The ingame tutorial is funny, the text, but not really helpful in how to use the GUI.

Most user made video tutorials are click-fests and even in slow motion I did not figure out yet how to link divisions to corps to army to army groups to theaters when deploying units.

I played around a little with technology, this seems straight forward.
The trading seems straight forward.
Diplomacy, I never managed to create a puppet state in HOI1 or HOI2 no idea how this works. Only annexation worked for me so far. I really want to learn here on how to peacefully expand the country.

Using a custom game I learned how to delete troops and also just found out to click the BUILD button, which lets you rebuild disbanded divisions. Later this afternoon I may then finally know how to use things.

Battle Plans, are they actual used by AI controlled HQs or are they just for myself to look at?

p.s. or if you know a good source for a tutorial, let me know :)
I will today read the full manual...

Ahhh A2.3 Sprites or Counters, I was wondering why I do not see the units any more...
I was also wondering why the units disappear when you zoom out just far enough to see the whole country. This used to be better in HOI2 and HOI1. So it is wise to build land fortifications only, because they also protect the coast?

How do one increase the threat level with another nation to be able to do hostile diplomacy stuff? Send spies and make them do things in hope they are detected? Embargo?

Expedition forces can only be send to allies and you cannot control them yourself in HOI3?

In HOI1 I could send expedition forces to China and Spain without being allied, after a while they returned.
In HOI2 I couldn't send expedition forces at all to them, because we weren't allied.
I saw a Lets Play of HOI4 where the player sent expedition forces to Spain during the uprising of the Republicans and was able to control them himself, the same with China against Japan. He wasn't allied with either of them and could control the units in their countries himself, which is great to level up their commanders while your own country stays out of war before 1940.

If you Control another country, you may Release that country by clicking “Create Puppet” in the Politics Interface. This creates an “independently” governed country in its own territory, but one which is largely controlled by your country – it is an Ally, and allows you Transit Rights through its country. Its foreign policy is yours.

Units have a 30-day reserve of Supplies, which may become exhausted if the unit is constantly running ahead of its supplies. You only need convoys for overseas, not for land supplies.

page 54 movement...

p.s. still doing clusterf***

To be honest, the troops and game goes way out of control if you tick anything AI.

still testing...

In HOI2 it was nice with the production sliders AI controlled, you said I want production and it made sure there is always just enough while distributing the rest of the IC to 100% onto other things. This is also useful because the manual control of the sliders is terrible with the gui.

In HOI3 you can only give AI full control, including production chains, or no AI control.

I tried hard to create a full command chain for the troops and give the theatre the front line in the east for example, hit AI controlled and it will move all sorts of divisions around.
New units requested by the theatre, if built, are not integrated in the command chain, but are all directly attached to the theatre.

Several theatres couldn't be used later on when the front moved, it said it is outside of its command area or something and literaly becomes useless, I had to detach all the korps, armys, divisions and attach them to still working theares. This was when I fought Japan and they drove me way back into the motherland, the Far East Theatre refused to defend or do anything after a while.

There was one really working well threatre in the east, I could assign a new front line and it would send all the troops exactly where I wanted them, holding the line, requesting new units, sending them to the front, recapturing areas. If I set the front line into the areas of Germany, it would even attack.
This one had all units directly attached to it and worked brilliant.

Another worked well, which I used in the east to replace the non-functional Far-East-Theatre. I dissolved as much as possible in the Far-East-Theatre, assigned the units directly to this other one without command chain, which started near Moskau and set the front line directly at the coast to Japan with the order to defend, when Japan was already very close to the Lena. It took its troops and marched east, recapturing lost provinces.

This makes me believe, the less command chain you have, the better the AI works. A full command chain renders the AI non-functional.

An HQ may have a maximum of 5 Land Units attached to it.
If it is eligible for
Reinforcements, it will grow in Strength to a maximum of 3,000 men.

OK! The initial theatres are set to a location. If you want to move them, you need to have them on AI, use the assign new objectives button, then draw a rectangle around the new location by holding the left mouse button the theatre should operate in (roughly 4000km maximum side length as 2000km is the max radio length for a theatre).
Now you can set objectives in the new area as usual with right click and the theatre will behave.

If I look at the ai scripts, there are three functions called by the executable to run in ai_production_minister.lua. The GUI however only lets you set AI controlled or not, meaning it will run all three of them or none.

-- ###################################
-- # Main Method called by the EXE
-- #####################################
function BalanceProductionSliders(ai, ministerCountry, prioSelection, vLendLease, vConsumer, vProduction, vSupply, vReinforce, vUpgrade, bHasReinforceBonus)

-- ###################################
-- # Main Method called by the EXE
-- #####################################
function BalanceLendLeaseSliders(ai, ministerCountry, countryTags, values)

-- ###################################
-- # Main Method called by the EXE
-- #####################################
function ProductionMinister_Tick(minister)

I believe, if I just empty the functions for lease and production, only leaving the BalanceProdcutionSliders, this will render the AI controlled countries inflexible or are those scripts only run for the player owned countries?

