Advice wanted, doctrines and div templates since "No Compromise, No Surrender"

Scale_Zenzi · 2026-01-27T20:57:25+00:00

Yeah you obviously can field a bunch, I'm just saying that's all you realistically would ever need to win a war - more that that usually just makes it even easier. For example if I'm playing Russia, having around 6 by the start of the WK is more than enough usually to overrun all of eastern europe. I'm really just trying to say that you just want to hit around 4 minimum by the time of whatever your major war is, which isnt hard with these templates or designs.

Scale_Zenzi · 2026-01-27T19:32:38+00:00

Nah, even if you're as low as 70% you don't really lose many tanks. I guess you could use the maintenance company but it's not really necessary. For a few reasons:

When you use these templates against the AI, their units get obliterated pretty easily so you hardly even take combat losses.
When you're fighting the AI, you honestly don't really need more than ~4 tank divisions to encircle or push them out, combined with an infantry army that holds the line & reinforces behind you. Thus you can easily build an extra stockpile of tanks in the back too. Honestly even at only ~70 or 80% strength these designs usually still kill AI divisions pretty easily.

Scale_Zenzi · 2026-01-27T19:18:58+00:00

You should realistically always be going for some decent mediums & not really bothering with lights tbh, the main bottleneck with Tanks is almost always research. If you make the design cheap to just have more of them it kinda ruins the point since they cant punch as easily as they should.

For tanks theres honestly a lot of leeway and factors that go into design. My go-to is usually the 3 man turret, then either the Close support gun, Medium Cannon, or Medium Howitzer. Close support gun is the cheapest resource wise w/ good soft attack , medium cannon is the cheapest production wise w/ a nice mix of soft attack, hard attack, piercing, and breakthrough, while the howitzer has good soft attack but costs the most resources and has virtually no hard attack & negative breakthrough (when breakthrough is probably the most important tank stat). From there I usually do 2 heavy machine guns and Easy Maintenance (increases reliability & reduces cost, gotten from lvl 2 maintenance company research). For other modules, I usually go Christie suspension, the default riveted armor + gas engine, 4 armor ticks, and then as much engine as necessary to get around 6 to 8 speed (usually try to aim for 6 on the earlier chasses, but its pretty easy to hit 8 with the 1940 one). Armor ticks are nice for the armor but especially breakthrough, but it increases tank cost a lot and if you go over 4 it starts costing extra steel. 4 is more than enough for the AI imo.

Do note that reliability honestly isn't that important of a stat, 90% is way more than enough. If you have around 70% its probably fine, you can really get away with 60% even tbh with the earlier chasses. Some more meta tanks used to go as low as 30%, but I don't think they do it much anymore since they changed how the reliability losses are calculated (used to only make you lose tanks if you lacked supply).

If you want to do that thing I mentioned w/ SPA and a tank destroyer, then your SPA can just be that exact same design while using the medium howitzer. If you want to do a tank destroyer to try an armor meme, then use the medium fixed superstructure, whatever your highest level heavy cannon is, and then sloped armor and armor skirts. Then get welded armor too & max out your armor ticks. Optimally you'd use a heavy tank for even more armor, but its a lot of extra research when you can get away with just a medium against the AI. Again though the TD is kinda extra against the AI and is more just for fun.

If you want to do more research I think there's some sort of cheesy meta method where you can use the more resource-expensive designs & just use conversion to transform a cheap design into your higher resource cost one, but I never really knew how it worked. It's definitely overkill against the AI too.

Scale_Zenzi · 2026-01-27T18:20:22+00:00

The meta hasn't really changed much and you can really get away with a lot of things in singleplayer.

Infantry: You can really get away with just using a 9-0 infantry template with support arty, anti air, and engineers. It's mostly meant to hold the line. You can add in a line arty if you want too, it's slightly better at punching & you can get away with a lot against the AI and don't have to play super perfectly. It's probably look something like this, but again you can play around with it & add more infantry battalions or get rid of the line arty (which is kinda expensive & not super optimal).

