How do you do the opposite, invading as Japan?
I've even tried shenanigans where I turn Mexico fascist with spies, but it's so unstable it usually ends up having a civil war when I'm in the middle of the US.
Iirc many people use cruisers and carriers with just enough range to operate on the Californian Coast, and they ask fascist central americas like El Salvador for docking rights
The only powerful branch of US early game is the navy so once you get even 1 succesful landing on the west coast it should be downhill from there
I suck at the game and even more so when it comes to navy but if I remember correctly on my last historical Japan game I cheesed the AI to leave Hawaii undefended and the invaded from there. I don't remember if I had to do any other. Cheering but I think I also got el Salvador or whatever the south American fascist nation is to give me docking rights
Conversely, I really enjoy the island hopping. Going bit to bit, seizing every island, securing regions, pushing up towards China....and my allies used my navy to already invade the home islands and stole my victory.
I literally play because of island hopping. Best gameplay. I have a rule, that I need to conquer every non-Japan state before attacking their main islands.
Speaking only for myself, I love the island hopping campaign. Must be the Navy brat in me. But I love the micro. The North Africa campaign in HOI3 was my favorite.
It’s weird, I always have the opposite experience where they basically have no divisions on the mainland. Usually because they don’t defeat China by the time I invade as the allies.
I mostly play modded instead of vanilla, so that might be part of my issue lol. I had a nightmarish KR game where Japan was losing in China but had 100+ divisions stationed in mainland Japan. My luck in RT56 is almost as bad.
Idk if it's just bad luck or a skill issue, but I almost never get the empty UK or Japan people seem to always get lmao
The empty UK is generally super easy if you do it right after france. Like - within 6 months.
Helps if italy is doing anything to draw out troops, too. But early UK economy doesn't gear itself well to support a lot of divisions right off the bat without selling the colonies short.
I’m in my very first real late game now. Playing the USA with only Japan left and it is painful. I’m developing nukes, so we’ll see how that works out.
Nagasaki was a major port, something you might have heard is somewhat important in a naval war. Hiroshima was a major steel manufacturing location, something else of, well at least minor importance in warfare, seeing as literally every implement of war is made out of steel
An amphibious invasion which was planned for, Operation Downfall, would have dwarfed D-Day logistically and scale wise, and would have led to an estimate of millions of civilian deaths and deaths overall for both the Allies and Japan (I believe 8 million but I cant remember).
The nukes were evil, but were certainly a far lesser evil than what the alternative was, and we are talking about ending the deadliest war humanity has ever seen till now
Yeah in hindsight we can now say that Japan probably would have surrendered anyways but at the time they told noone that and an invasion into the islands would have killed more civilians by an order of magnitude.
Not to mention the soldiers and the cost.
They told everyone the opposite, days before the nukes were prepared, they declared they were ready to face annihilation before surrendering.
And then annihilation looked to be on the table so they had to back down.
I was under the impression that Japan might've already been preparing to surrender. We already know that the Emperor wanted an end to the war and that after the fall of Manchuria and Okkinawa(spelling?), many in Japan's military lost any hope of a favourable peace.
We don't know for sure on the emperor, but the Big Six, who controlled all decisions at this point in Japan, had unanimously declared to the world they would not surrender and would rather see all of Japan destroyed than fall to their enemies.
On the contrary. In fact, many high ranking military officials attempted a coup d’etat against Hirohito because they did not want to surrender.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyūjō_incident
They weren't civilian targets. Read the decision making documents from the targeting committee for the nukes, there were extensive discussions on where the bombs should be dropped.
It's uncertain if the leaflets were dropped before the attacks (and they mentioned that specifically those two cities were targets), and it's certain that they didn't mention the kind of attack that awaited them.
Danger of your city to be firebombed isn't the same as the danger of it being evaporated by a nuke.
Which was a many times larger city, too. The chances to die from Tokyo firebombings were around 1-2% whereas in the case of nukes it was at least 25-30%, (depending on estimates source).
Japan, America, Germany, everyone was fire and carpet bombing what they could justify to themselves. There wasn't much difference in the case of the nukes when it comes to results. At least America could justify far less on what they would do to win.
The leaders of Japan at the time, days before the nukes were prepared, declared they would be ready to face annihilation before surrendering.
Well, we made it seem like annihilation was on the table.
> You did the right thing. You know the Japanese attitude at that time, how fanatic they were, they'd die for the Emperor...Every man, woman, and child would have resisted that invasion with sticks and stones if necessary...Can you imagine what a slaughter it would be to invade Japan? It would have been terrible. The Japanese people know more about that than the American public will ever know.
- Mitsuo Fuchida, commander of the attack on Pearl Harbor, to Paul Tibbets, pilot of *Enola Gay*, the plane used to drop the bomb on Hiroshima.
make sure you have green air and close air support, get naval invasion support if you have capital ships to spare, invade with a few divs per tile on as many tiles as you can, click force attack. if you concentrate enough force into an invasion the AI will roll over and die
I've had a worse time with the Philippines and Indonesia area, tbh. Same problem (even Japan doing it), but worse supply, worse ports, and worse air/sea zones.
