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Shandong Clique has the option to take bicycle infantry in the new Kaiserreich. The NatPop leader also has basically infinite manoower. Ring ring, motherfuckers.
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Jan 2, 2020 23:00
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| # ? May 9, 2024 17:18 |
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The best thing in the China Rework is Zhang Zongchang, though. Guy is just peak warlord. Unite China? Nah, he just wants to bang hookers and do drugs.  Oh, and do poetry: The sky god is also named Zhang Why does he make life hard for me If it doesn't rain in three days I'll demolish your temple Then I'll have cannons bombard your mum Magni fucked around with this message at 05:56 on Jan 5, 2020 |
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Jan 5, 2020 01:15
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That dude was an incredible boss. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhang_Zongchang “Poem About Bastards” You tell me to do this He tells me to do that You are all bastards Go gently caress your mother “Untitled” Someone asks me how many women I have I really don’t know either Yesterday a boy called me ‘dad’ I don’t know who his mother is
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Jan 5, 2020 01:49
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I'm starting to think that Caribbean islands are an amazing honeypot for dealing with European fleets. Set up a lot of naval bombers to cover them, and just watch as everything expensive gets sunk by a bunch of cheap rear end planes. edit: Case in point, I lost about 3 days of production to sink something like two years worth of hulls. The expression on the brit's face seems mighty accurate. 
Warmachine fucked around with this message at 02:22 on Jan 5, 2020 |
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Jan 5, 2020 02:14
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thinking of playing my next few games as Japan that way I don't have to worry about invading Japan 
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Jan 5, 2020 23:25
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Remember when japan would join the axis and so every single drat war ended up invading them lol
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Jan 6, 2020 00:14
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buglord posted:thinking of playing my next few games as Japan that way I don't have to worry about invading Japan theyre bad at defending so if u just go fast enough they dont do poo poo
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Jan 6, 2020 00:53
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Davincie posted:theyre bad at defending so if u just go fast enough they dont do poo poo This is what I did this last game--I was watching their war with China, and they seemed to have gotten really bogged down. I used the delay to set up all of my pieces near the Philippines so that as soon as I declared, I'd be ready to take Iwo Jima, Formosa, and Okinawa. I also noticed they didn't have poo poo for divisions (somewhere around 80 of them), which meant they couldn't have much guarding the home islands. Turns out they were practically unguarded, and I steamrolled from Nagasaki to Tokyo.
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Jan 6, 2020 02:40
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Mapgoons are playing a new, weird, completely a-historic Hearts of Iron game starting this next Sunday January 12th at 8pm UTC and running 3 hours sessions every following Sunday until we're all dead! Sign up & come join us in our first Multiplayer Hearts of Iron 4 Draft Game! https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19Id94yi0CpkbsZWI0k6nWYaCC9uczuyweyUl3MlqfYY/edit#gid=0 Whether you have 4 or 4,000 hours played, or never ever even played multiplayer before you're welcome to join us smashing Men, Material, and anachronistic NATO counters into one another. The jist of it is we'll have 4 players controlling major nations (USA, Germany, USSR, Japan) take turns drafting other nations until every player and any significant ai leftovers are on a team, then we'll race to set the world on fire. There's a permanent discord invite in most mapgoon threads behind the paywall in PGS such as in this thread right here or you can PM me here and I'll send one direct to you
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Jan 6, 2020 02:50
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The Cheshire Cat posted:Be communist South Africa, where the colonized overthrow the colonizers and then proceed to kick out the REST of the colonizers too. The trick for SA is subs. Just focus subs with your limited tech, and try to get l2 subs out by the time you switch to either Communist or Fascist. Put out as many as you can. The AI won't send fleets to engage you, so your subs have full authority over the coast. Then when you declare on Portugal/Belgium they'll send tons of troops down only for you to sink all their unsupported convoys. Even your undergeared troops can handle the hilariously awful colonial military Portugal and Belgium have. If France doesn't give Madagascar ( and they wont if you do it early ), you get a free war with not in the Allies France to exploit the same way. Suddenly you own 90% of Africa, and haven't even engaged England yet. Keep building subs, build CAS/anti Naval and put it all in Algeria. When you finally feel teched enough to take on Colonial Britain, hit it. Put you sub fleet in Cape/Mediterranean and give them air support through Algeria. You should be able to sink their Navy pretty decisively if you've been focusing Navy. Then just blockade Australia/England, and you've won.
