Author Topic: Hearts of Iron  (Read 25547 times)

Offline Torenico

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Re: Hearts of Iron
« Reply #240 on: 16-04-2017, 23:04:56 »
I'm not really a fort guy, they're very expensive and once the war has moven out they become almost useless. Maybe if you want to upgrade them to level 3 or 4 that could be better, because going for level 10 forts is not worth the effort imo. But yes, you can try building forts in these provinces you consider weakspots. But then again, forts + rivers are extremely overpowered sometimes :)

I haven't played that mod yet so I can't have on word on your war because I don't know how good each army is. The Russians are a pain in the ass no matter what mod anyways, you should set one goal against the Russians, will be it pushing them away from your borders?, capturing a city like, say, Kiev?, the whole of Russia maybe?. Beating Russia will be a pain in the ass, hard battles, terrible logistics.

Engineers are ofcourse ideal for river-crossing and fort-busting, but I haven't tried a MAR-MAR-ENG configuration yet. In my games, I always build 4 or 5 Marine divisions (mind you, most of my games are as Germany) but they end up acting as garrisons in Norway and Denmark because I never launch Seelowe. Still, if they're not on their landing roles, they behave like some sort of makeshift infantry division, it's quite weak from my experience, just like using Paratroopers as regular infantry.


IIRC Mountaneers lose almost all of their terrain bonuses if they have artillery attached to them, maybe you'd like to use two Mountaineer Brigades + Engineer brigade, you should keep your Artillery brigades for Infantry.


Offline MajorMajor

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Re: Hearts of Iron
« Reply #241 on: 17-04-2017, 11:04:20 »
I haven't played that mod yet so I can't have on word on your war because I don't know how good each army is. The Russians are a pain in the ass no matter what mod anyways, you should set one goal against the Russians, will be it pushing them away from your borders?, capturing a city like, say, Kiev?, the whole of Russia maybe?. Beating Russia will be a pain in the ass, hard battles, terrible logistics.

I think that I should be content to push them out of Galicia, for the time being. Currently I have two armies in the balkans, one covering the romanian border, the other in action ever since the start of the war, first against Serbia & Montenegro, then against Greece. Once the campaign there is finished I'll probably declare war on Romania and rush to the Dnister. My eventual wargoal is reaching the Dnper, taking as many VPs as I can along the way, and wait until the Russian Civil War event kicks in (not sure what I can do to accelerate it - I guess the harder they're loosing and the more I erode their National Unity the faster it will happen).

Engineers are ofcourse ideal for river-crossing and fort-busting, but I haven't tried a MAR-MAR-ENG configuration yet. In my games, I always build 4 or 5 Marine divisions (mind you, most of my games are as Germany) but they end up acting as garrisons in Norway and Denmark because I never launch Seelowe. Still, if they're not on their landing roles, they behave like some sort of makeshift infantry division, it's quite weak from my experience, just like using Paratroopers as regular infantry.

This is the second time that I read that Marines are not worth it unless you're planning amphibious operations. I shall rethink wether I want to spend leadership and IC in them or not.

IIRC Mountaneers lose almost all of their terrain bonuses if they have artillery attached to them, maybe you'd like to use two Mountaineer Brigades + Engineer brigade, you should keep your Artillery brigades for Infantry.

That was a bit of an embarassing mistake then.  :P

At any rate I think I will shelf the Austria-Hungary game for now. I have a self imposed rule of trying to play games a couple of times in vanilla before trying mods, it's just that this one time I couldn't resist because I find WW1 more interesting that WW2. I think I might try a vanilla Italy campaign, from what I gather they have a nice learning curve... but also a horrible army composition at the start of the game.

