| 1 | All the little things which can turn taking over the world in ''VideoGame/HeartsOfIron''. Some of them apply to all installments, some to specific parts. |
| 2 | |
| 3 | [[foldercontrol]] |
| 4 | |
| 5 | [[folder: General]] |
| 6 | * The United States is pretty much considered "easy mode" and for good reason, particularly in ''III''. They start off with the largest amount of Industrial Capacity in the game, the biggest knowledge pool and a ''very'' powerful navy -- and it only gets bigger and meaner as the game progresses. And then there's the obvious fact that the Axis can't hit the American mainland because of geographical separation and even if they managed to get a few ships to the coastal areas, they'd get massacred. The only weaknesses the US has is that, starting out, they have a weak army, air force and low technology, so using that knowledge pool is essential to catch up with the rest of the world. But by 1945, the US will almost always be in a dominant position, as the only other economic powerhouse, the USSR, will have almost certainly spent a lot of resources and taken a lot of damage fighting Germany. All of this isn't just TruthInTelevision, it's actually ''toned down'' compared to how powerful the US economy was in UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, complete with the fact that, by the end, [[UsefulNotes/ColdWar the USSR was the only other nation that could hope to compete with them]]. Later expansions make the US even more broken, with ''For The Motherland'' actually allowing the US to get a massive manpower boost once "The Day of Infamy" event triggers, which not only adds 400+ manpower instantly to their pool, but also revokes The New Deal (which imposed a manpower penalty on the USA) and gives a 25% bonus to manpower growth for a couple of years. |
| 7 | ** Both ''III'' and ''IV'' have similar game-breaking strategy when it comes to expanding the US war industry. In ''III'', the US could build handy and relatively infrastructure en masse, gain Construction Practical Knowledge while doing so, and then just spam factories with at a big discount, again using their pre-existing industry to do it at massive scale. In ''IV'', US starts with bunch of debuffs to construction... except for infrastructure. And high infrastructure increases both the resources of that state ''and'' speeds up the construction of all buildings, including factories. So until about summer 1937, players behind the US can completely trivalise the rest of the game simply by building roads and such. |
| 8 | * The same exploit works in every single part of the game against the AI: let them come for you, even if you are the invading force. This breaks entrenchment, making any further combat much easier. But there is another step to it: by shaping the front in such a way that there is seemingly an "empty" set of provinces, with no troops guarding them directly, AI will try to fill that gap. Have a second line of defence behind that gap, creating a sack-like shape. Wait for AI to march into the sack. Then close the entrance and wipe out clean whatever got caught inside, now cut off from supplies and reinforcements. And the further into the series, the easier it is to perform, due to the ever-decreasing size of individual provinces. |
| 9 | * Starting from II, engineer brigades are one of the most useful things you can equip your units with, doubly so if fighting a defensive war. Engineers are a relatively cheap addition to your troops and costs small amount of fuel from the start, but at the same time they ''considerably'' increase the defense capabilities of units they support, increase dig-in cap, remove or at least seriously decrease penalties for fighting in otherwise horrible terrain, ''bypass'' fortification bonuses, considerably decrease amphibious assault penalty, allow effortless river-crossing and - at least in II - increase the speed of unit they accompany by 1. In case of III, they start off with speed of 8 - which is enough to keep up with medium tanks and motorized infantry without slowing them down. In II, later models also start to gradually decrease softness value of units they accompany, which means that at least part of the damage that normally hurts infantry will be ignored. |
| 10 | ** ''IV'' changed Engineers from being a brigade to a support company, but made them into a support company that ''every single possible unit'' can benefit from having due to their all around bonuses and cheap price. While a lot of support companies are situational, Engineers are a mainstay regardless of anything. |
| 11 | * In a similar fashion, both ''Darkest Hour'' and IV have floatplanes that are able to be equipped by ships. They are single-handedly the biggest power multiplier any naval unit can get, increasing firing range, air defense and ''attack'' ratings and detection capabilities, while being very cheap to build, easy to research and upgrade (and in case of DH - also detachable). This even includes [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_aircraft_carrier heavy submarines]]. To make floatplanes even more broken, they can be combined with radars [=and/or=] rangefinders and even ''stacked'', creating a deadly combo for precise, long-range fire before the target even knows what hit them. |
| 12 | * In ''II'' (and thus ''Darkest Hour'') and ''IV'', all supplies for a nation's armies originate from their capital city. This means if an enemy capital city is surrounded, but not taken (which would create a new, temporary capital), then the war is effectively over: the opposing side's entire military outside of the capital is automatically cut off from all supplies and reinforcements and will quickly disintegrate. |
| 13 | * Close air support units, especially in II and III. They are really good at their job (directly hitting infantry and tanks) and can keep up on their own in the air, while other bombers require escorts and general air superiority. But what really makes them game-breakingly powerful is the ability to cause damage to ''retreating units''. Normally when a unit is retreating, it can't be hurt with anything, short of nukes. CAS units can keep pounding such units and do so with complete impunity. So when a unit finally reaches nearby province, it can lose up to a third of its strength, making it easy pickings for ground units... and the bombardment can continue. Also, in II, most of the CAS doctrines are accessible by the 1938 mark, making their missions roughly twice as efficient before the war even breaks out. |
| 14 | * Naval Bombers, to the point that many players constructed Naval Bombers exclusively instead of naval fleets. Paradox tried to combat this problem in later patches by [[AcceptableBreaksFromReality (unrealistically)]] requiring other ships to detect enemy fleet before Naval Bombers could engage them. While not as useful as in II, even in III they are still very powerful units against enemy fleets, especially convoys. And depending on the size and shape of the air theatre towards the location of naval bases, they can potentially sink half of the enemy ships within a month of intense bombing in IV. |
| 15 | ** IV takes it a notch further due to how naval repairs and dockyards work, especially post [=MtG=]. The ship doesn't even have to be sunk or critically hit. All it takes is few blows that will force it to spend next ''year or two'' in the docks, getting it back to shape. And it only takes a small squadron of naval bombers to do it to the entire enemy navy, overcrowding said docks and effectively rendering the fleet into a sitting duck for some more bombing. |
| 16 | * If [[https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/are-submarines-worthless.264824/ done right]], convoy raiding can completely collapse the AI's ability to conduct war. It was proven time and again that a continuous and extensive convoy raiding will render the British Empire defenseless, as troops stationed in the colonies will be extremely undersupplied, making them easy pickings for Japan and ''even Italy''. Meanwhile, a large stockpile of resources will wait in colonial ports, allowing conquerors to take them over and use it for their own industry. |
| 17 | ** Speaking of submarines - torpedoes research in ''Darkest Hour'', ''III'' and ''IV'' can turn already powerful submarines (if well-used) to the terror of the sea, especially if rushing the tech tree. With proper research, submarines can get so powerful, a single unit of them will be capable of doing what normally takes three. And the smaller the size of submarine stack, the harder it is to detect them, making them even more efficient. In case of ''IV'', the convoy hunting rating goes into just silly values with better torpedoes. But more importantly, the torpedoes increase the general hitting power of submarines (and also increase their attack range in ''Darkest Hour''), so it's possible to take down destroyers with ease - [[TheHunterBecomesTheHunted while normally destroyers are designated submarine hunters]]. |
| 18 | * Intentionally prolonging war in Ethiopia as Italy is one of the most gamey tactics imaginable, in all game versions. In ''II'', since you are at war, it halves the demand for consumer goods, which increases the usable part of your Industrial Capacity. In ''Darkest Hour'' it also allows better training of your commanders. In ''III'' it combines both of the above, giving you more Industrial Capacity to use and providing a source of experience for troops and commanders, but most importantly it generates Land and Air Experience, which affects the research speed of respective doctrines and certain key technologies, giving Italy a massive bonus three years before the outbreak of [=WW2=]. In ''IV'', the war can on go for as long as the Italian player doesn't want to engage in the political part of the focus tree, providing them with tons of Army and Air experience. It also allows other fascists countries to join, either with land-lease ''for Ethiopia'' (so it maintains cohesion longer and provides free experience via equipment usage) or sending a division or two to Italy as volunteers to grind some extra experience directly. There is a tendency to at least ban outside countries from meddling in the war during multiplayer matches. |
| 19 | ** ''Darkest Hour'' eventually worked around this by giving Italy a steep ''penalty'' for being at war before 1940 rolls around, thus enforcing a quick conquest of Ethiopia. |
| 20 | ** As counter-intuitive as it sounds, sending volunteer forces to ''Ethiopia'' in ''IV'' as Germany when Italy is AI-controlled is one of the most gamey tactics imaginable. You can effectively prolong that war as long as you want, giving a two-fold advantage: it generates crazy amount of army and air experience (combination of volunteers, land-leased equipment and military attaché) for you (and by proxy to Italians, as they can't waltz through the country within days) and since the AI can't engage the political branch of focuses, it has to stick to the industrial and research ones, giving it much stronger economic base for future wars while having better units. The moment you are done with your grind, just retreat your forces away from frontlines, let Italians capture all the strategic objectives within a week and get your volunteer force back. With the release of ''La Resistance'' the game-breaking potential was nerfed not by directly affecting the whole exploit, but simply by reworking how the Spanish Civil War starts and unfolds, making it far more profitable to ignore Ethiopia and focus on Spain instead... but nothing prevents you from doing both. |
| 21 | * Strategic rockets, especially after developing V2 or stand-ins for it. Unlike strategic bombers, rockets are extremely cheap and more importantly, fast to construct. So what if they are one-use-only, if a single rocket can achieve in ''one hour'' more than what strategic bomber can do in ''a month''. By the end of the month, you will produce another two. It is entirely possible to produce enough rockets to absolutely '''CRASH''' entire nations, especially in ''II'' and ''III''. In fact, in ''II'' rockets are often banned in multiplayer, because with loss of Industrial Capacity, players also lose slots for their tech-teams, which alone can cripple a country without any way to regain lost time. If played right, a handful of rockets can turn England into rubble, while the infrastructure will be so damaged it will take at least few months to get the country up and going. And when the industry is down, no units are produced. At all. |
