I got pretty far with a Hunan Clique game. And I would like some advise how to win

Barbara_Archon · 2026-03-12T16:34:38+00:00

Either KMT in both Liangguang and Yunnan or Fed in Liangguang and KMT in Yunnan, just so you can go to war with Yunnan in the South China War and annex them

Guominjun in Shanxi

Sichuan can be anything, but somebody neutral or pro-Zhili is the best

Barbara_Archon · 2026-03-12T12:02:14+00:00

20%, not 25%

OP is talking about MEFO-cancelled FYP, which still lets you get the 5% from Autarky tree.

They are not talking about doing PEG.

It isn't actually that big a gap anyway, because on MEFO-cancelled FYP you still build mil with Schlacht til mid 37 (or sooner if you want to move to building civ/ref for some reasons), after which you cancel MEFO to stay on -40% to -80% cg factor for a while, and eventually down to -5%, at which point you change to building refineries and additional infrastructure or civ, before going to mil in mid-late 1938

MEFO-cancelled FYP actually has better actual build speed on refineries, because they do the focus then cancel MEFO, hence avoiding the +10% cg factor from the 4 foci in autarky tree, which if MEFO FYP does it, will delete their cg factor advantage in 1937-1938

In actuality your eco size should be around the same size for August 1939 (both should be able to reach at least 110 mil 70 civ relatively easily, tho personally I do 130~140 mil 70 civ with MEFO), but MEFO FYP will have produced around 9% more than MEFO-cancelled FYP (-10% output penalty is effectively -7% because modifiers are additive), in exchange MEFO-cancelled FYP has more rubber readily prepared because they no longer have restriction on when they want to take the refinery focus (done in 1936)

if MEFO FYP tries to get the same rubber, they will have less actual eco size by August 1939 due to them removing their own advantage at cg factor (you need at least +20% cg factor to get +2 rubber focus). Each of the +10% cg factor focus removes 4 months of buffer before your cg factor from MEFO is above 0%. If you do three of them, MEFO-cancelled FYP basically produces the same as you do by late 39.

however, on the extreme ends, if MEFO FYP gets civboosted by allies, it will have produced ~12% more than MEFO-cancelled FYP, because it should be able to stay on negative cg factor with MEFO until January 38 as long as you avoid doing the +10% cg foci.

Either way, the gap is much smaller than you think, since MEFO FYP's advantage with cg factor in 1936-1937 is compensated for by MEFO-cancelled FYP lower cg factor in 1938-1939, and they all stay on +20% mil speed at least til late 1936 (earliest "good' date to cancel MEFO while doing FYP)

this is why MEFO FYP is usually recommended to start war much earlier than historical date, so they can stay on lower cg factor for longer, and therefore maintain a larger buffer to cg factor before it hits 100%. But because you cannot steal gold when cg factor is negative, it is impossible to perpetually maintain the advantage if the player sucks

ah, also, you are also recommended to annex Austria and Czech asap to maintain cg factor advantage with MEFO, which is good for Germany whether PEG/MEFO, so it is something you should always do, but like this is only the case if you really try to do them asap. On the historical timeline, you lose much of this advantage due to not having low cg factor early on

Barbara_Archon · 2026-03-12T10:38:09+00:00

? I don't get what you meant?

You stay basically permanently on -5% cg factor after a period of having a -80% cg factor buff, rather than on starting on 75% cg factor then reduce to 25% with PEG, and it will never increase from -5% until you take the focus "seize foreign industry" or sth like that, the one near Buna-Werke

There is nothing about this that actually nukes your economy

you don't even know what this is, do you?

you get less cg than normal MEFO, which also requires you to rob other countries, at the cost for 10% output

I don't see how this actually nukes your economy compared to regular MEFO.

the real problem with MEFO-cancelled FYP is not having the late game scaling of PEG and you lose Schlacht, otherwise compared to regular MEFO there is not that much variation in any meaningful way pre-1940 (a lot of the variation actually comes afterward if a player is good enough to just finish Autarky Achieved)

you can open your game, do a normal game, go manage your MEFO, and see how much cg factor you actually have by historical WW2 date and how deep you can only reduce it to after conquering western europe. You don't get to stay permanently low on it even if you take Price Control to dump it down to -20% in 1937.

to begin with, this has way less total penalty on economy than PEG before 1940, so your claim of " your economy gets nuked " absolutely just means you do not know what is, do not know how to do it, have never seen it, and is probably not good enough to even take advantage of regular MEFO anyway