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Jan 6, 2020 03:14
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If you send enough aid to China when it's just the Second Sino-Japanese War, they will often smash Japan before they can remove the debuffs they get from invading China. Japan will usually offer to China to surrender if they kick them off the continent and I think historical China will always accept. They will often do it all over again, because lol focus trees/AI, but they'll be much reduced. EDIT: Japan is pretty bad at defending because they're usually fighting a hell war across India or wherever by late game. This is because the game can't properly represent giving bamboo spears to women and strapping landmines or grenades to children. You can also instigate a civil war before you land, it cuts down on their units and creates a diversion although I've noticed rebel AI's are usually bad if it's not something that happened IRL. RocknRollaAyatollah fucked around with this message at 04:20 on Jan 6, 2020 |
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Jan 6, 2020 04:16
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Things HoI4 has taught (reminded) me: Wars are fought with bullets, but won with beans. Maybe remembering this I can win quicker than December 24, 1957 going forward. edit: Yo dawg 
Warmachine fucked around with this message at 16:53 on Jan 6, 2020 |
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Jan 6, 2020 15:09
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Rookersh posted:The trick for SA is subs. I do this but with endless minelaying subs just because minelaying is disturbingly effective, and because it's an infrastructure thing.
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Jan 6, 2020 18:12
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RocknRollaAyatollah posted:Japan will usually offer to China to surrender if they kick them off the continent and I think historical China will always accept. They will often do it all over again, because lol focus trees/AI, but they'll be much reduced. Ugh, I wonder if it only goes to Nat China, or if you only get it if the united China faction exists or something. I played two Communist China campaigns into the mid 40s a few months ago where I took back all of China and Korea and then was stuck in a war against Japan where they'd make constant unsuccessful naval invasions against two ports in Manchuria, the US hadn't taken a single island in years, and I was building a navy from scratch. In the first campaign the Nazis beat the Soviets and I got bored and attacked them and got stuck in Siberia, and in the second game I slipped by and took Taiwan, but then my small fleet got caught and wiped out while I was preparing a naval invasion of Japan proper. In retrospect I wish I had just moved my garrisons out of those ports and let them come in so I could at least destroy their divisions. I don't know if it would have helped the US though. In both games they didn't do poo poo against Japan and just wasted all of their manpower and equipment on incessant failed naval invasions in France.
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Jan 6, 2020 22:36
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Democratic independent Japan is hell. Manchukuo always joins Axis at 90% capitulation and forces me to fight Germany and Italy. Then it’s a coin flip that UK & Western Europe declares on me because ??? RT56 if that matters.
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Jan 6, 2020 22:50
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I just played a game as democratic Germany. First funny thing is the game was sitting at 9% tension in '41 without the Germans stirring poo poo and Japan also going democratic. Second thing is  Russia went to war with Poland, and as Basically-United-States-But-Europe, I kept feeding the Poles supplies while I finished my buildup. Poland was taking ground when I eventually joined the war, and Hero Jeep broke through the front and turned Russia into border gore, driving all the way to the Black Sea before making the USSR capitulate. edit: Ok, so they haven't capitulated yet. That'll change. Warmachine fucked around with this message at 23:09 on Jan 6, 2020 |
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Jan 6, 2020 22:56
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Warmachine posted:I just played a game as democratic Germany. First funny thing is the game was sitting at 9% tension in '41 without the Germans stirring poo poo and Japan also going democratic. Second thing is I'd watch the HBO miniseries based on this one supply truck singlehandedly taking down the USSR
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Jan 6, 2020 23:25
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BallisticClipboard posted:I'd watch the HBO miniseries based on this one supply truck singlehandedly taking down the USSR I like to imagine it wasn't even deliberate, it just got extremely lost.