| 22 | ** In ''IV'', due to how repairs are reworked, it's entirely possible to cripple the AI ''forever''. The AI has a tendency to convert as much factories as possible into the war material ones. Repairs are done with use of civilian factories. And AI will keep only the minimal required amount, so in case of heavy bombardment, it might take years to rebuild, while also lacking resources to retool some factories into civilian ones. Later patches "fixed" this by making repairs considerably easier to conduct, [[ObviousRulePatch solely to counter the AI's eagerness to get rid of all civilian factories]]. |
| 23 | * Trade deals in ''II'' and ''III'' can be abused against the AI. Each trade deal increases diplomatic relation between both sides and the higher the relations, the cheaper the exchange goes for both countries, but the exchange rates of old deals are kept intact. In practical terms it means it is perfectly possible to sell supplies to AI for money, making few separate deals for it. The first one will be about making big bucks, the following few will be about building up relations and still making pretty penny. ''Then'', when relations are high due to this string of deals, AI will sell own resources at a discount price to a "befriended" country, usually accepting back own money paid for the overpriced supplies. The AI will be unlikely to cancel any of those deals due to combination of high profit and script calculation of how "favourable" the deals are. If done right, the final exchange rate might even triple the value of trade in favour of human player, allowing to rob AI blind. |
| 24 | * [[ItsRainingMen Paratroopers]]: |
| 25 | ** Dropping behind enemy lines can in certain cases win a war within a day or so. The AI tends to focus all of its units on their borders, rarely keeping anything stationed in the interior, aside ''maybe'' the capital and extremely important strategic locations. Which means most of the AI's provinces containing victory points (and vital factories) are left unguarded. A few well-timed drops can take out most of the enemy's industry and victory points, either shortening the war considerably or outright winning it. A Suicide mission for the capital is also a very good strategy. |
| 26 | ** If the capital is taken, ''the entire resource base is lost and all supply lines are cut''. This is considered equal to cheating and is usually banned in multiplayer. But outside outright gamey strategies, sudden para-drops can cause massive disruption of enemy supply lines and a quick encirclement of a large amount of enemy divisions |
| 27 | ** Para-dropping into nearby provinces is also very helpful while conducting amphibious assaults, as it prevents the enemy from sending reinforcements, while causing encirclement ''and'' double envelopment of troops guarding the shore as they have to deal with both the landing party and paratroopers at the same time while being cut out of supplies, which can cause penalties so high their defense percentage might end up reduced to a single digit. |
| 28 | ** If the drop zone happens to have an airport, you can resupply your paratroopers the moment they take over the province, or, more importantly, pick them up and ''hit another target'', this time deep behind enemy lines. And your bombers and dogfighters just gained a staging ground, while enemy is denied landing zone. |
| 29 | ** If by chance any air wing is stationed in the airport when a province is taken, ''all the planes are instantly destroyed''. Sudden drop behind lines on unguarded airfield, before the planes can take off, can absolutely wreck enemy air capabilities. |
| 30 | ** In ''IV'' AI not only still fails to properly garrison own territory, making it very easy task to create a truly ''massive'' airborne invasion, but has a tendency to easily surrender. Since the war score is heavily tied with control of strategic cities and provinces, it might force AI to surrender despite having superior army and actually ''winning'' the war on the frontlines. And while there is a percentage limit of how many special forces battalions you army can have as compared to other units, there is absolutely nothing preventing player from designing an unit that consists of only single battalion, giving few dozens of battalions to drop rather than 3-4 divisions. Sure, they are going to be utter crap in combat, but so are "full" divisions. And they aren't supposed to fight in the first place. And since there are so many battalions ready to be dropped, losing one or five doesn't hurt at all, as opposed to entire division being wiped out. |
| 31 | ** That being said however, Paratroopers come with some very significant drawbacks. Paratroopers are reliant on transport plains that are the most expensive unit type in the entire game and this requires for you to both research and build two unit types at the same time. Transport planes are also completely defenseless requiring you to have a proper fighter escort to protect them during their missions. Paratroopers are also the third weakest Infantry unit in the game after Garrison and Militia, meaning that if they face anything stronger than these units in equal or superior numbers, they are going to be overwhelmed in very short order. Since Paratroopers start out most of their missions being encircled, loosing a fight will almost certainly mean that ''you will loose the entire Paratrooper division you just deployed, requiring you to build an entirely new one''. |
| 32 | * Invasion of the British Isles is easily one of the cheapest tricks you can pull in II and III, giving you well over 100 Industrial Capacity and all of the empire's resources. Due to the British AI's tendency to spread out their forces, Britain itself often left weakly defended and is rather easy to take over with any decent sized nation that can muster about 15-20 divisions and a convoy force large enough to support your troops for a few months before they are inevitably sunk. Since the Royal Navy is spread all over the Atlantic, you can easily push through with a large concentrated naval force and get your troops on shore before the AI manages to bring in enough ships to counter your invasion. |
| 33 | * Deliberately keeping your army obsolete in ''II'', ''Darkest Hour'' and ''III'' allows you to apply the upgrades at a much faster and cheaper rate. If you apply upgrades normally, you pay the full price and spend the full time on each new tier of technology. But if the gap is bigger, each tier will be at half the price and rate of the higher one. So if you are catching up three tiers normally, you pay 3 times the full price. But if you are upgrading obsolete units three tiers at once, you pay 1/4 for first tier, 1/2 for second tier and only the final tier is at full price, netting you 1.75 price tag and time, instead of 3.0. If you are having a particularly obsolete army (like pretty much everyone in ''Darkest Hour'', which starts in 1933 and most militaries are in [=mid-1920s=] technology), your best bet is to simply tech out until about 1938 (or even 1939 if you aren't Poland, Germany, Japan and Nationalist China) and only ''then'' start upgrading. The result is jumping a few tiers within ''just a few days'' and for pocket change, rather than taking months and taking out your entire industry to do so. Also, producing obsolete units is both cheaper and faster, while you can easily upgrade them later, but that obviously assumes you know when your country got tangled into the war historically, thus planning ahead for that. |
| 34 | |
| 35 | [[/folder]] |
| 36 | |
| 37 | [[folder: Hearts of Iron I ]] |
| 38 | |
| 39 | * Bordering on GoodBadBugs, if your unit is destroyed in a battle, but starts to retreat, it will turn into a "ghost" 0 strength light tank division. Once reaching its destination, it will disband the next hour, as it's just a loop in a script it was created in the first place. ''But'' should you issue it an order to move before it is "disbanded", it will exist for as long as it will keep moving. How's this a game-breaker? It has ''movement speed of 80'', allowing to reach next province within few hours and take it over. The catch is that this "ghost" can never stop (or it will disband) and can never fight (or it will be killed for good), but it's an excellent infiltrator, allowing to overrun any given country within 2-3 days tops. |
| 40 | * Due to how absurdly simple the upgrade system is, every technology that directly adds a bonus to specific type of unit, rather than unlocking a new model, instantly applies to all related units. Thus, if you time it right, your infantry can be re-equipped with stronger artillery and given plentiful submachine guns or even assault rifles in the middle of a battle, turning the tide of it. It's a bit more complicated with unit types that have models, but any kind of infantry has the technology bonuses applied directly and instantly to it. |
| 41 | |
| 42 | [[/folder]] |
| 43 | |
| 44 | [[folder: Hearts of Iron II & Darkest Hour]] |
| 45 | |
| 46 | * Due to the way how combat mechanics work in ''II'', it is a very viable strategy to use militia units as literal CannonFodder, especially if few units are cycled around the battlefield. In the meantime, a token force of regular infantry and other units can do the real fighting. Done right, the endless cycle of militia units entering the combat will simply ZergRush over enemy, regardless of technology gap, thus giving countries with outdated military [=and/or=] small industrial base not only a fighting chance, but a victory, often against impossible odds. This does, however, require serious manpower reserve to pull in the first place or being a small country with short borders to defend. |
| 47 | * Producing Garrisons with Military Police detachments can completely negate partisans. It might not sound impressive, but Garrisons in such configuration can outperforming presence of ''few divisions'' in a province and quite efficiently spill the control to the neighbor ones. This was nerfed in ''III'', where conquered or controlled foreign land always has minimal partisan rating, slowly decreasing over the course of 20 years, which is more than the game lasts. |
| 48 | * In ''II'', it is entirely possible for a player to annex the entire United States as either Japan or Germany by the end of 1937. As Japan, all that is needed is to hop from Kwajalein to Hawaii to San Diego to the Panama Canal to the eastern seaboard, which is further described [[https://hoi2.paradoxwikis.com/Japan_Conquering_the_world_-_in_Very_Hard_difficulty_level here]]. As Germany, the trick is to declare war on Portugal and take over the Azores and Cape Verde, then proceed to declare war on Venezuela and use it as a springboard to invade southern United States with fast-moving units before they can ramp up their own unit production. Needless to say, this turns the rest of the game into a complete joke, particularly if the player then releases the United States as a puppet. |
| 49 | * Darkest Hour rebalances numerous attachment brigades and expanded their sheer number and variety. |
| 50 | ** Almost all land units are restricted to single brigade attached. Infantry divisions can have two. Around the 1942 or so mark it means the unit in question can get the firepower ''doubled'' thanks to attachments, while saving manpower, Industrial Capacity and most importantly - unit counter for command structure - by fielding one buffed division instead of two basic ones. A 1942 era division with [[MoreDakka towed artillery and tank destroyers]] is virtually unstoppable by contemporaries. |
| 51 | ** Cavalry is one of the cheapest and most over-looked brigades in the game. Not only it is very powerful for its price, it also has almost no terrain penalties and costs no fuel to run. As long as you are not facing tanks, cavalry brigades help shred infantry into ribbons due to big Soft Attack bonus. Later models represent moto- and mechanised cavalry, so they decrease division's Softness rating due to having half-trucks, armored cars and tanks, while carrying even more guns. This is especially useful for Japan when fighting war in China, as it [[CuttingTheKnot bypass Japanese lack of fuel and the abysmal infrastructure and terrain in China]]. |
