Just some little tips

[Maykievic]

Hi guys , i'm playing in very easy as Romania to grasp the basics, just i don't get some things:

1) I swear i can't understand what to prioritize in techs, i spend almost all my leadership in tech to be able to have 7 techs developing at a time, but except for infantry and light armor (and just some doctrines or industrial eff and education) i now am behind time in everything , for example i'd like some naval and aerial tech but i would get behind in the others more needed.

2)I 'd like some advice in how to integrate antitanks , militias and other brigades in my armies. I ' m using almost only inf-inf-inf-art and mot-mot-light-light divisions , waiting for medium and heavy tanks . I also use some engineers when i have to face a lot of rivers or mountains. I don't know where and when to use antitanks or AA even though they seem useful.

3) My last question , Allies AI kinda sucks , they never do anything and is always a one on one between Comintern and Axis, i saw some timelapses of Black Ice and AI seems better but i'll be honest , it seems pretty difficult to understand , is it advised to start learning it now even if i have just 20ish hours in vanilla? everyone says it's amazing but quite complicated

Sorry for the wall of text but thank you in advance for helping a fellow hoi 3 adept!

 

[IronMurg]

1. As Romania you don't have a lot of leadership to work with, so you'll only be able to focus on a few things. There's many different ways you can build up your forces, but in general your priorities should be, in this order:

1. Techs that increase your leadership, manpower, or ICs
2. Your Army
3. Your Air Force
4. Your Navy

2. Inf-inf-inf-art is a solid division for a leadership poor nation like Romania. If you're using TFH then there's no reason to ever have more than one armored brigade in a division, so you could be more efficient with a mot-mot-mot-light setup. Another thing is you're eventually going to run into enemy armor, so you need to have a solution ready, whether it's AT, TD, CAS, ect.

3. I've never played BlackICE myself, but I did read the tutorial for it, in which they recommend new players try to figure out the base game before moving on to BlackICE...

 

[varrilete]

as romania if u want fight communism and ally germany u should have inf inf inf art and every 3 of this one with AT some mot with armor for explotation and encirclement of russians divisions and support the germans make some ing at inf for attacking citys as the AI in vanilla sucks making good divisions..

i agree with ironmurg in the techs research allways inf first and at art later leave the planes and navy tech for stronger allys and if u want some planes buy license

 

[browd]

Rather than researching anti-tank, you can consider buying production licenses for those brigades and then merging them into short divisions (i.e., build some 3xinf divisions, license/build some AT brigades and then merge the AT brigades with the short inf divisions). Also, when it comes to tank destroyers, those really need so many armor techs you won't have the leadership to research (such as heavy tank armour and some medium tank techs) that you should definitely just license them. I would not spend any leadership on air or naval techs - license those units, or do without.

Spare leadership should go to some selected land doctrines that will improve the org and morale of your inf brigades (Infantry Warfare and Mass Assault - most important) and then your Art and AT brigades (same doctrines for both -- Assault Concentration and Delay Doctrine). (Note that doctrine research benefits your licensed units, not just those you've researched yourself.)

Armor and TDs share the same org and morale doctrines - Blitzkrieg and Schwerpunkt -- while mot brigades have yet another set of doctrines, and 8 doctrines is hard for Romania to afford (what with everything else you need to research). But also keep in mind that there are two light tank techs (armour and engine techs) that also benefit mot brigades, so researching inf and light tank techs will also benefit your mot brigades, so perhaps the mot doctrines are worth straining for, if you have a decent number of mot brigades.

 

[Maykievic]

Thanks! so what about an average corp of 3 inf-art 1 with at and 1 3xmot and light/medium?
So i should licence the brigades not developed by tech? and what about industrial techs other than agriculture?
Thanks btw

 

[varrilete]

well i forgot about the doctrines that are a muss develop inf tanks i would buy them AT i dont know is thing i have, i like some national things u know

planes i would license some fighters and multirole

TD i dont know how are u with fuel and suplys

 

[browd]

Having 25% of your INF divisions with AT sounds about right.

The issue with mixing high-speed exploitation-type units, like LArm+Mot, with plodding INF divisions in the same Corps is that you won't get much benefit from the faster divisions in practice -- they will either outrun the rest of the Corps, losing their HQ bonuses, or they stay with their slow comrades, in which case you have to ask why did I spend the extra IC, fuel and supplies. I prefer to keep my faster divisions in their own Corps, so they can stay together as they stomp around.

