New player needing direction

[Rommel30]

It's not quite the same as HOI2DD, not that I was expecting it to be, it's just that it's a huge leap for me since I never played any of the other HOI2 incarnations (apart from Vanilla).

So I've loaded up the Germany 1936 scenario and I can no longer afford to do my usual 2yr IC production run after the initial production queues are finished, on average I could produce an extra 44 factories in those 2yrs and still have time to produce an army to beat Poland et al on a historical basis before being ready for the SU.

I always did my sliders on the 1st of Jan every year as that was the allowance, central planning followed by standing army, I find I can now change them more often but take huge dissent hits for doing so which I can no longer reduce quickly by just throwing IC into consumer goods:wacko: I see the civil expenses bit so maxed it out along with changing other bits to give me better dissent modifiers(take a dissent hit for that too). max I can reduce dissent is still a paltry .14%

And trade, how do you get everything you need? I never even added to my production queue and demand was still going up as IC increased (Central planning, ministers etc) What used to cost but a couple of hundred energy and 100 supplies now costs far more! Can't even afford to buy oil off the SU etc, by the time of Barbarossa in DD I would have 200k+ oil stockpiled.

Ok, I think need some major re-education here as I know AOD has to be better and more rewarding than Doomsday was, any advice on things I've mentioned, or anything else you think I should know, pointers to strategy threads or indeed even what you do etc?

o

 

[bestmajor]

infra increases IC and resources as well + theres the concentration bonus for IC (means building IC in berlin, cologne or stuttgart is better than building it in lets say cottbus).

thats very useful, i hardly build IC anymore (just a few in berlin)

as for the slider try to get max CP in 37.
maybe switch of the conversions from coal to oil until you have better techs, they suck a lot in the beginning. and military salaries can be reduced to zero as well until august 39 if everything wents well).
otherwise tanks tanks tanks.
(note this is more or less based on 1.05 and 1.06 - dont know if sth was changed in 1.07)

EDIT: dont go for a standing army to early - better is hawk lobby iirc (for the MP) - and switch one of the national ideas to militaristic in appr march 39.

 

[kiahoga]

Like beast Major I don't build much Factories other than Berlin. I normally up the Ifra in all my 10+ ic provs to 200% also when raising infrastructure the bonus also applies to how much say coal your making. For Germany especially as the war start you will live or die by Synthetic oil plants. Also as Beast pointed out unless your planning on war early you don't need to put full funding into Military Saleries. Troop wise, without you spending alot on Factories it should be fairly straight forward to have 80 to 100 divs in you army when Danzig fires. I like have 10 or so tank divisions for Poland. Also unlike Arma with the stacking penalty everything should be brigaded. Some people only do arty but personally I put 1 engineer brigade in every corp because then if you have to the whole unit can dig in to 40. There are alot of nuances that you'll learn with time

 

[Rocket88]

I would recommend you use the automated trade feature and the advanced sliders for production - they are brilliant and free you up to concentrate on the game (as Germany I've never had any problems with lack of resources or money). It also means you can get your dissent reduced immediately it happens - so you dont have to tweak the sliders every time

I usually build 7/8 factories in parallel as it gets me an extra tech slot once they complete - but after that I do the same as the others and focus on infrastructure [this improves both IC and resource production in the province]

 

[Rommel30]

You can push your infrastructure past 100?

Does anything apart from the civil expenses and changing of minister/policy help reduce dissent? After going for max CP as soon as possible my dissent is up at 30%:wacko:

Are the automated sliders really reliable? Would never dared to let auto run anything in DD, this will need a change in mindest

What to do about oil and rares, should I build runs of synthetic plants?

Are engineers worth using again then? They nerfed them in the final DD patch and I never used them again.

What would you recommend me setting military spending to in peacetime?

Go for Hawk instead of standing army? Do you no longer get the free slider move events to max out both hawk and intervention sliders?

Are there any other resources I can read to help me understand some of the mechanics of the game, there is a lot changed and the manual does not for instance warn of a dissent hit to change sliders nor of the ability to now change them more than once a year.

Thanks for the advice so far, any more will be really appreciated

 

[Amallric]

Does anything apart from the civil expenses and changing of minister/policy help reduce dissent? After going for max CP as soon as possible my dissent is up at 30%

Deploy your army in your industrialised areas. You'll still have the dissent, but not the IC reduction from it.

Are the automated sliders really reliable? Would never dared to let auto run anything in DD, this will need a change in mindest

Use advanced sliders

Are engineers worth using again then? They nerfed them in the final DD patch and I never used them again.

Consider brigading ALL of your units due to the new combat system. Engeneers allow dugging in until 40 instead of 20, but you don't need more than one per corps.

What would you recommend me setting military spending to in peacetime?

0, unfortunately it has no downside whatsoever.

Are there any other resources I can read to help me understand some of the mechanics of the game, there is a lot changed and the manual does not for instance warn of a dissent hit to change sliders nor of the ability to now change them more than once a year.

read the dev diaries maybe

 

[bestmajor]

Does anything apart from the civil expenses and changing of minister/policy help reduce dissent? After going for max CP as soon as possible my dissent is up at 30%

well maybe try to stay below 15%. but splitting up your troops for anti partisan duty like Amallric suggsted is a good idea.

