DH player looking for a few tips

[gord96]

Hi all.

I am a longtime Darkest Hour player but however after purchasing a new PC with Windows 8, I find Darkest Hour is not friendly with that OS and I now need a new fix.

So I saw HoI 3 on sale on Steam and picked it up. Generally the game makes sense from my DH experience, however a few thing I could use some clarification if you don't mind...

1) Command of military. Now in DH you just stacked divisions into groups and ordered them around. In HoI 3 I see there is no real stacks, but a strange command structure. Now do I order individual units or can I just order the HQ to do that. It 's quite a change and confusing at first.

2) What's this leadership resource all about?

3) What's a good make up for your corps? I imagine there is a combined arms bonus like in DH?

4) Any mod suggestions?

Thanks guys!

 

[Pugmak]

1. You can stack divisions up in piles and move them about, still. Or you move them individually. You can also click on an HQ counter, then on that HQ card there'll be a green horizontal bar that separates the HQ itself from the other units attached to it. Clicking on that green bar selects the HQ and all its subordinate units. You can give orders that way.

The command structure is one of the features I like in HOI3, but ymmv.

It's been forever and a day since I played HOI2 or any of it's offshoots so I'll probably be a bit off on the "just like in HOI2" or "different from HOI2" parts, so keep that in mind.

The chain of command is referred to here as the OOB (Order of Battle) just so's there's no confusion. Just like in HOI2, your generals have both traits and skills. In assigning your generals, each plays a part.
At Theater HQ level, skill level reduces overstacking penalties for your units engaged in combat. At Army Group HQ level, skill level reduces supply consumption for all units assigned by 5% per skill point. At Army HQ level, your divisions get an org boots per skill point. At Corps level, you get a boost in how quickly and effeciently your brigades will rotate into battle from reserves (reserves being brigades that don't fit into the "frontage" limit which is 10 for the first province from which the attack originates plus 5 for each additional province that units attack from into the same battle. Frontage only applies to "line" units such as infantry or armor. At beginning, each armor brigade takes up 2 frontage. There's a tech in Land that you can research that reduces that to 1 so you can get more armor brigs into a battle frontage.) Frontage and overstacking are two different issues.

Then there are traits. At division level, traits are 100%. At each level up from there they reduce by 50% iirc. It still adds up though.

When playing a large nation such as Germany or Russia, the OOB is a nifty device to reduce logistics needs by stacking the OOB with Logistics Wizard traited generals (except at Army Group, where higher skill level does best... unless you have a 5+ skill level general AND Log Wis ) In HOI3 there's no Transport Capacity. It's all about supply flow and it gets tricky to manage. There are many threads concerning supply and its management. Those do a much better job of explaining than I am able to do.

2. Leadership Resource is something you manage on the tech research page with sliders. You decide how many leadership points you want to put into diplomacy to create diplo points that allow you to do trades and other diplo things, espionage which allows you to do spy things by building spy points, research by building that pool, and how many officers go to your officer pool.

Officer pool is important. Every time you make a new unit, you use up some officer pool to command that unit. If your officer pool gets below 140%, you start to build up penalty to your attack delay. I don't recall the formula though.

3. In this game, you make divisions from brigades. The combined arms bonus is at division level. There are some very good threads on the division creation issues. I barely understand all the ins and outs myself so wont try explaining it.

4. I suggest getting a grip on the basic game first. Then value add through the mods after you fully understand the game. But Black Ice is one lots play. Myself, I'm still trying to figure out the base game lol.

Edited to add:

Here's the new wiki page:
http://www.hoi3wiki.com/Hearts_of_Iron_3_Wiki
The "quicklinks" in the gray bar at the bottom of the page has links to info that will answer most of your questions much more fully and accurately.

Also:
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum...Restructuring-Tool-for-Hearts-of-Iron-3-(ART)
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum...my-Organizer-A-Full-Feature-Visual-OOB-Editor

Those are two saved game editors that make creation of your OOB much easier if you're playing a large nation with a big military force.

 

[gord96]

Thanks pal! Good info. How effective is the AI at fighting well for you? At what level do you 'automate'? I just tried a quick Spanish Civil War scenario and I set 'Madrid HQ' on automate and he seemed to actually be winning the war.

On that note, at that high of automation can you set objectives properly? If I told Madrid HQ to take something in Eastern Spain, would he start dragging troops from Western Spain to help or only when needed?

Thanks again. This game is great, just need to get this OOB figured out. I am not a huge fan of tactical control so this OOB could be something I find really handy.

 

[Pugmak]

Thanks pal! Good info. How effective is the AI at fighting well for you? At what level do you 'automate'? I just tried a quick Spanish Civil War scenario and I set 'Madrid HQ' on automate and he seemed to actually be winning the war.

On that note, at that high of automation can you set objectives properly? If I told Madrid HQ to take something in Eastern Spain, would he start dragging troops from Western Spain to help or only when needed?

Thanks again. This game is great, just need to get this OOB figured out. I am not a huge fan of tactical control so this OOB could be something I find really handy.

Honestly, I never messed much with the military AI. Some love it, others hate it. I would guess that most use it in a limited fashion.

I play mostly as Germany since with that I can have a large military and mostly ignore the naval stuffs. Not a fan of the naval stuffs, myself. Mostly, I don't use the AI much because Germany relies on blitz in France and envelopment in USSR. When using the AI in France, I noticed that most of my armor assets were being put on "rear guard" at ports and cities already captured. Even when I would strategic deploy sufficient garrison divisions to guard those areas, as long as the AI was set, the armor wouldn't budge from uselessly guarding those rear areas. So, the offensive would stall out.

I do recall some good use of the AI when set at the army level only on infantry armies in France that were holding the flanks of the major breakthrough, though.

I don't know whether or not the AI can accomplish envelopment as needful in the USSR due to never bothering to try it.

 

[marxianTJ]

Basically the way I like to use the AI is if the war is *basically* over against a major (ussr vs Germany, Germany vs France, Italy in Africa after you secure the Suez and Gibraltar, etc) you know that stage in the game where you no longer have to think or maneuver you're just scooting units around until the surrender message comes up - I just switch that area to the AI - because it does just fine at trouncing an already defeated enemy, and I can do other more fun stuff.

Another good use of the AI is to guard allied regions without turning the units over to expeditionary forces (which are very rarely accepted by the AI) - your AI helpers will generally coordinate fairly well with your allied AI. For example if you're playing Mongolia, or an expansionist Com Chi who managed to get a land-link with the USSR.

The AI when set to blitzkrieg will do fairly well at encircling units - but from what I've seen the pockets it creates can be fairly risky, and sometimes aren't as big as what a human could accomplish.

 

[BarrosRodrigues]

Thanks pal! Good info. How effective is the AI at fighting well for you? At what level do you 'automate'? I just tried a quick Spanish Civil War scenario and I set 'Madrid HQ' on automate and he seemed to actually be winning the war.

On that note, at that high of automation can you set objectives properly? If I told Madrid HQ to take something in Eastern Spain, would he start dragging troops from Western Spain to help or only when needed?

Thanks again. This game is great, just need to get this OOB figured out. I am not a huge fan of tactical control so this OOB could be something I find really handy.

I recently recorded a tutorial style video that shows a lot of automation and how to set it up. I start setting up the TH HQs 1-2 minutes into the video. You can see it here.