Hearts of Iron 3 Tips (SF, FtM, TfH)

[Ivar the Boner]

I decided to pay a visit to a EMPIK (Potato Book/Games/Music/AllKindsOfShit Shop) And I noticed HoI 3 + Semper Fi for "not so retarded price", so "why the fuck not" I said and bought it... and then I pirated HoI3 with all patches DLC's

I have few questions for the veterans. I stared campaign as Potato, with a plan of telling Józef Beck to shut the fuck up and just give Gdańsk to ze Germans and then join the axis (by cheating myself 0 neutrality).

But now ze Germans are stuck at "stare war" at Maginot Line and I don't really know how to help them because I'm NOT at war with the allies (even though I'm in Axis) and germans don't wan't my expeditionary force (I have whole "Lwów Theatre" to spare" and it seems like you can't give resources for free in Hoi3 (as you could in Hoi2.

So, what can I do, other than waiting for soviets to steam-roll me?

 

[Ivar the Boner]

Toolatelol

At first I was liek:



And then, SU was liek:

HoI 2 it is not. But tips for my next campaign would be appriciated.

 

[Average Manatee]

As Poland, you'll want to use spies to Raise Threat on the Soviets. Since you are polar opposite in ideology and they are fuckhueg, your threat will go up quickly (Your neutrality is reduced by whatever the highest threat in the world is against you). Also, drop your current IC below 30 (switch to worst laws) and you'll get a decision that knocks off about 50 or so neutrality over time. As long as you are at 0 neutrality you can declare war on anyone. If you are in a faction everyone else in the faction will join you unless you declare a limited war (which is what Germany does most of the time).

Soviets are scripted to DoW whoever is on their western front around that time. It's pretty much inevitable.

If you are going to join the Axis there's not a ton you can do before Barbarossa. I guess you can knock over Romania for the oil fields and then eat up the other Balkans. If you want to be gamey, prepare from the beginning of the game to start a naval invasion of the UK.

It's certainly possible to beat the Soviets and/or the Germans as Poland. It's quite a strenuous task though of course. Hell, I managed to defeat both of them at the same time a few months back when playing the HPP mod (which has Soviets declare war on Poland as they did in reality). Though that's more due to the fact that the mod is quite a bit unbalanced.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

First of all, get ICE mod (Iron Cross Edition). ICE fixes THE sole big problem in HoI3, which is the leadership values (in base game, it makes it so that ONLY the major nations are actually playable, due to how much leadership matters), and it adds tons of neat stuff.


Against the Soviet Union, you will have essentially two strategies as axis Poland. First is trying to build up your own army in order to provide Germany with assistance, though you should stick with infantry and other more basic forms of brigades in order to maximize IC to Manpower build-up. Air force and navy are irrelevant, as you are well within the Luftwaffe umbrella, would do absolutely nothing without vast expenses on a naval force, and should conserve Leadership in order to stay on the cutting edge with infantry, industrial and land doctrine techs. Ideally you will manage to keep officer ratio at 110% while having three full divisions at each border province. As a minor, providing land support and spies is most you can do.

Alternatively, you can focus on building a fortification line. Germany has a bad habit of losing (what a shock) due to running out of manpower in the East, so it might be preferable to build Fortress Potato and keep all foreigners out, as Land Forts are a FUCKLOAD more powerful in HoI3 than they were before.

With spies, it bears note that spy production ALSO comes out of your leadership, which as noted is precious due to needs of your tech and your officer ratio. And the Soviet Union requires much more than just a little spy investment, for as a maximum totalitarian nation they have counter-espionage modifiers that make them very capable of bringing death to all spies, so you'd need at least 0.1 daily spy production to keep up with the attrition, probably more.

If you're running ICE, eventually you'll want to start shifting your Production away from the military and towards building more IC, so you can produce more money (which you can trade for manpower) and more other stuff, and exchange IC for new resource production and leadership.


