I am 100% new to grand strategy games besides stellaris. Main tips for dh?

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The only time I think infrastructure is worth it is when you are standing up a new island forward base. 6 levels of naval base / airfield take forever to tick up at 10%.

On land it tends not to be worth it because the front moves on (either for you or against you). I guess the ESE bonus might be worth it if you are defending a fortress line or something.

The invest in infrastructure decision can give +TC% which can be helpful in the right circumstances.
 
1. Where should you build infastructure?
2. Is infastructure worth it if the province might be taken by an enemy?
3. When and how do you use orders other then attack?
4. How do you go on the defensive?(I usually take the approch of the best defense is a good offense but this doesnt seem to be working for me.)
5. Is there a way to cancel stuff in production without the popup box?
6. How do you build depots to store stuff?
7. How do you supply units by air?
1. Where you expect much action.
For example: When playing Germany 1933 I build up to 60% (or more) where my main regions are from which my army starts vs. Poland, NL, Belgium, France. In the area where I place airpports and expect much action, I even build infra upto 100%. The main reason is how units regain org.
2. You build infra therefore it won't be taken by the enemy.
3. What orders?
4. You don't win a war by going (only) into the defensive. I am not sure what you mean by "how"? Anything else than heap up all defensive advantages? Terrain, dug in, fortresses... defending a coastal region with a cheap garrisons instead of more expensive infantry etc.
5. No.
6. Not possible.
7. DH Manual page 62, 109, 148.
 
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For defense, the big-ies are:
  • River lines
  • Extra units for provinces with lots of neighbors / bad terrain
  • Keep a near by strategic reserve to pile into provinces that are hard pressed
  • Build enough infantry. It is all too easy to get distracted by the sexy stuff and come up short.
If the AI does take one of your provinces, their units tend to trickle in by 1's and 2's. (support-)counter attacking from all neighboring province can maul the incoming units.
 
Okay 2 things.
1. as the ussr ive taken control of republican spain and i might have a decent shot of winning if i can pull off a few encirclements. But for some reason none of my units in spain are reusplying. Dispite me owning a big city. Why?
2. What techs should i be prioritizing?
 
Question does anyone know of any mods that add an anarchist spain path or somthing?
 
Quick note, I play most of my games with the KR mod so some things might be different from vanilla.

1. What should i build for ground units?
2. How do you rush technology?
3. HOW DO YOU DO ANYTHING NAVAL RELATED?(also is there a way to put stategic bombers and stuff on aircraft carriers?)
4. How do you get more resources? Does building infastructure increse resources like it does in hoi4?
Thks.
1. Depends on which nation you play but normally I aim to have about 70% Infantry to hold the line and 30% Tanks + Motorized to breach it. When playing a minor power that can't afford tanks, cavalry is usually the way to go, especially in areas with poor infrastructure and hard terrain like China. Special forces are more location-dependent, if you have a lot of mountainous terrains it makes sense to have mountain divisions for an additional edge. If you expect to fight amphibious battles, marines are also worth the investment. Paratroopers are the most expensive force to field in terms of the unit and aircraft cost so I'd only invest in them if you have IC to spare and a specific target, such as Britain, in mind for such a capability. The important thing is that in every given time you are building the army you need for your immediate target, and once you are attacking it, move on to the build order for the next target (basically fight today's battle and build for tomorrow's war.) Special forces are particularly worth it for manpower poor states with a lot of IC since you're getting more bang to your buck into your limited manpower.

2) If you are a major power, try to get money via tech trade with powers that aren't and won't be hostile to you and invest in research. Also, research only the things you really need which means concentrating on a narrow number of units and sticking with them, one type of fighter, one type of bomber, etc. I personally prefer to branch out if I can, but generally speaking even a great power won't be able to invest in both tactical and strategic bombers. Don't research what you won't build.

