Prepping for a 1v1

[Synpax]

A friend of mine is a reasonably experienced HOI 4 player and has played HOI 2 and 3. I have experience with grand strategy and have played a bit of HOI 4 but none of the previous games.

He has challenged me to a one on one battle inwhich he is Germany and I can be any other nation in the world. The winner is whomever conquers the others nation, either through alliances or directly. We will be running the Black Ice mod and historical or non-historical AI is my preference.

Based only on my knowledge of history, I'd believe the US is a good choice. However, based on my research, it seems the US is somewhat weak at the start and that he may be able to *rush* me.

I have a few weeks of preperatory study before we begin this game, but am curious what nations you might suggest and any strategies you'd recommend.

[Synpax]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von A.W.:

Black ice just adds more stuff rather then Just infantry gear you will need to produce Boots and so on just makes the production better and harder i might add.. France is powerfull but for you vs a semi decent player and unless you know how to play not much hope..Even with UK he will just roll you up..UK and France will rule the sea but he will rule on land...And you have to fight possible Italy Nationlist Spain and a large front with German that close to you VP cities...Best hope Turn Italy ensure Rep Spain wins and ally with USSR that way you will have him on more then one front

So you are saying I should play as Italy? And turn it... democratic?

[Synpax]

BTW - if anyone here wants to earn a little $$ by coaching me, I'm up for that.

[Andrew]

No if france or ussr turn italy away from germany... were playing on friday your welcome to attend and keep your money its a game and we would love for a new player to join us if any1 takes offers to take money from you to teach you my advice run as either its a scam or they are worthless

[Torrens]

200 cheap template is too little I didn't say that. It doesn't have to be over 900. A cheap template that can pierce the german armored divisions is enough. Im not gonna argue with you about templates as there is no right answer. Im only hinting at the production cost. They are situational based on what his frined is making. Also the reason I adviced him not to put his whole army at the border is the encirclents you mentioned. They are inevitable and thats why you dont want to lose 30 divisons that cost you 2000 production to make. He can grind grmany to a halt in ideal situations but not in this match up probably. But you are advicing him to do absolutely everything as ussr. This is not their strenght. It is optimal to make sure that you have lots of something not lots of everything as that is not possible when his friend rushes him. If you try to do everything you will simply have medicore quantity of medicore divisions. Not enough, You need MORE as ussr. You can't compete with factories. You can't make everything.

[Andrew]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Torrens:

200 cheap template is too little I didn't say that. It doesn't have to be over 900. A cheap template that can pierce the german armored divisions is enough. Im not gonna argue with you about templates as there is no right answer. Im only hinting at the production cost. They are situational based on what his frined is making. Also the reason I adviced him not to put his whole army at the border is the encirclents you mentioned. They are inevitable and thats why you dont want to lose 30 divisons that cost you 2000 production to make. He can grind grmany to a halt in ideal situations but not in this match up probably. But you are advicing him to do absolutely everything as ussr. This is not their strenght. It is optimal to make sure that you have lots of something not lots of everything as that is not possible when his friend rushes him. If you try to do everything you will simply have medicore quantity of medicore divisions. Not enough, You need MORE as ussr. You can't compete with factories. You can't make everything.

Of couse he can compete with Factories German starts with about 30 Divisons and about 30 Factorys Military.

USSR starts with over 100 Divisions and around 30 too if USSR takes Poland and Romania from Germany early on wouldn matter if he was rush Germany couldn win that early would take atleast 8 Months to a year before German could beat USSR off the bat and without poland and Rom Germany would be lacking that vital Oil and Factories...USSR would need to act fast sort its divisions out asap justifty asap and start the ensureing that Germany is hindered in every aspect Germany is strong at the start but not that strong where it can face a massive war so soon

[Torrens]

Your talking in a vacuum now. This scenario is a veteran player against a newer HOI player who will go straight at him. He will not be able to do all those things he simply won't its delusional. A new player doesn't have a plan like that. Not enough pp not enough time, not enough xp to learn an prepare. The vet will annex europe and ussr can't compete with factories doesn't matter if he takes baltics, finland, romania. Germany justifies faster. Going quantity is his best bet as a new player if he goes for ussr you have to play for a nations strenghts. Other nations have other strenghts.

