Tips and resources for a HoI2 beginner?

[PhroX]

Another HoI2 n00b here. Kept reading all the AARs, and eventually fell to temptation over the weekend.

Started as Germany, followed the AAR linked earlier for the first few years, but I've taken off on my own now. Got a few queries though. (I can't get to Paradox forums at work, and when I'm at home, I'm too busy playing... )

a) Is it worth puppeting off nations? I think I've nearly taken out the SU, and I'm wondering whether I should release any of the nations like Ukraine or Beylorussia, or indeed some of my earlier conquests like Denmark or Greece.

b) How do I annex Yugoslavia? They've got no territory left - it's all controlled by me and my allies - yet there's no option to annex in the diplo menu. I kinda think it could be a bug, as I didn't have any trouble with other places I invaded.

c) Whats the best way to get more manpower? Or, failing this, to cope with not having much? I've been at zero for about 9 months now. All my fresh men go to reinforcing my armies in the East. Can't build anything manpower-heavy like infantry anymore.

d) In the AARs, people have posted screenshots showing the strength of every nation's armies. How do you get to this? Under the statistics tab, I can only see the armies of me and my allies. (I'm probably missing something really obvious).

 

[Volum]

Another HoI2 n00b here. Kept reading all the AARs, and eventually fell to temptation over the weekend.

Started as Germany, followed the AAR linked earlier for the first few years, but I've taken off on my own now. Got a few queries though. (I can't get to Paradox forums at work, and when I'm at home, I'm too busy playing... )

a) Is it worth puppeting off nations? I think I've nearly taken out the SU, and I'm wondering whether I should release any of the nations like Ukraine or Beylorussia, or indeed some of my earlier conquests like Denmark or Greece.

Puppets are usually good. If a nation is your puppet you get all their resources except for the last 1000. You don't have to deal with partisans so it helps your TC and they can give you doctrines. Puppets are usually good but you don't want small worthless ones alltough Flanders often gives you useful doctrines. You don't want to puppeting everything tough, take some IC for yourself too

If your invading the SU just wait for bitter peace (take Moscow, Leningrad, Stalingrad, Baku and Sverdlovsk) and you should get an event where the Soviets ask for peace. Unless youre really unlucky and Stalin decides to fight on.

b) How do I annex Yugoslavia? They've got no territory left - it's all controlled by me and my allies - yet there's no option to annex in the diplo menu. I kinda think it could be a bug, as I didn't have any trouble with other places I invaded.

Im guessing one of your allies have captured the capital? In that case your ally has to annex them, they usually do so after a few days.

c) Whats the best way to get more manpower? Or, failing this, to cope with not having much? I've been at zero for about 9 months now. All my fresh men go to reinforcing my armies in the East. Can't build anything manpower-heavy like infantry anymore.

Change your ministers to manpower boosting ministers and maybe go on a building stop for a while. Reinforce your armies and build up a small manpower reserve in case you have to do some heavy reinforcing. Then just build a division when you can.

d) In the AARs, people have posted screenshots showing the strength of every nation's armies. How do you get to this? Under the statistics tab, I can only see the armies of me and my allies. (I'm probably missing something really obvious).

That feature is only in vanilla HOI2, are you playing Doomsday or Armageddon maybe?

 

[PhroX]

Thanks

Puppets are usually good. If a nation is your puppet you get all their resources except for the last 1000. You don't have to deal with partisans so it helps your TC and they can give you doctrines. Puppets are usually good but you don't want small worthless ones alltough Flanders often gives you useful doctrines. You don't want to puppeting everything tough, take some IC for yourself too

If your invading the SU just wait for bitter peace (take Moscow, Leningrad, Stalingrad, Baku and Sverdlovsk) and you should get an event where the Soviets ask for peace. Unless youre really unlucky and Stalin decides to fight on.

Just Sverdlosk to go then. Had all the others by the end of '41 (it's now mid-42).

Im guessing one of your allies have captured the capital? In that case your ally has to annex them, they usually do so after a few days.

Ah, that would explain it. Think Romania got the capital.

Change your ministers to manpower boosting ministers and maybe go on a building stop for a while. Reinforce your armies and build up a small manpower reserve in case you have to do some heavy reinforcing. Then just build a division when you can.

Yeah, I've gone for the ministers, and the only stuff I'm building is manpower light, but I was kinda hoping there might be something like the EU3 NI that boosts it by 50%.

That feature is only in vanilla HOI2, are you playing Doomsday or Armageddon maybe?

Armageddon. Guess I'm just stuck with my dodgy intelligence reports then?

 

[Volum]

Yeah, I've gone for the ministers, and the only stuff I'm building is manpower light, but I was kinda hoping there might be something like the EU3 NI that boosts it by 50%.



Armageddon. Guess I'm just stuck with my dodgy intelligence reports then?

I've never played EU But if your manpower is down to zero you probably have as large an army as you need. You just have to use intelligence reports.

 

[Chukchi Husky]

I got the Anthology box set recently (before I only had Doomsday). I played all the tutorials and the invasion of Poland scenario, but when trying to play the main 1936 game I don't have any idea what to do.

Also, should I install every version of the game? At the moment I have Armageddon installed.

 

[Yuri2356]

a) Is it worth puppeting off nations? I think I've nearly taken out the SU, and I'm wondering whether I should release any of the nations like Ukraine or Beylorussia, or indeed some of my earlier conquests like Denmark or Greece.

Puppets get full use of their IC and manpower, suffer no partisan activity, and shunt all their surplus resources to you. They'll also cover the supply needs of units you station in their territory. You can then simply assume control of the divisions they produce and carry on with the warfighting.

The only downside is that releasing puppets which you've already annexed will produce dissent, which then costs you productivity to put down, but that be avoided if you puppet the nation via peace negotiations instead.

