Trying to git gud. France 1936 game until November 1939 so far. Germany at the door soon.

[Leonardlumont]

Hi fellow strategy gamers

I must say HOI4 is addictive once you get started, but quite challenging even after 400 game hours (in my case, I might be a slow learner). I do prefer learning by doing to reading guides and wikis until being familiarized with the game concepts.
I tried out a number of countries to play, made it to Axis piggyback victory with a fascist Belgium allied to Germany in the vanilla game even, but after buying the DLC's, I have mainly focused on playing as France.
It has been a number of short to medium playthroughs to find a strategy that would allow France to survive without going the rightwing path, and I think the defences just might hold this time.

I have level 6+ forts on the Italian border and on the Belgian (now German). 14 divisions, of which 7 are just colonial brigades with enigineer support along with my 4 mountain divisions guard the border to Italy under the overall command of Alphonse Georges. 4 armies with almost every other french unit under Maxime Weygand protects the northern/northeastern border. Made Charles de Gaulle general of the lone tank division because I could not decide what to do with it.

Spoiler: Forts and production

Spoiler: North armies

It is November 1939, Germany has eaten Poland, Benelux, Denmark an Norway like normally. I have not joined the Allies yet, and plan to wait until Germany actually attacks me. I took the focuses: Form the popular front and down to General Work Council, took Intervention in Spain when the civil war fired and sent my mountaineers. The republic lost anyway, but they made veteran rank, and I earned a lot of army stars. Got the Franco-Soviet treaty, and the Rearmament-Defence-Army Reform.

Spoiler: Part of Focus three

I decided to remodel my infantry units to include more artillery, and all the support companies I thought would make sense. I read somewhere that hitting a breadth of 20 would be ideal to get the most firepower in use at the same time. My production lines cannot provide this at all, but hopefully enough guns will be out there when the enemy shows up. Some armored cars were produced, but I don't know yet where they will do the most good.

Spoiler: Infantry Template

Spoiler: Logistics and spies

I started out building a lot of civilian factories, but spent some points on spy stuff as well. I have infiltated the german administration and built a 100% spy network, but I don't know what to do with it. Capturing a cipher seems too risky, and stealing an industrial blueprint would take one more spy.
I spent some military production upgrading my fighterplanes, and also bulit a few radars and AA in border areas.

The obvious weak points would be that I don't have enough military factories yet to release my armies full potential.
Only 3 research slots yet.
I could not train my navies fully since they spend an insane amount of fuel.
I would also need to protect my convoys from the colonies against a future japanese attack.

So what do anyone think? Could I survive for now, or will I get steamrolled all the same? Are there any obvious blunders or weeknesses in this plan?

 

[Mr_Dimento]

Honestly, you look great. I've played a lot of France, and you are doing a pretty standard defensive build.

One thing you should focus on as France with this build is Heavy Tanks. Try to have 1 or 2 divisions of Heavy Tanks by war breaking out. No more. Have them be 20 or 40 width and you should be able to micro them against German aggression.

 

[eastcoastceojam]

How many 1936 Fighters do you have in your air force? Hopefully 100s of them, as fighting Germany with mostly Interwar Fighters is going to end badly for you. But it looks like you have some AA deployed, so that will help knock down some CAS even if the fighters don't do that well.

I'm interested in seeing how this campaign goes, so hopefully you can post your progress at some point.

Even if you don't win, it would be helpful to share it. Some of my favorite runs have been those that ended in flames. Failure is a great teacher.

 

[Leonardlumont]

Honestly, you look great. I've played a lot of France, and you are doing a pretty standard defensive build.

One thing you should focus on as France with this build is Heavy Tanks. Try to have 1 or 2 divisions of Heavy Tanks by war breaking out. No more. Have them be 20 or 40 width and you should be able to micro them against German aggression.

I do not have a production line at all for the B-1 yet, and I remember them taking forever to produce. Building full divisions of them don't seem possible with my 22 military factories so far. Would it make more sense to add a heavy tank batallion to the existing fortified light tank batallions that are distributed to the defending armies? This would make them slow, but perhaps they don't need speed right now.

How many 1936 Fighters do you have in your air force? Hopefully 100s of them, as fighting Germany with mostly Interwar Fighters is going to end badly for you. But it looks like you have some AA deployed, so that will help knock down some CAS even if the fighters don't do that well.

I'm interested in seeing how this campaign goes, so hopefully you can post your progress at some point.

Even if you don't win, it would be helpful to share it. Some of my favorite runs have been those that ended in flames. Failure is a great teacher.

