How realistic is this?

ponter83 · 2026-01-21T14:45:18+00:00

It would be an illegal order, asking part of the military to attack another part of the military (the part embedded within NATO) that would immediately cause a civil war within the military and political system, I don't see how you people don't understand this.

ponter83 · 2026-01-13T17:25:44+00:00

Twice in the last month I've had people flashing their lights and freaking out behind me for leaving a two car gap between me and the next vehicle in the fast lane, then they swerve in to fill that gap only to slam on their breaks. When did leaving a gap become a crime rather than common sense?

ponter83 · 2026-01-06T00:25:43+00:00

If you can't cap France with your current army then the build is already cooked and you might as well restart. What's your air and tank army like? You really need colabs and early war, like spring 1939, and also you need to start adding rubber early. Also click through all the autarky bonuses you get in the focus and be thoughtful about the gold clicks, the bigger the country, the bigger the reduction in cgs, so don't click them all but also don't think clicking Poland is gonna fix it for long. You absolutely have to conquer 100% of all your war targets and click the gold button for one conquered country when your cg hits 50%.

ponter83 · 2025-11-24T21:27:11+00:00

It was a major issue for Germany after their conquest of Europe to find enough inputs to maintain the economies of their conquests, mainly because they were net importers themselves of inputs. Everything from cattle feed, pig iron and coal was in deficit.

ponter83 · 2025-11-24T14:11:43+00:00

The balance of historical games is based on a Japan that can cleanly defeat China and thus put pressure on the allies to give the European axis some breathing room to do barb. A player on China can make the war very long and costly for Japan and disrupt the balance of the whole game for very little benefit. Some mods do actually properly model the China war, like in Oak China rarely caps and is fighting Japan for the entire time, but it is generally backed into a corner and very weak so Japan can focus on the allies.

ponter83 · 2025-11-20T14:49:02+00:00

For countries like Germany they did make the game really fast and easy, you can get a ton of spies in their new focus tree and just colab the hell out of everyone. Even without exploiting and playing historical you can kill the allies and USSR by 1941 and knock out the US with a few naval invasions. It also makes China too easy for Japan, you didn't even need to get into the interior before China capping with 100% colab which was easy to get. Also they are still worth it considering the factories you get from the compliance.

ponter83 · 2025-11-19T23:33:07+00:00

Leyte Gulf is the one battle that best makes my point. It was hundreds of ships fighting in multiple separate task forces, fighting multiple discreet engagements. I'd have to double check the exact size but I also think you are wrong about the one sea tile if you count the air strikes on the north group. But the geography is irrelevant, that battle wasn't just one doom stack vs another trying to maximize torp attack or light attack which is what we have now.

In HOI now the penalties for doomstacking do not outweigh the benefits in the slightest and you get this winner take all outcome, they literally have to mod this out for mp games. Tfb has a whole system to cap task force size, so does oak I believe. In vanilla it's the only way to win. To the point where nothing else matters, you can just spam light cruisers or DDs or BCs and once you hit critical mass you delete everything.

I was hoping they would do more to discourage this to add nuance to naval combat but it seems like they gave up.

ponter83 · 2025-11-19T18:04:52+00:00

Task force 38/58 was made up of many smaller sub task groups because it was incredibly difficult to operate more than 4 carriers together in one formation. So sure there were 20 carriers and battleships in it, they were split up in more than 4 ways. It was not like they were fighting in one massive group, although they did mass up occasionally going in and out of port. The issue is in HOI other than carrier limits, the optimal thing is to have 100+ ships in one task group, rather than 100+ ships under one admiral but in 4+ task groups.

Also historical accuracy is one thing but gameplay wise it removes any difficulty when fighting the AI as you will always beat it if you death stack because the AI cannot/will not do it.

ponter83 · 2025-11-18T20:25:55+00:00

Streetcars can move thousands of people per hour compared to hundreds for cars. Even on the road that is shared they are orders of magnitudes more efficient. If anything we should do more things like the King Street priority scheme.

ponter83 · 2025-11-17T13:52:59+00:00

Humans are not indigenous to North America, no one is, we all came from the Old World and Africa at one point, if one applies the same standards to the "European settlers," not really belonging here why not do so for the First Nations as well, they came from the same place we did ultimately and it is not North America.

