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Great tutorial, very imformative. I am actually starting to enjoy the game.
If you continue in the manner in which you have approached this so far, this tutorial will
be a must see for all beginners like myself. Thanks for taking the time and looking forward to next installment.
If you continue in the manner in which you have approached this so far, this tutorial will
be a must see for all beginners like myself. Thanks for taking the time and looking forward to next installment.
Just noticed something. My failed first tutorial can be googled! I'm on the first page of google search! how awesome is that? (also, about 1,400 views in a week, thank you everybody for making me very proud of the work I'm doing).
I've a question : in the diplomatic actions , you have align to faction , of course germany does not get it as it starts in one ... but does this cost leadership like influencing foreign countries?
oops. forgot to mention that one, didn't I?
No, in both FtM and SF Align to faction only costs 1 diplomatic point. In FtM it lasts unlimited number of days, while in SF in lasts a number of days as stated in the window that opens when you try it.
edited the diplomacy chapter to mention diplo cost and make a mention of align to faction.
Last edited:
Chapter 6: Intelligence.
Click the Intelligence tab.
Here is where we manage our spies, both those working domestically and abroad. There are 4 priority settings for spies: from 0 to 3. The game uses these settings to decide where to send spies. It will first try to keep the ones with the highest setting at the maximum of 10 spies each. Then the second highest, and so on. Changing priorities is easy: each left click on the tri-coloured bar adds one to our priority. When at priority 3, left-clicking will set it back to 0. Right-clicking reduces priority by 1.
In the top left corner, we find our domestic spies. Germany’s version of the FBI, if you will. The window will tell you the number of spies that are waiting for assignment (right now we don’t have any leftovers, but at some point we will have a whole bunch of these.) If you have enough, adding a new nation to the list will send the maximum number (up to 10) all at once. Sending spies takes one day.
Right now we have 133 spies in foreign nations and only 4 at home (the default setting when starting a new game). We don’t have rebels in Germany right now, but if we did, they would be at efficiency 14 (as far as I know, efficiency determines what kind of rebels we got, some are easy, just disgruntled rabble, others are partisans like Tito was in Real Life.).
The game also lists how many spies we caught in the current month. If the game detects foreign spies working in Germany, it will show up as an exclamation mark (“!”). Mousing over this will tell us where they came from and what they are doing. Some missions (as I will explain in a moment) can be safely ignored, while others are to be dealt with ASAP. It wil also list our Effective neutrality for ease of reference.
There are three missions in FtM we can perform at home (4 in SF): counterespionage (eliminating hostile spies), support ruling party (which will add to the party’s organisation; more details in the chapter on politics) and raise national unity (this is exceedingly slow but it will keep our National Unity from decreasing).
In Semper Fi, you can also lower your neutrality. When used in conjunction with Increase Threat on another nation, it allows for an early, ahistorical DoW, which we won't do. If you ever play the UK, using the two together is of prime importance to get Great Brittain into the "better" laws a lot sooner.
Under normal, peacetime circumstances, Germany doesn’t need to do anything other than counterespionage at home. (of course, this is single player, things might be different in MP)
There is no need to change anything here.
Directly below the Domestic Spies window, you will be able to select any and all nations in the world. We are now going to stop sending spies abroad for a couple of days, until we can get the Abwehr at home fully staffed (again, the maximum is 10 spies per nation).
Click on “priority”. This will shuffle the nations, listing the high-priority ones first. France will be the first on the list, just like in my screenshot. Then you will go down the list setting every nation at priority 0, just like I described above: left-click to add one, right-click to take one away.
This will take a couple of seconds, but it is important because we need to get our homeland security going ASAP. When you think you’re finished, click the “priority” button again. Any nations you might have missed will now be shown at the top of the list. If not, the nations will be listed alfabetically, starting with Afghanistan.
In the middle, we have our spies abroad. At the start of the game, we have 4 spies in the UK and they are on counterespionage (the default setting). We could change the priority here as well.
And then , we have a whole slew of spy missions to perform, some of which are interesting, some are actually useful, others are mostly superfluous.
The missions are:
None: actually a misnomer. This mission will tell our spies to lay low, but they will still do some random low-level stuff on their own. This is the one to use when you don’t have the maximum of 10 spies there.
Counterespionage: If we have spies in a neutral country, this mission will attack their home spies. If we have spies in a faction member, it will HELP THEIR DOMESTIC SPIES. (Spies in Italy, once they join the Axis, would attack any other spy except the Italian ones).
There are 3 espionage missions, which are fact-finding missions on the target nation’s military, tech research and politics (For those coming from HOI2, sorry no more stealing blueprints). I’ve never actually used any of these, but if you ever play with AI-control, the AI will use this to gauge the enemy’s advances, I believe.
