Germany Tutorial: Take 2.

[misterbean]

I hit me when I was getting ready for bed, actually. the answer is pretty simple: we replaced Frick, who gives a 15% ruling party support, with Goebbels, who gives a much more valuable leadership bonus. hence the loss of popularity.
BTW, SonofWinter, I am all for initiative. it will help you to deal with combat situations, but I am a little worried that you may be going a little too fast too soon. Are you sending spies abroad? what are you producing? Researching? I understand you want to play and have fun. just don't get into a situation where you will get frustrated with the game.

 

[SonofWinter]

Oh, for now I'm just running 6 month games, to see what works and what doesn't. As for frustration, I've been on this forum and playing Paradox games since 2001 when EUI came out yes, 2001 not 2004.

I own HoI, HoI 2 and now I bought HoI 3, so I know that each of these games requires a lot of short term practices, before you start your first serious game. I'm trying to learn everything you've got to teach, so teach on, because I've got a lot of knowledge gaps, when it comes to HoI 3.

As far as techs, I'm going for the full spread, hitting all the 1936es first, then will move on to 1937s. The only thing I'm not so sure of is the industrial techs, should I start those up right at the beginning? And which ones? I want to go for a CV navy though, but I will expand the sub fleet and the battleship fleet and their techs as well.

The other question is, how many IC factories should I start with at the beginning. They give a +0.6 to the construction practical, for each one that is completed, so I wonder if I should be going for 2 each time, just to maintain the 5.0? What do you suggest?

 

[misterbean]

In FtM I don't build any factories as Germany. we already have a shortage in metals and rares. FtM saw resources worldwide get reduced. we can't afford the maintenance cost of factories in the long run. 2airbases and 1 naval base is plenty to keep the practical warm. ass some infrastructure work in the eastern provinces and you should be good to go.The industrial techs can afford to wait a year, since we have other concerns.
CV are even more powerful now than they were in HOI2. CV+CL would be my choice of a surface navy. start with those as CV require a hell of a lot of efford. When you finish researching escort carriers, start building a couple to get some practical going. same for CL. prioritise CV research at all times. with some efford, you can start building fleet carriers in 1938.
I'm about halfway through the production chapter, so with a bit of luck I can post it later tonight.

 

[Conch]

You can build some IC and it won't hurt your ressource situation too much, but don't overdo it. As misterbean said, it would be better to keep building infra, airbases and naval bases where you need them. If you really want to research construction related techs early, you need the practicals. Start building up practicals by building level 1 forts in each province at the french border, they are built quick and give you enough practical experience to shorten the build time of any naval base and air base you already have in the build queue for at least some weeks, giving you these practicals faster as well. If you then just keep building air fields, ports and infrastructure your production practicals will stay on a high level. This will especially be important once you start building infrastructure in poland, you will need these for the attack on the Sovjet Union.

 

[SonofWinter]

Now a question of upgrades vs. rebuilds. Is it at any point more feasible to simply scrap a unit and rebuild it? For example, does upgrading an Infantry (I) to Infantry (II) give you practicals? Or are you better off and cheaper cost to disband the infantry unit and simply building a new one? Do you get your officers back, when you disband a unit?

Also, how much practicals does a fort give you? Because I'm not sure of the numbers. Currently it costs me 4.5 IC to build a new +1 to production with 0.6 practicals. While building infrastructure cost 0.9 IC to build and I will only get 0.1 practicals for it. So for 4.5 IC I get 0.5 practicals from 5 infrastructure. So in the end I seem to be loosing practicals for the same investment. I'm basing the 0.1 on airbases and naval ports, so unless infrastructure gives +0.2 in practicals, its just better to build the Industry to get your practicals up, currently. Or is there a weakness in my math somewhere?

 

[misterbean]

the weakness in your math is time. The intrinsic cost of ALL things you build is calculated by multipying the IC cost per day by the number of days it takes to finish.
So ICper day*number of days=ICdays.
Let's say one investment costs you 7 IC per day and finishes in 100 days. ICdays: 7*100=700.
another one costs 3.5 IC per day but takes 250 days to finish. ICdays: 3.5*250=875.
So even if, from first glance, the 3.5 investment looks cheaper, it actually, in the long run, ends up costing you more.
I don't have the game running right now, but if you do the math to calculate ICdays as shown, you will find that land forts are not so bad, because they finish a lot sooner and allow you to build more in the same time span it takes to build just 1 factory. and remember practical decay over the term of about 10 months when building factories.
Now, another thing to keep in mind, is that it takes about 5 years to recoup the costs of a factory. A fort or an airstrip, when finished, is immediately useful.
you'd be amazed how fast 3 years fly when you get going.
and finally, building one fort can make a world of difference. building 1 factory? how cares, right? IC building is useful, and highly encouraged in SF, even made fashionable in HOI2. But not for Germany in FtM (by my reckoning anyway).

I forgot to answer your first question. It is always better to upgrade existing divisions and planes rather than scrap them. you only scrap the stuff in the starting OOB that you don't ever need. You could say: "I'm playing the SU, I don't need no cavalry". In that case, scrapping the cavs you start with is ok. in all other cases upgrading is more economically viable. (and yes, I do believe you get some practicals from them)

 

[misterbean]

Chapter 9: Production.

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This is one of the screens where you’ll be spending a lot of time. In the production tab we build all our military stuff and manage our economy.

