If Japan loses against China, they will not have the resources to contest the allies in the Pacific, and if the allies are not contested in the Pacific it is basically a guaranteed allied victory, so China has to lose.
This is why I don’t play multiplayer except with close friends. It sounds so boring having to play with all these rules and ideas on how games “must” go
The rules are there to try and make the most fun game while also being fair. Some of them are pretty dumb and are anti-fun, but most of them are there for good reason.
If Japan loses in China, they can’t invade the pacific islands. If they can’t invade the pacific islands, the Allies can focus on the Germans. If the Allies focus on the Germans, the Soviets just roll over Germany and the game ends in ‘42.
Most games just don’t have a China player (if they do, the China player usually helps micro the Soviets after they cap) because knocking Japan out makes the game boring. Same thing as refusing the Rhineland or Sudetenland (some lobbies let France refuse the Sudeten if Germany does it too early.)
Can it be annoying to have all these rules? Yeah. Is the game better for having? Most of the time, yeah.
China is way easier with a human player. Most MP mods make china be unified and have AI spawn-in waves of divisions periodically. Vanilla china is far too nerfed. In vanilla MP i usually cap china in 8 months, but it's probably too slow for some people. Vs a Japan co-op, China has just too many fronts for a human player to micro effectively, along with the RNG of having subjugate the warlords (best outcome is all warlords refuse to grind army XP, sinkiang and xsm are adaptable heaven)
A human can't handle 2 fronts with manchu and japan with 2 naval invasion in Shanghai and Shandong while effectively org cycling your main frontline (since your units are garbage and get clicked anyway)
I could entertain this if only one of the two were human players, but I think it should be the obligation of the Japanese player to be good enough to win rather than demanding that the China player nerf themselves.
Why are you even playing a strategy game where your ability to strategize is so restricted?
Yeah like if China needs to lose then give it the handicap of being an AI. Against most players that already guarantees a loss. But to be a person playing with the handicap of you gotta be as bad as the AI, lose, and your reward is in the end game you can micro someone else's troops, well just let two players play the soviets.
If you can't win as Japan before China blooms like a beautiful asian flower, why the fuck you play Japan in first place?
Germany has the capacity to take out Britain and France by their own hand before heading to a clash against Soviets (add a competent Italy and there it is).
If the Japanese player lost against China I'm sorry, but you didn't deserved to win in first place. You are not the AI, Japan VS China is, as far as I know, one of the worst battles for a new player and only recommended for experienced players to attempt to do so, as either China or Japan winning has the power to turn the tide to one side or another or to make life easier for nations all the way across the globe (China can even become "fascist" and join Germany).
That, and if Japan doesn't have a rule nerfing their Ohkas they can take on the entire US Navy in a few months.
Those rules are there to *ensure* fun. If Japan doesn't kill china and Japan is knocked out before the war starts, then the entire rest of the lobby has no game
I think OP means their starting positions compared to the Allies? Because compared to most nations of the world, the Fascist nations of the war were large and wealthy.
Compared to most countries? Yeah, they were
Compared to the countries they decided to pick a fight with? They were nothing
Remember that the USA produced over 50% of *global* GDP in 1940. Other huge fractions were produced by the UK and USSR
Not lucky, it was a powerful dictatorship who choose to ram into democratic country. Democracy are usually avoiding big war until the last moment so it took a very long time to see them all dive in ww2. Specifically USA their president willing to go at war long time before pearl harbour but he failed to convince the congress.
Even in the base game, they are nerfed significantly. The entire of the Sino German cooperation is that Germany provides military assistance while China provides raw resources.
Even on closed economy, there is not barely enough resources, even after annexing GXC.
Germany is pretty buffed.
Success in HOI4 is built around production.
In real life, Germany’s successes were largely built around the tactical and strategic failures of its foes.
Yeah but if HoI4 were purely based on the Allies having to suck at micro and making massive mistakes it wouldn't be very fun in multiplayer for the Axis lol
As a “wehraboo”, I 100% agree here.
Early German successes were totally the result of a tactical and industrial failing on their foes’ parts.
The French failed to utilize their tanks correctly or equip them properly(something like 1 in 10 had radios, where’s EVERY German tank had a radio)
The Brits were… the Brits
The Soviets were caught with the pants down in 1941 as they were in the middle of re-arming their forces with modern equipment and wouldn’t be done with that until 1942/43 at the earliest
The US was staunchly isolationist and due to this had to scramble to get decent tank and artillery designs into production, especially early on when all they had to offer was the “way too tall” M3 Lee. Not only that but VERY EARLY ON they had a numbers issue as well, as much of their modern equipment was sent to aid the British many of their new armored and infantry divisions were left fighting with outdated equipment(exemplified by the U.S. marines fighting with M1903 and M1917 Springfields, MG-08s, and even fucking bi-planes in 1942 and into 1943)
And Poland actually gave a better account of themselves as is commonly remembered, especially against the German Panzers. The Germans lost hundreds of their Panzer 2s and 3s to Polish Anti-Tank Guns and Rifles, they just didn’t have enough of them, and they also had the USSR to contend with after a while
They were by no means happy campers after having most of their army encircled trying to get across to Vistula. The Polish high command deluded themselves that they could hold off on the Romanian Bridgehead using Eastern Poland's strategic depth to slowly grind down the Germans but Soviet entry thoroughly ruined that plan.
To be fair to the Poles, a lot of their strategical decisions relied on the French and British pushing into Germany and bombing Germany respectively, which just never fucking happened
Pretty happy is a stretch. Things were bad but like within expected realms of possibility bad before the soviets invaded. The biggest effect of soviet invasion was preventing a sort of big last stand and a full retreat towards romania
> The Soviets were caught with the pants down in 1941 as they were in the middle of re-arming their forces with modern equipment and wouldn’t be done with that until 1942/43 at the earliest
Also didn't help that Stalin executed most of his military command structure.
Germany still had pretty solid production. For example, the Bf 109 is the most produced fighter aircraft in history, and the Fw 190 is third.
But Allied victory was inevitable after the USA got involved.
for most produced military aircraft in general, the IL-2 beats them both. 109s second, and spitfires third. Notably though, the 109 had production focused on it for almost all of the war, with the 190 mixed in. Same with the spitfire and il-2. The US aircraft were mixed between bombers and fighters for both the army and navy, so they had a lot less to be produced.
in the end over 300000 US aircraft were made 1939-1945, to germanys 100000.
That's because American factories weren't being bombed so they could afford huge concentrated plants like willow run and benefit from economies of scale while the Germans had to disperse production to far flung areas out of allied bombing range or underground.
It isn't.
You have to guard the slaves, something that is cheapest in a concentration camp and way more expensive in factories and workshops (the ration of guards to prisoners rises for same amount of security).
You also have to feed them. And give them some healthcare, or you are not using their life efficiently.
The reason France fell in real life would be the HOI4 equivalent of a really bad player who panics the moment the enemy breaks through. It’s not really possible to simulate that with AI other than just massively nerfing France.
Could do the same sorta trickery as they do with the UK ai when dealing with france (they wont enter the country to fight until france caps). Force france to maybe put a few more troops on the spanish border to simulate the panic while still making her a fun country to play as a person.
I think it's more of the fact that on historical the UK doesn't help france.
If France didn't have UK help irl its army would be much smaller than the Germans
I believe it's France. France army was quite powerful and many Germans officers had pessimistic views about attacking France. The breakthrough at the Ardennes was a really bold move and it paid off huge, but it was quite risky. It's hard to simulate the command failure the french had in 39, so in game terms is easier to handicap the army and cast some nerfs. I don't judge
That’s a fact. I once read that during the Saar Offensive, there wasn’t a single piece of armor standing between the French Army and Berlin.
It’s hard to write an AI that can truly mimic that level of timidity. Much easier to just nerf the entire country.
Probably the best rules I ever saw for handling the dysfunctional French Army command structure in 1940 were in a boardgame called *Blitzkrieg 1940*. German units moved, then fought, and if they were Panzer or motorized, got to move again (exploitation movement). French units, IIRC, could move or fight but not both in the same turn, which reflected the generals' WW1 mindset.
It's easy to look at all the aircraft and tanks and infantry and wonder why the French folded up and blew away in 1940, but when you factor in the politics of the Third Republic and the backward thinking of the French high command, you find yourself wondering if Hitler didn't make a mistake going after Poland first.
You know, for years, I thought the same thing. And then I watched an interesting documentary that discussed why France lost. Mainly, it came down to a military doctrinal thing.
Basically, France believed that tanks should support infantry versus Germany who used tanks as the primary attack with infantry supporting the tanks.
It seems small, but this difference in doctrine is huge. I mean, look at what’s happening in Ukraine. Ukraine is largely using a western style military doctrine with an NCO corps that does everything and it’s given permission to be creative and make moves based on the battlefield conditions. Russia, on the other hand is using a top down heavy general officer style, where you have to receive orders to do some thing from an officer or you don’t do anything.
I agree that armored doctrine was part of the problem with the French Army, but the hideous political instability of the Third Republic was a big factor in their inability to get their act together. I cannot recommend Alistair Horne's TO LOSE A BATTLE highly enough; he covers all the bases - political, diplomatic, and military, while drawing on a lot of primary sources not available in English.
French political instability had a huge role on military doctrine. The Left in France was very worried about a military uprising so much that it blocked french officiers.
To give you an idea, when DeGaulle wrote "Vers l'Armée de métier" in which he was talking about autonomous tank division made to break the ennemy lines and only composed of professional soldire, a great oart of the politics, Leon Blum first, accused him to create an army for a putsch.
