I'm new to HoI4 and I'm struggling understanding proper retreating and the like. Playing as the soviets in a "historical" scenario I notice having huge issues with having armies being encircled and cut off, and since I overall have a hard time being able to staff the entire border anyway, it feels that this situation happens easily.
Are there general advice on how to better prepare and also how to keep my units mobile in their retreat, so I dont always get cut off?
Have nearby units attack enemy units that risk flanking your retreating units for as long as they can, regardless of actual chances of victory. Try to keep your as impermeable as you can. Remember you can cancel any unit's attack by simply right clicking on the province they're in, so you don't have to continually wear them out with a losing battle. I've found that a lot of my micromanaging involves this. Find a weakness? Exploit it with nearby troops, and make sure a reserve or two prevent units in adjacent provinces from reinforcing that weakness. The principle is the same in retreating. A unit or army of yours is risking encirclement, get nearby troops to halt the encircling forces, and bail your boys out of there.
As for military readiness, I'd have to know what you're actually doing in greater detail before I can comment on that.
Well, as I was saying I was looking at more or less a historical scenario, I'm thinking I start here with the soviets to see how much I learn before I go off and have fun with other stuff. This usually means that by 1940 I have a fairly big border with Germany, and since Moldavia joins up with them it's just a huge space to cover.
My previous attempts involved researching superior firepower and just trying to build as much as possible, including forts down the borders. I think one of my errors was a lack of focus on producing civilian factories, ultimately leading to limited potential to build fortifications of various kinds along with more military factories. Other researched focused on reducing construction times, infantry and doctrines and also tanks. I also more or less only trained infantry and tank divisions, which by the start of operation barbarossa would be mostly medium tanks, some light and a few motorised infantry sections. Infantry divisions would be mostly infantry with artillery support.
I've been reading up more but obviously there are a vast amoutn of things to do, so currently I've been thinking to maybe try motorising my infantry a bit more, but idk if thats worth the research points. Overall I know I have to be able to ramp up military production (after all, the real USSR would produce roughly 40 T-34s per day!).
I've also been sure to focus my naval production on convoys so I have better access to resources.
They’re streaming the new skylines expansion
https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive
Honestly I think Germany would be a better place for a noob to the game to start. That's what I did, but to each their own.
As for unit composition, I'd recommend skimming through this guide and building a better understanding of just what stuff means.
With forts, doing it against your border is suboptimal with the exception or Romania, as that is marked by a river. You want to take advantage of these natural barriers as combined with forts they give a serious oomph to your defensive capabilities. Yes you'll have to retreat and give some of your land, but just plan your industry ahead. When actually building your forts, you should do them one at a time in each province as opposed to ordering big stacks. To illustrate, if you order 1 fort in 10 provinces, your industry will quickly set up each fort (they don't take that long to build, so leave them until you feel confident in your industrial capabilities and war looms over you) in each province, and repeating when the orders are complete. This results in a consistent, defensible line with no weakpoints. The alternative would be to order 10 forts in 10 provinces. This will result in your industry being bogged down in fully fortifying a single (or a more limited number) of provinces at a time, and if war comes to you before they are done, you're left with one half of your line being impenetrable, and the other half being totally unfortified and being the focus of the brunt of your opponent's armed forces, which may result in a breakthrough and who knows what might spiral out from there.
The main reason to make such defensive lines isn't just because it makes life harder for your opponent however. A strong defensive line requires fewer units stationed there in order for it to hold reliably, meaning you free up units to perform other tasks, such as defending much less defensible but still important locations, employing them to exploit weaknesses in enemy lines, or maybe they're needed at another front altogether. Don't use more than you need to defend a province. If a single unit can stop whatever is trying to breakthrough, there's no point in having two there. Use that extra unit where it can properly pull its weight.
As for positioning your armies, don't feel constricted by front lines. Fallback lines are essential in setting up a proper defense, being able to set up lines on your fortified rivers or on some other strategic location, as well as using them as a set up to pincer an enemy in between a rock and a hard place. You may very well find that you don't actually want to defend every inch of land, but want to sacrifice your initial borders so that you can have yourself set up in a far more defensible position. As you can imagine, something like this applies double for the USSR.
Ok, thanks a lot for the advice. Is it worth in general to keep troops at the ready for the defense further back? Or should I start at the frontline and do good micro to have the mreach back.
I'll also say USA is a great place to start. You are basically immortal thanks to being far away from any threats, get a big fuck off navy to have fun with, have insane industrial power and can impact the war in a big way, on your own terms. With Germany, you always run the risk of dying or fucking up the war.
You don't really want to have troops idling, but you also don't want to leave your back up lines unmanned and unentrenched for maximum efficiency. This is just a matter of good judgement you'll develop through practice
I don't know if any of you read the stellaris reddit but holy fuck if I see one more "pUrgE tHe xEn0s" comment under a topic that's, like, asking for advice on reskinning the UI I'm going to cut the fucking transoceanic fiber optic cables
YAY
https://www.reddit.com/r/Kaiserreich/comments/9pcvvj/kaiserreich_alpha_08_divided_states_is_out/
It's live now, for real. If it doesn't update for you, refresh steam. Also remember they changed workshop pages.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1521695605
Avoiding the American civil war
its nearly identical to the previous patch, except one thing, the very first event will ask if you want to form a coalition, select that, after that everything is identical
Is there any downside to avoiding the Civil War?
You don't get to turn the US into a Utopia as Jack Reed???
Well that sucks, I was hoping for more ways to avoid it as one of the other factions like Reed assassinating Long and vice versa, or at least have the civil war be a two sided war instead of three or four.
Cities: Skylines thread is dead and gone so I'll just drop this here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0Z6OQ8kJ5A
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/cities-skylines-industries-dev-diary-1.1123429/
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/cities-skylines-industries-dev-diary-2-industry-areas.1123567/
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/cities-skylines-industries-dev-diary-3-supply-chain-part-1.1123961/
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/cities-skylines-industries-dev-diary-4-supply-chain-part-2.1124097/
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/cities-skylines-industries-5-industry-area-levelling.1124225/
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/cities-skylines-industries-dev-diary-6-maps-and-policies.1124365/
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/cities-skylines-industries-dev-diary-7-cargo.1124492/
So Central America in the new KR update feels like one of those regions that blows it's load in the early game and just sorta leaves you with not much to do afterwords. Once you've united the region (which is fairly easy in itself) all you're really left to do is build up and join one of the major factions.
Also since nobody has been posting them, TwoDollarsTwenty has been posting videos demonstrating the features of Industries on Paradox's YouTube Channel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06d7qASrteQ
I'm just looking forward to the synthwave radio that's supposedly going to drop with this.
¡Viva México! (I apologize for my Spanish)
https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/108621/4c8ab5d1-9539-4114-897b-1b36730a5cf7/image.png
Paradox has been posting their Industries dev blogs daily until the 19th, then they withheld the last blog. What a tease.
What. How did New England get so much?
Yeah, Canada will give New England all their USA territory, though New England won't get cores on it.
The latest and final dev blog is out, one thing that caught my eye is this:
New models of cargo train cars are also available and you can spot the updated train cars hauling goods in and out of your cities. It's now quick and easy to recognize the goods that are moving through your city by cargo train - logs, crops, animal products, ore and oil each have their own train car.
Also LGR:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XEaakK-cfY