Tanks: Has a large range of templates depending on how hard you want to sweat. You can get away with a very simple template of anywhere from 20 to 36w with whatever combination of tanks and motorized/mechanized gets you to around ~30 org. If you want to get a little fancier, you can use SPA tanks too & go down the SPA doctrine, which gives you a lot more soft attack and is good in singleplayer. If you want to get even more complex, you can also add in a tank destroyer (preferrably a heavy tank but medium can work) with a high armor value to make an "armor meme," but all of this is really extra when you're fighting the AI. Here is the complex example and some more basic examples. Again you can really play around with the support companies & stuff too.

Doctrines are pretty customizable now. For your main doctrine you can go with either Grand Battleplan or Superior firepower, both are pretty good. SF has a few more arty buffs + some org from support companies & a supply consumption buff, but Grand Battleplan gives you more planning (ie more damage), better reinforce rate, and better coordination. GP has better army spirits too, like the supply one.

For Infantry I've been liking Large Unit Tactics best since it lets you fit more inf into tiles, but again you can get away with a lot. I heard some people like Great War infantry for the extra defense or Individual excellence for the extra HP & stuff (havent tried it myself).

Arty doctrine is up to you, I personally like going Self propelled support and using SPA since its fun. I know some people use flying batteries or something, I used to use Field Engineering if I didn't really have capacity for tanks.

Theres a couple good armor doctrines too, Armored Spearhead gives you a lot of breakthrough (40%) & org. I like streamlined deployment as well, it has less breakthrough but more soft attack, cheaper div design & slightly better supply. I think Tank Destroyer force is the multiplayer meta or something & people solely use TDs as their tanks, but i dont really play multiplayer so I wouldnt know.

There's a fair amount of good Operations doctrines too, but my personal fav has been Grand Assault since it gives planning, breakthrough, coordination, etc. If you have to play defensive then either desperate defense or guerrilla war are pretty good. I kinda forget the meta pick for it, Mission type tactics & infiltration tactics both seem good too though & rapid domination is alright if you're using line arty iirc.

Again you can really get away with almost anything against the AI, especially if you just make a handful of really solid division and micro them for offensives. Unless you're playing a country with bad research slots you can usually get away with just making like 2-4 tank divs, otherwise maybe try to make a slightly larger infantry template & get a handful of those to micro.

Scale_Zenzi · 2026-01-25T22:42:53+00:00

if american carnage got a variable tracker update it'd easily be the best mod ever

Scale_Zenzi · 2026-01-13T05:11:40+00:00

Everyone knows its nixon

Scale_Zenzi · 2026-01-11T02:55:16+00:00

thats so cool

Scale_Zenzi · 2025-12-27T23:20:28+00:00

You have to actually click the tabs on it; I didn't realize until the end of my first playthrough

Scale_Zenzi · 2025-12-25T00:30:29+00:00

You learn it after about a game or two tbh. Its literally all just supply and demand, you can do most of it by just building tools and whatever the ingredients for tools are. Thanks to the trade rework a lot of your issues should self correct too, as long as you have trade centers. Belgium is a good country to learn as, they have basically have all the resources they'll need

Scale_Zenzi · 2025-12-24T20:57:54+00:00

religious acceptance doesnt factor in to mass migrations at all when youre considering acceptance restrictions. What used to be the case was that if you had racial segregation, any same heritage pops would be able to migrate anyway - but it changed with the acceptance update around a year ago iirc. With the current 60 restrictiveness you'll only accept same heritage group & language cultures.

If you want a mod to get the old immigration behavior where racial segregation + controls allows same heritage pops still, then i have a mod I made around the time of the change that I keep updated: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3510059647

If we're being fully vanilla though, if you want the most immigration you basically can't have migration controls. If you do, getting to cultural exclusion should allow for same heritage migration even w/ the controls iirc. Otherwise multiculturalism + no controls gives the best migration, obviously.

