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Germany Tutorial: Take 2.

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@Sprites: glad to have you. welcome.
@LOKI100: Part of the reason why I restarted, was your recommendation and your appeal to my sense for the greater good.
@The UNDERTAKER: I'll try to point out the most significant differences between the two, as well as HOI2. The only differences so far with SF are, obviously, the lack of Strategic Resources, which is not gamebreaking, and the fact that the Aerial Mapmode doesn't show the maximum range of the planes stationed in your various airbases. You'll have to get a "feel" for your planes' range, but it is not a gamebreaker either. oh, and the flag doesn't show global effects for your country. On the plus side, you'll find trading during peacetime easier than in FtM as resources in general are more abundant.
 
Severe occupation laws will increase the revoltrisk and make whatever partisans spawn better armed and more determined. ALWAYS GO FOR THE LEAST SEVERE POLICY!
Click to expand...

Are you sure that is always the right advice? Different occupation policies provide different bonuses and penalties. Don't you think the right choice depends on your circumstances? For Germany fighting deep inside the USSR, supply throughput and revolt risk may indeed be the most important considerations, but might there not be other situations where getting hold of more IC or resources from occupied territory is more important?
 
SSmith said:
Are you sure that is always the right advice? Different occupation policies provide different bonuses and penalties. Don't you think the right choice depends on your circumstances? For Germany fighting deep inside the USSR, supply throughput and revolt risk may indeed be the most important considerations, but might there not be other situations where getting hold of more IC or resources from occupied territory is more important?
Click to expand...

I checked the game and played the numbers, so to speak, to answer your question.
collaboration: IC: 5%, res: 25% (20% dif in favor of resources), mp:35% (!), LS: 30% (!), pts support: 1.5%
military government: IC: 20%, res: 50% (30% dif!), mp: 30%; LS: 20%, pts: 7%
full occupation: IC: 40%, res: 65% (25% dif), mp: 15%, LS: 10%, pts: 11%
total exploitation: IC 60%, res: 75% (15% dif), mp 5%, LS: 1%, pts: 19%.

so with collaboration you have most MP, LS and peace of mind.
with milgov you have most res and IC
with full you are basically nowhere and everywhere at once
with total, however (on which I based my earlier conclusions, given HOI's longstanding tradition of favoring extremes), your IC gain outweighs your resource gain.
For me, the be-all and end-all of a German campaign must always be the termination of the Soviet threat. For this you need lots of MP, lots of LS to keep ahead in techs, and the easiest supply routes.
It would now seem, however, that a combination of milgov and collaboration would be better, based on the nation you occupied. It then becomes a matter of strategic choice and player's option.
I will edit the post accordingly, unless anyone else would care to chime in? (please do, the more the merrier, just watch out we don't turn this into an interactive AAR by accident)
 
My post about revoltrisk has been edited, citing the most urgent need of the moment as primary factor in determining your policy.
 
sorry, guys. Next chapter may take a few days. Suffering from serious case of writer's block to properly explain threat and neutrality. I know what I want to say, but everything comes out sounding like Klingon language and since it is so vital, I want it to make sense.
 
Thanks for taking the time putting this together. I haven't played any HOI game in the past but always interested
in the series. As a Newbie, it can be quite frustrating trying to find the info needed to understand and enjoy the game to its fullest
given all the places you need to search (IE forums, manuals, strategy guides, quickstart guides, supplements, etc).
I think I have already learned more from your first few chapters which I read tonight than days of searching elsewhere.
The best thing about this is you ARE explaining everything, even what may be the simplest things for experienced players, but not for the new players as myself
and it is in one place. If you can continue in this manner, I am sure many people who might have decided to shelf the game will enjoy it.
Thanks again and keep up the good work.
Can't wait for the next chapters.
 
WhAcKeD_OuT said:
Thanks for taking the time putting this together. I haven't played any HOI game in the past but always interested
in the series. As a Newbie, it can be quite frustrating trying to find the info needed to understand and enjoy the game to its fullest
given all the places you need to search (IE forums, manuals, strategy guides, quickstart guides, supplements, etc).
I think I have already learned more from your first few chapters which I read tonight than days of searching elsewhere.
The best thing about this is you ARE explaining everything, even what may be the simplest things for experienced players, but not for the new players as myself
and it is in one place. If you can continue in this manner, I am sure many people who might have decided to shelf the game will enjoy it.
Thanks again and keep up the good work.
Can't wait for the next chapters.
Click to expand...

thanks a lot. Rest Assured, I plan to continue in this manner as much as possible. There may be a new update tomorrow evening at the latest. I just have to finish the chapter, upload the screenshots and we're good to go.
 
the more the merrier. welcome, and enjoy the discovery of untold hours lost staring at little squares moving on a map :)
 
new chapter tomorrow is a definitive yes, barring internet problems.
 
