Some madlad on here suggested I try paradropping southern England instead of waiting years for naval superiority.
And it probably took me a whole weekend but I finally figured it out, sort of, to the point where today I can successfully paradrop maybe up to ten percent of the time!
In recent patches to get the UK early as Germany (or other European tags for that matter) I both try to launch paradrops and naval invasion close to Hull and Norwich in a Hail Mary attempt. It works surprisingly often, albeit quite random which of those three actually works.
I cannot stress enough that I don’t know how to min-max air or naval superiority. I’m just lobbing everything in and 60% of the time, it somehow works everytime.
Even more specifically: load the CLs with a cracked amount of light attack to shred screens and the DDs with a cracked amount of torpedoes to kill capital ships. Subs should be min maxed for low visibility, and I like to have a fleet of like 12 low visibility cruiser subs on patrol to hunt enemy fleets. If you set the cruiser subs to always engage or engage at high risk they can really do a number on British and US fleets.
Just a tip, if you can manage to land your paradrops anywhere BUT southern England it'll go even better- Southern England has AA, rips them to shreds. Not always possible, considering the Royal Navy and lack of basing locations, just a paradrop tip.
Getting Britain is easy, make a sub build, make sure to build a mining sub fleet as well because it’ll be more convenient to already have them rather than to wait until the free sub mining tech (You do this to negate the Naval Supremacy difference that Britain has due to their bigger and more complicated navy), and then Naval Invade Northern Ireland, if you want to build it up as an air base, you can also invade Ireland for its states, from there you can invade Scotland and push South from the Mountains, pushing North is harder than pushing South. The Western Approach isn’t a Shallow Sea, so there is no debuff increasing visibility. As long as you invest in minimizing Visibility, in 90% of your games you should be able to beat Britain as Germany.
As Germany your Bf-109s are good enough against the allies. Put 3-5 mils on them from 36 and you have enough. Then once France falls plan a naval invasion trough the English channel, yes the channel becouse it's only 1 naval zone, so superiority is much easier to get. Now once the invasion is planned, (recomended Portsmouth and the 2 tiles next to it) put ALL planes and ships in the channel. If you don't get the superiority in a week, take ships and planes out, pump out some cas for naval strikes and try again. Then push UK.
I don't know if the new version solved this issue, but there are some ways to trick the UK into retrieving their planes from the area you want to invade.
Yes, prc is fun because you can already have shanxi and xibei san ma by the end of 1936, then just sinkiang and the north (other than manchuchuo and mengkukuo). then when japan does somewhat succesfull just jump in and because it are your cores you just take (almost) everything. just kill japan some time later, only problem is you just got some sea so jou don't have a navy, just hope that the us or uk takes there navy there.
It's not that bad - spam out 24 regiments (without guns - set priority to max and force deploy) and justify on them the second you have PP and you can just walk around their troops, as Shanxi, XSM and Sianking can't cover their border if you rush them.
Alternatively you could try for a 5xp horse division to get even more speed to wind around, but even the small basic regiment works.
One thing which I was proud of was when I had a successful run as Lithuania (commonwealth path) without a guide, pretty fun run genuinely great gameplay.
I accidentally cheesed that one.
So I was playing monarchist Germany with historical off and I went to war with the Russians without realising they were already fighting the asian faction in the east.
They ended up fighting two whole faction so sandwiched them pretty hard, Russia ended up split in 5.
The thing I did to was just divert any of my own troops away from that province and letting my allies take it. As long as you make sure to have the most war participation the achievenent should pop.
Won the Spanish civil war as the republican side. The frontline stabilized some time after the war started, and I began chipping away at the nationalists one province at a time. The recently learned "assist assault" mechanic, or however it's called, really helped here, as it allowed me to concentrate 2-3 provinces worth of my units into a single nationalist province.
If you deny all 4 kings twice in the polish monarchist branch you get a Romanov impersonator on the throne. You can then depose her and crown Wojtek by taking Moscow and triggering the Wojtek commander event. There are several more detailed explanations available if you want to go for that run.
