Would you agree/disagree that this are the best starter countries to learn HOI3?

[WSnova]

Sorry if I was not clear, didn´t want the title to be too long.

I was discussing with a friend in how many people struggle to learn HOI3 because ..well the game does a terrible job to show you its mechanics. It veered of in what are the best learning nations for HOI3 and I ranked them into this category, and was wondering whatdo you guys think:

1. Germany: Starts pretty powerful, most flavour events, lots of leadership to play around with. More railroaded than other nations. Best place to learn land related warfare(because you will have to wage big land wars against diverse opponents), production(You will need to expand your armed forces), trade(Germany needs to trade for resources). Its big enough that your mistakes won´t affect you so much.
2. USA: Perfect place to learn all Navy related things without the worries about having a land border with any major power, you don´t have a far flung empire to defend, enough IC and leadership to screw up and still be Ok. I´d pretty much say this is a must for someone who wants to learn the naval and air aspect of the game.
3. UK: Now lets start tunning up the difficulty, UK has the same characteristics both Germany and the USA have, but now you will have to be more worried about defending your empire, a multi front Naval war, convoy protection. You still have pretty good IC, leadership and resources in general. But I like to think this as a intermediate level problem.
4. USSR: Its pretty much a test to see how much you have mastered in land combat, you are not swimming in leadership like Germany, you get to fight Germany as a final test. Its just a way to test combat with a little bit more pressure and less room for error.
5. Japan and Italy: As a final way to test the player and to teach him how a smaller county can still beat a bigger one if they focus their resources better.

Honorable mention: Nationalist China, which to me is like the USSR than it can become pretty powerful, but you get hit earlier than the USSR. Logistics are much harder than with the USSR.

I always thought playing with minors to learn didn´t teach you much because they can´t really affect much and there is less of a noticeable feedback. Also you don´t get much room for errors because you have less VPs and leadership.

What do you guys think?

 

[_karl_]

I found Italy a relatively good choice for a beginner: you start with simple little wars where you have a clear superiority (the war in Ethiopia is essentially a tutorial, the war in Yugoslavia is slightly more technical but still straightforward), then you have you little playground around the Mediterranean Sea, with a small part of the Royal Navy which offers a nice introduction to naval fighting, and taking Malta can be your first little challenge. Then, once you're beginning to know how to play, it's time to give a hand to the Germans somewhere around the Black Sea. So you have some kind of progression in the difficulty, and not too much micro-management of multiple/huge fronts.

 

[yamato2cz]

Sorry if I was not clear, didn´t want the title to be too long.

I was discussing with a friend in how many people struggle to learn HOI3 because ..well the game does a terrible job to show you its mechanics. It veered of in what are the best learning nations for HOI3 and I ranked them into this category, and was wondering whatdo you guys think:

1. Germany: Starts pretty powerful, most flavour events, lots of leadership to play around with. More railroaded than other nations. Best place to learn land related warfare(because you will have to wage big land wars against diverse opponents), production(You will need to expand your armed forces), trade(Germany needs to trade for resources). Its big enough that your mistakes won´t affect you so much.
2. USA: Perfect place to learn all Navy related things without the worries about having a land border with any major power, you don´t have a far flung empire to defend, enough IC and leadership to screw up and still be Ok. I´d pretty much say this is a must for someone who wants to learn the naval and air aspect of the game.
3. UK: Now lets start tunning up the difficulty, UK has the same characteristics both Germany and the USA have, but now you will have to be more worried about defending your empire, a multi front Naval war, convoy protection. You still have pretty good IC, leadership and resources in general. But I like to think this as a intermediate level problem.
4. USSR: Its pretty much a test to see how much you have mastered in land combat, you are not swimming in leadership like Germany, you get to fight Germany as a final test. Its just a way to test combat with a little bit more pressure and less room for error.
5. Japan and Italy: As a final way to test the player and to teach him how a smaller county can still beat a bigger one if they focus their resources better.

Honorable mention: Nationalist China, which to me is like the USSR than it can become pretty powerful, but you get hit earlier than the USSR. Logistics are much harder than with the USSR.

I always thought playing with minors to learn didn´t teach you much because they can´t really affect much and there is less of a noticeable feedback. Also you don´t get much room for errors because you have less VPs and leadership.

What do you guys think?

Brazil, Canada, South Africa, Australia. none are in the reach of immediate danger, all can decide with how many forces they engage and whit what forces they do it.

 

[marxianTJ]

Canada is quite a bit of fun - mainly because it's like Spec Ops mode lol since basically all you have the MP for is to build marines and so forth and go around the world ruining peoples' days with a token navy to back you up.

 

[Chipawah]

US is to me the biggest play-and-learn nation, you can build and research everything and test everything on the battlefield.

I think you can mess up the supply situation in Barbarossa pretty badly as Germany the first time around. Supplies being one of the most counter-intuitive aspects of the game, this can be quite frustrating.

I agree that Canada is one of the easiest minors to handle and gives you a pretty manageable experience for a first time try.

 

[Kovax]

I consider Brazil, Canada, Hungary, Romania, or Sweden to be good starters. It gives you a chance to learn how to balance an economy and use the assets available without having to deal with overseas holdings, massive navies, or a list of army divisions that would fill a small book. There's a lot that you can learn about the game without needing to handle everything at once. After you've learned how to manage the country, use spies to affect your neighbors, and establish diplomatic relations with one or more factions, then it's time to take what you've learned and move up to either Italy or Germany.

Italy, as pointed out, starts out with a nice, safe training war in Ethiopia. After that, it's 3 long years of boredom and frustration to try to turn the tangled mess of more HQs than combat divisions into a functional Order of Battle. It's an ideal opportunity to take a historical underperformer and turn them into a viable major power.

Germany falls into the "sink or swim" category. It's got "training wheels" in the form of diplomatic decisions with details to tell you what you need to do, and it's got all of the early advantages, but any mistakes you make in the early stages WILL come back to bite you after you charge headlong into the vast reaches of the Soviet Union, and it's far too late to fix them by that point.

To me, the US makes a terrible tutuorial, because it doesn't matter what you do, you've got the Industrial Capacity and Leadership points to get away with it. In essence, you're really not learning by "trial and error" because there are practically no consequences for mistakes, so you have to unlearn a lot of what you thought you knew in order to play another country later.