Chapter Five: Diplomacy.

Leave the game paused. We are going to have a lot to do before we can let any time pass.
Click on the Diplomacy tab.

diploww.png

Busy little baby, isn’t it? It’s not so bad as it looks, once you figure out what’s what here. So first, a little introduction.
On this screen, we have the whole world at our fingertips. At the top right are the three factions: Axis, Allies and Comintern. They all have certain advantages the others don’t. Mousing over each of them brings up a tooltip to identify these advantages.

Members of the Axis faction (which, right now, consists of only Germany) can initiate a limited war. This is a war where only the one that called it is involved. The other Axis members are considered non-participants and are therefore free to do as they please while remaining at peace. You can later, at a time of your choosing, Call any one from the Axis to Arms. They will analyze the threat and the AI will make an assessment whether to get involved or not. I’ve never known Germany to be turned down when calling someone to arms, (failure to do so would get them booted out of the Axis, I believe) but it may take a couple of days for the AI to shift his forces and respond favorably. When you do this, remember that the AI, while having grown quite adept in and by itself, is still just an AI. It may respond favorably, and then spend the next ten weeks doing nothing. Or it may decide that Copenhagen is nice this time of year and send a million of its troops over there. Those of you playing SF will see more of this irrational behavior than the ones playing FtM, but it may still happen. Forewarned is forearmed.
A second Axis privilege is the Territorial Pride. Whenever an Axis nation if fighting on what it feels is its home turf (in the game called Cores, these provinces once belonged or still belong to the nation in question and it wants it back. One fine example is Danzig. Before the first World War, Danzig belonged to Germany since a late 19th century French-German war. They lost it when they lost the war. Whenever Germany is fighting over control of Danzig, in any way, shape or form, they get a 10% combat bonus). Pretty neat, huh?

The Allies are a close-knit bunch. When you declare war on one of them, you also declare war on all of them. So you are never “only” at war with France, you are also at war with Bhutan, Iraq, United Kingdom, Nepal and Yemen. Remember that if you ever play a middle-east nation and you decide that Yemen would be nice to have. They may be small, but they have large friends with big guns.
The Allies are also democratic nations (by and large). As such they have to pay more IC to keep the people happy. On the other hand, they have to pay less when at war. Keeping them at peace for as long as possible deprives them of a large amount of IC that could otherwise be used to build tanks, planes or warships.

The Comintern are a communist faction. They pay less tribute to money and can trade using resources, just like everyone could in HOI2. They can even give each other resources for free.
Their soldiers are used to doing more with less, so they spend 33% less on supplies than other nations.
And because they are scorned by the rest of the world, they have a highly developed spy network that works 10% better than those of other nations. Lucky for us, the only other Comintern members in 1936, besides the Soviet Union, are its puppets Mongolia and Tannu Tuva (a dwarf state in central Asia) and not worth bothering with.

All factions have 2 things in common. War between factions is to the death. There can be no white peace. They fight until total victory is achieved.
The 3 factions also each have a Faction Leader. These are the Soviet Union for the Comintern, the UK for the Allies and little old us for the Axis. Peace offers (a neutral nation at war with the Sovets, for instance) and membership questions are made by the Faction Leader. We will decide who will join the Axis (mind you, a nation’s puppets become members by default) and we could call a halt to the Sino-Japanese war if China begs us to (if Japan, by then, is in the Axis).

Click on the Majors button. These are nations with at least 60 base IC (the actual factories before modifiers are used). Each of them has the potential to build large armies and navies spanning the world. The ones with 20-59 base IC are called Regional Powers; their power base is sufficient to get noticed by everyone in the same region (such as Romania in the Balkans). Minor Powers such as Greece, Austria or South Africa have between 10 and 19 Base IC, while Micropowers, such as Luxemburg, have to make do with 9 base IC or less.
The other buttons are more filters to quicly find the nation we’re looking for with evident names: our neighbours, nations that have not joined a faction, all of them, or only those with a capital on a certain continent.