3) For a new player, I recommend sticking to the more "gamey" naval builds for now. If you have IC to spare, that means a carrier fleet in a ratio of one carrier per one destroyer escort (I like to have one or two more escorts) Make sure to fully upgrade your carriers with everything you can get for them and arm the destroyers with ASW modules. If you have some battleships at the start of the game, amass them in fleets based on firing range but only deploy them once you've smashed the enemy carrier fleet and for shore support in amphibious operations. Battleships are more exposed to air attack so I'd recommend light cruisers armed with SAAs and seaplanes for their upgrades. Battleships with 21 speed or less should get all the add-ons but armour (it slows them down a lot) while battleships with more than 21 speed should definitely invest in armour at the expense of one of the other upgrades, probably torpedos.

If you don't have the free IC for all of that at once, consider building the add-ons in serial runs along with serial runs of convoys, escorts, transports and destroyers, that said, the battleship fleets really aren't that important so you might consider just leaving them as is, just don't expect much from them if you do. If you don't have the IC for much in the way of fleet construction, consider a poor man's carrier fleet made up of light carriers and destroyers or build submarines and stack them up; not much can survive 30 submarines. The really important thing is to have at least one offensive naval fleet carrier/submarine, enough transports to move your forces and enough convoys and escorts to supply them. To fight submarines, I recommend small fleets of 3 escort carriers and 3 destroyers, they are really cheap. Battlecruisers and heavy cruisers are good at hunting surface raiders, but I've recently found fleets of 3 light carriers and 3 destroyers to be better overall.

To summarize, I like to organize my fleets like this:

A) One or two offensive fleets of fully fitted 6-8 carriers + 6-10 destroyers (ASW) or 30 submarines (torpedos)

B) Legacy formations of existing battleships/older battlecruisers + light cruisers (SAA/Seaplanes) mostly for sure bombardment.

Don't build new ones as a new player.

C) A few anti-surface raider formations of 3 light carriers with 3 destroyer escorts (ASW)

D) A few anti-submarine formations of 3 escort carriers and 3 destroyer escorts (ASW)

E) Transport fleets escorted two light carriers attached to their formation if you are having trouble.

F) Be sure to research the right doctrine, carrier doctrines for a carrier fleet, indirect approach for a submarine fleet. If you have a fleet in being researched, keep if you are going the carrier route, but discard it if you are going to build submarine formations in favour of the indirect approach.

4) For resources, it depends what you mean. For industrial capacity build factories, infrastructure mostly improves movement speed in provinces and other supply modifiers so while it's well worth it in some scenarios, it won't improve your industrial output. That said, factories in turn need energy, metal, and rare metals to function. Those resources can be traded automatically or manually with the AI players, though it is sometimes worth to plan conquests according to resource acquisition when playing resource poor countries such as Japan. The thing to remember is to build your factories roughly along your resource capacity so you don't trade away too many of your supplies or money for resources (the more supply or money you have to trade away, the more IC you need to invest in making supplies and consumer goods, the more IC you need and so on.) If you are playing a state like the US, Russia, the UK, or even Germany you should be mostly fine (Germany's biggest worry is oil) The other concern about expanding IC is how soon do you expect to fight? If you have time, then a run or two of factory construction will expand your industrial resources ahead of the war, but if you expect to fight soon then you're better of building military units. IMO, IC construction should be something done on mass though a few long term serial runs can help offset the rising costs of supply as your army grows.

5) Air Force: I really recommend you stick to tactical bombers and interceptors as a new player since everything else is more tricky to use. If you want, you can also develop escort fighters and add them to your tactical bombers, but I think the resources are better spent on more interceptors. The thing about airpower is that you are not only researching the tech for the planes but also their doctrine. Fighters share the same one, but strategic bombers, CAS, and TAC/NAVS have their own.

If you really want CAS, I tend to prefer to go with fighters instead of or in addition to interceptors because they have the range to properly escort them and the fighting capacity to fend off other fighters or interceptors. CAS, however, are all about timing your attacks and need their own doctrine tree so I don't recommend them to a new player. Tactical bombers can do most of what you need and interceptors can get you air superiority on mass and shred enemy bomber formations. Naval bombers are a good anti-fleet investment if you have spare IC as they benefit from the Tactical bomber doctrine tree.
 