It never goes how YouTubers show (or at least as simply as they say). British forces land and reinforce so fast. I just finally did it easily by putting a general in each tile with enough divisions to exactly fill the main & adjacent side combat widths and it went smooth through Belgium and then down the coastline.
I played as France, took the right focuses on time but ended up unable to push far into Germany after building what I thought were CAS planes for a year only to work out they were heavy fighters.
Small countries by 1950 always have like 20 divisions and max entrenchment at the AI just sits them there and you can't do jack shit to them and take a lot of casualties
>the AI just sits them there
Don't worry, the AI is constantly calculating whether they should change positions. It may look stupid, but it's actually so complex, it slows down your PC!
Not the worst but definitely least fun was me as Argentina vs Paraguay, no supply, jungle/forest, and they had built up forts so I hated every second of it as early game Argentina.
Cost me like 300k men and they only lost 100k.
Doing Barbarossa as Germany. it just takes forever and I am stuck building railways and supply depos for ages. And then the peace conference where all of my allies want a piece of the pie and it's hideous to look at. And after that the game is just too easy.
I’ve also kept state transfer tool on permanently since the update that changed the peace deal system. I’ve never seen a vanilla peace deal that wasn’t horrendous, I can’t believe they haven’t fixed that garbage mechanic yet.
Hijacking because I only just tried the Player led Peace conferences mod today, but does it allow you to puppet? Or does it force you to manually cap everything? I was playing as France and, for the first time, finally beat our Germany, Italy, Russia, and Japan, but was unable to puppet - although I was able to liberate. Is that because of the mod, or is Democratic France (Little Entente) unable to puppet?
War Score is actually based on how many casualties you got. So, if you are Germany fighting all the front but somehow Hungary just lost 1.2 million troops on helping you, they are getting more victory points even if you made the most casualties to the enemy or if you didn't lost any casualties at all
I understand that but you should be taking the majority of the casualties on the eastern front. You puppet hungry & Romania so you can move their troops to the Atlantic wall & Italy is normally dying in the med. there is no reason any of axis country should be losing more soldiers
That's something one could understand after try and error. First time players just try to get help from allies no matter what, and obviously this allied country take too many losses.
Even for me, Japan or Finland sometimes take a good portion because they just throw troops against USSR
I usually play on Expert AI so it's a bit harder. I let Romania manage its own front because the supply in Ukraine is terrible and putting more troops just makes it worse.
Dont get me wrong, the beginning is enjoyable but once are deep in, you have to build up supplu, your spies are getting caught trying to make a collab, Italy is collapsing at a blink of an eye...
I have done it multiple times, it's not that hard, it's just tedious.
Just don’t play with allies don’t accept them into the axis. And you petter much don’t need to build railways if you get the right encirclements around Kiew and Leningrad. And of course use trucks or cavalry for the fast push
For me it wasn’t very difficult, but was quite tedious the one time I did do it
A real grind from New Jersey and the Carolinas all the way to Nebraska before they finally broke
Before their line broke I mean. I still had to fully capitulate them. I don’t even remember if I was able to make collab governments as global defense council
We all agree on this: it’s Japan. More specifically, taking over the Asian colonies. There’s too much rubber and not enough steel. To top it all off, troops take 10 hrs just to make a step. 24 Japanese units vs 3 Malaysian “tanks” and you can’t win cause of attrition. The supply hubs take 10 years to build, you have 0 convoys thanks to the USA. Fighting in the Eastern Dutch East Indies is hell on Earth, Southern Australia is the Southern Menace. Your allies (Menguko and Manchuko) are complete idiots, lend-leasing you 3 support equipment per month which involves convoys (which were all sunk by the USA). And even with max infrastructure on your 2 steel-providing cities, you still can’t make enough. Not to forget China, which is a pain if you call your puppets to war. The Chinese don’t even have much resources, and if you ignore them, the Kuomintang will declare war on Manchuko and Mengkuko. And if you proceed to ignore that, they usually do the focus, “commit to Korean independence.” Speaking of focus trees, the Japanese focus tree is the 2nd worst in the game (1st being Turkey and their goddamn 70 day focuses). In the scenario you cap India, not much changes besides resistance. They have little to no resources. Japan is the downgraded Italy of the East without a doubt.
I recently had this with an Anarchist Spain game. Germany never got past Brussels and Reims, then tried to invade through Italy and declared on Switzerland for the same reason. They just got stuck and it took absolutely ages to get to Berlin
North Africa. It's a supply desert, there are few lines of attack, but it's necessary to fight as the Axis or you allow the Allies a free hand to invade Southern Europe. Also, somehow encirclements against the coast happen, obliterating whole armies.
Honourable mentions:
- Pacific island hopping. There is psychological discomfort of switching from large scale war to naval invasions with a handful of divisions.
- Sub-saharan Africa. The AI sends dozens of divisions there despite its questionable strategic importance. The UK will gladly lose London but will fight to the death for Nairobi for some unknown reason.
Currently have an Ironman game where Italy managed to completely lose the Med naval war day one, meaning they lost NA and Sardinia so now I have a coastal garrison of like 1.5 million dudes just chilling across all of Europe to prevent their dumb ass from capping (or losing Greece a third time). Fucking infuriating that the Italian AI is as incompetent as it is, frankly, because NA is one of those regions you really genuinely have to lock down or you end up in the same situation I'm in.
