Perhaps it is worth mentioning the auto-trade and auto-sliders availiable in ARMA. Might come in handy for new players, wanting to lessen the complexity of micromanagement?
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Too many things to mention about builds overall so I will just stick to a few of my personal favourites.
Why 9 Transports? Your not doing an early Sealion. 3 is plenty to reinforce Prussia and these can be built in 1939. You get 3 free for Norway anyway so why build them early and have them eat supplies and oil?
Upgrade Oppelns infrastructure to 100%. This is Germany and we do not want any inferior infrastructure!
I wouldn't consider building 2 rounds of factories gamey. It stops players from building things too early that just need to be upgraded later. 3 or 4 rounds of factories is more the territory of IC-whoring. Building factories also allows you to point out the build time in the province early on in the game.
Use trade to balance your Supplies so that your IC is put to better use. Possibly gamey but it is a very good demonstration of the power of trade. I am not a great fan of stockpiling Supplies. Get your manpower on the map first and then make Supplies. Bare in mind that if you throw your early IC into Supplies Spain is going to eat a huge chunk of it.
I would add the 1 x 99 Med II tank build as well as it takes care of most of your armour needs.
Why underfund production that has a serial bonus like a Rocket facility does? Use a Factory for the soak off as it does not get a serial bonus. A fully funded Rocket Facility completes around the time War breaks out, and yes I know taking it to level 10 is not optimal but its built and out of the way.
That about covers it I guess. There are many different ways to proceed and most of us have our own preferences. Gaminess is also a completely different topic and most or all of this may fall under your rules on the matter, in which case feel free to ignore it
Why 9 Transports? Your not doing an early Sealion. 3 is plenty to reinforce Prussia and these can be built in 1939. You get 3 free for Norway anyway so why build them early and have them eat supplies and oil?
Upgrade Oppelns infrastructure to 100%. This is Germany and we do not want any inferior infrastructure!
I wouldn't consider building 2 rounds of factories gamey. It stops players from building things too early that just need to be upgraded later. 3 or 4 rounds of factories is more the territory of IC-whoring. Building factories also allows you to point out the build time in the province early on in the game.
Use trade to balance your Supplies so that your IC is put to better use. Possibly gamey but it is a very good demonstration of the power of trade. I am not a great fan of stockpiling Supplies. Get your manpower on the map first and then make Supplies. Bare in mind that if you throw your early IC into Supplies Spain is going to eat a huge chunk of it.
I would add the 1 x 99 Med II tank build as well as it takes care of most of your armour needs.
Why underfund production that has a serial bonus like a Rocket facility does? Use a Factory for the soak off as it does not get a serial bonus. A fully funded Rocket Facility completes around the time War breaks out, and yes I know taking it to level 10 is not optimal but its built and out of the way.
That about covers it I guess. There are many different ways to proceed and most of us have our own preferences. Gaminess is also a completely different topic and most or all of this may fall under your rules on the matter, in which case feel free to ignore it
Kayapo and Remble: It's been a while since I played vanilla DD or Arma. The SCW event takes supplies based on the maximum daily production or somesuch, right? I don't remember having a problem with it in Arma, so maybe they reduced the amount? Or maybe my memory isn't what it should be...
dublish - Its a percentage yes. For some reason 5000 is a number I associate with it, which is quite a large amount of Supplies that early in a game. This AAR is DD v1.3a not ARMA so its somewhere around 5000 if my memory is still working.
I do not.dublish said:
Yeah, that's about what I would classify as a minor-major. Large enough to afford factory builds, small enough to need it.4th Dimension said:
This isn't Armageddon. Naval brigades are not available. When I mention naval production, though, I will put in a plug for the FC brigade.Kayapo said:-1 run of 99 CAs with FC brigade. Cheap, good and efficient.