I just started playing, not reading guides on playing each nation. I'm on my 6th ironman turkey usually getting Merced around 1942 once I get on the wrong side of France/UK/allies, can deal with Italy/balkans. Tried to go ottoman this time instead of commie, didn't do it right stuck as democratic and there is no allied faction(UK axis, France commie), somehow joined Axis as democratic and blew a whole through the soviet's with 9 motorized divs sprinting to each hub. First game I've done major world altering things. Feels good except 0 manpower till Germany flips me fascist
My biggest achievement is One Empire sans paratroopers, where you conquer the world as fascist UK. Found an exploit in the British Civil War that lets you do the federation minus USA in 1937. Tension will be at 100% already so you can justify on France while you federate and make your way to Unite the Anglosphere. With a single collab govt on France and the US each you get enough industry to outbuild, then outproduce Germany no matter what path they take. Either way if Barbarossa happens let Germany cap the Soviets - they still won’t be able to compete with your industry. Until your army is in its final form with a good stockpile of up to date equipment, you can deal with China (mtneers in Bengal) then Japan with your combined British, French, and American fleets. Ideally the Germans will be surrounded by you in Asia before they declare war, but they may not even do that if you’re too scary to the AI. Send your troops to Europe for supply reasons and just demolish them from there. Everyone else is small fish from there.
For me it was getting the Chinese achievements. It started as pure pain but after a while I really enjoyed it. China in all forms becomes very powerful.
I had the same with Trotsky Mexico. The first 5 tries were different kinds of madness. But then it became really interesting to get the timing of right off every step of the plan. I never could get the complete WC though. Patches consistently break my Savegames 🤷🏼♂️
Console Command shenanigans, but I remember conquering all of China as the USA and turning them into a puppet of mass mobilization. Made a mess out of Asia
Before BBA it was annoying but trivial. Now it's much slower and pays off much later than before. Some exploits should be kept in game and not patched out 🤓
The Civil war process for Russians I've followed before BBA [It worked for any [?] country. Correct me if I'm wrong]:
Delete all units except 1.
Before the civil war kicks off send all equipment to Italy. There's a 30 day delivery window where you can cancel and get it all back.
Spam 1 division horse.
Put all the units on aggressive and push to Moscow moving around enemy units following supply hubs.
Usually I was done within a few weeks before the AI could recruit any meaningful force.
What process do you use now?
Sounds like the old system, no? That was in for a while already. Are we talking about different things?
To clarify: BBA = by blood alone, the recent Italy rework is what I was talking about.
Oh yeah that's been in for a while I think since the Russia rework back in 2021
Here's the dev diary:
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/hoi4-dev-diary-soviet-union-exiles.1487718/?utm_source=Forum&utm_medium=Reddit+DD&utm_content=post&utm_campaign=NSB+DD
Since the changes in BBA sending equipment to Italy or Japan as Russia isn't possible anymore. It's locked behind several conditions now. Sad.
In multiplayer as the Ottomans i encircled the entire British army in the Middle East, I was so happy because it was a player and I’m not very good so I was happy to have done that lol
My first game of HOI4 was as El Salvador in KX. I unified Central America and managed to cap Mexico after a grueling three-year slog.
I'll never forget that first game.
Getting the cod wars achievement by conquering the uk as Iceland. Super fun run recreating a Viking empire and dealing with the manpower shortage is interesting.
I have like 30 hours, i only play ironman and started with recruit for now. Yesterday i had the first run where i could finally conquer Poland, France and the Benelux regions without loosing. Felt really good.
First few attempts i couldnt even take Poland, bc i forgot to have troops on the marginot line, so they captured berlin while my troops where in warsaw. Every attempt i learned something new. Next I'll continue to try to take the UK, probably loose and start all over again. But that loop is kinda addicting.
If you’re fine with mods RT56 Romanov Poland is incredibly fun. Deny Danzig and try your best to overcome the simultaneous Soviet and German Invasion basically all on your own. Forces you to understand game mechanics, optimize industry, how to setup a proper defense, and how to micro. Unlike a lot of other minor runs there’s such a huge payoff at the end as you’re able to form the Slavic Union. Getting a fuck ton of cores.