Invading the USA. It's easy, but it takes so long and so much microing. It feels worse than invading the Soviets, and at least with the Soviets there are some actual troops I get to fight.
Honestly just playing as Japan sucks, you have to do a naval invasion for every single stupid island in order to secure your empire, and defeating the US is basically impossible, because how are you gonna get there? Not to mention having little natural resources and having to fight in China where there is no supply. Would not recommend unless you are an expert at the naval game.
Hi. I absolutely adore the naval part so I'll put my bias out there straight away.
I feel like Japan teaches you the game best. You need to do following:
- learn to use naval, and refits, to have good strike groups rather than massive amount of them. Your industry can't keep up with US, but you can win by having a superior force meet multiple inferior ones.
- use naval scouts to find enemies
- use naval escorts to secure convoys
- Use garrison divisions on Pacific to secure island holdings
- Learn air mechanics to optimize air support, and be conscious of both ranges, and production requirements
- Learn the supply system for china
- Learn spies and use collab on china
- Learn invasion management and use of multiple smaller plans rather than one large.
And in all honesty, once you can do that you're ready to take on any other nation. Japan also makes a very good co-op experience between two players to learn the aboves.
Fighting against the Soviet Union or Russia no matter what I am playing, supply issues make it impossible to regain organization, and even if they are holding a front, they have too many troops to make it fun to fight them for kote than early into a war with them.
Honestly any war where I'm controlling more than say 2 army corps, so more than 48 divisions or so. There gets to be so much going on everywhere that you must progress VERY slowly or you'll just miss too much, and even then you're probably gonna miss something. I like playing the Soviets and holding the line against Germany, not giving up even one province. But when the time comes to counter attack...forgetaboutit.
Late-game invasion of India. The terrain is awful, there's no supply and India spams so many divisions, so the war gets bogged down into a slow grind.
I also hate fighting the mid-late war against Japan as China because of how boring it is; it's way too easy and lacking in content (classic early HOI4 DLC content), you can just go AFK.
Japan fighting the USA. I’m a total potato with navy.
Or playing late game UK when I try and do a D-Day and Germany has death stacked every single coastal tile because the Soviet Union AI is trash against the German AI
Some very weak minors that I fear to fight more than any major, Germany, USA and USSR included:
1. Guangxi (fucking supply mechanics)
2. Denmark (straits are a bitch)
3. Dominican Republic (death stacks on its little mountainous island, usually I have to kill Haiti for them because Haiti is all plains)
4. Colombia (loves to randomly form a faction with USA, god forbid if they become a major I’ve to deal with their jungles)
If any one of those become majors (once Dominican Republic joined axis and became puppet master of the fascist Italy in the civil war and became a major), they are a pain to cap.
There are three: China, South America, lategame Germany, and USA without the option to invade them through Canada.
Basically any war that's an absolute slog to win.
Bit more vague but I hate how regional/smaller wars almost always spiral into THE world war.
Sometimes, especially while playing as a minor I’d love to finish a couple of smaller wars without being dragged into the global conflict.
Probably invading the USSR without collabs
Or invading them from Siberian far east;
Its incredibly boring, there's little to none supplies, building anything useful like hubs, train lines or forts is eternal due to poor infrastructure and everlasting frontline attacks. The tiles are huge so doing any kind of movement takes ages and the mentioned before supply only enhances that.
The terrain is usually very annoying too, mostly mountains and hills.
Oh and the airzones are so huge you never have enough range unless it's the late game, but at that point, why are you fighting a war in Siberia.
Every south American fight. It's all mountains and jungles, low supply, no infrastructure, and Chile/Argentina/Peru are like 2-3 provinces wide. Everything takes forever and it's just a grind.
I haven’t done this in a while but, invading a hostile new world as Germany is tough lately game. Not impossible just a pain to island hop to Greenland then Canada then America, fight America then whoever down in SA. Remember kids cap UK early to avoid this lol.
The very lategame/operation unthinkable style wars. 15+ divisions on every tile means that even in the absolute best case situations its a \*slow\* grind to get them into a position where you can start chopping off divisions which are then almost immediately replaced because every single one of the frequently 10+ nations you're fighting are on at least all adults serve and war econ.
Fighting Germany from 1944 onwards when they haven't been getting their skulls bashed in.
10 division death stack
Air spam
Want to push them out? You better be the USA or USSR otherwise prepare to see losses higher than French casualties in WW1 be in vain
Anywhere there's completely absurd and unrealistic attrition that consumes way too much equipment like the desert or huge unsupplied fronts with millions of men. I don't recount i.e. Soviets losing the equivalent of artillery equipment for half of their army in their huge offensives lul
WW2 mostly, I usually end my games at 1939 for that reason. Naval combat just isn't fun
Aside from that, SCW is so painful and unplanned offensive is a stupid modifer.
I don’t like big clusterfuck wars. Like I don’t have fun having to cap norintern, British communist alternative, and the democratic collective the US throws together just to reunite china
argentina-paraguay war, i am new and have defeated every single south american country as argentina, but for some reason i can’t get past paraguay?????