-2 runs of 99 CLs with FC brigade. Cheap good and efficient. Sometimes i just have to use these with the starting CAs Germany has and make a zergfleet
When did researching fighters become fashionable for early Germany? You have enough research capacity to research 3 planes comfortably while still researching other important techs on time. CAS, INT, and TAC. That's it! The time for building fighters is AFTER the Soviet BP, when we start thinking about WC. We can catch up on research then.Kayapo said:
Yes, I will mention that. I will also mention that the easiest way to world conquest is to immediately move your armies to your borders in January 1936, immediately declare war, and immediately start steamrolling other nations. I will mention it, and will add that to do so is terribly gamey and not a whole lot of fun.Kayapo said:
I absolutely will! I never used the auto-slider on DD1.3a, but I was fiddling around with it yesterday and it looked sort of useful. It was still over-allocating to consumer goods and production to the tune of 0.01-0.03, but that is such a paltry amount, that I'm wondering if we should just advise the novice player that he can keep it on there during the first three years or so. Does anyone know if the auto-slider on DD1.3a works?Rompa said:
I have built them early because they do not need to be upgraded. Also, they do not consume oil while sitting in port, right? Anyway, if we are going to be building factories then I will hold off on transports until 1939.Remble said:
This is only for role-playing benefit, right?Remble said:
OK. We will do 2x rounds of IC builds, that will bring us to the end of 1937 just as our 1938 models are getting researched.Remble said:
Yeah, I was going to mention the gameyness of trading supplies to the Soviets for resources, and the trading those resources to other nations for more supplies than you gave to the Soviet and benefitting off of the arbitrage. And then I was going to do it anyway, to demonstrate the benefits of trade.Remble said:
I think a major novice mistake (jusging from the questions on the regular HoI2 forum) is building far too many ARMs. I was planning on wiaiting until the 1939 model was researched, and then create the serial build. At the same time, I would serial build a line of MOTs as well. Since approximately 2x MOTs comes off the line at the same time as 1x ARM, that dovetails perfectly into a ARM/MOT/MOT corps. Is it ideal? Arguably no, but it works, its convenient, and its easy for a novice to remember. (Also, 3x SPArt comes off the line in roughly that same amount of time... but when we get to that I will also consider arguments for AC for the MOTs).Remble said:
Anyway, my point is, I will demonstrate exaggerated restraint in building tanks, as an example to novices of how a few ARMs can go a long way. I don't envision us going to war with the Soviets with more than 10x panzer divisions (grouped into 10x corps with 2x MOT in each corps).
OK, we'll make a factory the soak.Remble said:
The auto-slider does work for DD 1.3a, sort of. Its not completely reliable so I do not use it. Moving the sliders is easy enough especially if you remember that pressing the shift key makes it move a whole lot faster.
The Infrastructure is mostly role-play but I usually end up building either the Rocket or Nuclear facility there as its the furthest province away from Allied bombers.
I am not totally sure you got what I meant with the Supply trading. I meant that you trade Germany's excess starting resources, mostly Energy, with other Countries to prevent Germany having to put IC's into making Supplies early on. I tend to start making Supplies when I need to trade for Rares a bit later on. The back trading thing is good to know about but I don't use it nor would I advise anyone to do so in a serious game.
Your Armour idea works fine and I agree that it is a common mistake to build too much.
The Infrastructure is mostly role-play but I usually end up building either the Rocket or Nuclear facility there as its the furthest province away from Allied bombers.
I am not totally sure you got what I meant with the Supply trading. I meant that you trade Germany's excess starting resources, mostly Energy, with other Countries to prevent Germany having to put IC's into making Supplies early on. I tend to start making Supplies when I need to trade for Rares a bit later on. The back trading thing is good to know about but I don't use it nor would I advise anyone to do so in a serious game.
Your Armour idea works fine and I agree that it is a common mistake to build too much.
Now that we've made our slider move and chosen a couple of new ministers in the diplomacy folder, let's delve into the production folder. Click on the Production folder at the top of the screen. The production screen should look like this:
The field on the left is our production queue. We currently have three things in production: a cruiser, a destroyer, and a submarine. Although these are all early and rather weak models, we are going to keep building them because they are almost done. As you can see, the estimated date that they will be built is January 6th for the cruiser, and March 2nd for the destroyer and submarine. Normally, naval units take months, even years to build. If we did want to cancel these projects, we would simply have to click on the red X on the side of the box.
Above the production queue are a series of boxes that have the different categories of things we could build. We will get into those in a second. First, let's check out the right side of the screen.
At the top of the right hand box are our production sliders. These determine how we will allocate our IC. They are broken down into five categories:
As we have been reducing these other sliders, we see that the unlocked production slider is rising. We will eventually put all that extra IC to use with some builds. But first, a couple of quick pointers. First, changes to the IC sliders only take effect after you exit the Production folder. So if you ever make changes to the sliders, you will have to go to another folder for them to take effect. Second, the minimum requirements for these categories can change frequently -- even daily. During times of war, as units are needing more reinforcements and additional IC is being added as you conquer foreign provinces, these sliders will require daily check-ups to ensure that everything is at its most efficient. You can delegate this responsibility to the computer, and thus avoid the hassle of micro-managing your production sliders. This is done by clicking on the box that says "Auto control window." The following box appears:
If you wanted the computer to control your IC-slider, you would click the box that says "Auto set production sliders," and then click on the boxes to indicate what you want to prioritize (if there wasn't enough IC for the minimum requirements of all your categories). In the example above, I prioritized production and reinforcements. However, we will not be using this auto-control yet, so leave all these boxes unchecked. This box also allows you to delegate proposing and responding to trade deals to the computer. If you feel like the AI is just spamming you with trivial trade deals, you could click these as well, but for now, leave them unchecked.