[Andrew]

I think your vastly vastly over powering his friend and underminding the op... two wars Poland Rom.90 pp.. after that world tension be so high whoever german hits will tigger france and uk to attack him the USSR joins in germany hit on all sides

[Torrens]

I took the situation as the OP described it. I can't know how evenly matched they are in practice but im talking from a green vs someone who is familiar with game mechanics even from previous titles. All those advice you gave the host probably doesn't even know what you are talking about. What is justifying? What is pp? Wgat is organisation? What is supplies? Stuff like that.

[Andrew]

He has 40hrs in the game its not that hard of a game to understand with 40hrs played.

USSR
With your standing Army take Poland Romania right of the bat Germany will see you doing this and will try and justfity on Poland to gain land too.

Once Poland and Romania is your you can sit back and enjoy the extra resources and factories while German is trapped whoever he decides to attack will pull a France and UK to attack him then when he is caught in a war with them you move against him to ...While all this is happening boost commie in Italy and help republican spain win.

At this stage german will at best have 80 divsion split up on 3 fronts while you and the others will have 400 to 500 German Military is good but no match for even a new player that has some idea what to do..Black ice will make this even easyier as factories are so important in it and you would have taken those away from him in his two free invasions at the start before world tension grew

[똑똑한]

USSR is a gamble since you can be knocked out early by a good rush or if he manages to drag Japan into the way and you really need time to get going. USA is a better bet since he cant possibly invade you as long as you keep your fleet strong through the early game. No matter how much land he takes he'll never have enough manpower to deal with US after all those wars. the percentage is just too low to make up for all the troops he'll lose dealing with russia. A solid strategy would be to garrison UK so they remain in play, then send entire navy and blitz japan asap (Reich wont have enough pp to flip Canada/Mexico for a landing point and the german navy/airforce cant provide superiority for invasion because of lack of range in the early game), knock them out and turn Republic of China democratic, giving the soviet union a second source of meat to help them out. If italy messes up in north africa and germany ignores it, then try to open up a turkish front, tons of mountains and you can kill their expensive units through attrition in the deserts.
Economically, cut off Germany from oil and you can limit their number of armored divisions until they ahve time ot build up synthetic refineries

[↯Zindy⛦]

how to be OP
step1:pick USA
step2:go communist
step3:join comintern
step4:???(influence SCW)?
step5:run over germany when he invades poland, this will put him against all allies+all of the comintern at once and since you're the USA you can influence the war instantly, he will never be able to reach you via the sea since the british+french+your navy will mop up whatever navy your freind has and he will never be able to recover.

more tips: you could try boosting communism in turkey,iran or even Japan
ALSO do not forget the spanish civil war! As America you're in a good position to turn commie as quickly as possible then spam divisions at the same time and you could turn the tide of the spanish civil war and since they do not suffer the "recovering from spanish civil war" they can join the comintern more easily, It gets even better if you can boost communism in France especially since they already have alot of communism; then Germany will have a HUGE problem lol!

[glythe]

Incoming Random list of thoughts and possible strategies from someone who has been playing this game a lot since release.


When someone says 1vs 1 me and they pick Germany you basically have to pick UK USA or Russia. I think the safest bet is to play Russia (if you are an experinced player). Why? Because AI USA has a ton of production and they will throw human waves at Germany that cannot be ignored. As a new player it might be smarter to start as the UK if you can wrap your brain around their disjointed territory.

There is a gamble that you can pick france and deny him the Rhineland when he takes that focus. Sometimes AI UK will support you fighting Germany and sometimes it won't. If the UK declares with you.... gg the war is over. This is always outlawed for this very reason in MP games as Germany is actually very vulnerable when the game starts.

If you choose the UK you can deny all land grabs and you can start WWII after he takes one country and tries to take a second. This makes Germany stupidly weak and is usually forbidden in MP games. His navy is pathetic and yours is huge so he can't invade that way. You have better plane production so he can't win with a paradrop landing either. Franco-British Union is OP and will ruin his desires on france if he takes too long to conquer it.

AI Russia will pick a fight with Germany it can't win. So if you don't play Russia then you need to make sure they don't lose. Non-historical focus has a good chance of Russia doing something really stupid like officer purge then declaring war on him. That by the way is instant game over. Germany will inherit about 300 factories (that will no longer have any resistance) and enough resources so that he never needs to trade for anything beside Tungsten and everyone will trade tons of factrories to him.