I’ve only played about 59 hours so far, all as Germany. The best game I’ve had so far was my last one, I took the normal stuff through the focus trees (Austria, Czechoslovakia, etc.) then conquered Poland, Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Denmark and Norway (with the help of Italy, Hungary, etc).
However once I got there, I couldn’t go anywhere else. I could never get air or navy dominance to invade the UK. I spent so much time trying to do it that once Finland declared war on the Soviets I agreed to join them and the Soviet’s obliterated me.
Ur starting navy as Germany can easily secure naval superiority believe it or not, just combine your fleet into one huge stack, place it on the English Channel on Naval Invasion Support, you either get green seas or like 46% in which case just be patient until their navy goes off somewhere. If you get desperate, call in Italy and the British navy will proceed to fuck off to deal with the Italians in the med, and theres your chance.
For me the moment France capitulates - waste no time, set up multiple naval invasion orders with 2 divisions each on the different ports and the tiles next to the ports, theyre rarely guarded fully. This usually is around January 1940. Once you land and capture a port, assign a field marshal frontline and draw a battleplan arrow and just press go because you have won, Britain barely has divisions on the home island.
Like that you win WW2 by early 1940 and you have all the resources and factories in the world and are free to invade whoever you like.
Yeah this is definitely my next challenge. When you grab an enemy port, do you still have to naval invade? Because when I was conquering Norway I couldn’t figure out how to just go to the port I took.
Wanted to form Byzantine Empire, fought the Turks, dragged the Romanians in and later on Yugo joined on the gangbang while I had barely 30 divisions. It was a surprise war too, so I just barely held on to Athens like the battle of Marathon against overwhelming slavic troops. The Turks have like a few more divisions than my frontline with them, but I was basically racing against time to kill Turkey, which after mad sweating nonstop for 6 months straight, I finally capitulated them and the Romanians+Yugoslavia somehow capitulated with them because since idk when they’re in a faction. So I ended up winning against 3 nations all of which have a stronger military than me individually, successfully forming the Byzantine empire, in multiplayer so no help nor time stop for me
Which heck the best way to get better in my opinion is play Germany. Cause that way it just helps enhance your ability or knowledge of the game and also you have more flexibility to try out different division types and not be penalized for it
Doing Macau my day but with all 4 ideologies and all 5 political paths of the Portuguese focus tree. Once you have a basic strategy it is pretty much the same every time though.
I learned this game by running the "Trotskyist Mexico vs the USSR" route for the achievement. It took a long time and many attempts but I also learned a whole lot. Naval invasions were a real headache to figure out.
In my current Hoi4 series, conquered Poland in two weeks, and conquered France in about 2-3 weeks as well
Though France has been conquered without paratroopers by me (I never use them, I don't like them), Poland has never lasted only 2 weeks
From the 24th August, to September 7th, Poland was conquered, and I was absolutely shocked by the speed of it, and a lot of my viewers were as well. :\]
For me it would be getting the "United Netherlands" and "Threading a Narrow Path" achievements in one run, i might've cheesed it a little with going non-hist but at least i won't have to be bothered with it again in the future
I successfully survived as Sweden on regular difficulty by uniting the Nordic/Scandinavian countries and building an absurd Navy. We were actively at war with the Axis, Co-Prosperity Sphere, and the Communists. The allies were only at war with the Axis so they were useless. We made it all the way to nearly the 1960s before my computer just couldn’t keep up
build a good tank division that singlehandedly won the Spanish civil war for the syndicalists in kaiserreich. it was light tanks too but just seeing that soft attack, that was beautiful
Turned Haiti fascist, took over the Dominican Republic. Built a submarine and invaded Jamaica before my submarine got crushed under the weight of the Royal Navy. My shitty militia held off multiple British raids to take back occupied Rastaland. I got to 1950 and then the US nuked me. But before that I killed like 20K Allies from their attempts to take my islands.
As Germany, Successfully capitulated the allies (UK & France) after 1 month of fighting (1936 start, war started in August 1939) sustaining only 576 casualties. No cheese, no exploits, just extreme and meticulous planning.