| 52 | ** Extra anti-air attachment for ships quickly become ridiculously powerful. Around the 1943 mark, the ship AA defense is so strong thanks to those, it is possible to essentially negate the superiority of carriers. If combined with radar on any of the capital ships, fleet uniformly equipped with extra AA is a total overkill for planes. And it can go even further from there once rocket technology is advanced enough to develop surface-to-air missiles for additional punch. |
| 53 | * Coastal forts. Only specific shore provinces can be targets of amphibious assault, marked by a beach icon. Amphibious assault comes by itself with the highest possible penalty for the attacker and the amount of troops used for it is strictly limited, even with maxed out technology. Thus with coastal forts of at least level 6 (out of 10), it is possible to stack a penalty that’s so high for the attacking landing party, their attack efficiency will hit ''zero'' percent. Coastal forts are very fast and relatively cheap to build with 1940 construction technology. And there is also entrenching bonus for the troops simply stationed in those provinces, adding another debuff for the attacker. If neighbouring provinces are also garrisoned by anything above militias, it won't be possible to create encirclement for the shore garrison using para-drop. Once properly prepared, defenses against amphibious assault are impossible to overcome and thus making it impossible to land troops. ''III'' nerfed it by making it possible to land anywhere, but only ports are capable of resupplying troops and naturally there is still only one province to land on when it comes to tiny Pacific islands. |
| 54 | * Carriers are absolutely broken in naval combat, especially when facing a naval task force without their own carrier(s). Unlike all the future installments, in ''II'' and ''Darkest Hour'' carriers do not have actual airplanes on it. Instead there is a CAG attachment, representing those planes. This significantly affects how carriers fight: by game logic, they aren't a floating airstrip, but a ship like any other, only one that just happens to have a range of its "guns" around 150-200 km and dealing damage with air-related stats. For comparison, a late-war battleship will have hard time firing further than 40 km and anything smaller than that will be having hard time firing at more than 10, making it virtually impossible to hit back a carrier. |
| 55 | * In ''Darkest Hour'', motorised divisions come with a speed rating of 27. Short of Air Cavalry[[note]]a late-game unit that comes from a whole bunch of hard to research secret technologies and won't show up until the early 1950s[[/note]], this is by far the fastest land unit in the whole game. For comparison, regular infantry moves at a speed of 6 and tanks at around 20. This is a ''significant'' change from baseline ''II'', where motorised divisions were just slightly faster than infantry. As a result, motorised divisions can easily overrun any given country with their sheer speed alone, while at the same time being the cheapest and easiest to research form of mobile units, with the least amount of penalties out of them all from bad terrain. All while still kicking some serious ass in combat, especially early in the war. It is paramount for any given nation planning a conquest to unlock motorised divisions (dated for 1935), because nothing moves as fast as they do. |
| 56 | * Unless you start out already on the Central Planning side of the economy slider, going as far as feasible into Free Market is just so much better. Central Planning gives you more raw Industrial Capacity (which requires more resources) as a bonus. Free Market decreases costs ''and'' production time. Granted, it does increase demand for consumer goods, reducing your usable Industrial Capacity pool, but after joining a war, that restriction is out of the equation, and only benefits remain. |
| 57 | |
| 58 | [[/folder]] |
| 59 | |
| 60 | [[folder: Hearts of Iron III]] |
| 61 | |
| 62 | * Practical knowledge. It replaced already the powerful gearing bonus from ''II'', but gearing bonus required continuous production of the same series of units. Practical knowledge is just accumulated with each finished building or unit. And it not only decrease the time and costs required to finish production, but also affected related research by really large margin. |
| 63 | ** One of the most gamey tactics for industrialization is based on building relatively cheap infrastructure (which is always useful to move supplies and units), thus quickly gaining large amount of Construction practical knowledge, making factories ''much'' cheaper and finished in few weeks instead of over a year... [[SerialEscalation and they will further fuel the practical knowledge, snowballing the bonus further.]] Or just building suddenly cheap and fast forts. USA pulling this goes from already powerful to virtually unbeatable due to having bigger industry than ''all other Great Powers combined'' |
| 64 | ** Preparing anti-air defense has similar, ''and utterly accidental'', effect. By building just a handful of provincial AA defenses, practical knowledge for artillery skyrockets, greatly decreasing construction and research of all types and sorts of heavy guns, including those from tanks. |
| 65 | ** Building a vanilla heavy cruiser - without absolutely any improvements on board - takes roughly 6 months and costs nothing. And even if seriously underequipped, it will still do fine up until about 1941 mark or can be used to hunt down convoys with no fear from destroyers. But the real kicker is about how it provides capital ship practical knowledge and ''a lot'' of it, which can in turn greatly speed-up construction of the real deal: battleships and battlecruisers. Normally they can take up to three years to finish. Japan can gain insane amounts of practical knowledge for capital ships this way, thus entering the Pacific War with numerous and modern battleships, utterly wrecking the United States Navy, or even standing a chance against player-controlled America. |
| 66 | *** Germans start in 1936 with a few of their pocket cruisers ''almost finished'' - which makes the construction of not two, but ''THE ENTIRE SERIES'' of Bismarck battleships even more tempting. |
| 67 | * Combined arms bonus rework from ''Their Finest Hour'' expansion significantly altered unit composition. Prior to TFH, there was no real reason to build other divisions than mono-stack of same brigades or even looking toward the Superior Firepower technology allowing to add +1 brigade to your divisions, as this eased on research and upgrades. With those changes, various types of support brigades making the division provide additional bonuses, while interacting with each other in much higher degree. This leads to situations where 2 Infantry + 1 Artillery + 1 Engineers divisions, despite fielding half the number of soldiers, could beat the crap out of [=4/5=] Infantry mono-divisions, simply by both having artillery by itself (lots of soft attack), engineers on their own (bonus against fortifications, trenches and river crossing) ''and'' a +10% bonus to general combat efficiency from having two different types of support brigades. And the combined arms bonus covers all kinds of divisions, so armoured ones turned from already powerful to flat-out unstoppable with the right brigades inside - not to mention a [[ShapedLikeItself Combined Arms Warfare technology]] that increased armour brigades combined arms bonus by 10% (so 15% in total), massively increasing tank divisions' combat efficiency. |
| 68 | ** The bonus was so strong and effective, the Second Sino-Japanese war started to play out far more one-sided for Japan than previously, because by default the Imperial Japanese Army starts with a few units of infantry that already have combined arms bonus, making them far, far more powerful than previously. No other country starts the game with such units, having instead mono-stacks and the AI is generally incapable of utilising this game mechanic. It was addressed by various mods, but in vanilla, the fact human players can use it and the AI doesn't even understand combined arms bonus made it a stroll in a park to overcome AI-build armies even with inferior technology and numbers. |
| 69 | ** This also helps Italy in a very roundabout way. Italy starts with its historical army, which used undermanned divisions to artificially bolster their numbers (lots of units without a meaningful number of soldiers or equipment). However, rather than reshuffling units around and consolidating them, players can easily build up cheaper artillery and throw ''that'' into each of the divisions, already having free space to do so, both filling up the army with badly needed bodies ''and'' getting a combat bonus. Of course AI will never do that since, well, [[MemeticLoser Italy]], but this does help human player, rather than being a hindrance it was [=pre-TFH=]. |
| 70 | * This was done to [[ObviousRulePatch rebalance the game]], as the previous system simply checked unit Softness. As long as the unit was within a specific, easy-to-achieve threshold, it was given a static Combined Arms bonus, which allowed for a variety of completely broken combinations (throwing a woefully obsolete heavy tank brigade into a pure infantry division, mobile divisions always getting that bonus, etc.). It was seen as both broken mechanically ''and'' completely unbalanced (tanks require a significant industrial base and researching first a bunch of technologies). Thus, a game-breakingly powerful modifier was replaced with a ''different'' game-breaker, but one that can be achieved by every country, rather than only the majors. And if by any chance you are playing without ''Their Finest Hour'' and the related patches, you will be playing under the old Combined Arms rules. |
| 71 | * The humble drop tanks. While all fuel tank improvements make aircraft easier to pick and slows them down, drop tanks can go as far as ''double'' range of certain types of planes, with minimal drawbacks. This is extremely useful when fighting in Russia (where airfields are few and sparse) and in the Pacific (where you only have a handful of islands and carries as possible landing spots) and can pretty much ''turn the tide of war'' all by itself once implemented. |
| 72 | * Buying fuel directly, rather than crude oil from oil-producing countries, is far more efficient. Short of the US and the USSR, all other oil-producers have virtually no need for fuel on their own, while they sit on massive reserve of crude. Thus their AI easily accepts selling the finished product, as the crude-to-fuel ratio always remains very high for crude, thus the AI is assured with strategic reserve it has. Also, in earlier builds of the game, the efficiency of fuel production was tied with the size of the crude oil stockpile, thus it was best interest of everyone to not buy crude at all from oil producers and thus increase their fuel production instead. For obvious reasons that got cut. |
| 73 | * Convoy raiding and strategic bombardment of any type is this in certain versions of ''III'' (it was nerfed quickly with patches). The national unity can be decreased with extensive destruction of merchant marine and continuous bombing. In fact, it's possible to bomb Britain hard enough for it to surrender, while not doing any invasion on the Islands. |
| 74 | * Using wars with minor countries to let you pass Total Economic Mobilization and Service By Requirement laws lets you swell your Industrial Capacity and manpower by a hilarious degree before World War II starts. Especially bad if you're a major power, and just ignore the "war" while you build up a huge number of divisions, planes, and ships. This got so bad that for the ''Their Finest Hour'' expansion, a special restriction was set where those laws could only be passed if the enemy you faced had a minimum of ''half'' your Industrial Capacity, otherwise you're stuck with just War Economy and Three-Year-Draft. |
| 75 | * Earlier editions of ''III'' turned your intelligence apparatus into one of these when used properly. The "Sabotage Production" mission, when coupled with "Counterintelligence" to eliminate enemy domestic spies, enabled allowed you to utterly cripple an enemy's industrial capacity, to the point that, for example, Germany would take months to conquer Poland and would get stonewalled in France, leaving them ripe for an American or Soviet attack. Later expansions removed the ability to sabotage production. |