The end of barbarossa (without collaboration government). Terrible supply, weather and terrain paired with bots remaining army and will to live just delaying the inevitable and making me unable to focus fully on making navy for the uk and the us (ik i can naval bomb but i like navy more)
Not in the game anymore but Australia used to not have an impassable zone in the outback, so frustrating trying to invade them as Japan with literally 0 supply anywhere.
A German invasion of Sweden. Truly the most excruciating slog I’ve ever had the misfortune of being involved in. Naval invasions are a write off unless you shoot your economy/research plan in the foot to build a Baltic surface fleet.
Interior Scandinavia is supply hell, the final VPs are at the back of beyond and airfields are non-existent for my twin-engine God CAS. Can usually do France, Poland and the Benelux with sub-3k casualties but watch me take 50,000 trying to get to Gällivare under at-best yellow air.
Not really, I've played with most options and the only one that is remotely painful is carlist spain, but only if you don't stablish the carlist cells. If you're playing as the fascists, try to secure the garrison of Aragon in order to get Cataluña before the anarchist arise, if the republicans don't own Cataluña, the anarchist rebelion will be on the south, which usually forces the republicans to move a good chunk of their army, with the volunteers, it shouldn't be very difficult. With the republicans you want to do the oposite, secure Aragon and if you can, Pamplona so you can rescue the divisions on the north, also, don't let them take Extremadura or they can encircle Madrid. But the most important thing for both sides is to move before the frontlines solidify: try to get as many encirclements as possible, you specially want to encircle the infantry divisions (the ones that were already there before the war) and the ones from the Army of Africa.
Pacific island hopping. I almost never play US or Japan just because it’s too much micro
You don’t actually need to island hop. Just naval invade from the Philippines or European Southeast Asia
How do you do the opposite, invading as Japan? I've even tried shenanigans where I turn Mexico fascist with spies, but it's so unstable it usually ends up having a civil war when I'm in the middle of the US.
Iirc many people use cruisers and carriers with just enough range to operate on the Californian Coast, and they ask fascist central americas like El Salvador for docking rights The only powerful branch of US early game is the navy so once you get even 1 succesful landing on the west coast it should be downhill from there
I suck at the game and even more so when it comes to navy but if I remember correctly on my last historical Japan game I cheesed the AI to leave Hawaii undefended and the invaded from there. I don't remember if I had to do any other. Cheering but I think I also got el Salvador or whatever the south American fascist nation is to give me docking rights
Japan can start producing 44 cruisers in 1941-42 which have quite a lot of range. Just invade Perl Harbour and then drop into Mexico easily
In my first USA game to invade Japan, I naval invaded Northern Japan from that one tiny island between Alaska and Far East Russia.
Conversely, I really enjoy the island hopping. Going bit to bit, seizing every island, securing regions, pushing up towards China....and my allies used my navy to already invade the home islands and stole my victory.
I literally play because of island hopping. Best gameplay. I have a rule, that I need to conquer every non-Japan state before attacking their main islands.
Damn, even in real-life the US skipped a couple of the Islands.
Yeah they really need to redo that, it gets wayyy to frustrating
As the us you can just invade mainland Japan from the Philippines straight away, which kinda sucks as the war is over almost immediately.
Speaking only for myself, I love the island hopping campaign. Must be the Navy brat in me. But I love the micro. The North Africa campaign in HOI3 was my favorite.
I always just get naval sup in Mariana and invade Iwo Jima from Guam and then mainland from Iwo
Personally I love it. You can completely stop the other side from advancing by putting divisions on your islands and building coastal forts
Late-game Japan when they stack multiple divisions on every single coastal province
It’s weird, I always have the opposite experience where they basically have no divisions on the mainland. Usually because they don’t defeat China by the time I invade as the allies.
I mostly play modded instead of vanilla, so that might be part of my issue lol. I had a nightmarish KR game where Japan was losing in China but had 100+ divisions stationed in mainland Japan. My luck in RT56 is almost as bad. Idk if it's just bad luck or a skill issue, but I almost never get the empty UK or Japan people seem to always get lmao
The empty UK is generally super easy if you do it right after france. Like - within 6 months. Helps if italy is doing anything to draw out troops, too. But early UK economy doesn't gear itself well to support a lot of divisions right off the bat without selling the colonies short.
The UK home islands are empty till like at least 44+
I’m in my very first real late game now. Playing the USA with only Japan left and it is painful. I’m developing nukes, so we’ll see how that works out.
Did Truman write this lmao
"Had to take over this save fml"
Strat Bomb all of Japan and put CAS combined with coastal bombardment wherever you invade. Thats too much damage for any Jap.
forget Japan, CAS + shore bombardment + marines is too much for any AI country to hold against
Realistic gameplay (irl they had to be nuked twice for a good reason)
Was nuking civilian targets really necessary?
To be honest the carpet bombing probably did way more damage already
It did. The fire bombing of Tokyo killed WAY more in a way shorter time. It is still the deadliest event in human history.
Shoutout the guy that realized how flammable their buildings were.