In the diplomacy screen we could see the target nation’s ruling party. Here we can choose to support them, just like we can with our own. Useful if you want to make certain a nation doesn’t change government when you don’t want them to.
Dircelty below that one is support our party. This will strengthen the organisation of the party closest to our own (in this case a National Socialist or, failing that, a fascist party).
Disrupt national unity does exactly what the name says: it directly attacks the target’s NU, making them divided and more prone to surrender after losing VP provinces. This is the one we will be using on France for the next 4 years or so. (not yet, though, first we have other things to do).
Support rebels: if a nation has an uprising going on, this mission will make them more efficient. Could be useful for the right nation.
We can also choose to disrupt (sabotage) their research or their production. Neither is very helpful for Germany since we’re already ahead of mostly everyone else in the world.
The last one is really useful. Increase Threat will make the target nation seem like imperialist warmongers of the worst kind. It will increase the threat they generate to the point where you might see otherwise neutral countries start mobilising in fear of an attack from our target. Makes influencing a sloooooooooooooow process.
The right-hand side of this screen shows us the various stats for the target nation, to the best of our spies’ knowledge. In FtM, we can look at the target’s ministers, this option is not available for SF.
Note that the number and location of forces is usually wrong and nearly always an underestimate.
Well, unless I missed something, this is it for spies. Trust me, we will get back here to light a powder keg under Europe.
Click the Intelligence tab.
Here is where we manage our spies, both those working domestically and abroad. There are 4 priority settings for spies: from 0 to 3. The game uses these settings to decide where to send spies. It will first try to keep the ones with the highest setting at the maximum of 10 spies each. Then the second highest, and so on. Changing priorities is easy: each left click on the tri-coloured bar adds one to our priority. When at priority 3, left-clicking will set it back to 0. Right-clicking reduces priority by 1.
In the top left corner, we find our domestic spies. Germany’s version of the FBI, if you will. The window will tell you the number of spies that are waiting for assignment (right now we don’t have any leftovers, but at some point we will have a whole bunch of these.) If you have enough, adding a new nation to the list will send the maximum number (up to 10) all at once. Sending spies takes one day.
Right now we have 133 spies in foreign nations and only 4 at home (the default setting when starting a new game). We don’t have rebels in Germany right now, but if we did, they would be at efficiency 14 (as far as I know, efficiency determines what kind of rebels we got, some are easy, just disgruntled rabble, others are partisans like Tito was in Real Life.).
The game also lists how many spies we caught in the current month. If the game detects foreign spies working in Germany, it will show up as an exclamation mark (“!”). Mousing over this will tell us where they came from and what they are doing. Some missions (as I will explain in a moment) can be safely ignored, while others are to be dealt with ASAP. It wil also list our Effective neutrality for ease of reference.
There are three missions in FtM we can perform at home (4 in SF): counterespionage (eliminating hostile spies), support ruling party (which will add to the party’s organisation; more details in the chapter on politics) and raise national unity (this is exceedingly slow but it will keep our National Unity from decreasing).
In Semper Fi, you can also lower your neutrality. When used in conjunction with Increase Threat on another nation, it allows for an early, ahistorical DoW, which we won't do. If you ever play the UK, using the two together is of prime importance to get Great Brittain into the "better" laws a lot sooner.
Under normal, peacetime circumstances, Germany doesn’t need to do anything other than counterespionage at home. (of course, this is single player, things might be different in MP)
There is no need to change anything here.
Directly below the Domestic Spies window, you will be able to select any and all nations in the world. We are now going to stop sending spies abroad for a couple of days, until we can get the Abwehr at home fully staffed (again, the maximum is 10 spies per nation).
Click on “priority”. This will shuffle the nations, listing the high-priority ones first. France will be the first on the list, just like in my screenshot. Then you will go down the list setting every nation at priority 0, just like I described above: left-click to add one, right-click to take one away.
This will take a couple of seconds, but it is important because we need to get our homeland security going ASAP. When you think you’re finished, click the “priority” button again. Any nations you might have missed will now be shown at the top of the list. If not, the nations will be listed alfabetically, starting with Afghanistan.
In the middle, we have our spies abroad. At the start of the game, we have 4 spies in the UK and they are on counterespionage (the default setting). We could change the priority here as well.
And then , we have a whole slew of spy missions to perform, some of which are interesting, some are actually useful, others are mostly superfluous.
The missions are:
None: actually a misnomer. This mission will tell our spies to lay low, but they will still do some random low-level stuff on their own. This is the one to use when you don’t have the maximum of 10 spies there.
Counterespionage: If we have spies in a neutral country, this mission will attack their home spies. If we have spies in a faction member, it will HELP THEIR DOMESTIC SPIES. (Spies in Italy, once they join the Axis, would attack any other spy except the Italian ones).