I may wrap this around the code in ProductionMinister_Tick(minister) function:
If not CCurrentGameState.GetPlayer() == ProductionData.ministerCountry then
<Minister_Stuff>
end

p.s. the build buttons are blocked in the production windows if AI is enabled...

pps. nope, has no impact...

It is possible to let the AI only adjust the sliders! Beneath the normal bigger slider on the right for "AI Controller" or "Manual" is another smaller slider which you can change if you have the bigger slider on "Manual". You can set priority production, upgrades etc. or manual as well.

A really annoying thing:

You cannot annex territories but only countries.

You cannot annex puppets of other countries or any country part of the other factions, if you start war or invade a country of another faction you will be at war until the end of the game and cannot annex that country. They will have a government in exile forever.

Occupied countries will always have partisans and from time to time spawn troops from within you have to fight, annexed countries do not after a while and become fully part of your country.

You cannot open diplomacy channels with the other factions to make peace or trade countries/territory.

The AI controlled countries can annex anything, even small territories.

In 1936, I declared war towards Persia and set my war goal to "Erobern" (occupy and claim?) After successfully reaching enough victory points, the country fully became part of Soviet Union.

In 1937, I declared war towards Iraq, invaded and could not set the goal "Erobern". After successfully occupying all its territories nothing happened. I can set a different occupation law, which reduces the chance of partisans, but they still spawn troops from time to time and try to fight me.
It was not shown as puppet of Great Britain when I started the war, then at some stage it did and then I was at war with the rest of the world (Allies). I cannot trade or do anything with Great Britain or Iraq.

Great Britain once claimed a single small territory of Persia, which was already part of the Soviet Union, and it was nearly immediately became part of Great Britain (with Persia claiming it). I then took it back and it then became Soviet Union again.

Saudi Arabia became part of the communist states and I occupy Iraq, Syria, Israel, Oman, Jemen, Jordania and Palestina with no chance of annexing any of those and permanent partisans spawning. We are fighting Great Britain in India and Africa, how the hell am I supposed to occupy whole continents without permanent installing a government which supports the communists or annex the area to not have partisans?
In the north Germany (Axis) starts to make trouble and will eventual start a war as well...

What happens if I invade and occupy the british and french territories in Europe, would this end the war or let me annex/free their colonies?


pps. OK! The war goal "Kommunismus einfuehren" (induce communism) stands for annexing the whole country and its colonies. This works even with allies.
I invaded the UK islands in Europe until they surrendered and bang everything Britain owned became part of the soviet union.
Next is USA... it kind of bothers me that Germany (Axis) keeps invading countries next to me. They captured Ireland when I captured UK and they are now invading Canada while I invade the USA.

What works well for me:

1. create one Division
2. create a higher command (Korps)
3. on that Korps, create a higher command (Army)
4. on that Army create a higher command (Army Group)
5. on that Army Group, create a higher command (Theatre)
6. disband all lower command than the Theatre.
7. assign the Division directly to the Theare
8. open the Theatre and assign it a region it should operate in by clicking the objective button and then draw squares around the areas, it will change to the colour of the threare if more than one are around (i.e. Europe/Northamerica/Southamerica etc.)
9. enable AI on the theatre
10. enjoy and concentrate on diplomacy for example.

It will autodetect the front lines and fight any bordering enemy country, it will put troops at strategic points or resources and it will request more troops if needed. In the production screen, you will see what each theatre requests and you can build/autodeploy those.

To fine tune, you can exchange the leader of the theatre or set single objectives manually to invade another country overseas for example. It will then build an invasion army and usually use marines (not paratroopers) to attack a port, then send supplies and the third wave are tanks (this often needs manual player air-support or it fails).
If you later then want to move a theatre overseas after or during the invasion, disable its AI, load it onto a transporter and tell the transporter to move to the destination.

Why no korps, army, army group in between?
I know you can micromanage the shit out of it if you want and this is great, but I only do this if needed. If you have other commands in between the theatre and the division, it sometimes behaves weird. It would for example station the Korps HQ in northern Europe and the Division south, forfeiting the purpose of the leader boni given by the Korps HQ, because the distance is too great.

I do often manually control the fighters and bombers, because in an attack the AI would not use them enough. Usually ~20 fighters and bombers I manually use to keep the air clear and the bombers attack ground targets, supporting the advance. They are also great to watch occupied territory if not needed for anything else.

Often I use manually transporter ships or manually set up a patrol on sea.

At the moment I have theatres for Northern America, Europe, Moskau, Orient, India, Asia, Far East, South America, Africa and Australia. I also have a couple of special forces and air-support I use.

And I found another button on the theatre, which lets the AI organise subcommands! Now it will not make weird decisions with armies beneath it in the organisation... it is on the opposite side of the AI-controlled button.