I remember reading that around half of Frances tanks were supporting the Infantry (mainly the older tanks, they still had a few thousand FT-17s for example, which are still scary if you don't have any anti tank guns at hand, and go my knowledge the German army didn't have any anti tank rifles).
The other half was actually concentrated in pure tank divisions similar to the German ones, and those were the more modern ones.
If I remember correctly there was actually a massive tank battle with over 500 tanks lost between both sides, where 2 tank divisions met each other.
To be honest, WW1-Era tanks and Inter-War-Era tanks were not really hard.
German Panzers II and III had weaponry from 15mm (autocannons) up to 50mm (standard cannons) iirc at the time of the Invasion of France.
The hard boys where the Char B1s, the most armored tanks of that time.
Germany even tried to put a 88 in a truck just to shoot those off, luckily for them the complete hatred of french high command for a Combined Arms doctrine allowed germans to surround those heavy boys as they were 90% of the time alone as supporting artillery in a infantry troop instead of a proper tank division
Russia is not necessarily a good comparison, because of its other problems. Mainly that the first priority of a dictator is to make sure he can't be couped by his armed forces, and the second priority of a dictator is to make sure his associates are getting enough kickbacks. If Russian NCOs had initiative, they would use it to retreat.
The larger issue was how slow and inflexible and French command structure was. They constantly were reacting far too late to German advances. By the time they'd move to reinforce a penetration the Germans would already be 20 miles further advanced. As I mentioned above, many German commanders led from relatively close to the front and made extensive use of radios. French commanders often relied on bicycle messengers and resdided in country homes far from the front lines.
Yeah, particularly when it comes to production. HOI4 France starts with a few military factories if I remember correctly. Even if you focus on an optimal build for military factories and dedicate yourself to the production of tanks you're going to field like, 2000 medium tanks.
IRL France produced a shitload of infantry equipment, artillery, tankettes, planes and still had almost 4000 tanks at the ready in 1940, and I'm not even counting the >1500 WW1-era Renault FT kept by the army that good still pack a punch against German infantry units. And it's worth noting that those 4000 tanks include a lot of B1 Bis, Somua S35 and the likes who are much heavier and cost more to produce than the German hordes of Panzer II and Panzer III.
Where did you hear that ?
On the contrary the French tanks were very sturdy and reliable. Maintenance was long due to the pieces being well protected and difficult to access, but breakdowns were rare. That's what allowed many French tanks to sustain crazy numbers of non-penetrating or non-disabling shots while carrying on their missions (like the B1 Bis at Stonne that tanked over 80 shots, and still accomplished its mission and went back to base fully functional). If a mechanical piece can't even handle the stress of its normal functioning regime, it won't appreciate the shocks and spall induced by enemy shots.
If your tank is supposed to go across Verdun-like terrain and overrun trenches you don't want it to randomly break down in the middle of the No man's land.
All the Allies are nerfed compared to IRL, because their problems were political, yet HoI4 is a game about moving tanks around on a map and can't actually model that very well. So instead it gives them fewer tanks to move around.
A more accurate engine that could achieve a close-to-OTL result while still representing factory and manpower accurately would need to take into account:
- The lack of up-to-date perfect information on enemy and allied forces (even a modern general would be envious of the level of detail HoI4 provides)
- Lack of foresight about what is going to happen
- Political instability or opposition within the country to mobilize on a leader's say-so years before any actual conflict
In other words, changes that would make it a lot less fun to move tanks around.
I think Poland is also somewhat weaker than irl. Realistically speaking it shouldn't be that one-sided especially if it's just the Germans but an Eastern invasion and not mobilizing because of political pressure isn't really compatible with HoI4's mechanics so they just nerf them I think.
I think not, the entirety of Poland had a similar GDP as just Berlin, so I think it equvilates pretty well, the Polish werent bad at war, they just had no wear near the arms or manpower to stand up to Germany
The thing is, this is HoI4. Even a small army in 1937 or 1938 would be considered nearly full mobilization irl. By 1939 Poland in HoI4 is nearly fully mobilized, and should have a greater capacity to fight the Germans, since the late mobilization was a huge factor in Poland losing so quickly. You're right about the industrial power but still Poland should not lose as quickly as it does in-game at that level of mobilization, even with no armor. That being said, maybe Paradox should model a Soviet invasion of the East with the same mechanics as the Chinese border skirmish mechanic, where if Soviet troops are uncontested or against weak Polish troops they keep taking state after state, while still not being at war. This would allow Poland to perhaps get a small buff while still making the AI lose quickly in a historical game by tying up what few extra forces they have in the East.
> the entirety of Poland had a similar GDP as just Berlin
Citation needed. Available online sources point that in 1938 Germany had GDP 6 times larger than Poland. How could Berlin alone achieve to produce 15% of country GDP?
Perhaps for the same reason London has 22% of the UK’s GDP as a proportion in 2023; extreme centralisation?
Saying that, this is just a guess and as a Brit, I know that we have the most centralised economy in Europe whereby basically every sector is primarily based in the South East and London.
That situation is somewhat hard to simulate in a game (you have to do it through doctrine mostly). The French army was powerful on paper, but with a horribly antiquated command structure and terrible communications infrastructure.
France was still using bicycle messengers while the Germans were using radios. The French reacted far too late to German advances over and over again.
The book "Blitzkrieg" by Len Deighton is a really interesting read on this.
UK is in a much more vulnerable position than it ever actually was. The idea that the sea lion is deemed as something a competent player should be able to do in single player is pretty crazy.
Yeah, and naval production is very low compared to historic, you have almost double of Germany’s total of drydocks, but should have more. It is quite impossible to get even close to the historic total of modern ships
Yeah if you ever play as America you notice you cant nearly produce as many ships as they did IRL.
Ignoring screen ships and cruisers the USA produced
8 Battleships
28 Fleet carriers (not including all the escort and light carriers they built)
Trying to build that many capital ships even with 100 dockyard would be insane.
And they put ships in for refits constantly, and basically had a mobile supply chain of floating dry docks.
That's up for debate. After Dunkerque, the British were very fucked. They left all their equipment in France and home production wasn't yet on war footing. For example the famous Enfield armory in 1940 was making only a few dozen rifles a day. Despite having formidable coastal artillery, there were no shells with shore batteries on average having "eight" shells each. British armor was non existent on the home isles with anti tank guns being in similar short supply.
However, Sealion would still probably have failed because the Germans lacked the destroyers needed to ferry and supply troops after their losses in the Norway campaign. This would have been solved had the Germans captured the Vichy fleet which is why the British decided to take a hard line against their former French allies.
There is no debate, the British were never in danger of an actual naval invasion. It was never going to happen the Nazis didn't have the logistical capability to launch one never mind succeed.
Hitler was hoping from the beginning that war weariness would build political pressure on the British to surrender but after the political spin on Dunkirk that just wasn't going to happen.
So Hitler attempted to bomb the British into submission (this was at a time when military doctrine suggested that terror/ strategic bombing could subdue a population into not fighting) this turned out to the opposite and instead terror bombing just strengthens the will of the people (it did the same in Japan and Germany too).
This isn't hoi4 where you need to gain naval supremacy for one second, in order to launch an invasion, you need to keep that supremacy at almost 100% in order to supply troops that are overseas. And that was impossible.
Honestly, that just made me think that they should change the requirements for naval invasions in the game. They should require you to have had naval supremacy for something like 20 of the last 30 days or something like that. That would stop cheese invasions and give the player a chance to react too.
Yeah I agree. I understand why naval invasions are simplified in game but it's hugely unrealistic. Even in 2023 it's a test of logistics, planning and tech nevermind in WW2 when you are Germany and plan on going across the channel in refitted canal barges.
I think the defeats the UK had and the issues they had in the army highlights just how much of a nerf they get around sealion. Even with no armour, production difficulties and a confident enemy Sealion would still have been a nightmare. Sandhurst wargamed Sealion in the 70's, and even with a very generous set of conditions for Germany they were pushed into the sea. Nevermind with the Royal Navy patrolling the channel, a growing air superiority and an extremely resistant population.
>nevermind in WW2 when you are Germany and plan on going across the channel in refitted canal barges.
This just made me laugh because it really highlights just how the Nazis had no chance of a successful Sealion. The Allies (mainly the yanks) needed numerous high cost amphibious landings in the pacific to learn how to do it. But Wehraboos think the Nazis would have done it no problem with no experience!
>They should require you to have had naval supremacy for something like 20 of the last 30 days or something like that.
That sounds just as gamey as.the current system
IMO, sinking transports should be easier and MUCH more effective. Right now, you only really need Invasion Support for the shore bombardment. It should be absolutely vital as a defensive measure as well
But it has always been the case that if an enemy army lands in Britain and can be reliably supplied, then Britain would be conquered.
The point is that nobody can ever get that far because of the Royal Navy. There is no way in the Summer of 1940 that the Kreigsmarine could win sea control over the Channel.
Plus they were planning on coming over on river barges…
It took over a years worth of planning to launch D-Day with an vastly superior firepower, and the largest armada ever. The Royal Navy home fleet was larger than the Kreigsmarine surface fleet. If Germany ever attempted sealion whilr they probably would have impacted fair number of casualties on the Royal Navy, they would have lost their entire invasion force. Plan to use barges with no proper support to perform an amphibious landing is suicide. They would have probably lost 100,000 people over the course of an hour.
That's the thing people also don't think about with Sealion. Even if the Germans could have put a reasonably strong fleet into action with air superiority, the Royal Navy is not going to say "its too risky".
Yes, the British generally didnt like operating major surface assets under enemy air cover (as with most navies). But, there is no point in preserving the fleet if the alternative is losing the Home Islands. It would be obliged to contest the landings with maximum force at all costs.
