The Tribe: Complete "Competitive" Vanilla HOI4 Multiplayer Guide

Most of the guides on steam for HOI4 are completely useless in multiplayer, so, we made our own. Most new players are pushed away by toxicitiy and the lack of avalible resources toward competitive, vannilla multiplayer. This guide includes a complete list of the tasks of all major nations and their jobs in normal games, insight on land, air, and naval doctrine. As well as proper division templates and other useful things to know when going into HOI4 multiplayer. (GUIDE WAS MADE IN 1.5.2, IT IS NOT UP TO DATE ON THINGS LIKE SPIES OR NEW NAVY)

Brought to you by: The Tribe
https://discord.gg/fVMYw7Z

Introduction

Problem: HoI4 has a massive skill gap between new and veteran players

Problem: HoI4 multiplayer communities tend to be incredbily toxic even for skilled veteran players

Problem: HoI4 forums and youtube videos are generally poor resources for multiplayer advice

Result: many new players interested in HoI4 multiplayer give up after their first few tries due to a combination of experiencing toxicity and the lack of resources to get better at the game.

Solution: The Tribe discord community have provided the HoI 4 multiplayer scene with a MUCH NEEDED welcoming environment conducive to learning about the game through this guide and our discord server and most importantly having fun. The Tribe has the knowledge and skill of veteran players without the elitism and toxicity. This is a People's Community. We want the HoI4 multiplayer family to grow and prosper.

This is THE premier and most comprehensive HoI4 multiplayer guide that will ever exist. It was created by the skilled and friendly players from The Tribe discord community. The link to join our discord is https://discord.gg/fVMYw7Z

This guide will be added onto after Man the Guns as the META will most likely change.

---Division Templates, Doctrines, and No No-s---

(New) MTG NAVY WRITTEN BY BEST NAVAL PLAYEYER NA AND EU

THERE IS ONLY 2 SHIP U MAEK IF U WANT 2 WIN NAVAL BATTLE


MAEK SHIP AT RATIO OF LIKE 2.5 DD PER HC OR SOMETHING IDK

CARRRIERS ARE POOPOO

GO TRADE INTERDICTION OR FLEET IN BEING IDC


IF U WANT 2 KILL SUBMARINES
U
USE LEGACY DDS AND AIR
PUT DDS WHERE SUBS ARE AND GO ON PATROL
AND PUT AIR OVER IT FOR DETECTION 2 FIND SUB
AND IF ITS SUB 1-2S THEY WILL DIE
IF THEY ARE SUB 3s JUST CONVOY ESCORT THEY WILL DIE SURELY IF THEY DONT THEN JUST RESEARCH THE SUICIDE PILLS IN THE ESPIOONAGE TAB AND TAKE THEM

Division Templates

Infantry Templates:

Fighting Infantry: You arent ever going to be pushing with Infantry, or atleast you shouldnt be. Infantry acts as a wall, as a buffer for your tanks to work around. For Infantry support companies, you always want Engineer, Recon, and Support Arty. AA is nice for when you are being CAS'd down and Support AT is good for getting a bit higher piercing. Adding rocket artillary late game is good and recommended. Maintainence company allows your divisions to capture a precentage of enemy equipment, and can pay for itself.

14 inf 4 art: engi support arty (can add AA, or Maintainence)

20 width: support arty engi (can add AA, or Maintainence)

Suppressive Infantry: 10 width calvary is more then enough to suffice, dont add support companies as they cost too much.

Port Guards: 20 width infantry with engi recon and arty are good enough for garrisoning ports. Its not invincible however, you just want this infantry to slow down your enemy long enough for your army to get over.

Tank Templates:

In vanilla, you should always be going Superior Firepower because Mobile Warfare is bad. (explanation for why its bad is in its own section) As most nations you should be doing 7 motorized 13 tank, for Germany 6 mot and 13 tank (thanks to the 5% org national spirit they can afford to do this.) Recon and Engineer are good to have for busting rivers, speed, and entrenchment. Support Arty (not SPGS) gives a little bit of soft and hard attack which is always good to have. Logistics is ok, but isnt really needed unless you are fighting somewhere with low supply. Maintainence gives your tanks extra reliability and allows you to capture enemy tanks. Field Hospital is trash and completely useless, its bonus is only good when are playing like a ♥♥♥♥♥♥. SPGS are only good aganist fighting infantry, as germany and soviet you are going to be fighting other tanks so you are going to need to have more then SPGs if you want to not die.

If you are being CAS'd down, add Support AA to minimize CAS damage from 10 to 4 max, if you want to shoot down enemy CAS then add Tank SPAA and upgrade the gun to demolish enemy planes.

You always want to add tank destroyers to your divisions, switch out tanks for TD's if needed. Only put JUST enough to pierce enemy tanks.

Tank Upgrades: Gun > Reliability > Engine > Armor

Air and Land Doctrines

Air Doctrine:

Battlefield Support: good for CAS
Operational Integrity: good for Fighters
Strategic Destruction: good for Bombers

if you are controlling your factions fighters go Operational Intergrity or ur bad because it gives 20% agility for fighters which is super strong, missing out on that can cost you the air war. The only time to do other doctrines is if you have a different nation to control CAS. In that case, he should research Battlefield support for peak CAS efficiency. same goes with bombers, although bombers are kind of underlooked because strat bombing is banned in most servers thanks to how they are balanced.

Land Doctrine:

Superior Firepower: Good for Tanks and Infantry, go right left if doing tanks, do right right if doing just infantry.

Grand Battleplan: MUH PLANNIN (this doctrine technically has the most modifiers if you have max planning but you are never going to have it on a mobile front)

Mobile Warfare: virgin doctrine

Mass Mob: nobody does this in vanilla unless if you are Yorkee

Things that suck and you should never do.

1. Dont ever add field hospitals to your divisions, completely useless and the alternatives are miles better. expierence trickleback is very small, and you are wasting a slot for that when you could add something else like maintainence or support AA/AT

2, Forts suck, nations like Germany Japan, and potentially Italy start or can easily get fortbuster Generals, so they just get dabbed on.

3. If i see one more ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ person tell me that Medium SPGS with mobile warfare is good im going to commit sucide by watching all of Drew Durnils videos in a marathon.
literally just dont, if you think this is good just deinstall the game, please. Medium SPGS get pierced on super hard by normal Superior Firepower tank divisions. You miss out on soooo much hard attack that its not worth it.

4. Space Marines are g a r b a g e. Counter them by putting support AT in your infantry. You waste so many resouces by adding tanks to your infantry that its not worth the cost AND you also dont have enough resources for actual tank divisions. (space marines refers to having 1 or 2 tank brigades in an infantry division.) The ONLY time where this is viable is if you are playing France and you add Heavy two tank destroyers to your calvary divisions to pierce all german tanks and catch him offguard before he can get AT.

5. Battleships are mostly useless, naval battles are decided by which nation has the most carrier deckspace. If you want shore bombardment, make Battlecruisers (or BB 4s if you have them), because they are most effiecient for their production.

---Tips and Stuff---

how 2 not be bad a the game

How to be an Air Controller

Always get operational integrity if your going to control your factions fighters. Operational integrity gives the most agility of all the air doctrines. You shouldnt worry about having a land army, if you have any spare research do synthetics and make them for you and your faction.

when actually microing planes:
Have groups of 100, if you want to quickly make a group of planes, set the group size to 800 and then cut it in half three times so you have air wings of 100 planes.
Dont overcrowd airports, makes your planes less efficient.
If you are having a negative K/D ratio, take your planes out. Dont waste planes.
Place your planes where they are needed, and try to get the most airspace coverage as possible.

LISTEN TO YOUR FACTION: People are constantly going to be talking to you asking you to put planes somewhere, be sure to always be there communicating and not deafend in discord/ts.
If you need more airport space, ask your team to build up airports.

be sure to have your light aircraft designer before you research fighter twos, or your planes wont get the benifit from the designer.

Mobile Warfare sucks and here is why

Mobile Warfare Tank (branch right both times)


Superior Firepower Tank (branch right first, left branch second time)

We chose the amount of motorized that we do so that you can have at least 30 organization. 30 organization has been determined to be the minumum amount of organization to have an effective tank division. Here you can clearly see how much worse Mobile Warfare tanks are compared to Superior Firepower tanks when they use the same amount of motorized. One of the big benefits of Mobile Warfare is that it gives your tanks more organization. Therefore, the mobile warfare tank divisions need less motorized in them to fight effectively. So a common mobile warfare tank division only has 3 or 4 motorized in it and it's still much worse than the Superior Firepower tank division see

The only benefit to the MW tank div is that since it is now so tank heavy, it cannot be pierced by the SF tank div. This will result in the MW tank div winning in a 1v1 tank battle vs the SF tank div. This is easily counterd by simply swapping a single Medium tank for a medium tank destroyer in the Superior Firepower tank template.

So at the end of the day our Superior Firepower tank div here has much more defense, more soft attack and about twice the HP while also being considerably cheaper by using more motorized than the Mobile Warfare tank. HP is very important. It means that when your tank divison gets pierced, it will suffer fewer equipment losses. The Superior Firepower tanks will absolutely destroy the Mobile Warfare tanks in 1v1 engagements and are much harder to push back due to their higher defense and you will wind up having many more of them due to the extra HP resulting in fewer tank equipment losses and the fact that the division is cheaper to produce.

Also, when you upgrade Superior Firepower tanks with level 5 engine they are as fast as motorized so the tiny armor speed bonus that Mobile Warfare grants is irrelevant and meaningless since you're not capped by your armor speed at that point but, by the motorized speed. Last note is that the MW tanks having twice the breakthrough of the SF tanks is irrelevant since you don't need more than 1,000 anyways. It's just redundant and useless so having 1,800 breakthroug is actually of no more benefit to you than 900 or 1,000 breakthrough is.

Thats just tanks, check this out. Virgin MW gives no bonuses for infantry, meanwhile chad alpha male Superior Firepower gives insane bonuses for Infantry.


Superior Firepower Infantry Division (branch right first, left branch second time)



Mobile Warfare Infantry Division (branch right both times)

Also Superior Firepower has Airland battle, which gives 20% air superiority and can stack between nations if you have troops in an area, as icing on the cake. Superior firepower divisions get much higher attack and 20% defense for all division. SF tanks are better long term then MW tanks, and SF gives really good infantry bonuses. SF is always the best land doctrine, even if you are only making tanks. MW gives only breakthrough, org, and recovery rate. SF gives attack.

Also, Superior Firepower applies a 20% soft attack and 5 Organization to all Front Line units and these stats are not shown in division templates. So, in reality on the field your Superior Firepower units are even better than what we can show here with the division templates.

SF is also the only land doctrine that just gives straight bonuses to attack and defense, meaning that it stacks on top of nation modifiers and stuff, this is the best vanilla doctrine.

---Nation Specific Stuff: (AXIS)---

Germany Part 1

So you have decided to command Germany in World War Two? You have chosen a heavy task my friend. You must be good at the game in a general sense and be capable of microing all over the map simultaneously from Scandinavia to Africa, from the Atlantic coast to deep in the Russian heartland. Above all you must be a LEADER who can maintain high morale of your fellow Axis members and coordinate strategy with all of your brothers in arms. You must accept the fact that you as Germany are ultimately responsible for everything the Axis does or does not do. If someone else on the Axis doesn't know something or does something wrong then it's your fault for not educating him and it's your job to fix it. All the pressure is on you. Oh, you still want to play Germany? Ok then, here is what you must do.