To the left of the IC-sliders is a detailed look at your resource intake. You can quickly and easily see what resources you have a surplus of, and what resources you need to trade for, by looking at this. Since we are still on the first day and the computer has not yet calculated what our resource intake is, these all say +0.0 (except manpower, which has been calculated to +0.62 per day). Immediately below the IC-sliders and resource intake is a list of all of our current trade deals. You can hover over each to learn the details, and if you want to cancel any of them you could do it from here.
At the bottom of this screen is a summary of our convoys. All of the supplies that we have going out, and all of the resources that we have coming in, must be transported to and from our national capital. If there is a land connection, they would be transported overland. However, if we do not have a land connection to a province, we would have to transport supplies and resources with convoys. Remember earlier how we noted that East Prussia was separated from the rest of Germany? Well, we cannot transport resources and supplies over Polish territory, so we need convoys set up to do this. The game is set up to automatically do this. Sometimes it will fail, and we will need to tweak convoy management ourselves, but for the most part we can just leave this part of the screen alone.
Okay, let's build something! When we choose what we want to build we should think through very carefully what our strategy is going to be and how we are going to use the assets we create. Ideally, when we do eventually go to war with Poland and the rest of the Allied powers, we are going to want a strong air force and a larger army. But if we were to build those things now, we would end up having to spend IC to upgrade them in a few years as we research new technologies. So right now we want to build things that will not require an upgrade. Beware though, especially when you are playing as smaller countries, that it takes months of game time for the first round of the production queue to be built; and it takes years to build a respectable fighting force. If you expect to be going to war quickly, you had better build up your forces as fast as you can! And if your forces are wiped out in battle, it will take you quite awhile to rebuild your military. Since we are Germany, and can pretty much predict when we will be going to war, we will be safe for now with these non-military builds.
The first thing we will build is a rocket site. Click on the box that says "Rocket" (above the build queue).
Rocket sites are not military units that we can move around the map; rather, they are static province improvements that will help us research rocket technologies. Building rocket sites are expensive (they cost 20 IC each!) but if we build one early on, it will pay off for us.
If we wanted to build just one, we would simply click Start Production. But suppose we wanted to build more than one? If so, we have two options to make this happen. "Serial Runs" are when you dedicate enough IC for exactly one rocket site; and as soon as that one rocket site is complete, you automatically start production on a second one, and so on. The advantage of serial runs is that each additional rocket site you churn out will get finished a little sooner. The amount of time you save by completing each additional rocket site sooner is known as a "Gearing Bonus." There is an upper limit to how much of a gearing bonus we get, but we won't reach that for some time with most builds. The other option besides Serial Runs is "Parallel Runs". This is when you want to get a certain number of units (or in this case, rocket sites) completed as fast as possible, and you are willing to spend more IC to do so. You do not receive a gearing bonus if you are only building one round of something, so this option isn't terribly efficient. In general, we want that gearing bonus, so click on the + button next to Serial Runs until you have ten runs queued up. In this game we will end up cancelling this production run after only one rocket site is complete, but just in case it never hurts to have more queued up. This applies to just about anything we build.
The next thing we will build after rocket sites is additional factories. Factories take a long time to build -- up to a year or more -- and for a cost of 5 IC over the course of that year, they only provide one additional IC. However, if you build the factory early enough, that IC will pay off in the long run. Countries with enough IC to dedicate to building factories in the pre-war years (say, over 70 IC) can and should try to increase this through factory builds. Beware, though, that some countries (such as the United States and the Soviet Union) start out with so much IC that investing it into building even more factories can be a little "gamey" (that is, it makes the game far too easy). This is known as "IC-whoring."
Factories are not an option to build from this production folder; we have to return to the Map folder to build factories. Click on the View Map folder. Note how the IC summary in the upper right has changed to reflect the IC slider moves we made.
We can only build one factory per province at a time; but we want to invest as much of our IC toward factory production as possible, which means that we want to build factories in several provinces. Which provinces? Well, we remember that historically the Allies bombed German factories from their airfields in England, so we want to build those factories as far to the east as possible, away from England. Let's start with Berlin.
After clicking on the province of Berlin on the map, we see the Berlin information screen on the left. There are three ways to start building factories; either click on the factory icon underneath the picture of Berlin, right-click on the province and select the appropriate option, or use the hotkey: typing "i" will automatically queue up a factory in this province (there are hotkeys for other province improvements as well, such as "f" for land fortifications, "a" for anti-aircraft guns, and "r" for radar sites; these hotkeys are case-sensitive, so make sure Caps Lock is off)). We are going to plan for two rounds of factories, so type "i" twice. Click on additional provinces in eastern Germany and type "i" twice in all of these, until you have used up all of your IC. We will know that we have used up the rest of our IC because the IC summary in the top righthand corner of the screen will display a green zero as the first number. Don't forget to build factories in our two East Prussian provinces as well! The only province you should not build factories in is Oppeln. This is because the speed at which factories are created is linked to the amount of infrastructure in that province. Every province in Germany has 100% infrastructure, except Oppeln, so a factory would take longer to build in Oppeln than in others (the minimum infrastructure needed to build a factory is 40%; we won't have a problem with that in this game, but if you were playing as another country you might).