You can push your infrastructure past 100?

yes try to reach 200% at least in berlin, cologne and stuttgart with the increase of speed ASAP

 

[Neoman]

With the auto trade, whenever I have both on, it has a tendency of trying to trade away all of my resources or trading away heavily on a resource when it is in the red and I make it to about mid 1937 before one of my vital IC needed resources runs out. When I keep the auto trade from exporting one resource it will simply over export another resource, How do I stop that? Also since I'm a nub, how do advanced sliders work?

 

[Happy Tyrant]

With the auto trade, whenever I have both on, it has a tendency of trying to trade away all of my resources or trading away heavily on a resource when it is in the red and I make it to about mid 1937 before one of my vital IC needed resources runs out. When I keep the auto trade from exporting one resource it will simply over export another resource, How do I stop that? Also since I'm a nub, how do advanced sliders work?

In the same window that you can block imports/exports, there are sliders for each resource under "Import Focus". These allow you to set a target that the AI will strive to reach. Keep your country's relative capacity in mind. For instance, setting them all to import 75 may be fine for a major, but will be impractical for a country like Argentina. A country like Venezuela, however small, can do well by trading its enormous amount of oil for other resources. I usually put an emphasis on oil and rares, since they are the main limitations for vehicles and IC respectively.

Your request for help with advanced sliders led me to make my own post, since I've seen it asked a lot.

 

[harrymanback]

Wish I'd read this earlier - just played a game as German, using DD tactics, and really struggled. Like Rommel30 I started with heavy IC building, and come the war I was really short of numbers. I only managed to make the key breakthrough against the Allies in the Low Countries when Hungary joined me, and didn't finish off the French til mid 1941. Didn't know about the >100% infra or advanced sliders!

On Rommel30s question about synthetic - I built three additional oil plants, along with the one or two you start with, and that generated plenty of oil. Problem is the synthetic materials plants, at least in the early portion of the game, need mountains of oil to produce a pathetic amount of rare materials. I had 3 rare materials plants producing 8 units a day between them, using up something like 50 oil (this was in 1940). Maybe those plants get better later on, but you might be better just stockpiling as much rare materials as possible before war commences through trade.

 

[bestmajor]

On Rommel30s question about synthetic - I built three additional oil plants, along with the one or two you start with, and that generated plenty of oil. Problem is the synthetic materials plants, at least in the early portion of the game, need mountains of oil to produce a pathetic amount of rare materials. I had 3 rare materials plants producing 8 units a day between them, using up something like 50 oil (this was in 1940). Maybe those plants get better later on, but you might be better just stockpiling as much rare materials as possible before war commences through trade.

yes better start with that at around 1944 - or after BP.

 

[Hister]

What is BP?

 

[bestmajor]

british petrol of course

(or bitter peace)

 

[kiahoga]

You can push your infrastructure past 100?

Does anything apart from the civil expenses and changing of minister/policy help reduce dissent? After going for max CP as soon as possible my dissent is up at 30%:wacko:

Are the automated sliders really reliable? Would never dared to let auto run anything in DD, this will need a change in mindest

What to do about oil and rares, should I build runs of synthetic plants?

Are engineers worth using again then? They nerfed them in the final DD patch and I never used them again.

What would you recommend me setting military spending to in peacetime?

Go for Hawk instead of standing army? Do you no longer get the free slider move events to max out both hawk and intervention sliders?

Are there any other resources I can read to help me understand some of the mechanics of the game, there is a lot changed and the manual does not for instance warn of a dissent hit to change sliders nor of the ability to now change them more than once a year.

Thanks for the advice so far, any more will be really appreciated

If I have the Extra IC I normally build a several Oil and rare plants remembering to scale back what they produce to what im comfortable with till your tech level raises.

Also, how the government slider work, is say you make your first change on January 1st 1936. Now your allowed to make more than 1 change per year there is a price. Starting right after making the change a dissent countdown starts. That runs out , in this case on Jan. 1st 1937.

So if you wait a year between slider moves you'll get no dissent. But if you don't want to wait a year you'll get a scaled amount of dissent Depending on how soon you make the change.

 

[Rommel30]

Still working this out, retooling is something that I am just starting to get to grips with, when I realised what it meant x takes 131 days and 80 days retooling time:wacko: WTF ok, getting my head around that now. Do miss being able to create my big army by 1941 and being unable to do so is taking some adjusting to, not for want of trying though, ran out of MPo

Combat: Loads different to DD, awesome though, 1st time out Sealion was delayed and didn't get onto British soil till October, 1st surprise was the amount of divisions I faced and secondly the length of combats, a battle for Birmingham took over 3 months. Love the new combat system, just going to be a while getting better at planning.

I always do Yugoslavia as soon as I can after Poland in DD, never been invaded by the Brits after annexing it though, ouch!

Gave up on that 1st game when running out of manpower, kept the save but new attempt going better I think.

Not bothered this time with Synthetic oil/material Plants, managing ok, didn't even build any IC and after Poland had about the same as I did in DD having done the 2yr IC build, that's a nice surprise

Like being able to keep production runs on standby, is there anyway to reduce the IC cost of this?

Have HQs changed much since DD?

Someone mentioned using Eng on Paras, can you drop them from Transport planes with brigades on now?

Any more advice for a new player welcome, thanks.

Anyone else just starting having come over from DD got any other observations I should know?