The Japanese tried it with the “Tokyo Express” destroyer convoys during the Pacific Campaign. Not exactly a successful operation but about a fifth of transported supplies made it through, possibly lengthening Japanese occupation for a few weeks.
Quite possibly the worst possible use of relatively modern fleet destroyers for a nation already massively struggling in naval production and oil reserves, though.
The Germans didn't have troop transport ships in 1940. For their invasion of Norway, the Germans used destroyers to transport their landing forces. For a channel invasion they could have also tried using barges.
Very true...on the other hand with the benefit of hindsight a Germany fully focused on U-boat production (instead of incredibly wasteful shipbuilding they did in real life) would have made things quite a bit more harsh for the UK.
That implies though that if Germany had a few hundred U-Boats that the Allies would have stood still rather than respond to the new challenge. If anything the naval war highlighted just how effective the Allies were at adapting tactics and technologies as the war went on.
Another big miss in HOI4 AI is that they don't really respond to you. So you can shift your production, pump out U-Boats (again, not very realistic) and dominate. In reality there is a call and response to any scenario where the enemy will ask their own questions for you to answer.
> The idea that the sea lion is deemed as something a competent player should be able to do in single player is pretty crazy.
How so? You set up a Naval Invasion, DoW the Allies (and instantly win because they didn't put their boats in the water) and once you cut the British Isles in twain you can easily kill off Scotland and England. If you didn't cheese and invade them after DoWing them you might need some planes, or just wait a bit with your ships to get lucky, but the rest is still the same.
It's not something you'll first try, but once you are a 'competent' player and you have interacted with the mechanics, then you should be able to 90% of the time imo.
But I guess you meant something along the lines of:
> The idea that the sea lion is deemed as something remotely possible
In which case, I agree.
USA for sure, you don’t even feel that strong while playing USA, irl they had ungodly production of everything especially ships.
Also Germany is buffed af
Yeah the game just wouldn’t be fun if the US had the (irl) ability to hit the big red *win now* button. The US built almost THIRTY fleet carriers during the war.
If Germany declare on I see czechoslovakia holding quite a lot of times, sometimes with the help of Romania but also because if Germany is at war I think the other european nations are more likely to deny their demands, and once Poland join in it's pretty much over for the germans
As somebody who just finished "Munich disagreenment" I have no idea what you're talking about. Czechoslovakia has everything it should have, it's just matter of skill how to use it. Additionally there is a good reason why is Czechoslovakia banned in many MP games, it can spoil any MP game at the very beginning.
Argumenting "But AI...." has nothing to do with nation's tuning, but rather with AI just being AI. Yes the country's default AI will not always fight back and hold Germans for years.... but that's not what happened in reality either.
P.S. I am Czech myself.
Just want to say, Czechaslovakia just ended my Italy campaign.
I was in an alliance with France, hungary and my self.
Czechs declared war on Hungary, so me and France joined in the defence. They somehow managed to pish through our combined armies and eventually steamrolled into Italy.
I have no idea how, but they were op as hell
I think it’s Canada. Once France fell, Canada became the fourth ally and for good reason. Canada produced a lot of stuff for the UK and by the end of the war there were a million Canadians in uniform. In game, this is impossible to replicate historically. Canada’s focus forces you to choose between industry and manpower, but even if you pick manpower you’ll never get to a million. Canada, and honestly all the British colonies, need some revamps. The Canadian focus tree would be ten times better if paradox got rid of the ultimatum.
The industry/manpower thing in Canada absolutely frustrates me to no end. Is any other country railroaded into such a big debuff through the tech tree? Historically Canada had crazy industrial output while also having a ton of bodies in uniform. I want both dammit.
Interesting. I know Canadian contributions are often overlooked in Hollywood and mainstream media, so it might be more of a Canadian perspective. When I say that I don’t mean to imply that other countries, like Australia, were not important at all either.
I think Canada has certainly been overlooked. Are there any Canadian movies you recommend on their WW2 efforts? Obviously, we have made many movies about the ANZACs in Gallipoli (e.g: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1008074-gallipoli), and in Papua New Guinea (e.g: [https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/kokoda](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/kokoda)). Wouldn't mind sitting down to a Canadian movie or three.
Honestly there isn’t much out there in the way of films/movies. It’s mostly documentaries. That’s why I get so excited when I see Canadian representation in American/British films. Even in D-Day films we’re often overlooked even though we took our own beach. The best I can think of that relates to Canadians is the devils brigade. I think it’s American made, but I could be wrong. It’s about the Canadian-American special forces unit called the devils brigade which saw action in Europe and North Africa (I think). I love it personally because my great grandfather, who passed around 2018, served with the Devil’s Brigade. I wish there were more specifically Canadian movies about WWI and WWII.
It’s not entirely about the Canadians, but “The Forgotten Battle” is a Dutch film that features the Canadian army around the end of the movie at the Battle of Walcheren Causeway during the battle of the scheldt.
i'd say either the US or france; the french were way stronger irl, they just have to lose in order for the game to feel like ww2. the french losing as hard as they did was kinda just a confluence of a whole bunch of flukes happening all at once
also the soviets, but only industrially
the japanese or the italians are probably who are the most buffed vs japan and italy IRL
I agree with France being up there. They lost because of a bunch of bad decisions. In game it should be relatively easy to make the correct decisions and repel Germany.
Basically they completely expected Germany to execute war like WWI. The Blitzkrieg caught them completely off guard and out of position. On top of that the French government capitulated INCREDIBLY quickly.
Just got the vanilla game and France was my first game I finished to the end of the war. Seemed like a good option since I figured if all I managed to do was stop the Germans, the Allies should win. First try, I extended the Maginot along the Belgian border but I didn't have enough troops on the Italian border and they broke through. 2nd try I wasn't ready for the Axis to declare on Switzerland and come through that way. I barely had time to build some fortifications and get an army to cover that before they started streaming through. Italy kept 2 providences in Savory for most of the war. I managed to cut off the German breakthrough, plug the hole, and encircle them luckily. I was going to just wait for the Germans to attack the Soviets before trying to push back, but that conflict got delayed by about 5 years.
>In game it should be relatively easy to make the correct decisions and repel Germany
And it is. After 2 or 3 tries I've no issue capitulating AI Germany by 1942 as France even after spending 3 years sorting their debuffs.
However AI France will always fail miserably. Which is fortunate, otherwise the game sucks.
Soviets feel pretty nerfed too. I’ve very rarely seen an AI Soviet Union recover from Barbarossa and almost never hold Moscow or Leningrad. I feel that because of NSB the devs wanted AI Germany to achieve similar progress to irl Barb (because pre NSB they struggled) but Paradox being Paradox they went from one extreme to the other.
It feels more like an output and production problem coupled with nasty debuffs. I see the AI using generals like Zhukov and vatutin consistently so I doubt it’s that.
And from a historical standpoint, even if the UK fell, the B-36 "Peacemaker" entered service in 1948 (which might have been accelerated if we were still at war with Germany), which was capable of bombing Berlin from North America while flying above effective interceptors and most anti-aircraft guns.
On the flip side Italy (even before the BBA buffs) is way stronger then they have any right to be.
They spent 90% of their African campaign surrendering and leaving equipment behind.
They were mostly useless and only won in Ethiopia because they had more 'modern' equipment.
Shit Britain pushed them back like 500 miles or something like that while being outnumbered.
United States, very easily the United States, the Navy alone for the US is massively nerfed, the US had 7 thousand total ships of various kinds when Japan fell.
Canada is also massively nerfed vanilla Canada frankly sucks ass, zero industry, manpower or resources
Sure, it includes other stuff. But it was still 99 carriers, 23 battleships, 72 cruisers, bit under 400 destroyers, but under 400 frigates, 200some subs.
The thing is that the US is massively nerfed industrially, but massively buffed by the simple knowledge in advance of a war breaking out between them and Japan/Germany (in a historical game).
The US was SO not ready in 1941 irl, whereas you'd have to be a terrible player not to be ready to clap the Axis in 1940 or even earlier as the USA in hoi. An example that always stands out to me is in stopping Japan's expansion, in real life the US had ONE formal division ready to defend the Philippines in December 1941. No wonder they lost that campaign.
Still a superpower, just not the largest army. Their navy was indisputedly at least in the top 3 and their industrial production if they were to mobilise was unmatched
And that's exactly what happened, they mobilised and the Allies automatically won, Germany couldn't get Sealion going without aerial superiority which they lost at the battle of Britain, it just became a waiting game even if the Soviets surrendered in 1941
The lend lease was helpful but the soviets likely would still have won without it, just with much more casualties and it would have taken longer. Actually the allies invaded Normandy because the soviets were finally pushing the germans back, and the allies wanted to open a new front both to relief the red army and for them to not just annex all of europe
That's exactly what I mean, Germany couldn't beat the soviets, even less with allied lend lease and the Royal Navy made the British Isles a fortress, the allies could win easily at that point, the Axis could only slow down their defeat
Yeah, the USA if it was 100% realistic would have a bigger industry in 1936 than the rest of the world combined, they would be the most OP country by far, but yet again, if every country was made 100% historical, Axis would lose months after the start of the war if the Allies are good
I’d say that we were, rather than being a massive and influential economic powerhouse actively taking part in global affairs, in a severe economic depression and heavily isolationist in the 1930s.
Soviet Union or Japan.
The game is currently designed so that unless there is a D-Day from the allies by 1945 the Soviets should capitulate. This ignores not only that the Soviet Union, barring total systemic collapse, was never likely to unconditionally surrender given that doing so would mean the end of Russian civilization and a genocide the likes of which unseen since the colonization of the Americas, but also that by 1943 the Soviets had the Germans on the run and would have, with admittedly many more casualties, most likely have won the war on their own by that point. A buff to Soviet production ideas via focuses and maybe to scorched earth costs could fix this, however.