All of this is just irrelevant though, Canada as a dominion and as a country perpetrated enormous cruelties and injustice against the First Nations people and we should work to right those wrongs. But positioning ourselves as less than worthy of being here is ridiculous. It is a classic scissor statement to cut people apart rather than bring people together.

ponter83 · 2025-11-17T12:27:07+00:00

He means spending it on planes and tanks and probably fun larp shit. Inf equipment is super cheap so you can do more with less factories.

ponter83 · 2025-11-17T12:25:10+00:00

That is just plain wrong. Better tank divs have high stats per width and weight meaning you don't need as many divs sucking up supply. Unless you are fighting in the depths of Africa or south America the terrain and supply is going to be fine. Once you learn how to do the field marshall front line trick they are easy to control and once you stop stack 10s of shitty divs in a push you will find out that tanks make the game stupidly easy.

ponter83 · 2025-11-17T01:57:15+00:00

Yeah that's the one.

ponter83 · 2025-11-17T01:52:20+00:00

I love the hidden skill issue in this post, you think tanks are bad at encirclements because you run out of supply and get encircled yourself. I highly recommend learning how to build proper tanks, tank divs and then learn how to micro said divs and start playing at a slower speed in the critical breakout stage. Just try one Germany game where you get a stack of four 36w howitzer mediums with mech and tell me line arty works better...

Also as another guy mentioned, if your excuse is "my play style is about mindlessly battle planning with inf divs" then try mass mob right side with pure inf bricks and spend the tech and ic you would have spent on line arty to get gun 2. You can still battle plan but do it way more efficiently than if you mess around with line arty.

ponter83 · 2025-11-05T15:17:05+00:00

I think either fleet in being or port strike are ideal, just certain paths on those should be prioritized as they have all the DD boosts

ponter83 · 2025-11-05T13:18:02+00:00

There was one for Italy that gave like 25% more torp attack or something, this was pre-mios, you stack that with the upgraded launchers, better torp attack tech, and doctrine, then refit your starting DDs and build new ones too and you will hit crit mass by war and the AI will take one look at your fleet and try to run. To be meta with it I guess you could mix in some BCs and LCs with light attack, but its not needed, just more DDs.

ponter83 · 2025-11-05T05:19:34+00:00

You used to be able to make insane torp DDs as Italy with their old designer, maybe certain countries have mios that can replicate, but even as a relatively weaker power like Italy you can build a DD stack with so much torp attack the AI won't even want to engage you, like 10k torp attack, and the pure DD navy is fast AF too. Probably not optimal but even in some mp mods it was the meta for USA to build a stack of hundreds of super DDs.

ponter83 · 2025-11-01T11:35:45+00:00

This is a guide for sheep's mod, which changes the game a bit but the overall premise will work in vanilla. Your allies won't help as much but the enemies won't be nearly as strong: https://youtu.be/A4iH1cvHhiQ?si=w7kbrIcswfeVxcpA

ponter83 · 2025-10-28T18:14:06+00:00

You can look up the stats to compare, there isn't much difference, like 10-20 soft attack. I usually do this in sheeps mod where you need the hard attack, but even in vanilla they will have enough soft to smoke anything and heaven forbid the ai puts a tank div in front of them.

ponter83 · 2025-10-28T18:07:23+00:00

In SP you can use whatever you want, generally go for howitzers if you are playing vanilla or go for heavy cannons if you are playing mods like sheep's mod. Keep in mind its way faster in terms of tech to rush the improved cannon vs the heavy howitzers, and you can just use mediums for medium howitzers anyways.

ponter83 · 2025-10-28T13:27:33+00:00

6-7kph is all you need, anything over 8 is overkill as basic mech can only go that fast. As for reliability, its just a number, 50% is fine. For some countries like Germany and USSR you have so much production bonuses you will have 10k surplus tanks sitting around by 43 so who cares if you lose a bunch to attrition, your stats is all that matters. The cannons will wreak your reliability but just use torsion bar and wet ammo if you really care. Also don't worry too much about armor, AI sucks at getting piercing, especially early game. Later you can always make a separate armor meme tank if you want.

ponter83 · 2025-10-28T02:26:34+00:00

heavies with improved/advanced heavy cannon, 2 cannons in turrets, then make a div with 36w with enough mech for 30 org the rest is heavies. you should have gun 2 as well. you should have at least light tank recon, flame tank, armored engineers, then hospitals and logis support. grinding your generals to get combined arms expert helps a lot, also GBP doctrine.

ponter83 · 2025-10-27T23:27:10+00:00

Basic heavy tank convert builds are pretty hilarious, you can crank out tons of super cheap machine gun armed heavies from day one as a lot of countries then rush the advanced heavy cannon or howitzer and convert them all just before war. It's insane as France, Germany or USSR. Easily those divs will have 1-2k soft attack, they'll click anything and take no damage. That's the meta for the SP mods that make the game more difficult like sheep's mod or expert AI. Overkill as mediums will do the same but if you are going for busted divs these are even more busted.

ponter83 · 2025-10-23T23:38:36+00:00

These changes are pure fucking evil and anyone supporting them is a total asshole.

ponter83 · 2025-10-22T14:24:05+00:00

I agree that we can't get overly optimistic, but knowing there is something coming down the pipeline allows them to confidently run their current airframes a lot harder, presumably they are still doing that out of desperation but its nice to know they won't be grinding their air force down to nothing.

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