FOCUS PATH:
1 Rhineland, so you can use that political power to get Martin Bormann Silent Workhorse
2 Army Innovations, to use that army xp to upgrade your infantry template to be closer to a 14/4 in preparation for the Spanish civil war
3 Four Year Plan, so you can use those two industry research bonuses on construction 3 and construction 4 and so the Captian of Industry
4 Autarky, for better construction speed
5 Hermann Goring-Werke, for more civilian factories
6 KdF-Wagen, for more civilian factories
7 Extra Research Slot, for more research
8 Reichsautobahn, for 100% infrastructure in 4 areas and to get closer to German War Economy
9 Treaty With The USSR, to get the research bonus for Medium 1 tank and Medium 2 tanks
10 Army Innovations 2, to get the research bonus for Medium 3 tanks
11 Air Innovations, to get more airbases in Germany
12 Anschluss, to reunite Austria with the Fatherland
13 German War Economy, for more military factories and to go from Partial Mobilization to War Economy
14 Demand Sudetenland, to reunite Sudeten Germans with the Fatherland
15 First Vienna Award, to reunite Southern Slovakia with Hungary
16 Fate of Czechoslovakia, to reunite Bohemia with the Fatherland and reunite Slovakia with Hungary
17 Reassert Eastern Claims, to reunite Memel with the Fatherland
18 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, to get a non aggression pact with the USSR for 2 years
19 Danzig or War, to reunite Prussia with the Fatherland
20 Around Maginot, to get war goals on Netherlands, Belgium and Luxemburg
21 War With France, to annex France
22 Operation Wesserubung, to annex Denmark and Norway
23 Coal Liquidization, to get a synthetic research bonus for Advanced Oil Processing
24 Synthetic Rubber, to produce more rubber from your refineries

Once you get here you can choose anything depending on the strategy you want. Here are your options.

1 Choose no focus to save on political power so that you can buy the rest of your advisors faster
2 Do your naval focuses if you are making ships
3 Do your air focuses if you want to research the Battlefield Support air doctrine or get a research bonus for Radar, Close Air Support, Naval Bombers, Heavy Fighters, Tactical Bombers, Strategic Bombers, Rockets, Jets or Nukes
4 Do your Westwall and Atlantikwall focuses to make an Allied D-Day landing harder for your enemy
5 Do Grossraumwirtshaft focus if you want to make infrastructure faster in the conquered territory when you invade the USSR
6 Reintegrate Alsace-Lorraine for a tiny bit of manpower that you will never notice
7 Do a continuous focus


Now you must assemble the best men in Germany to advise you on state matters

POLITICAL POWER PURCHASE ORDER:
1 Martin Bormann Silent Workhorse
2 Joseph Goebbels
3 War Economy
4 Free Trade
5 Hjalmar Schacht Captain of Industry
6 Heinz Guderian Blitzkrieg Theorist
7 Porsche Heavy Tank Designer
8 Messershmitt Light Air Designer
9 Replace Goebbels with Walther Funk War Industrialist
10 Extensive Conscription
11 Erwin Rommel Armor Genius

Once you have purchased these the war should start and you should do the Improved Worker Conditions decision to increase your stability. You should also change from War Economy to Total Mobilization as soon as possible for more factories. It is of utmost importance to raise your occupation law to Harshest Occupation for more factories as soon as you take land. Also, drop down to export focus ASAP

German technology is renowned for being highly advanced in World War Two

TECHNOLOGY PATH:
At the start of the game you need to research machine tools, computer technology, construction and switch to the Superior Firepower army doctrine. Where the Superior Firepower doctrine splits you take the right side on the first split and the left side on the second split. You must have started researching Construction 2 before you finish the Four Year Plan focus in order to use the 2 research bonuses on Construction 3 and 4. After you finish switching to Superior Firepower use that research slot to research the 1937 machine tools so that you can get it researched before the Four Year Plan focus is done. Just make sure to continue researching your army doctrine without interruption until it is completed after you finish the 1937 machine tools. Always go concentrated Industry over Dispersed Industry unless if you know your enemy allied players will for a fact go hard core into strategic bombers.

From here on out you need to prioritize your land doctrine, industrial research, computing technology and encryption and decrption. When you're all caught up on that research sneak in some artillery and infantry equipment research. Try to not researc too far ahead of time unless you have a research bonus for it. Before the war starts make sure to research signal support company and mainenance support company so that you can put them into your division templates.

After you do the Treaty with USSR focus you must prioritize Medium Tank reserach until you have finished Medium 3 tanks. It is also very important here to not waste one of your tank research bonuses on a tank variant. What this means is that you cannot research a medium tank vairant until after you have begun researching Medium 3 Tanks. Be weary of the Allied plane count, if theirs is looking strong then research the Ostwind Medium 2 Self Propelled Anti Air tank.

After you get the Messerschmitt Light Air Designer then you should research Fighter 2s and also get a license for Romanian Fighter 2s but, don't produce the Romanian Fighter 2s. Just use that license to help you research Fighter 2s 20% faster. Cancel the license once you have researched your own Fighter 2s. If the rules allow fighter 3s then get the license from Hungary for Fighter 3s and immediately reserach Fighter 3s once Fighter 2s are finished. If you see that your enemy allies are going hard core into Strategic Bombers then do the Heavy Fighter focus so that you can rush Heavy Fighter 3s to counter the Strategic Bombers

Make sure that you have begun level 3 oil tech before you finish the Coal Liquidization focus so that you can use that research bonus on oil 4 tech.


Germany must produce war machines

MILITARY PRODUCTION BUILD:

Start the game with 1 factory on Guns, 3 on Artillery, 2 on Support Equipment, 1 on Motorized, 1 on CAS and 20 on Fighter 1s. When you start building military factories middle 1938 then you will increase your fighter 1 production to 50 factories. After that you will put 15 factories on Medium Tanks. If you have a large lead on the Allied plane count then you can continue to put more factories onto Medium Tanks. If the number of planes the Allies have is close to the number of planes that you have then you need to increase the number of military factories on Fighters beyond 50.

Germany Part 2

MILITARY PRODUCTION BUILD CONTINUED:

The goal of the pre war Germany military prodution is to have as many tanks as possible while also having a sizeable lead in Fighters over the Allies. You only need 1 factory on Artillery since you only need support artillery in your divisions until after France falls. You only need 1 factory on Guns since you will gain tens of thousands of Guns when you Anschluss Austria and annex Czechoslovakia as well as when you capitulate all the AI controlled countries in Europe. Once the war starts adjust your production due to future war needs. Try to be proactive and not reactive. React appropriately when necessary. If the enemy plane count is very close once you start researching Medium Tank 3s then research and produce some Medium 2 Self Propelled Anti Air Tanks. You only need 3 factories on them. I forgot to mention that you should have 1 dockyard on convoys the whole game for trade and transport needs. You don't need to produce any combat ships. (There are naval strategies for Germany but, they aren't necessary and are a potential drain in oil and reserach away from your army which is your main focus)

After the war starts I increase my factories on Guns to 5 and once I run out of oil and rubber to produce tanks, planes and ships then I put my additonal military factories onto Guns and Artillery so that I can increase the size and firepower of my standard Infantry Division.

Mobilize the Germans for work

EARLY GAME INDUSTRY BUILD:

Just build Civilian Factories in your 80% and 70% infrastructure territories in western Germany until 1938. Do not build in the 4 central German territories until after the Reichsautobahn has finished. If you know for a fact that your enemy is going hard core into Strategic Bombers then you should construct a few level 1-2 anti air buildings in all German airzones. Once it hits mid 1938 then stop building civilian factories and start producing military factories and refineries. Make sure that you leave 3 spaces in each territory for the refineries or the Axis wont have any oil or rubber thus you wont produce any planes or tanks once the war starts. As soon as the war starts cease all overseas trade which requires convoys. Make sure that your fellow Axis members along with Japan are doing factory trade backs. Do not build infrastructure. Do not build forts.


ARMY TRAINING AND ORGANIZATION:

At the start of the game put your reinforce and upgrade equipment priority to lowest. Then, que up 37 tank divisons and put their equipment priority on highest and convert your whole army to tank divisions. Force deploy those 37 tank divisions as soon as possible (when they are trained to 20%) and immediately que up another 15 tank divisions with highest equipment priority and force deploy them ASAP too. You will now have 82 divisions on the field. Just enough so you can send 5 volunteers to Nationalist Spain in the Spanish Civil War. Convert 5 divisons to your infantry template and use any army xp to upgrade that infantry divison. Put that infantry divison on highest equipment priority so they can build up before the war starts. When the Spainsh Civil War starts then send your 5 divisons as volunteers along with all of your planes and 1 support equipment each month as lend lease.

Make sure that you duplicate your infantry divison so that you have 2 different infantry division templates. 1 of them and the one that your Spanish volunteers will be is a 40 combat width division with 14 infantry batallions and 4 artillery batallions. Your second infantry division will be a 20 width division with 10 infantry batallions. Use the air xp and army xp you get from the civil war to upgrade the engine and range on your fighter 1s and to complete these division templates. Your Medium Tank template should have 6 motorized batallions and 14 Medium Tank batallions along with, support arty, support engineers, support recon, support signal and support maintenance companies. If you are losing the air war or it's contested then put 2 Self Propelled Anti Air tank batallions into your tank division and remove a single medium tank batallion.

After you annex Austria then use the Austrian cavalry template to create a 10 width cavalry division with 5 cavalry batallions and no support companies. These will be your garrison troops. Que up 72 of them for a single army so they can garrison mainland Europe.

After the civil war is over, convert most of your army to the 20 width infantry template. Convert your main effort army to the 14/4s template. Then, que up 40 more of your 20 combat width infantry divisions to have 122 of them total. That will net you a large Heer consisting of 5 armies made up of 24 divisons each plus 2 additional divisons. Make sure that Italy joins the Axis before the war starts so that you can station those 2 additional divisons in Libya. You will later convert these 2 divisions into tank divisons. This is the safest method for getting German tanks to Africa. Otherwise, you have have to risk crossing the Mediterranean sea. VERY DANGEROUS! As soon as you start producing tanks and have the tank template complete then que up a tank divison for training. After you annex Austria and Czech then you will have plenty of guns for all of these units to start training. Just delete the Austrian units you get when you annex them.

Once the war starts lend lease all your planes to the Axis plane controller. (should be Romania)

After you annex France then que up another 120 divisions to guard the Atlantic coast against a D-Day invasion so that your first army group of 120 divisions can all go to the Eastern Front against the Soviets. You will have to increase your conscription law from Extensive Conscription to Service By Requirement.


After France has been crushed annex, Denmark, Sweden (if rules allow) and Norway. Also, justify war on Switzerland (if rules allow) don't waste time on doing the Operation Tannenbaum focus since you will save time by just justifying on them.

As you start to produce enough artillery slowly convert your 20 width infantry divisions to the 14/4 template. Prioritize the 14/4 divisons to the Eastern Front. If the USSR player is making Medium 3 tanks or Heavy tank 2s then make sure to research Medium 3 Tank Destroyers and put between 1-4 batallions of them into your tank divison while at the same time removing an equal number of regular Medium Tank batallions so that you stay at 40 combat width. You want the minimum number of Medium Tank Destroyer batallions required to pierce the enemy tanks.

Declare war on the USSR as soon as the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact is over. The longer you wait to launch Operation Barbarossa then the worse the strategic war positon becomes for the Axis as the Soviet and American war industries become stronger.

Use Erwin Rommel as your Tank Commander because he is most likely to get levels up in his attack statistic. Just be careful since he is reckless he can be injured often.

Keep pumping out as many tank divisions as possible. You can never have too many. As you gain army xp upgrade the gun on your tanks first, then the armor and reliability. Your Medium tanks will still be plenty fast.

Now go out there and lead Axis to victory so you can proclaim the Greater German Reich!

German Naval Strategies

Germany can do perfectly fine in most games producing no warships and getting no naval technology. However, if you want to do stuff with navy then there are a few options.

You can do your naval foci after your rubber focus to get level 3 or 4 destroyers, light cruisers and submarines depending on game rules. You can also get level 2 Battle Cruisers and upgrade their engine while researching the convoy raiding naval doctrine to cause havoc in the Atlantic with Allied shipping. Do not make or research Battleships or Superheavy Battleships

Another option is to make licensed Italian carrier 3 or 4s again depending on game rules and research the base strike naval doctrine with a few supporting destroyers and cruisers while Italy lend leases you his carrier planes to outfit your German built, Italian carriers.


Honestly the convoy raiding strat with upgraded subs and Battlecruisers is the most effective against a good Allies. Against a bad Allies then you can get away with building carriers to try to challenge the UK, French and USA Atlantic fleets in order to do Operation Sealion and invade the UK. Against a good Allies this is simply impossible barring they make a huge mistake. The UK alone can easily have 13 carriers by the start of the war without sacrificing his plane production. Then you have the American and French fleets to deal with too. There is nothing an Axis navy build can hope to do VS that so your best bet is to keep your navy dispersed in 1 ship fleets and convoy raid. Make sure to micro your Battlecruisers to retreat and repair from a battle if they get to low HP before they die.

