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Germany Tutorial: Take 2.

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misterbean

misterbean

Fumbling My Way through History
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Germany Tutorial, Take 2.
Hello and welcome to my second attempt at creating a tutorial AAR for beginners. This AAR will show you step by step how to play Hearts Of Iron III: For the Motherland. We will play Germany in a mostly historical path. We will reoccupy the Rhineland, absorb Austria and annex part of Chechoslovakia peacefully, while keeping the Allies nice and docile. In 1939, we will invade Poland, followed by the Phoney War. In the early spring of 1940, we will invade Denmark, the Low Countries and France. There will be no early Sealion, even though that is my preference in my own games. But by not invading, we can learn how to set up a proper defense. We will invade Yugoslavia followed by the big one: Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union. Only after that is won, will we invade Great Brittain.I will teach you how to build up the Luftwaffe, how to read an Order of Battle at a glance, how to trade, engage in diplomacy and spycraft. And if that doesn’t work, I’ll show you how to win wars. I will not use overly gamey tactics, such as fiddling with Germany’s conscription laws to make divisions cheaper to build or such like. Plenty of opportunity for that in the forum once you know how to do it properly.
Finally, we will go convoy hunting even though experienced players know a strong surface fleet is a far better long term investment but there will be no Blitz, since it is pure suicide. Nor will there be an invasion of Norway, because it will simply be impossible to protect our convoys to Oslo from the Royal Navy.
In honor of Ironhead’s masterful tutorial AAR for HOI 2, I will post theory and explanations in green. Text written in white are instructions for those of you following along.

Index:
Chapter One: Introduction.

First off, I can’t show you a screenshot of the opening screen. For some reason or other, I get a picture of my desktop. But that’s okay, I’ll just talk you through it.
What you see is mostly pretty standard. Single Player and Mulitplayer speak for themselves.
The tutorial is actually a bunch of pictures and some silly text. What’s more, it is mostly wrong. Don’t read it, unless you want a quick laugh.
What does matter, are the options. Click on it and you will get a little window with tabs. From left to right, these are:
Game: gives you the option to set your autosave to weekly, monthly, yearly or never. I set mine at monthly.
Video: There shouldn’t be a reason to change the settings, but the checklist at the bottom needs some explaining.
Use counters: If you check this, you will see your forces as NATO counters. If you uncheck it, you will get sprites if you zoom in close enough. I only use counters because they give you more information than sprites. Looking at an enemy division, you can see at a glance exactly what you will be facing. The sprites are not always clear enough for that. So check the box to play with counters.

Show Hierarchy On Map:

oobt.png
​
One of the biggest differences between Hearts Of Iron II and III is the use of an actual military structure. I will get in more detail about it in the appropriate lesson, but checking this box will show lines between, for instance, armies and their subordinate corps and the divisions that it commands. Make sure it is checked, because in a few years time, Germany will have over 100 divisions, all attacking the Soviet Union. The last thing we need is having to figure out whether a given division is part of army A or army B.
Thick blue lines show the direct subordinates. Light blue lines show the units below it and white lines show units under that one. Make sure it is checked!

Controls: The only thing here that needs a word, is the “Use Legacy Camera” option. Before FtM, the only way to move to a different part of the map was to mouse over the screen edge. This is the Legacy Camera. If you keep it unchecked, you can now click the middle mouse button (or mouse wheel) and drag the map. Allows for much easier control. Keep it unchecked.
The last option in the main menu, “buy Bonus Items”, takes you to the website of Gamersgate, a digital games retailer, where you can buy things like sprites, music or DLCs, provided you enlist first, of course.
In the bottom left corner, you will see the version of your game as well as the checksum. This is a combination of letters that is used for multiplayer matchmaking. All involved in a multiplayer game must have the same checksum or the game will not start.
Finally, in the bottom right corner, you see “quick start”. This takes you to 4 possible game set-ups for beginners. But we won’t be using these since it is much better to learn everything properly. Besides, the AI can be a little fickle at times. Click “custom start” to return to the main menu and click Single Player.
There, we’ve only covered the first screen, and it’s a full post allready!
Next lesson: The Main Menu.
 
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Chapter Two: Start Menu.

Again, no screenshot, but this one is easy. On the left you can choose between “historical start”, which are the grand campaigns that the game is all about, or battle scenarios, which can be fun little diversions, or to continue from a saved game. We’re interested in the historical start of 1936. This gives us the greatest freedom and the most time to build up an army that can conquer the world.