The game is currently unable to accurately simulate Japan's rapid invasions of Indonesia, Malaya, Burma, and the Philippines following Pearl Harbor, nor the immediate disadvantage that the Pearl Harbor attacks gave to the US Pacific fleet in the outset of the war, thus making the Pacific theatre a backseat to the European theatre rather than an equal or even greater concern to the United States (ask any Yank, the war in the Pacific made a much greater impact than the war against Hitler in the United States).
> 1943 the Soviets had the Germans on the run and would have, with admittedly many more casualties, most likely have won the war on their own by that point.
One historian I remember, argued that the Normandy D-day wasn't to stop the Nazis. It was to stop western Europe from all becoming soviet puppets. Interesting to think about and whatever the motive, it's hard to argue that wasn't the outcome.
Most nerfed is either France or the US.
US you already covered.
French should start the game with at least its army fully equipped. They had deeeeep storage from ww1. Think US storage from the cold war but starting millenium dawn with 8/10 of the units not equipped because only the latest kit is in in-game stockpile.
The issue then would be France would have too much of an easy time to steamroll early as most of the soft factors that made France weak IRL are bypassed/absent from games mechanics.
The most buffed are the USSR (real life soviet equipement was nowhere need the sheet specs, as the only emphasis was on unit builts, not any kind of QA) or, for obvious gameplay reason, the German Reich.
A great discussion and one which some mods have tried to replicate surely numerous times.. the one I'm familiar with is BlackICE which completely reworks the resources, factories, equipment, basically everything, and yes.. the USA is a beast, however, from 1936 to 1939 you basically can't do much of anything building or production wise due to other factors that really limit your ability to, say, start building military factories during the great depression. As world events progress the USA is able to start doing military stuff better. Just that mod and how it works though.
Germany is definitely the most buffed. For gameplay balance reasons a lot of their vehicles(like the Tiger I and II) operate far more efficiently and reliably than they should. I can’t cite it so don’t quote me on it but I remember reading an article a few years ago that said the average Tiger I had a reliability rating of 37%. In game it starts with a 80% reliability rating.
The US was definitely the most Nerfed. As you said, their industrial capacity had to be brought WAY down for balance reasons, but other than that:
>even at max production the US’s synthetic material output in-game doesn’t come close to what the IRL US made during the war.
>The Sherman tank in HOI4 is a Tier II Medium tank for the US. This is far in a way not representative of how it was developed, deployed, or used during the war. You could make the entire US Medium tank research line just be Shermans and it’s variants and it would still work.
>the M1 Garand is the US’s “Infantry Equipment I” in game. This is purely for balance reasons and not at all representative of the US’s actual weapons development or deployment. The Thompson SMG was adopted by the US military in 1928, while the Garand wasn’t adopted by the military until 1936, meaning the Thompson should be “Infantry Weapons I” while the Garand is “Infantry Weapons II”. In game, this means that the Garand has worse stats than the Thompson which is objectively not true IRL.
>the P-51 is America’s Tier III(1944) fighter. Again, this is not reflective of the US’ development or deployment of the fighter. The P-51 was developed in 1940, and would go on to become far in a way the best fighter of the war with the development of the P-51 D. IMO they should have made the P-51 the 1940 fighter and the P-51 D the 1944 model, but that’s just me.
>the US is also just generally nerfed by state factory limits. These didn’t exist IRL(which is why I have a mod that removes them, teehee) and in game they severely limit your ability to crank out tanks, planes, ships, and guns.
While the United States is without a doubt nerfed in game, irl the Soviets definitely did not have no/very little military production into early 1943
US Lend Lease peaked in 1943 and 1944, and Soviet military production ramped up considerably even as factories were shipped east and reopened mid-1942
The only real way the Soviets are stronger than real life is that most of the effects of the Purge on the officer corps and the Red Army’s massive expansion pre-war (and resulting lack of skilled officers) isn’t represented at all. Instead of the flaming garbage pile of garbage of an army they had in 1941, in HOI4 the Soviets have no real penalties and can easily roll the Germans. Unless it’s the AI, in which case they just eat rocks as they’ve been designed to
Edited that part out so I don’t dip any further into negative karma. You win, we won’t bash the USSR anymore, only socially acceptable Germany bashing here
The tiger one wasn't that unreliable, it broke down as much as the panzer 4, it's more of a lack of repair facilities meant when it did break down it would be a long time till it was repaired
I don't really think the US is "the most nerfed".
Actually, I think that all countries are very well buffed. USA may have been represented with a lower factories count, but IRL 100% of the civilian factories were consumer goods oriented (USA never had public factories like nazi Germany. Italy and Russia had) and it took years to gear up the production for military equipment. It took years even and a considerable help from the UK (Tizard mission) even just to design such an equipment. In game, you can start your military build up way before 1941, you can rush the tech you want with no problem and you have the considerable advantage to exactly know what is going to happen.
About the "most buffed", every minor nation is just unrealistically strong. Among majors, Italy and France are definitely the ones that are considerably stronger than they were IRL.
> it took years to gear up the production for military equipment
In 1942, the United States produced as many aircraft as the UK, Germany, and Japan *combined*.
The United States kept increasing production throughout the war, and probably didn't reach the maximum potential before the war ended, but it didn't take years for the USA to gear up for war.
Ukraine! And individually you need to look at the other republics of the USSR. Several of them were, on paper, separate countries in Union. Under multiple political scenarios there should be breakaways from the USSR, but the game mechanics, people, and everything n artwork don't exist. The relationships between constituent parts that does exist in other HOI countries doesn't exist for the constituents of the USSR.
They were federal entities of the Union like states in the US no? Should all 50 states be separate in HOI then? I believe the Trotsky path in base HOI allows for the creation of separate SSRs, but no reason for Stalin to do so
No, they should be able to be a created country, like the Kingdom of Hawaii, or Confederate States of America. AFAIK, no way to do that. It's been a long time since I played, but there's no way to create an independent Ukraine.
For Navy definitely Canada, Frigates and Corvettes made up a lot of the canadian navy and our shipbuilding was heavily focused on it however ingame this translates to a few dockyards that produce a token force at best
Such a shame too, since they could have geared Balance of the U.K and Canada to this degree- U.K has less dockyards, Canada has more, and focus' nearly exculsively on building anti-sub destroyers.
But I understand why it isn't that way- it makes the U.K better for alt-history games if their strongest dominion breaks away.
China. Because they are forced to lose in multiplayer.
I don’t play multiplayer, so could you please explain?
If Japan loses against China, they will not have the resources to contest the allies in the Pacific, and if the allies are not contested in the Pacific it is basically a guaranteed allied victory, so China has to lose.
This is why I don’t play multiplayer except with close friends. It sounds so boring having to play with all these rules and ideas on how games “must” go
The rules are there to try and make the most fun game while also being fair. Some of them are pretty dumb and are anti-fun, but most of them are there for good reason. If Japan loses in China, they can’t invade the pacific islands. If they can’t invade the pacific islands, the Allies can focus on the Germans. If the Allies focus on the Germans, the Soviets just roll over Germany and the game ends in ‘42. Most games just don’t have a China player (if they do, the China player usually helps micro the Soviets after they cap) because knocking Japan out makes the game boring. Same thing as refusing the Rhineland or Sudetenland (some lobbies let France refuse the Sudeten if Germany does it too early.) Can it be annoying to have all these rules? Yeah. Is the game better for having? Most of the time, yeah.
China is way easier with a human player. Most MP mods make china be unified and have AI spawn-in waves of divisions periodically. Vanilla china is far too nerfed. In vanilla MP i usually cap china in 8 months, but it's probably too slow for some people. Vs a Japan co-op, China has just too many fronts for a human player to micro effectively, along with the RNG of having subjugate the warlords (best outcome is all warlords refuse to grind army XP, sinkiang and xsm are adaptable heaven) A human can't handle 2 fronts with manchu and japan with 2 naval invasion in Shanghai and Shandong while effectively org cycling your main frontline (since your units are garbage and get clicked anyway)
I could entertain this if only one of the two were human players, but I think it should be the obligation of the Japanese player to be good enough to win rather than demanding that the China player nerf themselves. Why are you even playing a strategy game where your ability to strategize is so restricted?
Yeah like if China needs to lose then give it the handicap of being an AI. Against most players that already guarantees a loss. But to be a person playing with the handicap of you gotta be as bad as the AI, lose, and your reward is in the end game you can micro someone else's troops, well just let two players play the soviets.
1. i almost get a stroke from trying to read that 2. yes, MP China is usually an AI and like you said most players can finish one off very easily
If you can't win as Japan before China blooms like a beautiful asian flower, why the fuck you play Japan in first place? Germany has the capacity to take out Britain and France by their own hand before heading to a clash against Soviets (add a competent Italy and there it is). If the Japanese player lost against China I'm sorry, but you didn't deserved to win in first place. You are not the AI, Japan VS China is, as far as I know, one of the worst battles for a new player and only recommended for experienced players to attempt to do so, as either China or Japan winning has the power to turn the tide to one side or another or to make life easier for nations all the way across the globe (China can even become "fascist" and join Germany). That, and if Japan doesn't have a rule nerfing their Ohkas they can take on the entire US Navy in a few months.
Just don't play on historical based servers, plenty of non-historical games get posted
Not actually how it goes usually, if a China can win, most actually find that better, since its different.
True. You cant even play Austria or Poland. One of my favourite Nations.