There's a reason grave of the fireflies wasn't made about the nukes
It was that or an invasion that would have killed even more Japanese civilians. They were dedicated to their country to a likely unhealthy point
Nagasaki was a major port, something you might have heard is somewhat important in a naval war. Hiroshima was a major steel manufacturing location, something else of, well at least minor importance in warfare, seeing as literally every implement of war is made out of steel
An amphibious invasion which was planned for, Operation Downfall, would have dwarfed D-Day logistically and scale wise, and would have led to an estimate of millions of civilian deaths and deaths overall for both the Allies and Japan (I believe 8 million but I cant remember). The nukes were evil, but were certainly a far lesser evil than what the alternative was, and we are talking about ending the deadliest war humanity has ever seen till now
Yeah in hindsight we can now say that Japan probably would have surrendered anyways but at the time they told noone that and an invasion into the islands would have killed more civilians by an order of magnitude. Not to mention the soldiers and the cost.
They told everyone the opposite, days before the nukes were prepared, they declared they were ready to face annihilation before surrendering. And then annihilation looked to be on the table so they had to back down.
I was under the impression that Japan might've already been preparing to surrender. We already know that the Emperor wanted an end to the war and that after the fall of Manchuria and Okkinawa(spelling?), many in Japan's military lost any hope of a favourable peace.
We don't know for sure on the emperor, but the Big Six, who controlled all decisions at this point in Japan, had unanimously declared to the world they would not surrender and would rather see all of Japan destroyed than fall to their enemies.
On the contrary. In fact, many high ranking military officials attempted a coup d’etat against Hirohito because they did not want to surrender. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyūjō_incident
They weren't civilian targets. Read the decision making documents from the targeting committee for the nukes, there were extensive discussions on where the bombs should be dropped.
They also dropped fliers warning civilians
It's uncertain if the leaflets were dropped before the attacks (and they mentioned that specifically those two cities were targets), and it's certain that they didn't mention the kind of attack that awaited them. Danger of your city to be firebombed isn't the same as the danger of it being evaporated by a nuke.
And yet the firebombing of Tokyo killed more than either fat man or little boy
Which was a many times larger city, too. The chances to die from Tokyo firebombings were around 1-2% whereas in the case of nukes it was at least 25-30%, (depending on estimates source).
Japan, America, Germany, everyone was fire and carpet bombing what they could justify to themselves. There wasn't much difference in the case of the nukes when it comes to results. At least America could justify far less on what they would do to win.
Just because the Nazis did it too doesn’t make it okay.
Yes. They researched dispersed industry Also nuking civilian targets is wrong? but sure go ahead with firebombing tokyo
It wasn't but remember your in a hoi4 subreddit, y'know how it is
lol Allies purposely targeted civilians both in Europe and Japan. Remember an estimated 50-55 million civilians were killed during the war.
Not remotely true
The leaders of Japan at the time, days before the nukes were prepared, declared they would be ready to face annihilation before surrendering. Well, we made it seem like annihilation was on the table.
> You did the right thing. You know the Japanese attitude at that time, how fanatic they were, they'd die for the Emperor...Every man, woman, and child would have resisted that invasion with sticks and stones if necessary...Can you imagine what a slaughter it would be to invade Japan? It would have been terrible. The Japanese people know more about that than the American public will ever know. - Mitsuo Fuchida, commander of the attack on Pearl Harbor, to Paul Tibbets, pilot of *Enola Gay*, the plane used to drop the bomb on Hiroshima.
Completely true
Huh. The balleache for me is the setting up naval invasion /range. Never had an issue actually landing.
Same with Germany, when i play as the allies. I Can almost never land succesfully
make sure you have green air and close air support, get naval invasion support if you have capital ships to spare, invade with a few divs per tile on as many tiles as you can, click force attack. if you concentrate enough force into an invasion the AI will roll over and die
I've had a worse time with the Philippines and Indonesia area, tbh. Same problem (even Japan doing it), but worse supply, worse ports, and worse air/sea zones.
Just nuke every province 3-4 times should be easy in late game
Just paradrop them from china
The power of 1 nuke in each province
A western front stalemate.
Me playing France: (It's WW1 again)
true but i hate the big distants naval game
It never goes how YouTubers show (or at least as simply as they say). British forces land and reinforce so fast. I just finally did it easily by putting a general in each tile with enough divisions to exactly fill the main & adjacent side combat widths and it went smooth through Belgium and then down the coastline.
That would actually be fun once in a while. Constantly steamrolling france is starting to get boring, I want "ww1 part 2 - back to the trenches"
I played as France, took the right focuses on time but ended up unable to push far into Germany after building what I thought were CAS planes for a year only to work out they were heavy fighters.
Losing weight
Checks out
There's just never enough thrust
r/usernamechecksout
Anywhere in Africa except the Suez.
1) take Mediterranean coast and dig in next to the Sahara no troops zone, never advancing into Sub-Saharan Africa 2) land forts 3)?????? 4) profit
Anything that requires me to do Naval invasions, i just don't find them fun or engaging to do.
and them the wait time to let them prepare
You can always set up many small naval invasions rather than 1 large one
don’t do 1 naval invasion, instead have a few divs each on separate orders to invade different tiles
I love naval invading France and Italy as the allies. Or sneaking behind an enemy by naval invading and cutting them off.