The only way for Axis to reasonably challenge a good Allied navy in the Atlantic is to use thousands of land based naval bombers to do most of the fighting and damage to the Allied navy over time which requires strong Axis air control.

The only reasonable purpose for a proper blue water navy for Germany is to get naval superiority in the Baltic Sea after you have annexed Scandinavia (so the Allied navy cant sail through Kattegat and Skaggerak to sink your small navy!) in order to naval invade the USSR and assist the combats on the coast against Russia with shore bombardment.

Italy: Early Game

Welcome to italy, hope you enjoy being a meme.

Difficulty: Intermediate



National Focuses:

Now, lets get one thing clear, in most rulesets there are different rules regarding italy. Sometimes they are allowed to get yugo and greece before the war, or just yugo, or just nothing. In which ever case these are the first focuses you need to do. There is no one focus path.

1. Mare Nostrum
2. Industrial Effort I
3. Industrial Effort II
4. Extra Research Slot
5. Carrier Effort (if carrier 4's are allowed use on carrier 3's and 4's, if not then use on 2's and 3's)

"but mooster skeeep-i-o u missed ethopian war logistics"

step 1. put all your divisions everywhere in the southern port of somalia, delete all of them so you only have 24 of your main infantry. (if you are needed to send volunteers to spain then just train some 10 width infantry.)
step 2. let ethopia take everything minus that tile.
step 3. skip ethopian war logistics, push accross the river to get Engineer.

now if this is banned then just dont do carrier effort until after you rush yugo or greece, or if yugo and/or greece rush is not allowed then just do it as your 6th focus.



now after you get the focus skip, there is two things to do, one if there isnt a rule on how long the ethopian war can last then grind a really really stupid general, if not then you better hurry the frick up and cap them before you break a rule bucko. get engineer by attacking accross the rivers around the one tile in southern somalia, try to grind mountaineer and hillfighter and have your allies send ethiopia guns. You can get 3 upgrades attack and adaptable in a 2 year time frame by making 72 10 widths under messi and using a garrison order without anything enabled.

ok, so at this point, If you are allowed to rush yugo and greece before the war, then do it at the same time germany does anschluss, ask when he does anschluss and time it exactly with that. normally his 10th or 11th focus (if only allowed yugo then just make sure that your justification of yugo ends right as germany does anschluss). Make sure war with greece is happening the same time germany does anschluss if both are allowed. If you were doing this then you dont need to grind that hard on ethopia and you can just make 72 10 widths for yugoslavia (give them support arty). Put them on garrison order with nothing enabled and just attack into them and get mountaineer and hillfighter there. Desert fox is overrated, you can get more with hillfighter and mountaineer, it makes holding algeria impossible and torch harder for the allies. If you rush the war then you need to have facs on fighters and like 1.5k by the war, if not make little.

After Yugo and Greece (or if it wasnt allowed just do Italian highways then Triumph in Africa and then go straight to this) do Fighter Innovations for fighter twos, italian highways, and then go down for secret technology. Use the tech research to research Improved and Advanced computing machines. There is no one way to do the italian focus tree because it is most effected by rulesets. Get Air innovations two to help with Air doctrine research. Ethopian war logisitics is good, dont do treaty with germany until you can get advanced synthetics so you can use the bonus on synth threes.

Political Power Buys:



Our boy Mussolini needs his staff, this is the order to base what you do off of.

1. Free Trade
2. War Economy
3. Captain of Industry
4. Industrial Concern
5. Light Air Designer (make sure to have this before fighter twos are done researching)
Decision: Improve worker conditions.
6. War Industrialist (if allowed to take yugo and greece do this later, if not then you are going to need to make dockyards in 38)
7. Artillery Designer
8. Naval Aviation
9. Infantry Specialist
10. Army Defense

after this point do another worker conditions and/or anti democratic raids.



Italian Science:
1st Slot: Basic Machine Tools --> concentrated I-2 --> Carrier Primacy (once done use for intermediate and advanced computers)
2nd Slot: Construction I and II --> Operational Integrity (only go down for fighter veteren Initiative) (once done use for industry)
3rd slot Carrier I's (get licence) --> Superior Firepower
4th Slot: Electronics I and II -> Fighter I's --> 1937 machine tools --> Fighter Two's and Carrier Fighter Two's--> Industrial/Electronic tech
5th Slot: Carrier 2's and 3's, then go into Infantry+arty Tech. Use modernized arty focus for advanced arty.

Question you may have: Why the frick do you need to research 3 doctrines. well, first off, italian infantry isnt even that important, you dont need to join the war until after France falls, and you are only really able to take africa if Germany can send his tanks down there (unless if allies are tard), so navy is first. Infantry tech isnt that important until later on when you get marines.

Why Land doctrine: this is a dumb question, you will need this to hold captured land and take gibralter and the islands.
Why Air Doctrine: 20% Agility from Fighter Inniative applies to carrier based fighters, completely ♥♥♥♥ on any UK player who isnt air controller with your carriers.
Why Naval Doctrine: 10% carrier base air agility lol and sortie.

do this and you will rape the UK fleet, you want four carriers III's by feb 1940 with level 2 deckspace. Max engine on your carrier fighter twos and win the med no problem. Infantry is secondary. Licence Japanese Zeros when possible and use them as carrier fighters.

Construction/Production

Build civs In Rome and Tuscany, after finishing that upgrade the infrastructure in Emilia Romagna to level 9 (use italian highway) and then max it out with civs. Continue building civs where there is Infrastructure until mid 38, then you will want to make dockyards. You want about 32 dockyards, you will get 3 dockyards when you Annex Albania (only annex them once they do Naval Effort)
If allowed Yugo and Greece, compensate by caculating how many dockyards they have so you have 35 - 40 in late 38/early 39.

You want to make 4 Carrier III's, use whatever naval XP you have to upgrade the Carriers to have a little deckspace before making them. Start making mils when you have about 40 docks.

Start of the Game Production

4 on Guns
1 on Support Equipment
4 on Arty
10 on Naval bombers

when you get carrier Fighter twos, drop down to 4 on guns, 2 on support equipment, 4 on arty, and put the rest of your factories on Carrier Fighters, you want like 20 facs on them. The guns you make early you are going to need to use for a large portion of the game. You will get some guns from albania and after taking yugo and greece. You are going to need like 5+ on them from late 38 till war if you want to have enough. Remember to use Air XP to upgrade carrier fighters. Licence japanese zeros when avaliable. If allowed to take yugo and greece then you will need like 25 mils on ordinary fighter twos, as you are expected to contribute signifigantly to axis plane production.

Starting Naval Production:



Italy only starts with two battleships, you will need more for shore bombardment, finish the battleships in queue and get tradebacks for the chromium, you can finish the light cruiser if you want i guess.

Remember to build many carriers when you research them, you need 4. Make sub 3s destroyer 3s and light cruiser 3s, if you have a lot make bbs.

Italy: At War

DUCE DUCE DUCE DUCE DUCE DUCE
https://youtu.be/770R4Zz798s
https://youtu.be/GA4JThRBvck

Italy: At War.



Make the Romans proud.
By This Point, you want like 50 20 widths and 50 10 widths (if not allowed to take yugo and greece)
or 70 10 widths and 40 14 4's (if you took yugo and greece)

A navy of 4 battleships and 4 carriers III's that are as strong as the UKs fleet (assuming he invested extremely heavily into navy). With green air over Central med and some japanese Zeros you will be able to kill the UKs fleet, getting naval over the eastern med is much more difficult.
If he did, Destroyer 3's with escort tech so you can get supply to Libya.

You built up the Infrastructure in Libya to sustain your army

Its Febuary 1940, France has fallen (hopefully) it is now time to envoke your wrath on the poor allied ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ that dont see Benito as hier to the New Roman Empire. You Join the war as German tanks are placed in Southen Italy, your allies put planes over Central Med and you set your navy out, kill the british one (or use the destroyer 3's to just avoid it), and then move into Libya.

The tiles on the border with eygpt are hard to hold, pull back one tile so you hold the mountian and desert tile. The desert tile can only be attacked from one side and you will have green air over Libya. Now 99% of the time forts are bad, but UK doesn't start with fortbuster, so building a fort on this tile behind in the desert will completely neglect any chance of attacking, so you can buy time for germany to get his tanks over.



You and the german tanks quickly storm Algeria and then push toward El Alamein. While Germany uses his Infantry to take Yugo and Greece for you. Keep a fallback line behind it so you dont get paradropped or navally invaded. Give Marsa Mutrah to Romania or Germany to build Radars and max out the airport. Once you have the airport maxed, Wait for a sandstorm, and have germany attack into El Alamein and quickly take the airport by Cario before the sandstorm ends and the allied airforce can kick you out, put the Axis airforce on intercept. If taking this doesnt work, then you make some 14 4 marines and invade Syria, open up another front and then flood it with troops. Use that General you grinded to have limited logistical problems.

At this point, after finishing all the doctrines, be sure to make synthetics for Germany and use the Treaty with germany to rush modern synths.

Ok, so you have Eygpt, now what? Well, you now own the world. Invade Gibralter with Green air and marines, use 20 width cav with logistics to attack into africa. Use your superior navy to Navally invade Raj. If you are a god tier meme lord then you can invade some Portuguese islands and then to the Carribbean islands if your lucky the USA isnt paying attention. then max out the airports. Invade Surniame and cripple allied Plane production, invade other islands and keep naval superiority easily (if usa didnt do an air doctrine hes ♥♥♥♥♥♥, make some land based naval bomber twos so after you deckwipe him you can kill all of his battleships.)
If you are an ascended High IQ memelord invade Flordia with your OP general and then meme the ♥♥♥♥ out of him. You wont be needed for Barb, your job is to terroize the allies and help with D-day defense and holding Egypt.

Now, if the UK does carrier 3's and does air doctrine, you will be killed in central med. The best way to get around this is to make Destroyer III's and upgrade the engine. Use them for convoy escort in the central med and you wont lose supply. If you DO catch this early then it will be a great idea to get destroyer 3's and your convoy escort doctrine tech, and do carriers after you have gaurenteed passage over central med. if you take the Med and cut it off then you are in the clear. Once your fleet has a lot of Zeros, then the allies are basically ♥♥♥♥♥♥.

anyway thanks this is how you play italy in vanilla have fun.

Japan Part 1

If you have clicked on the Japanese section on the guide because you want to know how to become a proud imperial soldier then congratulations, you're a disgusting ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ weeb. The title of "weeb" does not come without its responsiblity, you must learn the role that imperial Japan will have in the second world war. The first thing you have to accept is that you are not the star of the show, the game will be influenced positively or negatively by your gameplay but Japan is often not given the oppurtunity to win the game on it's own. Japan is the big distraction of the allies, while Germany is busy prepparing for Operation Barbarossa the allies are going to be sitting around twidling their thumbs thinking of something to do until D-Day, and luckily for them there is a nation in the east that just so happens to want to take their land. What's different about Japan is that unlike nations such as the Soviet Union or The German Reich, you will have to manage not just the air and the ground, but also the sea. Every decision you make in each one of the main theatres of war will influence the other, winning a naval battle outside of Malaya ensures you will be able to shore bombard the troops stationed there and protect any potential reinforcements, winning the air war in Bengal ensures you will be able to push into India and support the axis by killing allied planes with sick +20% agility fighters, winning the ground war in the East Indies will destroy the Allied capacity to create more planes for the duration of the occupation, ensuring the Germans will have an easy time out producing the Allies and winning the air war.

Difficulty: Intermediate

National Focus Order

Focus order
1. Purge the Kodoha Faction (the fascist path duh)
2. Guide the Zaibatsus (Industry focuses)
3. National Mobilization Law (more industry)
4. National Research Policy(Japan is behind on technology so they will need this more than the Mils)
5. Nationalize War Industry (mmm more industry)
6. National Defense State (total mob before even being at war nice, remember to switch off of limited)
7. Liason Conference (you have to do this one although 1 planning bonus doesn't hurt)
8. Greater East-Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere
9. Marco Polo Bridge Incident

Make the God Emperor Proud



After this point, the focuses are more fluid and can be altered depending on what is needed. The important ones to hit are "Supremacy of Will", "The Zero (instantly gain carrier fighter 2s)", "Fighter Modernization”(heavy fighter and fighter 50% bonus), "Agility Focus"(20% agility for regular fighters and carrier fighters),

Important Note

One of the main problems with Japan is the lack of technology, you will have to start the game out by researching fighter 1's and light tank 2's, as well as researching down the superior firepower doctrine and your Industry.