| 76 | * Since ''III'' has the most advanced logistic system in the entire series, air strikes against enemy controlled infrastructure could bog down both offensives and defensive frontlines. Knowing or assuming possible logistical patterns of enemy and then bombarding specific provinces would drop the local infrastructure. This in turn would not only cut off supply transport for given day, but also make less supplies pass through that area due to damaged infrastructure or forcing a lengthy detour. And since each province in the logistic chain retains part of the supplies to sustain the system itself, a detour or just smaller flow could easily mean not enough - or none at all - supplies would reach frontlines. In similar vein, a handful of surgical strikes on ports used by enemy can effectively cut the invading force from supplies and making it easy prey for your troops. |
| 77 | ** Trans-Siberian Railway is the only half-decent infrastructure for entire Soviet Far East. Bombing 2-3 provinces containing the railway cuts out entire Soviet army in the region out of supplies. AI then tends to send ''convoys'' to make out for the shortage. Convoys that go all the way from Murmansk and Arkhangelsk to Atlantic Ocean, around the Africa, Asia and then trying to reach Vladivostok, as the game simply lacks the Northeast Passage. Needless to say, this takes a ''lot'' of convoys that can be effortlessly taken out by Imperial Japanese Navy, hurting Soviet Union even more. |
| 78 | * A minor one but in the first year of the game, AI-controlled France and the UK commit very little effort towards counterintelligence. They also have some good technology researched at the game start. This means that, with good RNG, a technologically underdeveloped country can assign spies to steal their technology and get a jumpstart on their tech tree. USA doesn't commit much to counterintelligence until 1940, so it's another good source of technology. |
| 79 | * Supplies are delivered to any given place two ways - either shortest route from capital ''or'' nearest factory when the capital is overseas or simply lack direct land connection. It doesn't sound like much, but by building just a single factory in various isolated areas, you can circumnavigate around supplies shortage, because the ''amount'' of supplies isn't closely scaled with the size of local industries. Various places that are normally hard or near-impossible to kept supplied turn into massive depos, while saving you the trouble and hassle of building and maintaining huge convoy fleets. Of course, the industry itself requires resources, but even if you don't deliver them and don't benefit to your total Industrial Capacity counter (due to the factory being listed as unoperational), you ''still'' get supplies produced and distributed locally. This also leaves the issue of fuel unchanged, so the exploit won't work with motorised units. Ironically, this change in supply chain comes directly from battling the well-known exploit from [=HoI2=], where all supplies came from capital and thus it was very easy to completely disrupt them. |
| 80 | |
| 81 | [[/folder]] |
| 82 | |
| 83 | [[folder: Hearts of Iron IV]] |
| 84 | |
| 85 | * Fascism ideology is seen as this. You can get yourself ready for war faster, can have a larger manpower pool, can invade other countries and puppet them easily, and can have numerous industry-boosting attributes. Democracies and Communism are seen as inferior, compared to it. |
| 86 | ** Generic focus tree for fascism gives a gargantuan 7% increase of recruitable population, combined with -10% training time, regardless of actual conscription law and all of that during peace time. For comparison, communists get 10% extra division recovery rate[[note]]A miniscule boost to speed at which organisation is regained[[/note]] and 550 Political Power, while democracies get [[DumpStat 20% trade deal opinion]] and either 20% fort, AA, and military factory construction speed bonus[[note]]''and'' a steep penalty toward joining factions[[/note]] ''or'' the ability to send volunteer forces[[note]]Something both fascists and communists can do by default[[/note]]. |
| 87 | ** The limit on declaring war? Non-existent. It is completely possible (and strategic) as Germany to begin justification for war at the very beginning of 1936 and annexing Poland (while gaining army XP and training generals) before the Allies can even lift a finger. A really effective strategy is to straight-up ''rush the Soviet Union in 1937'' and laugh. This will break the game in so many ways the AI will be unable to handle it. Bonus points if Stalin purges the officers WHILE being invaded. |
| 88 | ** Fascist nations now have access to Collaboration Governments, which increase the compliance of the nation's states postwar,[[note]] Which is incredibly hard to do, even as democratic nations, who have an occupation law that increases it[[/note]] and also lowers the nation's surrender limit[[note]] which combined with [[CheeseEatingSurrenderMonkeys France's national spirit, can cause them to surrender upon starting the war]][[/note]] |
| 89 | * Sending volunteers was progressively made stronger and stronger with each major update. It can win the world war for Fascist countries by itself before the war even breaks out and considerably strengthen Soviets, despite issues with the Great Purge. Volunteers generate Army and Air experience when fighting, while the units and commander sent grind experience for themselves, too. The government that receives the volunteers is also willing to accept a military attaché, which will provide the sending country with 20% of all experience gained by the receiving government. Combine that with land-lease of equipment, preferably the obsolete one that is useless anyway and the experience gains are around 2-2.5 points ''per day'' for both army and air, because your volunteers have your own air wings attached to them now and old planes were given as lend lease. All combined, this allows you to easily gain a few hundred points of experience before the outbreak of the war, allowing you to design your desired divisions, produce powerful variants of tanks and planes and unlock new doctrines. All while democratic and unaligned countries are stuck with gaining minuscule experience via army training. |
| 90 | * Lend lease itself is very useful, because there is nothing preventing you from arming ''both sides'', so the experience gained this way is doubled ''and'' can prolong the war, meaning even more experience gained in the long run. Immoral? You bet it. Effective? Like nothing else. |
| 91 | * Different brigades require different training times to field them. Infantry is the fastest, with 90 days until full training, while tanks take 180. However, the game keeps the default experience received from training tied to the manpower tied to the division. Meaning it is faster to field pure infantry divisions, with no attachments or other brigades, then switch to the actual desired template. And if the new unit is "smaller" than the one used for training, it won't even decrease in training quality. To make it even more exploitative, units require 20% of their training time to rush them into the field as NewMeat with barely any experience. 20% of 90 days for infantry means it's possible to field them in ''18 days''. Which is 1/10th of what it takes to normally train a tank division. And that's just the most default and vanilla setting, while various countries can access spirits and simple modifiers, decreasing recruitment time. ''Then'', such rushed "infantry" division can be switched to whatever template it was supposed to be in the first place and trained manually to get them out of Rookie status... or just send them directly to the frontline if desperate. What matters is materiel given to units, which is produced separately from training new divisions. As long as you have surplus, training pure infantry divisions and then switching to whatever is the fastest way of handling things. Even if the new, rushed division is further trained via field training, it will take ''less'' time to reach full experience than it would take to just make that unit directly - while generating army experience in the process. |
| 92 | * Any given form of SequenceBreaking will completely derail the game, even in multiplayer. AI isn't scripted to do anything outside of meeting its goals via focus trees, meaning it follows a pre-defined path with pre-defined timers. As such, ''any'' player action that will disrupt the sequence of events (Germany manually justifying on Poland from day 1, Japan gearing for war against Dutch East India etc.) can completely alter the big picture and render not just AI, but even other human players in online games without any adequate response to the "unscheduled" actions. |
| 93 | * Support companies: |
| 94 | ** All the artillery support companies you can attach to divisions. While they are just a single brigade of given type, they still provide additional punch to your unit, ''while not following rules of standard artillery''[[note]]Adding standard towed artillery brigade(s) decrease speed of the unit and costs a lot of resources. Support units don't have this problem[[/note]]. So you can attach artillery and AT guns to your light tank brigade without slowing it down, while almost doubling its fighting capabilities, at almost no price to that nor having to research or field self-propelled artillery. They also don't have any terrain penalties that are a nightmare for artillery divisions, thus Mountaineers, Paratroopers and Marines can gain additional punch, without any trade-off. If you are developing Superior Firepower doctrine, then artillery support companies can gain ''massive'' bonuses to their attack ratings that are well-worth it, even at price of bonus to artillery battalions. If you want to take it up to eleven, you can attach artillery support ''and'' rocket artillery support at the same time. Expensive? Yes. Worth it? Absolutely. |
| 95 | ** Recon companies. They are the only way to increase recon value of a division[[note]] The Infiltration in Depth doctrine (from the Infiltration branch of the Grand Battleplan land doctrine tree) adds +1 recon to all divisions, but that's it. Not to mention that said doctrine is located at nearly the end of tree, itself being the weaker branch of the two - and in an already lackluster doctrine tree[[/note]]. During combat, the unit with higher recon, regardless if defender or attacker, has combat initiative. The higher the recon, the bigger the chance for commander to pick the best tactic for given moment. And if your recon is higher than enemy's, you gain ''reroll'' for tactics, ''always'' being able to counter their commander. On top of it all, it increases attack speed by 10%. Since it's cheap and accessible from the start, it's a must-have for almost everyone. Later patches allowed to field them also as trucks, armored cars or even ''light tanks'', which translates into not only doing their recon job better, but also ''significant'' increase of combat capacity. |
| 96 | ** Maintenance company allows to completely ignore reliability stat of land units. Maintenance company ''starts'' with +5% to reliability (and non-modified equipment has reliability of 80%) and only goes higher from there. On top of that, they unlock "Easy Maintenance Hatches" option for your tanks, further increasing their reliability for pocket change. If that wasn't enough, Maintenance company allows to capture percentage of weapons used by defeated enemy, also 5% per tier, allowing countries like China to keep on fighting despite insufficient own production of equipment. |
| 97 | ** Anti-air, at least in multiplayer. It's so-so by itself, but it's something most players just ignore to both incorporate and account for, leading to a nasty surprise when the air fleet on ground attack mission is burning through planes like there is no tomorrow. And they also provide a small bonus to hard attack and piercing ratings, being handy against armour. |
| 98 | ** An "engineering" light tank company, which consists of a mere 15 light tanks fitted with bulldozer blades, extra armor skirts and flamethrowers. It offers both attack and defense bonuses in all sorts of terrain, along with movement speed bonus and when combined with regular engineers company create a combo of dirty cheap[[note]]In fact, an engineering tank company is ''cheaper to field than regular engineers'' and definitely less resource-intensive[[/note]] power multipliers that allow to defend any spot on the world and also operate in the harshest terrains as if it was a walk in a park. Truly, they clear the way. |
