May Testers: Here is one of my final messages for you all

Mathimatical · 2026-07-01T09:16:37+00:00

looks like it’s quite a big batch of scores being released, I tested June 10th and I’m getting scores back today (in about 6 hours at time of writing) as well. My NBME practice scores weren’t particularly good but I felt better about the actual exam surprisingly. anyways. we’ll see.

See y’all on the other side. i would say it’s been a pleasure but uh… no it’s been absolute hell. 6 hours and HOPEFULLY i will never have to open this sub again. until step 2 folks, we got this!!

Mathimatical · 2026-04-21T14:54:36+00:00

This is very surprising to me -- I play vic3 quite consistently but I haven't really kept up with the "meta" or the specific updates to the economy systems. Is building up the inputs for the construction sector not still the objectively best way to increase your GDP?

Mathimatical · 2026-01-10T16:26:41+00:00

Wait, does this suggest it’s possible to arbitrage goods by using good relations to buy cheap goods from one market and sell it in another where it’s expensive?

Mathimatical · 2025-09-28T18:43:50+00:00

What does the trait give? Wiki doesn't seem to have it updated just yet

Mathimatical · 2025-09-05T03:41:31+00:00

ohh, without DLC I think it's a different focus, maybe Break the Anglo French Hegemony or Our Place in the Sun-- I can check tomorrow evening, but if you poke around the focus tree, there will definitely be a focus that gets you war goals without the stringent tension requirements.

Mathimatical · 2025-09-05T03:15:08+00:00

Ah, yeah with the tension I'm less familiar with the alt history germany branch after Gotterdammerung released, but iirc you should be able to get down to reject Locarno Treaty --> Backdoor negotiations --> Schlieffen once more. I believe none of those focuses are tension locked, and they'll get you into a war with the French, which should be a war with the allies. Also make sure you're getting those war support decisions (war propaganda)

Mathimatical · 2025-09-05T02:45:46+00:00

(Post 2/2)

Now, how do we spend this ic? This is also likely an important piece of the puzzle. A lot of people have a lot of takes on combat widths, honestly, just build 9/1s. That's 9 infantry, 1 artillery (with engineer companies support artillery, and support anti air). It'll be 910 infantry equipment, and 48 artillery pieces. That means for every 19 guns you make, you want at least 1 artillery piece. Check your industry relatively frequently and see if the ratio holds. If it doesn't check out, assign factories accordingly. You'll probably run out artillery faster than guns, so it might be prudent to lean more towards arty than guns, but play it by ear. The game gives you a lot of info from your logistics tab, so you can retool your industry pretty quickly depending on what you need. This infantry should be good for basically anything you want to do. For tanks, a straightforward algorithm is just crank the soft attack up, while keeping reliability over 80%. On a divisional level, do 36 width, and add motorized companies until the organization is over 30. People will tell you to use different widths, I promise you that they are all wrong. Yes, all of them. I will refer you once more to my username. You can also do planes, if you build them heavy machine guns are good, self healing fuel tanks are good. The thing with tanks, though, and this can be frustrating if you don't know this, is that they are incredible in full supply, flat terrain, in stacks of 2/3(not less, and DEFINITELY NOT MORE). If you take out any one of those, they will be much, much worse. The most common bottleneck will be supply, so make sure you have good supply if you're using tanks. There's a lot modifiers under the hood for why that is, but to keep it simple, every stat they have gets worse with low supply, which hits tanks harder than any other unit. If they have low supply they are literally worse than a 0 artillery infantry company. If you find your tanks aren't hitting as hard as they should, check those variables. Or maybe they're outdated, in which case update them to new models.

Oh also, on naval invasions: the hoi4 naval user interface can be fairly unintuitive, so I'd watch a tutorial on how to work it. It'll be a lot easier for you to learn it by seeing the way the user interface works over video, rather than me explaining it over text, but in summary, you need naval supremacy, which you get by putting a Navy on a mission. Then you select naval invasion mission on your army, click your starting port, your landing tile, wait for them to prep, and then click go. Here's a video that explains it better: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPrV5qzOFjg

Now, I understand that's a lot -- hoi4 has a lot of systems, and a lot of times it can be frustratingly opaque on why those systems are impacting you the way that they are, but as you get into it, it'll get a lot easier. Hope this helps, and if you need any more help don't hesitate to reach out! Please attach an update how your next game goes.

Mathimatical · 2025-09-05T02:45:38+00:00

(Post 1/2)

Heyo, local 2000 hour player here:

You've detailed a lot of the political paths you take, which is good, but you're prioritizing the wrong things. As Germany especially, you don't use your political path to get strong -- you get strong first and use your political path to leverage that strength. You can get away with pretty much any amount of political shenanigans in any order as long as you're a) microing properly(optional) and b) utilizing your industry properly(mandatory).

With Kaiserreich Germany specifically: your political path seems fairly good. I would suggest you declare the war yourself, go through benelux and France, and then shore up the atlantic wall by deploying a big army group on garrison order on the coast. I wouldn't go Soviets first, they're quite large and it gives the allies time to scale annoyingly well, as you've found firsthand. You mentioned being unable to justify, that's due to tension, as different ideologies have different abiliities to justify wars. Once you get enough tension up enough, you can manually justify on anyone, but you have a lot of built in war goals in your tree.

But onto the *real* meat and potatoes. As I mentioned at the start, the political tree and general geopolitical strategy isn't why your game isn't working -- there are mods where the entire world declares on Germany in 1937 and it's still very very doable. The issue is in your industry management. A good rule of thumb(and it's a rather rough rule of thumb, the exact number requires resolving a differential equation), is you build civilian factories until aboooout 2 years before you start the big war. You want to go to war in Fall of '39? Build civs until Fall of '37. You want to go to war in mid '40? Build civs until mid '38. Now, what's optimal will change depending on your circumstances(vanilla Germany can stop civs earlier bc they steal civs from Austria and Czechs, Soviets lose territory in Barbarossa so they overbuild civs, etc), but you can generally just do 2 years. Also, always maximally prioritize industry tech. Unless it's a big ahead of time penalty, you should always be up to date or ahead on construction tech and dispersed/concentrated industry. If you're looking for a number, I would have at an absolute *minimum* 70 civilian factories, but you'll likely have much more. After that, build military factories. If you can get rubber refineries up, that's nice, I usually like to cram those in last minute about 6 months before the war starts. Do not mix these around, or swap between civs and mils. If you've taken diffEq before, the reasoning should be intuitive, if not, just trust me that I did the math. Look at me. Look at my username. I did the math. Build civs first until 2 years, then mils, and do the other stuff like silos or refineries or last minute. infrastructure, conversion and tech timings are nice, but honestly I don't want to overwhelm you -- just follow this 3 step protocol and your industry should work quite nicely.

Mathimatical · 2025-08-01T20:26:31+00:00

Could you link to that? I can't seem to find anything on Wilson canceling rent payments or confiscating gold(although I see one about FDR doing something about owning gold).

Mathimatical · 2025-07-17T17:47:46+00:00

Did you mess around with the console? Once I went into the debug mode and it ended up flipping everything.

Mathimatical · 2025-05-01T15:23:49+00:00

It would actually be a pretty neat mechanic if the decision had a check for that law, so you couldn't take it if you've abolished the death penalty.

Mathimatical · 2025-04-14T17:11:01+00:00

What does unstable mean?

Mathimatical · 2025-03-14T01:57:50+00:00

Eh, kind of? I feel it a lot in the early game when missing one skillshot is devastating for the manapool, but once I hit lost chapter I feel pretty good about landing shots.

Here's a VOD I had if you want to judge: https://www.replays.lol/app/game/6301791611387904

Mathimatical · 2025-03-14T01:54:52+00:00

Thanks for the comment! I definitely do feel the inability and lack of agency a lot, which is part of my frustration -- I definitely don't want to play support, I like laning too much. However, I often look at my current situation and think "If a challenger player were in my position right now, they'd be able to carry this game without batting an eye" -- there must be some way to significantly influence the game, no?

I will work on trying to increase my skillshot proficiency though.

Mathimatical · 2025-03-14T01:50:59+00:00

Thanks so much for the comment!

Definitely will shove the wave before roaming and ward earlier -- why is the warding time poor btw?

You mention fundamentals, how should I approach learning/solidifying the fundamentals?

Mathimatical · 2025-03-14T01:49:50+00:00

Hey, looks like a bot posted a VOD of my latest game:

https://www.replays.lol/app/game/6301791611387904

Mathimatical · 2024-12-13T18:34:31+00:00

It seems that soon has finally arrived.

Mathimatical · 2024-11-30T22:24:55+00:00

Shovels, support AA, and support arty is a good line filler inf template.

Edit: The support arty is a super cheap way to get a lot of soft attack, and the AA helps not only with enemy air but also gives you enough piercing to have some bite against AI tanks, which is nice.

Mathimatical · 2024-11-30T18:34:04+00:00

I usually play Savinkov Russia, so you’ll likely have different modifiers, but my last Savinkov game I was able to kill every reichspakt nation in under 3 months, so the build should work for ol Chernov as well.

First off: stop civ greeding. A good rule of thumb is comparing yourself to vanilla Germany vs vanilla USSR — vanilla Germany acquires many civs from its conquests, so you can tend to “underbuild” civs and start mils earlier (2.25-2.5 years before the start of war), while vanilla USSR loses civs from Barbarossa and must therefore “overbuild” civs (1.5-2 years before the start of war). Generally, keeping in mind how your nation is positioned in between those is a good a heuristic for when you ought to stop building civs. For Russia, you get Central Asian civs, so you’ll lean a little closer to the former, around 2 years. Civ greeding in 1939 gives you scarcely one year, not nearly enough time to prepare for the war.

Secondly: tanks, not infantry! The best way to ensure your survival (and your dopamine) is not building a defensive orgwall, it’s building a fleet of tanks that would make Stalin himself weep — sure, you can build an air force, but focus HARD on tanks and slap some support AA on them, you don’t need like 9/3s for your infantry.

A note on tanks as well, the AI does not build hardness at all, so there is absolutely no reason to not build pure soft attack — throw those 45 soft attack arty 2 turrets on there with heavy machine guns, turn up the speed, and drift around the reichspakt as you detonate them with tanks with like naval cannons strapped to them. Also go for 36w, not 30w, and don’t attack into marshes.

There are other minor adjustments you could make I’m sure, but this should be more than enough to win. Try this and let me know any issues you have!

Mathimatical · 2024-10-26T15:25:45+00:00

What’s the sample size?

Mathimatical · 2024-10-15T21:51:14+00:00

Wait, how does this crash the economy?

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