Fighting china

Fighting china is all about what you can get away with, most games require china to go united front but if they dont he may go subjugate the warlords and get them as puppet or worse get wars against them if this happens you will have a much harder time. For both sides you need to call your puppets into the war if china gets to declare on your puppets it spikes tension massively which helps the allies alot same the other way around if china has puppets then hope your game has rules that he has to call them or you are looking at 7% tension minimum per puppet to get them in the war. China will probably use some variation of 10 width spam so you need to be able to deorg units and cover a wide front to do this I recommend an army of 24 14-4s and another army of 20 widths to cover the flank as you push into china you can also train more if the war goes on long enough, to cover the equipment requirements I recommend 10 facs on guns 10 on artillery and 4 on support equipment from game start again if you want you can get light spgs but beating china is doable without. The first challenge is the border, if he is holding tianjin and beijing then great you win. Use (insert name of general with recon expert) and attack the urban tiles till you get urban assault expert then get improv expert and you’ve basically won the game. If the china player holds behind the first river then you may start to have problems, remember to lower your debuffs in the decisions menu by clicking “escalate the war in china” and if you need to you can pick ichigo but remember that it makes the USA stronger and remember it's all a matter of Can you get away with it? Fighting china is a matter of crossing rivers and deorging him while keeping hold of the land you take with weaker garrison troops. In order to win you only need to take out main china so just focus on that not much point marching through prc or xeibei san ma, unless of course you are grinding a general there.

Naval Warfare

The naval war is won almost soley by your usage of kamakazies. Even if you build carriers and dockyards the entire game, a good United States will always be able to out produce you. This can be countered by your Zero, since the Agility is so good you can kill American fleets easy if they arent careful, use your regular heavy fighters to kamakazie the enemy fleet when in range of an airport. Only fight in range of an airport with fighters.You will lose every other battle with a good United States if playing offensively in a ruleset where carrier stacks are allowed. When it comes to raiding, put 3 subs in every zone you can reach and put 3 destroyers to guard all of your islands. These are in case you catch a bad United States off guard by killing troops in transport.



Taking the rubber

After destroying the navy, you can make a move on the east indies. The most important location to consider is singapore. If a Siam player is avaliable, have them build a level 10 port in Hat Yai and a level 10 airbase in northern malay. If they are not avaliable, kill siam and do it yourself. Put 2000 fighters onto Singapore, and if you are trading fighters negatively, pull out. If you have air superiority, swap some fighters out for CAS or tactical bombers and begin to push into singapore with 14/4's. It is important to put your navy out to the side for shore bombardment.



Fighting the Raj

Similar to the fight in Singapore, it will be decided by air and your general. Push up to the Dacca line and build a level 10 airport in order to combat the British air force in East Bengal. After the Dacca line is broken by 14/4's, the Raj is toast. Do so by using the bridge general guy and fortbuster.

Japan Part 2

Doctrine:

The land doctrine you pick should be superior firepower and air doctrine operational integrity, no naval doctrine is needed to crash planes into boats heavy fighters instead of normal fighters because they are cheaper in oil(something you don't have) and have more range to cover the larger air zones of asia, same logic for tac bomber. The lack of navy may seem odd at first till you realise the absurd power of kamikazes(if kamikazes are banned then do a normal build with zeros and carriers) because of this focus on a strong airforce and land army I don't build light spgs to fight china because of the research and IC costs.


Division Design
At the very start of the game, you will want to delete all of your units except one motorized division, and train it in order to farm army experience. Why should one do this instead of sending volunteers to Spain like other axis majors? Because it is boosting the world tension higher than it needs to be, and if you are in an axis where the Germany or Italy is begging Japan for volunteers for Spain, you have already lost. Start to turn your 24 width infantry division into a proper 40 width 14/4 and switch the motorized when the combat width of that infantry divsion passes this. This is the main division you will use for china, and you should be able to construct around 20 of these divisions before the war if you put around 7 factories on artillery at the beginning of the game. Besides this division template, you will want to construct a 20 width infantry division with nothing but an engineer company for support and a 40 width motorized light tank 2/light tank 2 spg division. The tank build is reccomended for fighting more experienced china's, as they will be unpiercable by the 10 width hordes, with unbelivable amounts of soft attack to pound them to shreds. If you decide not to build tanks in order to save research, then just using 14/4's and naval invasions should also do the trick.

Naval war:

you will still have a fleet but that's not where your power lies your power lies in kamikaze heavy fighters, bait the usa to fight you in range of your airports and watch as his fleet gets melted if you are doing this you wont need naval doctrine but its nice to have I guess

What if kamikaze is banned? Use the designer mitsubishi and get the focus “The Zero” for the strongest carrier fighters in the game and deck wipe any USA who isn't careful, if you get deckwiped somehow remember to manually disengage your fleet so it doesnt fight in a losing battle. Ofc go base strike doctrine for this.



https://youtu.be/Lu4EE05owDI

Siam

Siam is a small, relatively unimportant minor in the Asian theater, good for new players.

Difficulty: Very Easy

Focuses: Economy first, then Ideology (go Fascist for manpower).

PP: Free Trade (be sure to trade the axis back for your rubber) Economy Law, and then Captain of industry. doesnt matter after that.

Research: Industry, eletronics, Superior land doctrine, and Infantry.

As Siam, make 20 widths with shovel and arty, max infrastructure and the airport in Southern Siam. Japan will need that infrastructure and airport if he wishes to take Singapore. You can also do your naval focuses and use the -100% ahead of time bonus for subs on submarine 4s to use in the Pacific.

Manchuko

Manchukuo is simple to play and preferably for new players. A good Manchu though can be a British Raj nightmare.

A simple yet effective playstyle for Manchuo is to do the 10 width spam backed with 40 width mountaineeres. Manchukuo can do a tank strat as well but he will need a good and cooperative Japan if this is to happen. You are Japans ♥♥♥♥♥.

Difficulty: Easy

Manchukuo typicaly goes with mass mob but if you know that your Japan is gonna give you tanks for China you will need to go Superior Firepower to ensure the tanks are not waisted.

Focuses.
1. Pacify the Countryside
2. Invite foreign Investers (Free civs for Japan)
3. Army Modernization
4. Mukden Military Academy
5. Law University
6. Obedience
7. First Five Year Plan
8. Invite Japanese Investors (Again Free civs for Japan)
From here on out its up to you.
Only Vassalize Mengukuo when they have finished all of their economy tree.

During all this your main focus will to build military factories to help you produce your 10 widths and to restore your stabitily as much as you can.

Spain

WIP
As we all know Spain is really ment for the newer players to Hoi. Well in the right hands though of an experienced player Spain can mean the difference of victory or defeat.

Difficulty: Easy/Intermediate

1. Prep for the civil war.

Best way to do this is to gather all of your divisions to the northern riverline running from the tip of Portual to the city of Zargosa and cut strait up. Make sure it is a fallback line so your units are already prepped for when the war kicks off. A good thing to do as well is to build all of you civs in the top left 2 tiles until the war starts due to that fact that everything is predetermined as to where the lines are to be set up and territory divided. You will want as much help as you can get from Germany so accept his lend lease and his volunteers to assist you in the war. (Only accept Japanese lend lease once the Republican Spains navy is destroyed) Save all your pp for when civil war starts. Only spending it when you have 150 saved for start of war. (300 if you are not rushing Militarism)

2. Civil War start.

When the war starts (if you have a good host) he shall pause the game to allow you to allocate your units to where they are needed. There are many ways to play this out. We will go with the most common one which is also the highest success rate. You will have 29 units spawn in the Southern most portion of Spain. With these divs you will need to strategily redeploy them to your fallback line that you have previously made in Step 1. Make sure you path them correctly or the will all die to Republican Spain. You will only need to put at max 5 division on the northern most tile that Republican Spain with start with. Just have 1 division take the port and the rest to hold off the other divs till German troops get there. The biggest nuciansce you will undertake in this endeavor is USSR. He will typiclaly send vols to Rep. Spain and they won't be weak 6 widths like yours will be. You will need Germany to counter his divs and you will need to ensure Germany's divs do not die and get the appropriate support they need.

Here is when you will spend that pp you have saved up. You will go to Total Mob/War Eco (whichever is allowed) and go off of Volunteer only. Then you will take you Infantry Expert to help ensure your ♥♥♥♥♥♥ 6 widths can actually beat Rep Spains ♥♥♥♥♥♥ 6 widths. You use whatever pp you have left after taking Total mob. to get yourself at least 3 Generals.

3. Long wait till 41

After the war ends you will have ample time to build up your forces and your economy. You should take this time to make strong divisions to what Germany will require of you to counter USSR (or France if they somehow live till 41). If he requires that you build oil you will build it so he is able to sustain his Panzer divisions.Make 40 width medium tanks to volunteer to Germany, and if the ruleset allows you to join the war in 41 then make 40 width Infantry to cover your border and D-day. To continue with the economy a good thing to always do is just build civs till 39 and the occasional 40 depending on when you decide yourself to join the war. After that a good ratio is 5 civs to every 3 mils. (It will even out when you trade for resources) Depending on the ruleset you will also be allowed to take Portugal. If so that will be a great boost to your economy and the Axis as well. For you will have all of the Axis tungsten and they will need it.

When dealing with Portugal it is a quick war but one that can turn bad if the Allies guarentee it. Once you win the war the you will take the 4 states in Iberia and nothing else.

4. Be Flexible

Not every game is gonna be the same. Make sure as Spain you are ready to switch everything you are doing to be able to ensure that you will be of help to the Axis. As i stated earlier there are countless strats you can do with Spain. Which in my opinion is what makes them the most fun to play.

Focuses
1.Rush Neutrality Focus(for PP). You do neutrality focus because you get 20% military factory construction speed. You dont need the manpower if you are only allowed to send volunteers.
2.Rush Research slot.
3.Do whatever you want after this cause its basic focus tree and its op, remember to use tank bonus on Medium 2's and 3's

Research.
Always start off with construction 1 2 and producion along with electronics. After your 1st is done get superior firepower to prepare for the civil war. Then your research from then on should be based on what you plan to do for the current match. (Be prepared to change on a moments notice to counter USSR and Allies) Do not waist your 100% research bonuses. Make sure you already have the prior research selected before you do the focus. Use the industry bonus from the first industrial focus to rush Construction 3

Templates.
14 inf 4 arty with Engineers, Recon, Arty, AA, AT (If allowed in war)
20 inf with Engineers, Recon, Arty AA, AT (If allowed in war)
7 inf 2 arty with Engineers, Arty, (AA or AT) (If allowed in war)
10 inf with Engineers, Arty (AA or AT) (If allowed in war)
13 Mediums, 7 Motorized with Arty/Rocket, Signal, AA, Maintanence, Recon (literally the only thing you should be making beside 200 10 widths to be able to volunteer them to germany if only allowed volunteers to germ.)

Hungary

Hungary is another important axis minor, equally important to Romania. In the hands of a competent player is a threat to not be under estimated.

Difficulty: Easy



Focus Path:
1. Secret Rearmament
2. War Games
3. Bled Agreement
4. Army Maneuvers
5. Industrial Revitalization (use for Concentrated Industry III)
6. Reintergrate the Railroads
7. Support Domestic Industry
8. Support Urbanization
9. Institute for Industrial Techniques
10. Announce the Gyor Program. (use for Concentrated Industry IV and V)
11. Mobile Focus
12. The Botond
13. Armored Warfare (use for Medium 2s)
14. Civilian Industry
15. Expand the Manfred Weiss Steel Works
16. Develop Tanks (use for Medium 3s)
17. Expand the Aluminum Industry
18. Expand the Technical Univesity of Budapest
19. Economic Interventionism
20. Strengthen Fascists
21. Renounce the Treaty of Trianon
22. Trade Deal With Germany
23. Joint Aluminum Mining Company

Farm PP and get improved worker conditions and the rest of your military staff after this point.