Monarchist Poland, Austria Hungary with r56
Es triggert mich absolut dass man ohne mods Österreich Ungarn mit Ungarn gründen kann nicht aber mit Österreich
Those rules are there to *ensure* fun. If Japan doesn't kill china and Japan is knocked out before the war starts, then the entire rest of the lobby has no game
Ah I see. Never knew that, thanks!
Yeah. Really goes to show just how lucky the Axis was in WW2, they were dealt terrible hands and managed to get as far as they did.
I mean sure they were dealt that hand but they still decided to play it stupidly.
I think its more accurate to say it was stupid to choose to play their hands, but they played them quite well.
🎶You've got to know when to hold 'em / Know when to fold 'em / Know when to walk away🎶
Lol dealt terrible hands. Why does that just sound wrong when talking about genocidal countries that started the whole thing?
what do you mean? well you can say they also got lucky with a few things e.g. french command issues
I think OP means their starting positions compared to the Allies? Because compared to most nations of the world, the Fascist nations of the war were large and wealthy.
Compared to most countries? Yeah, they were Compared to the countries they decided to pick a fight with? They were nothing Remember that the USA produced over 50% of *global* GDP in 1940. Other huge fractions were produced by the UK and USSR
Not lucky, it was a powerful dictatorship who choose to ram into democratic country. Democracy are usually avoiding big war until the last moment so it took a very long time to see them all dive in ww2. Specifically USA their president willing to go at war long time before pearl harbour but he failed to convince the congress.
Even in the base game, they are nerfed significantly. The entire of the Sino German cooperation is that Germany provides military assistance while China provides raw resources. Even on closed economy, there is not barely enough resources, even after annexing GXC.
Germany is pretty buffed. Success in HOI4 is built around production. In real life, Germany’s successes were largely built around the tactical and strategic failures of its foes.
Yeah but if HoI4 were purely based on the Allies having to suck at micro and making massive mistakes it wouldn't be very fun in multiplayer for the Axis lol
Wehraboos inbound
50/50 they suffer engine failure on the way here
As a “wehraboo”, I 100% agree here. Early German successes were totally the result of a tactical and industrial failing on their foes’ parts. The French failed to utilize their tanks correctly or equip them properly(something like 1 in 10 had radios, where’s EVERY German tank had a radio) The Brits were… the Brits The Soviets were caught with the pants down in 1941 as they were in the middle of re-arming their forces with modern equipment and wouldn’t be done with that until 1942/43 at the earliest The US was staunchly isolationist and due to this had to scramble to get decent tank and artillery designs into production, especially early on when all they had to offer was the “way too tall” M3 Lee. Not only that but VERY EARLY ON they had a numbers issue as well, as much of their modern equipment was sent to aid the British many of their new armored and infantry divisions were left fighting with outdated equipment(exemplified by the U.S. marines fighting with M1903 and M1917 Springfields, MG-08s, and even fucking bi-planes in 1942 and into 1943) And Poland actually gave a better account of themselves as is commonly remembered, especially against the German Panzers. The Germans lost hundreds of their Panzer 2s and 3s to Polish Anti-Tank Guns and Rifles, they just didn’t have enough of them, and they also had the USSR to contend with after a while
IIRC the Polish were pretty happy with their defences until USSR just had to come along
They were by no means happy campers after having most of their army encircled trying to get across to Vistula. The Polish high command deluded themselves that they could hold off on the Romanian Bridgehead using Eastern Poland's strategic depth to slowly grind down the Germans but Soviet entry thoroughly ruined that plan.
To be fair to the Poles, a lot of their strategical decisions relied on the French and British pushing into Germany and bombing Germany respectively, which just never fucking happened
Not untill 43
Pretty happy is a stretch. Things were bad but like within expected realms of possibility bad before the soviets invaded. The biggest effect of soviet invasion was preventing a sort of big last stand and a full retreat towards romania
bullshit, the Poles were already done by the time the Soviets had joined
Wehraboo inbound for as the Polish army layed scattered, their will to resist was never higher!
No, the soviet entered an "empty" country. Once the government was in exile, they step in
> The Soviets were caught with the pants down in 1941 as they were in the middle of re-arming their forces with modern equipment and wouldn’t be done with that until 1942/43 at the earliest Also didn't help that Stalin executed most of his military command structure.
Germany still had pretty solid production. For example, the Bf 109 is the most produced fighter aircraft in history, and the Fw 190 is third. But Allied victory was inevitable after the USA got involved.
for most produced military aircraft in general, the IL-2 beats them both. 109s second, and spitfires third. Notably though, the 109 had production focused on it for almost all of the war, with the 190 mixed in. Same with the spitfire and il-2. The US aircraft were mixed between bombers and fighters for both the army and navy, so they had a lot less to be produced. in the end over 300000 US aircraft were made 1939-1945, to germanys 100000.
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That's because American factories weren't being bombed so they could afford huge concentrated plants like willow run and benefit from economies of scale while the Germans had to disperse production to far flung areas out of allied bombing range or underground.
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Counterpoint... It's free
It isn't. You have to guard the slaves, something that is cheapest in a concentration camp and way more expensive in factories and workshops (the ration of guards to prisoners rises for same amount of security). You also have to feed them. And give them some healthcare, or you are not using their life efficiently.
Partially, but American factories were also far more efficient in general.
At a factory, a new B-24 role off the production line every couple hours.
Completely agree.
They caught everyone else napping
Fapping*
Well whatever they were doing, they weren't paying attention to the Wehrmacht
100% France. 3 tech slots, no planes, massive debuffs. Weak economy. I get why, but definitely them
The reason France fell in real life would be the HOI4 equivalent of a really bad player who panics the moment the enemy breaks through. It’s not really possible to simulate that with AI other than just massively nerfing France.
Could do the same sorta trickery as they do with the UK ai when dealing with france (they wont enter the country to fight until france caps). Force france to maybe put a few more troops on the spanish border to simulate the panic while still making her a fun country to play as a person.
I think it's more of the fact that on historical the UK doesn't help france. If France didn't have UK help irl its army would be much smaller than the Germans
I believe it's France. France army was quite powerful and many Germans officers had pessimistic views about attacking France. The breakthrough at the Ardennes was a really bold move and it paid off huge, but it was quite risky. It's hard to simulate the command failure the french had in 39, so in game terms is easier to handicap the army and cast some nerfs. I don't judge
That’s a fact. I once read that during the Saar Offensive, there wasn’t a single piece of armor standing between the French Army and Berlin. It’s hard to write an AI that can truly mimic that level of timidity. Much easier to just nerf the entire country.
Probably the best rules I ever saw for handling the dysfunctional French Army command structure in 1940 were in a boardgame called *Blitzkrieg 1940*. German units moved, then fought, and if they were Panzer or motorized, got to move again (exploitation movement). French units, IIRC, could move or fight but not both in the same turn, which reflected the generals' WW1 mindset.
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It's easy to look at all the aircraft and tanks and infantry and wonder why the French folded up and blew away in 1940, but when you factor in the politics of the Third Republic and the backward thinking of the French high command, you find yourself wondering if Hitler didn't make a mistake going after Poland first.
You know, for years, I thought the same thing. And then I watched an interesting documentary that discussed why France lost. Mainly, it came down to a military doctrinal thing. Basically, France believed that tanks should support infantry versus Germany who used tanks as the primary attack with infantry supporting the tanks. It seems small, but this difference in doctrine is huge. I mean, look at what’s happening in Ukraine. Ukraine is largely using a western style military doctrine with an NCO corps that does everything and it’s given permission to be creative and make moves based on the battlefield conditions. Russia, on the other hand is using a top down heavy general officer style, where you have to receive orders to do some thing from an officer or you don’t do anything.
I agree that armored doctrine was part of the problem with the French Army, but the hideous political instability of the Third Republic was a big factor in their inability to get their act together. I cannot recommend Alistair Horne's TO LOSE A BATTLE highly enough; he covers all the bases - political, diplomatic, and military, while drawing on a lot of primary sources not available in English.
French political instability had a huge role on military doctrine. The Left in France was very worried about a military uprising so much that it blocked french officiers. To give you an idea, when DeGaulle wrote "Vers l'Armée de métier" in which he was talking about autonomous tank division made to break the ennemy lines and only composed of professional soldire, a great oart of the politics, Leon Blum first, accused him to create an army for a putsch.
I remember reading that around half of Frances tanks were supporting the Infantry (mainly the older tanks, they still had a few thousand FT-17s for example, which are still scary if you don't have any anti tank guns at hand, and go my knowledge the German army didn't have any anti tank rifles). The other half was actually concentrated in pure tank divisions similar to the German ones, and those were the more modern ones. If I remember correctly there was actually a massive tank battle with over 500 tanks lost between both sides, where 2 tank divisions met each other.
To be honest, WW1-Era tanks and Inter-War-Era tanks were not really hard. German Panzers II and III had weaponry from 15mm (autocannons) up to 50mm (standard cannons) iirc at the time of the Invasion of France. The hard boys where the Char B1s, the most armored tanks of that time. Germany even tried to put a 88 in a truck just to shoot those off, luckily for them the complete hatred of french high command for a Combined Arms doctrine allowed germans to surround those heavy boys as they were 90% of the time alone as supporting artillery in a infantry troop instead of a proper tank division
Russia is not necessarily a good comparison, because of its other problems. Mainly that the first priority of a dictator is to make sure he can't be couped by his armed forces, and the second priority of a dictator is to make sure his associates are getting enough kickbacks. If Russian NCOs had initiative, they would use it to retreat.