(edit: Also with ICE, depending on whether or not newer versions updated the AI, it's a good idea to use "tag [insert nation tag here]" to switch around your allies and put latest Propaganda tech and education techs into the pipeline, the dumb bastards will otherwise suffocate themselves in negative modifiers (if I'm correct, only USA, UK, Germany and Soviet Union properly research latest propaganda tech).

 

[Ivar the Boner]

First of all, get ICE mod (Iron Cross Edition). ICE fixes THE sole big problem in HoI3, which is the leadership values (in base game, it makes it so that ONLY the major nations are actually playable, due to how much leadership matters), and it adds tons of neat stuff.


Against the Soviet Union, you will have essentially two strategies as axis Poland. First is trying to build up your own army in order to provide Germany with assistance, though you should stick with infantry and other more basic forms of brigades in order to maximize IC to Manpower build-up. Air force and navy are irrelevant, as you are well within the Luftwaffe umbrella, would do absolutely nothing without vast expenses on a naval force, and should conserve Leadership in order to stay on the cutting edge with infantry, industrial and land doctrine techs. Ideally you will manage to keep officer ratio at 110% while having three full divisions at each border province. As a minor, providing land support and spies is most you can do.

Alternatively, you can focus on building a fortification line. Germany has a bad habit of losing (what a shock) due to running out of manpower in the East, so it might be preferable to build Fortress Potato and keep all foreigners out, as Land Forts are a FUCKLOAD more powerful in HoI3 than they were before.

With spies, it bears note that spy production ALSO comes out of your leadership, which as noted is precious due to needs of your tech and your officer ratio. And the Soviet Union requires much more than just a little spy investment, for as a maximum totalitarian nation they have counter-espionage modifiers that make them very capable of bringing death to all spies, so you'd need at least 0.1 daily spy production to keep up with the attrition, probably more.

If you're running ICE, eventually you'll want to start shifting your Production away from the military and towards building more IC, so you can produce more money (which you can trade for manpower) and more other stuff, and exchange IC for new resource production and leadership.


(edit: Also with ICE, depending on whether or not newer versions updated the AI, it's a good idea to use "tag [insert nation tag here]" to switch around your allies and put latest Propaganda tech and education techs into the pipeline, the dumb bastards will otherwise suffocate themselves in negative modifiers (if I'm correct, only USA, UK, Germany and Soviet Union properly research latest propaganda tech).

I actually do have ICE mod (it was already in... package from pirate bay) but I decided not to use it until I played a while with vanilla.

I didn't know that leadership play such a big role. I read some of your posts when you said that 12 is absolute minimum. Well, as potato I have 9 and it's too ealry (I already started new campaign) to say if it's enough.

Also, I started building tanks because I simply don't have manpower to mobilize myself properly (Potato reserve force is fucking hugeeee) and keep building infantry. I basically have two theaters - one is "defensive force" made entirely of reserve infantry which is chilling on soviet border. And another one which is made of standard troops who are tasked with going "puppeting apeshit" on Czechoslovakia, Lithuania, Latvia etc. because I seriously need help to defend against soviets and I don't have manpower to recruit more troops (and keep enough surplus of potato to mobilize myself when shit hits the fan).

It's quite fun for now, but I seriously broke the campaign with cheating myself 0 neutrality (Czechoslovakia is still around intact and France got fucked by germans because I joined axis instead of making myself meatshield for allies like it historically should be) but otherwise I would be left alone fighting soviets (suicide in my case) because there is no way to lower my neutrality without cheating in Their Finest Hour.

Or is it? can Potato survive without neutrality cheat?

 

[Average Manatee]

First of all, get ICE mod (Iron Cross Edition). ICE fixes THE sole big problem in HoI3, which is the leadership values (in base game, it makes it so that ONLY the major nations are actually playable, due to how much leadership matters), and it adds tons of neat stuff.

By ICE, you mean black ICE? Because that's a ridiculously shitty mod. Balance is absurdly, ridiculously horrible, there is a huge amount of event bloat, and the tech are moronic and there are far too many of them (doubling minor leadership doesn't matter much when you also double the amount of techs).

