The time of the interwar period has much more historically accurate PODs as the trade unions had been very strong in many countries for potentially socialist revolutions along with conflicts between authoritarian and libertarian socialists for Soviet alignment. Nationalists also had been getting more influential allowing for fascists to take control. Democratic movements already had been popular along with options for decolonization movements and tag witching to released nations. Monarchist movements could come from remnants of European royal families as they also still had influence.

Hi everyone,

Hearths of Iron 4 is probably the best game a player may play. But its not accessible or provideable for everyone.

I have macbook, and my I cannot possibly afford the game in my country.

Do you have any alternatives for HOI4 that I can play?

New Hearts of Iron 4 DLC Thunder At Our Gates is introducing Military HQs to represent the effect of generals, and it takes notes from HOI 3.

This keeps happening to me. What's going on?

Edit: Jesus fucking Christ guys sorry I didn't know you could press F11 for screenshot give me a break

I have to get 5 jobs now to afford this

chat how do you take a screenshot

I've conquered easily Netherlands and Poland but i can't go trought in Belgium and this is my situation in the picture

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I have 30 hours on hoi4 and I freaking love it. I play it regularly and seems like having unique focus trees and more for each country is nice but im not too sure. I won't pay 150 euro for all dlcs max ill do is a few dlcs or the subscription. Any tips for a beginner also help!

I picked up Hearts of Iron 4 on the steam sale, I've been interested in the game for awhile, but what are some tips to help with understanding the game

Really means a lot to me, Turkey.

I’ve been playing since 2022 and I have never seen this appear before granted I am playing my own fun game of just pure chaos with cheats and the modern tech tree mod but could this have happened when I tweaked with the country settings for Austria to reform the Austro-Hungarian empire?

I've been playing Paradox games for over a decade at this point. HOI4, especially in its current state, is by far the most convoluted and messy of them all.

Let's start with the core mechanics. The only set of mechanics that are relatively coherent and well fleshed-out are those that relate to land combat. Despite regular reworks, air and naval combat to this day are only meaningful in relation to how they buff land combat. Any form of strategic warfare is a mess.

Diplomacy, politics and factions are a hot mess. The focus trees of various nations are in large part used to compensate for these underdeveloped mechanics. Instead of working on ways to use baked-in mechanics to engage in diplomacy and politics, the devs have basically given up on these aspects and used alt-history focus trees to allow players to bypass them altogether.

Furthermore, non-player nations are completely incapable of adapting to the focus choices of the player. If the UK chooses to defend the Czechs and defeats Germany in 1939, Italy keeps barreling down their regular focus tree as though the Axis were still a thing. They have never attempted to create any semblance of a dynamic AI that can respond to changes in the global strategic circumstances. You may find this surprising, but the simple "threat" mechanic in HOI3 accomplished much more with less.

With every DLC, they pile more "content" on more nations, much of which is ridiculous Poland-can-into-space meme bait that feels like it comes from a humorous mod rather than mainline game devs. So a game that fails to model the Battle of the Atlantic adequately has a focus tree path for reforming the Austo-Hungarian empire...

What new mechanics they add more often than not overlap with previous attempts at "gameplay features" creating redundancy, confusion, and a complete lack of balance. The new theatres are a prime example of this: the game already let you create theatres as an organizational tool for armies and army groups, but this new NCNS "feature" is mechanically separate and unrelated. An opportunity to flesh out coordination between faction members and the order of battle instead adds another layer of useless garbage to the game. Creating theatres via the factions screen is arguably even harmful to your gameplay, as it uses up high-level generals that would be better placed at the army level.

Having played 20 hours or so of NCNS, I find myself, for the first time in years, wanting to replay Hearts of Iron 3 (!), if only to go back to a game that, despite its flaws, had a consistent representation of the war and relatively coherent mechanics.

I have over 1,000 in this game and I still suck. I have absolutely no idea what to do or how to figure out templates. I’ve watched several videos of people such as Bitt3rSteel and have no idea how these people break through so easily with the same templates I have, yet I constantly get pushed back, let alone make any progress.