Research:
Start researching Basic Machine Tools, Light tanks, and Superior Firepower the second the game starts, continue researching these three until the end of the game. You want to rush Concentrated V, Medium 3's, and have the Superior Firepower land doctrine fully researched by the time the war starts. Use the 4th research slot for Electronics research, and your 5th research slot to get the needed support companies for your tanks. After Researching Light Twos, Liscence German Medium 1's whenever they are avalible for the research bonus. same goes for medium 2's and 3's.

PP buys:

1. Silent Workhorse
2. Free Trade
3. Partial Mobilization
4. Captain of Industry
5. Industrial Concern
6. Tank Designer
7. Military Theroist
8. Army Offensive
9. Armor Specialist
10. Calvary
Do improved worker conditions after this, no other needed political power buys until you are able to switch on to War Economy or Total Mob. Before going on Total Mob switch off of Disarmed Nation.

Tank Divisions:
7 Mot 13 Medium + engi, recon, main, support arty, signal

Hungarian tanks are super strong, much better then Romanian tanks thanks to the Armor Specialist Hungary starts with that Romania doesn't get. Romanian air controller is much better then Hungary because Romania not only gets a production bonus to fighters, but he also gets 15% agility for all domestic made fighters, meaning he should always be making fighters since they will be superior to German and Italian ones.

At the start of the game, it is best to produce infantry equipment and arty to lend lease to Germany once the war starts, until you have motorized and medium tanks to produce. Remember to one division train so you can have your template ready before war!

If France is Going AT france then instead of Mediums, make Heavy tanks first, and then after you beat france keep 1 or 2 heavy tank divisions to break El Alamein and then convert over to make Mediums for war with USSR.

Romania

Romania is an Important axis minor, as Romania you are responsible for providing Fighter Twos for the Axis, you are the largest source of Oil from the start of the game, and, you are the air controller.

Difficulty: Easy (If you dont know how to micro planes then dont play it or germany will scream at you)

First PP buys: ICAR air designer first, then Free Trade, Partial Mobilization, Captain of industry, and lastly, Industrial Concern.

Focus: the absolute first thing you should do as Romania is start Expand the Airforce, and go down toward IAR 80 and use the bonus on Fighter Twos. Once you research fighter twos, do the CAS focus and research CAS 2s.

After finishing this, do Insititue Royal Dictaroship and get King Micheal's coup whenever is possible. Go for the Royal Foundation, then start doing Preserve Greater Romania and doing your economy focuses, dont do Force Abdication or Balkans Dominance.



Research:
1st research slot: at the start of the game start researching concentrated industry, be sure to be researching Concentrated II before you do the Civil Works focus. Use the research bonus to rush concentrated IV Industry, then start construction research.
2nd research slot: should be on Operational Integrity air doctrine
3rd research slot: Use to research Fighter 1's and 2's. After finishing those, start researching RADAR.
4th research slot: Use for Industry, focus on excavation so you have more resources on the market for the Axis.

Production:
The first thing you should do is max out your infrastructure in Muntenia, after that, start building civs, with concentrated 5 Romania will have a large number of building slots. Dont build in the two provinces bordering USSR, as they will end up being ceded to the Soviets. Romania has a 15% Agility modifier from the Air Designer, meaning his fighters are the best in the Axis beside Japan. He also gets a -10% production cost for all planes. All of his factories should be on planes, since they will outclass German and Italian ones. Be sure to upgrade them to Max engine, range, and weapons when possible.

Bulgaria

Bulgaria is the least important Axis minor in europe, a good nation for new players seeking to learn the game. you could entirely mess up this build and literally nobody would care.

Difficulty: Very Easy

While it is argued what bulgaria should do, it is most commonly accepted the best thing for Bulgaria to do is to make medium tanks. (beside being eaten by Germany or Romania) Bulgaria can easily do light tanks or rocket motorized infantry, but none can truely compete with Medium Tank Bulgaria. This nation guide will explain to you how to rush Medium tank 3's as Bulgaria for the Axis and min max your economy.



Focuses:
for most nations with a default focus tree we would just give the basics of what to do, but for medium tank Bulgaria you must be percise in what you do, the margin of error is small. Doing something out of order can seriously hurt you. (not really your team, if you ♥♥♥♥ up then you get annexed, most germany's have short temper for Bulgaria players) The reason why you dont do PP first and next construction is so you can use the research bonus for Concentrated III industry, if you dont rush it then you run out of building slots and this build fails.

1. Political Effort
2. Collectivist Ethos
3. Nationalism Focus
4. Naval Effort (delete dockyards for additional building slots)
5. Industrial Effort (use research bonus for concentrated III)
6. Construction Effort I
7. Construction Effort II
8. Infrastructure Effort I
9. Infrastructure Effort II
10. Extra Research Slot
11. Construction Effort III
12. Army Effort
13. Mechanization Effort (motorized focus bypasses because bulgaria starts with it researched)
14. Armor Effort (use for Medium II's and III's, Liscence from germany for increased research time, be sure to get trade backs)
15. Militarism
16. Military Youth
17. Paramilitarism
18. Ideological Fanatism
19. Doctrine Effort I
20. Doctrine Effort II
21. Technology Sharing (do this focus as soon as possible, if germany goes to war early then do it after Idelogical Fanatism)
22. Secret Weapons.

after this point, start saving political power to do Improved worker conditions and war propaganda until 100% stab 100% war sup, once you research that point then do the Armament Effort focuses.

Research:

Do exactly what this says:

1st slot: Always be researching Tanks, Licence them from germany and get trade backs to research them faster. Once you get medium 3's use them for Signal, Recon, Engineer, and Maintainence support companies.
2nd slot: Always be researching concentrated Industry from day one of the game, until you get Concentrated III, then do Constrution I, Improved Machine Tools. After all of this start doing construction research and then Concentrated IV when its no longer ahead of time.
When you get the 3rd Research slot: Research Superior Firepower land doctrine, branch right first and left the second branch.
When you get the 4th Research slot: use for Electronics research and pair with secret weapons to catch up on your eletronics tech to the other majors.

Political Power buys:

This is even more important then doing research correctly, screwing it up can lead to worker strikes or desertions

1. Partial Mobilization
2. Free Trade
3. Captain of Industry
4. Industrial Concern
5. Tank Designer
6. Fascist Demegogue
7. Decision: Open up politcal discourse
8. Decision: Hold National Referendum
9. Decision: Improve Worker Conditions
10. Decision War Propaganda aganist (whatever nation shows up)
11. Decision: Improve Worker Conditions

(DON'T JOIN THE WAR UNTIL YOU ARE OVER 80% STABILITY AND 70% WAR SUPPORT, OR YOU GET DESERTIONS AND STRIKES)

Once you have 80% stability and 70% War support

12: Military Theroist
13: Calvary Expert
14: Army Regrouping
15: Army Defense
16: Total Mobilization

After all of this, just start doing improve worker conditions and war propagana until 100% in both.

Industry:

From day one of the game: Make civs, once you get to 20 make mils. Build in high infrastructure areas.



Divisions:

7 motorized 13 medium tanks, add Engi, recon, maintainence, and signal
Bulgaria doesnt start with arty I researched, and its a pain to research with the already tight research path. once you finish your support company research, do towed arty and add a factory to make them, and add support arty to your tank divisions. Be sure to be 1 division training from day one of the game.

---Nation Specific Stuff: (ALLIES)---

United Kingdom

Who wants to play as a stinky smelly anglo with no teeth? Literally nobody, the entire game is just screaming at your commonwealth to stop being completely retarded and bad. You are the plane ♥♥♥♥♥ and cant do anything beside make planes and infantry until you win the Air war, then you can make tanks which can be fun, but that only happens when everyone on your team isnt a complete brainlet. You are the Tard Wrangler, vet your commonwealth well and know how to play all of the commonwealth because it is your responsibility to make sure they do ♥♥♥♥ correctly.

Difficulty: Intermediate

Focuses: First go limited rearmed and if germany does rhineland first focus wait 10 days before picking your next focus incase you somehow get a lucky spanish civil war to go on rearment. Then you want to rush commonwealth ties and first develop raj then south africa because they dont have depression. then develop canada australia and new zealand in that order. Now if at any point when doing this you get enough world tension to do shadow scheme do that and go down that tree instead. Make sure you use the industry buff to either rush construction 3 or 4. after that you should keep developing colonies until you can get general rearment, then when getting that rush aircraft production group for the fighter production and then go down to carrier focus to get carrier 3s. Also gey your radar research bonuses and Cryptologic bomb bonuses

Politcal Power:
Silent workhorse
Free trade
industrial concern
germand and italian scientists
buy war industrialist when you start to build mils, get partial mob as soon as you can and try to get your infantry expert and army defense guy before the war starts. then focus your pp on getting all the churchhill speeches , the rest of your high command, and manpower laws

Industry: you want to put 1 mil each at the start of the game on guns support equipment artillery and motorized, put the rest of your mils on fighters and keep putting any new mils on fighters until when the war starts with germany, then see if you are beating germany in the air if you are then you can move new mils you get to guns and artillery but make sure you keep ahead of germanies plane count. At the start of the game until mid 1938 you should be making civs in your 90 infrastructure and your 80 infrastructure provinces in the UK, then in 1938 build up max level airports in Aswan and Eastern desert for the battle of egypt, put max level radar in aswan and also build a fort in alamein as big as you can. then upgrade the port and infrastructure in alamein as much as you need for supply then start making mils in your highest infrastructure provinces.

Research: Keep one research slot dedicated to researching superior firepower ( go integrated support and shock and awe) then with your first other 3 research slots research basic machine tools carrier 2s and fighter 1s( with a russian license). When you get your 5th research slot use that on Base strike naval doctrine going down right side. Make sure that when you are getting your 50% bonus on industry tech that you are researching or have researched construction 3 (or 2 if you get this early) and spend the research bonus on construction 4( or 3 if early). Make sure you keep up to date on your radar tech using your focus to get max level radar, and using your Cryptologic bomb focus to get max level research tech and as high level as possible decryption.

Naval Strategy: At the start of the game put every single dockyard you have on carriers ( before doing this strat make sure Australia will build you fighter 2 carrier fighters) license carrier 2s off of usa and research them. keep making your carriers and you should have 11-12 by the time the war starts. have australia lend lease you carrier fighters and have your carriers have only carrier fighters. Make sure before the war starts you have the atlantic covered with at least 3 destroyers per sea zone in defense of german submarines. Put your whole fleet in the med ( you should be safe in the channel after you destroy the italian fleet you may send a part of your fleet there for security, the netherelands and the scandinavian countries should make a good meatshield around the main island to last long enough for you to rush back if germany tries an early sealion). You should be able to get naval superiority over italy.

Battle For Africa:
The main thing about holding egypt is green air. With green air you will hold egypt easily but with yellow or red air the germans will push. Make sure alamein is highest fort level and build max level airports in aswan and eastern desert along with max level radar in Aswan ( this makes no real life sense but the middle of the egypt air tile is there so you want max efficiency on your fighters. you need to make sure you keep naval superiority in the med to get battleship support and to make sure the axis cannot get cyprus for the extra airports on it for them to get air superiority in egpyt. You should land in crete with 14/4s to take another source of air superiority away from the axis. With south african tanks you should be able to hold with air superiority. After a while you should be able to push the axis out of africa with south africa/australian tanks. After taking africa you are going to want to invade italy this should be your invasion plan when taking italy over. Once you take libya you have forced italy to guard all their ports which makes doing a dday much easier.

Tard Wrangling: The most important skill a UK can have is to be a good tard wrangler. Make sure you vet your allies team and also make sure they have a few IQ points to rub together. If one of your commonwealth members is going to do a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ strat ( like mechanized canada) tell him to do the good strat, in this example that would be air controller canada. Make sure you read on how each commonwealth country should be played and make sure to send all your airplanes to canada and also make sure to get your low IQ france player to send his motorized to australia and south africa.

United States

Playing Big Daddy America is fun. You will have the biggest navy and one of the biggest armies if not THE biggest in the game. Playing the USA is like playing the Soviet Union but, you also get to do naval combat. Most rule sets force you to wait until either 1941 or the fall of France to join the war, whichever comes first. So, you start with a terrible economy from the Great Depression and you can't fix that until the Fascists and Communists do things to raise the world tension. You are the most powerful Allied nation. You will be responsible for the production of a huge army, airforce and navy and helping out globally. You are the easiest nation to play since in 99% of games you will never even be invaded. You just have to know how to set up your military production and micro your units. Make sure that you and the rest of the Allies faction are buying all resources that you need from the USSR before buying from anyone else.