If you click back on the Production folder we see that we now have a bunch of factories and a series of rocket sites queued up to be built; we have so many, in fact, that we are short over 2 IC-points. That is okay; one of our factories will be built a little bit slower, but the important thing is that we are using every bit of IC that we have.
And that will take care of our production needs for now. After the first couple of years we will want to start focusing our IC on strengthening our military, but we will wait until we have researched more modern models. Which brings us to our next lesson: researching new technologies.
The field on the left is our production queue. We currently have three things in production: a cruiser, a destroyer, and a submarine. Although these are all early and rather weak models, we are going to keep building them because they are almost done. As you can see, the estimated date that they will be built is January 6th for the cruiser, and March 2nd for the destroyer and submarine. Normally, naval units take months, even years to build. If we did want to cancel these projects, we would simply have to click on the red X on the side of the box.
Above the production queue are a series of boxes that have the different categories of things we could build. We will get into those in a second. First, let's check out the right side of the screen.
At the top of the right hand box are our production sliders. These determine how we will allocate our IC. They are broken down into five categories:
- Consumer Goods. This is how much of our IC goes toward consumer goods. Consumer goods controls dissent and creates money. Every country has a minimum of consumer goods that must be created; for us, it is currently 33.86. If we go any lower, dissent will rise. We can go higher, and by doing so we will create more money, but for now we will want to keep it right at or above 33.86. Click and drag the slider until it gets close to 33.86. It changes by almost a full IC-point when you drag, so when you get close to 33.86 go ahead and use the buttons to the right and left of the slider to fine-tune it (holding shift while fine-tuning the slider will make it move faster). If we have too little IC allocated, the number will be red; fine-tune it until it is one click past the red and into the white. Right-click on the slider button when you are done and it will "lock" in place. We currently have 2% dissent, and so normally we would want to max this slider to get rid of dissent, but we won't this time -- we are going to receive an event in a couple of days that will reduce our dissent to zero for us.
- Production. This is IC allocated toward producing whatever military items are in your production queue at left. If we do not allocate enough, our production will slow down, and whatever we have at the bottom of our production queue will be affected. Leave this slider alone for now; we will be adding some things to our production queue in a minute, and we will adjust it then.
- Supplies. This creates supplies for our military. We currently need 14.81 to produce all the supplies that our military consumes on each day. However, we have a small surplus of supplies right now, and we are going to try to trade for some more, so let's reduce this to zero and right-click to lock it.
- Reinforcements. This allocates IC toward equipping new recruits to reinforce our unit as they sustain losses. Because we are not engaged in war just yet, we have no losses and we therefore need zero. When we are at war, we will usually want to keep this high so that our military fights at maximum combat power. For now, reduce it to zero and right-click to lock it.
- Upgrades. This allocates IC toward upgrading outdated units with new, modernized equipment. We start out with a few air force units that are outdated, so we would need 93.63 IC-points, and several weeks of game time, to upgrade them fully. Upgrading often pays off, but it is more cost-efficient to do so when we have researched even more modern models. Before we do any upgrades, we want to capitalize on this efficiency, so we will hold off on upgrading any units. Reduce this slider to zero and right-click to lock it.
As we have been reducing these other sliders, we see that the unlocked production slider is rising. We will eventually put all that extra IC to use with some builds. But first, a couple of quick pointers. First, changes to the IC sliders only take effect after you exit the Production folder. So if you ever make changes to the sliders, you will have to go to another folder for them to take effect. Second, the minimum requirements for these categories can change frequently -- even daily. During times of war, as units are needing more reinforcements and additional IC is being added as you conquer foreign provinces, these sliders will require daily check-ups to ensure that everything is at its most efficient. You can delegate this responsibility to the computer, and thus avoid the hassle of micro-managing your production sliders. This is done by clicking on the box that says "Auto control window." The following box appears:
If you wanted the computer to control your IC-slider, you would click the box that says "Auto set production sliders," and then click on the boxes to indicate what you want to prioritize (if there wasn't enough IC for the minimum requirements of all your categories). In the example above, I prioritized production and reinforcements. However, we will not be using this auto-control yet, so leave all these boxes unchecked. This box also allows you to delegate proposing and responding to trade deals to the computer. If you feel like the AI is just spamming you with trivial trade deals, you could click these as well, but for now, leave them unchecked.
