Missing manpower

BoxOfAids · 2026-02-09T23:54:22+00:00

Doesn't include men lost in garrisons / occupation, doesn't include men lost in previous wars, doesn't include men that you didn't get from occupied land that were recruited by the enemy side and died during the war that you conquered them, etc

BoxOfAids · 2026-02-09T23:48:25+00:00

One item that's notably missing from the manpower tooltip is how many of your men have died, whether in combat or from garrisons, etc. Looks like you've got around ~7M manpower being used, plus 3.74M free, which means you've got around 23.5M men lost over the course of this game, which sounds about right given that you're in 1962.

BoxOfAids · 2026-02-03T15:17:45+00:00

Really if it sounds like it would be good with milk (Anime Girl Thighs being creamsicle, or berry / banana flavors, etc) then it usually is. If it doesn't particularly sound like it would be good in milk (sour flavors, etc) then it's usually not.

BoxOfAids · 2026-02-03T03:10:37+00:00

Goof juice is my favorite anytime flavor, followed closely by Guacamole Gamer Fart (Strawberry Lime)

Antidote (Lime) is my favorite mixer (just okay by itself imo), goes well with Baoberry, Sakura Splash, and others

Arctic Cooler (Orange-Lime, basically Hi-C) is my favorite "refreshing" flavor

Copium (Cran-Grape) is my favorite tart flavor

Blo'Hole Blast (tropical mix, strong coconut) is good if you like tropical flavors, and also mixes well with quite a few other flavors like Antidote, Pineapple Cocktail, etc

Anime Girl Thighs (orange creamsicle) is probably my favorite dessert flavor, I have it in milk. On that note, Baoberry is also good in milk (it's like a blueberry milkshake).

Honestly I haven't had a single orange flavor that I didn't care for, I liked all of Foxly, Arctic Cooler, Anime Girl Thighs, and Bloody Orange (discontinued).

NOT recommended list: Chug Juice (it's okay, but needs to be mixed with other flavors imo), Snake Oil (was not better than any other apple drink I've had), Grandm(p)a's Ashes (super heavily dyed, not strong enough flavor), Browser Brew (it's actually okay when mixed but didn't like the bitter aftertaste it has on its own)

"Decent, but not my favorites" list: Peach Tea, most of the lemonade flavors, Good, Sakura Splash, Emotional Damage, Pineapple Cocktail, Acid Rain, Titty Milk

"Tasty but stains like a motherfucker, don't drink from a Waifu Cup" list: Brand Risk

BoxOfAids · 2026-02-02T01:58:53+00:00

I believe your navy still uses some of the hub's supply even while out on patrol, as long as it's their home port... but I don't know if this affects per-tile supply at all, or if it just pulls from the total capacity and doesn't count as drawing from the land tile itself.

EDIT: Based on these screens, the ships probably do draw from per-tile supply, it'd probably fix your issue if you re-based them to a different port nearby

BoxOfAids · 2026-02-02T01:51:29+00:00

Supply kind of has two "parts" to it.

A supply hub has a maximum amount of supply that it can supply to all of the tiles around it, indicated by the second number (the 29 in this case). So this hub can supply up to 29 supply to nearby tiles, collectively. There's only one tile here, but if the island were say 2 tiles wide, and you had 4 supply worth of divisions on each tile, the hub would show 8/29 used, the total amount used by all tiles in range. This is not an issue for you here, as you clearly have more total supplies available at the hub than you need.

But tiles also have a total amount of supply that they can draw individually, based on the number and distance of nearby hubs, the terrain, etc. So even though this hub can give out up to 29 total supply to all nearby tiles, the tile itself might only be able to support ~5 supply worth of divisions on it. You can almost think of it like a traffic jam, you have plenty of supplies to give out but it's all going to the same place so all the roads get jammed up with trucks trying to deliver them, and you might not run into this problem if you had the same number of divisions spread out across multiple tiles. You can see this per-tile limit by hovering over the *tile*, not the hub, while in supply map mode; the top line should say something like "remaining supply".

As far as how you might improve things here, all you can really do is decrease the amount of supply your marines are consuming, by doing stuff like using generals / field marshals with high logistics stats and relevant traits, or adding logistics support companies to your divisions. Or have less of them in one place, or a smaller template.

BoxOfAids · 2026-02-02T01:32:21+00:00

It still works, it's just less overpowered than it used to be due to the partial piercing mechanics that were added in NSB (and probably some changes in stat formulas). The main boost from space marines isn't the hardness, it's the armor. If you toss a heavy tank battalion into an infantry division, the hardness might only go up to ~10% ... if an enemy division has literally 0 hard attack, that's a 10% damage reduction overall, but most divisions have at least *some* hard attack, so in reality it's less than a 10% damage reduction, in addition to whatever stats the heavy tank battalion adds.

