[Noob] Why am I losing to Poland?

[Dragonquack]

Poland should be a quick and easy invasion but yet I’m actually losing to them, this is my first Germany game, why is that?

 

[desphorin]

Firstly, on industry build, your factory counts seem way off.

I've noticed that you did 2 collabs on Poland and 1 on France (which is a bit strange since you should rather do 2 on France which has more factories) and you lost east prussia, but this factory count is way too low at 1940. For instance, this following pic is what I have in mid-1938 while also investing on collab govs (forgot how many i've done by that point). I am only starting to build mils now but I can say I can reach 100+ mils easily by the war starts + factories from the Czechs.

Obviously I cant see the path of your focus picks, so I can only based on what I see now:

1. You are still on partial mob? War economy is something you should aim to change to in 1936
2. Limited export. I dont see why you will need to change to limited, so I have to assume you never change away from it, which is bad. You want to go free trade or export focus, again in 1936
3. Funk is correct, Goebbels is questionable since his biggest gain for you is to move you to war economy (which is actually not necessary since you can farm air ace for WS), Himmler is a pure role-play pick imo
4. You have the surface fleet designer and cas designer, but dont seem to have even started research on any new hulls or CAS II. Poor pp management imo.
5. Your current focus is the extra research slot, which i recommend to take at like the 8th focus (mid 1937)

On army and production:

1. I dont like 7-2s. You will find different opinion here but most would agree that since patch 1.5 artillery has been nerfed quite heavily that it is no longer the automatic go to. If you are at least using them in your attacks you may make a point of using them instead of 10-0s, but for the poland campaign for example, you are solely using motorised and Light Tank (LT) divisions, so why bother with producing all the artillery pieces that you arent using? You can save 20% cost per infantry and a lot of tungsten (which your mediums will be thirst of) switching from 7-2 to 10-0
2. Your 20w LT divisions contain 2 LTDs, why? You are not facing anything with significant hardness and armour, at least until you fight the Soviets. But by then you probably should switch to mediums or heavies already. Germany has a massive head start on tank research so I think its good to play to your strengths
3. Not sure why you need logistics on infantry. There is an argument to put them on in the eastern front, but before that, dont really need so. I dont think you need 18 motorised divisions when you only have 13 LT divisions. I normally dont build motorised divisions because 1) strategic redeploy infantry + last stand if your tanks are too far ahead and 2) save rubber for planes which are much more impactful
4. I am not a fan of using the battle planner to do all the job. But if you do, at least stop for a while to let your divisions regain org. A lot of your troops are fighting at 5 org, which of course means a lot of red bubbles.
5. I recommend to separate the tanks and motorised/infantry into different armies. If you put them in the same army (plus using the battle planner), you will have a lot of situations where the motorised attack but the tanks sit next to it staring. Concentration of forces is key, pack you best forces and punch at a single point and encircle troops are imo the most effective way to play the game (in SP at least)
6. The air game is simple in hoi4: you either build a lot of fighters to contest air superiority, or you build none of those and only build AA. Now you are doing a bit of both which means you cant contest the air and your land troops dont have enough AA. I normally put like 40+ factories on fighters as germany by the time war starts (maybe overkill idk) vs your 9 factories now. If you dont go this route, make sure you prioritise your most important fighting units (aka tanks) to actually have AA and not the folder infantry, your LT units have 0 AA now.
7. Navy is a distraction for Germany imo, so no comment really

Research:

1. Concentrated outperforms disperse when you go 2+ years of not changing production lines and not gaining new factories. And with most people playing an aggressive style (ie attacking other countries to steal factories, rushing newer techs ahead of time), dispersed is almost always better. Unless you think your game is going to last beyond something like 1945+ which allows concentrated to catch up, but then most of the time the game is decided well before that...
2. You should consider keep researching newer tanks, especially as germany who are blessed with a lot of bonuses to rush them

I think I have covered a lot already, feel free to drop more questions. Also, https://www.reddit.com/r/hoi4/comments/ijznxc/_/gh6wxiq is a good thread on Germany SP builds (read the replies as well). Hope these help.