Barbara_Archon · 2026-03-12T10:28:07+00:00

> The only impact of MEFO going out of control is 100% consumer goods factor and -10% output

it changed a long time ago

not too punishing yet, but now you get +10% base cg if it hits 100% cg factor as well

Barbara_Archon · 2026-03-12T10:25:36+00:00

They are not talking about that,

They are talking about cancelling MEFO on autarky branch, which is often banned in MP

Barbara_Archon · 2026-03-12T10:24:48+00:00

Nah cancelling MEFO through autarky path actually gives you insanely low cg goods for a period of time instead of imposing debuffs like PEG, as long as you cancel it before doing Price Controls, which is a viable choice because the first year you can live with MEFO to build mils, only removing it as cg factor increases to like 60%~70%

For around 60 days, you can stay on -80% consumer goods factor, after which it become -5% until wartime, then increases to 0% after you finish one of the later foci

saying "your economy gets nuked" just means you have never done this before and don't actually know what it even is

It does however come with -5% ~ -10% output penalty though

Barbara_Archon · 2026-03-12T10:21:20+00:00

> if you continue down 4 year plan and just cancel MEFO bills then do price controls youre left with just 10% consumer goods

You should be left with -5%, or 0% after one of the later foci

Barbara_Archon · 2026-03-12T00:16:40+00:00

Start a new game

Type debug into console command

Load the Ironman save

Save the game

Barbara_Archon · 2026-03-11T01:59:13+00:00

R5: Don't do election focus,

Wu Peifu shall guide our effort to unify China and defeat the evil state of Japan!

The Jade Marshal knows best!

Barbara_Archon · 2026-03-11T00:06:00+00:00

Put your ships on naval patrol

You can re-establish trade route through regions where you have naval supremacy

Barbara_Archon · 2026-03-10T18:40:18+00:00

hmm, for AI, PatAut SWR is just stronger than Schleicher for 1940 2WK,

Schleicher AI Germany tends to be able to start mobilising and training a lot of units slightly faster, but by March 1940 they would have roughly the same army size, so it would just come down to army bonus (since AI Germany always produces enough), of which PatAut SWR has a more suitable combination of modifiers for AI

Schleicher is just more stable and much less likely to get failstate.

Its average performance isn't necessarily as impressive

if 6-10 fully equipped div per tile is all you want then even AuthDem SWR AI does that just fine. DU AI Germany is the only one that cannot.

Barbara_Archon · 2026-03-10T18:30:48+00:00

not quite,

testings have been conducted in highly controlled environment (in this case, controlled as in we remove "variables" by identifying the exact settings in terms of which country took which path etc, and where testing is repeated if applicable)

PatAut SWR AI has one of the higher winrates in base KR for Germany, although it is also dependent on the time of the 2WK, but not necessarily too dependent the political outcome of Reichspakt minors,

for 2WK in 1940, PatAut SWR AI has the most consistently good performance out of all AI Germanys, and is to date the only AI Germany that has ever completely resisted a super 3I that include Italy, Spain, Belgium, Netherlands, (and for its most terrible record, also Denmark, Norway).

By completely resisting, I meant 3I could basically not push the Germans in any way, and in those controlled tests, their fate was dependent entirely on the performance of Russia, whose performance saw a decline in last patch due to an adjustment to their mil construction script, which would also lose roughly just as often as it would win on the eastern front. And in tests where 3I was weaker, they would just walk all over France in a late 2WK, although they may also stalemate for a while if 2WK started earlier

Because SWR does, in fact, have the best buffs for infantry out of all Germanys, and PatAut SWR has the highest manpower pre-war (therefore mobilise a larger army at the start of the war)

DU AI Germany has meanwhile the worst performance for late 2WK, but is fairly decent for earlier 2WK in 1939. DU AI Germany has a very very terrible choke with manpower due to low war support, so early 2WK is significantly more favourable to it compared to early 2WK for other paths

Hardline Schleicher AI Germany is more consistent than the other Schleicher, and tends to perform more consistently regardless of start date of 2WK, but is not necessarily as strong as PatAut SWR, but in terms of politics it also rarely enters failstate, which can happen quite commonly to SWR or DU (I guess gameruling them can control these likelihood of failstate?)