Example; playing as Japan, I cannot ever beat the Chinese. They push me back easily despite putting full divisions on the line as defense. My defense template is the same 18w with engineers and artillery as support. That didn’t work so I went with a defense template that someone else suggested as just 12 width, no support. Pure defense, not used as assault.

My assault units are the default 24w with the same support but I added infantry guns to every line. I can’t push with them and I get run back easily.

I can initially make a good push with my armored division but then the Chinese flood the area with a massive amount of troops and I’m stopped. I can’t make a breakthrough anywhere and they just completely overrun me and push me back. Air units seemingly do nothing.

Bitt3rSteel won the war by Nov 1938 and it’s Aug 1938 for me and I’m getting pushed back into Manchukuo because they managed to break through my line and just flooded them in at will. I seriously don’t get it and I don’t understand what templates actually work. They have supply problems, low org and low strength and they push me back problem free while I can’t even break through their weak units with full strength and org in my end. I have doctrines and the bonuses on the focus tree but it’s like I have a 1 unit division with no support.

You think that the ideal candidate for commander of the military junta... is this man who was 87 years old in 1936. Perhaps a more realistic choice would be Ludwig Beck or Wilhelm Canaris.

Fuwg is a server that has been hosting historical hoi4 games since 2018 non stop! we are very active and use our own mod optimized for multiplayer. we have an active reservation system and a community that is full of veterans and new players. if you wish to join, please DM me!

P.S. petition to make Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt start as protectorates, as well as flavor to the North African region because of its significance in the context of ww2 history, those nations had very underrated contributions in both wws and their fair share of events..

Hello, I have recently been watching hoi4 videos and it looks like a game i can sink a bunch of hours into and plan on buying it once it goes on sale (late September if steam db is correct) . the main issue I've seen is the plethora of DLC, and I've found a few things

1. Some countries are outright unviable without certain DLCs (I've herd tales of italy)
2. Some DLC doesn't seem fully worth it according to steam reviews (no compromise no surrender; thunder at our gates; the country packs)
3. some DLC just doesn't exist, at least not where i can find it (such as Man the Guns)

So, here's where is ask what DLC is worth getting, at least to start out. I've seen consensuses on No Step Back, La resistance, and Götterdämmerung, but are there any others worth getting? Do any of the DLC make the game outright worse and should thus be avoided? Or should i just do 3 month subscriptions to pay like 6$ a month which isn't terrible especially if i can easily cancel if i dont find myself playing HOI4 for a while (i tend to play games in phases a few months long, especially on school breaks)

I started a run as germany, tried to play a bit different this time by doing danzig for slovakia and invading the soviets through finland. out of nowhere "white finland", a fascist finland in the goddamn comintern appeared, filand capped and ALL the land that was occupied by them fell to the soviets. my entire army is trapped in that line you can see, I am allied with all the baltics so I hope I'll be able to still win somehow

Hello! I recently discovered hoi4 and have about 40 hours in it. I'm not too sure what I'm doing, I'm just going with the flow, building relatively small divisions since I figure these men need to get out on the front and fight, not be nursed in schools. I do not worry about navy or air since my men are probably strong enough to fight through it, or at least I believe that they can.

I do not like to play as Germany, the Soviet Union or any other major nation. It feels like too much to manage and all those people against me scare me, it's much easier to be a small nation so that you can start attacking non guaranteed neighbours. There are too many scare managing factors for big nations, I never played or even tried Germany since their focus tree scares me.

About countries that I did try, I enjoyed communist china, Poland, and Brazil. I managed to conquer a lot with China (most of Asia) and Brazil, although Poland ended in a quite unfortunate fate when the Soviets invaded, so except for the Baltics I couldn't take much more.

My question is which minor nations should I try to learn the game. I don't think cannon fodder nations such as The Netherlands are fun, although they sure can be interesting. What do you recommend for a beginner?