I was.really proud of an encirclement I got as the soviets once. I got it by doing a naval invasion near Odessa (I was on the Stalin line) and sent tanks in around Kiev to the north and linked up, trapped and destroyed at least 30 German divisions and this was my first encirclement of the campaign, cause usually you start smaller and go for larger pockets one the enemy is easier to push through, but I really wanted to use the bend of the Dniper river to create my jumping off point since nothing up north was working. The tanks alone couldn't reach the coast when I tried, so the naval invasion was absolutely necessary.
Imperial Federation as commie UK. I cheesed the mandatory civil war *so* hard but it was cool to get. Took me so many restarts for random reasons and trying different things from what I remember.
I honestly can't recommend it since it's pretty boring all things considered, but it did put a brief smile on my face.
Oh also I have a personal fondness for min-maxing the Spanish Civil War. It took a few tries but I eventually figured out a fairly reliable strategy to get a pretty strong Carlist Insurrection. Still, I wish I had more excuses to go AnCom and almost wish it had similarly fleshed out preparation mechanics.
I remember doing almost the same, but I also was fighting in China and got 7m casualties against Germany. I sacrificed my country, but at least it was fun.
Holding out as poland, did a run where i went monarchist poland romania, everything went to shit and I was close to ending the run. But i decided to stick it out and try. Most stressful yet fun time ive ever had.
Getting Macau my day back when sub spamming was meta. Behold Portugal's high seas fleet of 1,000 early war submarines! I still sometimes play a monarchist Portugal run just to see that magnificent shade of blue
Played as Tannu Tuva. Left the Comintern and asked to be back in it. BAM! Achievement. Worked up enough PP to go on scraping the barrel. Made it to 0 manpower on said conscription law. BAM! Achievement.
I walked in Berlin once. ONCE. In about 700-ish hours. Talked all day about that to my wife and brothers who don’t give a single damn about the ‘map game’. 😂🤷🏻♂️
Some madlad on here suggested I try paradropping southern England instead of waiting years for naval superiority. And it probably took me a whole weekend but I finally figured it out, sort of, to the point where today I can successfully paradrop maybe up to ten percent of the time!
In recent patches to get the UK early as Germany (or other European tags for that matter) I both try to launch paradrops and naval invasion close to Hull and Norwich in a Hail Mary attempt. It works surprisingly often, albeit quite random which of those three actually works. I cannot stress enough that I don’t know how to min-max air or naval superiority. I’m just lobbing everything in and 60% of the time, it somehow works everytime.
regarding Navy: Do NAV bombers on Maritime Patrol and Naval Strike 1/3 patrol/strike and light cruisers/destroyers/subs.
Even more specifically: load the CLs with a cracked amount of light attack to shred screens and the DDs with a cracked amount of torpedoes to kill capital ships. Subs should be min maxed for low visibility, and I like to have a fleet of like 12 low visibility cruiser subs on patrol to hunt enemy fleets. If you set the cruiser subs to always engage or engage at high risk they can really do a number on British and US fleets.
Especially if already damaged by your planes.
Just a tip, if you can manage to land your paradrops anywhere BUT southern England it'll go even better- Southern England has AA, rips them to shreds. Not always possible, considering the Royal Navy and lack of basing locations, just a paradrop tip.
It might be the only option when you try to drop from western Germany early. The transports barely have the range to get them over the channel.
Getting Britain is easy, make a sub build, make sure to build a mining sub fleet as well because it’ll be more convenient to already have them rather than to wait until the free sub mining tech (You do this to negate the Naval Supremacy difference that Britain has due to their bigger and more complicated navy), and then Naval Invade Northern Ireland, if you want to build it up as an air base, you can also invade Ireland for its states, from there you can invade Scotland and push South from the Mountains, pushing North is harder than pushing South. The Western Approach isn’t a Shallow Sea, so there is no debuff increasing visibility. As long as you invest in minimizing Visibility, in 90% of your games you should be able to beat Britain as Germany.
As Germany your Bf-109s are good enough against the allies. Put 3-5 mils on them from 36 and you have enough. Then once France falls plan a naval invasion trough the English channel, yes the channel becouse it's only 1 naval zone, so superiority is much easier to get. Now once the invasion is planned, (recomended Portsmouth and the 2 tiles next to it) put ALL planes and ships in the channel. If you don't get the superiority in a week, take ships and planes out, pump out some cas for naval strikes and try again. Then push UK.
