I'm argentinian, so my first games I was playing that nation! I never touched any major, until I had like 100 hours into the game. It really helped me understand everything! You're very right on that first tip. Cheers
A crucial tip can’t stress enough to newer players is: READ, read what soft attack does or what piercing does, how armor works, u can learn the entire game by reading everything and production wise, learn the logistics menu, it tells you if your outproducing your consumption or not, if not add more factories to it, or do less battleplan attacks and more concentrated attacks, u can get alot of stuff like guns, support and arty just from encircling divisions and capping their equipment, but it all starts with reading.
I must say I don’t really comment very often but I really liked tip number 9, everyone plays the game like it’s a competitive game even if it’s in single player but I like playing with cheats and just enjoying the experience instead of struggling and being annoyed, great video lad!
Just recently decided to try again to get into HOI4 after my initial tries with the game ended up driving me away, your tutorials are things I super wish I had back then! You’ve been really helpful! Keep being awesome!
My way of learning was playing as germany and watching a guide on how to defeat the allies (the way the game was intended) blindly copied it some times and started analyzing what he was doing in the guide and learning from it
As a 1.4k hour player I completely agree on the meta point, it's so bullshit, you'd win more and have fun more actually planning, just because dankus had a breakdown on paratroopers doesn't mean you can't use them,meta discourages the creativity of your strategies
I am absolutely terrible at Hoi4. I spent all of the Welsh Covid lockdowns playing it on my dad's steam (he got it for himself and I really wanted to try it) and later my own. I have in total on both accounts 4k + hours yet I still need videos like this one. But by far this is the best one so far. Told me everything I need to know in 9 mins instead of a over complicated 30 min video. Thanks so much for this video you're an absolute legend
Thanks so much boyo! Glad to be able to help players out, fuck the English 🐲 (my only knowledge of the welsh is Colin Hughes from Ted Lasso sorry lmao)
I think starting on major nation than micronation helps more, just start with 0 dlc at first then work your way onto the next dlc learning its new mechanics.. By starting with germany you can learn annexation, planes, etc and doesn't kill the mood for new players to retry again unlike smaller nation where you slowly build from 10 factory which generally very slow learning curve
It makes sense to you or me as experienced players, but try to remember how overwhelming this game can be as a beginner. There's too much to struggle with honestly
i bought hoi4 3 days ago for the summer sale, struggled to understand any tutorials and only just got a grasp of the basic ui functions from the top rated tutorials on youtube, your tutorials are very helpful and easy to understand and as a complete beginner, i can say this has helped me a ton
Thx for making this vid! My first nation was the US (now that ive branched out im a bit frustrated since its so much different than everything else) and after 30 tries i finally beat japan, learning USSR and struggling now so i think i might do a canada game or something just to reset. Thanks again!
My biggest Tip is: READ and COMPREHEND If you don't understand something, read the tooltips, hover your Mouse o er everything that seems like it means something. Running your 24 Infantry Divisions into a City and you're loosing? Press on the Red Battle Bubble, read what the numbers mean a d where they come from. Ideally it would look like this: > Loose attacking city with 24 Divs. > Open Tooltip to read why > Find out about Combat Width, Organisation, Breakthrough, etc. > Fix Division Template, making it bigger, giving units more inf>artillery, concentrate Air over the Airzone, attack with less Divisions at once, use planning > Successfully take City!
Im Just starting off and am gonna give a lot of these a try lol, thank you for the tips, I kept trying to play Germany/France/Poland and kept getting bored, excited to try again
I hear what you're saying about losing, as Italy I lost Africa to the Brits and the allies are propping up the last couple of Greek cities. To top it off I just ran out of manpower 😖 Any chance of a guide on managing fuel reserves and manpower? Italy (or just me) seems to struggle with both.