Looking at the top of the screen, we can see something I’ve mentioned before: strategic resources. What are these? (these don’t exist in SF) basically, they provide nationwide bonuses. There are too many to mention here, but the ones we have right now are:
Aluminium: Germany’s aluminium factories shorten the time needed to build planes by 15%.
Horsefarms: These give us a bonus on supply throughput, giving an improvement of our supply net.
Antibiotics: as long as we own these, 5% of our casualties from battle and attrition will return to duty due to proper medical care.
Ballbearings: in RL, the ballbearing plants in Schweinfurt were a major target of Allied bombing because they allow all repairs to finish faster.
In case you’re wondering: these are actual, physical resources in the provinces shown in the tooltip and, as such, are vulnerable to strategic bombing!
Each strategic resource provides 1 bonus. Having two horsefarms, for instances, will still yield only the same bonus we have now. However, having two or more of the same strategic resource will provide an added protection from bombing or invasions. If we have 2 antibiotics facilities, losing the one in Frankfurt will not hinder us in the slightest.
The statistics screen has a page showing all strategic resources in the world, along with the provinces where they can be found.
One more important fact about these: any nation that is closely aligned to a faction will, in times of war, provide their strategic resources (if any) to the faction leader, even if they are neutral and at peace themselves. Spain, for instance, has tungsten. They cannot join the Axis until certain conditions have been met. However, the access to Tungsten is enough to keep them closely aligned to the Axis. So let’s hope that Franco’s men will win the civil war. The alignment triangle in the Diplomatic screen has tooltips for each nation, telling you which ones have strategic resources and what those are.
In SF, these don’t exist. They are not gamebreaking in their absence, and diplomacy becomes a lot less strategic. It is still sound practice in SF to ensure the proper nations will align to the Axis, though, if only to ensure they don’t join the enemy.But we’re here to talk about production.

Let’s first focus on the right-hand side of the screen. In the upper right corner, we have our IC sliders. First comes the total IC available to us (204). Just below it is the word “manual control” and some arrows. Clicking these will allow the AI to manage our sliders for us, giving it instructions to prioritize upgrades, reinforcements or production. During peace-time, I prefer keeping it under manual control. The AI does a reasonable job of handling the sliders, but it will deposit wasted IC in the production slider, which is not always what we want. It also produces supplies up to a certain point (I’m guessing it calculates how long it can manage without producing any supplies) at which point it will set the supllies slider to 0. Not really what I want. Barbarossa will eat supplies like you can’t imagine. It is vital that we get as high a surplus as we can manage.
So keep it at manual control.
Our total available IC is divided between a number of sliders:
Upgrades: when we research more advanced tech, we can upgrade our divisions and planes (i.e. give the troops better guns, mortars, whatever). Just like in HOI2, it is relatively cheaper and faster to skip a few techs before upgrading begins. So we will wait until 1939 before upgrading everything. (note that this is not always desirable; if you expect an enemy invasion by 1937, or are playing a ahistorical path it may be better to upgrade what you have first). We can manipulate these sliders the same way we did in the tech screen. Set upgrades to 0 and lock it by right-clicking the slider button. All army and planes will upgrade to the next tech level. Ships will only upgrade radar, AA, and ASW (anti-sub weapons). What you build is what you end up with for the rest of the game.

Reinforcements: unlike HOI2, there is always some need for reinforcements, due to training accidents, retirement, and such like. During peacetime, this is a minor thing, but when we change laws, we may have to adjust this slider to account for the changes. Set this slider to 0.75 and lock it. This is plenty to keep it running smoothly without having to adjust it every day.
Supplies: this slider determines how many bullets and food we produce for our soldiers. Right now we need 11.70 supplies produced daily for our armed forces, but we will be selling a lot of supplies to provide money for resources and changing laws. Set it at around 27.5 for now. We can always adjust it later as needed. Note that, if your supply network is running smoothly, our divisions will have enough supplies with them to last a while. So we can (and will at some point) get into the red for a few weeks before the need becomes dire. After all, this screen is first and foremost about producing enough divisions, planes and ships to win the war.
Consumer Goods: the IC we invest here is used to keep the people happy and docile. By keeping this slider at 0.05 above the need, we ensure domestic calm at all times. Why 0.05 above need? Why not just put it equal to the need? Because, more so in past incarnations of the game, there was an issue with “creeping sliders”. What you see on the screen is the computer rounding the actual numbers down or up. As the needs changed, the sliders would move on their own. You might be running a deficit here without realising it until you suddenly find yourself with dissent. As I told you before, dissent is one of the big “no no’s” of the game. By putting it a little higher than needed, we make sure this does not happen. So set it at 0.05 above need and lock it in place.
As you can see, the rest of our available IC has now been dumped into the production slider. This is the IC we have to actually work with. In a few days we will change a few laws that will drastically lower the CG slider, giving us more IC. We will reduce the supply needs by building a proper OOB, freeing up even more IC.
So we now have 128 IC to work with, some of which will be used to finish the ships already in the queue. The remainder (about 114 IC) will be put to good use later on in this chapter.

Next to the sliders we have our resources, again with a mouse tooltip to give us the necessary details. These are not the actual numbers. The game needs 1 day to calculate the actual gains/deficits.
Under those two we have our trade routes. Right now we don’t have any trades. The ones we initiated earlier have yet to be accepted or denied by the US and the SU. This may be different for you since you’re probably playing from a saved game as you follow along, in which case you may already have some trades in here.
Trading or supplying troops across oceans and seas will require convoys. The bottom of the screen is used for our merchant navy: convoys to ferry resources, supplies and fuel back and forth and escorts for protecting them from convoy raiders.
Right now we only have 2 convoys going: the one from Stettin to Köningsberg supplying East Prussia and the one ferrying resources towards mainland Germany (they are assembled in our capital, remember?).
That leaves us with the entire left-hand side of the screen, where we are going to build up the Wehrmacht. There are 4 major enterprises to tak ecare of here: the army or the Heer, as it was known in Germany at the time, the Luftwaffe, the Kriegsmarine and provincial improvements.
Click on the “Division” tab.

​

The Heer: before we can even begin to think about numbers, first we have to take a look at how divisions are composed. Contrary to HOI2, divisions in HOI3 consist of a minimum of 2 brigades. There are 2 kinds of brigades: combat brigades and support brigades. Combat brigades are the frontline troops used. Support brigades, while essential, cannot fight on their own, as we will see in a minute.
A brigade is the smallest ground unit available for use in the game. We can build reserve brigades (these are men that, in peacetime, continue their day-to-day life until the army is mobilised at which time they take up arms). The strength in a reserve brigade depends on the Conscription law used when the brigade is first put in the production queu. The alternative are standard brigades. These are fulltime soldiers. A standard brigade starts with its full strength.
The pros and cons of each:
Reserves: cheaper to build and maintain in peacetime, more expensive to maintain in wartime. They need more time before they are fully combat ready and reinforced.