Then come a scrollable list of all the nations, according to the filter you assigned, as described above, with their name, their threat (we’ll talk about threat a lot more later in this chapter) and their resource gains. On the screenshot you can see Bulgaria suffering from an energy deficit. Mousing over each nation’s resources will show you the net gain or loss at that moment in time. A very important distinction because supplies, for one, are very fickle things that can change from day to day or even from hour to hour based on what is happening in that nation.

Under the nations you see a little checkbox “automate trade”. Checking this will let the AI make all your trades for you, but we will not be using it. The AI is quite capable of keeping your economy affloat, especially during peacetime, but it is incapable of seeing the larger picture. For instance, the German AI would happily trade with the US for Rares during wartime, merrily sending German convoys to get slaughtered, along with our National Unity, by the Allies’ fleets. For another thing, the AI is not as devious as a human player. I don’t believe it would keep trading with loss just for the increased relations those trades might bring. Besides, this is still a Tutorial AAR, meaning we have to learn everything ourselves.

Right at the bottom on the left-hand side is a box detailing Decisions available to us. Decisions are bigtime, Gamechanging events that are otherwise impossible just playing the game. The Anschluss of Austria is one fine example of this. While Germany could organise a coup of the Austrian government and could Annex it with arms, we could not Annex them by organising a coup.
Next to the name of each decision is a question mark. Mousing over it will show us the conditions that have to be met before the decision becomes available. For instance, for the Anschluss, Germany and Austria must both be independent nations, neither can be at war, Germany must have executed the Rhineland Occupation (the next decision in the list) and either the Austrian NSDAP must have a large enough following inside Austrian politics OR Austria must have a political crisis, OR it must at least be march 1938. Once the necessary requisites are met, the checkbox will light up green and we will get a warning icon on the screen telling us there is a decision to make. We don’t have to make a decision. In fact, we could play as a peaceful Germany and try to get Austria into the Axis the normal way, if we so wanted. A decision is always a “yes or no” matter and it is always player’s choice on whether to go through with it. Some decisions will last a long time, others will pass quickly. Given the fact that Decisions are nearly always beneficial for the nation you play, there is usually no reason not to execute it, especially if you’re looking to have a historical game. Sometimes, though, you might want to delay a while for one reason or other. But they never last. Wait until 1937 and the Rhineland Occupation becomes unavailable to Germany.
As time passes, other Decisions will turn up, so it is always good to keep an eye on this screen every once and a while even if you have no diplomacy to perform.

The center of the screen is taken up by the nation you selected. Here you can see the relation you have with another nation (200% relations is maximum attainable). Higher relations makes cheaper trade. It also makes them more willing to go along with you, but, contrary to HOI2, 200% relations HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH JOINING A FACTION!!!!
They might be more favorable to do so with high relations, or to defend you during war, but the actual joining is a whole different kettle of fish.
There are also the various threat and neutrality levels both you and the selected nation have. (bear with me on those 2 words).
Next you can read if they are at war, members of a faction, members of a military alliance (a temporary partner in crime, if you will), if they are or own puppets and more of the things to know about any one nation.
Next we have the various diplomatic options available. Buf before we get into that, we first need to explain the trifling matter of…

Threat and Neutrality.
(suddenly starts shivering until he’s had a long, deep drag of his cigarette. Wipes the sweat from his head, takes a deep, calming breath before diving in…)
Most, if not all of the diplomatic actions you can have with any nation in the world, are dictated by these two words. Understanding these is paramount to understanding how diplomacy works in the game.
First, there is Base Neutrality. This is the people’s unwillingness to go to war. High neutrality is usually associated with democratic nations or with nations that just want to be left alone in peace. High neutrality will raise the need for consumer goods. In SF, you can lower your neutrality by using spies at home to rouse the people, but in FtM this is no longer possible. In FtM, your neutrality rises when you end all wars you were previously part of or through certain events and decisions.As you can see, the USA has a Base Neutrality of 100%. They just want to be at peace no matter what, effectively, just like in reality, a sleeping giant.