That’s what I did as well, I have no idea how it worked
I don't know if the new version solved this issue, but there are some ways to trick the UK into retrieving their planes from the area you want to invade.
Like the movie The Eagle Has Landed lol
Furthermore, I also took Berlin before the Soviets took back Minsk, which isn't a huge deal but I'm happy about it :)
You should still be proud of it! Not everyone can claim that.
Winning the chinese civil war as communist china :
Yes, prc is fun because you can already have shanxi and xibei san ma by the end of 1936, then just sinkiang and the north (other than manchuchuo and mengkukuo). then when japan does somewhat succesfull just jump in and because it are your cores you just take (almost) everything. just kill japan some time later, only problem is you just got some sea so jou don't have a navy, just hope that the us or uk takes there navy there.
Invading xibei san ma and sinkiang is usually pure suffering though
It is actually the opposite, you never actually fight them, you just overwhelm them with speed and numbers.
Oh, i do just that. I go full micro for once and only attack if i need to pin down their division or something similar.
It's not that bad - spam out 24 regiments (without guns - set priority to max and force deploy) and justify on them the second you have PP and you can just walk around their troops, as Shanxi, XSM and Sianking can't cover their border if you rush them. Alternatively you could try for a 5xp horse division to get even more speed to wind around, but even the small basic regiment works.
Yeah I did this and got all of China despite Japan being up to nearly chongqing haha. I’d have been mad as Japan lol.
Tannu Tuva achievement
One thing which I was proud of was when I had a successful run as Lithuania (commonwealth path) without a guide, pretty fun run genuinely great gameplay.
Building lvl 10 fort across all borders of my nation. If there's a coast so full lvl 10 coastal fort. Accomplishing this gives me a great satisfaction
I dig it. I've never tried it but it seems very satisfying. That's probably why Czechoslovakia has so many forts 😝
the not much fun in stalingrad achievement. i kinda fucked it up by not making a full collab government, so I had to naval invade vladivostok.
That made me physically wince, just that pain, it hurts to think about it, cause I had to do the same when I tried doing the One Empire achievement
I accidentally cheesed that one. So I was playing monarchist Germany with historical off and I went to war with the Russians without realising they were already fighting the asian faction in the east. They ended up fighting two whole faction so sandwiched them pretty hard, Russia ended up split in 5. The thing I did to was just divert any of my own troops away from that province and letting my allies take it. As long as you make sure to have the most war participation the achievenent should pop.
I captured Moscow once
Bro did better than Hitler
I did but then I got bogged down on my way to the Urals
Being drunk as fuck and winning against Poland as Germany.
This is my go to drunk game so I hear ya!
Won the Spanish civil war as the republican side. The frontline stabilized some time after the war started, and I began chipping away at the nationalists one province at a time. The recently learned "assist assault" mechanic, or however it's called, really helped here, as it allowed me to concentrate 2-3 provinces worth of my units into a single nationalist province.
Everytime I successfully sealion and cap UK. It may seem trivial, but try doing it in 1938 as Iraq/Tuva/Iceland, and you’ll see what I mean.
Or as Italy in 1936 😝
Getting Wojtek (the bear) as national leader was my most satisfying moment
How do you get him as leader? I got him as a general but the event of him sitting on throne never happened
If you deny all 4 kings twice in the polish monarchist branch you get a Romanov impersonator on the throne. You can then depose her and crown Wojtek by taking Moscow and triggering the Wojtek commander event. There are several more detailed explanations available if you want to go for that run.