| 99 | * Heavy Tanks and their Self Propelled & Tank Destroyer variants. Putting a single Heavy Tank battalion even on regular infantry divisions will give such a massive boost to their armor, that the AI can't figure any way to counter it, effectively always giving you a massive 50% increase to damage and defense. |
| 100 | ** A self-propelled artillery guns mounted on heavy tank chassis takes it a step further, as they provide insane amount of soft attack and decent hard attack, while retaining all the other benefits of heavy tank battalion. They are so powerful, most of guides for long-lasting wars with bigger powers than own country call for using those SP guns. While they are relatively expensive to make and need to be researched first, a single battalion of most primitive model has bigger punch than most end-game artillery pieces and can be reliably researched and build from the start of the game. They are so broken, they can be even used against unsuspecting human-controlled army in multiplayer. And if another battalion of anti-tank version is added... |
| 101 | ** Army XP upgraded Heavy Tank Destroyers attached to regular infantry with support units make those units extremely effective at holding defensive lines. Heavy Tank Destroyers help improve the divisions hardness which makes them better against artillery and infantry and the extremely high piercing will make the attacking tank division lose it's organisation extremely quickly. They aren't as useful on attack as infantry units with artillery (either regulation or self propelled) but it costs less production than arty or normal tanks. |
| 102 | * A so-called [[TabletopGame/Warhammer40000 Space Marines]] combined listed above exploit of [=SPGs=] and [=TDs=] models based on heavy tanks with replacing all infantry with marines brigades, to gain massive buff in hard terrain and negate penalties for river crossing and potential amphibious assaults. It was so powerful and overused, most players didn't make anything else for their land forces aside maybe token mobile forces for encirclements. [[ObviousRulePatch Currently all types of elite infantry brigades can only make very small percentage of all fielded brigades]], specifically to "fix" this issue. But while this prevents universal use of Space Marines, it is still possible to have a handful of such elite divisions. |
| 103 | * The game considers any air-wing smaller than 100 planes to be "small" and apply a multiplier to an AcePilot attached to said air wing, making his bonus far more effective. Thing is, the multiplier is not properly scaled and at 10 planes, it offers a whopping '''1000%''' multiplier to compensate for the wing size[[note]]In practical terms, it means 10x times the displayed bonus of the ace[[/note]]. The resulting air wing, especially in case of fighters, has such absurd stats, the planes in it will act as if ''two tiers higher''. So you can have propeller planes that move at twice the speed of sound and with agility rating around 200[[note]]Best fighter plane you can build in the game will cap-out at 105 and not even the in-game jets will move that fast, while being even less agile[[/note]] and as a result, being virtually unkillable short for reliability-related accidents. There is ''no'' downside to small air wings, since combat is done in unified air zones and only the total number of planes matters, not the size of air wings they came from. |
| 104 | ** This is however, disabled if one plays with the ''By Blood Alone'' DLC, as it introduced fixed air-wing sizes. |
| 105 | * Pre-1.11 patch, the [[WeHaveReserves Mass]] [[ZergRush Assault]] land doctrine wasn't exactly great, but it had its niche uses and definitely wasn't bad. Most notably, both branches of it reduce combat width of infantry battalions by -0.4. In the old system, this allowed to cram more units into a division at the same width[[note]]At 20 width, a single battalion, and at 40 width, it's 3 of them, or that free space being used for some more artillery[[/note]], which was a neat, if late power-up. With changes introduced in 1.11, having "slimmer" infantry battalion is a godsend. On top of that, any related supply bonuses Mass Assault always had went from [[WhatKindOfLamePowerIsHeartAnyway nearly useless]] to [[HeartIsAnAwesomePower ungodly powerful]], especially since the two main countries using this doctrine - USSR and Republic of China - can further use those bonuses against any invader, since their own terrible infrastructure won't bother them as much as tank-heavy German and swarm-infantry (but on different doctrine) Japanese armies. |
| 106 | ** In addition, if plays with the ''No Step Back'' DLC, the Mass Assault land doctrine gains additional edge. It unlocks a "Bayonet Strength" spirit for Officer Corps, which removes experience costs when adding infantry (foot, motorized and mechanized) battalions to units. This might be not the most potent spirit, but it provides an immense utility, along with faster exp gain for infantry units. On top of that, other spirit, "Operational Reserves", gives you +10% HP to all your units. Keep in mind that Mass Assault decreases the width of your infantry, meaning you can get more HP from both extra battalions and that spirit, effectively weaponizing WeHaveReserves, as your units will be able to survive far stronger beating. |
| 107 | * Officer Corps spirits from the ''No Step Back'' DLC were very poorly balanced on launch and stayed like that after few patches. This means while certain spirits are near-useless, others are broken or create a broken synergy with other mechanics: |
| 108 | ** Doctrine-specific spirits for Mass Assault, Superior Firepower and Mobile Warfare remove costs of adding the related unit types for that doctrine (respectively: all kinds of infantry, infantry and artillery, tanks and mobile infantry). Superior Firepower is particularly cost-effective, as it covers 5 different unit types and even a support battalion, making getting the spirit cheaper than designing a single, combat-worthy division (while allowing to design dozens of variants for free, too). |
| 109 | ** The Superior Firepower land doctrine also gets the "Engineering Schools" spirit, which provides bonus to gaining all the very useful, but normally hard-to-get-and-grind traits. |
| 110 | ** A variety of Navy spirits significantly boost the speed of research, along with class-specific heavy discount on designing new ships. 20% research bonus for mere 35 naval experience, something that can be grinded in a month of exercises? Yes, please! |
| 111 | ** Since unlike Generals, Admirals are particularly hard to grind, having +2 levels to new admirals is a 10% bonus to hit-chance and 2% coordination bonus. Especially potent since once being hired, you can simply switch to another spirit. |
| 112 | ** Air Force spirits has their choice of 15% research bonus to new planes, which can be then easily switched to -15% cost of air doctrines once the pilots are busy training. And if one focuses on Battlefield Support doctrine, then there is a spirit further adding 25% bonus to ground support missions, ''doubling'' the doctrine's bonus. |
| 113 | * Earlier, due to the way how naval combat got overhauled in patch 1.6, visibility became ''the'' most important factor for deciding naval combat, while there are only two ways of decreasing it: either picking Trade Interdiction doctrine (the default German doctrine) or research ships with raider fleet design bureau (which only a handful of countries get and those lucky few can do both). As your visibility decreases, it is harder to spot the ship, and the harder it is to spot, the harder it is to hit. In fact, a hit chance is a square of the visibility value, so good luck hitting fleet operating under Trade Interdiction with designed by raider fleet design company, while they take pot-shots at your far more visible ships. Most notably, when combined with speed, visibility also affects chance of being hit with normally [[OneHitKill deadly torpedoes]], so even if your screens get decimated, the capital ships can have ''zero'' chance of being hit by a torpedo anyway. |
| 114 | * With the post-[=MtG=] overhaul of naval combat, [[InNameOnly "heavy"]] cruisers backed by swarms of the cheapest destroyers became '''the''' way to handle navies. Forget all the {{Cool Ship}}s, they are just useless sinks of resources and dockyard capacity and will be sent to the bottom in zero time. The heavy cruiser design fully exploits how targets are acquired and how damage is distributed. Thus, by making a cruiser ship with the cheapest and weakest heavy gun battery and then filling everything ''else'' with light guns that deal damage to screens, creates a floating gun platform that will decimate enemy screens with impunity. Forget armour, AA guns or "big" guns, they are utterly redundant - all that matters is maxed-out light damage output and speed, with that one token battery of heavy guns just to qualify as a capital ship. Meanwhile, your own screens can be decimated themselves, but as long as just ''one'' survives, the moment the heavy cruisers remove enemy screens, the torpedoes will send to the bottom all enemy capital ships, since nothing is protecting them anymore. All of this gets put on overdrive when using the naval designer and doctrines decreasing visibility (and those doctrines improve cruiser perfomance, too). '''Any''' naval engagement where one side isn't following this meta will lead to losing ''the entire fleet'', and in multiplayer, the side with bigger stack of ships will endure due to sheer numbers. On top of it all, the resulting ships are ''very'' cheap and easy to replace, meaning whatever losses the navy will suffer can be replaced within a few months, while repairs of damaged units are a matter of just a few weeks or even ''days'', rather than months due to their default cheapness. The only other unit type that gets a pass than those two are submarines, that are broken for ''different'' reasons, also thanks to [=MtG's=] changes. |
| 115 | ** ''By Blood Alone'' DLC introduced an ObviousRulePatch that made it impossible to arm a heavy cruiser to the specifics needed for a meta... but made ''battlecruisers'' the 1:1 replacement: slightly more expensive, but way deadier than [=CAs=] were in their [=pre-BBA=] form, and also far more survivable. The only thing that patch caused was unintentionally making deck conversions into auxiliary carriers less useful, since battlecruisers are now better refitted with different guns than rebuild as stop-gap carriers (which is still viable strategy, just leaving the navy with less suitable candidates for the conversion). |
| 116 | * Motorised infantry in general. Accessible from the start[[note]]or requiring just a single, unpenalised by year research - and countries that don't have the technology get a research bonus to it[[/note]] and very, very cheap to produce. It's point by point the most cost-efficient mobile unit in the whole game, offering fantastic speed, buffed infantry stats, a hardness value, and, compared with other vehicle types, non-existing terrain penalties. Even with fuel returning to the game, they are still ''far'' less gas-guzzling than alternatives. For AI, it's more than enough. Against human, the ZergRush capacity of motorised tends to be a nasty surprise, especially with [=post-MtG=] reworks. Stat-wise, they also make mechanised infantry utterly pointless, since for the same production, far less resources and potentially zero research, they allow to build ''three times as many'' divisions, while being on par with late-war mechanised units. Divisions that can be pumped from 1936, rather than waiting till late 1943 to even consider. If this wasn't enough, patch 1.6 reintroduced motorised artillery. It's your regular artillery, but towed by fast moving trucks, ''without any extra research needed''. Thus motorised infantry operate as your regular infantry-artillery divisions obliterating everything on their way, only moving three times faster and having small hardness value on top of that. ''And'' with none of the issues, research and production (or slower speed) that comes from tank-based self-propelled artillery and tank destroyers. |