Offline VonMudra

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Re: Hearts of Iron
« Reply #242 on: 17-04-2017, 19:04:00 »
Never had a problem with AH in WW1 mod.  Just garrison Galicia along the river lines/mountain rangers/cities/already built forts with 2 divisions each.  That'll be more than enough to just hold there while the Germans do their thing.  Put your focus into the balkans, launch the offensive through Montenegro/Western Serbia in order to bypass the river line (only do attacks there if you can overwhelm a single province).  Outflank their defenses and bring both to heel FAST.  Then garrison Italy and move everything else to Galicia and just methodically step forward rolling along the front.  You'll soon end up in Kiev and Russia will be brought to heel.  By that point, Italy has entered the war, so cut off their armies in Venice and roll the front to sit at a river line until have closed off the east.  Then, again, move river line to river line until you cut the boot off from northern Italy, at that point you can easily knock italy out of the war and move on southern France, while Germany, by that point, should be more than able to push in the north.  Your navy is probably far more important to build up than the land forces in the pre-war period, other than equipping/shuffling brigades to create proper divisions.  I found that, if I played things right, I could wipe out the Italian navy and effect a solid u-boot campaign in the Med.  Just gotta sorte only when you're confident you can win, and use naval recon flying boats to scout.

Offline MajorMajor

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Re: Hearts of Iron
« Reply #243 on: 01-07-2017, 21:07:23 »
Well, a couple of months afterwards I tried to resume my A-H campaign and get my shit together with the KuK Kriegsmarine. I soon realised that I had no idea of what I was doing, so I started a vanilla Italy game, since there are various nice tutorials for that.

I've been learning a lot: land, air and naval combat. So far I've only built BBs and DDs. With such fleets I had success up until early 1941, when Britain decided to bring its carriers to bear in the Mediterranean. They managed to sink a large part of my convoys and submarine flotillas, until I caught them stopping for repairs in Malta and sunk two out of the three CVs using NAVs.

Now it's January 1943. I have puppeted Iraq, captured Malta and Gibraltar and I'm in the process of reducing the starved beachhead created during Operation Torch. The Sovient Union declared war on Germany in August, and I've tried to help my fellow Axis partner the best I've been able to. I have carried out amphibious landings on Odessa and Crimea and managed to establish solild footholds while I wait for Germany to link up.

I'm unsure wether to call Hungary, Romania and Finland to war by this point. Are they usefull allies? Or will they be a burden? I'm particularly worried about Finland since the soviets seem to have an armored division in Hanko.

Offline Captain Pyjama Shark

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Re: Hearts of Iron
« Reply #244 on: 01-07-2017, 22:07:56 »
Well, a couple of months afterwards I tried to resume my A-H campaign and get my shit together with the KuK Kriegsmarine. I soon realised that I had no idea of what I was doing, so I started a vanilla Italy game, since there are various nice tutorials for that.

I've been learning a lot: land, air and naval combat. So far I've only built BBs and DDs. With such fleets I had success up until early 1941, when Britain decided to bring its carriers to bear in the Mediterranean. They managed to sink a large part of my convoys and submarine flotillas, until I caught them stopping for repairs in Malta and sunk two out of the three CVs using NAVs.

Now it's January 1943. I have puppeted Iraq, captured Malta and Gibraltar and I'm in the process of reducing the starved beachhead created during Operation Torch. The Sovient Union declared war on Germany in August, and I've tried to help my fellow Axis partner the best I've been able to. I have carried out amphibious landings on Odessa and Crimea and managed to establish solild footholds while I wait for Germany to link up.

I'm unsure wether to call Hungary, Romania and Finland to war by this point. Are they usefull allies? Or will they be a burden? I'm particularly worried about Finland since the soviets seem to have an armored division in Hanko.

In the bizarro-version of WW2, Finland is a burden and Italy is not.

Offline MajorMajor

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Re: Hearts of Iron
« Reply #245 on: 03-07-2017, 14:07:41 »
In the bizarro-version of WW2, Finland is a burden and Italy is not.

As wierd as it might seem, Italy can greatly change the course of the war... in the Pacific. If you are playing as Italy and stand up against the Royal Navy, you are unburdening Japan, which leads to them going apeshit in the Pacific: