Gefallener_Held said: I am not sure what the best missions are until a third spy is obtained with foreign training to get a spy of Russian background to set up a collaboration government.

Eh, I know the Soviets can be hard to spy on thanks to their bonuses, but don't be discouraged from doing so even if you lack a Russian spy. Collab on the Soviets is potent enough to justify the attempts even if you lose a spy or two. The goal is just to get the network to the proper strength ASAP. { "lightbox_close": "Close", "lightbox_next": "Next", "lightbox_previous": "Previous", "lightbox_error": "The requested content cannot be loaded. Please try again later.", "lightbox_start_slideshow": "Start slideshow", "lightbox_stop_slideshow": "Stop slideshow", "lightbox_full_screen": "Full screen", "lightbox_thumbnails": "Thumbnails", "lightbox_download": "Download", "lightb... Read more

Ruck said: Victoria I and I totally forgot how alien and strange some concepts are for beginners which never played those games.

Yep. You've been around long enough to remember when there wasn't a name for the genre of Paradox games. And I think you've even been around long enough to remember that EU1 was just a conversion of a tabletop game and how those tabletop rules were subject to abuse on computer. (Farming minors for 200 ducats at the end of every truce period as an example even if their income was 1 ducat a year.)   Read more

I'll give the minority opinion on this one. Run all DLC, but tell the new player to just use presets in the designers. And don't worry about MIOs. Just right click that notifier until they are ready to play around with it.  

Androbey said: The trade law mechanics I understand. The issue that I have is that if a country is Importing a commodity to reduce a production malus. Why would they export that same commodity? I would think that the only commodities that you would export are the ones that you have a surplus, (that is the ones you have more than you need for production efficiency).

It's one of the game's weird, but I consider necessary, abstractions. "Exports" aren't truly exports in the Vic3 sense of the word. It's clear to me that the various trade laws that reduce outgoing resources aren't just export controls but include a whole list of economic stuff like price supports, subsidies, rationing, and production quotas. The end result is that the government can just grab more resources to use in projects. The consequences are a drag on the economy in the form of lower bonuses to factory output and research. As an ex... Read more

Vigor said: Your templates have strange avatars for battalions I don't know what they mean.

It's the NATO counters option in the game. I can't read the non-NATO symbols in the game, so we've got that going for us. The divisions is 8 modern tank battalions, 9 MECH battalions, a modern TD battalion, and the support companies I outlined.   Read more

Vigor said: 1. i don't have AT research done.
2. i don't have air superiority.
3. I don't have enough tanks in the modern division to stack up much breakthrough
4. I have too many mechanized infantry (though in this situation, where I'm not really attacking to deal damage that should be a benefit)
5. The tanks are stock, no version upgrades
6. The tanks have foreign equipment (i'm not sure that is a bad thing considering the ones i produce are stock)
7. These divisions have 3 spart each (but in this situation that could be a benefit as well since divisions tend to not bleed spart much. I suppose that is because they fire from far away.)
8. These divisions have no aa (so they are pretty defenseless vs CAS/Tac)

Others have indicated a bunch of problems, but I will parse these particular issues. Fighting under red air is generally bad, but to do so with no AA is setting yourself up for failure. Enemy a... Read more

Kanitatlan said: (I'll let the usual culprits provide an amusing illustration)

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Gefallener_Held said: I saw a video stating maintenance companies are overrated.... I'm skeptical...

It's on my list to do a guide, but at the moment, I'm not sure MAINT is a good choice in a lot of cases. The tech at tier 2 gives you the option to make tanks cheaper. But the actual support company is a bit of a gimmick for most builds. Nice if you spec for using both its buffs specifically, but not great if you have other things you want to focus on. The increase in reliability isn't that useful in most of my builds because I'm not running really low reliability equipment. The capture ratio is only useful if the AI is using stuff I want or need. And since it costs support equipment, there's a case to be made that the support equipment you lose does not get offset by capturing garbage infantry kits and armored cars and light tanks with bad stats that I can't use.   Read more

paperhero said: Is there any way to be sure Japan will not attack Russia using the Focus tree?

I wouldn't sweat it even if it happens. (If Japan is under AI control.) Stonewalling the Japanese in Siberia isn't that difficult. 24 cheap pure INF divisions should keep the Japanese tied down for years on end while you wipe the Germans out.   Read more

mursolini said: Why not? These planes existed for Italiy and Japan, and you can still make them, just have to do the silly heavy fighter thing.

I also wish there was a medium NAV. I've sort of accepted that you have to make it a TAC, but it's really weird that because it's either a TAC or heavy fighter, it can't be benefit from NAV MIOs.   Read more

TheMeInTeam said: light spg with wheels can mount up to improved medium howitzer, same for td with improved medium cannon.

I wouldn't waste time with SPART right now. It uses 3 width and has a fairly high supply draw for a single battalion. So, this SPG might look decent: { "lightbox_close": "Close", "lightbox_next": "Next", "lightbox_previous": "Previous", "lightbox_error": "The requested content cannot be loaded. Please try again later.", "lightbox_start_slideshow": "Start slideshow", "lightbox_stop_slideshow": "Stop slideshow", "lightbox_full_screen": "Full screen", "lightbox_thumbnails": "Thumbnails", "lightbox_download": "Download", "lightbox_share": "Share", "lightbox_zoom": "Zoom", "lightbox_new_window": "New window", "lightbox_toggle_sidebar": "Toggle sidebar" } It creates a battalion that looks like this: ... Read more

pro.gamer.69 said: the ideal template you're looking for is a ratio of about 3-4 mech to 1 motorized AT or even better, tank destroyer. support engis, aa are a must, signals may be nice (especially if you make your division bigger), recon isn't horrible, logis are nice too.

ignore everything you see on width from before the release of AAT a few weeks ago. nowadays width barely matters, but 10, 15 are both solid, 36 works well too.

