Tanks or CAS

[[VGM] Hilliard]

Which is better for small nations with few military factories?

[EthanT]

Tanks, youll never have enough CAS/fighters to compete. Even a single tank battalion will drastically help an infantry division.

[Varenvel The Festive Dinosaur]

i would say ignore both and build AA and arty

and this comes from person who plays minor nations 50% of time i play hoi4

6 or 7 infantry 2AA 2 arty should make 20 with , as support companies i would sugest meitenance , hospitals , motorized recon , engineers and 5th is your pick (but you can use diffrent supports if you like)

this build or super infantry carried me in many nations , eventualy you want to build cas

reason i never sugest to build tanks is same thing tanks can do can be achived by paratropers for minor/small wars or just infantry , and armor becomes outdated quickly , and outdated tanks are 100% useless and weasted production

tanks have its uses but they are not consistant , and relies on your skill , and who you fighting , if you cant even make 1 semi good tank division (XP can be big barier for a lot minor countries to make said division) you wont able to utilise it well

[Maul]

if you have resources and aren't gonna be taken out towards the start of WW2 then tanks otherwise focus artillery and AA divisions.

[mk11]

Depends where you are. A lot of central and south america has bad terrain for tanks and too much distance for CAS to be effective. TAC is possible or inf/art and cavalry.

[Michael42]

Ive had great success just adding AA and AT to infantry units. cheaper to maintain and you can shatter tanks when entrenched since people or AI will rush them at key points. Can also put them anywhere versus tanks or planes that can have range or terrain issues.

[Kettenkrad]

If forced between those two specifically, tanks 100%.

Planes in general are costly, for how long it takes to produce one vs a tank under a time constraint. If the enemy controls the skies or has fighter, you'd lose more throwing CAS rather than tanks

As the first guy said, one tank battalion is just enough to drastically help, planes or CAS produce to slowly to give you enough to compete

[lang]

For a small nation tonks and aa.

[JDouglasBarson]

You could go either way. I done both with small nations. You just have to watch supply with tanks and check the range with CAS.

[Varenvel The Festive Dinosaur]

Originally posted by 76561198081476632:

Ive had great success just adding AA and AT to infantry units. cheaper to maintain and you can shatter tanks when entrenched since people or AI will rush them at key points. Can also put them anywhere versus tanks or planes that can have range or terrain issues.

AA itself is enough to handle 10/10 tank scenarios in SP/coop , and 6/10 in MP , AA adds suprisingly large amount of piercing , and unless enemy is using 100% armor its enough as most divisions use 40-60% armor

Originally posted by 76561198367715059:

If forced between those two specifically, tanks 100%.

Planes in general are costly, for how long it takes to produce one vs a tank under a time constraint. If the enemy controls the skies or has fighter, you'd lose more throwing CAS rather than tanks

As the first guy said, one tank battalion is just enough to drastically help, planes or CAS produce to slowly to give you enough to compete

this is very misinformative , while planes indeed take longer , planes affect entire battlefield and inflict loses even if your army does not , ontop of that they can be sent anywhere on planet resonably fast , not has atricion(aside from accidents) and air superiority offers big bonus

i never was fan of armor as it often can bogged down , enemy can have AT/piercing , forts , terrain , supplies (plane dont use supplies) , lack of resuply or production to keep with loses

if you cant afford to make planes , playing countries like portugal , yugoslavia , venezuela ETC who OP asks (minor nations) you wont able to even make said tanks as they are not reserched , even if we presume you reserch it day 1 , before production kicks and you have 5-20XP to even make weak armor division

and this would give you great war tank , to get light tank you would need another long reserch , change production again

who mind you for minor nation is incredible investment , compare it to AA , 1 short reserch , 5xp to add (10 for support company) , easy to produce

same with planes , no xp cost , fast reserch , stays relevant for entire game (you can keep old planes for training new airwings or land lease)

i play minor nations to achive things like this
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2156247889
or this
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1652371925


sadly most of my world conquests were not uploaded , and after windows bricked itself few months ago i lost most of screenshots

these are not even that good as i was semi noob back then

[Drax]

Originally posted by Varenvel The Festive dinosaur:

reason i never sugest to build tanks is same thing tanks can do can be achived by paratropers for minor/small wars or just infantry , and armor becomes outdated quickly , and outdated tanks are 100% useless and weasted production

No... You're wrong. Yes, tanks require skill, but they're significantly more effective than anything else when you know what you're doing.