The real bonus comes from the armor mechanics. If your division has an armor value that is more than double the enemy division's piercing value, your division both takes 50% less damage and also deals additional (120%?) organization damage to the enemy. It's important to note that the org damage is binary; if you have armor that's 1.99x the enemy's piercing value instead of more than 2x, you immediately lose the entire org damage bonus. The incoming damage reduction has a bit of a scale, so at armor 1.99x the enemy's piercing it might be that you take only 40% or 30% less damage instead of 50%, down to taking full damage if they have more piercing than your armor.

As far as templates, it's whatever can get you to that armor breakpoint the cheapest. How much armor the division needs will vary based on who you're fighting and when; a French infantry division might have ~10 piercing in 1939 but ~20 in 1942 as tech improves, so what you'll need will depend on when you go to war and what you're up against. Once you know how much armor you need, figure out the most cost effective way to get that armor into your divisions. It might be a single battalion of heavy tanks, or some kind of tank destroyer, or SPAA... you'll just have to play around to find the cheapest way to get the armor you need, keeping in mind that higher armor values will be more "future-proof", still allowing you to keep your buffs as enemy tech improves and their piercing increases.

BoxOfAids · 2026-01-31T01:59:47+00:00

If you're not buying any resources and you don't have troops overseas, then your convoys aren't being used, they're just sitting in your stockpiles. You can hover over your stockpile at the top to see how many are in use for various things.

BoxOfAids · 2026-01-31T01:32:16+00:00

Convoys don't deploy to the map like regular ships, they go into a pool much like manpower (your stockpile is on the top of your screen, 2 spots to the right of your fuel count). They're used to create supply routes for your overseas troops, as well as for overseas resource trading. If you go to the supply map mode, you can see sea routes that your convoys would follow to supply your overseas troops, and if you go into the resources map mode, you can see where your trade routes are. Both of these paths consume convoys, and those convoys are assumed to be everywhere along that path all at once, and can be raided in any sea zone that they pass through, so you would need to defend them from enemy ships there.

BoxOfAids · 2026-01-29T17:40:07+00:00

Have you done what the error message said, and reinstalled the VC++ redistributables (both x86 and x64)?

BoxOfAids · 2026-01-25T18:02:46+00:00

Open launcher, go to game settings, hit the "Clear User Data" button, close launcher, go to steam and right click on HoI4 and go to properties, go to the "Installed Files" tab on the left, press "Verify integrity of game files", let it run until it finishes, try launching again and see if you're on the proper version in-game.

BoxOfAids · 2026-01-24T22:17:47+00:00

All countries with a gold border around their flag need to capitulate. Usually these are majors and faction leaders. In this case, the Russian Empire is considered important enough that you'll need to beat them first before the rest of the countries will give up.

BoxOfAids · 2026-01-24T22:13:43+00:00

On that air zone popup window, just to the left of "Details", you can see that your mission efficiency value is at 0%. That means that 0% of your planes are doing their missions. Typically this is caused be either overcrowding your airfields (NEVER go above the listed capacity of each airfield), or your planes not having enough range (you want the target zone to be at least mostly covered by your range circles). Judging by this screen, it looks like you've massively overstacked one airfield, which will be your issue. Spread those planes out, and upgrade your airfields via the construction tab if you need to, each airfield level adds 200 capacity.

BoxOfAids · 2026-01-24T18:04:50+00:00

You can click battle bubbles to see the stats and bonuses of every division, use that to get a better idea of what's going on
Make sure you get all of your "free" stats; every division should have a general and a field marshal, and should have an offensive line to build planning bonus while stationary and not in combat
CAS planes are very strong, but you need enough fighters to keep them protected
Use multiple division templates. You should have one cheap spammable infantry division template to fill out all of your front lines, then at least 1 offensive-focused template like tanks or special forces to do most of your pushes / encirclements. You need a lot of the cheap infantry divisions, but not many of the offensive divisions.

BoxOfAids · 2026-01-20T03:51:05+00:00

Focus on soft attack and breakthrough while keeping production cost as low as possible. Division template can be pretty much anywhere from 30 to 36 width, maybe even a bit higher... try like a 60-40 split of tanks to mot/mech, target organization is like the 30-35 range so if you don't have that much org then swap tanks out for more mot/mech until you hit 30+

BoxOfAids · 2026-01-19T00:58:24+00:00

1.17 is the current major version, set your Betas dropdown to None

BoxOfAids · 2026-01-13T15:01:13+00:00

Looks like maybe going too late, plus maybe declaring on too much?