400 in metropolitan France, since I added just a few to the reinforcement limits. I still need to upgrade 227 to Morane-Saulnier 406.

Spoiler: Fighter plane production

 

[Iskulya]

For a noobie, it's not bad, but a few issues come to mind.

In vanilla the AI plays according to the 40 width meta so you are kind of gimping yourself if you restrict yourself to 20 width. 20 width divisions can still have a function, but especially for your offensive units you will typically want 40w.

In singleplayer it's a mistake to *ever* build anti-tank guns. The AI doesn't know how to use armor, and even when it makes it is used haphazardly and spread out where it will never be a real threat. Even if you are worried about tanks to some degree, support AA company is more than sufficient to deal with them. Field hospital and recon is also mostly wasted on infantry divisions in my opinion.

Recon, if used at all, is a better fit for offensive units. As it stands you are outfitting your infantry with a lot of fancy support companies that frankly are just a waste of your resources. The military factories devoted to providing equipment for them would be better spent on expanding your airforce or building up tanks.

Another noob trap is forts. I'm not going to say never build forts, but... nah, scrap that, I AM going to say it. Never build forts in singleplayer. Complete waste of your industry. If you're only investing in a level or two of forts, then they are demolished easily(damaged by combat) and their defensive bonus will be negated by being attacked from multiple directions. If you're investing in more than just a few levels of forts, then the cost gets so high that it's a tremendous waste of industry. Again, you are better served by putting the factories that would have gone on your forts into expansion of industry, producing more tanks, planes, or something of that nature. Solid air superiority with masses of close air support will serve you infinitely better than any amount of forts will.

Mixing light and heavy tanks is a waste. Personally I'm a fan of heavy tanks in singleplayer. I probably would have gone with that as France, especially since you already have a large supply of chromium thanks to New Caledonia.

22 military factories is really low for the end of 1939. You either built civs for too long, or put off expanding your military industry for the sake of forts. 4 factories on fighters by this point is a bit of a joke, even against the AI which since 1.9 has gone much heavier into aircraft production. You will need to have at least 20 on fighters in 1940 to really begin building up a decent force against the Axis.

Also as a conservative alternate strategy, you can forego or delaying building an airforce and instead make heavy tank divisions that include a battalion or two of heavy self propelled anti-air. Even with complete enemy air dominance, they will reduce the enemy's bonuses and shoot down bombers to a point that Axis production won't compensate for. If you're going against a superior enemy, heavy tanks are the better choice in my opinion. Medium tanks better serve you if you're fairly confident of your ability to make breakthroughs and encirclements. The AI cannot stand against heavy tank divisions that include self-propelled artillery and a bit of self-propelled anti-air even if they are entrenched with nearly a dozen divisions and have solid air superiority.

400 hours is really nothing, even I continue to learn new things every once in a while and I have 2.5k hours in the game. I too remember being a newbie and obsessiving over having level 10 forts along the 'extended maginot line' and along the Alps. Building any forts on the alps is a waste in singleplayer. I've always found that 36 infantry divisions with 10 infantry battalions and support artillery and engineers, coupled with green air and a few hundred bombers is enough to decimate any Italian attack. Eventually they will wear themselves down with insane casualties and equipment losses and you can just effortlessly push through. The suicidal attacking of the Italians will quickly level any fort you build down to zero pretty quickly anyway.

Glad you're having fun with the game, and hope this critique helps. As you get better at the game I might even recommend giving Expert AI mod a spin. It makes the game a lot more fun, especially playing as a major country, although it is also not without its limitations.

 

[Orbs]

OP lots of good recommendations here that will help if you follow.

Overall I just want to frame my advice as this: It‘s worse to be a jack of all trades and master of none.

Pick what you want to do and put everything you have into that, and nothing else. As France you just don’t have the production, the manpower, the stability or the time to do everything you’re trying to do, or even some of what you want to do.

Example, armored cars. Their best use is as suppression/garrison support. Cavalry do almost as well as armored cars and are cheaper, don’t require you to research additional techs and use guns that you’re already making. Also it’s a luxury to be planning for resistance suppression in 1940 if your play style is to turtle initially. If you absolutely love armored cars have at It, but do it later once you’ve repelled the German horde and your starting to push into Italy or Germany And actually might need armored cars for suppression. Otherwise you’re just building armored cars for Germany to use in the Soviet Union once you’ve capitulated

Apply this line of thinking to whatever strategy you pick. If you decide 10/0 infantry and planes are your best chance of survival, then build nothing but infantry equipment, support equipment and planes. Direct your research towards this goal as well. If it doesn’t have to do with planes and infantry don’t research it. By focusing your research this way you might get one extra gun or entrenchment or aviation doctrine researched instead before the shooting starts, which is going to help a lot more than that pretty 1936 aircraft carrier.

good luck!