Standard brigades: they cost more to build and maintain in peacetime, but once ready, they only have to get organised before you can throw them in the thick of things. Reinforcing these is cheaper during wartime, however.
Contrary to a regularly returning myth on the forum, reserve brigades, once mobilised (at full strength and org) are the equal in combat to standard brigades.
Because we will need a ton of troops, we are going to build reserve brigades until the war starts, after which time it all depends on what use we have in mind for them.

Combat brigades that are available to us at the start of the game are:
Light Armour (Larm): fast, lightly armed and lightly armoured tanks. Perfect for exploitation duties (encircling enemy forces, fast recon, getting to the VP provinces when resistance is minimal and speed is of the essence).

Motorised Infantry (mot): basically, these are infantry in trucks that allow them to fully support armoured breakthroughs and exploitation duties.

Moutaineers (mtn): as the name suggests, they have combat and movement bonuses in hilly/moutainous terrain. When fully entrenched in those circumstances, they are very hard to dislodge. Excellent defensive and offensive unit.

Infantry (inf): your standard footsoldier, or as Eisenhower put it, GI Joe. These make up the bulk of any army. They are highly versatile and can be used in almost any situation.

Cavalry (cav): the exploitation/ breakthrough unit of choice up to the first World War. By 1936 they have been outdone by motorised infantry and tanks, but they still shine in situations where tanks and motorised units have trouble, such as low-infrastructure provinces, or troublesome terrain types. We will use these primarily as anti-partisan forces, but Japan, for instance, has great use for these when invading China as frontline troops.

Militia (mil): to coin a modern-day phrase, these are your typical paramilitary forces. They are, by themselves, not worth much in modern combat, but they cost only a fraction of regular infantry in terms of IC, MP and supplies. Small countries or nations that need a large number of troops yesterday can easily field an enormous number of them.

Garrisons (gar): these are static brigades that have only one duty to perform: defense. They will guard VP provinces, rear areas prone to hostile bombings if you can’t afford interceptors, and such more. They are also excellent to supress partisan activity by themselves (even more so when coupled with military police).

Highly desirable combat brigades that we have to research first would be:
Armour (arm): your standard tank brigade: slower than Larm, but more powerful in combat. These will make up the bulk of our armoured forces.

Heavy Armour (Harm): personally, I don’t like them very much: they cost a ton to produce and supply and only move slightly faster than an infantry brigade. I will freely admit, though, that a fully mobilised Harm division can be rather scary on the battlefield if you don’t have a lot of anti-tank capability present. Tiger tanks are Harm.

Mechanised Infantry (mech): among the most powerful units in the game. They are expensive, but they pack one heck of a punch, are very fast, equally good in offense as defense. Just make sure you have enough supplies and fuel.

Marines (mar): Experts in amphibious, jungle and marsh combat. Every nation that expects to deal with these situations should build at least a few of these. AFAIK, the USA, RL, “only” needed 5 of these, along with a number of infantry divisons, to clear out the Pacific against Japan.
Airborne Infantry (para): experts at airborne operations. One of the most famous World War II Divisions worldwide were paratroopers: the 101st Airborne. Excellent defensive unit with parachute capability that allow them to bypass forts, can go places no other unit can ever hope to reach. Easy to abuse in gamey ways.
No player in his right mind would ever devote even an ounce of effort on:
Super Heavy Armour (SHarm): google “maus panzer” and you’ll know why. Ridiculously expensive, can hardly move at all. Don’t ever try them (unless you’re in a REALLY experimenting mood and for laughs)!

Support Brigade types are:
Armoured Cars (AC): think of these as lightly armoured jeeps with machineguns, if you will. They provide some measure of added combat ability. Among the fastest brigades in the game. Can be used for Combined Arms divisions (I will get to this later in the chapter), exploitation divisions and, when paired with a cavalry brigade, can be excellent to combat partisan uprisings.

Tank Destroyers (TD): armoured vehicles designed to combat tanks. Can be used in conjunction with motorised infantry to create Combined Arms Divisions. Highly desirable when facing the Soviet Union.
Anti-Aircraft (AA): They are only marginally more useful than they were in HOI2. These can be used for, obviously, AA duty when interceptors are out of reach for the nation you’ve chosen, or to protect HQs from bombardment. When properly teched up, however, they make reasonably effective anti-tank weapons in an emergency, but there is no way in a Vanilla game to turn these into the fearsome Flak-88 that the German army was so fond of RL.

Anti-Tank (AT): given the fact that the majority of your enemies will be “soft” targets (again, I’ll explain later), and given the fact that their “soft attack” is negligable, they are largely useless. If you must have anti-tank ability in your infantry forces, AA would serve you better for their potential dual role.
Artillery (art): Even with the big terrain penalties they face in any terrain (I believe they even have -10% attack in plains!), artillery is still, for many, the premier support brigade for infantry. There is simply no other brigade that provides better firepower per MP invested. Contrary to HOI2, they now have the same speed as infantry and will no longer slow you forces down.

Engineers (eng): In FtM their defensive bonuses could be (are?) bugged and don’t work as designed. That being said, they still provide movement bonuses for cross-river movement and attack bonuses against forts.

Military Police (pol): As you could expect, these brigades are used only for defensive, anti-partisan duties. Excellent in the latter role when paired with garrison brigades.

There are three types of support brigade we can’t build yet:
Self-Propelled Artillery (Spart): The motorised/lightly armoured version of artillery, these will provide an excellent addition to any armour type division. If you really want to go historical with your motorised infantry, you could forego the TD and go for this one in stead. Bear in mind, however, that the Combined Arms bonus is the single largest combat bonus you can have.

Rocket Artillery: somewhat less sever terrain penalties (and slightly faster) than artillery, they cost more supplies and come somewhat late in the game. Plus they require 2 more techs to be researched. HOI2 players: don’t combine them with mountaineers as they will diffuse the bonuses mtn have in hills and mountains.