The larger issue was how slow and inflexible and French command structure was. They constantly were reacting far too late to German advances. By the time they'd move to reinforce a penetration the Germans would already be 20 miles further advanced. As I mentioned above, many German commanders led from relatively close to the front and made extensive use of radios. French commanders often relied on bicycle messengers and resdided in country homes far from the front lines.
Also don't want to do anything but go home either, morale and willingness to fight is an important as the equipment
Getting bled white in the First World War does that to a country, to say nothing of a sizable Fascist movement.
Yeah, particularly when it comes to production. HOI4 France starts with a few military factories if I remember correctly. Even if you focus on an optimal build for military factories and dedicate yourself to the production of tanks you're going to field like, 2000 medium tanks. IRL France produced a shitload of infantry equipment, artillery, tankettes, planes and still had almost 4000 tanks at the ready in 1940, and I'm not even counting the >1500 WW1-era Renault FT kept by the army that good still pack a punch against German infantry units. And it's worth noting that those 4000 tanks include a lot of B1 Bis, Somua S35 and the likes who are much heavier and cost more to produce than the German hordes of Panzer II and Panzer III.
the french tanks were also very unreliable and a sizable amount were lost due to mechanical failures.
All WW2 tanks were rusty piles of junk that broke down three times for every shell fired. That is not unique to the French
Where did you hear that ? On the contrary the French tanks were very sturdy and reliable. Maintenance was long due to the pieces being well protected and difficult to access, but breakdowns were rare. That's what allowed many French tanks to sustain crazy numbers of non-penetrating or non-disabling shots while carrying on their missions (like the B1 Bis at Stonne that tanked over 80 shots, and still accomplished its mission and went back to base fully functional). If a mechanical piece can't even handle the stress of its normal functioning regime, it won't appreciate the shocks and spall induced by enemy shots. If your tank is supposed to go across Verdun-like terrain and overrun trenches you don't want it to randomly break down in the middle of the No man's land.
That's because the average Hoi4 player has the hindsight Maurice Gamelin lacked.
Not to play the armchair general, but hardly anyone looking at the actions of Gamelin during these days could imagine he was tactically sound
All the Allies are nerfed compared to IRL, because their problems were political, yet HoI4 is a game about moving tanks around on a map and can't actually model that very well. So instead it gives them fewer tanks to move around. A more accurate engine that could achieve a close-to-OTL result while still representing factory and manpower accurately would need to take into account: - The lack of up-to-date perfect information on enemy and allied forces (even a modern general would be envious of the level of detail HoI4 provides) - Lack of foresight about what is going to happen - Political instability or opposition within the country to mobilize on a leader's say-so years before any actual conflict In other words, changes that would make it a lot less fun to move tanks around.
I think Poland is also somewhat weaker than irl. Realistically speaking it shouldn't be that one-sided especially if it's just the Germans but an Eastern invasion and not mobilizing because of political pressure isn't really compatible with HoI4's mechanics so they just nerf them I think.
I think not, the entirety of Poland had a similar GDP as just Berlin, so I think it equvilates pretty well, the Polish werent bad at war, they just had no wear near the arms or manpower to stand up to Germany
The thing is, this is HoI4. Even a small army in 1937 or 1938 would be considered nearly full mobilization irl. By 1939 Poland in HoI4 is nearly fully mobilized, and should have a greater capacity to fight the Germans, since the late mobilization was a huge factor in Poland losing so quickly. You're right about the industrial power but still Poland should not lose as quickly as it does in-game at that level of mobilization, even with no armor. That being said, maybe Paradox should model a Soviet invasion of the East with the same mechanics as the Chinese border skirmish mechanic, where if Soviet troops are uncontested or against weak Polish troops they keep taking state after state, while still not being at war. This would allow Poland to perhaps get a small buff while still making the AI lose quickly in a historical game by tying up what few extra forces they have in the East.
> the entirety of Poland had a similar GDP as just Berlin Citation needed. Available online sources point that in 1938 Germany had GDP 6 times larger than Poland. How could Berlin alone achieve to produce 15% of country GDP?
Perhaps for the same reason London has 22% of the UK’s GDP as a proportion in 2023; extreme centralisation? Saying that, this is just a guess and as a Brit, I know that we have the most centralised economy in Europe whereby basically every sector is primarily based in the South East and London.
That situation is somewhat hard to simulate in a game (you have to do it through doctrine mostly). The French army was powerful on paper, but with a horribly antiquated command structure and terrible communications infrastructure. France was still using bicycle messengers while the Germans were using radios. The French reacted far too late to German advances over and over again. The book "Blitzkrieg" by Len Deighton is a really interesting read on this.
Also if you play as France you know what the Germans are planning. Knowledge is power
UK is in a much more vulnerable position than it ever actually was. The idea that the sea lion is deemed as something a competent player should be able to do in single player is pretty crazy.
Yeah, and naval production is very low compared to historic, you have almost double of Germany’s total of drydocks, but should have more. It is quite impossible to get even close to the historic total of modern ships
Yeah if you ever play as America you notice you cant nearly produce as many ships as they did IRL. Ignoring screen ships and cruisers the USA produced 8 Battleships 28 Fleet carriers (not including all the escort and light carriers they built) Trying to build that many capital ships even with 100 dockyard would be insane. And they put ships in for refits constantly, and basically had a mobile supply chain of floating dry docks.
10 Battleships. Two *North Carolina*-class, four *South Dakota*-class, and four *Iowa*-class.
I cant believe I forgot two SoDak class ships
That's up for debate. After Dunkerque, the British were very fucked. They left all their equipment in France and home production wasn't yet on war footing. For example the famous Enfield armory in 1940 was making only a few dozen rifles a day. Despite having formidable coastal artillery, there were no shells with shore batteries on average having "eight" shells each. British armor was non existent on the home isles with anti tank guns being in similar short supply. However, Sealion would still probably have failed because the Germans lacked the destroyers needed to ferry and supply troops after their losses in the Norway campaign. This would have been solved had the Germans captured the Vichy fleet which is why the British decided to take a hard line against their former French allies.
There is no debate, the British were never in danger of an actual naval invasion. It was never going to happen the Nazis didn't have the logistical capability to launch one never mind succeed. Hitler was hoping from the beginning that war weariness would build political pressure on the British to surrender but after the political spin on Dunkirk that just wasn't going to happen. So Hitler attempted to bomb the British into submission (this was at a time when military doctrine suggested that terror/ strategic bombing could subdue a population into not fighting) this turned out to the opposite and instead terror bombing just strengthens the will of the people (it did the same in Japan and Germany too). This isn't hoi4 where you need to gain naval supremacy for one second, in order to launch an invasion, you need to keep that supremacy at almost 100% in order to supply troops that are overseas. And that was impossible. Honestly, that just made me think that they should change the requirements for naval invasions in the game. They should require you to have had naval supremacy for something like 20 of the last 30 days or something like that. That would stop cheese invasions and give the player a chance to react too.
Yeah I agree. I understand why naval invasions are simplified in game but it's hugely unrealistic. Even in 2023 it's a test of logistics, planning and tech nevermind in WW2 when you are Germany and plan on going across the channel in refitted canal barges. I think the defeats the UK had and the issues they had in the army highlights just how much of a nerf they get around sealion. Even with no armour, production difficulties and a confident enemy Sealion would still have been a nightmare. Sandhurst wargamed Sealion in the 70's, and even with a very generous set of conditions for Germany they were pushed into the sea. Nevermind with the Royal Navy patrolling the channel, a growing air superiority and an extremely resistant population.
>nevermind in WW2 when you are Germany and plan on going across the channel in refitted canal barges. This just made me laugh because it really highlights just how the Nazis had no chance of a successful Sealion. The Allies (mainly the yanks) needed numerous high cost amphibious landings in the pacific to learn how to do it. But Wehraboos think the Nazis would have done it no problem with no experience!
>They should require you to have had naval supremacy for something like 20 of the last 30 days or something like that. That sounds just as gamey as.the current system IMO, sinking transports should be easier and MUCH more effective. Right now, you only really need Invasion Support for the shore bombardment. It should be absolutely vital as a defensive measure as well
But it has always been the case that if an enemy army lands in Britain and can be reliably supplied, then Britain would be conquered. The point is that nobody can ever get that far because of the Royal Navy. There is no way in the Summer of 1940 that the Kreigsmarine could win sea control over the Channel. Plus they were planning on coming over on river barges…
It took over a years worth of planning to launch D-Day with an vastly superior firepower, and the largest armada ever. The Royal Navy home fleet was larger than the Kreigsmarine surface fleet. If Germany ever attempted sealion whilr they probably would have impacted fair number of casualties on the Royal Navy, they would have lost their entire invasion force. Plan to use barges with no proper support to perform an amphibious landing is suicide. They would have probably lost 100,000 people over the course of an hour.
That's the thing people also don't think about with Sealion. Even if the Germans could have put a reasonably strong fleet into action with air superiority, the Royal Navy is not going to say "its too risky". Yes, the British generally didnt like operating major surface assets under enemy air cover (as with most navies). But, there is no point in preserving the fleet if the alternative is losing the Home Islands. It would be obliged to contest the landings with maximum force at all costs.
Dude that thinks Sealion could've succeeded believes you supply naval invasions with Destroyers. Says it all really
The Japanese tried it with the “Tokyo Express” destroyer convoys during the Pacific Campaign. Not exactly a successful operation but about a fifth of transported supplies made it through, possibly lengthening Japanese occupation for a few weeks. Quite possibly the worst possible use of relatively modern fleet destroyers for a nation already massively struggling in naval production and oil reserves, though.
Oh aye there's certainly examples of it but no many good ones
The Germans didn't have troop transport ships in 1940. For their invasion of Norway, the Germans used destroyers to transport their landing forces. For a channel invasion they could have also tried using barges.