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Question does anyone know of any mods that add an anarchist spain path or somthing?
As far as I know, All In One Mod (which is also included in the Grand Campaign) made the most changes to the SCW, but I've only played as Nationalist Spain so not sure what the events are for the Republic. I do know that Euskadi (the Basque nation) appears during the civil war.
 
Thanks for all of your help everyone. Im playing the USSR in my current game and have good tech so far. But the ussr was never known for being a naval power. Maybe ill make a navy during the cold war if i get to it. Any tips for surviving barbarossa and reducing decent from the great purge event(god i wish there was a mod that added a no option to that where you could get trotsky in power like in hoi4) I wish this game accurately simulated German tank's transmissions breaking every 2 friccin seconds. That would make it alot easier lol. Also i wish there were tank destroyer divisions but brigades should be fine. I intend to use them agianst germany because they have alot of tanks.
(PS im doing a ahistoral path where i'm guaranteeing Poland and didn't do the Molotov pact.)
(PSS if anyone knows of a ahistorcal path mod that makes it so you dont have to do the great purge pls tell me)
 
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2) If you are a major power, try to get money via tech trade with powers that aren't and won't be hostile to you and invest in research. Also, research only the things you really need which means concentrating on a narrow number of units and sticking with them, one type of fighter, one type of bomber, etc. I personally prefer to branch out if I can, but generally speaking even a great power won't be able to invest in both tactical and strategic bombers. Don't research what you won't build.
I will probably do a mix of both as tactical bombers have longer range but strategic ones can drop nukes and are better. Basicly use tactical ones behind enemy lines and strategic ones closer to the frontlines. Idk tho. Also are rockets worth it?(Tech rushing rockets as ussr)

PS naval bombers will probably be my "navy" Basicly use naval bombers to clear the waters and then use transports and invade with a mix of marrines and tanks in the rare instance i have to naval invade as the USSR.(Maybe i could do some fancy stuff in the medeteranian or baltic seas. I could try to d-day denmark or somthing and march to berlin.
 
Okay my wierd choices have made this an interasting game. ww2 hasnt started yet due to me guaranteeing poland as the ussr. But poland and itally have formed an aliance and are at war with greece. Itally however is not in the axis. Wll keep you all updated.
 
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[What orders? ]Reserves, planed defense, etc

Support-attack is really good; use it when ever you can
Yes.

Special missions, manual page 122 ff.
Very short description (since you seem to insist not to read the really helpful manual):
# support-defence: moves to support attacked units in adjascent regions, needs only half the time to normal move order, manually ordered
# reserves: same as above but automatic once set
# anti-partisan duty: doubles the suppression value of the unit, very helpful in regions where you need to supress partisans, best done by garrison-units

General rule of thumb for land combat:
You win battles best and fastest by depleting the org of the enemy units and for this you use combined arms, mainly inf/art for mostly stationary units, infantry without brigades as your bread and butter unit, MOT and ARM(=tanks) for the spearheads and airforce to support battles according to Schwerpunkt-doctrine (thus Air Mission: ground support targetting morale is better than ground attack, both can be done by either TAC, longer range, or CAS, more damage).
You destroy enemy units by either:
  • Blitzkrieg tactics (Wehrmacht): encircling them until they have no more region to retreat (which will delete them in the next defeat in a battle). Encircling is done by armored spearheads: Panzer plus MOT but usually you try to keep them out of combat so they can actually move to encircle... which means you will strife to do the actual fighting with your infantry
    or
  • Deep Operation tactics (Red Army) by overrolling them: you defeat an enemy unit, they retreat to a region but a unit of yours is there earlier which will delete the retreating enemy unit upon arrival (best for this are MOT - motorized units because they are the fastest)
  • (Wehrmacht) and (Red Army) shall only hint to the early developers of those tactics, the tactics themselves can be used by any country/army.
See also:
Concepts of how to wage war:
  • Concepts Of Warfare by Mikkel (shortest, funniest and best introduction to military campaign planning I know and universally applicable)
  • Wehrmacht:
    • Auftragstaktik (german (much better)/english (quite bad, you should learn German if you want to get serious about military theory and tactics *grin)
    • Schwerpunkt
    • Blitzkrieg
  • Red Army: Deep Operations
What choice of units, especially land units, is heavily dictated by your choice of tactics and your bottlenecks. If you have lack of manpower you counter this by going for more expensive but more manpower efficient units like air units, MOT, ARM. If IC is your bottleneck, simple inf are best and most efficient. If oil and/or TC (transport capacity) is your bottleneck, use as few oil- and supply-hungry units as possible.
 