Secondly, there is Threat. Threat is exactly what the name implies: how threatening a nation appears to other nations. Threat is raised whenever you finish building any military unit. In SF, ships and reserve divisions raise a lot less threat than in FtM.
Threat is also raised by putting your soldiers on the border with other nations, allowing them to see those divisions get deployed.
Threat is also raised by invading another nation.
Threat can also be raised by foreign spies working inside your country. We could raise the threat level of Mexico, for instance, to the point where the nations around it start mobilizing, fearing they’re about to be invaded.
There is no way to lower threat. Once you have it, you’re stuck with it.
Threat has a more profound effect based on physical proximity: our threat level will go up like crazy in a few years time, and will alarm all of Europe, but will barely register in the USA, because they share several Pacific islands with Japan, who will be doing their own threat raising.
If the other experienced players on the forum know anything significant I forgot, please chime in and I will edit this chapter accordingly.
Here is a major difference between SF and FtM.
In SF, it works like this: the highest threat against you is substracted from your neutrality. As the difference gets smaller, more “militant” diplomatic avenues start opening up. Since you can both lower your own neutrality AND raise your target’s threat using spies, it gets a lot easier to take unhistorically aggressive actions.
In FtM, however, the two are still substracted from each other to give you your Effective Neutrality Level. This determines just how aggressive you can be on the diplomatic scene. Since you can no longer lower your neutrality by using spies, it requires a more determined effort on the part of your foreign spies. The effect is still basically the same, but the actual game mechanic to achieve it has been altered.
If this sounds like Latin to you, it will get clearer in a moment. For now just remember that
Base Neutrality-Threat=Effective Neutrality.

How does this work in practice?
Going back to the USA, you will see that the diplomatic action to DoW the USA (game term for declaring war on someone) is greyed out. The tooltip says that we cannot DoW the USA because our Effective Neutrality is too high.
Our base neutrality at the start of the game is 60.
The highest threat against us is 0.
You can only DoW someone when your Effective Neutrality is 15.
This means that our Neutrality must go down to 15 or someone would need to raise threat with Germany (game term to mean: become threatening to someone) up to a level of 45 or anything in between.
To give you an idea in practice:
During a recent USA game, Japan had the highest threat in the whole world with the USA, at a level of about 23, after waging war against and annexing or puppeting all the different Chinese warlords for years.
With a Base Neutrality, by 1941, of around 85 or something, my Effective Neutrality was
85-23=62,
making it impossible to DoW the Axis myself. (I had neglected to raise Japan’s threat with spies, my bad.) Only the attack on Pearl Harbour (a decision for Japan) would have drawn the USA into the war. This did not come, possibly because the Japanese AI felt my Pacific defenses were too great to overcome. (I haven’t played Japan in FtM so I can’t be certain)
I could not build an Alliance, ask to join the Allies or even embargo Japan as they all require your Effective Neutrality to be at a certain point between 35 and 15 or lower.