 

[eastcoastceojam]

Otherwise you’re just building armored cars for Germany to use in the Soviet Union once you’ve capitulated

Two thumbs up for this comment!

 

[Leonardlumont]

I let a few months pass. Germany declared war, and SU honored the defence treaty. It seems I was mistaken in the first post about Norway, as Germany have not made a landing. England sent some divisions in case they do. Yugoslavia still exists in peace, and Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria have not flipped to the axis yet. Germany and Italy have not attempted an attack on the forts, and there are actually not that many divisions on those fronts it seems. The SU have demanded Latvia and Lithuania, but not Estonia and Bessarabia, an no ultimatum to Finland yet.

Spoiler: Northern Front

Spoiler: Italian front

I seem to have a numerical superiority when counting whole units, but I know that many of mine are not full strenght divisions. It will take a while before they are fully supplied and upgraded, but that could be the case with the enemy forces as well. I don't yet have any progress on land doctrines. On the espionage front, decryption of the German codes is ready in 133 days. I also seem to have the option of planting false intelligence.

Spoiler: German code

So should I:

* Turtle on until I also have an offensive army to attack with
* Change from defensive to fronts and prepare for an attack to commence when preperations are ready
* Like above, but only attack when the german code is cracked
* Unprepared attack while the enemy is still weak

 

[desphorin]

For a noobie, it's not bad, but a few issues come to mind.

In vanilla the AI plays according to the 40 width meta so you are kind of gimping yourself if you restrict yourself to 20 width. 20 width divisions can still have a function, but especially for your offensive units you will typically want 40w.

In singleplayer it's a mistake to *ever* build anti-tank guns. The AI doesn't know how to use armor, and even when it makes it is used haphazardly and spread out where it will never be a real threat. Even if you are worried about tanks to some degree, support AA company is more than sufficient to deal with them. Field hospital and recon is also mostly wasted on infantry divisions in my opinion.

Recon, if used at all, is a better fit for offensive units. As it stands you are outfitting your infantry with a lot of fancy support companies that frankly are just a waste of your resources. The military factories devoted to providing equipment for them would be better spent on expanding your airforce or building up tanks.

Another noob trap is forts. I'm not going to say never build forts, but... nah, scrap that, I AM going to say it. Never build forts in singleplayer. Complete waste of your industry. If you're only investing in a level or two of forts, then they are demolished easily(damaged by combat) and their defensive bonus will be negated by being attacked from multiple directions. If you're investing in more than just a few levels of forts, then the cost gets so high that it's a tremendous waste of industry. Again, you are better served by putting the factories that would have gone on your forts into expansion of industry, producing more tanks, planes, or something of that nature. Solid air superiority with masses of close air support will serve you infinitely better than any amount of forts will.

Mixing light and heavy tanks is a waste. Personally I'm a fan of heavy tanks in singleplayer. I probably would have gone with that as France, especially since you already have a large supply of chromium thanks to New Caledonia.

22 military factories is really low for the end of 1939. You either built civs for too long, or put off expanding your military industry for the sake of forts. 4 factories on fighters by this point is a bit of a joke, even against the AI which since 1.9 has gone much heavier into aircraft production. You will need to have at least 20 on fighters in 1940 to really begin building up a decent force against the Axis.

Also as a conservative alternate strategy, you can forego or delaying building an airforce and instead make heavy tank divisions that include a battalion or two of heavy self propelled anti-air. Even with complete enemy air dominance, they will reduce the enemy's bonuses and shoot down bombers to a point that Axis production won't compensate for. If you're going against a superior enemy, heavy tanks are the better choice in my opinion. Medium tanks better serve you if you're fairly confident of your ability to make breakthroughs and encirclements. The AI cannot stand against heavy tank divisions that include self-propelled artillery and a bit of self-propelled anti-air even if they are entrenched with nearly a dozen divisions and have solid air superiority.

400 hours is really nothing, even I continue to learn new things every once in a while and I have 2.5k hours in the game. I too remember being a newbie and obsessiving over having level 10 forts along the 'extended maginot line' and along the Alps. Building any forts on the alps is a waste in singleplayer. I've always found that 36 infantry divisions with 10 infantry battalions and support artillery and engineers, coupled with green air and a few hundred bombers is enough to decimate any Italian attack. Eventually they will wear themselves down with insane casualties and equipment losses and you can just effortlessly push through. The suicidal attacking of the Italians will quickly level any fort you build down to zero pretty quickly anyway.