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Jan 7, 2020 00:54
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I'd like to imagine it's actually a kettenkrad pulling a trailer and wotjek sits in the trailer as the Polish liason to this expedition
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Jan 7, 2020 01:07
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Randallteal posted:Ugh, I wonder if it only goes to Nat China, or if you only get it if the united China faction exists or something. I played two Communist China campaigns into the mid 40s a few months ago where I took back all of China and Korea and then was stuck in a war against Japan where they'd make constant unsuccessful naval invasions against two ports in Manchuria, the US hadn't taken a single island in years, and I was building a navy from scratch. In the first campaign the Nazis beat the Soviets and I got bored and attacked them and got stuck in Siberia, and in the second game I slipped by and took Taiwan, but then my small fleet got caught and wiped out while I was preparing a naval invasion of Japan proper. I believe you have to be in the United Front. You also have to be the faction leader if you're in the United Front, it only fires for the leader.
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Jan 7, 2020 02:48
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VostokProgram posted:I'd like to imagine it's actually a kettenkrad pulling a trailer and wotjek sits in the trailer as the Polish liason to this expedition It's canon now.
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Jan 7, 2020 17:59
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I just fired this up and started as Italy. I made 2 armies from my units in Eritrea and Somaliland, assigned commanders and gave one army the local air wings. Put both armies on front lines to plan a shared offensive toward Addis Ababa, let them plan a few days, and watched. The red skulls mean my units are out of supply, right? I assume that's why they're taking weeks to win battles in one province. What am I doing so wrong here? That supply mapmode makes it look like my men in Eritrea and Ethiopia aren't running out because of a lack of supply capacity, but some of the units on the fronts seem to be starving.
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Jan 8, 2020 11:29
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The skull icons mean they're taking losses. In this case because literally all of them are fighting. Combats are taking ages because you're fighting in mountains.
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Jan 8, 2020 11:52
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Vivian Darkbloom posted:I just fired this up and started as Italy. I made 2 armies from my units in Eritrea and Somaliland, assigned commanders and gave one army the local air wings. Put both armies on front lines to plan a shared offensive toward Addis Ababa, let them plan a few days, and watched. The red skulls mean my units are out of supply, right? I assume that's why they're taking weeks to win battles in one province. Red skull is attrition. terrain such as mountains and jungles have high attrition penelties if you move through them. a red fuel can means low supplies E: the mountains also give a boost to defense and take forever to move through so that’s why the battles haven’t resolved fully yet
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Jan 8, 2020 15:04
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Beaten by everyone, but if you can at all avoid it, don't fight in the mountains. Unless you want to tie up a lot of divisions for weeks at a time for little tangible gain. An update on my Hero Jeep game: my invasion of the UK was pretty uneventful, save for America joining the war, and notably Poland staying out of it. Poland, America, and the British Empire are all in the same faction, with Poland as the faction leader. I can only assume this is because I have troops lined up at the Polish border ready to turbofuck Warsaw the moment they declare. As such, we still have pretty good trade going on even as German troops run roughshod across the British Isles and start to establish beachheads in North America. Wotjek and the rest of the Ostpanzergruppe have been moved to the western front due to the Swedes deciding to perform a landing in Britain with no support. They predictably failed to capture any ports, but... it did show some glaring weaknesses in the British-American defenses. Namely that they left London unguarded. 12 hasty paratrooper divisions later, and some mechanized reinforcements once a safe beach had been cleared, and we hold south-west Britain. I bring the Ostpanzergruppe in, spearhead-aggressive, and watch the UK turn to spaghetti. It's scary what 13kph divisions can do.
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Jan 8, 2020 16:12
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Thanks for the advice. So what's the overall plan for winning the Second Italo-Ethiopian War? At the beginning of 1936, you have 15 divisions in Eritrea (mostly regular infantry) and 5 divs in Italian Somaliland. But the Eritrea front is all mountains and it takes forever to win a battle because the enemy gets a huge defense bonus, meaning I lose troops to a ton of attrition as they engage the defenders. On the Somalia front my guys start in a poor strategic position and the AI seems to like getting their divisions encircled as the Ethiopians start to take over the area. The only source of firepower I really have is some 1936 tactical bombers which do not do a lot. The real war had Addis Ababa captured 4 months after the new game bookmark, and if I can't do a better job than Mussolini's goons what's the point of anything? There is a national focus that gives you a bunch of free ports and infrastructure in both Italian colonies, which would help with getting more guns to the front so I can actually fill up combat width in fights, and I guess I can try "patience" too.