For those of you playing SF: the difference between threat and neutrality is still the same, but if my USA game from above had been an SF game, I could have lowered my neutrality manually for 6 years, making it possible to join the Allies before december 1941 and without japanese Dow. Thankfully, the US AI is not in the habit of doing so and I will later describe what you can do to ensure they stay faithful to history.
If all this still sounds like Latin to you, in everyday English it basically means that the more any nation feels threatened, the more it is willing to support aggressive politics. It will become self-evident once we start actually using it in-game.
Moving on for now, the diplomatic options are (and each of these will cost a number of diplomatic points, except Influence nation, which costs 2 Leadership points invested as long as the influence lasts)
Declare war: this means that Germany will declare war on someone on behalf of the ENTIRE Axis.
Declare Limited War: As stated before, only the Axis nations have this choice. A limited war would involve only Germany, in our case. Contrary to HOI2, there is no longer a danger of Germany being sucked into war against China alongside Japan, because it is a limited war. We do have the option later to Call any other Axis nation(s) of our choice to Arms (you can’t see the action button because the USA is not in the Axis).
Offer Alliance: If two nations are getting along splendidly and have a common enemy, they can form a military alliance. This is not the same as a faction. It is a temporary, purely military joining of forces. I do believe, however, that a military alliance REQUIRES you to come to your partner’s aid in times of war, so don’t take this lightly.
Non-aggression pact: two nations can form a NAP, meaning they promise not to go to war against each other. The terms of the agreement become less sever over time and (in FtM) the game will warn you of a change in NAP status.
Proclaim Guarantee: This means to guarantee a nation’s independence. If that nation is under attack, you will be forced to intervene on their behalf.
Ask for Transit Rights: Germany can ask to be allowed to move forces (land, air and naval) across the other nation’s country. You cannot subsequently DoW this nation without revoking the transit rights first, and you cannot engage an enemy’s land forces from the recipient nation’s land. For instance, Italy regularly is allowed to move troops through Yugoslavia, but they can’t attack Greece from yugoslavian territory. One slight catch, though: airborne operations and amphibious invasions are still possible. In my Italy example, they could potentially base transport planes and paratroops in Yugoslavia and then launch an airborne invasion from yugoslavia.
Give Transit Rights: We could give another nation permission to move their armies through Germany. You will usually see this option between AI nations bordering a much stronger nation because it makes it impossible for the other nation to DoW the weaker one.
Invite to Faction: An option available only to Faction Leaders. Under certain conditions, which I will discuss later in this chapter, a faction leader can invite a willing nation to join said faction. Sometimes you will see the option become available but their are other, scripted requirements before the invitee (if that is proper english?) agrees. For instance, Nationalist Spain will not join the Axis under any circumstances unless the British Isles or Gibraltar are in Axis hands first.
Embargo: An embargo immediately and permanently ends all trades with the other nation until the embargo is lifted. This was the real-life US action which prompted Japan to attack Pearl Harbour.
Buy Production License: Pay money to use another nation’s blueprints, thereby foregoing the need to research the tech yourself. Obviously, this requires a close working relationship with the other nation.
Allow Debt: During war, you can allow a nation to trade with you on credit until after the war.
Influence Nation/ Align to Faction: The game mechanic is different than HOI2, but the function of this action is still the same: get a nation to become more willing to join your faction. This takes a long time and even then it may not work (see Invite To Faction above). Remember that if you’re not playing a faction leader yourself, yo may still influence a nation, but the ultimate choice on whether to invite or not still lies with the faction leader. As a neutral nation, you can always choose to Align to a faction, making your desire to join known. In time you could then ask to join said faction.
Offer Trade Agreement: Exactly what it sounds like. Major difference from HOI2: you either sell resources for money, or you pay money to buy resources. (unless Comintern members trading amongst each other, they can still trade resources just like in HOI2). Trade becomes cheaper when relations are higher. Thus, it is more advantageous to sell to nations that have a low relation with you and to buy from nations that have a high relation with you. Trade agreements have one other, major function in-game: barring decisions or events, trade agreements are the ONLY way to increase relations with another nation. (HOI2 players beware; influence no longer affects relationship!) Each trade, no matter how big or small, no matter whether you’re selling or buying, will improve relations between the two nations by 15. The maximum attainable relationship is +200. Having close relations with another nation has many advantages. They might be more peaceful to you. Buying from them becomes cheaper. They get a bonus to drift towards a faction when they have good relations with one of its member nations, and a penalty when they have negative relations with them. These modifiers become higher the more your relations improve. In other words: trade a lot with those you want as your friends, but make a few bigtime sales with the ones you don’t care about.
We will now engage in a trade with the USA. Click on Offer Trade Agreement.

tradel.png

This window opens up.
HOI2 PLAYERS BEWARE: the direction of the sliders is now REVERSED from HOI2!!! You will now pull the slider towards your flag to sell and towards the other nation to buy. It helps to think in terms of money exchanging hands: selling sends money in our direction, buying sends money to the other nation.
Germany is in dire need of metals and rares at the start of the game. In order to buy these, we will need a lot of money. So first we will sell supplies to the USA, who happens to have a lot of money and a relationship of 0 with us.
Pull the slider representing supplies all the way TOWARDS THE GERMAN FLAG, just like I did. You will see a vague assessment telling us how possible the trade is. These are: impossible, maybe, likely, very likely and back to impossible if you’re asking for more than they can provide. In this case, the best case scenario is “likely”, but it is very rare for the US to refuse this trade. We can now click on the reverse arrow on the right-hand side to put the slider back to zero, we can decline to go through with it or we can accept the deal. We will have to unpause the game (KEEP THE GAME PAUZED!!!!) and wait a few hours before the US tells us if they accept or not and, if we have enough convoys (this is an transatlantic trade), we will get the money two days later (the next day in SF).
Click on “Accept”. That’s it. the rest is up to the US AI.
You will have noticed I have not even mentioned the big triangle with all the little flags yet. I will do so now because this is where you assess the potential of any nation in the world to join any of the three factions. So it deserves some special attention in my next chapter.
But before we forget, first we are going to make another trade deal, this time with the Soviet Union, who has a lot of metal and rares in surpluss.
Find the Soviet Union (in the Comintern, or in Europe or under the letter “S” in All or by clicking its flag in the triangle).