| 117 | * Dispersed Industry tech tree in its current form. On paper, Concentrated Industry outperforms it with sheer factory production output by a margin of 5% per tier (totalling at 25%)...but any switch of production lines requires lengthy catch-up, as the production ''efficiency'' drops to baseline 10%. Dispersed Industry allows to retain part of the existing efficiency when switching to higher tier of gear, while also having higher production efficiency base (up to starting at 35%). On top of that, there are also bonuses to equipment conversion and against air raids. So while final result of 100% production efficiency is lower for Dispersed Industry, it can reach that level about a ''year'' earlier and allows to put any new factories into better use thanks to higher baseline efficiency. Ironically, Dispersed in initial form was clearly inferior to Concentrated and then it was "balanced" with one of the patches, but only on paper. In practical, gameplay terms, Dispersed Industry is perfect for fielding top tier equipment and taking benefit from new technology, aka something you need to win the war. |
| 118 | * Using Air XP to create a plane variant right from the start. While tanks and ships got their design systems overhauled (opening ''different'' venue for game-breakers), planes still operate on the default mechanics. Rushing to 1940 Tier 2 fighters and upgrading them to have increased reliability and agility will make them extremely survivable. The other types of planes, upgrading their attack ability can make them extremely deadly. |
| 119 | * Due to the way how old research system and research bonus worked, it was perfectly possible to get things like Germany entering the war with Panther tank in ''advanced variants'', Britain getting 1944 Supermarine Spitefuls fighters in production before 1940 or the Soviet Union go as far as getting [=T-54s=] tanks by then. These tech rushes led to the entire system of technology bonuses being overhauled so that they increase research speed instead of decrease research time, making it no longer possible to negate ahead of time penalties or reduce technology research times to only a few days. |
| 120 | ** On the flipside this buffs America (who can get 6 research slots) allowing a player to straight up out research most[[note]]Democratic Germany and New Zealand can also get 6 research slots[[/note]] other powers. |
| 121 | ** The rework also makes research agreements broken as it allows a player (e.g the UK) to passively get 50% research buffs on things they don't prioritise to research. And it gets just silly in multiplayer, where the players can co-ordinate their research plans. |
| 122 | * The rework to doctrines in ''No Step Back'' made the US Navy and Air Force very broken for one simple reason. Because Doctrines are now purchased with Experience instead of researched like normal, a player could easily max out whatever branch of the Air or Navy Doctrine they were going for by ''1939''. All they'd have to do is put the navy or air force on exercise, keep dockyards available to repair their ships, and (in the case of the air force) make sure they had enough replacement planes[[note]]while Japan, Britain, and Italy all have similarly sized navies, the USA is the only country that also has a fuel source to keep up with said navy and air force exercises; while the Soviets have a similarly-sized supply of oil, but need to construct a large number of ships and planes to catch up[[/note]], and they'd have enough XP to not only do all the doctrines they wanted, but also customize their planes and ships. And thanks to the rework in how the officer corps now work (namely, advisors now grant army XP alongside combat bonuses), the Army usually won't be that far behind, since it can be priorities with its corps, while the raw amount of experience from air force and navy exercises will allow to just power through. |
| 123 | ** For the exact same reason, Imperial Japanese Army turns into a juggernaut thanks to the Second Sino-Japanese War. It's a major conflict that can be easily stalled from winning it too fast, allowing instead to farm land experience without any effort, as Nationalists troops receive a bunch of debuffs rendering their units harmless, while warlord forces are few and far between - and both use dated equipment. Since the war erupts by the summer of 1937, this gives two years of a head-start over everyone else. Once done with China, Japan can easily conquer rest of Asia, which will be no match due to Japanese land doctrines and combat-trained troops. |
| 124 | * With ''Death or Dishonor'' DLC, out of all countries, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia, both minor states that can barely hold ground (and Czechoslovakia isn't even there anymore in the 1939 start), turn into absurdly powerful countries even without any gamey tactics and tricks. Czechoslovakia can quickly turn into a fortress almost impossible to pierce, with all borders covered with high level forts and recruitment pool increased enough to man said forts, stalling any possible advances forever over hard terrain and numerous bunkers. Yugoslavia almost doubles its resource (it's one of the main exporters of aluminium from the start and gains more of it) and industrial base, while gaining additional research and military bonuses (and since it has much more resources than it will need for a looong while, they can be easily traded for free access to foreign civilian factories, allowing to quickly build up own industry) and basically is stronger than neighbouring Italy in the end of national focuses. In case of Yugoslavia, it is also possible to artificially ''double'' the industrial base and get the related construction slots for free, simply by following the focus tree that releases various nations as puppets, and they will then follow with industrial section of the generic tech tree on their own, as the AI will evaluate that it lacks factories. By the time Yugoslavia is reintegrated, it will have industry fitting for a major nation - and all of that can be done by mid 1938, way before Italy will start even having any ideas about the Balkans. |
| 125 | ** ButWaitTheresMore Yugoslavia can also further cheese it by grabbing Bulgaria and Greece (both complete pushovers), giving Greek provinces to puppeted Bulgaria, and upon integrating the country back, gaining it all as core territory (even if Greece is normally excluded from the entire system). Same applies with Romania and Hungary. The best part? There is an achievement related with all of this, which ''looks'' like a tough challenge, but really isn't and Yugoslavia can just casually expand, taking all of the Balkans ''and'' Hungary without any issues long before [=WW2=] even gets going. |
| 126 | * For reasons similar to Yugoslavia, Ethiopia can become ''absurdly'' powerful with ''By Blood Alone'' DLC. After victory against Italy (which is way easier to achieve than it sounds, while the DLC makes it even easier), Ethiopia can push for [[BalkanizeMe federalisation of the country]]. Each state (since it went from just a single state encompassing all of Ethiopia into a ''dozen'' of states corresponding to real-life Ethiopian regions) splits off as a puppet with a regional focus tree, providing a bunch of factories and just as many free resources. At any point, Ethiopia can re-integrate into a unified state, which will then have an industrial and resource base on par with very strong regional powers, or even a weak major, so once the puppets end their economic focuses, or even pass just ''half'' of them, they can be integrated. Keep in mind that Ethiopia starts the game as a ''barren, semi-tribal country'' with barely any development or technology, yet by late 1940 it's stronger than Italy just from focuses alone. The resulting PowerCreep was caught in a crossfire of criticism, from questionable plausibility to just openly breaking the game. |
| 127 | * Axis members switching to Free Trade policy in multiplayer. Normally, Free Trade is undesired, as it decrease the amount of resources country has for own use, automatically exporting 80% of them, traded for civilian factories - a terrible idea for pretty much anyone but top producers of resources and with unpredictable AI that loves to drop the deals. But in case of multiplayer, human players can trade between each other without the fear of AI breaking the deal, essentially making the downside of the policy meaningless, keeping their industrial potential intact (since they give each other factories back) ''and'' get all the benefits of Free Trade: +15% construction speed and -10% research time. All Axis countries get additional bonuses to construction speed early on, especially Germany with their MEFO bills spirit, so that extra +15% provides a substantial edge. |
| 128 | * World tension, or rather lack of it. Almost all Allied countries need specific threshold of world tension to even start national focuses related with rearming and gearing toward the war. With a bit of proper timing and self-restrain, fascists countries can keep the world tension at bay, preventing war preparations for their future enemies. In multiplayer, it is usually outright ''demanded'' for players behind Germany, Italy and Japan to take certain focuses in specific years, because otherwise Allied players are completely blocked. But against AI, [[SequenceBreaking such actions can neuter completely any resistance, because AI is scripted to take historical focuses in sequence]] and gets seriously confused when it can't. |
| 129 | * Bum-rushing war justification, instead of doing the more historical path. |
| 130 | ** Germany, if directly going for manual war justification, can take out Netherlands and also gain access to Dutch East Indies, securing oil, aluminium and a ''third of the global rubber production''. Alternatively - or even simultaniously - it is possible to justify on Poland from the get-go, which will provide massive amount of experience for the army and airforce, along with derailing any AI sequence for... pretty much every country. And if one goes on war against Czechoslovakia instead of waiting for Munich, it is possible to drag France, but ''not'' rest of the Allied countries into the resulting war. Not only does this derails Allied countries from acting properly under AI, but France can be puppeteered and thus the French Navy will be fighting for the Germans. |
| 131 | ** Similarly, Japan's best bet on survival is justifying a war against Dutch East India right at the game start and secure local oil before anyone can even move. Forget your focus tree giving you a free justification, you need that oil right from the start, or your navy will be unable to operate. This also works around the crippling embargo you will get from the USA if you follow more historical path for your expansion - they will still issue embargo, but by then, you will have your own modest oil industry running for few years. |
| 132 | * A bug-based exploit: Creating a massive division as Spain, and then changing the name of the division to Brigada Legionario before the civil war means that instead of spawning in dozens of weak infantry units, it spawns in the massive division that you created. Same with "Brigada Internacionales". |
| 133 | ** This also applies to other countries that get event-based division templates. |
| 134 | * As any non-democratic country, stage a civil war in France RIGHT on the Maginot Line. This will keep France busy for a long time as the revolution will be deathstacked on level 10 forts with the AI refusing to do anything due to the "defensive focus" trait [[note]] The Democratic AI has "Focus on Defense" and the Rebel AI currently seems to have a unholy focus on not leaving its core province [[/note]] |
| 135 | * If you play as fascist/monarchist Britain you can add the "Sun never sets" and "Secure Imperial Shipping" buffs decreasing production costs on light cruisers by 10% and increasing their speed by 35% and range by 25% on top of doing the focus that decreases repair and refitting costs. Combine this with either "Escort Fleet" or "Coastal Defense Fleet" hardware designers and you have either a entire fleet of super-cheap {{Glass Cannon}}s that can grind down capital ships or a VERY far reaching raiding flotilla that can outrun any blockade or convoy. |