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Crecer13 said: In the game, amphibious river crossings are not that difficult or important. But in reality, this was one of the most difficult operations, especially considering that Europe has a huge number of rivers. For this purpose, in the USSR in 1944, 11 separate Special Purpose motorized battalions (OMB OSNAZ) were created. They were armed with Lend-Lease Ford GPA or DUKW-353. Their main goal is to cross rivers and create bridgeheads on opposite banks of the river. The experience of the war showed the importance and complexity of river crossings as one of the main factors, therefore, after the war in the USSR, amphibious capability was more important than armor protection.

Sounds like you will want to push to Mechanized Marine Corp then. Both for historical and practical reasons.   Read more

Ossiv said: Would marines be a better choice than mountaineers? Looking for advice from those who have used both.

It's a tough call for a number of reasons: 1) Mountaineers require army XP and compete with Mobile warfare. 2) Marines are probably more useful for pushing rivers than mountaineers or their rangers would be for pushing in snow. 3) Marines have the Mechanized Marine Corps doctrine that is incredibly powerful. And while regular MAR and Marine Commandos aren't super useful for Germany outside of Sea Lion, Mechanized Marines provides a ton of bonuses to Amtracs including a price reduction, ORG bonus, and soft attack bonuses. These bonuses make it almost mandatory to slap at least some Amtracs in panzer formations or to create mechanized river crossing specialists if you push Marines this far. 4) Rangers are probably an overall better support company than pioneers in terms of raw stats, but y... Read more

Kanitatlan said: Well that appears to be new. It definitely didn't work some time back and I haven't tried it for a while. The issue was always something about the game only trying the nearest ports to your capital (up to some limit). Obviously something has changed. How upgraded is your trans Siberian railway (in case that matters)

No manual upgrading of anything. I ran some of the infra focuses.   Read more

Ossiv said: Have anyone tried if that is possible in game? To win the UK by sinking all or most convoys, without landing any troops to the UK soil?

It's not mechanically possible. Even with maximum war support loss from convoys being sunk, the UK will still have enough war support to stay in the war. The UK will be useless with no merchant marine and easy to defeat, but you will need boots on the ground. Now, based on things I've done to Germany, it should be possible to drop British war support below the 50% threshold by a combination of bombing, convoy raiding, and using spies to damage war support (and stability and democratic support). With a ton of effort, you should be able to coup Britain, but I don't know if that could succeed without some German troops sailing across to give Mosely a hand.   Read more

Kanitatlan said: Once Japan gets the rubber you get the problem that it now needs to be convoyed and the game absolutely refuses to allow you to convoy it to Vladivostok. .

I don't have a problem shipping from Japan that way:
{ "lightbox_close": "Close", "lightbox_next": "Next", "lightbox_previous": "Previous", "lightbox_error": "The requested content cannot be loaded. Please try again later.", "lightbox_start_slideshow": "Start slideshow", "lightbox_stop_slideshow": "Stop slideshow", "lightbox_full_screen": "Full screen", "lightbox_thumbnails": "Thumbnails", "lightbox_download": "Download", "lightbox_share": "Share", "lightbox_zoom": "Zoom", "lightbox_new_window": "New window", "lightbox_toggle_sidebar": "Toggle sidebar" } That steel I'm importing from Japan is going from the Home Islands to my port right there. I c... Read more

While AA in both divisions and at the state level is a solid investment in many cases, I am not sure a "no air" Soviet build is worthwhile in the current build. Others have noted a bunch of issues, but let me break it down my way. 1) AA guns are cheaper than planes in both cost and resources. You can easily spam both support AA and line AA in your divisions just using steel. You can produce AA guns from day 1, and even though Tier 1 AA guns aren't as good as the Tier 2 guns you can get in 1939-1940, they are still solid., 2) State AA is more expensive than just spamming AA guns for divisions, but you really need it to deter LOG strikes and strategic bombing. Note that strategic bombing isn't just about factories, but STRs can bomb forts, railways, infrastructure, and other state level stuff. Once built, state level AA is permanent. It can be bombed, but it will repair itself over time like all other buildings even with no factories dedicated to repair... Read more

blahmaster6k said: How do you actually do this? Every time I try to block sea zones around Europe as another country to trade with the USSR via the Pacific the game just says there's no trade route.

No, I mean a human Soviet Union can do that. Obviously, with an AI Soviet Union, you're out of luck.   Read more

Simon_9732495 said: And a problem is, if you are actually fighting a war you get punished for being good. If you make a quick clean cut capitulation maybe with collaboration before and risky snakes you get almost no XP. If you go for stupid grinding, attacking into detrimental terrain, dont win a early war too fast and so on, you can grind XP.

But the flip side is why this exists in the first place. The Devs want countries to be able to learn from less than stellar performance to catch up to or overtake winners. So, Germany gets a ton of doctrine reductions and lots of early XP, but "rests on her laurels" if you play her too well in the lead up to Barbarossa. On the other hand, the Soviets may sit there with their black holes of XP (increased costs for doctrines, nerfs to XP generation, and so on), but if they can stay in the fight, all that mediocre fighting generates the XP the motherland needs to... Read more