Choosing a nation can be done in 2 ways. Firstly, you have the Major nations at the bottom: UK, US, Italy, Japan, France, Soviet Union and Germany. Clicking on the appropriate flag will give you control of any one of these. If, however, you want to play as any other nation, you can scroll the map by holding the mouse at the screen’s edge and click the nation of your choosing. This is always the most impressive feature of the game for me. There are few other games out there where you can play literally as ANY nation, down to and including such eminent countries as the Grand Duchy of Luxemburg or Tannu Tuva.
Our choice is easy. Click on the German flag at the bottom or Germany on the map. In the top right corner you can now see the form of government for our chosen nation and its Head of State. It will also tell you whether you are at peace or engaged in war at the start of the game.

Below that, you have another list of options. These involve difficulty (normal for our game), and whether or not you want to let the AI control some functions for you. You could let it handle all diplomacy for you, for example, if you don’t like dealing with that sort of thing, and the computer will do an adequate job of keeping you on a historically correct path. But since you don’t learn anything that way, we will keep everything on “Player Control”.

One option requires a little explanation. This is the Game Mode. It tells the game how you want to handle supplies. Under normal, your supplies and resources are first collected in you capital or in Supply Depots for those parts of the nation that don’t have a land connection to your capital. Germany’s East Prussia is an example of this. Once they arrive in your capital, they are then send out by ground or by convoys to where they are needed the most. These are your supply chains. Cut off an enemy’s supply, and watch his offence flounder. Of course, he can do the same to you.
If you go with Arcade, all units will teleport the necessary supplies directly from your capital. You don’t have to worry about keeping those bombers off your back, but neither will the enemy. However you do this, it is a double-edged blade.
We will play using Normal Game Mode.

Finally, there are the Victory Conditions. Playing as the leader of a faction (UK for the Allies, Soviet Union for the Comintern or Germany for the Axis) will allow us to keep track of the objectives you set for yourself. They will be different for each faction. The Soviets, for instance, want control of Eastern Europe, Scandinavia and Germany, while the Allies want to maintain the independence of most European nations. The Axis powers want to eliminate the other factions. I never bother with them. I know my objectives: to control as big of a chunck of the world as I can. Leave them as they are and click the start button to load up as Germany on the 1st of January, 1936.
 
Glad to see you starting again, I recently picked up HOI3 for Christmas and was utterly baffled and scared by it, but your first tutorial really introduced me and helped me along - but I'm still learning and still quite bad :p , but it's just tolerable. Hopefully this will help a lot of people, quite a large percentage of threads on the forums are 'newb questions'.
 
welcome, my first student in this new session! :cool:
Yes, I realised it as well. That is to be expected. Whenever there's a promotion, a lot of people buy it, don't get it and either shelve it or seek out a forum. Quite normal. Heck, I was baffled, and I'd been playing HOI2 since it first came out! Let's face it, with all due respect, but this isn't your run of the mil game.
 
Chapter Three: Game Screen – Part one.

terrainps.png
​
This is what you see when the game begins. This is usually the moment people lose confidence. All those numbers, those provinces, what do I do? Where do I start? Well, not to worry. First we are going to learn the basics. The screen is divided in three parts. The first is the resource bar at the top.

resourcebar.png
​
I’m going to start on the left and work my way over to the end.
First, we have the flag (in this case the flag of Germany). More than just an ornament, mousing over it will show you a tooltip containing all the temporary strategic modifiers affecting Germany. Currently, there are no such modifiers, but once we convince Italy to join the Axis, the tooltip will tell us that the Pact of Steel gives us a bonus on supplies and research speed. Very handy when you want to know when a penalty will go away.
Next to it are your resources:

*) Energy: mostly coal, this keeps your factories going. Each “factory” (or Industrial Capacity, IC for short) requires two points of energy.

*)Metal: the steel that you use to build ships and tanks. Each IC requires 1 point of metal.

*)Rare materials: Your rares include rubber, chromium and other hard-to-come-by minerals. Each IC needs ½ pont of rares.

*) Crude Oil: this is just the stuff that comes out of the ground. In and by itself, it is completely useless. But it is automatically refined into Fuel for you by the game. If you have a shortcoming, the game will burn energy and turn it into crude for you (like synthetic fuels).

*) Industrial Capacity (IC): This comes in three numbers. The first are the number of IC we are not using at the moment (in Germany’s case 66 IC is wasted). The second are the actual factories in Germany. The third is the total of your factories modified by ministers, laws and technology. This is the total amount of IC at our disposal. More details will follow in the chapter on production.

