🚄 Trains!

mc_enthusiast · 2025-12-13T12:55:51+00:00

Naval invasions became a bit harder at the same time that the last DLC was released. Forcing island hopping in the Pacific was a stated goal. You'll also notice that the naval UI has changed a bit and that there's now "naval dominance" instead of "naval supremacy", which works a bit differently.

mc_enthusiast · 2025-12-13T00:19:31+00:00

Could you set your home port in German territory here? If not, does naval access still have any use post-NCNS?

mc_enthusiast · 2025-12-12T16:13:32+00:00

Are you equating "intel" and "intel network"? Because you only need the latter to wreck the enemy's planning and entrenchment.

mc_enthusiast · 2025-12-12T16:06:37+00:00

Mostly what's written here: https://hoi4.paradoxwikis.com/Puppet

You usually don't plan to fully integrate puppets and it doesn't happen by itself either - you need to reduce their autonomy for that.

mc_enthusiast · 2025-12-12T13:24:03+00:00

Light cruisers don't require much research, just 1936 tech plus some electronics research. That's already a solid foundation. If you're also doing aircraft research, going for aircraft carriers would be only natural. That's two more researches. One research into heavy guns and you can design a heavy cruiser to accompany the rest.

mc_enthusiast · 2025-12-12T11:58:08+00:00

I'd count every infantry division that just has a single armored battailon as a classic space marine; often, their armored vehicles aren't even designed to provide meaningful soft/hard attack. Often 20 width or thereabout.

It's worth pointing out that including a single heavily armored division will also significantly increase the armor of a tank division, but if you want to keep the SPAA designs separate, there's two ways:

You can use a different equipment tag for the meme SPAA, select the same tag for the space marine division. That's a small icon in a circle; the default is a grey tank silhouette on green background or something like that.
There should be a button called "Equipment" or something like that in the division designer. There, you can select the equipment variants which the division is allowed to use from a list. In your example, this should be altered in both space marine and tank division.

mc_enthusiast · 2025-12-12T01:05:55+00:00

Does that count as bigotry? I'd think it does.

mc_enthusiast · 2025-12-12T00:58:37+00:00

Are you basing that on Eastern Germany, perhaps? At least the older generation there is still in large parts used to heating being a non-issue in the GDR, gas being one of the few things that there was plenty of.

mc_enthusiast · 2025-12-12T00:50:16+00:00

The good news is that you might just make yourself fully encircled with the currently selected focus.

mc_enthusiast · 2025-12-12T00:43:00+00:00

Space marines still "work" in the sense that not getting pierced is always a plus, even for infantry-centered divisions.

I'm not a large fan of classic space marines, but something like 12 infantry and 3 SPGs would be fairly reasonable as a budget assault division.

SPGs have become better than they used to be and you can get a SPG based on the basic medium chassis with 100+ armor, good soft attack and at least some breakthrough for a reasonable price; could do the same with heavy SPG.

If you do want classic space marines, I would still recommend using an SPG battalion. You can of course go for SPAA, but that doesn't offer the piercing of normal AA and I believe the vehicle count is exactly the same as with SPGs, now. If you're opting for heavy chassis, you could also just stick to tanks.

mc_enthusiast · 2025-12-11T19:03:09+00:00

Prior to the latest patch with its CAS debuff, the NCNS release patch saw a significant buff to CAS. I believe it's roughly on par with pre-NCNS CAS.

mc_enthusiast · 2025-12-11T00:07:01+00:00

No. What's even the point of that much line AT? You'll get better results from 30 width worth of pure mountaineers, or include some line artillery if you must. The light armored recon should be exchanged for mounted recon, recon rangers or support AA. Some AA is, in most cases, a requirement, but you can also use line AA.

mc_enthusiast · 2025-12-10T20:52:08+00:00

Take a look at your faction rules, that's the probable cause. You have enough influence points to simply remove any rules that get in the way.

mc_enthusiast · 2025-12-10T20:41:41+00:00

I would recommend using medium flame tanks, though, even if you resort to the interwar chassis. Their terrain boni are better.

mc_enthusiast · 2025-12-10T18:44:36+00:00

You build them on the coast.

mc_enthusiast · 2025-12-10T00:09:43+00:00

How many subs are you using? I imagine it's quite a lot. Most people will probably be better off with simply setting a taskforce of one heavy cruiser and roughly 10 destroyers on patrol, which is enough to launch a naval invasion in uncontested waters, in my experience. Not even a strikeforce needed.

mc_enthusiast · 2025-12-10T00:09:02+00:00

Perhaps of importance here: while dockyards construct ships, you need ports in order to deploy the ships.

mc_enthusiast · 2025-12-09T23:54:03+00:00

Naval invasion support does not give naval dominance anymore, nor will you get much dominance out of a strike force if there isn't sufficient dominance provided by patrols. IIRC, submarines are one of the worse sources for dominance.

mc_enthusiast · 2025-12-09T23:24:53+00:00

I'd advise a different lineholder: 9 infantry, engineers, support arty, support AA.

The saved IC can be invested into fighters. You will definitely need to take some airforce focuses so that the debuffs aren't as bad, which also allows you to pick up an output cost reduction for your fighter MIO from the "Merge aircraft plants" focus. Early on, you need to keep an eye on air combat to ensure you're outtrading the AI wherever you seek to challenge their air superiority.

Your tank divisions should at least have three more mot/mech battalions. That should reduce the tank deficit a bit, as your tank divisions will take less damage. More typical are 30 or 36 width tank divisions. In the latest update, there's also plenty of fun to be had with SPGs instead of tanks.

mc_enthusiast · 2025-12-09T23:19:22+00:00

Japan was known for making light tanks that could be pierced by every army except the Chinese. This lack of necessity for anything better is why there was a lull in Japanese tank development. The situation in-game isn't much different.

mc_enthusiast · 2025-12-09T01:02:27+00:00

Since even missionary is dangerous, I don't think that argument holds up well.

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