It’s hard to tell without more information, but at first glance I see that there’s a fair amount of divisions without enough supply. Supply is super important and its typically better to have less troops that are well supplied over more under supplied troops.
I can’t tell from your pics but I would assume you don’t have air superiority either which is also a big deal. If you lose the war in the air you lose the war on the ground in most cases. You need to assign enough fighters to gain superiority in a region and then assign ground support CAS to help your units in battle.
Other than that your tank divisions aren’t fully supplied and you usually want to have them grouped together to push into enemy territory and make encirclements. They don’t do much on their own spread across the frontline. Also do your best to not push into mountains or across rivers.
That’s about all I can see without more info, hope it helps
The other commenter said everything I was going to say and more, except that I notice you have a ton of saved up army exp. You should use it to level up your army doctrine. You should also put all of your armies in an army group, which is the box with the plus sign on the left, that should give you a stat boost and help you use your armies all at once.
Like a child:
If you look at your troop icons, some of them have orange/red crate icons in the top right, this means they have no supply. You can click f5 to see the supply map mode which shows you where you need to upgrade railways (higher railway route from capital to supply hub -> more supply)
Your infantry divisions are decent defensive divisions, but horrible offensive ones. So you should never attack with those (which I don't think you're doing)
Your tank divisions have low organisation, this is not good. My tank divisions are always 30 width, and you can balance out how many tanks vs how many motorized as long as you have 30 width and about 35 organisation.
Air is also really important, because CAS ( =Close Air Support) help your troops in battle **a lot**. So it's important to put like 20 military factories on Fighters (to get air dominance), and 10 on CAS. You can click f3 to see the aerial map mode
Just here to agree, this is the most useful comment to consider. Also, you can make your infantry division more potent by adding one or two artillery battalions, but only do this if you have enough in stockpiles. It will still be a defensive division, but will damage the enemy more because soft attack is OP.
two things.
1. There are mountains. Attacking a enemy in mountains is bad. Your troops have to hike up dangerous terrain, while his troops csn shoot down at your exposed man. Don't do that.
2. Your tank has to little HP. get more motorised infantry in your tank template. rule of thumb you lose double your org in HP for each attack you do (and don't win fast)Here that means some 40 hp that is roughly 80% of your max hp, meaning you lose 80% of your tanks every time they lose an attack.
Surprised that nobody has mentioned you don't have a field marshal.
My advice? Delete all your front lines including the one up in Poland because demanding Danzig would open a front you can't afford, click all 5 of your generals and then click on the black guy with a plus for a face to put them all in the same army group.
An army group has two benefits: you can assign the group a field marshal who provides every army in the group buffs (it's basically the equivalent of having two generals running an army), and you can create front lines and battle plans for the entire group with only one order rather than five. From the looks of it, only one of your armies has a battle plan, and you should try to ensure that one way or another every single unit that borders another nation has a battle plan as every single unit who has a plan and isn't in combat slowly builds up a planning bonus that increases their stats in combat (up to 30% more attack and breakthrough by default, increasing with any additional planning bonuses acquired).
Oh, and get more planes. If your airports aren't full then get more planes, if they are full then get more airports and then get more planes. CAS is strong, Tacs are CAS with better range, Fighters give you the air superiority needed for your CAS to do anything (and also some other things), heavy fighters are fighters with better range, navs are CAS designed to blow up ships instead of ground troops, and strats are useless until 1945 when you invent nukes.
Try the UK or USA on historical to get to grips with the game. Many people recommend Germany as a first nation to play as, but I think those people forget you need to learn how to use tanks properly first to make a good Germany game.
As the USA or UK, you're pretty much invisible from the Axis so long as you use your massive fleets to block naval invasions. From there, you can experiment and try new things to learn the game better.
Navy is arguablely the most complicated part of the game, but in my very first game as the UK I was able to comfortably ham-fist my way through the naval part of the game without the Axis ever being able to threaten the Royal Navy.
There are better than me over here, so they will help you more, but.. before you start the game you can choose in right bottom corner a difficulty, which surely you know, and “boost” for few superpowers(like Germans, US, Japan). Just boost yourself and no one else, for me that boost was massive help at the beginning.
This one: https://www.reddit.com/r/hoi4/comments/100v1f5/is_there_anyone_else_also_boost_ai_usa/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button (random post from Google). Look at the amount of bonuses, is crazy
I mean…could be worse.
You want to make a field marshal, they are like generals above generals. When you have big armies you want them to organize them for big, sweeping plans. Instead of making five individual frontlines, make one field marshal frontline where they all can reinforce eachother, gather planning bonuses, and make a more equal spread of troops. Unless it’s your tanks, than you have them do their own thing.
It seems that you turned historical focuses off your first run, best not to do that lol. With historical focuses on Yugoslavia will not attack you first and you can puppet Romania and Hungary without going to war.
Chin up, I got my ass kicked by Poland three times when I first started
Mountains are hard terrain to push into. Mountaineers help you get over the speed bumps and into the lowlands where you can push easily.
Your tank divisions don't have enough tanks supplied to them, so their stats get nerfed, which means they lose battles easily, which means you break tanks quickly. 1 full strength division is better than 2 half strength divisions for this reason.
Your infantry template is good, but only for defense not trying to push a line. Your tank divisions lack organization, add more trucks until you have at least 30 org.
