How to fight Germany?

[TalyonUngol]

Alright, so my biggest problem is myself. I have atm 959 hours yet, Im still strugglign with playing countries like France and Soviet Union. My biggest issue, is fighting Germany. Take my last game for example as the SU.

I owned Turkey, Iran, Iraq, British and French Africa, I owned Australia, New Zealand, Canada, India, Romania, Spain, half of mainland britain and all of the United States by 1940((This was my best run as the SU to date. I was surprised. I was just super aggressive from the beginning))

Germany declared war on me after I killed the USA. I barely got my units into a defensive line by the time Germany rolled up. I have level 5 forts behind the rivers as mucha s possible and squeezed my armies into as little spaces as possible without overcrowding, at least I hoped. Yet Germany was still able to push back my defensive line of 20 width infantry with artillery and engineers. I wasn't in attack mode, so all infantry 20W was the thing.

And then I could never push them out. I was stuck. Germany has always made me struggle and I know its something that im doing wrong.

Would anyone know?

 

[Jays298]

If they have armor and you don't have piercing (anti tank of some kind), you are at a disadvantage. You are going to be at a disadvantage for a while because the Germans get an attack bonus against you for doing that focus IIRC.

I think you have to be prepared to fall back, and make the Germans fight you on a much wider front outside of Leningrad, outside of Moscow, Outside of Odessa. They will have supply issues.

You may be at a disadvantage because you conquered so much territory and need to produce a lot to garrison it and guard the ports. But you should have massive amounts of IC (Industry) and massive amounts of manpower.

But AI Germany vs AI Soviets, seems 75% of the time the Germans can't get past their historical failure line and fall back from there.

Air superiority if you can (fighters).

 

[him_15]

You need better division template.

 

[KDEstroy]

Templates, armor, anti-tank capability, and everything else are all secondary to having air superiority. Literally nothing can go wrong if you have air superiority, and nothing will go right if your enemy does.

 

[TalyonUngol]

So playing France, I really should get my first factories on aircraft going and then go for my infantry. Gotta build the planes. Okay. i will give this a shot sometime.

 

[Spelaren]

Fighting against Germany no matter what nation you have is a giant pain in the ass. They respond to pins and pincers somehow i don't grasp how. They spam massive amounts of troops and still manage to supply them.

 

[Bunnytob]

It might be Germany's giant f@ckoff airforce CASing you to death, it might be their stupidly large domestic industry, it might be that your divisions don't have enough Soft Attack.
But really, HOI4 Germany is much more powerful than it was IRL, simply because of game balance. IRL Germany had huge manpower problems starting in 1941, while in-game Germany can easily mobilise 10 million men into its armed forces without much of a hitch.

Also bear in mind that Vanilla Germany uses 9/3 divisions, which are significantly stronger than a 10/0.

 

[TalyonUngol]

Thank you so much to everyone. I really underestimated the value of fighters and Cas. I just defeated Germany within five months of fighting with overwhelming air force.