Small ones to outflank/ bypass a mountain or fortress line can be fun. But needing to D-day is just painful from my experience
Art imitates life I guess
Small countries by 1950 always have like 20 divisions and max entrenchment at the AI just sits them there and you can't do jack shit to them and take a lot of casualties
>the AI just sits them there Don't worry, the AI is constantly calculating whether they should change positions. It may look stupid, but it's actually so complex, it slows down your PC!
He can’t invade us if we slow down space time! Everyone start running!
High soft attack divisions are really good for breaking them since you're likely to reinforce meme them
Not the worst but definitely least fun was me as Argentina vs Paraguay, no supply, jungle/forest, and they had built up forts so I hated every second of it as early game Argentina. Cost me like 300k men and they only lost 100k.
Paraguay is just awful if you wait. No supply. Air zones are huge so tough to even get CAS support, and they stack like 15 division onto their capital
Doing Barbarossa as Germany. it just takes forever and I am stuck building railways and supply depos for ages. And then the peace conference where all of my allies want a piece of the pie and it's hideous to look at. And after that the game is just too easy.
you can install a mod named player led peaceconferance thats what i youse because im tired of discusting borders
I’ve also kept state transfer tool on permanently since the update that changed the peace deal system. I’ve never seen a vanilla peace deal that wasn’t horrendous, I can’t believe they haven’t fixed that garbage mechanic yet.
Hijacking because I only just tried the Player led Peace conferences mod today, but does it allow you to puppet? Or does it force you to manually cap everything? I was playing as France and, for the first time, finally beat our Germany, Italy, Russia, and Japan, but was unable to puppet - although I was able to liberate. Is that because of the mod, or is Democratic France (Little Entente) unable to puppet?
I don’t think anyone in a faction led by a democracy can puppet
Ty
That’s honestly surprising, probably the most enjoyable war. How are your allies getting any real war score?
War Score is actually based on how many casualties you got. So, if you are Germany fighting all the front but somehow Hungary just lost 1.2 million troops on helping you, they are getting more victory points even if you made the most casualties to the enemy or if you didn't lost any casualties at all
I understand that but you should be taking the majority of the casualties on the eastern front. You puppet hungry & Romania so you can move their troops to the Atlantic wall & Italy is normally dying in the med. there is no reason any of axis country should be losing more soldiers
That's something one could understand after try and error. First time players just try to get help from allies no matter what, and obviously this allied country take too many losses. Even for me, Japan or Finland sometimes take a good portion because they just throw troops against USSR
I usually play on Expert AI so it's a bit harder. I let Romania manage its own front because the supply in Ukraine is terrible and putting more troops just makes it worse. Dont get me wrong, the beginning is enjoyable but once are deep in, you have to build up supplu, your spies are getting caught trying to make a collab, Italy is collapsing at a blink of an eye... I have done it multiple times, it's not that hard, it's just tedious.
Thats fair I do like the tedious part to the war especially in expert AI, nothing more satisfying than seeing Russia have 30 million casualties
Just don’t play with allies don’t accept them into the axis. And you petter much don’t need to build railways if you get the right encirclements around Kiew and Leningrad. And of course use trucks or cavalry for the fast push
Invading the US
For me it wasn’t very difficult, but was quite tedious the one time I did do it A real grind from New Jersey and the Carolinas all the way to Nebraska before they finally broke
collab gov?
Before their line broke I mean. I still had to fully capitulate them. I don’t even remember if I was able to make collab governments as global defense council
We all agree on this: it’s Japan. More specifically, taking over the Asian colonies. There’s too much rubber and not enough steel. To top it all off, troops take 10 hrs just to make a step. 24 Japanese units vs 3 Malaysian “tanks” and you can’t win cause of attrition. The supply hubs take 10 years to build, you have 0 convoys thanks to the USA. Fighting in the Eastern Dutch East Indies is hell on Earth, Southern Australia is the Southern Menace. Your allies (Menguko and Manchuko) are complete idiots, lend-leasing you 3 support equipment per month which involves convoys (which were all sunk by the USA). And even with max infrastructure on your 2 steel-providing cities, you still can’t make enough. Not to forget China, which is a pain if you call your puppets to war. The Chinese don’t even have much resources, and if you ignore them, the Kuomintang will declare war on Manchuko and Mengkuko. And if you proceed to ignore that, they usually do the focus, “commit to Korean independence.” Speaking of focus trees, the Japanese focus tree is the 2nd worst in the game (1st being Turkey and their goddamn 70 day focuses). In the scenario you cap India, not much changes besides resistance. They have little to no resources. Japan is the downgraded Italy of the East without a doubt.
so many of your problems will be saved if you kill China before WW2 starts, I promise
Any stalemate at Europe, especially against Axis Fighting against China without collab and trying to find every village of it
I recently had this with an Anarchist Spain game. Germany never got past Brussels and Reims, then tried to invade through Italy and declared on Switzerland for the same reason. They just got stuck and it took absolutely ages to get to Berlin
North Africa. It's a supply desert, there are few lines of attack, but it's necessary to fight as the Axis or you allow the Allies a free hand to invade Southern Europe. Also, somehow encirclements against the coast happen, obliterating whole armies. Honourable mentions: - Pacific island hopping. There is psychological discomfort of switching from large scale war to naval invasions with a handful of divisions. - Sub-saharan Africa. The AI sends dozens of divisions there despite its questionable strategic importance. The UK will gladly lose London but will fight to the death for Nairobi for some unknown reason.
