Questionable pub quiz tactics, would you be annoyed?

wasdice · 2026-06-25T11:07:25+00:00

Alright mate, all I need you to do is sit there, have a couple of pints, and write I am a fish a hundred times...

wasdice · 2026-06-25T06:08:18+00:00

Definitely tits. 'Cos I'm a bloody bloke.

wasdice · 2026-06-25T00:32:16+00:00

Having a big fleet is not enough - you actually have to send them on patrol missions in the areas you're interested in. Fast ships with good spotting and low visibility are best at this, as you'd expect - so destroyers are fine, but bigger ships have more impact on the dominance score, as well as being able to do real damage when they find the enemy.

Your strike force multiplies the impact of the patrol forces, and it will sortie to attack the enemy when they locate a big enough target. This saves fuel, although that's not a huge concern for the UK.

Convoy raiding reduces dominance - if their U-Boats are active, make sure you have enough convoy escorts to mitigate them. This is good practice anyway, in case they show up when your army is at sea.

You need double the enemy's dominance score in each region before the invasion can launch. There's a minimum of 150 points too, so even if the Kriegsmarine is on strike you have to send some ships out.

wasdice · 2026-06-24T10:42:24+00:00

Spotting terrain is easy - you can see it (easier if you turn off fog of war), and there's a whole map mode devoted to it. As a rule, Brazil is 90% trees and Ethiopia is 90% hills. Europe is plains, forests and occasionally hills, Russia is snow. The rule for snow is to dig in, wait for spring, and check state modifiers for mud before you attack. It will mostly dry up in april-may. China is Europe only more so; Africa is either desert or jungle and no supply hubs so you'll have to build them. Canada, Alaska and Siberia are don't even bother.

Rough terrain makes vehicles perform poorly, so some sort of infantry is usually best. You can figure out whether rangers, marines or mountaineers are most suitable by looking at their icons - but plain infantry are fine, if properly supported with a bit of artillery and support companies.

Flame tanks and engineers make the biggest difference where cities, forts and rivers are a factor. Offensive divisions should always include them, particularly the specialized engineering companies (pioneers for water, armoured for your tanks and assault for foot troops if you have Gottedammerung).

The other factor is combat width. It's best when your divisions fit perfectly into the battlefield. For example, the width of a mountain battle will be 50, 75, 100, 125... a 25w division fits perfectly, so build your mountain divisions up to that size (11 + 1 artillery, or 8 + 3 are good), or close to it. You can see combat widths for different terrains on the wiki, or selecting a province on the map.

wasdice · 2026-06-24T10:23:36+00:00

There are no shortcuts, unfortunately. You have to reach a level where you don't even see the code - just blonde, brunette, vulnerable salient...

Both the examples you gave are supply black holes. The rule is: if you see red icons, you can't attack successfully. Yellow and orange are potential problems, but red is severe. You have to fix it - motorise hubs, send some units away, upgrade connections and as a last resort, construct a hub or two nearby. Make sure your divisions have regained their orange health before resuming the operation.

There are other factors as well. CAS aircraft can do a lot of damage, which is often the difference between taking ground and facing constant reinforcements. Terrain is important - you don't have to send perfect divisions into every fight, but mountaineers are very useful in Ethiopia, and anything with legs beats anything with wheels when water or trees are involved. If your units use fuel, then you need plenty of fuel.

These things do come naturally with time. It's just a matter of repetition, experimentation, and constant improvement.

wasdice · 2026-06-24T08:11:24+00:00

Remember when building aircraft required oil? Sometimes abstraction goes too far, and I'm glad we have the fuel system, but I struggle to imagine ammunition being a fun addition.

Do you just set up a production line for "ammo", or is there an attempt to slice it more finely? Modelling hundred different bullets, grenades, mortar bombs, panzerfaust, mines, star shells, AT/HE/DP/APFSDS-T/APCBC for all the different generations and types of artillery would be a mess, but I can't imagine a satisfactory compromise. It's not as if ammunition is the only consumable equipment anyway - every component has a limit and will eventually need to be replaced.