To the left of the IC-sliders is a detailed look at your resource intake. You can quickly and easily see what resources you have a surplus of, and what resources you need to trade for, by looking at this. Since we are still on the first day and the computer has not yet calculated what our resource intake is, these all say +0.0 (except manpower, which has been calculated to +0.62 per day). Immediately below the IC-sliders and resource intake is a list of all of our current trade deals. You can hover over each to learn the details, and if you want to cancel any of them you could do it from here.
At the bottom of this screen is a summary of our convoys. All of the supplies that we have going out, and all of the resources that we have coming in, must be transported to and from our national capital. If there is a land connection, they would be transported overland. However, if we do not have a land connection to a province, we would have to transport supplies and resources with convoys. Remember earlier how we noted that East Prussia was separated from the rest of Germany? Well, we cannot transport resources and supplies over Polish territory, so we need convoys set up to do this. The game is set up to automatically do this. Sometimes it will fail, and we will need to tweak convoy management ourselves, but for the most part we can just leave this part of the screen alone.
Okay, let's build something! When we choose what we want to build we should think through very carefully what our strategy is going to be and how we are going to use the assets we create. Ideally, when we do eventually go to war with Poland and the rest of the Allied powers, we are going to want a strong air force and a larger army. But if we were to build those things now, we would end up having to spend IC to upgrade them in a few years as we research new technologies. So right now we want to build things that will not require an upgrade. Beware though, especially when you are playing as smaller countries, that it takes months of game time for the first round of the production queue to be built; and it takes years to build a respectable fighting force. If you expect to be going to war quickly, you had better build up your forces as fast as you can! And if your forces are wiped out in battle, it will take you quite awhile to rebuild your military. Since we are Germany, and can pretty much predict when we will be going to war, we will be safe for now with these non-military builds.
The first thing we will build is a rocket site. Click on the box that says "Rocket" (above the build queue).
Rocket sites are not military units that we can move around the map; rather, they are static province improvements that will help us research rocket technologies. Building rocket sites are expensive (they cost 20 IC each!) but if we build one early on, it will pay off for us.
If we wanted to build just one, we would simply click Start Production. But suppose we wanted to build more than one? If so, we have two options to make this happen. "Serial Runs" are when you dedicate enough IC for exactly one rocket site; and as soon as that one rocket site is complete, you automatically start production on a second one, and so on. The advantage of serial runs is that each additional rocket site you churn out will get finished a little sooner. The amount of time you save by completing each additional rocket site sooner is known as a "Gearing Bonus." There is an upper limit to how much of a gearing bonus we get, but we won't reach that for some time with most builds. The other option besides Serial Runs is "Parallel Runs". This is when you want to get a certain number of units (or in this case, rocket sites) completed as fast as possible, and you are willing to spend more IC to do so. You do not receive a gearing bonus if you are only building one round of something, so this option isn't terribly efficient. In general, we want that gearing bonus, so click on the + button next to Serial Runs until you have ten runs queued up. In this game we will end up cancelling this production run after only one rocket site is complete, but just in case it never hurts to have more queued up. This applies to just about anything we build.
The next thing we will build after rocket sites is additional factories. Factories take a long time to build -- up to a year or more -- and for a cost of 5 IC over the course of that year, they only provide one additional IC. However, if you build the factory early enough, that IC will pay off in the long run. Countries with enough IC to dedicate to building factories in the pre-war years (say, over 70 IC) can and should try to increase this through factory builds. Beware, though, that some countries (such as the United States and the Soviet Union) start out with so much IC that investing it into building even more factories can be a little "gamey" (that is, it makes the game far too easy). This is known as "IC-whoring."
Factories are not an option to build from this production folder; we have to return to the Map folder to build factories. Click on the View Map folder. Note how the IC summary in the upper right has changed to reflect the IC slider moves we made.
We can only build one factory per province at a time; but we want to invest as much of our IC toward factory production as possible, which means that we want to build factories in several provinces. Which provinces? Well, we remember that historically the Allies bombed German factories from their airfields in England, so we want to build those factories as far to the east as possible, away from England. Let's start with Berlin.
After clicking on the province of Berlin on the map, we see the Berlin information screen on the left. There are three ways to start building factories; either click on the factory icon underneath the picture of Berlin, right-click on the province and select the appropriate option, or use the hotkey: typing "i" will automatically queue up a factory in this province (there are hotkeys for other province improvements as well, such as "f" for land fortifications, "a" for anti-aircraft guns, and "r" for radar sites; these hotkeys are case-sensitive, so make sure Caps Lock is off)). We are going to plan for two rounds of factories, so type "i" twice. Click on additional provinces in eastern Germany and type "i" twice in all of these, until you have used up all of your IC. We will know that we have used up the rest of our IC because the IC summary in the top righthand corner of the screen will display a green zero as the first number. Don't forget to build factories in our two East Prussian provinces as well! The only province you should not build factories in is Oppeln. This is because the speed at which factories are created is linked to the amount of infrastructure in that province. Every province in Germany has 100% infrastructure, except Oppeln, so a factory would take longer to build in Oppeln than in others (the minimum infrastructure needed to build a factory is 40%; we won't have a problem with that in this game, but if you were playing as another country you might).