I had the same problem when playing as German against the soviets, ended up with 200 manpower and not enough war support to change the conscription aha
For manpower generally you just want to not attack positions when you don't have the ability to realistically win. Also having high compliance gives you more manpower from your occupied states, so you might want to check if you didn't put on an occupation law that lowers compliance growth. For oil, the best thing to do is to build refineries before war. And be careful how you use your navy. Just a handful of ships can suck up all of your reserves easily without accomplishing much. Also use armored divisions mainly for attack, your normal infantry is perfectly capable of holding the line (chances are they are even better at it) so you can safe a lot of fuel there too
what was a really helpful tip, is that wargoals might help not starting a world war... i played mexico today, and conquered everything to the panama channel... yeah this country joined the allies and i fought vs uk, usa similarily then... so yeah next time ill just either fight USA first or conquer with wargoals
Great video for beginners. You’re probably right it is best to learn with a small nation but I’d ad that once you get that down you want to play as Germany. Germany has pretty much no restrictions until UK and France decides to be annoying. Btw it took me 7 games before I managed to create the Roman Empire as the Italians on the easiest difficulty. I’ve never played a game with such a leaning curve
I agree! Germany is definitley one of the best to learn on once you have the basics down. And yep, this and Rainbow Six Siege are probably two of the games I'm played with the biggest learning curves!
@@hammotimee Thanks! I completed the Aerophasic engine which destroyed the galaxy and possibly me along with it. But I got a victory screen so the details aren’t super important.
Cheers mate! And yeah exactly, for a new player whjat's meta isn't really going to be helpful, and IMO it's boring. There's so much you can do in this game, why limit yourself to what everyone else does?
I have over 50 hours into the game. And yes…I freaking suck. I can’t get myself to win battles, improve my economy and etc. however I’ve seen myself improving way more nowadays just because I never gave up! So one crucial tip is to be patient, it is going to take time. Also I’m not really the best till now so if any of you have tips reply down below!
I'm still figuring out how to properly get a massive army without running out of supplies for training them. It always seems I'm behind in military factories no matter what I do. I'm either not able to produce them fast enough or I focus too much on the civilian factories and end up not building enough military factories.
One thing I wonder about is the development of infrastructure and railways. I tried playing Canada 🇨🇦 and was like watching grass grow after playing the United States
I tried playing Australia and acting as support for the allies, making sure my sphere of influence was protected and depending on the allies to stop the Axis. Problem is, I did really well, but the Allies did *Absolutely Nothing* .Germany won, took the USSR and Japan took China and the Philippines without the USA doing anything to get it back for the entire game. D-day never happened, the UK just sat there until 1948. It was very depressing because I was relying on the Allies to do *something* and they were utterly useless.
@@hammotimee I think it was because the UK and the US did absolutely nothing to stop them. There was no d-day to distract them in the West. The Soviets held them for quite a long time but they seemed to be the only ones fighting and they eventually folded.
its funny i cant do stradegy or multiple fronts its just for some reason my brain just tells and forces me to put all my focus on one part and i realise i messed up when its too late and it also doesnt help that i have 0 idea what im doing,what im researching,building,etc my brain is too simple. and how do i do navy and air force stuff and how do i not die instantly when more than 2 countries are at war with me plz halp i also dont know what to pick for the focus tree and also i never read any of the stuff im too lazy or my brain doesnt have brain cells to process all the text
Honestly the best country for your first run is the US. If you chose non historical AI, you won't be drawn into any way way into 1945, or even later. You can really learn all about focuses and industry, and if you feel like it start a war with Mexico, which shouldn't be too much of a challange. For the 3rd or 4th run, I recommend an non historical Soviet run. The Soviets start with a pretty good army, decent industry, and most importantly you can pick your fights for most of the game, unlike with small European countries. In my experience with playing a small Nation, by around 1940-1941 Germany or the Soviets will have beef with you, and you don't really stand a chance. If you want to learn more about supply lines, try and fight the japanese, for just general combat try and invade Europe. On easy difficulties both shouldn't be a problem even for lower players
Hey learning how to play HOI4 and everyone else i always try watching, keep saying try Germany cause they are easier. I have tried Germany, and they are not new player friendly. I will try a smaller nation and get used to the mechanics. thanks for the tips.
I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong when attacking countries, I'm playing a Austria-Hungary campaign and helped the axis take over France in a couple weeks, yet with the help of the axis I'm losing to Romania? Any tips would be appreciated.