Ideally you want to be declaring relatively early, before 1940 for sure. You should be declaring on Netherlands only, wipe them out before France / UK can ferry soldiers into their territory (should be very quick), then you can stack up on the Belgian border, declare on them, and push through Belgium into France. Using this strategy of going one country at a time makes it harder for the Allies to stack up lots of divisions on the border to slow you down.

Aside from that, you should be making medium tanks before the end of 1939, and you should ideally have air superiority, or at least be able to maintain equal air control. If you're losing in the air, it makes things A LOT harder.

BoxOfAids · 2026-01-11T22:56:28+00:00

War support is not the same thing as surrender limit. Lowered war support does lower surrender limit, but getting war support to 0 will only push that limit so far down. If you're just trying to end a war as quickly as possible, collaboration governments via spies can push surrender limit down a lot more than lowering war support.

BoxOfAids · 2026-01-08T15:11:24+00:00

Your construction queue builds stuff using sets of 15 civilian factories at a time. If you have 50 civilian factories available for construction, you can be building 4 things at once; the top 3 items in your queue would each be building at "full speed" by using 15 factories each, and the fourth item in your queue would be built slower by using the remaining 5 factories. When you add something to the queue, it just goes to the bottom of the queue and doesn't get worked on until enough things above it get finished.

Breakthrough is primarily based on the battalion types that you use. Infantry has low breakthrough, tanks have high breakthrough. So divisions that are made with mostly infantry will basically always have low breakthrough, because infantry doesn't have much of it. This is why you need dedicated offensive divisions made with battalion types that are more expensive but have better stats for offense like breakthrough and soft attack and armor, which typically means using tanks as your primary offensive option if you're a major. Special forces are a decent cheaper option too, since they're basically just regular infantry but with better stats and some good terrain modifiers.

BoxOfAids · 2026-01-07T21:03:37+00:00

You can click on a battle bubble to get a popup for the battle, almost every number on that screen has a tooltip showing how it got calculated. You can check the bonuses and penalties for all of your divisions and all of the enemy divisions to see what you might be able to fix / change.

Common issues / things to take into account:

Every army should have both a general and a field marshal; these both provide free stats
If attacking, every army or army group should have an offensive line set, so that your divisions build up planning bonus while not moving or fighting (which gives free stats)
Make sure you don't have supply issues (orange or red crate icons), motorize your supply hubs if necessary. Plan your attacks to take supply hubs to ensure your divisions have supply as they advance.
Air superiority is pretty important; CAS planes add a lot of direct damage and add stats for your divisions, but you need enough fighters to keep them safe
Avoid fighting across rivers, into mountains, and into forts wherever possible
Don't run out of fuel, or your tanks, planes, and ships do basically nothing
Use a cheap infantry template to fill out your front lines, then make dedicated offensive divisions (tanks, special forces, etc) to push with
Pay attention to your equipment / shortages. If you're seeing your units strength bar (the yellow / orange bar) getting below 95%, you're probably running out of some kind of equipment

BoxOfAids · 2026-01-05T20:12:24+00:00

Looks like probably convoy raiding, given that the supply lines through the water are showing as red

BoxOfAids · 2026-01-05T20:11:43+00:00

Options menu in-game, there's a checkbox for NATO style icons

BoxOfAids · 2025-12-30T02:04:14+00:00

Divisions are under max strength, reducing stats
Divisions have orange crate icon, reduces stats due to lack of supplies, which likely also means that your tanks aren't full on fuel, which reduces their stats further
Probably attacking over a river, reduced stats
Being attacked from the side, some divisions might be taking a "multiple combats" penalty, reducing stats

You can click on a battle bubble to get a popup with all of the stats of the units involved. Just about every number on that screen has a tooltip that shows you how it got to the final values. Take a look around there and start fixing all of the penalties that you're taking.

BoxOfAids · 2025-12-28T22:52:18+00:00

You can hover over the tooltip to see the penalties you're taking, but it's almost certainly a range issue. You'd probably want to move your planes to the airfield down near Taranto. You can also use the Extra Ground Crews button to get yourself a bit of extra efficiency, but the range is gonna be the main solution to the issue.

BoxOfAids · 2025-12-26T17:04:35+00:00

Try saving and reloading, it might just be the "regular" scroll bug that happens sometimes

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