*) Supplies are next. Supplies don’t come by themselves. They are produced by investing an amount of IC. This is one of the most important ones. They represent uniforms, food, ammo. All the things your army needs to keep up the good fight. As important fuel is to your tanks, infantry can keep going without it. But if they run out of supplies, they suffer dreadful combat penalties. As Patton once put it: “My men can eat their belts, but my tanks gotta have gas!”

*) This brings us to Fuel. Derived from Crude Oil, fuel keeps your subs hunting and your planes flying. Lack of fuel was the ultimate downfall of the Luftwaffe in real life.

*) Money. The thing that makes the world go round. Unlike HOI2, you can no longer barter one resource for the other, unless you’re in the Comintern faction. Just like reality, you sell something to make money that you use to buy something else.

*) Manpower. Each point here represents about 1,000 men of the right age for you to draft. As you can see, Germany has 826,000 men ready to die for us. We gain a little each month, and we lose a little to replace soldiers that retire, for instance. This number, along with supplies and fuel, determines in most cases what kind of armed force you can build. The USA has a terrible MP shortage during peace time. They have more IC than they know what to do with, however, so they opt to go for expensive, fuel-costly armour and planes that don’t cost a whole lot of MP.

*) Diplomacy Points. As the name suggests, they are used to engage in international diplomacy. Trading, asking for transit rights, signing up with a faction, embargoing a nation you dislike, they all cost a number of diplomacy points. Even Germany, with their “see-want-take” mindset, needs a lot of these to keep our economy going.

*) Spies. This is the number of spies we train every day. They can then be used to keep Germany safe and the rest of the world triggerhappy.

*) Officer Ratio. Each division, each air wing, each ship you build includes the NCOs used to order the men around. We will need to keep this above 100% during wartime to make sure we don’t suffer combat penalties. Officers, spies and diplomats are raised with Leadership Points (LP), that we will get into during our talks about research.

*)Dissent. The number of people unhappy with your regime. If this number rises above 0, we will have to reduce it as fast as possible or our economy will grind to a halt. What’s more, when dissent is high, soldiers at the front will worry more about their loved ones at home than about the enemy soldiers across the hill and will, again, suffer combat penalties.

*)National Unity (NU): This represents the percentage of your generals and politicians and business men to keep going despite the odds. If we capture more Victory Points than the enemy has NU, than he has no choice but to surrender. This one will cost us or win us the war.

Last on the list is the menu button. We will have to make a few adjustments there later, so I’ll show it to you then.

Okay, I think that’s plenty for now. See you next time!
 
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A question to the audience: should I repeat the info I gave earlier about the different mapmodes or just explain them as they become useful? I don't want to overwhelm new players with too much theory at once.
 
Ready_Set_Go said:
I feel like putting a link to different sections of the wiki as needed would be good.
For mapmodes, or different big ideas.
Click to expand...

unfortunately, the Wiki has not been updated to FtM yet. Some of the advice given there is now out-of-date.
 
Most Excellent! - I am glad to see this finnaly started. Now don't you dare abandon this!

On topic

You cannot overwhelm with too much theory and information. Because you are simply explaining stuff - what it is and how does it work, too much information doesn't mean that everything will be read - some might read about the supply mode, some may already know what that is etc. but what is important is that the information be present here..

My suggestion would be to explain everything (on the screen) in a concise manner. As if there was no wiki.

All in one place - all in this tutorial - a comprehensive yet community based tutorial, a guide that takes the player step by step through the years of piece and war.

And personally for me - a basic comparison to HOI2:DD - will help me understand concepts, so I like those "Unlike HOI2, you can no longer barter one resource for the other"

Keep it up!
 
Chapter Three: The Game Screen – Part 2.

Last time I explained the basics of resources to you. Now I will show you another tool for your use: The Order of Battle Browser

oobbrowser.png

This nifty little thing shows you how your armies are set up. At the top are a number of green little icons. These can be used to select what information you want available to you: ground forces, airforce, navy, ground-, air- and sea battles, your bombings, enemy bombings, or Allies objectives. The last one means that you can ask one or more of your allies in a war to attack or defend a given location. The AI will then assess the potential of the request and either assist you or not. A little caveat, though: all battles will be shown above the ground forces section, but all bombing runs and objectives are at the bottom. The small white minus (“-“) in the top corner will open and close the browser if you need to look at a large part of your playing field.