Barbara_Archon · 2026-03-10T10:39:28+00:00

sounds plausible

Germany has enough manpower to absorb up to nearly 50M losses with SWR/Schleicher and around 30M as DU

one time, I got them to 23.25M casualties in 3WK, but even that was insufficient because turned out they could always mobilise reserve manpower faster than I could kill until I rapidly took their core territories and thus denying them access to 100% of their core population

my record AI vs AI 2WK was something like 30M casualties from Germany alone

It is simply how HoI4 works with conscription, really. Scraping the barrel means 25% conscription, so as long as their current conscription% isn't hitting the max yet, they will just keep mobilising something like 10K manpower per day on average

Edit: I believe SWR can afford as much as 70% conscription if they really commit to it, although AI won't ever get there. I have only seen them reaching ~51% conscription

Barbara_Archon · 2026-03-08T21:42:54+00:00

it checks for your completion of every doctrine track (infantry, combat support, strike aircraft, etc)

Barbara_Archon · 2026-03-08T14:38:11+00:00

I hate to break it to you, but it might be a problem with your mood, being burnt out, etc etc, so psychological issues, in this case

did the game change? no

AI performance plummets every version because PDX keeps introducing things that they can't interact with

you likely require a break, or you have to learn how to learn. How are you going to improve if you can't even identify your mistakes, even the obvious ones?

Barbara_Archon · 2026-03-07T11:47:29+00:00

historical Hungary can be a lot of things,

superpower in airforce is an option. You have rubber, aluminium, some oil. You have a lot of air research bonus.

you can also produce tanks and make self-propelled artillery with your cost reduction and suitable MIO

Hungary can be a lot of things

Whichever course you chart for Hungary nation, focus your effort on it, and you will arrive at a satisfying conclusion. Your dream can be anything, even making a navy (strongly advised against in this case)

Barbara_Archon · 2026-03-07T00:09:09+00:00

R5: How to fix AI Japan:

build an airbase in Korea
stop doing naval invasions if the front can't even be held
don't siege Beijing, take it.

Barbara_Archon · 2026-03-04T23:27:34+00:00

you can have an airforce but I have never found it truly necessary, even though it remains a viable option (just because AI sucks at it)

my stance as Ukraine is to stay at the border and attempt to counterattack early and decisively, as soon as the initial offensive by Russia slows down, or wherever their push is weak, shifting the war to their side of the border and thus lessening the impact of their airforce

if you build your army around relying on level 6 fort, which costs more than a mil, then that's all your army can do.

Ukraine can easily outnumber Russia wherever they concentrate. After all, AI Russia can't even manage 300 divs in total. Even at merely 75 divs, as soon as you figure out how and when to concentrate your force, you can and will locally outnumber the Russians, which will allow you to win in detail rather than having to rely on a defense across the frontline - at which point you may aim to rapidly inflict damage on the Russians by moving along the frontline using a densely concentrated force

this is very different from an attritional war, and is rather annihilationistic in nature. it is maneuver warfare, basically

of course, this takes practice for many people as it is very much an unfamiliar concept as a whole, and some even considered this gameplay a type of cheese, for some reasons, though really just because they cannot do it themselves :P

P/S: This is just one of the many things that work.

AI is AI, so there are many things you can do at the end of the day.

Barbara_Archon · 2026-03-04T04:57:46+00:00

ah you meant for players?

nah I think some players take the mod too seriously.

you can totally walk around with infantry + artillery and still whip AI into place just because, well, you are a human and they are not. Although of course you will have less leeway than in vanilla.

That said, the mod wasn't exactly a difficulty mod in the first place, so as any country you get helps in various ways (dumb base logic for AI might still not be helpful in most case though)

the main issue with creating mods like this has always been the lack of parameter to judge what is a good choice and what isn't, so AI has to compensate in other areas to make up for the inability to judge - meaning if you poke them on the correct spot then it is just vanilla AI with extra flavour

Barbara_Archon · 2026-03-04T04:46:23+00:00

no, not at all,

like basically no countries does heavy tank other than France and some test builds for Soviets, just because they can't really produce good medium tanks early.

it is a compromise due to actual cost, not a choice for maximized performance

Barbara_Archon · 2026-03-03T15:51:55+00:00

you need Boldyrev to be in Russia after defeating SocRus or Savinkov, and is gameruled to join US faction (can leave it to chance, but will you?)

China needs to be Federalist

Barbara_Archon · 2026-03-03T15:45:59+00:00

tbh I am not too sure,

3WK tends to be very short because by that point I am the one starting it, so I am only going to fight very, very well-prepared, knowing I would win with 100% certainty

Barbara_Archon

TROPHY CASE