 

[Serutan]

[rant] I think the dissent hit for puppeting is ********. I think it would be more realistic if
you got a much smaller belligerence benefit (say 25-50% of current), and no dissent. [/rant]

@Chuchky Husky : Go to the HoI2 Wiki - lots of useful info there.

 

[Rheinmetall]

Don't worry about experience - your commanders will get enough of that when Barbarossa starts.

As for the Baltic countries, it's better to wait for the Molotov-Ribbentrop event to fire in August '39, then simply demand territory from the Baltic states - you'll have the entire region without firing a shot.

Well Molotov-Ribbentrop fired, But the baltics didn't give me squat despite my demands, so I had to start taking it by force.

 

[Aldezhar]

1.st post

Good tread, so I decided to join the forum.

Played the game on and off for the last 6 months, and played USSR. I have had the Germans hold of Barbarossa when I declined the Ribbentrop event. Germany never executed Fall Gelb (France) or Weserübung (Denmark/Norway). Made for an interesting game since the war never happened.

Finland is always good for a fight, but a northern front is hell even with proper preparations.

Playing UK atm, anyone have any tips? What navy and air units are worth going for. Building fighters and destroyers. And most importantly (at least for Monty in Africa) HOW do I protect my sea transports.
On inf side I do marines in Malta, mountaneers in Gibraltar and whatever I have at hand ends up in Africa.

[edit]
Oh yeah, if you shift-click and ctrl-click the +/- for the IC sliders they move 0.5 and 0.05 units at a time respectivly. Took me a long time to find that out. Why cant i use the keyb to set it or one button to "move to needed"

 

[Volum]

You can hold in control also to move it 1 IC at a time

 

[Rheinmetall]

Armageddon, I'm playing as the soviets. It's '41 and the germans are beating the crap out of me. I don't mind that, but the game keeps crashing when a message pops up to tell me that something is happening in Iraq, involving Germany. Actually the game also crashed a lot when I got a bunch of messages about the US not joining the war. Is this normal? Is the game really this bug ridden?

 

[Dell19]

d) In the AARs, people have posted screenshots showing the strength of every nation's armies. How do you get to this? Under the statistics tab, I can only see the armies of me and my allies. (I'm probably missing something really obvious).

Its possible to activate that tab in Armageddon by using the reveal map cheat which is I guess what a few of us have used. Its a useful tab to show relative military power.

 

[Dell19]

Armageddon, I'm playing as the soviets. It's '41 and the germans are beating the crap out of me. I don't mind that, but the game keeps crashing when a message pops up to tell me that something is happening in Iraq, involving Germany. Actually the game also crashed a lot when I got a bunch of messages about the US not joining the war. Is this normal? Is the game really this bug ridden?

I've had occasional crashes but they are rare for me. Have you got the latest patches as its not unknown for Paradox to release a game with bugs. There should be an Iraq event where they can switch sides so maybe something is broken with the events. I know in EU2 there are some events that will crash the game if something weird has happened particularly in the mods.

 

[Rheinmetall]

I've had occasional crashes but they are rare for me. Have you got the latest patches as its not unknown for Paradox to release a game with bugs. There should be an Iraq event where they can switch sides so maybe something is broken with the events. I know in EU2 there are some events that will crash the game if something weird has happened particularly in the mods.

According to steam the game should be up to date. It might have something to do with the events, but it usually throws me to the desktop when I start the game clock again after some events pause it, so it might be there too.

 

[PhroX]

According to steam the game should be up to date. It might have something to do with the events, but it usually throws me to the desktop when I start the game clock again after some events pause it, so it might be there too.

What is the latest version according to Steam? For a long time, they were several versions behind (indeed, the version the had was horribly unstable and prone to crashing). I seem to remember seeing that they've updated, but I'm not certain (IIRC, Arma 1.3b is the latest)

 

[cardgame]

Do puppets really give you IC too?

 

[Serutan]

No. Puppets only give you resources. You only get IC from provinces you control. You get a bit more IC from provinces
that are both owned and controlled, and full IC only from provinces that are controlled and are national
provinces.

 

[Rheinmetall]

What is the latest version according to Steam? For a long time, they were several versions behind (indeed, the version the had was horribly unstable and prone to crashing). I seem to remember seeing that they've updated, but I'm not certain (IIRC, Arma 1.3b is the latest)

I'll try the beta patch & see it it'll fix it. The game is currently 1.2

 

[Captain Carnage]

I had a save game in Armageddon which would crash when the US occupied either Saigon or Bangkok (can't remember which one.) I eventually gave up on it.

 

[Tee Kay]

Do puppets really give you IC too?

No. Puppets only give you their excess resources (when they have over 1000 of a resource).

I try to liberate puppets wherever possible/suitable, especially playing democratic nations (as you don't get as much dissent as authoritarian nations hit when you do) as it really helps with TC and frees up troops which would otherwise be used to suppress partisans. Puppets gets full use of their IC (assuming national provinces for them of course) and puppets with +3 tech teams (or even +2) can really help with research.

Plus, generally if you liberate provinces with no IC or very small IC as a puppet it will get off-map IC and resources. So I tend to liberate small puppets rather than bigger ones unless they can get enough tech team slots to help research.

No. Puppets only give you resources. You only get IC from provinces you control. You get a bit more IC from provinces
that are both owned and controlled, and full IC only from provinces that are controlled and are national
provinces.

IIRC, you only get 20% IC from occupied or annexed non-national provinces, plus any minister bonus. Annexation makes no difference in that case. You get 30% resources from occupied provinces and 50% for annexed ones. With Armageddon you can simply turn full IC take over on but I found you run out of resources very quickly (even as USSR) as you still only get 50% from non-nat provinces.