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Jan 8, 2020 20:22
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buglord posted:Immediately at start, I pulled all my troops into 3 mountain tiles (a vertical line with the capital as the bottom third tile). Researched grand battle plan, gave my only general and field marshal defensive traits, hired defense oriented military staff. You can live with just three tiles (probably even one if we're talking about the capital) and you wont capitulate. Used my one and only factory to make forts. The war started in 1939 as usual, and the allies accepted me into their club. By 1940 they helped me get the whole country back. Right now it's '41 and the axis are slowly being driven off africa. Here’s how I survived Ethiopia e: lol nvm you’re asking about Italy
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Jan 8, 2020 20:25
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Vivian Darkbloom posted:Thanks for the advice. So what's the overall plan for winning the Second Italo-Ethiopian War? At the beginning of 1936, you have 15 divisions in Eritrea (mostly regular infantry) and 5 divs in Italian Somaliland. But the Eritrea front is all mountains and it takes forever to win a battle because the enemy gets a huge defense bonus, meaning I lose troops to a ton of attrition as they engage the defenders. On the Somalia front my guys start in a poor strategic position and the AI seems to like getting their divisions encircled as the Ethiopians start to take over the area. The only source of firepower I really have is some 1936 tactical bombers which do not do a lot. hold the line in the south while you finish the ethiopian war logistics focus. it puts a level 3 port in somalia and boosts your eritrea one. the ethiopians have barely any guns, a single military factory, and no planes. send a pithy force of tac and fighters to the airbase in eritrea and push up from the south once the naval base focus is complete. the terrain there doesn't suck complete rear end and you can walk straight to addis ababa
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Jan 8, 2020 20:25
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Vivian Darkbloom posted:Thanks for the advice. So what's the overall plan for winning the Second Italo-Ethiopian War? At the beginning of 1936, you have 15 divisions in Eritrea (mostly regular infantry) and 5 divs in Italian Somaliland. But the Eritrea front is all mountains and it takes forever to win a battle because the enemy gets a huge defense bonus, meaning I lose troops to a ton of attrition as they engage the defenders. On the Somalia front my guys start in a poor strategic position and the AI seems to like getting their divisions encircled as the Ethiopians start to take over the area. The only source of firepower I really have is some 1936 tactical bombers which do not do a lot. Ship some mountaineers in from Italy to attack from Eritrea. You can also send more air forces from the mainland. The battleplaner ai isnt great and needs babysitting, maybe just turn the speed down a notch and make sure they arent getting themselves encircled. I usually do a spoiling attack in Somalia while i redeploy to just hold the line. With some experience the war really shouldnt take more than 70 days. Butch Banner fucked around with this message at 20:29 on Jan 8, 2020 |
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Jan 8, 2020 20:26
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also the italians absolutely sucked rear end at their invasion so don't worry if your troops bleed in the game
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Jan 8, 2020 20:27
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I think what I usually do is take all the mountaineers in my country and put them on the north front and put all my tanks on the south front. I think you end up with more than 24 after that so I send some colonial divisions home. Then I just do two offensive orders from both directions and let them go and it'll be done around the time of either the first or second focus.
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Jan 8, 2020 20:29
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Raskolnikov38 posted:also the italians absolutely sucked rear end at their invasion so don't worry if your troops bleed in the game The weirdest people on the pdox forums are the spaghetti wehraboos who insist despite all evidence to the contrary that Ethiopia was not a microcosm of Italian involvement in WW2 generally.
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Jan 8, 2020 20:37
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Vivian Darkbloom posted:Thanks for the advice. So what's the overall plan for winning the Second Italo-Ethiopian War? I usually ship down 6 divisions from Italy + relocate my territorial formations in Libya down there before unpausing after game start. That's usually enough to do it with minimal effort.
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Jan 8, 2020 21:16
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Can you play as a minor (even generic tree minor) even if you know you can’t make it every week?
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Jan 9, 2020 01:09
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I started a 1936 game as communist China because they had the most interesting focus tree with Waking the Tiger. Not sure why the RoC gets such a boring one comparatively. I joined the alliance with all the other Chinese factions and now it's an endless shootout between lots of low-tech divisions in northeast China. Seems like Japan and its puppets are pretty clueless too, as they haven't opened a second front by invading Shanghai. Chinese armies are losing 10 men for every one Japanese or puppet casualty, so that could be going a little better, but at least the endless hopeless attacks from my guys in the Shanxi hills are keeping most IJA units pinned down. Not really sure what to do here since my resources are so limited -- mainly I'm building all the small arms I can and the occasional artillery piece to keep my army fighting and waiting for the world to get angry enough that someone comes to rescue us.