On the Industry techs, you definitely want to research Education, for the leadership boost (even though you are starting from a low base, every bit helps), and you should consider a round or two of the research efficiency boosting techs in the Census Tabulation/Mechanical Computing/Electronic Computing line, if you can fit them in. Given the part of the world you are in, some investment in the two supply techs in the Theory tab (those and Civil Defense are the only ones worth researching in that tab) may be worthwhile.

The problem is, there are so many useful techs, that deciding which ones are truly vital depends entirely on your overall plan.

EDIT: And on the production license issue, keep in mind that what you license will be frozen at the licensing country's tech level at the time you buy the license. Your doctrine research will always apply, and if you can eventually spare the LS to invest in researching that item yourself, you can eventually upgrade your licensed items with your own tech. So, for example, if you decide that you can't spare the LS for the two AT techs right now, you can license some AT brigades now and then, after you conquer Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey (or whatever) and have a bit more LS, come back later to pick up the AT techs and then upgrade your (obsolete) AT units. Also, license is great for single-tech-to-unlock units (like mountain infantry, marines, MOT, MEC, SP Art, Multi-Roles, etc.), where you might not be able to justify burning the LS to unlock that specific unit, but once you license and build them, the regular INF or ART or LARM (or whatever) techs that you are researching anyway will keep those units upgraded.

 

[Kovax]

Romania and Hungary have about the same Leadership (as do almost all of the "Industrialized Minors" in the game. I normally spend around 1 point of Leadership on Officer Ratio, about a half-point split between Espionage and Diplomacy, and the rest on Research. Normally, I have 1 research slot perpetually tied up in Infantry Techs, a second in Land Doctrines, one on the Armor and Artillery page (mostly used on Artillery), and another on the Industry page. Any additional research either goes into air or reinforcing those other priorities.

In the early stages of the game, researching Education and Agriculture are vital, but become steadily less so as the game advances, because their effects only matter over a long span of time. By the time Germany starts going ballstic against Poland, you may never recover any further investment in the Education slot over the course of the game, and your Manpower increase is slow enough that you're either going to have enough men, or not; the Agriculture slot will only make a small difference in the remaining time. At that point, keeping your combat techs and doctrines current takes priority.

The Infantry Warfare and Mass Assault doctrines (one raises the maximum Organization of Infantry, the other increases the rate of Organization recovery) can be as (or more) important as the more obvious Infantry weapons techs. Keep those current at all costs. If you're adding Artillery or other weapons brigades to your infantry divisions, Assault Concentration and Delay become important. The first tech in the lowest doctrine group lowers Attack Delay, and is fairly important, especially on offense, but not as critical as the first two mentioned. Anything else is a "luxury", and you can only afford a small amount of research into other fields.

You can license TDs, and only need to keep your AT gun techs current to maintain their ability to pierce enemy armor, although their own armor will be much harder to keep current. In a few early games with HUN, I license-built ARM from Germany, and it quickly became obsolete against the Soviet equipment. The TDs, on the other hand, were easy enough to keep semi-current, allowing me to occupy the Caucasus region and drive all the way to Stalingrad in my own invasion corridor (until Germany ran itself out of manpower and collapsed). In a more recent game, I built a motorized Corps consisting of 2 - TD+2xMOT+AC and 2 - 2xMOT+2xAC, which was able to outflank and pocket nearly 20 Soviet divisions for eventual destruction by the supporting infantry, and overrun another dozen or more divisions over the course of the campaign.

 

[marxianTJ]

1) I swear i can't understand what to prioritize in techs, i spend almost all my leadership in tech to be able to have 7 techs developing at a time, but except for infantry and light armor (and just some doctrines or industrial eff and education) i now am behind time in everything , for example i'd like some naval and aerial tech but i would get behind in the others more needed.


As minors I hardly ever invest in researching education, industrial production, or agriculture. Your base is so low the LS spent on a *very* marginal increases is better spent elsewhere - either you will gain more through conquest or you will seek to get lucky and steal these techs - particularly from France once she falls as the Free French will still have all of their old techs but hardly any LS to stop you. However, efficiency techs, can come in *quite* handy as they shave days off of research and production - especially as an IC/resource/MP strapped minor. If you can fit it in agriculture isn't *so* bad - particularly because it's not that hard to research and every bit of MP helps, but generally if you can get your conscription laws high quickly that's far more benefit than researching the techs.