The map is what you’ll be staring at 99% of the time. The map you get at startup is the terrain mapmode. This can be changed by clicking on the tabs just above the world map. Click on the third tab from the left to switch to political mapmode, where each country is in a different colour. I will tell you more about the other ones in our next lesson. Right now, this is what it should look like.

political.png

Germany is in grey. Please note East Prussia, seperated from Germany at the end of WWI, and the main reason Germany invaded Poland.
The little arrow pointing up next to the world map will open a text box where you can see messages from the game.
Next, click on the menu button at the top right of the screen. This will open a window where you can adjust the game options, just like in the main menu, save, go to the main menu or go directly to your desktop. There is one thing I need you to do before I can begin showing you how to begin playing Germany: Message settings.
There are a lot of these and they can all be set to pop-up and pauze the game, simply pop-up (not advisable in Single Player games) or to appear in you message box at the bottom. Take your time to get them like mine. Set them all to pauze the game and the game will spam you with anything and everything, including trade deals between countries nobody ever heard or cared about, and you will never get anything done. However, some of them are of course vital and should pauze the game so you can deal with them on a moment’s notice, others are just there to keep an eye out for.

messsages1.png


messsages2.png

Sorry the pics are so fuzzy. They were either too small or this. Just follow down the list and set the icons on the right side as I did. The first column in pop-up and pauze, the second is appears in the log, the third (the one I have completely in red) is simply pop-up and the fourth is to make it appear as a tiny red dot on the world map. Handy for when you’re playing nations like US or Uk who have interests all over the world.
Take your time. There are a lot of them there. When you’re done, click close. Alternately, you could set them all to pop-up and pauze. When one of them appears, either as a pop-up or in the log, you can right-click on it to change the setting. But that would give a whole new meaning to the word “spam”.

Anyway, that is all for now. Next lesson: Terrain, Weather and more. Have fun!
 
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again, sorry about that last pic. I spend an hour this morning trying to get it right. This is the best I could do.
 
I think this tutorial is a really excellent idea and I will tag along, since I don't yet have FtM and it's been 18 months since I actually played this game!

On the subject of the message settings, my approach was to set everything to pop-up and pause initially. Then I assessed each message type as it came up to decide how I wanted to handle it in the future. The problem is that it's not always obvious how useful a message will be (or even what it is!) until you see an example.
 
SSmith said:
I think this tutorial is a really excellent idea and I will tag along, since I don't yet have FtM and it's been 18 months since I actually played this game!

On the subject of the message settings, my approach was to set everything to pop-up and pause initially. Then I assessed each message type as it came up to decide how I wanted to handle it in the future. The problem is that it's not always obvious how useful a message will be (or even what it is!) until you see an example.
Click to expand...

SSmith, welcome! yeah, that's why I included the idea in the first place.
 
Chapter Four: Terrain, Weather and more goodies.

“You never did learn to watch your surroundings.”
(Rha’s Al Ghul admonishing Bruce Wayne, Batman Begins)
A lot of things can affect combat, both for better and for worse. A thousand years ago, the great Sun Tzu taught that knowing where and when to fight can be more important than having a thousand soldiers at your command. The same still holds true to this day. In HOI3, knowledge of terrain, weather, supply lines and infrastructure can be used to great effect. Using the various mapmodes, you can do exactly that.
Above your world map are all the mapmodes you need to wage war. The second one from the left is the Simplified Terrain Mapmode.