If you click back on the Production folder we see that we now have a bunch of factories and a series of rocket sites queued up to be built; we have so many, in fact, that we are short over 2 IC-points. That is okay; one of our factories will be built a little bit slower, but the important thing is that we are using every bit of IC that we have.
And that will take care of our production needs for now. After the first couple of years we will want to start focusing our IC on strengthening our military, but we will wait until we have researched more modern models. Which brings us to our next lesson: researching new technologies.
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You might want to insert that the hotkeys are case sensitive and must be used in lower-case. I forgot to mentoin that.
I sorta figured it would be obsolete after HoI3 came out. But if people are still using it for years, that's great.Haru yo koi said:
I cam't wait for the mext lessom! Techmology is ome of the most importamt aspects of this game.Ironhead 5 said:
Ironhead 5 said:
lol i rly didn`t knew that... i always double clicked it resulting in 0.5-1.0 IC being wasted xD
Krediax said:
Same here tbh.
Amazing, we have a huge gaggle of experienced players and still every now and then someone knows something somebody else doesn't.
You can also build province improvements by right clicking the province and choosing what you wish to build. Not as easy as using a hotkey but its there if needed. If you are unsure if you can build something in the province then right clicking will show you what you can build as other options would be greyed out.
Minimum Infrastructure level to build a Factory in a province is 40%.
Minimum Infrastructure level to build a Factory in a province is 40%.
Our production queue is set up and our IC sliders are set, so let's start researching new technologies. Click on the Technology folder tab.
This folder is split up until two fields. On the left, we have five empty spaces. These five spaces will soon be filled by researching teams studying important new technologies. The number of available slots for research teams is linked to the amount of IC a nation has. Nations with less than 20 IC can only have one technology team researching at a time; those with between 20 and 40 IC can have two tech teams; those with between 40 and 60 IC can have three tech teams; those with between 60 and 80 IC can have four tech teams; and those with 80 IC or more can have up to five technology teams researching at any one time. We have plenty of IC, so we can use all five research slots. We are not required to fill up all five slots with tech teams, but it would be foolhardy of us not to (the only advantage to using less than the maximum number of research slots would be to save money).
On the righthand side of the screen is an empty field. Over the empty field are ten boxes. These boxes represent the different areas of technology that can be researched in HoI2. They are:
You can see how each individual technology is integrated into a "technology tree." The technologies that are shaded fuschia cannot be researched yet; we need to learn the earlier technologies first, before we can progress to later technologies. The technologies shaded green are already known by us; and the technologies shaded blue are ones that are unknown to us, but available for study.
Click on the blue box at the upper left that says "Bas M Tools." This is shorthand for Basic Machine Tools, which is an important early technology. At the bottom of this field, we see a description of what Basic Machine Tools is and what it does for us. It provides a bonus to our "industrial efficiency." In other words, it will make our IC go up, without the cost of building factories! This is good, and we want it as soon as possible. But first, look at the five blue boxes above the "Start Project" box. These five blue boxes represent the five different components of the technology that must be researched in order to fully research the entire technology. Each technology has five components; each component is numbered. Imagine that each component represents a different field of expertise, and the number next to it represents the difficulty of studying that component. We want to learn Basic Machine Tools, but it won't be easy; we will want to find a technology team that is skilled in as many of those components as possible.
Also in this area we see that the historical year of the discovery of this technology was 1936. If we were to try to research a technology before it was historically discovered, we would be saddled with a research-slowing penalty (with significant opportunity costs -- when it takes longer to research one technology, there could have been two or more other technologies that you could have researched in that wasted time! Sometimes, though, a technology is so important to a country that researching technologies several years in advance is beneficial; this is called "tech-rushing"). Fortunately, it is 1936 now, so we will not incur a penalty for researching this technology. We also see a remark that we have not traded for the blueprints of this technology. Later in the game, if one of our allies has a technology and we don't that ally can give us the blueprints of that technology. The blueprints won't automatically make us learn that technology; but it will make researching it much quicker.
Anyway, let's check out what tech teams we have available to us. Click on the black circle of the first open slot for tech teams on the left.
Germany is blessed with some of the best tech teams in the game. Make sure to scroll down to see them all! We can right away that one of our tech teams, I.G. Farben, is skilled in all of the components of Basic Machine Tools (see the green outline around the matching components?). Moreover, they have a skill level of 9, which is the maximum. Let's have I.G. Farben research Basic Machine Tools. Click on I.G. Farben's picture, and then click on Start Project. Okay, they have been assigned to their research project and will continue to make solid progress each day! It should take them a little over three months to completely research this technology, which is pretty fast. Technologies take months to research, not weeks, and for that reason there is no way to research all the technologies in this game (unless you modify the game so that there is no end date). We must choose which technologies we want to research carefully, and make sure that they are integrated into our national strategy.