| 136 | * Ever since ''Man the Guns'' and reworking of the supply/resource import mechanics, submarines went from being the most useless naval class to completely broken. A fleet of sub [=IIIs=] equipped with snorkels can easily cut the supply lines of nations and, thanks to the stupidity of AI, cause hundreds of thousands of casualties in the opening days of a war as the AI moves its troops around. They can also negate enemy fleets in the same way, as the UK and Japan, two of the major naval powers, must import the oil needed to run their ships and once their merchant fleet is gone, their ships won't be able to operate. All of this means the player can effectively ignore all the new naval mechanics introduced; sure you min/max your fleets or [[BoringButPractical just pump out dirt cheap submarines]]. Most importantly, submarines are the only vessels that are replaceable in any meaningful way - they are so cheap and fast to build you can afford losing some. |
| 137 | ** Cruiser submarines. Only a small handful of nations get access to them (either starting with them, or via national focus), but that's about their only downside. Cruiser submarines are accessible relatively early on and are equal with tier 3 regular subs. Their special slot means they can take additional fuel containers, extending their range to that of ''tier 4'', years before you could access them. But the real kicker is how they can have plane launchers installed instead. Two of them, actually. This means a single cruiser submarine has a spotting rating equal to a small squadron of purpose-build light cruiser, takes half the time and maybe tenth of resources to build and ''remains undetectable itself''. So after spotting enemy fleet, it can safely retreat, while the real naval force will come in to pound (unsuspecting) enemy ships. This also means a massive save on fuel, since it means just a handful of submarines, instead of an entire fleet of light cruisers doing patrols. Doing effective raids as Kriegsmarine never been easier. On multiplayer, the limit to what countries get them is pretty much non-existent thanks to Production Licenses[[note]]a mechanic introduced in ''Death or Dishonor'' that allows for one nation to manufacture equipment - including ships, planes, and tanks - belonging to another country, in return for paying 1 factory per license to the owner of said license[[/note]], since all 3 major factions are guaranteed to have a country with access[[note]]France and the USA for the Allies, Germany and Japan for the Axis, and USSR for the [=ComIntern=][[/note]], and if any of the European countries with the technology (or Japan) goes Monarchist, all 4 ideologies will have a major that can license cruiser subs to other nations. |
| 138 | ** And let's not forget about submarines being built as mine-layers. They can reach spots that would be suicidal for surface ships, while being cheaper than any other alternative and burning less fuel. Combining convoy raiding with laying out mines for combat ships means taking a massive dent in enemy's capacity of running any sort of naval actions, as the ships not sunk by torpedoes are going to go down thanks to mines or will simply underperform in naval combat as they will be forced to carefully maneuver around plentiful mines. |
| 139 | * Still want a use for all those expensive Capital Ships? Set them to strike force and engage at low risk and maintain naval supremacy purely through existing. |
| 140 | * After ''La Resistance'' debuted, the new model of intel provides such massive amount of information about enemy, it's almost as if there was no FogOfWar. And following patches not only kept it, but ''buffed it further''. |
| 141 | * While the intelligence agencies from ''La Résistance'' are considered lacklustre and their missions mostly a gimmick, there is a very specific use for them, without even expanding and upgrading the agency itself beyond getting it started and hiring a single spy. Namely, the "Diplomatic Pressure" mission. What it does is making AI more eager to accept whatever is proposed to it. Including a non-aggression pact, even between sworn enemies. Non-aggression pact prevents both sides from declaring war for a year, ''no matter what''. They just can't. Then there is a progressive counter where, unless the enemy has amassed a sufficient number of troops at the border, the pact is effectively extended, up to 3 years in total, each 6 months requiring less and less troops to break the deal. In most cases, this means buying yourself ''at least'' that default year - and often two - of extra time. Poland can postpone the start of [=WW2=] by a ''year'' with ease, Finland can effortlessly get 18 months of extra time against the Soviets, while Belgium, the Netherlands and Nationalist China can fully cheese the three years of the pact due to how small their respective borders with Germany and Japan are, making it trivial to just stack a sufficient number of their own troops at the border. China in particular can milk the non-aggression pact, as it has only '''three''' provinces at the border, while [[WeHaveReserves being China]]. Japan quite literally doesn't have enough bodies to stack in the poorly developed border province in Manchuria to break the pact, and after 3 years of waiting, it will have to ''manually'' justify war on China, as the justification from the Marco Polo bridge incident will be long expired by then. While it obviously only works against the AI, enforcing a non-aggression pact makes it possible to better prepare for an otherwise tough fight against invading forces and massively expand own armed forces and their hardware. |
| 142 | * Prior to ''La Résistance'', there was no point in going down Britain's "[[JokeItem Revisit Colonial Policy]]" focus tree if you weren't planning on going communist. However, with the DLC, you gained one free operative for every two independent nations in your faction if you're the spymaster. Suddenly, you could decolonize Africa as Great Britain and gain a ''legion'' of spies with which you could boost ideologies in your enemies, lower their stability, and stage coups in them virtually limitlessly. Unfortunately, in 1.9.1 they nerfed the number of operatives gained by nations in your faction that have 0-50 factories[[note]]0 spies for 0-10 factories, 1/4 for 11-50, and the full 1/2 for 51+[[/note]] and capped your total number of operatives at 10, though it's still a substantial number if you let ([[VideoGameCaringPotential or help]]) them build up. |
| 143 | * France as of 1.9.0 with ''La Resistance''. By going monarchist you gain war goals on all the majors of the Allies and Axis, an extra +25% manpower base and 3% recruitable, -20% training time on top of the new military focuses reducing production cost of ALL forms of artillery and infantry equipment, another focus increasing production efficiency growth and cap by 10% and another that gives up to 8% non core manpower. All of this allows France to single-handedly fight all of Europe and win. Note though you still have to survive the initial years as you build up, but by 1940 if France hasn't fallen they will basically become the France of ''VideoGame/EuropaUniversalis''. |
| 144 | ** One of the other monarchist nations added in ''La Resistance,'' Carlist Spain, also gets war goals on most of the European majors, alongside the Benelux and America, and gets a much longer focus path that gives it -20% training time, extra +20% multiplier ''and'' flat +5% to recruitable manpower, while also giving the whole army large bonuses to almost every combat stat, making the Spanish Army stronger than every other army in the game. The only "downside" is how deep in the tree it is and thus how long it takes to get there, but there is really nothing stopping anyone from simply waiting it out. |
| 145 | *** On a slightly less extreme note, fascist Spain can get similar (though much less extreme) boosts that can make a player have a ''much'' easier time. |
| 146 | * Even at the top difficulty level, the AI isn't capable of building units that can properly defend against properly build tank division supported by motorised infantry with the Mobile Warfare Blitzkrieg doctrine. The exact composition varies from player to player and patch to patch. The important factor is to make tanks move at the speed of the motorised infantry, which leads to a massive amount of over-runs that instantly wipe out enemy units. In North Africa, the Russian Steppe or the American Great Plains, these units can break entrenched enemy lines, easily encircle & over-run hundreds of infantry units and will not stop moving while doing so. |
| 147 | * Nuclear bombs for late game multiplayer, while not useful as conventional deterrents, can be used to push through level 10 forts and/or a murderstack of elite units, as everything within the province gets wiped out clean. The big difference from prior titles is how infrastructure is handled on regional level, but nuclear attack is provincial, meaning the general infrastructure of the region is barely affected, but anything within specific province evaporates, leaving empty ground for easy capture. In prior titles, the provincial infrastructure would be damaged, too, turning the terrain into barely passable until reconstruction happens. Even with new supply system and railway network introduced with 1.11 patch, the new (if rudimentary) rail can be set up within ''days'' - and that assuming the province in question had rail in it in the first place. |
| 148 | * Although it might not seem like one, deleting naval invasion orders after the units launch out to sea but before they land can be this on multiplayer - because many players are dependent on the naval invasion sound to find out about the invasions, deleting the order mid-invasion will result in units still carrying it out, allowing you to land troops silently[[note]]obviously they'll still have to fight any garrisons if they try and land in a port[[/note]]. It's so bad that many servers often ban deleting naval invasion orders while they're being carried out. |
| 149 | * [[Film/RevengeOfTheSith Order 66]] - gaining military access, stationing troops on the victory points of a nation you have military access to, than getting the nation you have military access from called in to a war against you. It became so deadly because not only does it disrupt supply, but against certain nations, it can lead to them capitulating in a number of days. Paradox slightly nerfed this one by making it so you can't declare against puppets, but you can still declare against another faction member or a nation that's guaranteed and order 66 a country. A particularly deadly combination is to establish collaboration governments beforehand - this can lead to them capitulating a few days after getting called in[[note]]collaboration governments are offset by the fact that they get more expensive the more you pull off, but if you're playing as a major power, this isn't an issue[[/note]]. A particularly broken (albeit very risky) example involving Germany or Byzantine Fascist Greece is to Order 66 Italy[[note]]specifically, Italy starts off guaranteeing Albania, and will grant military access to any Fascist country they aren't at war with or dislike for other reasons - if Greece hasn't abandoned their debt to Italy, they'll give Greece access even if the debt hasn't been touched[[/note]], which can make the game much easier for Greece[[note]]all of Italy's cores in Europe (as well as Libya, and the Dodecanese) except for Sardinia can be cored as part of Byzantium; and if one puppets Italy and integrates them using the puppet mechanic system, they can gain access to the Regia Marina, which is one of the largest navies in the game, and a somewhat decent airforce; and there's also the fact that, if you capitulate them with most of their army in tact, you'll get all their equipment, which will be more than enough to overcome any deficit you have[[/note]], and also solve Germany's lack of a strong navy at the start (or give them an easier way to form the European Union or Holy Roman Empire). |
| 150 | * On release, ''No Step Back'' allows the player to supply their divisions via transport planes. The problem? Only 50 transport planes (costing merely 162 productions each) are enough to resupply ''four'' 30-width divisions worth of tanks. Barbarossa becomes a joke when you can pack Germany's entire tank reserves to a small area and push straight to Moscow. |