Hard to say, could be supply, maybe your troops are under equipped, do they have air supremacy? Have the Romanians joined the Soviets? In which case that'll be harder haha
Check if they are supplied and if you are lacking equipment. If you fight a long war, your (likely small) industry can't really support the amount of troops you have. If you see negative numbers in the storage tab, your divisions lack equipment they need to keep fighting. If they don't get it, zheir fighting strength is very low. My recommendation is to set the reinforcement priority to the highest. Also you should change your garrison division template to a template with only 1 cavalry. This way you can safe tons of equipment, because your garrisons would normally use your standard infantry template, which will use stuff like artillery that costs much industry but doesn't really give any suppression.
I'd still recommend starting with germany or at least not to delay playing it too much. I wasted too much time playing useless minors until I tried Germany and was surprised at how easy the game was
If someone has never picked up this game before, Germany can be super overwhelming. After 4-5 games of other countries then I agree, Germany is probably one of the best
3:58 Sadly I made that big mistake in the beginning. I went communist Romania and started knocking out all the small countries until i hit Hungary, which of course had a guarantee from France and Britain. I declared war on them like an idiot, and 3 years in I was fighting both Germany and the Allies, and not even an alliance with Russia could save me. Completely swallowed by both factions. The moral of this story, DO NOT ATTACK A COUNTRY THAT IS GUARANTEED BY THE ALLIES!
Change Game Rules??? Wow! I'm super new and super bad (and not bad in a good way) and sometimes I've wanted a game where I can just do whatever and not worry about the end-game where the big factions take over everything and so you're like on rails to a predetermined end (even on non-historical...usually the fascist faction takes over). I never knew you could just change the rules!
Every time I play a fun nation like Germany I always got bogged down after I take France and Scandinavia I can never understand how to function the navy anyone have any tips for this stage in the game or where I should focus on
I feel your pain! I have a naval guide here, which is good if you don't have man the Guns, but I've got a video coming out in two weeks all about how to manage your navy, so stay tuned 👀 ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-ztxduPIqNo4.html
@@hammotimee 5 years. It didn't make perfect. It wont ever do i reckon. The only good performance i ever gave was always as fasci Germany, but y'know it is always overpowered no matter what allies do
Learn from your mistakes... Like not sending your entire Canadian army to France to help the Allies, only for France to surrender, thus leaving your army cut off and surrounded, thus wiping it out.
I've given this game 3 chances and I'm done. Hats off to the people that can get a handle on this. I guess I'm just dumb. To me it's clunky, lags, doesn't explain a thing, and is not user friendly what so ever. I made the mistake of getting this because I wanted something more complicated then total war but this was wayyyyy more then I anticipated. Actually being a leader would be easier because you have people that know what they are doing, doing the little things.....
Great tips but you kinda forgot that mods make the game fun in the late stages of playing, some go for rt56 multi-player, God forbid comp mp, or kaiserredux, aswell as being creative with your plans and thinking critically, most new players as soviet union for example cannot defeat Afghanistan because of the hard terrain, they should think of the enemy' strengths and weaknesses, for example because their mountains, it would help if mountaineers were deployed, if they have forts, bomb them, if you have green air, distract them and paratroop behind their lines
Thank you! It's a good point about the mods, most of my videos are aimed towards newer players, so with a game as busy asd hoi, I didn't want to add more onto their plate with suggesting mods, as that's like adding new games entirely sometimes haha
So….this might be a dumb question but, is recon good for attacking army? Like a recon armored car, cause I AWLAYS thought it scouts the enemy army, but….recently i found out that, I think I was wrong?
@@hammotimee ah, got it, so, for my atk inf, rn I have armored recon, arty, logistics (cause there 42 width, I heared it’s the meta so) maintenance and anti air
@@Anderson12690I'm pretty sure you should change the armored recon to cavlary one. The armored recon has two uses, first, it doesn't slow your forces down, but that doesn't matter for infantry, and second it doesn't impact your units hardness so much. But for infantry thats kinda pointless outside of some space marine builds. The big difference is that armored recon takes light tanks, while cavalry only takes infantry and support equipment. So the cavalry one is way cheaper
For people not wanting to get too deep into navy: spamming battleships might not be efficient at winning battles, but usually its enough to get you naval dominance and allow for a naval invasion
Thanks mate I appreciate the straight forward to the point video. I was about to uninstall out of frustration but I'm glad I came across your video. Cheers legend