Glad you're having fun with the game, and hope this critique helps. As you get better at the game I might even recommend giving Expert AI mod a spin. It makes the game a lot more fun, especially playing as a major country, although it is also not without its limitations.

If I can like this comment twice I would like it 10 times.

Some extra thoughts for OP:

• Change your basic template to 10-0 engineer support arty support AA, never have to deal with arty shortage and your mils are going to build something that are actually useful (tanks)

• Air is all or nothing, so scrap every mils you put on them, you cant outproduce the Axis. Just put support AA to basic infantry and add 2 SPAA (xp boosted) to your tanks and you will be fine. Air superiority is a force multiplier - it cant help much if you dont have an enough force to utilise it.

• Forts in SP are only useful to bait the AI into smashing its head onto them, wasting equipment and manpower. The AI will usually not attack if the adjusted level is equal or higher than 5. (Each extra direction to attack reduce adjusted level by 1). But yea like Iskulya said, dont bother.

• You seem to have a (pathetically) low count of divisions on the filed. I hope you have more training and ready to deploy

 

[desphorin]

I let a few months pass. Germany declared war, and SU honored the defence treaty. It seems I was mistaken in the first post about Norway, as Germany have not made a landing. England sent some divisions in case they do. Yugoslavia still exists in peace, and Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria have not flipped to the axis yet. Germany and Italy have not attempted an attack on the forts, and there are actually not that many divisions on those fronts it seems. The SU have demanded Latvia and Lithuania, but not Estonia and Bessarabia, an no ultimatum to Finland yet.

Spoiler: Northern Front

View attachment 638542

Spoiler: Italian front

View attachment 638543

I seem to have a numerical superiority when counting whole units, but I know that many of mine are not full strenght divisions. It will take a while before they are fully supplied and upgraded, but that could be the case with the enemy forces as well. I don't yet have any progress on land doctrines. On the espionage front, decryption of the German codes is ready in 133 days. I also seem to have the option of planting false intelligence.

Spoiler: German code

View attachment 638544

So should I:

* Turtle on until I also have an offensive army to attack with
* Change from defensive to fronts and prepare for an attack to commence when preperations are ready
* Like above, but only attack when the german code is cracked
* Unprepared attack while the enemy is still weak

It is strange that so less troops are on your border. They normally have 70~80+ and some tanks (just germany) to slaughter you.

For forts, read my previous comment, that would explain why they dont attack.

Imo you should wait until you have tanks. Infantry push without air support is just asking for trouble by de-orging yourself and inviting an easy counterattack. With the soviets distracting them you can easily hold one extra year.

 

[Leonardlumont]

• You seem to have a (pathetically) low count of divisions on the filed. I hope you have more training and ready to deploy

The template I made requires a lot of artillery and other stuff. I have just 4 recently trained in France with 2 in pipeline. I sent most colonial brigades home from North Africa. Only 3 and a cav in Tunis to avoid giving everything away to Italy.

 

[Harin]

Getting the defense treaty with Russia seems to have been your best move. I would recommend using the time you bought yourself to build an offensive army.

In the meantime you may want to make a new infantry 10-0 infantry template that has no support companies at first, so you can start producing them right away, without the bottleneck of artillery and support equipment holding you back. You can always add to them later. This will help you address any sudden surprises that may occur over the next year, as you build tanks.

 

[qqmagnuz]

The template I made requires a lot of artillery and other stuff. I have just 4 recently trained in France with 2 in pipeline. I sent most colonial brigades home from North Africa. Only 3 and a cav in Tunis to avoid giving everything away to Italy.

The template you made is a very good early to mid-game template for offensive infantry nations, but are actually weaker defending than a 10 width pure infantry division. Not to mention you can drastically reduce the number of expensive artillery pieces for other, more useful equipment.

 

[blue_yonder]

Pick what you want to do and put everything you have into that, and nothing else.

Yes, I like this. My aim as France is to be a slow snowball but an unstoppable one, and I base everything around the pros and cons of using concentrated industry. Changing production is poison, so until I can make good stuff, I simply don't make it (apart from guns, obviously). But support equipment never goes out of style, and that's all that's needed to make the best defensive units I've found for the Alps: 10 inf + eng + mp. I put 24 of these under Rene Orly, and when he reaches 6 stars and his army is nearly all vets, I make him my defensive field marshal (De Gaulle is the offensive fm from the kick-off, and offence is the line by which I reach army reform).

 

[Leonardlumont]

I kept turtling and changed the infantry template to 10-0. Removed the AT support, Horse Rec and hospital, but kept AA and eng.