VS AI, you always want tanks because you should only be playing aggressive aside for a few particularly weak countries. If you build basic units like you're suggesting, while you won't die, you won't be able to kill enough countries off to do a world conquest before the game dies of lag. Tanks are the #1 way of achieving encirclements which is the #1 way of winning wars against nations you can't just steamroll with your army. Only one is needed to have a strong effect on your battles. Only time I don't do tanks is when I'm doing something like CK2 and rushing London as South Africa. Due to the tight time limit, extremely limited factories, resources and manpower. AND the need for naval invasions, I haven't been able to get tanks to work out.

AA is handy but the AI is never any good at using their airforce. It's only really a necessity in multiplayer games, but in those it's better to get an ally to support you rather than trying to assemble a makeshift airforce or sinking production into countering something your allies could just help you with. If I was Britain, I'd MUCH rather have a commonwealth country have a couple of tank divisions over a mediocre army with AA that'll just get wiped out as soon as the Axis come up to them with a tank.

And this "outdated tanks are 100% useless and weasted production" is complete bs. Outdated tanks will still steamroll infantry and are only weak against newer tanks. The AI doesn't really use tanks properly so outdated tanks mean very little, and against players you can either just avoid their tanks OR build tank destroyer divisions. Outdated tank destroyers will still be effective against modern tanks.

You have two options as a minor when going up as a larger nation. Turtle, and let the enemy slowly waste resources grinding into you for years. OR build tanks and continuously encircle and kill their divisions. Works FAR faster and even works against the USSR who, at a certain point, will just start chucking out untrained, unequipped infantry.

[Varenvel The Festive Dinosaur]

Originally posted by Drax:

Originally posted by Varenvel The Festive dinosaur:

reason i never sugest to build tanks is same thing tanks can do can be achived by paratropers for minor/small wars or just infantry , and armor becomes outdated quickly , and outdated tanks are 100% useless and weasted production

No... You're wrong. Yes, tanks require skill, but they're significantly more effective than anything else when you know what you're doing.

VS AI, you always want tanks because you should only be playing aggressive aside for a few particularly weak countries. If you build basic units like you're suggesting, while you won't die, you won't be able to kill enough countries off to do a world conquest before the game dies of lag. Tanks are the #1 way of achieving encirclements which is the #1 way of winning wars against nations you can't just steamroll with your army. Only one is needed to have a strong effect on your battles. Only time I don't do tanks is when I'm doing something like CK2 and rushing London as South Africa. Due to the tight time limit, extremely limited factories, resources and manpower. AND the need for naval invasions, I haven't been able to get tanks to work out.

AA is handy but the AI is never any good at using their airforce. It's only really a necessity in multiplayer games, but in those it's better to get an ally to support you rather than trying to assemble a makeshift airforce or sinking production into countering something your allies could just help you with. If I was Britain, I'd MUCH rather have a commonwealth country have a couple of tank divisions over a mediocre army with AA that'll just get wiped out as soon as the Axis come up to them with a tank.

And this "outdated tanks are 100% useless and weasted production" is complete bs. Outdated tanks will still steamroll infantry and are only weak against newer tanks. The AI doesn't really use tanks properly so outdated tanks mean very little, and against players you can either just avoid their tanks OR build tank destroyer divisions. Outdated tank destroyers will still be effective against modern tanks.

You have two options as a minor when going up as a larger nation. Turtle, and let the enemy slowly waste resources grinding into you for years. OR build tanks and continuously encircle and kill their divisions. Works FAR faster and even works against the USSR who, at a certain point, will just start chucking out untrained, unequipped infantry.