Take this time to explore around the various technology categories and see what else is available. As you can see, Germany has a pretty good head start in research, and there aren't many 1936 technologies left to study. We are going to want to go after the first agriculture technology, because Germany needs a large manpower pool to draw from when we go to war with the Soviet Union. We also want to study Basic Computing Machine, since it makes research proceed faster. After that, the only 1936 technologies left are in the Naval category. There, we see that 1936 technologies are still available for aircraft carriers, escort carriers, and destroyers. Carriers are extremely powerful in this game, and it is tempting to research them. But it would be ahistorical and "gamey" to do so, so we won't this game. Escort carriers are also a useful part of any battleship fleet, and we will eventually want to research that. But we won't be challenging for supremacy of the high seas until after we defeat the Soviets, so for now let's just focus on studying the next destroyer model (we could actually put together a pretty powerful fleet without any destroyers, but what fun is there in that? ). With our last available technology slot, we could study another 1936 naval tech; but again, we aren't going to concern ourselves with the navy just yet. Why don't we go ahead and study a 1937 technology? Since we are studying it only one year in advance, the penalty won't be too great. Still, we want to choose a 1937 technology that is as easy as possible. If you look in the Infantry category, you see the the technology for Rear Area Vehicle Repair Shop. All five components of this technology are a manageable five, and we have a tech team (Opel) that has all five components matched up.
So now we have our first five technologies picked out, we have lined up tech teams to research them, and we have started projects on all of them. Did you pick the same five tech teams that I picked?
If not, click on any tech team that doesn't match what I have above; click on the "Cancel Project" box; and choose the tech team that I have chosen above, so that your technology screen matches mine, and start projects on all of them.
We'll start seeing these research projects being completed in a few months. As each project is complete, we will return to this screen and choose a new technology to research. Except for when we return to this screen to pick new technologies, we will not have to return to this folder for "micro-management." Next, we'll discuss the Intelligence folder.
This folder is split up until two fields. On the left, we have five empty spaces. These five spaces will soon be filled by researching teams studying important new technologies. The number of available slots for research teams is linked to the amount of IC a nation has. Nations with less than 20 IC can only have one technology team researching at a time; those with between 20 and 40 IC can have two tech teams; those with between 40 and 60 IC can have three tech teams; those with between 60 and 80 IC can have four tech teams; and those with 80 IC or more can have up to five technology teams researching at any one time. We have plenty of IC, so we can use all five research slots. We are not required to fill up all five slots with tech teams, but it would be foolhardy of us not to (the only advantage to using less than the maximum number of research slots would be to save money).
On the righthand side of the screen is an empty field. Over the empty field are ten boxes. These boxes represent the different areas of technology that can be researched in HoI2. They are:
- Infantry. This includes infantry technologies, including airborne infantry, marines, mountain troops, motorized and mechanized infantry, as well as logistics technologies.
- Armor & Artillery. This includes technologies for all of our tanks and artillery.
- Naval. This includes new models of all ships and submarines.
- Aircraft. This includes new models of all airplanes.
- Overview. This actually does not have any technology trees in it, but rather is a summary of all the latest technologies you have researched.
- Industrial. This is a wide array of technologies that aren't necessarily military per se; in this we have manufacturing, agriculture, and oil synthesis technologies, radar and cryptographic technologies, as well as rocket and nuclear technologies.
- Land Doctrine. These technologies represent innovative new thinking in the conduct of land warfare and the use of military hospitals.
- Secret Weapons. These are the fun technologies, such as rocket aircraft, intercontinental ballistic missiles, and nuclear-powered ships. They are only unlocked later in the game, after we have researched other prerequisite technologies.
- Naval Doctrine. These technologies represent innovative new thinking in the conduct of naval warfare. Both this and the Land Doctrine technology trees have mutually exclusive paths to follow; in other words, you can only research certain technologies for your doctrine, and no technologies for another doctrine. Changing doctrines is possible, but we won't do it this game.
- Air Doctrine. These technologies represent innovative new thinking in the conduct of air warfare.
You can see how each individual technology is integrated into a "technology tree." The technologies that are shaded fuschia cannot be researched yet; we need to learn the earlier technologies first, before we can progress to later technologies. The technologies shaded green are already known by us; and the technologies shaded blue are ones that are unknown to us, but available for study.