It's quite fun for now, but I seriously broke the campaign with cheating myself 0 neutrality (Czechoslovakia is still around intact and France got fucked by germans because I joined axis instead of making myself meatshield for allies like it historically should be) but otherwise I would be left alone fighting soviets (suicide in my case) because there is no way to lower my neutrality without cheating in Their Finest Hour.

Balderdash. I can reach 0 neutrality before 1937. Just do as I said. Trigger prepare for war decision and raise threat on Soviets. If you want to be gamey you can accomplish this:

Spoiler

I didn't know that leadership play such a big role. I read some of your posts when you said that 12 is absolute minimum. Well, as potato I have 9 and it's too ealry (I already started new campaign) to say if it's enough.

Also, I started building tanks because I simply don't have manpower to mobilize myself properly (Potato reserve force is fucking hugeeee) and keep building infantry. I basically have two theaters - one is "defensive force" made entirely of reserve infantry which is chilling on soviet border. And another one which is made of standard troops who are tasked with going "puppeting apeshit" on Czechoslovakia, Lithuania, Latvia etc. because I seriously need help to defend against soviets and I don't have manpower to recruit more troops (and keep enough surplus of potato to mobilize myself when shit hits the fan).

It's quite fun for now, but I seriously broke the campaign with cheating myself 0 neutrality (Czechoslovakia is still around intact and France got fucked by germans because I joined axis instead of making myself meatshield for allies like it historically should be) but otherwise I would be left alone fighting soviets (suicide in my case) because there is no way to lower my neutrality without cheating in Their Finest Hour.

Or is it? can Potato survive without neutrality cheat?

Poland has just the right amount of leadership if all you care about is land power. More is only needed if you are a major naval power (anything a minor wants can be licensed) or want to spam planes (And strategic bombers, by far the most exploitively powerful part of the airforce, can be licensed effectively as well. Literally 2 strategic bombers can neutralize any country that isn't the Soviets or the USA). Frankly leadership is far too bloated. Anything more than 20 I find myself running out of things to spend it on. Fact of the matter is about 1/2 to 3/4ths of tech in HoI3 is superfluous.

 

[Ivar the Boner]

Balderdash. I can reach 0 neutrality before 1937. Just do as I said. Trigger prepare for war decision and raise threat on Soviets. If you want to be gamey you can accomplish this:

DID YOU SUBMIT TO THEIR DEMAND?

 

[Ivar the Boner]

On a more serious note, I don't really get how neutrality work. So what should I exactly do to lower my neutrality* to declare war on someone/join faction?

*At my first take on HoI 3 Potato campaign I was prepared to give Gdańsk to ze Germans and then Odbić Wilno Annex Lithuania to regain acces to the sea (for trade), but at 1939 Lithuania had 3.0 threat and I had 65 Neutrality. So after germans took danzig for free I proceed to acomplish physically impossible act (with huge help from Soviets).

 

[Average Manatee]

No

 

[Average Manatee]

On a more serious note, I don't really get how neutrality work. So what should I exactly do to lower my neutrality* to declare war on someone/join faction?

*At my first take on HoI 3 Potato campaign I was prepared to give Gdańsk to ze Germans and then Odbić Wilno Annex Lithuania to regain acces to the sea (for trade), but at 1939 Lithuania had 3.0 threat and I had 65 Neutrality. So after germans took danzig for free I proceed to acomplish physically impossible act (with huge help from Soviets).

As I said, your Neutrality is automatically reduced by whatever the highest threat against you is. So if the Soviet Union has 20 threat to you and you have 70 neutrality, your neutrality is now 50. And you need to lower your current IC below 30 (as soon as you have money, switch to full civilian economy for a day) to trigger the prepare for war decision, which knocks off a huge chunk of neutrality.

Lithuania is the wrong country to raise threat on. They are fascist, the same ideology as you. They are also a shitty weak country that isn't very threatening in the first place. Both of these mean that threat won't go up much. The Soviet union is huge, your fascist government hates communists, and they have a huge border with you. Their threat will probably go up 10 times faster than Lithuania. Just because the soviet is the threatening one doesn't mean you can't declare war on lithuania or anyone else, the soviet threat will reduce your neutrality against everyone else.