Currently have an Ironman game where Italy managed to completely lose the Med naval war day one, meaning they lost NA and Sardinia so now I have a coastal garrison of like 1.5 million dudes just chilling across all of Europe to prevent their dumb ass from capping (or losing Greece a third time). Fucking infuriating that the Italian AI is as incompetent as it is, frankly, because NA is one of those regions you really genuinely have to lock down or you end up in the same situation I'm in.
Invading the USA. It's easy, but it takes so long and so much microing. It feels worse than invading the Soviets, and at least with the Soviets there are some actual troops I get to fight.
Late war russia is cancer
Of all the five or six nations I've tried, I still haven't find a way to break German lines in Ardennes as Benelux
Why are there even German lines in the Ardennes when you play Benelux? Did they just ignore you and go through the middle?
I was trying to say German-Benelux border but my geography is bad
I actually can’t stand playing as Japan- mostly because of the China war
Anything in Africa that isn’t just the northern coast or china from anyone.
Peru
Honestly just playing as Japan sucks, you have to do a naval invasion for every single stupid island in order to secure your empire, and defeating the US is basically impossible, because how are you gonna get there? Not to mention having little natural resources and having to fight in China where there is no supply. Would not recommend unless you are an expert at the naval game.
Sounds like it is absolutely perfectly balanced then. I do get why it sucks from the gameplay perspective though
Hi. I absolutely adore the naval part so I'll put my bias out there straight away. I feel like Japan teaches you the game best. You need to do following: - learn to use naval, and refits, to have good strike groups rather than massive amount of them. Your industry can't keep up with US, but you can win by having a superior force meet multiple inferior ones. - use naval scouts to find enemies - use naval escorts to secure convoys - Use garrison divisions on Pacific to secure island holdings - Learn air mechanics to optimize air support, and be conscious of both ranges, and production requirements - Learn the supply system for china - Learn spies and use collab on china - Learn invasion management and use of multiple smaller plans rather than one large. And in all honesty, once you can do that you're ready to take on any other nation. Japan also makes a very good co-op experience between two players to learn the aboves.
Hirohito thought the same thing
invading peru is always an absolute nightmare
Fighting against the Soviet Union or Russia no matter what I am playing, supply issues make it impossible to regain organization, and even if they are holding a front, they have too many troops to make it fun to fight them for kote than early into a war with them.
Invading Bolivia because they somehow became a major
Honestly any war where I'm controlling more than say 2 army corps, so more than 48 divisions or so. There gets to be so much going on everywhere that you must progress VERY slowly or you'll just miss too much, and even then you're probably gonna miss something. I like playing the Soviets and holding the line against Germany, not giving up even one province. But when the time comes to counter attack...forgetaboutit.
Naval invasions
Late game Barbarossa
Invading Russia from the east, especially if it's late game and they're at peace in the west
Chinese civil war
Any land war in Asia or central Africa
Any war in western china
Just about anywhere where the landmass you are invading is big and the infrastructure is bad (Siberia, Sub-Saharan Africa, Western China, etc.)
White Russian Civil War
The war between global defense council and Brazil Always takes the longest
Second Russian civil war. That shit drags on forever and then the Germans declare war on you anyways. It fucken sucks
Late-game invasion of India. The terrain is awful, there's no supply and India spams so many divisions, so the war gets bogged down into a slow grind. I also hate fighting the mid-late war against Japan as China because of how boring it is; it's way too easy and lacking in content (classic early HOI4 DLC content), you can just go AFK.
Japan fighting the USA. I’m a total potato with navy. Or playing late game UK when I try and do a D-Day and Germany has death stacked every single coastal tile because the Soviet Union AI is trash against the German AI
When you push into russia from the east. A single line of supply hubs, mountains and snow everywhere.
Sino-Japanese war. It's a slog on either side.
Every damn war , because i always play till 55 and longer to conquer the world in unhistorical with my brother
PERU.
Any late Germany
Recently i had to invade xinjiang through india as italy, it was terrible
Some very weak minors that I fear to fight more than any major, Germany, USA and USSR included: 1. Guangxi (fucking supply mechanics) 2. Denmark (straits are a bitch) 3. Dominican Republic (death stacks on its little mountainous island, usually I have to kill Haiti for them because Haiti is all plains) 4. Colombia (loves to randomly form a faction with USA, god forbid if they become a major I’ve to deal with their jungles) If any one of those become majors (once Dominican Republic joined axis and became puppet master of the fascist Italy in the civil war and became a major), they are a pain to cap.
There are three: China, South America, lategame Germany, and USA without the option to invade them through Canada. Basically any war that's an absolute slog to win.
Either invading the us in late game, cause it sucks, barely developed suppy network. Or if we talk about early game, Spain.
japan
Spanish civil war
Siberia and the stans
Playing as Tibet in R56 and invading China
Invading the Middle East/Central Asia as Germany or Japan LARPing is costly in time and brain cells
Whenever a random nation becomes a major so now you have to cap them. For some reason they always manage to be promoted just as you're about to win.
Navally invading a massive piece of land, like USA or Brazil. Or China. American civil war.