Difficulty: Intermediate/Hard

FOCUS PATH:

1 WPA, use that political power for the silent workhorse
2 Comitte on Technocracy, for the computer research bonuses
3 Reaffirm Monroe Doctrine
4 Carribean Sphere, for political power
5 Central America, for political power
6 The Neighbors, for political power
7 South America, for political power
8 Bureau of Ships, for ship production speed
9 Carrier Primacy, for carrier research bonuses
10 Air War Plans Divison, for fighter production speed
11 Air Support, for CAS production speed
12 War Propaganda, for Volunteer Only
13 Prepare Intervention, for Isolation
14 Military Construction, for infrastructure
15 The Giant Awakes, for Civillian Economy
16 Limited Intervention, for Limited Conscription
17 Extra Research Slot, for more research
18 Issue War Bonds, to get rid of the Great Depression

Once you get rid of the Great depression then you can do whatever you want really, this is the most important part of the USA. This focus path might not be able to be followed exactly due to the world tension in your specific game. If you can't continue down the focuses that are locked by world tension then you could go for the CAS research bonus or Fund the Navy focus and things like that. Pax Americana is useless, killing Venezuela early is useless since the Axis wont be able to trade with them once the war starts anyways. Maybe kill Venezuela later in game if you have nothing else to do and need more oil.

EARLY GAME INDUSTRY BUIILD:

Construct enough dockyards so that you have 35 dockyards. 5 for convoys and 30 for carriers. Then just make military factories in your highest infrastructure areas for the rest of the game. Do not build civilian factories or infrastructure.


MILITARY PRODUCTION BUILD:

Start the game doing 1 division training and getting your templates squared away. You only need 1 factory on guns, artillery and support equipment. The rest should be on fighters and CAS. In the early game you will mostly be making fighters to give the Allies a fighting chance in the air war. Start producing Carriers from day 1 and make them the whole game. Don't make battleships. As soon as you have Medium tank 1s researched then start producing them. You will need American tanks for D-Day or Torch. If you're a USA that doesn't make tanks for D-day then just uninstall the game and don't come back. You NEED tanks. You will also want to be making a sizable amount of strong 14/4 infantry divisons. Don't spam out weak troops. You need to make your troops as high quality as possible. Make sure you produce enough carrier fighters for your carriers. You will have around 18-20 total carriers by the start of the war with this build so you will need a lot of carrier fighters.

Make sure you put your tanks under Patton and use Eisenhower for your main army for the supply reduction

RESEARCH:

Prioritize your land doctrine, industry and computing tech first. You have enough research bonuses to rush the 1942 level computers from the start of the game. Do it. Licence motorized, fighter 1s, light tanks and medium tanks from the USSR to help your research. Licence fighter 2s from Australia. Make sure that you start researching light tanks and mediums tanks very early so you can actually produce them. Research Carrier 3 and 4 once you get the research bonus for them. Research the Base Strike Naval Doctrine for the ones that buff carriers and eventually do the operational integrity air doctrine to get the 20% agility bonus for your carrier fighters. When you find spare research slots a bit later into the game then upgrade your infantry and artillery. Excavation technology is also very important.

POLITICAL POWER PURCHASE ORDER:

1 Silent workhorse
2 General Electric
3 Omar Bradley Superior Firepower Army Theorist
4 Light Air Designer
5 War Industrialist
6 Heavy Tank Designer (affects all tanks not just heavy tanks)
7 Pacific Fleet Designer
8 Infantry Equipment Designer

No matter the order if you have the ability to get Extensive Conscription and Parital Mobilization then do it immediately. Also, once the war starts you need to get on Total Mobilization ASAP

ELECTIONS:

Pick the Democrats for both elections so that you can get the stability and so that you can use General Electric to rush your electronic research. You don't need the Industrial Concern that the Republicans give you

WAR MANEUVERS:

Do not put your Pacific Fleet where Japan can get air cover or this will happen to your fleet.

Use it defensively in the Pacific only in blue water. As you train new divisons make sure to ship them out to the UK as soon as possible. It takes a long time for troops to cross the Atlantic so don't procrastinate doing it. Prepare for D-Day in the UK. When you do your D-Day landing make sure to invade as many places along the European coast as possible from Southern Spain to Northern Denmark. Split the Axis forces as much as possible. Make your D-Day a micro hell for them.

America is the Arsenal of Democracy, without your help then civilization itself will be destroyed

France

WIP
So, You are looking to play France? Why, why in gods name do you want to play France, that one nation that died 6 months into the war. Are you actually not interested in playing the game past 1940? 90% of France mains only play France because they are French, and almost always the best France players are French. They are the masters of surrendering and eating cheese, thats why they are the only people who you find actually playing as the surrender monkeys. If you are French and want to carry on the French legacy or just a random turd who wants to be a baugette then just read this fam.

Difficulty: Intermediate.



There are two main ways to play France, and both play completely differently. This section will divide into two very simple parts, the "I want to try to hold France" or "I don't want to try that hard to hold France" You only do one or the other, there is no in between. All out or all in.

1. I don't want to try that hard to hold France.

This is probably less perferable in Vanilla, but works. This build is extremely easy. When doing this build you dont build anything in France, and instead only build military factories in your colonies (dont build in indochina) You can build in Algeria, sub saharan africa, Syria, the American colonies, and New Caledonia.

Production: First few factories on guns, any additional factories you make should go on Fighter twos. Build Mils only in your colonies from day one of the game.
make battlecruiser twos.

Research:
1st Slot: Keep on industry, Do basic machine parts, then Concentrated I II and III.
2nd Slot: Use on Fighter 1's, then on fighter 2's. After this use it for Electronics research.
3rd Slot: Use for Superior Firepower land doctrine (branch right first, right second time)
when you get 4th: Use on Tank Research
when you get 5th: Use on Infantry stuff.

Focus Path:
1. Rush Strengthen Government
2. Do Air Focus and Fighter Research (for fighter twos)
3. Do Algerian Industry and Research slots
4. Do Offensive focus and go for Army Reform. (use medium tank research for medium 3's)

PP buys:
1. Silent Workhorse
2. Light Air Designer
3. Free Trade
4. Captain of Industry
5. Economy Law
6. Military Theorist
7. Arty Company

Change your economy law after this whenever you can. Then do Army Defense, and after this do improve worker conditions until 100% stability and War Propaganda until 100% War Support.

Goal:
You want 20 width Infantry to cover maginot and the Belgian border, just to slow down the Germans temporarly. Have some pure Infantry 40 widths for North Africa and be sure you and your allies try to take Libya. If France doesnt intend on holding then he has no excuse to not take Libya since the allies can focus their efforts there. Lend Lease all the fighters you made to Canada and then wait for D-day. After France falls stop making as many fighters, by then you can use your industry to make 40 width Infantry and medium tanks to help in D-day. Don't hold Corsica it can screw with North African supply.
Dont let the Germans grind good generals, once they break with tanks run the ♥♥♥♥ away, remember to convert your mainland factories to mils to not contribute to germanys civ count.

2. I actually want to try to hold France for as long as possible.

Oh so you have a pair of balls and is actually interested in melting the Germans, well bud we got something to do.

Two things:
1. If you want to end the game in 1940 and have comptent allies build in France for maximum possible factories for tanks and AT infantry. Hard research construction instead of concentrated.
2. If you want to hold France for 6-8 months and withdraw then do whats said below.

Focus Path:
1. Rush Strengthen Government.
5. Algerian France and 1st research slot.
9. Rush Army Reform (Go Defensive and use the research bonus for Heavy 3's, and use the AT research for 1941 AT tech)
14. rush to get 3rd research slot

Forts suck, at this point just do no focuses to finish up your PP buys

PP buys:
1. Silent Workhorse
2. Free Trade
3. Captain of Industry
4. Artillary Designer
5. Industrial Concern
6. Heavy Tank Designer
7. Calvary Expert
8. Defensive Expert

If during any point you can switch onto Partial, drop what you are doing and go for that.

Research:
1st slot: On Superior Firepower land doctrine
2nd slot: Hard research AT tech, do it the entire game.
3rd slot: Industry, get concentrated 3 so you dont run out of building slots in the colonies.
when you get 4th slot: Use for Infantry tech
when you get 5th slot: Use for Heavy tanks.

Construction: Build only mils in the colonies from day one of the game, if trying to end the game in 40 then build civs first in mainland france till late 37 then make mils.

Production:
1 fac on guns
1 fac on support equipment
1 fac on arty
2 fac on AA
rest of facs: On AT (until you have enough, then take some off for Heavy tanks)

You want to have 25 on AT by mid 38, after you have 48 cavalry divisions on the field keep 2 on Nice, 3 on maginot planes tile, and the rest of them on the Belgian border. hold the Italain mountains with plain 20 width infantry and hold the Maginot mountains with 20 width infantry. Keep some AT infantry there just in case if germany got ballsy and wanted to push.

Divisions:
7 mot 13 heavy tank + engi arty
9 cav 2 line AT + engi arty aa (if you have a surplus of AT then make 8 cav 1 art 3 AT)
10 inf + engi arty aa (good for holding mainland aganist 14 4s and other stuff.)

Basic Rundown of what to do:

Ok congrats you can pierce German tanks with your infantry, the only way Germany can pierce them is by making divisions with only 3 motorized and going Mobile Warfare, no good player would go MW in vanilla. You win the game, congrats.

The only counter to this build is German 14 4's, if the Allies win the air war over France then germany cant push, if not, then UK and commonwealth need their own infantry in France to stop the German 14 4s. Since medium tanks cant push, a good germany will make 14 4s or have Hungary make heavy tanks, which will ♥♥♥♥ your ♥♥♥♥.

If you succeed, then you have denied Germany from tungeston to make Medium 3's, you denied him from your factories. It takes a long time but if Germany is good he WILL push you out, it will just take him a while. This is a game killer, and will hurt Germany A LOT.

Canada

BURN THE WHITE HOUSE


Easy to learn and play if you just listen to your damn UK.

Difficulty: Easy (KNOW HOW TO MICRO PLANES FFS)



Focus:
1. RCAF Station Borden
2. We have the Hurricane (use for Fighter 2's)
3. Rowell-Sirois Commision
4. National Housing Act
5. Dollar-a-year-men (use for construction 3)
6. Army Modernization
7. CMP Truck (use for mechanized I)
8. A motorized army (use for mechanized II)
9. Red Deer Training Camp
10. The Valentine Tank

(((READ)) after this point, if you are able to do Defense of Canadian Regulations,stop what you are doing and go for that (the stuff below isnt that important, minus maybe shadow factories), get your research slot and go for national steel car, then go down to IF day, then come back for this.

11. Strengthen Commonwealth ties
12. Montreal Labatory Collaberation
13. Shadow Factories
14. Camp X
15. Supply the Empire
16. Turner Valley Oilfield
17. Aluminium Company of Canada

Research:
1st slot. Fighter 1's, then fighter 2's, then tanks.
2nd slot. Electronics I, then motorized, then go into Superior Firepower Right first left second time.
3rd slot. Industry Tech, rush construction 3, then go for basic machine tools and use for industry
4th slot. Mechanized, Eletronics tech and guns.



Industry: Build only where you have highest infrastructure, build civs until late 38, then do mils, use your dockyards for convoys to send to the UK to become independent.

2 fac on guns
1 on support equipment
2 on arty

Drop down to 1 on motorized, 1 on guns, 1 on support equipment, 1 on arty and put the rest on tanks and mechanized when you get them, dont trade for any of these resources.

Politcal Power:
1. Silent Workhorse
2. Free Trade
3. Captain of Industry
- Decision: worker conditions
4. Stability guy
5. Tank Designer.
6. Industrial Concern
7. Military Theorist
8. Infantry Designer
9. Panzer Expert
10. Armor Offense

South Africa

South Africa is an important nation in the allies that is relatively easy to play. South Africa is vital for holding North Africa aganist the Italians. A good nation for new players.