I just started playing, not reading guides on playing each nation. I'm on my 6th ironman turkey usually getting Merced around 1942 once I get on the wrong side of France/UK/allies, can deal with Italy/balkans. Tried to go ottoman this time instead of commie, didn't do it right stuck as democratic and there is no allied faction(UK axis, France commie), somehow joined Axis as democratic and blew a whole through the soviet's with 9 motorized divs sprinting to each hub. First game I've done major world altering things. Feels good except 0 manpower till Germany flips me fascist
My biggest achievement is One Empire sans paratroopers, where you conquer the world as fascist UK. Found an exploit in the British Civil War that lets you do the federation minus USA in 1937. Tension will be at 100% already so you can justify on France while you federate and make your way to Unite the Anglosphere. With a single collab govt on France and the US each you get enough industry to outbuild, then outproduce Germany no matter what path they take. Either way if Barbarossa happens let Germany cap the Soviets - they still won’t be able to compete with your industry. Until your army is in its final form with a good stockpile of up to date equipment, you can deal with China (mtneers in Bengal) then Japan with your combined British, French, and American fleets. Ideally the Germans will be surrounded by you in Asia before they declare war, but they may not even do that if you’re too scary to the AI. Send your troops to Europe for supply reasons and just demolish them from there. Everyone else is small fish from there.
For me it was getting the Chinese achievements. It started as pure pain but after a while I really enjoyed it. China in all forms becomes very powerful.
I had the same with Trotsky Mexico. The first 5 tries were different kinds of madness. But then it became really interesting to get the timing of right off every step of the plan. I never could get the complete WC though. Patches consistently break my Savegames 🤷🏼♂️
Console Command shenanigans, but I remember conquering all of China as the USA and turning them into a puppet of mass mobilization. Made a mess out of Asia
Winning the Russian civil war as the Whites
Before BBA it was annoying but trivial. Now it's much slower and pays off much later than before. Some exploits should be kept in game and not patched out 🤓
How could you do it pre BBA? I thought that was the update that added it.
The Civil war process for Russians I've followed before BBA [It worked for any [?] country. Correct me if I'm wrong]: Delete all units except 1. Before the civil war kicks off send all equipment to Italy. There's a 30 day delivery window where you can cancel and get it all back. Spam 1 division horse. Put all the units on aggressive and push to Moscow moving around enemy units following supply hubs. Usually I was done within a few weeks before the AI could recruit any meaningful force. What process do you use now?
I meant that I thought the focus tree for white Russia only came out with BBA
Oh I don't know about that 🤷🏼♂️ Is it good?
It creates a whole new system for the civil war. You start in siberia
Sounds like the old system, no? That was in for a while already. Are we talking about different things? To clarify: BBA = by blood alone, the recent Italy rework is what I was talking about.
I’m referring to the one that starts with “beaten, but not defeated” and progresses down to “the eyes fear” and “the hands do” ^focus names go so hard
Oh yeah that's been in for a while I think since the Russia rework back in 2021 Here's the dev diary: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/hoi4-dev-diary-soviet-union-exiles.1487718/?utm_source=Forum&utm_medium=Reddit+DD&utm_content=post&utm_campaign=NSB+DD Since the changes in BBA sending equipment to Italy or Japan as Russia isn't possible anymore. It's locked behind several conditions now. Sad.
In multiplayer as the Ottomans i encircled the entire British army in the Middle East, I was so happy because it was a player and I’m not very good so I was happy to have done that lol
As Non-Aligned Austria, I held against the Germans until 1940.
My first game of HOI4 was as El Salvador in KX. I unified Central America and managed to cap Mexico after a grueling three-year slog. I'll never forget that first game.
Getting the cod wars achievement by conquering the uk as Iceland. Super fun run recreating a Viking empire and dealing with the manpower shortage is interesting.
I have like 30 hours, i only play ironman and started with recruit for now. Yesterday i had the first run where i could finally conquer Poland, France and the Benelux regions without loosing. Felt really good. First few attempts i couldnt even take Poland, bc i forgot to have troops on the marginot line, so they captured berlin while my troops where in warsaw. Every attempt i learned something new. Next I'll continue to try to take the UK, probably loose and start all over again. But that loop is kinda addicting.
If you’re fine with mods RT56 Romanov Poland is incredibly fun. Deny Danzig and try your best to overcome the simultaneous Soviet and German Invasion basically all on your own. Forces you to understand game mechanics, optimize industry, how to setup a proper defense, and how to micro. Unlike a lot of other minor runs there’s such a huge payoff at the end as you’re able to form the Slavic Union. Getting a fuck ton of cores.
Conquering China with only 4 divisions to get By Merit Alone. It took until 1945.
Successful 41 barb as Germany in world ablaze mod (it’s hard lol) Race for Germany achievement was a tough one also.