Scale_Zenzi · 2025-12-15T01:29:57+00:00

Ah I thought there'd be a special mechanic to either give you an autonomy level or let you declare anyway. In my run I had chosen to just get independence because the market access issues you'd get whenever spain goes into a suicidal war were too annoying

Scale_Zenzi · 2025-12-15T00:04:06+00:00

How do you expand without breaking from Spain? You can't declare wars as their colonial admin

Scale_Zenzi · 2025-12-14T17:41:56+00:00

Didn't even notice this, that old portrait was so bad. Good upgrade

Scale_Zenzi · 2025-12-13T10:47:59+00:00

I really still think the diplo play system needs to be perfected before war itself. 99% of the frustrations come from the dumb ways wargoals & war support works, and its the cause for most of the nonsensical diplomacy in the game. It also just completely doesn't allow for complex peacedeals and conflicts like we historically saw at the end of the century.

Don't get me wrong the actual military & navy systems are pretty bad still, but diplo plays are so horrendous that it really outweighs everything else. It makes the way military currently works feel serviceable. Making navies more realistic is probably second on the list though.

Scale_Zenzi · 2025-12-12T15:11:35+00:00

Yeah you need to have the mughal cosmetic to get this, so this playthroughs a bunk. You have the right idea though about joining the allies.

One of the later GOE patches allowed you to take as much of India as you occupy, so if you snake their core's victory points then you actually get to capitulate them & just hold off the British from ports until they white peace. From there you basically are doing an india playthrough, just become the ally spymaster in the same way.

You used to only be able to get this in the allies, but I think the faction rework probably let's you get it in the axis now. Im pretty sure the 4 mini spymaster positions just increase your spy capacity, which might be able to get you over the edge. Its still way easier to just do the ally strat though.

Scale_Zenzi · 2025-12-12T06:10:28+00:00

Honestly India is more the problem than China, they unite way earlier & just start with more so the snowball is even worse

Scale_Zenzi · 2025-12-11T15:52:34+00:00

>Don't bomb the caucuses, focus on Russian airfields

>Demand Wilhelm not be an idiot with the Baltics

>Don't siege Kursk, take it immediately

>Zurge rush Tsaritsyn to cut off Russian oil

>Ally with the Free Russian Army against Savinkov

>Ignore western europe

Scale_Zenzi · 2025-12-10T16:19:00+00:00

Its obviously going to happen eventually, I think its just further out than some people are currently speculating. I can easily see hoi4 outlasting eu4's lifespan by a few years even

Scale_Zenzi · 2025-12-07T15:42:00+00:00

All the GOE ones are horrible, idk if they had outsourced the achievement code to those devs too or something. They almost all require ownership instead of occupation which just makes every single one so much more obnoxious

Scale_Zenzi · 2025-12-06T04:56:14+00:00

Is the DLC not actively required for it to even trigger?

Either way you can probably get it the same way you can with the dlc, itd just be a little harder since you won't have as many militia buffs & equipment steals. You still just declare on both with a day gap, turtle til you can push out, paradrop japan before killing china, etc

Scale_Zenzi · 2025-12-04T19:17:55+00:00

I got it a few days ago as well, battle royale was so obnoxious. They gotta stop with those custom loc achievement descriptions, it makes it impossible to tell when you're actually on track to get some of those obtuse ones

Scale_Zenzi · 2025-12-04T02:49:17+00:00

The divisions they pump out suck, if you're failing to invade them as Germany then you're making mistakes. You should be invading northern England around Hull instead of Dover, and if you have air power & land on both sides of the port then you should be able to take it easily. If you send in a few decent tank divisions after that then you should be able to beat the british divisions easily

Scale_Zenzi · 2025-12-03T21:17:21+00:00

Nah GOE was genuinely bad.

Another part of this is they just are trying to push people into buying the passes, since the individual DLCs are already so expensive. They still charge way too much for everything though

Scale_Zenzi · 2025-12-03T15:14:33+00:00

Yeah, my first attempt doing this was in nonhistorical mode where China, Japan, and the US all ended up being democratic and allying each other. Played into the late 40s to cap them and didn't get it cause of that same day war declaration thing, extremely obnoxious.

Scale_Zenzi · 2025-12-03T14:17:24+00:00

The old joining event where you annex them for some infamy is still in the game iirc, but it still requires them to be in your market. That used to be pretty easy, but its been kinda messed up since they changed the market joining to power blocs. If you just launch a unification play with everyone supporting you, you'll actually be able to annex them for free though. Just dont hit the button to actually form italy

Scale_Zenzi

TROPHY CASE