To be honest you really don't have to beat your friend, you just have to make sure he can't knock out both the UK and France. If he does a paradrop rush on the UK and takes it before WWII.... game over you lose. This is one of the dangers of playing as USA. In fact if you play as USA I will 100% paradrop knock out the UK every time. France is a pushover and you can mangle them at your leisure as Germany any time before 1940.

Note you can prevent Germany from getting any land w/o gurantees by fabricating to create tension.

If your friend plays as Germany you could try to sucker him; if playing as Russia you can let him take Poland while you take Romania. The oil is worth way more than the handful of Polish factories he gets. He can't invite Bulgaria to his faction because the second he does you will crush them. If he land rushes to get Pland and you get Romania right after world tension will be crazy high - he might not get to take Czechoslavakia.

Note:
If you play with DoD expansion then he has to take Czechoslavakia first before Yugoslavia. Also the fate of Greece will never result in the surrender of Greece as long as Romania still exists.

Go nuts trying to get world tension very high very fast..... this messes with the pace of the game and allows the allies/neutrals to start building armies way sooner than they should. This will make a difference when Germany knocks out 3-4 small countries that normally have no troops. It certainly helps bleed the MP a bit when he has to fight a semi decent army instead of a pathetic little band of troops.

You can try boosting Communism in Germany - this is usually outlawed in MP games for a reason.

You can join the Allies and then turn fascist - this is almost always outlawed in MP games. Turn Fascist as the USA after you join the allies and then gg Germany. You can puppet most of south America and they will not be able to join the Allies. Be aware that Peru and Venezuela will likely join the Axis if you attack them. You can knock out Venezuela this way if he is trading Oil to Germany.

Something you can do as a long term move is to have more trade influence with a nation like Portugal. Portugal+Russia are holding most of the Tungsten (which becomes a huge deal when medium tanks are on the table; if the game lasts into the jet era this material ups the ante again).

As Russia get a non agression pact with Japan. This is a death sentence for Germany if he has not gotten Japan in the war with the Allies yet. Note this happens way too often with the new buffs to china. I see Japan get wrecked about 3/5 games now where in the past China was always steamrolled. AI Japan is very reluctant to join the Axis war with the allies unless you take some "worthless" focuses. Normally it doesn't matter for SP games or or large MP games but in a 1v1 MP game it makes a huge difference. He likely won't take them is what I'm trying to say.

If playing Russia you can win the Spanish Civil War and then he's in deep trouble when you fight . He will not have enough divisions to guard France from the south and the Russian border. Spain can easily have 100 divisions that will require about 48 top notch German divisions to hold back.

Russia can supply hundreds of thousands of guns to China and help win the spanish civil war. If Japan does not take China quickly then most of the time it will not win that war at all. Germany will get wrecked without Japan to mess with the USA.

If Spain is not in with the Axis then the Allies can hold North Africa easily for a very long time. Moreover Italy and Vichy france will send a ton of soliders to their doom to fight waiting UK warships as the Axis tries to land in Africa.

If you play as Russia the German player will be forced to have a ton of troops on your border at all times and they are essentially wasted. Likewise he has to have a ton of troops wasted guarding the shores of France (and if you did your job in the SCW Southern France too). In order to guard the Russian border, the coast of France and southern France he will have to sacrifice troop quality very quickly. He will also be likely to have to raise his conscription level very early which will also cause him problems.

If he tries to go for the anti soviet pact you can raise relations with your neighbors and hope they don't sign. Turkey rarely ever signs anymore with the DoD expansion if Germany killed Romania as part of WWII. Note that killing Romania before WWII requires the fate of Czechoslavakia which is really a slow start for land grabbing.

[Synpax]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Torrens:

I took the situation as the OP described it. I can't know how evenly matched they are in practice but im talking from a green vs someone who is familiar with game mechanics even from previous titles. All those advice you gave the host probably doesn't even know what you are talking about. What is justifying? What is pp? Wgat is organisation? What is supplies? Stuff like that.

I didn't do a great job explaining my background.

To clarify, I have played the game a little bit and created a large empire starting with just Latvia. It covered much of Africa. a lot of Europe and Asia -- all while playing with historical AI. I understand the basic game mechanics. I do understand justifying, national focuses, spending the points to fix divisions and infuencing other governments. I am, however, rusty, but I have about two or three weeks to prep.

My opponent has 2000 hours in the game, but has never played against a human player, only co-ops or single player.

I have another advantage in that he does not know what country I will play as, AND we will disable historicle AI.