With all this said, Poland is probably the 3rd hardest nation to start playing as next to Czechoslovakia and Austria. Losing a few dozen times before getting the hang of things is to be expected.

Also, I started building tanks because I simply don't have manpower to mobilize myself properly (Potato reserve force is fucking hugeeee) and keep building infantry. I basically have two theaters - one is "defensive force" made entirely of reserve infantry which is chilling on soviet border. And another one which is made of standard troops who are tasked with going "puppeting apeshit" on Czechoslovakia, Lithuania, Latvia etc. because I seriously need help to defend against soviets and I don't have manpower to recruit more troops (and keep enough surplus of potato to mobilize myself when shit hits the fan).

This is pretty much how it has to go. I'm not sure why Poland has such low manpower in HoI3. They don't even start with enough to fully mobilize their starting units.

An absolute priority on manpower is essential. This means Infantry is one of the worst units to be using, next to militia and Cavalry. You want either Artillery or Armor to form the majority of your units. You can abuse reserve unit discounts to make your comparatively small IC work insanely harder than it should be able to, you can't afford to waste your manpower on anything but the most efficient units.

 

[Ivar the Boner]

On a more serious note, I don't really get how neutrality work. So what should I exactly do to lower my neutrality* to declare war on someone/join faction?

*At my first take on HoI 3 Potato campaign I was prepared to give Gdańsk to ze Germans and then Odbić Wilno Annex Lithuania to regain acces to the sea (for trade), but at 1939 Lithuania had 3.0 threat and I had 65 Neutrality. So after germans took danzig for free I proceed to acomplish physically impossible act (with huge help from Soviets).

As I said, your Neutrality is automatically reduced by whatever the highest threat against you is. So if the Soviet Union has 20 threat to you and you have 70 neutrality, your neutrality is now 50. And you need to lower your current IC below 30 (as soon as you have money, switch to full civilian economy for a day) to trigger the prepare for war decision, which knocks off a huge chunk of neutrality.

Lithuania is the wrong country to raise threat on. They are fascist, the same ideology as you. They are also a shitty weak country that isn't very threatening in the first place. Both of these mean that threat won't go up much. The Soviet union is huge, your fascist government hates communists, and they have a huge border with you. Their threat will probably go up 10 times faster than Lithuania. Just because the soviet is the threatening one doesn't mean you can't declare war on lithuania or anyone else, the soviet threat will reduce your neutrality against everyone else.

With all this said, Poland is probably the 3rd hardest nation to start playing as next to Czechoslovakia and Austria. Losing a few dozen times before getting the hang of things is to be expected.

That's sorts a things out. I basically took espionage option to make nation look like a threat as a "make casus beli" from Europa Universalis. Which is, apparently, not the case.

And I chose Poland simply because I though it will give me fast tutorial (very, very fast) on how to manage your armies and economy. Which it did. But it also gave my fast tutorial on how to get raped. But hey, that's experience.

Thank you very much good sirs, your tips are appriciated. I always knew I can count on Finns and Sea-Life

 

[Average Manatee]

It is kind of like a make CB ability. Basically if you have 50 neutrality and raise 25 threat on the Soviets, your neutrality will be 25. But you can declare war on the soviets, because the barrier to declaring war is that your neutrality must be equal or less than their threat against you. So, when you raise threat on the Soviets, you effectively move yourself 2x that number towards declaring war on them, but only 1x towards everyone else. So it's kind of weird but also kind of makes sense. If you are afraid of the soviets, you can declare war on them, but it also moves you closer to declaring war on everyone else, because you are afraid of the Soviets and need to expand and acquire more power to fight them with.

Also, its worth noting that threat is universal. When you raise threat on the soviets, you raise the soviet threat against everyone. This will help "push" everyone else away from joining the soviet union's faction (see the triangle in the diplomacy tab). How much you raise threat still depends on the factors of ideology, proximity, etc, so while it won't do much to make the USA feel afraid, it will definitely make nations like Finland, Turkey feel afraid.