soviettrade.png

Push the “metal” and “rare” sliders towards the Soviet union the Soviet Union until both read +10 and the likelyhood of their accepting is “very likely”. Click Accept. KEEP THE GAME PAUZED!!Why do this now? Mainly because it improves our relations with them, making future buys cheaper. Also, they have not been able to sell anything just yet, so it won’t get any higher than it is right now.
Here’s our trading strategy: in 8 days, we will do the reverse of what we just did: buy metal and rares from the US while selling supplies to the SU. Coupled with buying rares and metals from everyone else who can provide them (Sweden for metal, Italy, UK and Netherlands for rares) we should be set to get our stockpile of both as high as we can get it before the war starts and most of our trading avenues will dry up. Throughout the war, Germany will suffer a shortage of rares. The only way to get through that is by making sure we can last the distance with the stockpile we amass by 1939.
One last thing I forgot to mention: after any diplomatic deal, you need to wait 8 days until you can make another one with the same nation again. So in some games you may have to decide whether to influence a nation first or to trade with it first, for instance.
Man, this was one serious wall of text here, wasn’t it? Next chapter will be much shorter, but even more important as we explore the intricacies of the Diplomatic Triangle.
 
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just getting ready to post that very chapter right now, actually. thanks for the compliment. Threat and neutrality are easy stuff once you get the hang of it, but actually explaining it was a lot harder than I imagined.
 
Chapter 5B: The Diplomatic Triangle

trianglem.png

Today I’ll guide you through the maze that is the Diplomatic Triangle. This is where we find out who to coerce into being our friend, who to watch as potential enemies and, in the case of the USA, who to keep neutral.

First, the basics. In each corner, you have one of the three factions. The Allies at the top, with the UK as its leader, the Comintern in the lower left corner and the Axis in the lower right. All the nations that belong to a certain faction will lock into place near their faction.
Everyone else is considered neutral and will slowly “drift “ towards the faction they like best at that point in time. Look at it like a pond, with the neutral nations being toy boats floating around in that pond. Every time a faction member performs any kind of action that other nations could observe, it is like throwing a pebble in the pond, causing ripples. These ripples will send every boat drifting away towards one of the corners. With a bit of practice, we can learn to “throw our pebble” just right, so that it has the desired effect on certain nations.

Our “pebbles” in this case include:
Form of government. The Allies, during peace time, will naturally seem more attractive to democracies and nations interested in maintaining the status quo. Far-left governments would like to be a part of the Comintern and The Axis will draw from autocracies, far-right governments and military-minded nations. We can use spies to get the right kind of government in place, if we want to, so that they will be more receptive to our influence.

Relations: Having good relations with a faction member will cause a nation to drift more towards that faction. Hence the importance of trade. Necessity will force us to trade with the Soviets and the UK, but we will try to maintain close relations with those nations that are potential Axis members. At the same time, we will trade with nations, such as the Netherlands, that provide a potential security hazard when allowed to join a faction, to make them drift back towards the center of our “pond”.

Neutrality: take a look at the USA. They are, at the start of the game, close enough to the Allies to join them. They start out with a democratic government and close relations with the UK. However, their neutrality of 100% will prevent them from joining. Other nations included here are, for instance, Nationalist Spain (once they win the Spanish Civil War) who will only join the Axis if the Axis will have control of Gibraltar and/or the British Isles first.
This is where threat comes in. As mentioned before, threat lowers neutrality. In layman’s terms, Germany’s rearmament program will make us seem like a huge threat to our neighbours and they will seek protection from either the Allies or the Comintern. By influencing them, we will set their minds at ease about any warplans we might have.