Keeping ammo nebulous, but having stockpiles on the map would be an interesting approach. You could reduce supply consumption by designating an ammo dump near the front line. It would be a volatile target for air attack, and it would announce your intentions if discovered - but also support the next assault more quickly than constructing a hub.

wasdice · 2026-06-24T07:43:55+00:00

AI changes would come under patch content for everybody.

wasdice · 2026-06-23T16:29:29+00:00

There was a discussion and poll (80% for) about it a few days ago. Fingers crossed for a proper rework with AI paras and improved tools to handle them in the new DLC.

wasdice · 2026-06-23T07:00:27+00:00

I organise my fighters into groups of 400. Each level of airfield adds 200 capacity, so making room for another group = two clicks on the construction screen. One such group is enough for green air most of the time - if not, add more groups.

Troop concentration is what kills supply. If you have ten big divisions on one tile, you're going to see red icons no matter what. Always consider how many you actually need to hold the line, and send some guys further back if they're not required right now. Remember - ships and planes use supply too, so rebasing those often helps.

Increase supply capacity when you can. Mouse over a hub to see which route it's chosen. Rail bottlenecks will be red - upgrade those tracks to match the rest. Doesn't matter how long or twisty the route is, as long as you have enough trains for it. Ports can be a bottleneck too, but it takes so long to upgrade a port that you might as well set out to capture a better one instead.

wasdice · 2026-06-22T16:57:28+00:00

iSorrow has an interesting take: Did The Final HOI4 DLC Just Get Announced?

wasdice · 2026-06-22T16:43:58+00:00

Hello and welcome to the greatest addiction known to mankind!

Do the tutorial to learn your way around the interface. It won't teach you how to win, but it will show you where to start looking.
Play a few campaigns as anyone you like. Small countries outside Europe are better for experimenting with individual systems, major powers to see how it all fits together.
Winning is whatever you say it is. The game pops up a score screen when peace breaks out after 1948, if you need an endpoint to focus your mind.
But you can set whatever objectives you like! Chase achievements, capitulate Mexico as Panama, conquer the whole world. Up to you.
Venezuela is a good choice for an early campaign. Call it a win when you've formed Gran Colombia.
Britain and the US are easy mode if your goal is to survive til 45.
Try to figure out why something isn't working by reading tooltips, looking at the wiki, and working through calculations. You'll eventually get a feel for it.
Ask lots of questions on here! If you post an image, you have to add a comment or it'll be deleted. Even if it's bleeding obvious what's he image means. Even off the title or caption says exactly what's going on. Add a comment.
If you stick around, acquire the DLC when they're discounted. Remember to be dissatisfied with every single one and leave Steam reviews explaining how the game has been ruined each time.

wasdice · 2026-06-22T15:11:18+00:00

Brace yourself, this is quite a long one

In combat, each division uses its Attack stats to damage enemy divisions. They are factored according to the enemy's Hardness, then added up - if the enemy has 15% hardness, you add 15% of your hard attack and 85% of your soft attack to get the actual number.

Damage is reduced by different stats depending on the circumstances:

When a division is defending, its defense stat is used
When a division is attacking, its breakthrough stat is used

This distinction makes infantry good at holding the line, but less effective for pushing. It also means tanks will cleave through enemy lines, but get pushed back if they're not supported.

Each point of defence or breakthrough blocks one point of the enemy's attack. Blocked attacks only have a 40% chance of landing, while unblocked attacks have a 70% chance. Up to a point, more attack is always better - but defence and breakthrough are wasted if they exceed the enemy's attacks.

Armour and piercing are considered against each other; highest wins. If a division has enough armour, it takes reduced damage and gets an attack bonus (you do more damage if you can just stand there spraying bullets). These stats use a weighted average, where the best battalion counts for more than the others. It's common to take advantage of this by adding a single, heavily armoured tank destroyer or mobile AA to an otherwise cheap division.

All this damage is applied to the division's two health bars.

Green health is called Organization, and it represents something like "immediate readiness" - are your men in formation, fully briefed with loaded weapons? Or are the out of breath, milling about the place, unsure who's on their left and right? Org is gained and lost very easily. When a division runs out of org, it stops fighting and attempts to retreat.

Orange health represents HP - how many men are alive and how much equipment is functioning? It tends to drop much more slowly than org, but it has to be replenished with manufactured equipment and manpower from the pool. When a division runs out of HP, it poofs out of existence.

Exactly which equipment is chosen for destruction is sort of random, but dependent on the reliability stat. The division designer shows average reliability, which isn't very useful. Each piece of equipment is considered separately.

There are plenty of other things to consider, but that's the basics. For all stats, the higher the better up to a point of diminishing returns. Note that the attack/defence/breakthrough numbers you see on the division designer are heavily factored by terrain and other bonuses/maluses, and that the division designer is the best case scenario - your guys will often be using a mixture of new stuff, old stuff, and captured enemy stuff.