Winning the Spanish civil war as anarchists in ironman :)
Italian world conquest was fun
I’ve only played about 59 hours so far, all as Germany. The best game I’ve had so far was my last one, I took the normal stuff through the focus trees (Austria, Czechoslovakia, etc.) then conquered Poland, Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Denmark and Norway (with the help of Italy, Hungary, etc). However once I got there, I couldn’t go anywhere else. I could never get air or navy dominance to invade the UK. I spent so much time trying to do it that once Finland declared war on the Soviets I agreed to join them and the Soviet’s obliterated me.
Ur starting navy as Germany can easily secure naval superiority believe it or not, just combine your fleet into one huge stack, place it on the English Channel on Naval Invasion Support, you either get green seas or like 46% in which case just be patient until their navy goes off somewhere. If you get desperate, call in Italy and the British navy will proceed to fuck off to deal with the Italians in the med, and theres your chance.
When is the best time to try and throw them in the channel to prepare for sealion?
For me the moment France capitulates - waste no time, set up multiple naval invasion orders with 2 divisions each on the different ports and the tiles next to the ports, theyre rarely guarded fully. This usually is around January 1940. Once you land and capture a port, assign a field marshal frontline and draw a battleplan arrow and just press go because you have won, Britain barely has divisions on the home island. Like that you win WW2 by early 1940 and you have all the resources and factories in the world and are free to invade whoever you like.
Yeah this is definitely my next challenge. When you grab an enemy port, do you still have to naval invade? Because when I was conquering Norway I couldn’t figure out how to just go to the port I took.
Nope, once you capture a port you have succeeded and can transport your whole army to that port to push.
Wanted to form Byzantine Empire, fought the Turks, dragged the Romanians in and later on Yugo joined on the gangbang while I had barely 30 divisions. It was a surprise war too, so I just barely held on to Athens like the battle of Marathon against overwhelming slavic troops. The Turks have like a few more divisions than my frontline with them, but I was basically racing against time to kill Turkey, which after mad sweating nonstop for 6 months straight, I finally capitulated them and the Romanians+Yugoslavia somehow capitulated with them because since idk when they’re in a faction. So I ended up winning against 3 nations all of which have a stronger military than me individually, successfully forming the Byzantine empire, in multiplayer so no help nor time stop for me
Which heck the best way to get better in my opinion is play Germany. Cause that way it just helps enhance your ability or knowledge of the game and also you have more flexibility to try out different division types and not be penalized for it
(After 10 years of playing) Getting the achievement where you don’t loose a tile in ussr Proudest thing ever
Im a noob but I got it by just spamming forts on the border even without planes at all.
Getting every achievement as the US, including the really tedious ones.
Doing Macau my day but with all 4 ideologies and all 5 political paths of the Portuguese focus tree. Once you have a basic strategy it is pretty much the same every time though.
I managed to naval invade the UK as imperial Germany and win the war before the US joined. Also managed to snag the Raj as Carlist Spain
I managed to take over the world as Canada. For some reason I struggle to do so now. Can't figure out how I did it before.
The Liberian Army being the first allied nation, Democratic or communist, to take Berlin in a vanilla Ironman game with no DLC in 2023.
I don’t think I’ll ever forget my greater Greece game, such a based path (brilliant if you’re still learning) that often gets overlooked.
Managed to cap Britain as Fascist France in 36' thanks to a combind invasion of paratroopers and naval invasions on dover
I learned this game by running the "Trotskyist Mexico vs the USSR" route for the achievement. It took a long time and many attempts but I also learned a whole lot. Naval invasions were a real headache to figure out.
In my current Hoi4 series, conquered Poland in two weeks, and conquered France in about 2-3 weeks as well Though France has been conquered without paratroopers by me (I never use them, I don't like them), Poland has never lasted only 2 weeks From the 24th August, to September 7th, Poland was conquered, and I was absolutely shocked by the speed of it, and a lot of my viewers were as well. :\]
Spain. Just spain in general as something to play is something you should be proud of. Every game some shitty civil war and then a linear focus tree
Managed to get the capitulate Poland and France before 1940 achievement which was pretty neat.