| 151 | ** As of ''By Blood Alone'', the transport plane supply meta has reared its ugly head again. Transport planes are now made much cheaper, but their effectiveness hasn't been diminished to match. For the low low production cost of ''360'' , you can build '''100''' transport planes (when before you can only build '''2''') and completely ignore the supply system in any region. Thinking that enemy air superiority will balance this out? Wrong, transport planes are so cheap that they can be shot down constantly and still provide perfect supply to the troops[[labelnote:Explanation]]A single factory has a base production value of 4.75, against a production cost of 3.6 of a transport plane, allowing to maintain very high production with even minuscule industry - not to mention flooding the military stockpile with robust production lines. Prior to the changes, a single transport plane cost 180 production, requiring a massive industrial investment to get them in meaningful quantity, making them hard to replace[[/labelnote]]. |
| 152 | * Launching naval invasions right as you declare war against an AI-controlled nation. The reason for this is that, if the AI is at peace, they have no reason to keep their navy deployed, and because the game only requires naval superiority when the invasion is launched, if you have all your ships deployed in the required areas, there's a brief window where you'll have superiority after the war begins. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhZtM-DikX4 As shown here]], this exploit makes it possible for ''China'' to be the one to kick off the Sino-Japanese war and '''win'''. |
| 153 | ** Also shown in that video is staging empty naval invasions - the reason for doing this is that while you can't launch any naval invasions without troops assigned, they'll still prepare as long as you have convoys. It suddenly becomes possible to have an entire army invade one territory before researching the 1940 transport ships technology. |
| 154 | * Anything that gives you flat weekly manpower is this, especially in smaller nations that typically don't have manpower to spare. |
| 155 | ** The "International Brigades" focus for the communists/anarchists in the Spanish Civil War gives +1000 manpower per week during the course of the civil war, but if the republicans kick the nationalists' teeth in before the anarchists rise up, the bonus becomes ''permanent''. |
| 156 | ** ''No Step Back'' adds the "Ideological Loyalty" Army Spirit, which, alongside a virtually useless -20% encirclement penalty, gives +500 weekly manpower. This spirit can be chosen by ''any'' communist nation, and most minor nations can become communist mid-1937. Three years of +500 manpower per week adds up to about 100,000 manpower around the time World War II starts, giving you the ability to start stomping over most of your minor neighbors, eventually snowballing until you can start competing with major nations. |
| 157 | * As Republic of China, your best bet is to ''not'' integrate certain warlords, especially the Guangxi Clique in the south. Due to your starting situation, you are locked at Free Market trade law, being forced to hand over majority of your resources - but the warlords aren't. This means a resource-rich Guangxi Clique will provide you with ''more'' resources (despite retaining a share for themselves) than you would gain yourself from controlling the exact same provinces. On top of that, Japan has to justify war on them separately, which they do either very late or even never, offering you a nice, safe underbelly. To a lesser extent, Shanxi Clique can turn into similar situation, but they have to first get their steel making industry going and usually simply don't last long enough. |
| 158 | ** Oddly enough, choosing to give in to Japan's demands for territory in response to the Marco Polo Bridge incident can be this - if Japan goes to war with you over your refusal, they also get a war goal on Shanxi, which will significantly increase the size of the front. However, if they manually justify on China, or if China is the one to kick off the war, the Japanese AI can't attack Shanxi if they aren't called in, thus narrowing the front and also forcing Japan to waste troops guarding the border with Shanxi. |
| 159 | ** In a very similar vein, Japan gets more out of setting up a PuppetState in Korea than keeping that territory under direct control. Korean Peninsula is a non-core territory for Japan, so only half of everything made there is gained directly, along with access to half the factory slots. As a puppet, Korea will give away 87,5% of whatever it is making, ''including factories''. On top of that, Korea will have a generic focus tree, offering a whole bunch of bonuses, big infrastructure boon and free factories. |
| 160 | * As already mentioned, justifying war on Japan, or even better on Manchukuo, when playing as the Republic of China, significantly shortens the frontline you have to deal with, while the border area around Beijing is particularly easy to defend. This even works against human players saddled as Japan, because if they try to justify manually, they will shorten the frontline on their own, while going down the focus tree for [=RoC=]-Shanxi war justification takes a precise, exact amount of time, allowing to outright troll such players and justify ''a day earlier'' than they can get that focus finished. If Japan gets tangled in a "defensive" war like that, it has to manually justify ''each warlord separately'', which AI will almost never do, and for the human players, that means an extra hassle and wasted time, offering a chance to simply push Japan away from Shanxi entirely, rendering justifying moot. Even when the [=RoC=] is completely unprepared for the war with Japan, the fact they have a very short frontline to defend makes it trivial to pull YouShallNotPass, while farming Army Experience to remove Chinese army debuffs. |
| 161 | * Another and far less exploit-based, course of action for China is to go straight into war against the Communists via the focus tree, defeat them (they are really easy to deal with) and then follow regular play. Having control of Shaanxi province means the nearby Shanxi Clique under Yan Xishan can be completely ignored when preparing defences against the looming Japanese invasion. Shaanxi is a natural fortress combining tough terrain with a border made out of the Yellow River ''plus'' Communist field fortifications. Thus even if IJA overwhelms Yan Xishan, there is a very easy way to defend the Chinese border ''anyway''. In fact, since the Japanese are busy with the Shanxi Clique, they spread their troops on a larger front, making Nationalist defence easier ''and'' reconquering Shanxi territories after the clique's collapse means they will be directly re-added under Nationalist ownership, as they have cores on those. Considering that in 9 out of 10 games Yan Xishan aligns himself towards the Communists, it also allows to ignore an otherwise troublesome warlord without having to interact with him in any way. The early war with the Communists also provides the benefit of gaining badly needed army experience and removing the long-term problem that the eventual communist agitation turns into by 1938, greatly simplifying management of the war with Japan without having to also play whack-a-mole against the endless communist infiltrations. |
| 162 | * Close-air Support planes gained a new job with 1.11 patch. They can... hunt down trains. As silly as it sounds, this can completely disable the enemy’s ability to fight, for without trains, virtually no supplies are moved to the frontlines, while they take forever to be replaced. And since the goal was to destroy trains, rather than the railroads themselves (which can also be a potential target for surgical strikes), it only takes minimal repair of captured rail system to use for your own. |
| 163 | * Due to [[GoodBadBugs an error in the script]] that never got fixed or properly addressed, your spies, when trying to steal industrial blueprints, will get the all-powerful -2 or even -3 years ahead penalty blueprints, allowing you to blitz through the industrial research trees. And industrial technologies are some of the most important ones, regardless of who you are playing as. The trick is to always spy on the country that has the ''other'' branch of Concentrated[=/=]Dispersed Industry than your own. It doesn't matter if they are even ahead of you, all that counts is that they have unlocked a technology you simply can't access yourself and thus the game generates the big catch-up bonus with the stolen blueprint, rather than the regular [[PowerupLetdown -10% research time]] blueprints provide on regular basis.[[note]]The spy action generates the big catch-up bonuses whenever you can't directly access the "most recent" technology from the target. Normally, that just means you are two tiers behind in a given field. However, in the case of industrial technologies, there are two mutually exclusive branches (Concentrated and Dispersed), making you perpetually unable to access the tech tree from the branch you didn't pick, forcing the script to erroneously assume you are two tiers behind[[/note]] As a result, you will be researching late-game industrial technologies by 1939. |
| 164 | ** The exact same exploit works with Special Forces technology, for the exact same reason - it's two mutually exclusive branches. It lacks the sheer ubiquity of industrial technologies bonuses, though. |
| 165 | ** This can also be exploited, although to a lesser extent, in other technological categories and requires that the target is ahead in something. Most prominent is the ability to amass a bunch of tank blueprint bonuses, as long as you postpone or simply ignore research of armour[=/=]engine technologies, focusing on just the models themselves. |
| 166 | * As Germany, you can gain a foothold in Britain using paratroopers alone, thus sidestepping the Royal Navy. Since the AI only guards ports instead of the entire coastlines, you can drop several paratroop divisions around a port and encircle it, then bring your tank divisions over to start securing more ground[[note]]capturing Bristol is vital to surviving on the island, as it belongs to a different sea zone than the English Channel and can be used to supply your forces (assuming you have defeated France and have friendly ports that can avoid the English channel)[[/note]]. The key to pulling this off is to not send your planes to Britain or the English Channel before the invasion, as the AI will not send any planes there if you don't, allowing you to gain total superiority over them for a brief window of time to deploy your paratroopers. If successfully pulled off, you can defeat Britain before 1941 and thus avoid pulling the USA into the conflict, allowing you to annex the entire Allies (if both France and Britain fall before US involvement, the rest of the Allies surrender). Bonus points, you can then steal the British and French navy, making you the second strongest navy in the world and capable of going toe to toe with the USA when the time comes. |
| 167 | * The main weakness of the British Empire, and both the Royal Navy and Air Force in particular, is the dependence on oil exports for the fuel production. However, it doesn't matter where said fuel ends up being ''stored'', as that is used from an arcade mode pool. As such, the UK can build its fuel silos in places like Jamaica, Belize or the Falklands, simply to increase the national fuel capacity, and then use it without any hassle as if the fuel was all stored in London. The other candidate for this exploit, Japan, unfortunately doesn't have safe, far-away colonies that nobody is going to attack, making it British-specific. |
| 168 | ** Speaking of the British Empire, the DifficultButAwesome Imperial Federation path of uniting all colonies, including India, into a superstate with as many resources and manpower pools as it desires. If you go the fascist way and invade the United States, there is a decision that allows Canada to unite with America as the Dominion of North America, getting cores on all of the United States, cores that are inherited when annexed thorough the puppet screen. As an added bonus for this harder sub path that may require invading the colonies to unite them, the fascist name of the Imperial Federation is, simply, TheEmpire. Nothing specific or anything, this is THE Empire. |
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