Click on the blue box at the upper left that says "Bas M Tools." This is shorthand for Basic Machine Tools, which is an important early technology. At the bottom of this field, we see a description of what Basic Machine Tools is and what it does for us. It provides a bonus to our "industrial efficiency." In other words, it will make our IC go up, without the cost of building factories! This is good, and we want it as soon as possible. But first, look at the five blue boxes above the "Start Project" box. These five blue boxes represent the five different components of the technology that must be researched in order to fully research the entire technology. Each technology has five components; each component is numbered. Imagine that each component represents a different field of expertise, and the number next to it represents the difficulty of studying that component. We want to learn Basic Machine Tools, but it won't be easy; we will want to find a technology team that is skilled in as many of those components as possible.
Also in this area we see that the historical year of the discovery of this technology was 1936. If we were to try to research a technology before it was historically discovered, we would be saddled with a research-slowing penalty (with significant opportunity costs -- when it takes longer to research one technology, there could have been two or more other technologies that you could have researched in that wasted time! Sometimes, though, a technology is so important to a country that researching technologies several years in advance is beneficial; this is called "tech-rushing"). Fortunately, it is 1936 now, so we will not incur a penalty for researching this technology. We also see a remark that we have not traded for the blueprints of this technology. Later in the game, if one of our allies has a technology and we don't that ally can give us the blueprints of that technology. The blueprints won't automatically make us learn that technology; but it will make researching it much quicker.
Anyway, let's check out what tech teams we have available to us. Click on the black circle of the first open slot for tech teams on the left.
Germany is blessed with some of the best tech teams in the game. Make sure to scroll down to see them all! We can right away that one of our tech teams, I.G. Farben, is skilled in all of the components of Basic Machine Tools (see the green outline around the matching components?). Moreover, they have a skill level of 9, which is the maximum. Let's have I.G. Farben research Basic Machine Tools. Click on I.G. Farben's picture, and then click on Start Project. Okay, they have been assigned to their research project and will continue to make solid progress each day! It should take them a little over three months to completely research this technology, which is pretty fast. Technologies take months to research, not weeks, and for that reason there is no way to research all the technologies in this game (unless you modify the game so that there is no end date). We must choose which technologies we want to research carefully, and make sure that they are integrated into our national strategy.
Take this time to explore around the various technology categories and see what else is available. As you can see, Germany has a pretty good head start in research, and there aren't many 1936 technologies left to study. We are going to want to go after the first agriculture technology, because Germany needs a large manpower pool to draw from when we go to war with the Soviet Union. We also want to study Basic Computing Machine, since it makes research proceed faster. After that, the only 1936 technologies left are in the Naval category. There, we see that 1936 technologies are still available for aircraft carriers, escort carriers, and destroyers. Carriers are extremely powerful in this game, and it is tempting to research them. But it would be ahistorical and "gamey" to do so, so we won't this game. Escort carriers are also a useful part of any battleship fleet, and we will eventually want to research that. But we won't be challenging for supremacy of the high seas until after we defeat the Soviets, so for now let's just focus on studying the next destroyer model (we could actually put together a pretty powerful fleet without any destroyers, but what fun is there in that?
). With our last available technology slot, we could study another 1936 naval tech; but again, we aren't going to concern ourselves with the navy just yet. Why don't we go ahead and study a 1937 technology? Since we are studying it only one year in advance, the penalty won't be too great. Still, we want to choose a 1937 technology that is as easy as possible. If you look in the Infantry category, you see the the technology for Rear Area Vehicle Repair Shop. All five components of this technology are a manageable five, and we have a tech team (Opel) that has all five components matched up.So now we have our first five technologies picked out, we have lined up tech teams to research them, and we have started projects on all of them. Did you pick the same five tech teams that I picked?
If not, click on any tech team that doesn't match what I have above; click on the "Cancel Project" box; and choose the tech team that I have chosen above, so that your technology screen matches mine, and start projects on all of them.
We'll start seeing these research projects being completed in a few months. As each project is complete, we will return to this screen and choose a new technology to research. Except for when we return to this screen to pick new technologies, we will not have to return to this folder for "micro-management." Next, we'll discuss the Intelligence folder.
I had already taken screenshots, so I posted what I had. But I am almost immediately second-guessing myself on the Destroyer vs. Escort Carrier debate. I mean, let's not sugar coat it, Desotryers are hardly necessary; while Escort Carriers are essential. I can go back and change it (remember, we are still on 00:00 1 January 1936). Should I change that technology to Escort Carrier? Is it too gamey / ahistorical? What does the body politic think?
You can easily research both of them in 1936 so it isn't that big of a deal.
Why do you call Destroyers "hardly necessary", that is all I use. I never build Lt. Cruisers.
Why do you call Destroyers "hardly necessary", that is all I use. I never build Lt. Cruisers.
Because you could use light cruisers OR destroyers to serve as your screens. Yeah, light cruisers cost more IC-days, but on the other hand you already have the next model researched.sbr said:
There are no alternatives for escort carriers though.