Spoiler: New infantry template

A new development in the world. As the SU was already at war with Germany when SU gave Finland the ultimatum, Finland has now fully joined the Axis. As Norway has not been taken, and is part of the Allies, this could mean an arctic front opening up. I never saw that before in a HOI game.
Great Britain took Libya and Sardinia rather effortless.
I deployed most of the mediterrainean navy against Italy, but it is quickly gulping up fuel, so I had to increase imports of oil from US. I also built a small taskforce to eventually protect the convoys of raw materials from Vietnam and Polynesia.
The oil import costs some factory output, and this has been further reduced by a pacifist strike, that also took a lot of political points to mitigate. I was saving those point for an increase in the mobilization of the industry, and also need them for reorganizing the aviation industry (50 points = 1 mil factory in 120 days).
Now on top of that, the opposition, right and left, demand political concessions. Saying no would cost even more political points and a stability hit, but I just don't really want to keep saying yes to the commies.

Spoiler: Political

 

[desphorin]

I kept turtling and changed the infantry template to 10-0. Removed the AT support, Horse Rec and hospital, but kept AA and eng.

Spoiler: New infantry template

View attachment 638695

A new development in the world. As the SU was already at war with Germany when SU gave Finland the ultimatum, Finland has now fully joined the Axis. As Norway has not been taken, and is part of the Allies, this could mean an arctic front opening up. I never saw that before in a HOI game.
Great Britain took Libya and Sardinia rather effortless.
I deployed most of the mediterrainean navy against Italy, but it is quickly gulping up fuel, so I had to increase imports of oil from US. I also built a small taskforce to eventually protect the convoys of raw materials from Vietnam and Polynesia.
The oil import costs some factory output, and this has been further reduced by a pacifist strike, that also took a lot of political points to mitigate. I was saving those point for an increase in the mobilization of the industry, and also need them for reorganizing the aviation industry (50 points = 1 mil factory in 120 days).
Now on top of that, the opposition, right and left, demand political concessions. Saying no would cost even more political points and a stability hit, but I just don't really want to keep saying yes to the commies.

Spoiler: Political

View attachment 638707

Great to see you are hanging tight against the Axis! Some things I would do:

• Add support arty to the 10-0. They are still the cheapest source of soft attack and you should have a huge stockpile of arty sticking around. 1 factory on arty (from the start of the game) will last you until the very end of the game if you use them only in support slots.

• PP management: Silent workhorse, economy law, trade law are perhaps the most important things to get when you have pp (and imo in that order). You seem to have use your pp in some not-so-necesary things before imporving economy laws. You probably should have changed to war economy the day germany declared war on you (or the day your war support goes above 50% for commies or fascists). So next time you should plan ahead and keep spare pp for the most important things. Designers, theorist, and high command can come later. Obviously the more you play you will get a feeling when you want things and can adapt as you go.

• Yea strike and draft events are nasty, so it is important to get stability (and WS in offensive war) up before you get into war ideally. If you want to save up pp, might consider stop doing focuses for some time (pdx-designed focuses are not always useful).

• You can consider send your extra arty to the soviets so you can gain some extra army xp. An attaché to soviets/china when you have the pp is also a good idea. You will want A LOT of army xp to chase after lagged behind doctrines and upgrade tanks.

Hope this helps!

 

[Hudson D.]

Very interesting thread !
Any recommendation on going "Little Entente" and starting the war in 1938 ?

 

[Hiksday]

Very interesting thread !
Any recommendation on going "Little Entente" and starting the war in 1938 ?

It's really easy , there's not much to say , Germany is going to be alone against 5 country ( or more if you do join the ententes ) . I don't really see how you could fuck this up as even the starting army should be able to beat Germany .

 

[desphorin]

Very interesting thread !
Any recommendation on going "Little Entente" and starting the war in 1938 ?

Nothing much changes really from what was suggested in the thread, except Germany is now even easier to beat and France could afford to build mils instead of civs earlier. Just bide your time and defend until you can field a few proper tank divisions with SPAA to counterattack. Really a few (~4) is what you need.

 

[eastcoastceojam]

Germany is going to be alone against 5 country ( or more if you do join the ententes ) . I don't really see how you could f**k this up as even the starting army should be able to beat Germany.

FYI - Not sure if this is an RNG thing, but the times I've tried the France Little Entente path, Italy always joins the Axis immediately after the war starts over Sudetenland. So Germany isn't completely alone, though the 1938 Axis is weaker than usual, and has no land access to oil.

So, don't be a noob like me and leave your entire Italian border undefended on your first Little Entente run, making Mussolini's dreams of conquering the south of France come true.