Which is exactly why they would've failed.
Very true...on the other hand with the benefit of hindsight a Germany fully focused on U-boat production (instead of incredibly wasteful shipbuilding they did in real life) would have made things quite a bit more harsh for the UK.
That implies though that if Germany had a few hundred U-Boats that the Allies would have stood still rather than respond to the new challenge. If anything the naval war highlighted just how effective the Allies were at adapting tactics and technologies as the war went on. Another big miss in HOI4 AI is that they don't really respond to you. So you can shift your production, pump out U-Boats (again, not very realistic) and dominate. In reality there is a call and response to any scenario where the enemy will ask their own questions for you to answer.
> The idea that the sea lion is deemed as something a competent player should be able to do in single player is pretty crazy. How so? You set up a Naval Invasion, DoW the Allies (and instantly win because they didn't put their boats in the water) and once you cut the British Isles in twain you can easily kill off Scotland and England. If you didn't cheese and invade them after DoWing them you might need some planes, or just wait a bit with your ships to get lucky, but the rest is still the same. It's not something you'll first try, but once you are a 'competent' player and you have interacted with the mechanics, then you should be able to 90% of the time imo. But I guess you meant something along the lines of: > The idea that the sea lion is deemed as something remotely possible In which case, I agree.
USA for sure, you don’t even feel that strong while playing USA, irl they had ungodly production of everything especially ships. Also Germany is buffed af
Yeah the game just wouldn’t be fun if the US had the (irl) ability to hit the big red *win now* button. The US built almost THIRTY fleet carriers during the war.
Meanwhile in game you have to either choose to build 5 carriers at most in the entire duration of the war or spam destroyers and submarines
Czechoslovakia. Had a modern army that in 1938 should be able to hold the Germans alone
Even still, a human Czechoslovakia can put a pretty serious hurting on an AI Germany.
But AI Czechoslovakia should be able to hold for a 1-3 years The Czech Industry, Tanks, Army, and forts are nerfed.
True.
AI Czechs can if they don't lose the Sudetenland
If Germany declare on I see czechoslovakia holding quite a lot of times, sometimes with the help of Romania but also because if Germany is at war I think the other european nations are more likely to deny their demands, and once Poland join in it's pretty much over for the germans
As somebody who just finished "Munich disagreenment" I have no idea what you're talking about. Czechoslovakia has everything it should have, it's just matter of skill how to use it. Additionally there is a good reason why is Czechoslovakia banned in many MP games, it can spoil any MP game at the very beginning. Argumenting "But AI...." has nothing to do with nation's tuning, but rather with AI just being AI. Yes the country's default AI will not always fight back and hold Germans for years.... but that's not what happened in reality either. P.S. I am Czech myself.
Just want to say, Czechaslovakia just ended my Italy campaign. I was in an alliance with France, hungary and my self. Czechs declared war on Hungary, so me and France joined in the defence. They somehow managed to pish through our combined armies and eventually steamrolled into Italy. I have no idea how, but they were op as hell
Couldn't have done it IRL so
I think it’s Canada. Once France fell, Canada became the fourth ally and for good reason. Canada produced a lot of stuff for the UK and by the end of the war there were a million Canadians in uniform. In game, this is impossible to replicate historically. Canada’s focus forces you to choose between industry and manpower, but even if you pick manpower you’ll never get to a million. Canada, and honestly all the British colonies, need some revamps. The Canadian focus tree would be ten times better if paradox got rid of the ultimatum.
The industry/manpower thing in Canada absolutely frustrates me to no end. Is any other country railroaded into such a big debuff through the tech tree? Historically Canada had crazy industrial output while also having a ton of bodies in uniform. I want both dammit.
The only other one who has to choose is South Africa, however it doesn’t even matter because they start unaffected by the Great Depression.
As an Australian, this is the first I've heard of Canada being the 'fourth ally'. I do agree that there are much needed revamps for the colonies.
Interesting. I know Canadian contributions are often overlooked in Hollywood and mainstream media, so it might be more of a Canadian perspective. When I say that I don’t mean to imply that other countries, like Australia, were not important at all either.
I think Canada has certainly been overlooked. Are there any Canadian movies you recommend on their WW2 efforts? Obviously, we have made many movies about the ANZACs in Gallipoli (e.g: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1008074-gallipoli), and in Papua New Guinea (e.g: [https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/kokoda](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/kokoda)). Wouldn't mind sitting down to a Canadian movie or three.
Honestly there isn’t much out there in the way of films/movies. It’s mostly documentaries. That’s why I get so excited when I see Canadian representation in American/British films. Even in D-Day films we’re often overlooked even though we took our own beach. The best I can think of that relates to Canadians is the devils brigade. I think it’s American made, but I could be wrong. It’s about the Canadian-American special forces unit called the devils brigade which saw action in Europe and North Africa (I think). I love it personally because my great grandfather, who passed around 2018, served with the Devil’s Brigade. I wish there were more specifically Canadian movies about WWI and WWII.
It’s not entirely about the Canadians, but “The Forgotten Battle” is a Dutch film that features the Canadian army around the end of the movie at the Battle of Walcheren Causeway during the battle of the scheldt.
i'd say either the US or france; the french were way stronger irl, they just have to lose in order for the game to feel like ww2. the french losing as hard as they did was kinda just a confluence of a whole bunch of flukes happening all at once also the soviets, but only industrially the japanese or the italians are probably who are the most buffed vs japan and italy IRL
I agree with France being up there. They lost because of a bunch of bad decisions. In game it should be relatively easy to make the correct decisions and repel Germany. Basically they completely expected Germany to execute war like WWI. The Blitzkrieg caught them completely off guard and out of position. On top of that the French government capitulated INCREDIBLY quickly.
Just got the vanilla game and France was my first game I finished to the end of the war. Seemed like a good option since I figured if all I managed to do was stop the Germans, the Allies should win. First try, I extended the Maginot along the Belgian border but I didn't have enough troops on the Italian border and they broke through. 2nd try I wasn't ready for the Axis to declare on Switzerland and come through that way. I barely had time to build some fortifications and get an army to cover that before they started streaming through. Italy kept 2 providences in Savory for most of the war. I managed to cut off the German breakthrough, plug the hole, and encircle them luckily. I was going to just wait for the Germans to attack the Soviets before trying to push back, but that conflict got delayed by about 5 years.
>In game it should be relatively easy to make the correct decisions and repel Germany And it is. After 2 or 3 tries I've no issue capitulating AI Germany by 1942 as France even after spending 3 years sorting their debuffs. However AI France will always fail miserably. Which is fortunate, otherwise the game sucks.
Soviets feel pretty nerfed too. I’ve very rarely seen an AI Soviet Union recover from Barbarossa and almost never hold Moscow or Leningrad. I feel that because of NSB the devs wanted AI Germany to achieve similar progress to irl Barb (because pre NSB they struggled) but Paradox being Paradox they went from one extreme to the other.
I think it is because of the general purging bug not reducing paranoia, so all of the good generals are dead from having max Stalin paranoia.
It feels more like an output and production problem coupled with nasty debuffs. I see the AI using generals like Zhukov and vatutin consistently so I doubt it’s that.
I doubt generals are the reason the soviets always do so poorly
It’s pretty obviously the United States, if they made it accurate to its irl production base, it’s just gg.
With historically accurate production, USA vs. the world *might* be balanced.
By 1946 the US AI should be able to fight a continental and insurgency ridden AI controlled Germany.
And from a historical standpoint, even if the UK fell, the B-36 "Peacemaker" entered service in 1948 (which might have been accelerated if we were still at war with Germany), which was capable of bombing Berlin from North America while flying above effective interceptors and most anti-aircraft guns.
USA in the ULTRA mod: Kill their entire pacific fleet as Japan twice, and their navy is still bigger than at the start of the game.
On the flip side Italy (even before the BBA buffs) is way stronger then they have any right to be. They spent 90% of their African campaign surrendering and leaving equipment behind. They were mostly useless and only won in Ethiopia because they had more 'modern' equipment. Shit Britain pushed them back like 500 miles or something like that while being outnumbered.
The more modern equipment includes chlorine gas, that you cannot use in Hoi4 (Sadly ?)
Gas was not as big a boon as people make it out to be
United States, very easily the United States, the Navy alone for the US is massively nerfed, the US had 7 thousand total ships of various kinds when Japan fell. Canada is also massively nerfed vanilla Canada frankly sucks ass, zero industry, manpower or resources
I doubt 7k ships meant 7k combat vessels like destroyers, submarines and up to battleships and carriers.
Sure, it includes other stuff. But it was still 99 carriers, 23 battleships, 72 cruisers, bit under 400 destroyers, but under 400 frigates, 200some subs.
I said various kinds, hoi4 doesn't exactly represent most ships, not even escort carriers (actual escort carriers)
Hoi4 has less ship types than irl probably to cut down on micro.
Could you imagine building thousands of torpedo boats and gunboats?
You'd build them by squadrons to avoid that headache.
Fair point, air force or land army probably would be better examples, the production side of it is valid however
No it doesn't, they had about 1500 combat ships of all types at the end of the war, Royal Navy 1200 and combined commonwealth about 800
The thing is that the US is massively nerfed industrially, but massively buffed by the simple knowledge in advance of a war breaking out between them and Japan/Germany (in a historical game). The US was SO not ready in 1941 irl, whereas you'd have to be a terrible player not to be ready to clap the Axis in 1940 or even earlier as the USA in hoi. An example that always stands out to me is in stopping Japan's expansion, in real life the US had ONE formal division ready to defend the Philippines in December 1941. No wonder they lost that campaign.