Self-propelled Rocket Artillery: Are to Spart what Rocket art is to art. I hold the same basic objections to them personally as I do to Rocket Art.

Unless I missed something, I have now covered all brigades. How do we turn them into divisions? That’s easy. A proper division will have at least 1 combat brigade and/or 1 support brigade. But first you need to know their stats. So here comes another list ;-)
Strength: As I said before, strength depends on whether they are Reserve or standard brigades and on your Conscription Laws. A fully mobilised combat brigade as a strength of 3,000 men, while Support brigades have only 1,000 men. Think of this as your division’s “Health”. An division that is at 0 Strength will cease to exist (the game term is “shatter”).
Organisation: This simulates your brigade’s ability to keep fighting when the going gets tough. When your divisions reach 0 org (usually sooner than that), they cannot continue fighting and must retreat to the nearest friendly province when on defense. When they are completely surrounded and cannot retreat, they will shatter. A division on the offense that reaches 0 org, simply calls off the attack and must first be allowed to reorganise. The amount of org they have depends on the type of division and your military doctrines.
Combat Width: I will explain this in all detail in the chapter on combat, but the basics are like this: assume that each battle consists of 10 squares. Combat Width determines how many of these squares your brigade occupies. Armour brigades start out with a combat width of 2, which can later be researched to become 1. All other combat brigades have a combat width of 1 and support brigades have a combat width of 0. This is one of the biggest changes from HOI2. You can only fit in so many brigades in those 10 squares before getting stacking penalties. As support brigades do not take up any space whatsoever (0 width, remember?), you can have a whole series of brigades involved in any single combat.
Soft Attack: These are the number of shots fired at the “soft” unarmoured portion of the division every 1-hour “turn”.
Hard Attack: These are the number of shots fired at the “hard” armoured portion of the division.
Air Attack: These are the number of shots fired against attacking enemy planes.
Defensiveness: These are the number of shots avoided when under attack.
Toughness: These are the number of shots avoided when attacking.
Air Defense: These are the number of shots avoided from enemy bombers.
Softness: This stat has a lot of meaning in combat. It determines the softness or hardness of the division.
For instance, a Light Armour brigade has a softness of 30%. This means that of all the enemy’s soft attacks, only 30% will hit something before calculating the effect of defensiveness or toughness. Since most brigades have more soft attacks than hard attacks, it means the best policy would be to get softness as low as possible.

But I have previously mentioned Combined Arms Divisions.
When a division has a total softness of anywhere between 33% and 66%, they are considered such a division and they get a whopping 20% base combat bonus.
If said division is commanded by a general with the Panzer Leader trait, they get another +10% bonus (even more so if the superior HQs also have a general with this trait) (as we will see in the next chapter).
If the Combined Arms tech in the military Superior Firepower tree is researched, the division gets another 10%.
It is therefore obvious that the most powerful divisions in combat have a softness between 33% and 66%.
Speed: in Kilometers Per Hour under ideal circumstances. Mobile brigades have had their speed decreased for game balance reasons.
Suppresion: When we win a war, and the conquered nation is in an alliance or a faction, it usually forms a government in exile in the faction leader’s capital. We then occupy the conquered territory. A brigade’s suppression ability allows it to decrease the partisan revolt risk in the province it occupies and the surrounding, adjoining provinces. (There is a minimum risk that the conquered nation will simply give up and we will Annex the nation instead. Annexed nations have an increased risk of revolt and suppression no longer has any effect on it)
Supplies: this is how many supplies the brigade needs per day.
Fuel: This is how much fuel the brigade needs per day.
Officers: every army brigade needs 100 officers. Mountaineers need 130, militia, garrisons and Military Police need significantly less. These are taken from your Officer Pool when the brigade or division is finished and deployed anywhere on the map.
Build cost: this is how much IC the brigade costs to build per day.
Manpower cost: this is how much Mp the brigade needs. Manpower is taken from your MP pool when the brigade or division is first put into the production queu.
Production Time: This is how many days a brigade requires before it is finished, given current practical levels.

I know. It’s a lot to take in. What’s more, throughout the campaign, we will have to take all these things into account whenever we start a new army production. Thankfully, you’re not alone. The Paradox forum is incredibly helpful in giving advice to whoever needs it.
Unfortunately, there are as many opinions on what constitutes the “best” divisions as there are players on the forum. One thing everyone agrees on: there are no “one-size-fits-all” divisions. It all depends on your use for them, on the nation you play, on your potential targets, and so on. For this tutorial, I’m going to go with some of the most used compositions.
But first (HOI2 players beware!) I need to talk about serial and parallell builds. Parallell builds mean you build them at the same time. Serial builds mean you finish one and then start on the next one. For a variety of reasons, serial builds are no longer the holy grail of production. Practicals make them less interesting. In HOI2, it was quite common to produce 5 parallell divions*99 serial. That would give you 99 times 5 divisions coming off the line at the same time, all of them costing the same amount of IC. In HOI3, however, the first parallell build finishes and it modifies the cost of the next division. The second division would have a different cost, and so on and so forth. For this reason, serial building is used primarily for those things that you would otherwise thend to forget. In my case, I tend to forget transport ships, for instance. So I always build transports in serials.