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Jan 9, 2020 11:34
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dialhforhero posted:Can you play as a minor (even generic tree minor) even if you know you can’t make it every week? If this is about the mapgoons game, yes probably.
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Jan 9, 2020 11:59
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Vivian Darkbloom posted:I started a 1936 game as communist China because they had the most interesting focus tree with Waking the Tiger. Not sure why the RoC gets such a boring one comparatively. I joined the alliance with all the other Chinese factions and now it's an endless shootout between lots of low-tech divisions in northeast China. Seems like Japan and its puppets are pretty clueless too, as they haven't opened a second front by invading Shanghai. Chinese armies are losing 10 men for every one Japanese or puppet casualty, so that could be going a little better, but at least the endless hopeless attacks from my guys in the Shanxi hills are keeping most IJA units pinned down. Not really sure what to do here since my resources are so limited -- mainly I'm building all the small arms I can and the occasional artillery piece to keep my army fighting and waiting for the world to get angry enough that someone comes to rescue us. Tac bombers are good too although Communist China doesn't get them off the bat. You just want to pump out units as quickly as possible and overwhelm the Japanese too. Unless you have the industrial base from taking out your neighbors prior to 37, you're probably just going to be fighting the hell war until the war widens but that's not a great game. I would recommend restarting if you don't have a good industrial base to actually do something.
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Jan 9, 2020 15:44
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dialhforhero posted:Can you play as a minor (even generic tree minor) even if you know you can’t make it every week? yes!
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Jan 9, 2020 15:48
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RocknRollaAyatollah posted:Tac bombers are good too although Communist China doesn't get them off the bat. You just want to pump out units as quickly as possible and overwhelm the Japanese too. Yeah no kidding. I tried some border wars (which are one weird mechanic) but even grabbing states off the warlords did nothing for my awful industrial situation.
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Jan 10, 2020 20:14
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| # ? May 9, 2024 17:18 |
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Phone posting so excuse the lack of specifics, but the way I worked my Communist China games were to start improving relations with the USSR and working on attacking your eastern neighbor ASAP. They should let you into the Comintern once you max relations and then you can bring them in against the warlords. If you declare war on your eastern neighbor ASAP, you should be able to rush east and take their capitol right before their first wave of new units can be deployed. You have to manually control your divs at this point though because the AI will be hesitant to advance since you don't have enough divs to cover your border properly. The USSR should come into the war, but you also need Mongolia to join so they can invade from there, and getting Mongolia to join can be iffy. I found that if they don't accept your call to arms, the USSR will usually pull them in mid-war after a few weeks, so just zip to their capitol and try not to lose ground. After that move on to the northern / western warlords and do the same thing, using the USSR to distract the enemy's main force (they often aren't aggressive enough to actually win the war for you) while you shoot forward and claim the victory points. When Japan attacks Nat China, you should be all set up in the west and pumping out inf with your new factories. Declare on Nat China and push in from the west while Japan squeezes them from the north. This bit is tricky because the USSR might not agree to come in against China right away, but if you wait for Japan to beat up China too much the USSR might pull them into the Comintern, or Japan might get to all the best bits before you can. Ideally you gobble up a bunch of China and meet Japan in the middle, Lady and the Tramp-style, then take as much as you can in the peace deal. After that you build up until you feel ready to take out Japan. You could leave the Comintern at this point if you don't want to deal with that drama. If Japan got enough of China to make a puppet there, it might be best to invade early while the puppet doesn't have much of an army. That was the best way I found to grow quickly as Com China and take out Japan, but as discussed earlier Japan probably won't peace out to you at that point, so you gotta be prepared to build a navy from scratch and take the fight to Japan or just fend off naval invasions and hope the US gets its poo poo together. The good news is you'll get immense manpower from having united China even if some of the provinces are still owned by Japan and controlled by you, so you're pretty much impossible to dislodge once your infantry production really gets rolling. Randallteal fucked around with this message at 21:28 on Jan 10, 2020 |
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Jan 10, 2020 21:25
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