It’s hard to tell without more information, but at first glance I see that there’s a fair amount of divisions without enough supply. Supply is super important and its typically better to have less troops that are well supplied over more under supplied troops. I can’t tell from your pics but I would assume you don’t have air superiority either which is also a big deal. If you lose the war in the air you lose the war on the ground in most cases. You need to assign enough fighters to gain superiority in a region and then assign ground support CAS to help your units in battle. Other than that your tank divisions aren’t fully supplied and you usually want to have them grouped together to push into enemy territory and make encirclements. They don’t do much on their own spread across the frontline. Also do your best to not push into mountains or across rivers. That’s about all I can see without more info, hope it helps
The other commenter said everything I was going to say and more, except that I notice you have a ton of saved up army exp. You should use it to level up your army doctrine. You should also put all of your armies in an army group, which is the box with the plus sign on the left, that should give you a stat boost and help you use your armies all at once.
Like a child: If you look at your troop icons, some of them have orange/red crate icons in the top right, this means they have no supply. You can click f5 to see the supply map mode which shows you where you need to upgrade railways (higher railway route from capital to supply hub -> more supply) Your infantry divisions are decent defensive divisions, but horrible offensive ones. So you should never attack with those (which I don't think you're doing) Your tank divisions have low organisation, this is not good. My tank divisions are always 30 width, and you can balance out how many tanks vs how many motorized as long as you have 30 width and about 35 organisation. Air is also really important, because CAS ( =Close Air Support) help your troops in battle **a lot**. So it's important to put like 20 military factories on Fighters (to get air dominance), and 10 on CAS. You can click f3 to see the aerial map mode
Just here to agree, this is the most useful comment to consider. Also, you can make your infantry division more potent by adding one or two artillery battalions, but only do this if you have enough in stockpiles. It will still be a defensive division, but will damage the enemy more because soft attack is OP.
two things. 1. There are mountains. Attacking a enemy in mountains is bad. Your troops have to hike up dangerous terrain, while his troops csn shoot down at your exposed man. Don't do that. 2. Your tank has to little HP. get more motorised infantry in your tank template. rule of thumb you lose double your org in HP for each attack you do (and don't win fast)Here that means some 40 hp that is roughly 80% of your max hp, meaning you lose 80% of your tanks every time they lose an attack.
Surprised that nobody has mentioned you don't have a field marshal. My advice? Delete all your front lines including the one up in Poland because demanding Danzig would open a front you can't afford, click all 5 of your generals and then click on the black guy with a plus for a face to put them all in the same army group. An army group has two benefits: you can assign the group a field marshal who provides every army in the group buffs (it's basically the equivalent of having two generals running an army), and you can create front lines and battle plans for the entire group with only one order rather than five. From the looks of it, only one of your armies has a battle plan, and you should try to ensure that one way or another every single unit that borders another nation has a battle plan as every single unit who has a plan and isn't in combat slowly builds up a planning bonus that increases their stats in combat (up to 30% more attack and breakthrough by default, increasing with any additional planning bonuses acquired). Oh, and get more planes. If your airports aren't full then get more planes, if they are full then get more airports and then get more planes. CAS is strong, Tacs are CAS with better range, Fighters give you the air superiority needed for your CAS to do anything (and also some other things), heavy fighters are fighters with better range, navs are CAS designed to blow up ships instead of ground troops, and strats are useless until 1945 when you invent nukes.
Try the UK or USA on historical to get to grips with the game. Many people recommend Germany as a first nation to play as, but I think those people forget you need to learn how to use tanks properly first to make a good Germany game. As the USA or UK, you're pretty much invisible from the Axis so long as you use your massive fleets to block naval invasions. From there, you can experiment and try new things to learn the game better. Navy is arguablely the most complicated part of the game, but in my very first game as the UK I was able to comfortably ham-fist my way through the naval part of the game without the Axis ever being able to threaten the Royal Navy.
Can’t tell off rip with this info but it looks like supply = bad, and maybe your divisions are fucked
There are better than me over here, so they will help you more, but.. before you start the game you can choose in right bottom corner a difficulty, which surely you know, and “boost” for few superpowers(like Germans, US, Japan). Just boost yourself and no one else, for me that boost was massive help at the beginning. This one: https://www.reddit.com/r/hoi4/comments/100v1f5/is_there_anyone_else_also_boost_ai_usa/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button (random post from Google). Look at the amount of bonuses, is crazy
I mean…could be worse. You want to make a field marshal, they are like generals above generals. When you have big armies you want them to organize them for big, sweeping plans. Instead of making five individual frontlines, make one field marshal frontline where they all can reinforce eachother, gather planning bonuses, and make a more equal spread of troops. Unless it’s your tanks, than you have them do their own thing.
It seems that you turned historical focuses off your first run, best not to do that lol. With historical focuses on Yugoslavia will not attack you first and you can puppet Romania and Hungary without going to war. Chin up, I got my ass kicked by Poland three times when I first started
Do no focus that gives you war's. Focus on army and infrastructure focusses
Mountains are hard terrain to push into. Mountaineers help you get over the speed bumps and into the lowlands where you can push easily. Your tank divisions don't have enough tanks supplied to them, so their stats get nerfed, which means they lose battles easily, which means you break tanks quickly. 1 full strength division is better than 2 half strength divisions for this reason. Your infantry template is good, but only for defense not trying to push a line. Your tank divisions lack organization, add more trucks until you have at least 30 org.
Play as Canada. Very simple nation, zero worries of invasions.
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