simpleterrain.png

It may not be pretty, but it will tell you at a glance where you can find the right terrain to guide your defense or judge the enemy’s defenses. All game modifiers listed for certain types of units are the net result: basic penalty – basic bonus.
The various terrains are:
*)plains: simple flat, open countryside. No movement or attack penalties. Perfect for fast, mobile troops such as tanks and motorised or mechanised infantry. (white colour)
*)woods: lightly forested terrain. 10% movement and attack penalties. (light green)
*) forests: dense forests. 20% movement and attack penalties. (green)
*) jungle: 30% movement and attack penalties. Note that the Marine brigade has only 5% penalty to both movement and attacking in jungles as well as a 25% defense bonus. (dark green). Anyone fighting in jungles suffers attrition (malaria and other fun stuff killing your soldiers). Attrition can only be countered by researching the right tech.
*)river: not exactly a terrain type as such, but attacking across a river suffers an attack penalty (hence the Allies’ plan in 1940 to use the Dyle river as defense against the Germans). Marines only suffer a 10% penalty.
*)marshes: 40% attack and movement penalty. In addition, anyone staying in marshes suffers attrition. Marines only suffer a 10% penalty to attack through marshes. (sickly purplish hue)
*)hills: low, rolling moutainous terrain: 20% movement and attack penalty. Mountaineers suffer only 10% movement penalty, have a 20% bonus to attack and 10% bonus to defend. (brown)
*)mountains: steep, huge mountainous terrain (Himalaya, Alps,…). 40% movement and attack penalties, as well as attrition. Mountaineer brigades have bonuses in these surroundings: 30% penalty to movement, 10% attack bonus, 20% defense bonus. (grey)
*)urban: highly industrialised population centers such as Stalingrad. 20% penalty to movement, 40% penalty to attack as well as (some) attrition. Note that any kind of armour suffers additional penalties when attacking urban terrain. (deep purple)
*)desert: no penalties, again making it primary armour terrain, but there is attrition. (yellow)
*)arctic: like desert terrain, there is only attrition to worry about. Moutaineers have a 50% attack, 20% defense and 20% movement bonus in the arctic.
So, if Germany were to get invaded, the primary defenses would force the enemy to attack your urban centers across a river (preferably at night, suffering an additional attack penalty) with his tanks.
More info about the various ground forces in a later chapter.

weatherj.png

Next up is the Weather Mapmode. Storms will ground your airforce and make your navies useless. Also, frozen ground gives penalties better avoided. Hearts Of Iron 3 has a fairly natural weather cycle. Weather patterns will shift. Winds will send rainclouds away. Especially in the Soviet Union, keeping an eye out for the weather is vital. First it begins to rain, causing muddy ground (again, penalties). Then it will begin to freeze, causing frozen ground. After it thaws out, the snow will melt to mud. Mousing over a province will tell you exactly what the weather is like, how much of the province is muddy or frozen and such more, allowing you to determine to best time to attack. In the Soviet Union it is best if you go a little more on the defense between oktober and march. You can still attack, but everything will go a lot slower. Find nice defensive terrain and wait it out. Vanilla is doable (if you’re on the outskirts of Moskow, for instance, your best bet would be to secure that first), but some mods have a fairly hefty General Winter going on in the SU. Lucky for us, the weather effects are less severe than they were in HOI2, where attacking in the middle of winter was pure suicide.

revolt.png

You never suffer any revoltrisk in your cores (those are provinces Germany considers “their home”), but conquering your neighbours and occupying their land will see a rise of underground resistance. Most of these are simple, lowlevel sabotage activities. These are simulated by the revoltrisk. Green means no revoltrisk, yellow means heightened danger, red provinces could spawn armed rebels. The only way to counter this is by having units present with a high “suppresion” quality, such as garrisons and military police. This is no different from HOI2, but you no longer need a garrison in almost every province. Just keep one in the ones you don’t want to lose to rebels along with some mobile intervention forces to attack any rebels that do crop up.
There is a major difference from HOI2, though. When you defeat a nation that is part of a faction or a military alliance, they usually form governments-in-exile. You can’t annex a nation without first defeating the entire cabal of nations arrayed against you. You only occupy the land and can set “Occupation policies”. This determines just how severe you want to repress the local population and loot the land. Severe occupation laws will increase the revoltrisk and make whatever partisans spawn better armed and more determined. ALWAYS GO FOR THE LEAST SEVERE POLICIES DEPENDING ON YOUR MOST URGENT NEEDS (Manpower, IC, resources, leadership, good supply lines)! When you do annex a nation, the revoltrisk will increase astronomically without your garrisons being able to do anything about it. don’t be surprised if you get uprisings every other day or so.
Whatever the situation might be, revoltrisk will have one major effect: it will sap your supply lines. Take Poland, for instance. In 1941, we will attack the Soviet Union, starting, obviously, on Polish ground. All your supplies will have to travel from Berlin across Poland and occupied Russia to your frontlines. Having revoltrisk means suffering at the front.