As a minor you only have enough LS to invest in a few small things. As Romania you have virtually no use for a navy other than to defend your own ports (and it's highly unlikely the allies will try to land in Romania unless your campaign is already long dead). If you so desire building a flock of outdated CL or DDs would be acceptable - you can also skimp on them LS wise - you only need to research the Guns and Engines. Armor on screens can be completely ignored as, generally, they're easily replaced once their practicals are high, and *good* navies will hardly ever shoot at them - and will hardly get the chance to hit fast moving screens twice. You can also ignore ship AA until such a time as you intend to start moving your fleet around (since AA upgrades).

For Air Craft you do have a few options since light air craft are fairly cheap. You have 3 options basically. 1. A small subset of INTs purely to prevent manpower bleed on your troops wherever they are - as enemy bombing will hurt a lot. 2. MRFs which can partly prevent and inflict MP bleed and only utilize INT doctrines - but they're expensive, so they're less viable unless you knock over your neighbors 3. CAS - CAS won't effectively prevent your MP from bleeding out, but they negate the need for dedicated AT brigades, inflict respectable soft damage on non-armored targets, and can bomb naval targets relatively well - and they require few air techs to be effective.

For ground troops, if *at all* possible I'd avoid Larm - either go regular ARM (by upgrading existing Larms) and attaching them directly to your INF brigades, and simply don't research/upgrade their engines (since you won't be using their speed anyhow grouped with foot infantry) or go AC instead. Armored cars will give you *some* piercing resistance benefit as an LT would early game (they will become less useful for this later on - but their speed boost will remain). AC also only require 2 techs to be kept up to date. *Some* ARM/Larm/AC component can be really handy because they cost less MP and will take less MP - and will drastically reduce the MP losses of the units they're attached to. If you've built a respectable number of CAS you can also neglect to upgrade your ARM's guns if necessary - as the CAS will do all the beating up of the hard targets. The mobility of MOT is nice - but I generally find I want to shove the LS I'd have to put into them elsewhere (since they like to have Larm upgrades and their doctrine techs aren't that useful to me when I'm strapped for LS). If you plan carefully you can encircle troops with regular INF speed divisions just fine - you won't get any BIG ones with like a kergillion divisions inside, but you can pick divisions off here and there.

With AT building around 15-25% of your attachments as AT can work unless you intend to go the CAS route - whereupon the role of the AT would be greatly reduced and would only be useful for building ART practical for research/practical purposes.

It's also handy for minors to utilize 2x/2x brigades to save on MP and give you more divisions in total for your MP buck.




2.)

I would avoid building MIL for anything other than holding ports in your home territory. 2x MIL in each port should be more than enough. If you happen to have occupied territory 2xGAR is usually sufficient (or 2xGAR1xMP1 or simply 2xGAR). 1-2 2x CAV divisions should be more than sufficient for anti-partisan operations if you happen to occupy a large amount of non-core territory. Mils cost a lot to research, drain your MP faster than any other unit if they have to fight, and are generally just worse in every way if you're MP poor.

Unless I'm going in for building lots of CAS I try to build about 1 AT for every 4 ARTs that I build (so 1/5th of all attachments). I'd also recommend not using 3xINF + attachment as a minor, 2x/2x (inf/inf/ART/ART if you built CAS, or Inf/Inf/ART + sometimes AT if you didn't). Purely to save on MP. The only time 3x INF is better as a minor is if you simply don't have the leadership to even bother researching attachments (like say, Albania, or Ethiopia).

I'd avoid using engineers for 2 reasons. A. they waste a lot of your LS points, and B.) they have no morale upgrade (an oversight by the devs) and so if they get deorged they take significantly longer to recuperate than your other divisions and will ultimately end up bringing the ORG of the division as a whole down over time. Building AA is virtually pointless because it only shoots at air craft that are actually attacking it - which your INF and etc will do on their own, so you're better off just to have a regular ART - plus that's 2 more techs you'd need that you can't afford.

3.) The allies AI can sometimes do great things, and sometimes it won't but on the whole you shouldn't expect to see them do a whole lot to Germany unless they're collapsing or have had to pull most of their divisions to the East - as IRL lol. I would also caution against trying to capture a TON of territory as a non-Germany minor because non-German occupied territory seems to make the German AI go a little ehhhh.... funny I guess. I've had games as Italy where I occupied the WHOLE of the Southern USSR and had Germany open a *massive* gap in our lines because they'd refuse to defend the line where our two fronts met. So, now I usually just try to fight *through* their lines to prevent the territory from being anything other than German - since that seems to make the AI more happy.