How do we build a division?
First, obviously, we need to determine what we need. In the previous chapter, we saw that our Armour Theory is at 10%, while our Armour practical is only at 5%. We need to boost this, so we are going to build an armoured division.
Thankfully, the game provides us with some ready-made templates to the right. Click on the “panzer 1936” button.
You can now see the total stats for the division as assembled. The IC cost is a little over 15. Click on the chockbox marked “reserve division”. The IC cost has now been halved, as have the MP costs.
This division is made up of 2 Larm brigades and 1 mot, giving them Combined Arms bonus (CA for short). A division can consist of up to 4 brigades (5 if we research the Superior Firepower Tech). We could add a brigade, but bear in mind that this division already has a combat width of 5 (2 for each Larm brigade and 1 for the mot brigade). Adding another combat brigade would make it take up too much space on the battlefield (10 squares, remember?). So we could add a support brigade. Which one? The division always moves at the speed of its slowest brigade, so it would have to be a brigade of somewhat equal speed. On the Left-hand side, the “brigade side” of the puzzle, click on the KPH heading. All brigades are now arranged from fastest to slowest. Clicking it again would make it from slowest to fastest and vice versa.
Our division has a speed of 8. That only leaves Armoured Car or Engineers. Neither of them would force the division out of the “Golden” CA zone. Armoured Cars would make them a little tougher, but engineers would enable them to cross rivers faster and have an easier time attacking forts.
Click the engineer brigade. You can see that it has been added to the Panzer division on the right and that its stats have already been figured into the total. All you have to do now is click “start production”.
There we go. Our first division is being build.
Now click on infantry 1936. Click on the artillery brigade (left-hand side of the screen). Click on “save template”. The game will now always give us 1936 infantry as 3inf+1art. (and I fully expect some comments on this one)This will be our regular infantry division. Click on “start production”.
We’re doing this to keep our infantry practicals warm while we concentrate on other, more urgent needs.
Such as our Kriegsmarine, which is, frankly, a shambles. Even when focusing on convoy raiding and submarine warfare, we need at least some kind of surface fleet worthy of that name.
Click on the Flotilla folder. Click on the Battlecruiser and then start a parallell build of 2. Why BC? Because they have been researched to 1936 level allready and share practicals with Battleships. They take 2 years to finish. In a few months, when we have researched 1936 Battleship techs, we will commence building 2 Battleships. When the BCs finish, they will add their practicals to the BBs ALREADY IN THE QUEU. Besides, BCs are fast and powerful enough to stand up to almost anything (excepting Battleships and carriers). We will use the Battleships to bombard the shores of Baltic Soviet Union and protect our shores from enemy invasion fleets.
Start building 1 Light Cruiser and 3 submarines.
That’s all we can afford to spend on our navy for now.
Click on the small rocket in the middle, just below the airforce folder. Start building one rocket test center. We will need this if we ever hope to research and build jet engines. It takes a lot of IC and a long time to finish, so its best to get it up and going right now.

​

Leave the production screen and find the province called Karlsruhe on the French border. Given the length of this chapter, I will guide you through the province card later. Here we can build any provincial improvements (airbases, naval bases, AA, radar, infrastructure,…). Click on the Land Fort (2nd from below in the left column). We need to finish the Siegfriedline for two reasons: obviously, it provides protection from any French invasion, and secondly, it provides construction practicals.

​

Do the same for the other 4 provinces bordering the Maginot line that don’t have a Land Fort yet (Baden Baden, Offenburg, Freiburg and Lorrach).
We still have 15 IC left.
Find the province of Wilhelmshaven (west of Denmark) and start building a coastal fort there.
That leaves us with about 10 IC.
Go to the airforce folder and start a production of 1 interceptor. As you can see, we are running a couple of IC short. Take just enough IC from supplies to put production at 0.02 above need. (creeping sliders, remember?)
And that’s it. We are building armour, infantry, a bunch of ships, a rocket test center, forts and an interceptor wing. Here is our complete production:

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Given the considerable length of this chapter, I’ll leave it at that for now. Have fun.
Next Chapter: the fun world of a proper Order of battle. Coming to a forum near you.

 

[Hakomar]

Very useful, thanks for that. I didn't really understand more than half of that until now

 

[misterbean]

Very useful, thanks for that. I didn't really understand more than half of that until now

glad to help

 

[SonofWinter]

Good to know that I should be building my units at lower maintenance. Also, thank you for explaining the Combined Arms bonus and how it works. I had no clue about that.

So a quick question, I've gone through 4 games now, into June of 1936, no Spanish Civil war in any of the games, is this event broken?

 

[loki100]

So a quick question, I've gone through 4 games now, into June of 1936, no Spanish Civil war in any of the games, is this event broken?

Don't think so, it relies on the concept of mean time to happen. In effect there is a 50% chance it will have fired by March/April 1936, but each month is checked in isolation (ie its sampling with replication), so there is a statistically very low chance it could not fire by 1948. if you understand the poisson distribution this is easy to explain, if not then at its crudest every single month has a 15% chance of the event happening so in 50% of games it will have fired in spring 1936, but it is not set up to ensure it kicks in by a certain date. If you understand the flaw of reasoning in Grahem Greene's novel Dr Fisher of Geneva, that explains it well too. Its the difference between likelihood before an event happens and the suceeding likelihood once that event hasn't happened at the first possible point.

 

[WhAcKeD_OuT]

Nice job misterbean.
Now THIS is a tutorial..........

 

[misterbean]

Nice job misterbean.
Now THIS is a tutorial..........

You're very welcome.
As for the Spanish Civil War: I've seen it start in januari 1936 and end in februari of that same year, I've seen it begin in 1938 and last until well after I had taken Paris, I've seen the Nationalists win, I've seen them loose. It's a wild guess, really, when and how it happens. one thing is sure, however, the consequences for Germany are minor. I have not personally known a victorious Republican Spain to join the Allies, though there are some reports on the forum from other players that did see it happen. Mostly, they stick to their own affairs.

 

[misterbean]

Chapter 10: Order of Battle.

This is where it gets interesting. Before we can begin playing the game, you first need to understand the way a properly organised army works. I have here a simple layout of a proper OOB for you.

​

Let’s look at each section to learn how it works.

Skills and Traits: Each commander has a skill level and most have traits (such as being good at defensive operations, or being an expert with armoured forces). A Commander’s skill will always have full effect on all troops under its command. Units and their commanding officer will gain experience when in combat. Lower-level units will gain more experience, while higher-ups will gain gradually less xp. When a commander reaches 100 xp, he will gain a skill level. Each commander has a maximum skill level (this can only be found in the game files, not in the actual game itself).
Contrary to HOI2, you will no longer lose skill levels when promoting commanders. During wartime, however, you lose experience when demoting a commander, which may lead to a reduction in skill level.
His trait will be halved for each subordinate level: a theatre commander’s traits have full effect on any army groups under its command, ½ effect on armies controlled by the army group, ¼ for all corps HQs that comprise the army in question and 1/8 effect on the divisions or brigades that make up the corps.The various traits for army generals are:
Commando: When out of supply, the effects are lessened by 20%.
Defensive doctrine: 10% combat bonus when defending.
Engineer: 10% combat bonus to attack across river. Contrary to HOI2, you no longer need to put them in a division with an engineer brigade.
Fortress buster: 10% combat bonus to attack forts (both land- and coastal versions, apparently).
Logistics wizard: 25% reduction on supply consumption.
Offensive doctrine: 10% combat bonus when attacking.
Panzer Leader: 10% Combined Arms bonus.
Trickster: 10% chance to surprise enemy when combat begins.
Winter Specialist: 50% bonus to stave off the effects of arctic attrition.