-I never had lag late game
-most minor nations have 1-3 factories , how many tanks can you make? presming you can conquer any neighbour with 1-2 tank division as most nations you will want to conquer have more firepower then you
-have you looked at tooltips how much air supremacy makes your armies weaker? besides AA adds soft attack and hard attack
-"Outdated tank destroyers will still be effective against modern tanks." bruh my games
-or have better army , i had conquered world 3 times as portrugal 2 times as romania , once as venezuela once as bulgaria , twice as sweden , once as finland(propobly hardest i had) , not used tanks , steamroled everything with my infantry , and these are ones i remember , i played close to half hoi4 minor nations with various sucess

im not saying tanks dont work , but super infantry is easier and more consistant and can be done by any nation

[Drax]

sigh*

Originally posted by Varenvel The Festive dinosaur:

-I never had lag late game

Then you never played late enough. I'm talking about post 1950 which is entirely possible as a minor nation doing certain achievement runs. It's nothing to do with PC specs, Paradox games are just notorious for collapsing in the late game due to their AI.

Originally posted by Varenvel The Festive dinosaur:

-most minor nations have 1-3 factories , how many tanks can you make? presming you can conquer any neighbour with 1-2 tank division as most nations you will want to conquer have more firepower then you

Most minor nations START with 1-3 military factories. Unless you don't know you can BUILD factories or that NATIONAL FOCUSES exist, it's usually possible to get 10-20m factories quite quickly. The only time this isn't the case is when they have unique focus trees and you're forced to go down a specific route. Again, CK2 achievement as SA. By the time you unlock med. tanks, you have enough factories to produce at LEAST 1 tank division every 6 months.

Originally posted by Varenvel The Festive dinosaur:

-have you looked at tooltips how much air supremacy makes your armies weaker? besides AA adds soft attack and hard attack

I did more than that. I made one of the most popular HOI4 guides about every stat in the game including the significance of air supremacy. That doesn't change the fact that, as I said, the AI doesn't use its airforce properly and it can be easily exploited. While I'd still put AA on my tank divisions, wasting all my production on AA for my inf isn't worth it when the AI doesn't hit large enough air supremacy values in the first place, and rarely keeps up the pressure. And, again, in multiplayer games it's better to just get an ally to support you. And the soft attack and hard attack isn't worth it compared to other support companies. I use them if I have excess production, but not as minors under most circumstances.

Originally posted by Varenvel The Festive dinosaur:

-"Outdated tank destroyers will still be effective against modern tanks." bruh my games
-or have better army , i had conquered world 3 times as portrugal 2 times as romania , once as venezuela once as bulgaria , twice as sweden , once as finland(propobly hardest i had) , not used tanks , steamroled everything with my infantry , and these are ones i remember , i played close to half hoi4 minor nations with various sucess

WOW, that's nothing... I've played some of the more hardcore mods like Black Ice. I've participated in a number of PVP hoi4 games and in Vanilla SP I've done a world conquest as Ireland. Listing out your 'achievements' based on your words and words alone means nothing, however. As you could be lying or talking about modded campaigns. It's better to just talk about the facts, and the facts are tanks can win you wars.

[Varenvel The Festive Dinosaur]

lag is becouse of procesor bottleneck , older CPUs handle it better then new ones

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2156247889 had 0 lag in that game , 40FPS at 4 speed

focuses for factories? you do these last , first focuses are for PP and changing ideology , then reserch bonuses for powerful tech

generic focus tree gives you like 2 factories?

im not really questioning your skill , i belive you can achive anything you say with tanks , but for a lot low skilled players tanks go like this:

-My tanks are not good to break enemy lines , and now army is too weak to hold becouse i spend production to make tanks

infantry build is easier(for less skilled players) and more forgiving

my games not usualy last beyond 1948 , by that i conquered most (screenshot is quite old one)

[BULLETPROOFWEASLE!]

I say tanks with AA and then infantry with arty

[Ali]

It depends on geography and resources. If your japan or UK you better go for air, if your Germany or ussr go for tanks