 

[Malakal]

Polish manpower is always horrible in HoI games. I can argue that industry is right and our leadership was shitty, those are more or less true, but Poland with half mobilization in 1939 had 950k troops, full mobilization would put it at between 1.5 to 2 million which is impossible in those games. Pity as it greatly limits your options.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Polish manpower is always horrible in HoI games. I can argue that industry is right and our leadership was shitty, those are more or less true, but Poland with half mobilization in 1939 had 950k troops, full mobilization would put it at between 1.5 to 2 million which is impossible in those games. Pity as it greatly limits your options.

I guess the only gist there is that you can't directly measure manpower through units since in HoI3 the troop strength seems to be ONLY combat troops and doesn't account for all the other stuff you need soldiers for like driving trucks or cooking, etc.

However, Poland's manpower is definately abnormally low. Poland was home to 31 million people in 1939, after all.

 

[Malakal]

Polish manpower is always horrible in HoI games. I can argue that industry is right and our leadership was shitty, those are more or less true, but Poland with half mobilization in 1939 had 950k troops, full mobilization would put it at between 1.5 to 2 million which is impossible in those games. Pity as it greatly limits your options.

I guess the only gist there is that you can't directly measure manpower through units since in HoI3 the troop strength seems to be ONLY combat troops and doesn't account for all the other stuff you need soldiers for like driving trucks or cooking, etc.

However, Poland's manpower is definately abnormally low. Poland was home to 31 million people in 1939, after all.

Well Im not talking 1944 style German total war mobilization its just 1939 start-of-the-war state and its way too low. Granted it seems like most other nations are also underrated, mainly for performance probably, but Germany gets its full cake and so do other majors.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Polish manpower is always horrible in HoI games. I can argue that industry is right and our leadership was shitty, those are more or less true, but Poland with half mobilization in 1939 had 950k troops, full mobilization would put it at between 1.5 to 2 million which is impossible in those games. Pity as it greatly limits your options.

I guess the only gist there is that you can't directly measure manpower through units since in HoI3 the troop strength seems to be ONLY combat troops and doesn't account for all the other stuff you need soldiers for like driving trucks or cooking, etc.

However, Poland's manpower is definately abnormally low. Poland was home to 31 million people in 1939, after all.

Well Im not talking 1944 style German total war mobilization its just 1939 start-of-the-war state and its way too low. Granted it seems like most other nations are also underrated, mainly for performance probably, but Germany gets its full cake and so do other majors.

Germany gets a bit more than its cake really. Only Germany has such a nuke-load of IC and leadership that they can literally take on the entire world AND research ALL the techs.

Still, a good example of the underrating is Japan, who's nowhere near a credible threat on the defensive, or Finland where the Winter War tends to go exactly like Stalin planned (then again, Winter War is a game designer's nightmare).


EDIT: Also pro-tip: As a minor abuse the hell out of Lend-Lease agreements. The AI isn't going to do anything rational with those IC points anyway.

 

[Ivar the Boner]

I just wonder if it was even remotly sensible idea to invest in both infantry and tank tech. I murdered my economy utterly by trying to shit out tanks (again, I don't have manpowah for more "szara piechota") instead of paying germans to make some for me. My tank divisions was enough to roll over baltic states and czechoslovakia* but it actually had some problems in Romania, so I guess they are going to get fuck by bolsheviks (my infantry was holding their own quite nicely for some time in my first campaign, even though they were getting bombed to hell).

* HoI 3 implemented new feature to paradox Grand Strategy Games. Instead of map painting you can now CHANGE FONTS OF OTHER COUNTRIES NAMES HOLY SHIT. (This psuedo cyryllic thing is stupid though)

 

[Average Manatee]

The problem with HoI3 is that almost all manpower and leadership is a resource on the map, and if/when Germany annexes you Germany will get it too. Give Poland a 10 manpower province and when Germany takes it Germany will still get 7-9 manpower out of it, which is rather silly.