An example is in order here. A commander with Logistics wizard trait gives 25% reduction on supply consumption for the division he commands. If we give this guy command of a Theatre, any Army Groups under it will get 25% reduction, the armies within the army group will get 12.5% reduction, the corps will get 6.25% reduction, the divisions will get 3.125% reduction. (yes, this means ALL armed forces in the entire theatre, including airforce and navy.)

At the top, we have a Theatre HQ. These are usually defined by a geographical area of operations. In this area, all forces should respond to the proper Theatre. As Germany we have 2 Theatres at the start of the game: the Bitburg HQ, which is charge of the Western half of Germany, and the Berlin HQ, in charge of the Eastern half. We can create additional Theatres later on as the need develops and manually assign a number of provinces for it to control.
A Theatre has a range of 2000 km. This means that all forces under its command should be within 2000 km of the Theatre to profit from the Theatre commander’s traits and stacking bonus.
Theatres are commanded by a Field Marshall and reduce the stacking penalty incurred when attacking with too many divisions by 1% for each skill level they have. Since we will try to avoid stacking penalties anyway, the best commander for a theatre is a logistics wizard (see the above example) He will give a 3% reduction on supply consumption for ALL forces in that theatre. The cumulative effect of this can be awesome indeed.
It can command any number of army, airforce or navy forces, but usually up to 5 Army Groups is plenty.

Directly subordinate to the Theatre is the Army Group. An Army Group groups up to 5 armies that have a common directive. For instance, when we start Barbarossa (the invasion of the Soviet Union), The Berlin HQ will have an Army Group taking care of security in Poland and east Germany, another attacking north SU, one attacking central SU and one attacking south SU. Or you could create an Army Group consisting solely of Aircrafts to protect western Germany.
Army Groups have a range of 600 km.
They too are commanded by a Field marshall who reduces supply consumption for all units under its command by 5% per skill level. It is therefore wise to have a commander with skill 5 at this level (that’s a reduction of 25% total to the entire Army Group) who has the right trait for the job you need it to do.

Next up are Armies. Consisting of up to 5 corps, they are the basis for your strategic planning. (“Army A will do this, while Army B covers their flank,etc.”).
Armies have a range up 400 km.
They are commanded by generals. In a proper OOB, every division in an army has increased organisation, dependend on the general’s skill. Again, care should be taken to take full advantage of the general’s traits to give him the job he’s best suited for.

A Corps is commanded by a lieutenant general and makes up part of the forces under army command.
Corps HQ radio range is 200 km. They improve the odds of reserves moving forwards in battle by their skill level. Having the right trait is more important here than skill level.
Divisions: consist of at least 2 brigades and (with proper research) up to 5. These are the guys doing the actual fighting and, as such, their Major Generals will gain experience the fastest. Their skill level improves combat efficiency, so it should not be overlooked. However, traits are what matter at this level: having a full 10% combat bonus is superb!
Brigades: you can field single brigades as well, but their Brigadier Generals are not supported by the game. They will thus lack divisional bonuses above and beyond lacking manpower.
What does this mean in practice for assigning commanders?
Theatre: logistics wizards
Army Group: highest skill levels you have available (Germany has several lvl-5 commanders at game start).
Army: High skill with proper traits
Corps: traits, with some skill
Divisions: traits.
Brigade: none.

One last thing needs to be said about HQs. When you are missing a link in the chain, for instance, by attaching a garrison directly to a Theatre instead of a corps, the HQ you attach a unit to will act like the first higher-up. so if you use armies without an army group, the theatre will act as an army group and you will miss out on the bonuses normally provided by a theatre. This goes for every level of your hierarchy.