There are 3 espionage missions, which are fact-finding missions on the target nation’s military, tech research and politics (For those coming from HOI2, sorry no more stealing blueprints). I’ve never actually used any of these, but if you ever play with AI-control, the AI will use this to gauge the enemy’s advances, I believe.
In the diplomacy screen we could see the target nation’s ruling party. Here we can choose to support them, just like we can with our own. Useful if you want to make certain a nation doesn’t change government when you don’t want them to.
Dircelty below that one is support our party. This will strengthen the organisation of the party closest to our own (in this case a National Socialist or, failing that, a fascist party).
Disrupt national unity does exactly what the name says: it directly attacks the target’s NU, making them divided and more prone to surrender after losing VP provinces. This is the one we will be using on France for the next 4 years or so. (not yet, though, first we have other things to do).
Support rebels: if a nation has an uprising going on, this mission will make them more efficient. Could be useful for the right nation.
We can also choose to disrupt (sabotage) their research or their production. Neither is very helpful for Germany since we’re already ahead of mostly everyone else in the world.
The last one is really useful. Increase Threat will make the target nation seem like imperialist warmongers of the worst kind. It will increase the threat they generate to the point where you might see otherwise neutral countries start mobilising in fear of an attack from our target. Makes influencing a sloooooooooooooow process.
The right-hand side of this screen shows us the various stats for the target nation, to the best of our spies’ knowledge. In FtM, we can look at the target’s ministers, this option is not available for SF.
Note that the number and location of forces is usually wrong and nearly always an underestimate.
Well, unless I missed something, this is it for spies. Trust me, we will get back here to light a powder keg under Europe.
I think most of the espionage missions are useful in the right circumstances, although I have never found the espionage missions rewarding - and I must admit that I have never tried supporting rebels or disrupting research/production.
I have never studied exactly how the game goes about assigning spies, but I always assumed that the priority settings were exactly that, so that most spies would go to the highest priority countries but a few could still be sent elsewhere. Are you certain of your interpretation?
I could be wrong here, but I thought Support Our Party always operated on the party in the other country that shared our ideology exactly, so in our case it would always support the NS party, even if supporting the Fascist party might actually be a smarter move due to having much higher organisation and/or popularity.
I have never studied exactly how the game goes about assigning spies, but I always assumed that the priority settings were exactly that, so that most spies would go to the highest priority countries but a few could still be sent elsewhere. Are you certain of your interpretation?
I could be wrong here, but I thought Support Our Party always operated on the party in the other country that shared our ideology exactly, so in our case it would always support the NS party, even if supporting the Fascist party might actually be a smarter move due to having much higher organisation and/or popularity.
I once supported rebels in French Africa pre-war, just for laughs. they took half the coastline, including Oran. By that time, I needed the LS elsewhere, so I quit. Within a week they were back down to one province. coincidence or not? I don't know. besides, it was one of the early SF versions. however, I stand by my interpretation unless proven otherwise. Besides, for Germany, it would be a waste of LS to focus on something like that.
the comment about assignment of spies is purely a matter of observation. my lvl-3 is always assigned before my lvl-2.
Support Our Party WILL focus on NS parties for Germany, but if none are available, it will settle for fascists. The tooltip says: "the party whose ideology most closely resembles our own." So in a nation without NS parties, fascists will have to do. Sorry if that was not clear in the chapter.
Thank you very much for your tutorial. It really helps me to get in Hearts of Iron. I can't wait to read the next part. Keep on working 
!
Greetings from Germany.
!Greetings from Germany.
Subscribed, and thanks, I've been looking for a good tutorial to actually get into this game. I think the learning curve is just a bit too steep to do it without one, especially for those, like me, that don't have massive amounts of time to spend just LEARNING the game by trial and error (least efficient way). I'd much rather spend what time I have PLAYING it.
welcome and while I agree that playing the game is the best, I have always found experimenting with stuff and watching it blow up in my face a fun learning experience all of its own.
screenshots for the next chapter have been uploaded. I just have to actually write it. expect it tomorrow or tuesday.
@Conch: thanks for setting me straight. Always enjoy learning some linguistic skills.
This is coming along great.
Just out of curiosity, what did you type into google to make your thread come up?
Just out of curiosity, what did you type into google to make your thread come up?
Once more, thanks for this great help. I am new to HOI 3 and so glad I picked it up during the holidays.
Incredible game. Totally immersed into it now.
Incredible game. Totally immersed into it now.
Quick question. When you click on a roundel of a country on the diplomatic triangle, a tooltip pops up.
On the very top, before it explains the breakdown of drift, there are 2 numbers looking like this:
( +1.45/+1.32) What do they represent?
Thanks
On the very top, before it explains the breakdown of drift, there are 2 numbers looking like this:
( +1.45/+1.32) What do they represent?
Thanks