Are you producing units as reserve? Under volunteer army laws you can produce reserve tank units at -75% of the normal cost.

 

[Ivar the Boner]

The problem with HoI3 is that almost all manpower and leadership is a resource on the map, and if/when Germany annexes you Germany will get it too. Give Poland a 10 manpower province and when Germany takes it Germany will still get 7-9 manpower out of it, which is rather silly.

Are you producing units as reserve? Under volunteer army laws you can produce reserve tank units at -75% of the normal cost.

Germans dragged me into a war with allies finally so I'm now fully mobilized and after year or so I'm gaining manpower again. I had to stop making any tanks because I don't have rare materials* and I can't really trade for them because damn brits sink my convoys. So I started spamming infantry again. Hopefully I will have enough manpower to replenish my losses when SU finally DoW me.

* Different units have different costs or I'm just imagining stuff? I was never sure if resource cost is tied to IC or depends on shit you build.

 

[Average Manatee]

Every IC costs 2 energy, 1 metal, 0.5 rares to build with for 1 day. So if you have 100 IC you'll be using 200 energy, 100 metal, 50 rares every day, no matter what you build. Also a small amount of energy (coal) is additionally converted into oil based on your IC.

I'd recommend trading with the Soviets. They (and the USA) are the only nations that will have surplus resources to trade for most of the game (other nations will cancel trades eventually), and you won't need convoys with the Soviets. And do try to build up a stockpile early on.

 

[Raghar]

However, Poland's manpower is definately abnormally low. Poland was home to 31 million people in 1939, after all.

Nobody wants fight, everyone wants to plant potatoes.

 

[Ivar the Boner]

I'm definitely getting hang of things now, mostly thanks to your tips. I still got my butt kicked by soviets but at least now I know why, more or less. They DoW'ed me and "master of puppets" strategy was fucking stupid, Latvia can't stand a chance and I didn't bother to send any troops north to guard my Latvian border (I hoped Soviets will ignore them and I won't have to deal with too long front line). Romania is getting completely steam-rolled and only good thing about it is that soviets now border Czechoslovakia (who is also mah pupt) and soon they will border ze Germans, which is my only hope, because I put all my eggs in one basket by trying to push soviets from the south by sending whole theater as a offensive force while other theater is tasked holding off soviet onslaught. Well, my offensive failed because I completely ignored "front width" and tried to attack with doomstack.

Silly me.

 

[Average Manatee]

Infantry is very bad manpower-wise for their worth. Poland needs manpower-light units. I prefer stuff like Heavy Armor/2x Art/INF or 2x Armor/2x Armored Car.

How are you getting lend-lease from both sides? I've only gotten it when closely aligned with one. Getting it from both sounds spectacularly gamey in such a delicious way.

The trick to staying ontop of Oil is realizing that it's only used up while moving/attacking. You can make a solid wall of armored steel to defend with, it won't use a drop of oil if it's sitting there being attacked. This is one instance where the AI is really bad, because it's always moving units back and forth around the fronts wasting fuel like an idiot. Also, supply bonuses from your command structure/being Comintern apply to fuel as well, so you can cut fuel usage in half with a bit of work. Soviets can literally cut their fuel usage down to 5% with good leaders since their faction gives a -33% supply bonus.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Oh yea, I guess it should be mentioned that you might want to save on the few hours before a major non-scripted surrender happens (when Puppet goal isn't involved) if you want/don't want eternal war. You see, outside of historical German surrender (though this one doesn't happen as often due to the strict demands for the event to fire) and French/Dutch/Belgium surrenders, surrender choice on the AI is random chance.

 

[Malakal]

Infantry is very bad manpower-wise for their worth. Poland needs manpower-light units. I prefer stuff like Heavy Armor/2x Art/INF or 2x Armor/2x Armored Car.

This shit here is what I am talking about. Poland has to conserve manpower, this is ridiculous, we are talking here about a nation with second biggest pop growth rate before the war and huge young population.