Difficulty: Easy (dont ♥♥♥♥ up or you lose Africa)



Focus Path:
1. South African Railways
2. Expand the Mining Industry
3. Special Service Battalion
4. Q Service Corps
5. SA Engineering Corps
6. South African Special Forces
7. Armor Effort (use for Heavy 2's)
8. Infrastructure Effort
9. South African Steel
10. Expand The Rand Mines
11. Fund the Unversity of South Africa
12. Establish Atomics Energy Board
13. The Cape Defense Institute
14. Support the Policy of Appeasement
15. Police Windhoek
16. Supress the Stormjeers
17. Heavy Engineering (use for concentrated IV)
18. Armament Effort
19. Pretoria Arms
20. War Measures Act
21. Native Laws Amendment Act
22. Work for All Poor
23. Outlaw Strikes
24. Emergency Workers.

After this point, you can Secure Interests in Africa or go down for Reconstitute the Cape Corps.
OR
Farm PP to do improve worker conditions and war propganda.

Research:

1st Research Slot: Eletronic 1 and 2, then Heavy Tank 1's and 2's, then support companies like signal, mantianence, recon, and engi.
2nd Research Slot: Concentrated I, then go do Mobile Warfare, branch left first, then right second branch.
3rd Research Slot: Industry stuff
4th Research Slot: Eletronics Research and guns.

PP buys:

1. Silent Workhorse
2. Free Trade
3. Medium Tank Designer
4. Captain of Industry
5. Industrial Concern
6. Military Theroist
7. Armor Specialist

After this point, do worker conditions until 100% stability. During any point where War Support is high enough to switch to partial mob, drop whatever you were saving PP for and switch to it.



Divisions:
7 mot 13 heavy arty, engi, recon, maintainence, signal.
you dont need infantry unless if you are worried about being memed by Italy.

Production: Have UK lend lease you motorized since you dont start with it researched, use your one factory for guns and when you get additional military factories have 1 on guns, 1 on arty, 1 on support equipment, and rest on heavy tanks.
Make lots of Civilian factories up until you can switch onto a better mobilization law, then start making/converting mils. You need one fully equiped tank division by the war to place in Egypt to help hold aganist the stupid ugly spaghetti people.

Be sure to 1 division train from day one of the game, and make the division to 50 combat width for maximum Xp gain. place it in el alamein so once you have enough tanks you can just convert it.

Raj

Raj is the Soviet Union for Japan, you are the nation that has a easy early game all the way until 1941 when you are forced to deal with the Japanese and hold them off. Good nation for experienced players who don't want to play a major. Keep the Japanese at bay and support your Allies!


Difficulty: Intermediate

Focus Path: (note, not everything is exact, certain focuses like Provincial Elections are locked behind world tension, if you gain the world tension to do this focus, drop what you were doing and go for that, after doing the needed stuff there then go back and finish what you didn't already do.)

1. Great Indian Railway
2. Industrial Expansion
3. Tata Steel
4. Assam Oil
5. Indian Institute of Science
6. East India Railways
7. Intergrate Princly States
8. Ishapore Arsenal
9. Provincial Elections
10. Indian National Congress
11. Cripp's Mission
12. Two Nation Theory
13. Princely State Donations
14. Imperial Service Troops
15. Lessons of the Great War
16. Indianisation of the Army
17. Lions of the Great War
18. The Bangalore Torpedo (Can be switched with 16)
19. Indian Gurkhas

At this point, you can do 1 of 2 things. Get the extra research slot and minor upgrades to your units. Go on Increase Autonomy to become independant faster to allow you to get off of volunteer only.


Research:
1st slot: Industry, Do Construction I and II then start doing Basic Machine tools and concentrated Industry.
2nd slot: Use for Superior Firepower (Branch right first time, left second time) OR Grand Battleplan Land doctrine
3rd slot; Use for Electronics and Infantr/arty tech Research so you have good troops for Japan. Be sure to get good engineer companies for high entrentchment.
At some point you will take your research off of industry improvement to get yourself level 2 AA. It will be needed to keep you from getting deorged from CAS and to also pierce the Japanese light tanks if he attempts to push with them.


Production:
1 fac on Support equipment
1 fac on Arty
3-5 facs on AA when able
rest of facs: on Guns.

PP buys:
1. Silent Workhorse
2. Free Trade
3. Captain on Industry
4. Popular Figurehead
5. Industrial Concern
6. Infantry Equipment Designer
7. Military Theorist
8. Infantry Expert
9. Army Defense

During any point you have the War Support to switch off of Civilian Economy, drop whatever you are saving PP for and switch.



Divisions:
40 width Infantry + Engi Support Arty, AA
14 Infantry with 4 Line Arty (SF)
20 Infantry (GP)
20 width infantry + Engi Support Arty (Port guard and Ethiopia)
40 width Mountaineers + Engi Support Arty, AA

War:
There are two lines you can hold, the Dakka line or the Mountain Line. Personally, i feel the moutain line is better because you are holding more territory. Hold a line of 14 4 Infantry
Only hold mountain line if the Allies are able to spare planes for you and you have a sufficiant amount of divisions to be able to hold more ground.

Notes: Build airports for planes on eastern border. As well as a lvl 5 airport in Dehli. Upgrade your Naval base to 10 at West Bengal if you need assistance from the Allies with troops. If your Lucky one of the other allied minors will provide you with AA so you may not have to build it yourself. Never forget about your furthest north tile in West Bengal. Put that 40 width Mountaineer there to ensure it holds. Ensure those divs in ethiopia have green naval coverage or they will be sunk by a good Axis, or just use the for El-Alemain and Alexandria.

Australia

Australia is a good nation for new players, but in the hands of a good player (or just by following this guide) can be the most frustrating thing the axis has to deal with. Make sure to make the Aussies proud with your extreme amounts of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ after you get sick encirclements aganist the Axis for your epic HOI4 montage.

Difficulty: Easy



Australia always makes tanks, since he gets 3 50% research bonuses for tanks. This guide will explain how to make your economy strong and have Medium tanks to use aganist the Axis, and rush Fighter 2's for your faction.

Focus Path:
1. Expand the RAF
2. CAC Boomerang
3. Standard Guage Railway
4. Support Policy of Appeasement
5. Industries Assistance Cooperation (use for concentrated industry III)
6. Western Australian Government Railroads
7. South Australian Housing Act
8. Additionial Militia Training
9. Royal Australian Arty
10. Diamler Dingo
11. Sentinel Tank Project (use for Medium 2's and 3's)
12. Establish Advisory War Council
13. National Security Act
14. Army Inventions Directorate
15. Civil Construction Corps
16. Department of Supply and Development
17. Allied Works Council
18. Expand Lithgow Small Arms Factory
19. Expand the Northern Railway
20. Invest In Victory
21. Squash the Squander Bugs
22. Fight Work or Perish
23. Research Collaboration
24. Rationing and Recycling
25. Volunteer Defense Corps
26. Citizen Military Forces
27. Strengthen Ties with the UK
28. Adopt Westminister
29. Classify Aliens
30. Fund Australian Defense Research

at this point, use your PP for decisions like improve worker conditions or worker propganda.

PP buys:
1. Partial Mobilization
2. Silent Workhorse
3. Free Trade
4. Armor Designer
5. Industrial Concern
6. Army Offensive

Everything else for Government as Australia is useless, at this point use your PP for Improve Worker Conditions or War Propaganda.
Once you can switch onto War Economy or Total Mob do so, you dont need to worry about Conscription Law until right before you go on Total Mob, since you are only making tanks.
Later in the game when Japan can join the war, might want to get the Infantry Genius and start making some 40 width Infantry to garrison your ports so the Japanese cant invade you.

Production: Build Civs, yes you have the great depression and high consumer goods, but the only reason you dont make civs as the USA is because you start with 130. Australia only has 11, you need civs so you can make military factories once you are off of the Great Depression.
Build Civs in high infrastructure areas, and be sure to have your Concentrated III so you dont run out of building slots. Once in the war start makign tons of military factories so you can produce more tanks.

1 fac on guns
1 fac on support equipment
1 fac on arty
The rest of your factories: Place on Fighter 2's, even though you dont have an air designer and your planes are a little worse off, you have nothing better to produce and by making them you support your faction. Lend lease all the fighters you make to Canada.



Once you get medium 2s:
1 fac on guns
1 fac on support equipment
1 fac on arty
1 fac on motorized
rest of facs: on Medium Tanks. (dont make Medium 1s)

Research:
1st slot: Use for Industry, Start researching Basic Machine parts, Concentrated I and II. Be sure to be researching Concentrated II by the time the focus Industries Assistance Cooperation ends so you can use the bonus on Concentrated III. Then start doing Construciton and Machine Tools.
2nd slot: Use for Tanks, Research light tank I and II's, then Medium 1's, then Motorized (should only take a few days to research with a licence). Use the Research bonuses you get for Medium 2's and 3's. After getting medium 3's use the slot for Engineer, Recon, Maintainence, and Signal companies.
When you get 3rd slot: Use for the Superior Firepower land doctrine. (branch left and right second time) whenever the land doctrine is complete, use for Electronics.
When you get the 4th slot: Use for electronics research to catch up.



Divisions:
40 width tanks 7 mot 13 Medium tank + engi recon maintainence signal and arty.

have a few of these Infantry Divisions for Japan in late 1940.

20 width Infantry 10 inf + arty engi.

Be sure to 1 division train from day one of the game!

New Zealand

New Zealand is literally the easiest nation in the game with a focus tree. Recommended for new players. New Zealand just makes light tanks, doesnt get any easier then that. GTFO with your ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ big bob superheavy tank memes, you suck and you are the reason why nobody wants to play UK. Rush fighter twos and do whatever literally nobody cares.

Difficulty: Very Easy



Focus:

1. Expand the NZPAF
2. Form the RNZAF
3. Fighter Focus (rush fighter twos you useless ♥♥♥♥.)
4. Army Reforms
5. Bob Semple tank (use for light 1s i guess)
6. Schofield tank (use for light 3's)
7. National Roads Board
8. New Zealand Steel
9. Bureau of Industry
10. Department of Scientific and Industrial Research
11. Wairarapa Sheep Farms
12. Industrial Conscription
13. Chariton Automatic Rifle
14. Domestic Arms Industry
15. Big Think
16. Expand Univesity of Auckland
17. The First Labor Government
18. Strenghten the Commonwealth
19. Ratana Alliance
20. Social Security Act
21. The Manpower Act
22. Amend the Moari Affairs Act

nobody cares what you do at this point, just save PP for improve worker conditions and war propaganda.

PP buys:
1. Free Trade
2. Partial Mobilization
3. Heavy Tank Designer (gives bonuses to not just heavy tanks)
- improve worker conditions
4. Industrial Concern
5. Military Theroist
6. Infantry Equipment Company
7. Limited Conscription
8. Army Regrouping Expert
9. Army Offense Expert



Research:
1st slot: First eletronics tech, Fighter 1's, Fighter 2's, then light tanks.
2nd slot: Start researching industry, hard research concentrated I II and III from day one of the game. After that start doing machine parts and then hard research concentrated IV.
When you get 3rd slot: Use for Superior Firepower land doctrine (branch right first, left second time)
When you get 4th slot: Use for Electronics research
When you get 5th slot: Use for Infantry Tech (i guess)
When you get 6th slot: wtf wait why does NZ have 6 research slots, you know what, just start researching Big Bob tanks because why not. Dont actually make them just have them researched and then give the UK have a migrane over your funny big bob memes lol ex de. Actually, just kidding, and if you thought that was funny then i recommend you neck yourself.



Production:
1 fac on guns
1 fac on support equipment
1 fac on arty
1 fac on motorized
Rest of factories on Light tanks.

Build civs until you are low on building slots then do mils, and then start converting some of your civs over to mils.

Divisions:
40 width 7 mot 13 light tank + recon engi maintainence signal arty

Make infantry late 40 to garrison your ports and singapore.

20 width 10 inf + engi arty

Be sure to 1 division train from day one of the game, make it larger to 50 combat width for maximum xp gain, be sure to duplicate it before adding stuff so you have a 20 width to guard your ports.