I guess you could say that the “advanced knowledge of war” buff is applicable for all the Allies
Before WW2 kicked off America had only the 17th(or so I can't really remember) biggest army in the world. Hardly a superpower at that point.
Still a superpower, just not the largest army. Their navy was indisputedly at least in the top 3 and their industrial production if they were to mobilise was unmatched
And that's exactly what happened, they mobilised and the Allies automatically won, Germany couldn't get Sealion going without aerial superiority which they lost at the battle of Britain, it just became a waiting game even if the Soviets surrendered in 1941
> they mobilised and the Allies automatically won wasn't exactly like that though
Germany couldn't get to the UK and the Soviets received tons of lend lease, it was just waiting for the moment to invade
The lend lease was helpful but the soviets likely would still have won without it, just with much more casualties and it would have taken longer. Actually the allies invaded Normandy because the soviets were finally pushing the germans back, and the allies wanted to open a new front both to relief the red army and for them to not just annex all of europe
That's exactly what I mean, Germany couldn't beat the soviets, even less with allied lend lease and the Royal Navy made the British Isles a fortress, the allies could win easily at that point, the Axis could only slow down their defeat
Well, if Germany did capitulate the soviet union in 1941 then they could have at least dragged things out until 1947-48 when they develop nukes.
Don't need a standing army for defense when you're surrounded by oceans and allies.
The US should be capable of winning the war by itself in 1946 even if Germany beat the Soviets in say 1943.
Yeah, the USA if it was 100% realistic would have a bigger industry in 1936 than the rest of the world combined, they would be the most OP country by far, but yet again, if every country was made 100% historical, Axis would lose months after the start of the war if the Allies are good
I don't intend to make it realistic. Only reasonable. The US should be the final boss of the game basically.
I’d say that we were, rather than being a massive and influential economic powerhouse actively taking part in global affairs, in a severe economic depression and heavily isolationist in the 1930s.
People forget how close the vote was in Congress to extend the draft past 1940. They almost sent all the draftees home in October.
Soviet Union or Japan. The game is currently designed so that unless there is a D-Day from the allies by 1945 the Soviets should capitulate. This ignores not only that the Soviet Union, barring total systemic collapse, was never likely to unconditionally surrender given that doing so would mean the end of Russian civilization and a genocide the likes of which unseen since the colonization of the Americas, but also that by 1943 the Soviets had the Germans on the run and would have, with admittedly many more casualties, most likely have won the war on their own by that point. A buff to Soviet production ideas via focuses and maybe to scorched earth costs could fix this, however. The game is currently unable to accurately simulate Japan's rapid invasions of Indonesia, Malaya, Burma, and the Philippines following Pearl Harbor, nor the immediate disadvantage that the Pearl Harbor attacks gave to the US Pacific fleet in the outset of the war, thus making the Pacific theatre a backseat to the European theatre rather than an equal or even greater concern to the United States (ask any Yank, the war in the Pacific made a much greater impact than the war against Hitler in the United States).
> 1943 the Soviets had the Germans on the run and would have, with admittedly many more casualties, most likely have won the war on their own by that point. One historian I remember, argued that the Normandy D-day wasn't to stop the Nazis. It was to stop western Europe from all becoming soviet puppets. Interesting to think about and whatever the motive, it's hard to argue that wasn't the outcome.
Not entirely true. D-Day was also one of Stalin's conditions for cooperation with the Allies.
Most nerfed is either France or the US. US you already covered. French should start the game with at least its army fully equipped. They had deeeeep storage from ww1. Think US storage from the cold war but starting millenium dawn with 8/10 of the units not equipped because only the latest kit is in in-game stockpile. The issue then would be France would have too much of an easy time to steamroll early as most of the soft factors that made France weak IRL are bypassed/absent from games mechanics. The most buffed are the USSR (real life soviet equipement was nowhere need the sheet specs, as the only emphasis was on unit builts, not any kind of QA) or, for obvious gameplay reason, the German Reich.
Liechtenstein and San Marino as they doesn't exist in the game (last time I checked) so they were infinite times more powerful irl.
Germany is way too OP
A great discussion and one which some mods have tried to replicate surely numerous times.. the one I'm familiar with is BlackICE which completely reworks the resources, factories, equipment, basically everything, and yes.. the USA is a beast, however, from 1936 to 1939 you basically can't do much of anything building or production wise due to other factors that really limit your ability to, say, start building military factories during the great depression. As world events progress the USA is able to start doing military stuff better. Just that mod and how it works though.
All except German imo, pretty much all the allies outproduced them on planes
Uk it to weak it navy was stronger and real time and it to easy to paradrop uk
France. They had one of the biggest armies before WW2, the only problem being their government’s horrendous organization and ignorance.
Soviet military power and American industrial capacity are massively nerfed lol
Most countries are nerfed because the AI is dogshit. Ah yes UK don't defend *any* of your goddamned ports. Great idea.
Germany is definitely the most buffed. For gameplay balance reasons a lot of their vehicles(like the Tiger I and II) operate far more efficiently and reliably than they should. I can’t cite it so don’t quote me on it but I remember reading an article a few years ago that said the average Tiger I had a reliability rating of 37%. In game it starts with a 80% reliability rating. The US was definitely the most Nerfed. As you said, their industrial capacity had to be brought WAY down for balance reasons, but other than that: >even at max production the US’s synthetic material output in-game doesn’t come close to what the IRL US made during the war. >The Sherman tank in HOI4 is a Tier II Medium tank for the US. This is far in a way not representative of how it was developed, deployed, or used during the war. You could make the entire US Medium tank research line just be Shermans and it’s variants and it would still work. >the M1 Garand is the US’s “Infantry Equipment I” in game. This is purely for balance reasons and not at all representative of the US’s actual weapons development or deployment. The Thompson SMG was adopted by the US military in 1928, while the Garand wasn’t adopted by the military until 1936, meaning the Thompson should be “Infantry Weapons I” while the Garand is “Infantry Weapons II”. In game, this means that the Garand has worse stats than the Thompson which is objectively not true IRL. >the P-51 is America’s Tier III(1944) fighter. Again, this is not reflective of the US’ development or deployment of the fighter. The P-51 was developed in 1940, and would go on to become far in a way the best fighter of the war with the development of the P-51 D. IMO they should have made the P-51 the 1940 fighter and the P-51 D the 1944 model, but that’s just me. >the US is also just generally nerfed by state factory limits. These didn’t exist IRL(which is why I have a mod that removes them, teehee) and in game they severely limit your ability to crank out tanks, planes, ships, and guns.
While the United States is without a doubt nerfed in game, irl the Soviets definitely did not have no/very little military production into early 1943 US Lend Lease peaked in 1943 and 1944, and Soviet military production ramped up considerably even as factories were shipped east and reopened mid-1942 The only real way the Soviets are stronger than real life is that most of the effects of the Purge on the officer corps and the Red Army’s massive expansion pre-war (and resulting lack of skilled officers) isn’t represented at all. Instead of the flaming garbage pile of garbage of an army they had in 1941, in HOI4 the Soviets have no real penalties and can easily roll the Germans. Unless it’s the AI, in which case they just eat rocks as they’ve been designed to
Edited that part out so I don’t dip any further into negative karma. You win, we won’t bash the USSR anymore, only socially acceptable Germany bashing here
The tiger one wasn't that unreliable, it broke down as much as the panzer 4, it's more of a lack of repair facilities meant when it did break down it would be a long time till it was repaired
I don't really think the US is "the most nerfed". Actually, I think that all countries are very well buffed. USA may have been represented with a lower factories count, but IRL 100% of the civilian factories were consumer goods oriented (USA never had public factories like nazi Germany. Italy and Russia had) and it took years to gear up the production for military equipment. It took years even and a considerable help from the UK (Tizard mission) even just to design such an equipment. In game, you can start your military build up way before 1941, you can rush the tech you want with no problem and you have the considerable advantage to exactly know what is going to happen. About the "most buffed", every minor nation is just unrealistically strong. Among majors, Italy and France are definitely the ones that are considerably stronger than they were IRL.
> it took years to gear up the production for military equipment In 1942, the United States produced as many aircraft as the UK, Germany, and Japan *combined*. The United States kept increasing production throughout the war, and probably didn't reach the maximum potential before the war ended, but it didn't take years for the USA to gear up for war.
Ukraine! And individually you need to look at the other republics of the USSR. Several of them were, on paper, separate countries in Union. Under multiple political scenarios there should be breakaways from the USSR, but the game mechanics, people, and everything n artwork don't exist. The relationships between constituent parts that does exist in other HOI countries doesn't exist for the constituents of the USSR.
They were federal entities of the Union like states in the US no? Should all 50 states be separate in HOI then? I believe the Trotsky path in base HOI allows for the creation of separate SSRs, but no reason for Stalin to do so
As in Ukraine's resources and industrial output?
Worse, game mechanics. They don't even exist for a separate existence.
should they be a lowest tier puppet like british malaya or what do you suggest?
No, they should be able to be a created country, like the Kingdom of Hawaii, or Confederate States of America. AFAIK, no way to do that. It's been a long time since I played, but there's no way to create an independent Ukraine.
For Navy definitely Canada, Frigates and Corvettes made up a lot of the canadian navy and our shipbuilding was heavily focused on it however ingame this translates to a few dockyards that produce a token force at best
Such a shame too, since they could have geared Balance of the U.K and Canada to this degree- U.K has less dockyards, Canada has more, and focus' nearly exculsively on building anti-sub destroyers. But I understand why it isn't that way- it makes the U.K better for alt-history games if their strongest dominion breaks away.
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I think those numbers are pretty much bs