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I wish this game accurately simulated German tank's transmissions breaking every 2 friccin seconds.
Hehe, true enough. But as true as that is for the so called wonder-tanks aka Panther, Tiger and especially the King Tiger (the 250 which were built altogether and most of them "killed" by mud and bad terrain), it is quite an exaggeration for the working horses of the panzer divisions with illustrious names like Type III and Type IV.

AND the Wehrmacht had, other than the Red Army, very well trained tank crews who were able to repair their own tank on the spot plus every panzer division having also more mechanics than probably in every other army... which resulted in German panzer losses to be only a quarter to what the other armies had because they simply repaired so many of their either broken or "killed" panzer.

Nevertheless, Germany got massively outproduced in tanks (and everything else) by already alone the USSR and then again as badly by the USA. The difference between good hand-made panzer and fully industrialized production of tanks (which, especially on the Red Army side, turned out to be also extremely good tanks).

As the USSR you actually have a rather wide variety of choice how to beat the Wehrmacht:
# outproduce them
# bleed them out manpower wise by just throwing masses of inf against them
# or even the other way, with a vaster highly mobilized army plus more air
Historically the USSR used both strats, utter defeat in the beginning of the war, then throwing inf at the Wehrmacht, then outproducing Germany having more of everything with an extremely heavy concentration on artillery and also regaining the ability in material and leading to apply their already much earlier developed mobilized warfare-tactics of deep operations.
 
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Thank you for all of the advice. I am kinda playing the game now but will read it when im done and compare that to what im doing. Time for an update.

Im fighting the great patriotic war agianst romania.
Poland was fine because i guaranteed it. But i decided to declare war on romania which caused germany to declare war on me. I was winning at first but i strated loosing once the germans arived. Trying to setup a river line and its winter so im actually defending kinda okay. I alos have rockets now and am using the m to full effect as a cheep 1 time use air unit. Tbh the only reason im loosing is because decent is limiting my IC by alot. DUE TO THE STUPID GREAT PURGE EVENT. Really wish there was a way to say no to that. Also france is in the war but not brittan. Hopfully pearl harbor will happen soon and i can get soem lend lease.
 
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Nvm they broke through
 
DUE TO THE STUPID GREAT PURGE EVENT. Really wish there was a way to say no to that.
Hehe, that's like wishing to play Nazi Germany without Hitler.
But everybody will probably agree that the Wehrmacht's best help for initially defeating the Red Army were the Great Purges.
Or like Germany shooting Rundstedt, Manstein, Guderian, Kleist and Rommel, to name only a few, before going to war.
 
Okay i might be able to win this. I just broke through near crimea
 
Hehe, that's like wishing to play Nazi Germany without Hitler.
But everybody will probably agree that the Wehrmacht's best help for initially defeating the Red Army were the Great Purges.
I kinda wish there was some sort of trotskyist path like in hoi4 if you didnt do the purge. It would give even more dissent at first but trostsky would have a modifier to reduce it and it would go back to normal via event. With trostsky you would basicly get a free cb on everyone who isnt communist/socialist and subversive activities would be cheeper but diplo would be much harder with everyone who isnt communist.
 
I see an opritunity. I might be able to breakthrough a weak opening and encircle a large chunk of the german army.