Proximity: This is physical proximity. When we deploy a new panzer division, our neighbours will feel threatened by it, but in the USA, on the other side of the world, it will barely register. On the other hand, we will be using spies in Canada to increase Canada’s threat, making them out to be the worst people since Attila the Hun for the simple reason that Canada is the US’ only major neighbour. Once the war starts, in 99% of my games Canada joins the Allies. Now, those “warmongers” just across the border will have joined the Allies, causing the US to rethink its strategy and drift away from the Allies. The intend is not to get the US to join us, but to keep the Giant asleep as long as possible. Likewise, in about 1 year, Japan should invade China, increasing their threat by leaps and bounds. Since Japan has many islands in close proximity to US Pacific holdings, as well as their puppet the Phillipines, Japanese threat will drown out all other. Since we’re playing a historic campaign, we will try to get Japan to join the Axis, thereby increasing the Threat of the entire Axis faction when seen by the US.

Close relations: Whenever a nation is very closely aligned with a faction, their drift will slow down as they become worried about their independence.

Do you see how it works? By trading with the proper nations, we will increase our relation with them. Our spies will subvert their government and make the other factions seem like a bigger threat than we are. Influencing them at the same time will make them more eager to join the Axis.
So here’s our strategy for the next three to four years: We will send spies to France to keep them divided, leaderless (keep their National Unity low to make conquering them easier). We will send spies to the UK and the SU to make them out to be the villains of the story. We will influence central and eastern European nations, thereby securing our southern flank. We will trade with belgium and Holland to keep them as neutral as possible. We could try to get the American National Socialist party (the German-American Bund) in power during the 1940 elections just to keep them off our backs, or even to join the Axis, but that would be not historically correct, which is what we're aiming to do here.
Italy and japan will be enticed to join us at the earliest possibility.

We now have all the other majors covered:
US: keep them neutral
SU: make it almost impossible for them to find new Comintern members
UK: likewise make it as hard as possible to get anyone to join them.
France: divided
Japan and Italy: Axis members.
We will try to get the traditional Axis members together, but some of them require conditions to be met: Finland will only join us when we get ready to invade the Soviet Union. Romania will only join us after losing large parts of their country to Hungary, Bulgaria and the Soviet Union. Hungary is a piece of cake.

Questions? Comments? Post them. That’s what this is about, after all.

Next time: the extention of diplomacy: Spies!
 
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SSmith said:
Nice work explaining some complex subjects!

Just a thought, but do you really want to try to get your party elected in the USA? Won't that mess with the historical path idea behind this tutorial?
Click to expand...

good point. I hadn't really thought that one through. on the other hand, it would allow me to explain one of the ways in which you can divert from history.
hmm...I'll think about it.
What do other people think? G-A Bund just to keep the US hopping or not?
 
The advantage of keeping to history (at least till war breaks out) is that most readers will have a reference point. To some extent you can see that as the default path. Options such as early war, the Bund in power in the US, heavy on the navy etc etc etc potentially limit the value (in that at some stage you're doing things essentially due to that strategy). Maybe the best option is to have a set of 'divergences' posts. So as opposed to keeping the US neutral and off your back as long as possible - here's a strategy that allows you to bring them to the axis (& here's the tools)?

Its difficult with a HOI3 tutorial as its easier say in EU3 to dip in and dip out with different countries at different stages that just happen to exemplify the point you're making.

One other point (apols) is that for a beginner, there is merit to keeping it simple. There are a lot of AARs that explore alternative strategies and the ways you can play the system to get particular goals. Its good to be aware of them but at the start may be a bit too much to try sucessfully?

Anyway, whatever route you take this remains an excellent resource.
 
misterbean said:
good point. I hadn't really thought that one through. on the other hand, it would allow me to explain one of the ways in which you can divert from history.
hmm...I'll think about it.
What do other people think? G-A Bund just to keep the US hopping or not?
Click to expand...

I think a tutorial should be a kiss. Yes, a kiss. You don't know what a kiss is?

Keep
it
short and
simple.

Kiss.

For the sake of simplicity, take the historic path and don't let the Bund take over US. You're describing it perfectly fine, and if any new player wants to toy around with the Bund in power, you did clarify things well enough for him to know how it works. But for a general tutorial that is intended to closely follow history, you should not do any major political changes in any of the major nations. If you follow history, and get a more or less historical US war entry, your readers will read it here and maybe think about how this could have gone different if US would have the Bund in power, and try it themselves.

By the way, great tutorial so far. I hope you keep it up, this is a perfect piece of content for anyone new to the game.
 
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