​

Before we start reorganising Germany’s OOB, let’s take a look at a unit “card”, in this case a random infantry division.
As you can see, the 5. Infanterie-Division belongs to the V. Armeekorps (which is a corps HQ) that is part of the Bitburg Theatre.
At the top, we have the division name. Right-clicking the name will allow you to rename it to anything you choose.
Below the name, we have the name of the commanding officer. Mousing the name or the commander’s picture to the left will tell us his traits, skill and experience.
The number of troops currently under his command will be shown next to the commander’s name. Note that this is a reserve unit and has less men currently serving than it would have when mobilised, making it more fragile when an enemy invasion occurs when you’re not mobilised.
Under the commander’s name is the amount of attrition suffered (currently 0%, you never take attrition in completely friendly surroundings) and the division’s maximum speed (currently 1 KPH due to winter conditions), along with the unit’s current location. Clicking this location will immediately take you there.
We also find two green meters, one each for supplies and fuel. They tell you the division’s supply consumption, how many days of supply are left in the province (under current circumstances) and how long it’s been since it’s been last supplied. If they start running out of supplies or fuel, the meter will start turning red. A unit out of supplies cannot attack, only move between friendly provinces. A unit out of fuel can only wait to be refueled. You can still strategically redeploy it, but that has its own consequences as we will see later in the game.
The little green square saying “HQ” tells us it is currently within range of all higher echelons of the hierarchy. When one of the higher HQs is out of range, all those below it are out of range. For instance, assume army A is out of range of its Army Group. This means that all corps and divisions of that army will be considered out of range as well, even when within range of the Army HQ, and lose all bonuses connected with the OOB. If this happens, the square will turn red.
The double-sided arrow under the supply meter has a tooltip telling us the division’s combat width. The number next to it (30 in this case) is its weight, which becomes a factor when having them boarding transport ships and, in the case of airborne troops, transport planes. If the transport’s weight limit is exceeded, you could take the brigades apart and send the division in pieces to its destination where you can reassemble it.
The grey rectangle shows what its current orders are. Halting current orders can be done by clicking the grey “X” in the order bar. TAKE CARE NOT TO MISTAKE THE RED “X” BELOW IT AS THIS WILL DISBAND THE DIVISION ENTIRELY!!!!
Next up is the red arrow pointing left. This allows us to seperate the unit from the hierarchy. The arrow will turn green and point right, allowing us to put it back in the hierarchy. This is a tool for reorganising the OOB.
Also a tool for the OOB is the rectangle with a “+” and several X marks. This allows us to create an HQ 1 level higher. You can see which one that would be by counting the Xs:
X=brigade
Xx=division
Xxx=corps
Xxxx=army
Xxxxx=army group
Xxxxxx=theatre
This is greyed out because the unit is already attached to a corps. We would have to seperate it first to create a new corps for it. new HQs start out with very little strength and will have to build up by reinforcements in the production screen.
The next three icons are, in order, for prioritizing it for reinforcements and upgrades (currently turned off for this division), for receiving reinforcements and for receiving upgrades (both of which need our input at the production screen’s sliders).
The next 2 icons are for boarding ships or planes (only available for paratroopers).
THE RED “X” WILL DISBAND THE DIVISION AND RETURN ITS MANPOWER TO OUR MANPOWER POOL.
The last icon will open a window allowing us to seperate individual brigades from the division.
The bottom is taken up by the individual brigades that make up the division. We have their name, an icon allowing us to upgrade the brigade into another type of brigade (according to game rules, for instance we could turn a garrison into an infantry brigade) which would take the brigade out of the game screen and put it into the production queu. Ending “production” there would disband the brigade. It is often cheaper to build low-level troops and upgrade them to a more sophisticated type later on, but that would be too complex for the purposes of this tutorial AAR. Feel free to toy around with it in your own games, however. (and before you ask, yes this would give you proper practicals).
The yellow stars denote the experience the division has, based on training laws and combat experience. We have each brigade’s troop numbers, strength (red bar) and org (green bar). The exclamation point next to the brigade’s org shows us that this is a reserve brigade.
Clicking on the brigade will show you its stats.

Man, you never appreciate just how much info they cram into that little thing until you start explaining it all!

I think we are just about ready to have fun. Time to build our own first Order of Battle!

The first thing you should do is to remove all commanders from their current assignments. That way, we can see who is the most skilled, who has the best traits, etc.
Fortunately, this is easy to do.

​

Select the Bitburg HQ from the Organiser. Right-click on the commander’s name. This will open a window where we can select a new commanding officer if we wanted to.
At the bottom, first uncheck “auto-assign”. In FtM, we can now click “unassign all” and confirm by clicking “ok”. This removes all commanders in army, airforce and navy. That way, any new units deployed by us will remain leaderless so that we can choose its commander ourselves.
In SF, the procedure is more involved. Click on the green bar between the HQ brigade and its subordinate units. This will select all units under that command. All you have to do now is right-click on each leader and select “no leader”. Do the same for the Berlin HQ.
Rename the Bitburg HQ into “OKW” for roleplaying reasons.
As you can see, Germany doesn’t have any armies yet, so we will change this. Find the IX. Armeekorps in Frankfurt-Am-Main, near the French border. Click on the “+XXXX” icon to create the 1st Army. Rename it to the 1. Armee. Now do the same again to create a new Army Group. Call this one “Heeresgruppe B”.
Go Back to the OKW HQ. Add V. Armeekorps, VII. Armeekorps, XII. Armeekorps and XI. Armeekorps to the 1. Armee. We will later fill this army up with newly created infantry divisions.
Similarly, find the VI. Armeekorps and create another army, which we will call 2. Armee. Add X. Armeekorps to it. Detach the single infantry division and assign it to the X. Armeekorps. Detach 2. Armee and attach it to Heeresgruppe B.
That leaves us with 2 panzer Divisions. Detach these and add them directly to the Berlin HQ for now. Germany only has Larm divisions right now. These will be used in an exploitation role during our invasion of Poland. While you’re at it, rename them into 1. Leichte Division and 2. Leichte Division. Doing this will make it easier to select them in battle.
Go back to the OKW. Detach the submarines and the Kriegsmarine and attach them directly to Heeresgruppe B. We could create a seperate Army Group for the Kriegsmarine, but that is strictly speaking not necessary. Besides, supply reduction will be bigger this way, since we will assign a high-skill general to command Heeresgruppe B.
That only leaves the 2 Luftflotte. Detach them and attach them to the Berlin HQ.
There you go. The OKW now commands Heeresgruppe B, which consists of 1. And 2. Armee, along with the majority of Kriegsmarine assets.