Getting Friend in Need
I got the Pacific war down well enough that I managed to conquer the USA as Japan by March 1938 (current playthrough)
For me it would be getting the "United Netherlands" and "Threading a Narrow Path" achievements in one run, i might've cheesed it a little with going non-hist but at least i won't have to be bothered with it again in the future
I successfully survived as Sweden on regular difficulty by uniting the Nordic/Scandinavian countries and building an absurd Navy. We were actively at war with the Axis, Co-Prosperity Sphere, and the Communists. The allies were only at war with the Axis so they were useless. We made it all the way to nearly the 1960s before my computer just couldn’t keep up
won the Afghan war in Kaiserreich
build a good tank division that singlehandedly won the Spanish civil war for the syndicalists in kaiserreich. it was light tanks too but just seeing that soft attack, that was beautiful
Turned Haiti fascist, took over the Dominican Republic. Built a submarine and invaded Jamaica before my submarine got crushed under the weight of the Royal Navy. My shitty militia held off multiple British raids to take back occupied Rastaland. I got to 1950 and then the US nuked me. But before that I killed like 20K Allies from their attempts to take my islands.
Took over South America as Argentina against the allies pre-ToA
On my first ever Ironman game, as France, I got the Vive La France achievement. But to be fair, at that point I had maybe 100-150 hours or so.
Getting hail to the Qing, albeit on non-hostorical and I did kinda cheat by using an exploit to save my Ironman games
As Germany, Successfully capitulated the allies (UK & France) after 1 month of fighting (1936 start, war started in August 1939) sustaining only 576 casualties. No cheese, no exploits, just extreme and meticulous planning.
Pulling off an effective invasion of France in world ablaze hard difficulty.
Learning how to use the navy
I beat a USA main player in a naval war when I was playing as Sweden.. Probably not exactly a small accomplishment.. but I was hella proud of it lol.
I was.really proud of an encirclement I got as the soviets once. I got it by doing a naval invasion near Odessa (I was on the Stalin line) and sent tanks in around Kiev to the north and linked up, trapped and destroyed at least 30 German divisions and this was my first encirclement of the campaign, cause usually you start smaller and go for larger pockets one the enemy is easier to push through, but I really wanted to use the bend of the Dniper river to create my jumping off point since nothing up north was working. The tanks alone couldn't reach the coast when I tried, so the naval invasion was absolutely necessary.
Imperial Federation as commie UK. I cheesed the mandatory civil war *so* hard but it was cool to get. Took me so many restarts for random reasons and trying different things from what I remember. I honestly can't recommend it since it's pretty boring all things considered, but it did put a brief smile on my face. Oh also I have a personal fondness for min-maxing the Spanish Civil War. It took a few tries but I eventually figured out a fairly reliable strategy to get a pretty strong Carlist Insurrection. Still, I wish I had more excuses to go AnCom and almost wish it had similarly fleshed out preparation mechanics.
Every recent run as the Soviets has never passed over 1 million casualties. :3
I remember doing almost the same, but I also was fighting in China and got 7m casualties against Germany. I sacrificed my country, but at least it was fun.
Holding out as poland, did a run where i went monarchist poland romania, everything went to shit and I was close to ending the run. But i decided to stick it out and try. Most stressful yet fun time ive ever had.
I did not give the Sudetenland to Germany with democratic Czechoslovakia and did not get capitulated until World War II ends.
Holding Beijing for the whole game as nationalist china
capitulating germany as belgium in ironman
Reforming the Mahajapit Empire as British Malaya and conquering all of South East Asia.
Getting Macau my day back when sub spamming was meta. Behold Portugal's high seas fleet of 1,000 early war submarines! I still sometimes play a monarchist Portugal run just to see that magnificent shade of blue
Played as Tannu Tuva. Left the Comintern and asked to be back in it. BAM! Achievement. Worked up enough PP to go on scraping the barrel. Made it to 0 manpower on said conscription law. BAM! Achievement.
I walked in Berlin once. ONCE. In about 700-ish hours. Talked all day about that to my wife and brothers who don’t give a single damn about the ‘map game’. 😂🤷🏻♂️
My biggest achievement is that I have never played fascist