supply.png

Supply Mapmode. All supplies and fuel are collected in your capital and send by train and boats to your military. These are your supply chains. They are determined by terrain and infrastructure and, given time, the game will seek alternate routes to keep them going if necesary. Green lines are good, blue provinces have a local surplus, any other colour is bad. Sending a truck across an Autobahn is easier than sending it across open wasteland.
During war, you must protect these supply chains from enemy bombings. On the other hand, completely surrounding an enemy force denies them the supplies they need as well. Without supplies, ground and air forces cannot regain their organisation and suffer combat penalties. Even an army of superior numbers or strength can be surrounded and bled white before launching the final assault. This one is vital to success and it bears repeating:
NO SUPPLIES=CERTAIN DEFEAT​
Note the green and red arrows between Stettin and Königsberg. These are convoys. Green convoys are Resource convoys bringing metals, rare, and whatnot back home. From Stettin, these travel to Berlin where they are used to fuel your economy. That’s right. A nation keeps its stockpile of resources (the ones at the top of your screen) in their capital. Grab an enemy’s capital, and you grab their stockpile as well.
The red arrow is a Supply convoy, taking supplies and fuel to the armed forces in East Prussia. If you were to load as the UK, you’d see a whole web of convoys keeping their vast empire together. Attack those and the British troops in Africa will have less ammuntion to spend.

infrah.png

Closely tied to supplies, is the infrastructure. This determines how modern the roads are, how fast your armies can move and how easy your supply chain can work its magic. I once stopped the breach of the Maginot line as the UK by logistic bombing of a conquered French province. This directly attacks the infrastructure of a province, eventually reducing it to a level where the Germans couldn’t move through anymore. Do this behind their lines and you might sever their supply chain. However, the German army is dependent on rapid maneuver warfare, so we will need to keep as much of the infrastructure intact as possible. Indeed, we will have to improve it in Poland and SU to keep our supplies going. Bright green indicates 100% infra, while lesser greens indicate diminishing infra, eventually leading to black: provinces with an infra of 0 or 1 at most.

vpmap.png

This is the VP Mapmode and bears some explaining. In HOI3, as well as HOI2, wars are won in only one way: every nation has a National Unity. Certain provinces are a matter of national pride. When the UK lost Singapore to the Japanese, even Churchill wanted to surrender. These provinces have a number of Victory Points attached to them. If you capture more Victory Points then your enemy has NU, they will have to surrender the next day. In other words, you cannot bomb the enemy into surrendering. You have to put troops to the ground that capture those provinces. This mapmode tells us which provinces are key to success. Green provinces are your VP provinces, yellow belong to neutral nations, while red belong to the enemy. Note Metz, for instance, in France, on the Luxemburg border, is a yellow VP province, since we are not at war with France just yet.

theatrey.png

I talked earlier about the OOB of your armies. I mentioned the head honcho, the Theatre HQ. This mapmode shows us which provinces belong to his area of operations; Germany has 2 theatres: Bitburg HQ and Berlin HQ, each responsible for respectively West and East Germany. You can create additional Theatres and manually edit its area of control. Not so important for us, since we will controlling our armies manually, but if you play with the Army under AI control, this is very important. A theatre under AI control will generally be very reluctant to send troops to the area of another theatre. After the invasion of Poland and before the invasion of the Soviet Union we will send troops back and forth and attach them to the proper HQ. If in doubt, this mapmode tells us which HQ that is.

airw.png

This is the Aerial Mapmode. It shows us two things: the location of our airfields and their relative size, as well as the maximum range of the airwings stationed there. Helps us to know where to base our bombers and fighters to maximum effect. The grey airfields shown are currently empty.

navalb.png

The naval variant of the previous mapmode. Note that this one also shows us our convoys. This way we can see where to station destroyers to hunt subs, for instance.

resource.png

The last one. The Resource Mapmode indicates the provinces where we produce (=mine) metals, rares and energy. Mousing over each one will give us a tooltip giving the exact numbers produces each day. There is one last thing here, that I have not even mentioned yet. The blue provinces contain Strategic Resources. These are things that are otherwise difficult to quantify in game-terms. One fine example is the province of Schweinfurt, between France and Chechoslovakia, a little to the northwest of Nürnberg. This province contains a ballbearings factory. This strategic resource speeds up unit repair rate by 15%. Any and all of our units are repaired 15% faster as long as we or one of our allies controls this province. We have 3 more: one containing horsefarms (speeding up supply throughput by 15%), one containing aluminium (air production rate +15%) and one with antibiotics (5% less casualties in combat). There are a lot more all over the world and I’ll go over each one in detail in a later chapter.

Well, everybody. That’s it. Glad you’re here. See you next time.
 
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Good start :)
 
I follow this one too, but will wait for some real action, as I think I know these basics, but lack some details on OOB, force setup and battle tactics for HOI3.
Unfortunately I can only play HOI3 with SF, FTM produces only an error message right after start.
 
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