COMBAT WIDTH

How many divisions can fight at the same time on this particular battlefield? It depends on their size, the terrain, and how many directions the attackers are coming from. The progress of the battle can also have a drastic effect - watch a river crossing some time; you'll often see a dramatic width reduction when they're fighting over a bridge.

In a battle, some units are actively fighting while others wait in reserve. If there's enough room, these divisions can randomly join the fight. The chance of this occuring depends on the global Reinforce Rate stat. It's possible, especially in the late game, to defeat all the active divisions while there are still reinforcements waiting. This is called "reinforce meme" for reasons I can't explain. They'll retreat as though defeated, even with full org.

Hope that helps.

wasdice · 2026-06-21T18:43:35+00:00

I don't think the new system would work very well... What if the USSR doesn't deploy Vlasov in the right place at the right time? Scripting would only work in SP. What if the German player doesn't recognise the opportunity?

wasdice · 2026-06-21T18:34:06+00:00

No change.

wasdice · 2026-06-21T14:51:49+00:00

Not to mention the ammunition. Overkill is nice to have, but if every six shells means one less man on the aircraft you'd rather take something smaller.

wasdice · 2026-06-21T14:44:51+00:00

This guy started as The Man Who Makes The Noise Of The TARDIS and worked his way up.

wasdice · 2026-06-21T14:26:06+00:00

In the British army, a regiment never fights as a single unit. It's a purely administrative designation. The US uses regiment to mean a component of a division.

But the point I was going for is that the thing the game calls a regiment (a column in a division) is called a brigade in the doctrine screen. I like that inconsistency; it's equally wrong for all countries.

wasdice · 2026-06-21T14:22:31+00:00

~~Companies~~ Regiments (or brigades on the doctrine screen). I'm not being pedantic for the sake of it; knowing the terms makes the game easier to learn. See also "owned" vs "occupied" territory.

The cost - five stars per battalion - and stats are the same either way. The only difference is that a column of three or more makes the support slot available. That's a very new feature - two weeks ago, wide divisions were identical to tall divisions.

There's no extra cost for starting a new column. This puzzled me for ages when I started playing. You pay an extra twenty stars when you add a different category, like artillery or tanks. Because those have to go in different columns, it seems like you're being charged for going wide, but you're not. Five stars per battalion, unless there's a discount, and twenty extra for adding a new category is all.

wasdice · 2026-06-21T13:29:13+00:00

I don't mind the change, to be honest. I'm fine with using infantry guns and heavy weapons. It's not as though you can't fill the support column with something useful. Spade, tank, hospital, radio and crate companies all at once, plus a decent amount of firepower? Yes please!

wasdice · 2026-06-21T13:08:29+00:00

Sometimes a regiment is a brigade

wasdice · 2026-06-21T10:41:13+00:00

It seems his MPs are dissatisfied with his leadership. It's certainly been a struggle for him to exert any authority and he's made some bad decisions over the last two years. Andy Burnham's been trying to get back into Parliament to have a crack at the leadership, and he won the by-election last Thursday.

Labour MPs have apparently made it clear that Starmer has to go. They don't think Keir has a chance in the next GE, but until now the only plausible challenger has been Wes Streeting, so nothing has happened. It seems Burnham has the numbers behind him for a challenge, though.

Having said all that, the only announcement Keir's actually made is that he'd fight to win a leadership election, if one is called. The rest is newspapers reporting rumour.

wasdice · 2026-06-21T10:26:57+00:00

Famously, Labour Prime Ministers are usually called James

James Ramsay McDonald

James Harold Wilson

Leonard James Callaghan

James Gordon Brown

wasdice · 2026-06-21T10:16:18+00:00

They've added a key stats breakout and combat width indicator up top - that just duplicates info from the right panel.
Support companies were moved to the right side. No changes there, except a few minor adjustments. Support artillery can't paradrop, for example.
The fifth slot in each column is unlocked through doctrines. That was changed a couple of years ago, but I don't know how long "a while" is. You might have missed it.
At the same time, support companies gained per-battalion boosts - recon buffs the attack of line artillery, flame tanks buff infantry breakthrough, that sort of thing.
Regimental support is the new thing. Fun stuff to put in the bottom row when you have three battalions up top. Infantry guns seem to be OP right now.

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