Mexico

This is the nation you play when you just got home from Taco Bell and you join a game with 20 people already and its the only nation open. Luckily Mexico is easy to play and doesnt require much so when you need to take a ♥♥♥♥ half way through you can just run to the restroom and not miss anything beside your will to exist and the inside of your ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

Difficulty: Easy



Mexico has the best tanks in the allies for some reason, because we all know how well Mexico was praised during the war for its epic tank army and their tank expert Matias Ramos. So uh, here is how to be good at game k thx bye. (no i cant speak spanish)

1. Numberó Unó

Focusó Pathó:
1. Pólitical Effórto (for PP)
2. Liberty Ethós
3. Interventióism Focus (for PP)
4. Industrial Effort (use for Construction III)
5. Construction Effort I
6. Construction Effort II
7. Infrastructure Effort I
8. Construction Effort III
9. Infrastructure Effort II
10. Extra Research Slot
11. Army Effort
12. Mechanization Effort (skip motorized focus by researching it beforehand)
13. Armor Effort

After this point you can finish your Government stuff for the Research slot as you join the allies, rush Guns or AT 3 for the allies, and finish your land doctrine with the help of the focuses.

If your an ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ then you can make Fighter 1k fighter twos and lend lease them to canada as the war begins before you make medium 2s, but nobody will like you as a person.

Political Power Stuff:
1. Partial Mobilization
2. Free Trade
3. Captain of Industry
4. Industrial Concern
5. Popular Figurehead



Glorious Mexican Science Research:
1st slot: Industrial stuff
2nd slot: Eletronics tech until mechanical computing, then go do land doctrine
3rd slot: Tanks
4th slot: rushing tech for the allies or industry

Economy:
1 fac on guns
1 fac on support equip
1 fac on arty
1 fac on motorized
rest of facs: on tanks.

Divisions:
1 div train from day one of game,

make 7 mot 13 medium tank divisions

Soviet Union

Playing the USSR is like playing Germany without the stress of having to lead a faction and have air-tight early game industrial and military production builds. All the fun with none of the responsibility. The USSR is very forgivng due to your huge land mass and default spread out industry. You have more men and land to be able to be sacrificed before capitulating than any other country. You get to sit back in the early game and just modernize your country for a few years until mid 1941 when the Axis invades you. You must do the following in oder to prepare the Motherland for Fascist invasion

Difficulty: Hard

THIS IS SUPER IMPORTANT READ HERE: Ensure that all of the players in the Allies faction are trading with you the USSR for all resources they need before they trade with anyone else!!!!

FOCUS PATH:
1 Stalin Constitution, use that political power for War Economy
2 Socialist Realism, use that political power for Free Trade
3 Finish The Five Year Plan, for civilian factories
4 Positive Heroism, for better tanks
5 Progress Cult, for faster research
6 Socialist Science, for more manpower
7 Extra Research Slot, for more research
8 Armament Effort, for military factories
9 Aviation Cult, for the fighter research bonus
10 The Great Purge, to remove men who are disloyal to Comrade Stalin
13 Rehabilitated Military, for the recovery rate
14 Military Reorganization, for the land doctrine resarch bonus
15 Improve Railway Network, for infrastructure

After that there are no other focuses worth doing in the tree until you go to war in 1939. Until then just do a continuous focus or, no focus to save your political power.

You go Positive Heroism path over the Collectivist Propaganda path so that you can get the Armor Genius so that your tanks can fight the German tanks on as equal a footing as possible. Collectivist is still really good however.

As soon as it hits January 1st, 1939 then justify war with Iran. After you go to war then you can unlock the Lessons of War focus

17 Lessons of War, for the tank research bonus
18 Research City Experiment, to get closer to Closed City Network
19 Diversify the Program, to get closer to Closed City Network
20 Closed City Network, for more research
21 Partisan suppression, to reduce the effect of enemy partisans on the Red Army as we spread the Revolution to Europe

Once these are done go back to doing no focus or a continuous focus


POLITICAL POWER PURCHASE ORDER
1 War Economy
2 Free Trade
3 Nikolai Voznesensky Captain of Industry
4 Stalingrad Tractor Factory Industrial Concern
5 Improved Worker Conditions decision
6 Boris Shaposnikov Military Theorist
7 Mikhail Kalinin Popular Figurehead
8 OKMO Heavy Tank Designer (affects all tanks not just heavy tanks)
9 MiG Light Aircraft Designer
10 Tula Arms Infantry Equipment Designer
11 Konstantin Rokossovsky Armor Genius
12 Konstantin Vershinin Ground Support Expert
13 another Improved Worker Conditions decision as soon as possible

Before the Axis invades you, annex and invade as much territory as possible in Scandinavia, the Middle East and anywhere else you can find a weak country to take over allowed by rules.

Once the war starts go to Total Mobilization and Limited Exports if your convoys are getting heavily raided so that you don't have to trade as much.


RESEARCH ORDER:

You have 5.5 years in game to prepare for war with the Axis so its pretty hard to mess this up. Just a few things here are important. Make sure that you check up on what focus that Germany is doing after every focus completes. Make sure that you have started researching Light Tank 2s before Germany finishes the Treaty with USSR focus so that you can use the tank research bonuses on Medium tank 1 and Medium tank 2. As soon as you get the tank research bonus from Lessons of War then use it to research Medium tank 3. Medium 3 Tank Destroyer and Medium 3 Self Propelled Anti Air are also good potential pickups depending on if your enemy is using heavy tanks or if they win the air war. Use the light plane research bonus for fighter 2s (or fighter 3s depending on rule set).

Make sure that you prioritize your industrial research including your excavation tech since you will have to be very self reliant on resources. Also when available do the decisions to give yourself more tungsten and more aluminum since you don't have that much in your country. I don't start researching the Superior Firepower land doctrine until after I have all the 1937 industry tech being reserached since you have plenty of time until the war starts. If you don't have an air controller then make sure you start researching the operational integrity air doctrine at the start of 1938. Do not research Navy

organize the Soviet masses for great projects

EARLY GAME INDUSTRIAL ORDER
Convert your military factories in Moscow and Leningrad to civilian factories then, just build civilian factories in your highest infrastructure areas until 1939. Build military factories after 1939. Do not build dockyards, forts or infrastructure


Military Organization:
In the early game make mostly guns and/or fighters if you want to send fighters to China and Republican Spain. You don't need to make fighter 1s for yourself since you can get fighter 2s very fast and you have 5.5 years before your war starts. Research CAS fairly early so that you can start producing it. Don't make any tanks until you finished researching Medium Tank 2s. Take the early game to catch up in your gun and support equipment deficit since you'll need a lot of those for your 40 width with no line artillery infantry divisions and/or your 20 width raws. Ideally by the time the war starts you have 4-6 40 width Tank divisions, many thousands of planes (mostly fighters) and 120 divisons of 40 width with 180 more divisons of 40 width or perhaps just 20 width raw. Make sure that you have signal and maintenance support companies in your tanks. Just use all your dockyards to produce convoys from the start of the game so that you can trade for resources. Do not use line artillery.

You can send 5 volunteer divisions to Spain for the civil war. You can either keep your light tanks so you can grind your tank general Zhukov in Finland and Iran or, you can lend lease them to a China player so he can make his own light tank divisons.

Do not make war ships. If you have to make warships then the allies suck donkey peepee.

STRATEGIC OBJECTIVES:
You have two jobs as the USSR. Firstly is to simply survive. To simply not die when the Axis invades you. It doesn't matter how many men you lose or how much territory and factories you lose. Never capitulate. Your job is to grind down as many Axis forces as possible while tying them down on your front. Your second job is to apply pressure to the Axis when your Allies do a D-Day landing. This is best achieved by making your own tanks and your own planes. Even if you are losing the air war somewhat but, you force the Axis to split their air force between you and the dday landing that is a very good thing. Also you must build tanks. You must build your own proper offensive tank divisions so that the Axis has to split their tanks forces between you and the dday landing.

If you are a USSR that doesn't make tanks then you should just uninstall the game. I know that no-air USSR builds are popular but, making your own air is superior. Splitting the Axis air force to make dday easier is far more important than simply having some more tank divisons with that spare production saved from not making planes.

LONG LIVE THE REVOLUTION

Soviet Union No Air Build

I'll cut right to the chase. If you can't get a coop player to manage your planes or another country to be the plane manager for the Soviet Union then it's really hard to micro tanks, infantry and planes across the biggest front in the war. The solution is to do a no air build. This will allow you to have many more tanks and infantry on the field than if you were contesting the skies over the Soviet Union and make micro much easier on yourself.

So the main big changes are that instead of planes, you need to produce towed anti air to use as support companies in your infantry and potentially even 1 or 2 line battalions in your infantry too. You also need to have a minimum of 2 self propelled anti air tank battalions in every single one of your 40 width tank divisions. That is basically it.

Note: Collectivist Propaganda is slightly better when doing a no air build since you don't need the air research bonus that you get from Positive Heroism, however, I still prefer Positive Heroism over Collectivist Propaganda due to the Armor Genius. It is so important. Other things you can do are promote the Commando Expert general to a Field Marshal to help shield your infantry from enemy CAS. If doing Postive Heroism then you need atleast 24 tanks by war, if collectivist over 30.

Recommend music to listen to while waiting 5.5 years for war as USSR

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBOD8qeCBuc

https://youtu.be/lDQ7hXMLxGc

https://youtu.be/m8m2BYv02Nw

https://youtu.be/6nFKPVfDrgU

https://youtu.be/7J__ZdvsZaE

https://youtu.be/7fV3USe9dlU

https://youtu.be/U06jlgpMtQs

https://youtu.be/stlZEKoJg10 (in case if the link above wasnt enough)

https://youtu.be/HF3pv6WsJrs (sabaton cuz y nawt)

https://youtu.be/P6ho3jU4bzM (not actually commie music but its C&C so had to include)

https://youtu.be/VA-i775cVbE

https://youtu.be/K211xq5fVq0

https://youtu.be/YEt41bYQBgE

https://youtu.be/mwAGw92RHQc

https://youtu.be/NvS351QKFV4

Afganistan or Mongolia (Soviet Air Controller)

Good nation for friends of USSR player and likes being air controller.
rarely are both of these nations allowed, but if one is, then 99% of the time their purpose is to be the Soviet Air Controller. Make sure the Soviet Union declares war on you and puppets you as soon as possible so he can lend lease you his planes before the war starts

Difficulty: Easy (know how to micro planes)

Focuses: Do your Air Innovations focus first, then go for CAS effort. Use the CAS effort to rush CAS 2, after that, Go down economy for your research slots and then Ideology.
Make sure you buy as much of russias steel as you can to give him extra civs, you dont really need them.

Research: Operational Integrity, encryption/decryption and Radar, nothing else is really important besides Concentrated Industry.

PP buys: war economy, free trade, and air designer (remember to get the light air designer before you finish your CAS research, or the bonus will not take effect for planes you have built.) Make sure you go on at least service by requirement during your war with russia to get as much manpower for planes as possible.

China (numba 1)

10 width China sucks. 10 width China just dies without killing many of the enemy. Make 20 width infantry with AA instead. Get the USSR to send you all of his starting air force and maybe convince him to make planes just to send them to you. If Japan is going light tanks then convince the USSR to send you anti air to use as support anti air to pierce the Japanese tanks. Make sure that you garrison your ports along with the coast tiles next to the ports. Do not build forts.

Difficulty: Intermediate (you die)

--END--

thanks m8 for checking our guide, come back in a week for more content, we intend to update it regularly.

We would be more then happy to take input or more contributers if they are good and well known within the community. What we have so far is by no means perfect, any help would greatly appreciated.

Credits:

Germany - Einsatzgruppen
Italy - Scipio
Hungary - Scipio/Arulanslave
Romania - Scipio
Bulgaria - Scipio
Spain - CheapLotus
Japan - IDGBIA/JPHdude
Manchuko - CheapLotus
USSR - Einsatzgruppen
UK - Arulanslave/IDGBIA
USA - Einsatzgruppen
France - Scipio/IDGBIA
Commonwealth - Arulanslave/Scipio
South America - Scipio
China -
Raj - Cheaplotus/Scipio

[Chrissy Moltisanti]

why no update

[Burned Vision]

RIP

[TheOneAzBeater]

Still a masterpiece.

[Astraka]

LOL. Fighter 2 france. this guide is VERY outdated

[Fallen]

Is there a guide for army templates?

[Molvanîa!]

how do you grind traits on generals?

[Oshidashi]

I read, I learned, I laughed, but I'm still a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

[♠️♦️Luigi♦️♠]

Maybe update the discord link?

[zxxzmute]

At the start of the game as Germany should I trade for Aluminum and Rubber to produce fighters?

[Scipio]

yup