Select the Berlin HQ and rename it “OKH”.
Heeresgruppe A allready has 2 infantry divisions under its control. Detach them and attach them to the II. Armeekorps. Create an army for it and rename it 3. Armee. Attach I. Armeekorps, VIII. Armeekorps and IV. Armeekorps to the 3. Armee.
Select the 13. Infanterie-Division and attach it to the IV. Armeekorps.
Rename the Panzertruppenkommando into “I. Panzerkorps” and create an army, renaming it 1. Panzerarmee. Rename the 3. Panzer-Division into 3. Leichte Division.
Select 1. Leichte Division and create a new corps (II. Panzerkorps). Do the same for the 2. Leichte Division (III. Panzerkorps) and attach both to the 1. Panzerarmee. We will later add armour and motorised divisions to each Panzerkorps.
Attach both the 3. Armee and 1. Panzerarmee to Heeresgruppe A.
Attach the Baltische Flotte to Heeresgruppe A, as well as all airwings. Send the latter to Rostock, a province devoid of any other kind of armed force. Once they all arrive there, we will reorganise them.
The only thing left to do is assign commanders to every land unit. We will hold off assigning leaders to our navy or airforce because we will get some very fine air- and naval officers in the next three years.
Go back to Heeresgruppe B. Click on the space where the commander’s name should be. In the general pool click “skill” to sort the list according to skill, with highest-skilled officers first. Promote general Von Rundstedt to Field Marshall and assign him to command heeresgruppe B. As a lvl-5, he will give a major reduction in supply consumption, while his defensive/offensive talents will give the troops under his command a (slight) benefit in case of trouble.
Select Heeresgruppe A in the OKH. Promote Von Manstein to Field Marshall and five him control. He’s a lvl-5 as well, who has some pretty awesome traits, among them panzer leader.
The armies are next. Assign Von Leeb to the 1. Armee in the OKW. Another high-skilled defensive expert. 2. Armee will be commanded by general Blaskowitz (a lvl-3 offensive doctrine general) as 2. Armee will be our reserve army. If we find ourselves in trouble on the French front or in our coastal provinces, they will be tasked with relief efforts.
On the eastfront, assign Von kluge to command 3. Armee. Promote Guderian to general and give him command of 1. Panzerarmee.
Find Busch, promote him to Field marshall and assign him to command the OKH. His high skill, logistics wizard and winter wizard traits will serve him well on the Eastfront (even more so when we finally invade the SU in 1941.)
We are staying in the OKH for now, because we will need as many high-level officers as we can here. Go to the 3. Armee. You can either click the green bar to select the entire army at once or you can first assign control of the various corps HQs and then follow up with assigning command of the divisions. What matters now is that we will select officers who have offensive doctrine trait (BUT NO OLD GUARDS!) to each and every position in the army.
For the 1. Panzerarmee, we have 3 outstanding lieutenant generals to command the Panzerkorps HQs: Von Kleist, Hausser and Hoth. Assign more panzer generals to each Larm division.
Go to the OKW. Assign defensive doctrine generals to command 1. Armee’s corps HQs. Never mind that they are old guards or not. They will basically have to stand guard for the next 4 years. After the fall of France, they will again be assigned to guard duty in Western Europe. If all goes well, they won’t have much opportunity to gain experience anyway. 1. Armee’s divisions should be commanded by major generals with defensive doctrine trait and fortress buster trait. Promote and demote as you see fit. In peacetime it doesn’t matter what you do.
The 2. Armee will be commanded by the best of the rest. Use plenty of logistics wizards to help cut down on supply consumption.
Finally, we have our Theatre commanders: Von dem Bach-Zelewski will command the OKW and Busch will command the OKH.
There. We’re done. Germany now has a complete and modern OOB, albeit missing a lot of divisions yet. And let’s count our blessings that I didn’t decide to give you a tutorial on the Soviet Union. Trust me, if you can manage that one, you can manage any army in the world.
Okay, before I close off, let’s run down a little checklist.
Did we start trade with US and SU?
Did we change ministers?
Did we delete all spies abroad?
Did we put all our Leadership on spies?
Did we start the proper building programs and change our production sliders?
If all answers are “yes”, save the game. If not, go back to the proper chapter in the tutorial to do so now. Then save.
When I get back, we are going to hit pauze for the first time…
And let the games begin!

 

[loki100]

good stuff well explained, but a couple of questions. Do you lose experience when you shift commanders up/down. Certainly didn't in SF and I've not noticed (but equally not bothered to look) in FTM. Equally are you sure that any break in the HQ chain removes all bonuses. I always thought that if say an army HQ was out of range of its army group it would still cascade its (& any corps) advantages down to those combat divisions in its range?

Theres a lot in there, but it may also be worth noting that although the trait/benefit stuff is easiest to explain in terms of a full hierachy what actually drives it is being the 1st/2nd/3rd HQ in the chain. So if you hook a division to a theatre (which I'd do with a garrison unit or sometimes in the Far East with the problems of large provinces and command range), the theatre is the 1st HQ in the chain and acts like a corps HQ in terms of trait and skill impact.

 

[misterbean]

good stuff well explained, but a couple of questions. Do you lose experience when you shift commanders up/down. Certainly didn't in SF and I've not noticed (but equally not bothered to look) in FTM. Equally are you sure that any break in the HQ chain removes all bonuses. I always thought that if say an army HQ was out of range of its army group it would still cascade its (& any corps) advantages down to those combat divisions in its range?

Theres a lot in there, but it may also be worth noting that although the trait/benefit stuff is easiest to explain in terms of a full hierachy what actually drives it is being the 1st/2nd/3rd HQ in the chain. So if you hook a division to a theatre (which I'd do with a garrison unit or sometimes in the Far East with the problems of large provinces and command range), the theatre is the 1st HQ in the chain and acts like a corps HQ in terms of trait and skill impact.

In some of my recent games, I had divisions out of range when their HQ was only 2 provinces behind them. Turns out that my Army Group was still standing in Lodz while the division was fighting over Moscow :blush:
you're absolutely right in your second remark. I completely forgot about that one. Will edit it right now.

 

[WhAcKeD_OuT]

misterbean gets my vote to prepare the in-game tutorials for HOI4 when it comes out...lol
Maybe even the manual. (getting paid of course)
Nice job

 

[unmerged(431234)]

Amen. By the time he's done we can just point the wiki here instead!

Another suggestion... If you drew up your OOB at least at to the corps layer, and snapped a pic of it, that might help people follow your logic. I'm lucky enough to know the historical Wehrmacht layout pretty well (and you're following it) so that helps... But it's easy to get lost if you don't know where Halder and Guderian ended up.

 

[misterbean]

thank you both for the compliment. I aim to please.
TBH, I'm not really following the historic Wehrmacht. I'm just trying to be thorough. If you look at my panzerarmee, you'll see that I have Panzer generals from Army Group level down to division level. The combined bonus to CA can make all the difference. An alternative would have been to have Hausser at the Theatre level (logistics wizard + panzer general+lvl4)in stead of Busch, but then I'd lose out on the Winter Wizard bonus.
I don't have time for a snapshot right now, but you can expect one tonight (my time) when I get home from work.

 

[SonofWinter]

Still reading, just don't have any questions, since I'm understanding what you are writing.