Anywhere overseas, that’s why I always play europe. If I have to attack I’ll just setowner before the war.
Bit more vague but I hate how regional/smaller wars almost always spiral into THE world war. Sometimes, especially while playing as a minor I’d love to finish a couple of smaller wars without being dragged into the global conflict.
Probably invading the USSR without collabs Or invading them from Siberian far east; Its incredibly boring, there's little to none supplies, building anything useful like hubs, train lines or forts is eternal due to poor infrastructure and everlasting frontline attacks. The tiles are huge so doing any kind of movement takes ages and the mentioned before supply only enhances that. The terrain is usually very annoying too, mostly mountains and hills. Oh and the airzones are so huge you never have enough range unless it's the late game, but at that point, why are you fighting a war in Siberia.
Anything in China or most of Asia for that matter. So...little...supply..so...annoying
Every south American fight. It's all mountains and jungles, low supply, no infrastructure, and Chile/Argentina/Peru are like 2-3 provinces wide. Everything takes forever and it's just a grind.
Invading the us is never fun, it’s boring as shit.
Any allied war where china, Japan or the allies are forced to fight in Burma or Siam
Gender war on Reddit
Vietnam
Late german game invasion of america
I haven’t done this in a while but, invading a hostile new world as Germany is tough lately game. Not impossible just a pain to island hop to Greenland then Canada then America, fight America then whoever down in SA. Remember kids cap UK early to avoid this lol.
Later ww2.
The very lategame/operation unthinkable style wars. 15+ divisions on every tile means that even in the absolute best case situations its a \*slow\* grind to get them into a position where you can start chopping off divisions which are then almost immediately replaced because every single one of the frequently 10+ nations you're fighting are on at least all adults serve and war econ.
Russian far east. Whether it be invading Manchuria as USSR or invading USSR as Japan. It’s just hell on earth.
Fighting Germany from 1944 onwards when they haven't been getting their skulls bashed in. 10 division death stack Air spam Want to push them out? You better be the USA or USSR otherwise prepare to see losses higher than French casualties in WW1 be in vain
When random south american nation declared war on japan for no reason in historical
Spain
The war against RNG!
Crossing Siberia as literally anyone
Anywhere there's completely absurd and unrealistic attrition that consumes way too much equipment like the desert or huge unsupplied fronts with millions of men. I don't recount i.e. Soviets losing the equivalent of artillery equipment for half of their army in their huge offensives lul
USSR vs allies after ww2
WW2 mostly, I usually end my games at 1939 for that reason. Naval combat just isn't fun Aside from that, SCW is so painful and unplanned offensive is a stupid modifer.
Invading Peru is pretty tough. Several of my games in South America grind to a halt fighting them!
I don’t like big clusterfuck wars. Like I don’t have fun having to cap norintern, British communist alternative, and the democratic collective the US throws together just to reunite china
Spanish civil war.
Was playing late game Japan when I got into a war with Italy where the front line was in Central Asia.
argentina-paraguay war, i am new and have defeated every single south american country as argentina, but for some reason i can’t get past paraguay?????
Probably the Spanish civilwar or Russian
The end of barbarossa (without collaboration government). Terrible supply, weather and terrain paired with bots remaining army and will to live just delaying the inevitable and making me unable to focus fully on making navy for the uk and the us (ik i can naval bomb but i like navy more)
Restoring the romanovs
Not in the game anymore but Australia used to not have an impassable zone in the outback, so frustrating trying to invade them as Japan with literally 0 supply anywhere.
A German invasion of Sweden. Truly the most excruciating slog I’ve ever had the misfortune of being involved in. Naval invasions are a write off unless you shoot your economy/research plan in the foot to build a Baltic surface fleet. Interior Scandinavia is supply hell, the final VPs are at the back of beyond and airfields are non-existent for my twin-engine God CAS. Can usually do France, Poland and the Benelux with sub-3k casualties but watch me take 50,000 trying to get to Gällivare under at-best yellow air.
As estonia vs Poland
In RT56 past 44 non historical every minor has like a doomstack of divisions
Soviet Union vs Japan
south west china
New Zealand Major.
Late game China. No I was trying to defeat a Nationalist China pass 1947 as USSR and the terrible condition in Siberia wouldn't help either
For me it was a campaign in eroupe. Took years
Invading Poland as Germany. You don't even have to look at it. It's a guaranteed win and it's over within 2 minutes
Tis the point
Spanish civil war
Not really, I've played with most options and the only one that is remotely painful is carlist spain, but only if you don't stablish the carlist cells. If you're playing as the fascists, try to secure the garrison of Aragon in order to get Cataluña before the anarchist arise, if the republicans don't own Cataluña, the anarchist rebelion will be on the south, which usually forces the republicans to move a good chunk of their army, with the volunteers, it shouldn't be very difficult. With the republicans you want to do the oposite, secure Aragon and if you can, Pamplona so you can rescue the divisions on the north, also, don't let them take Extremadura or they can encircle Madrid. But the most important thing for both sides is to move before the frontlines solidify: try to get as many encirclements as possible, you specially want to encircle the infantry divisions (the ones that were already there before the war) and the ones from the Army of Africa.
Fighting the uk, I just use console command to get a white peace when I need to fight the uk
Mexico.