HOI2 -- Wow..

[Wiglaf]

Um...i read the manual and played the HO2 tutorials but I just don't get how to play this game.

I started playing one of the big WW2 scenarios. I know, i'm supposed to start small but I wanted to try it.

I get a million popups about political influence. Okay, disregard. Now I notice I can't see anywhere in the world but the US. That's a bit disconcerting. I send a spy, he's caught, oh well.

Now I'm trying to get some units over there. I send my fleets over to Pearl Harbor. I have no idea how to send them anywhere else, especially the Europoean theater, since I don't have naval bases over there (or do I?)

I'm also confused about combat. How do you know when you'll probably win? In Civ4 you get a percentage chance. Here I have absolutely no clue how to predict a battle's outcome. In some smaller scenarios I played, battles kept popping up and I couldn't even see where they were without clicking the Battles tab.

In short I am completely overwhelmed. Have no clue what to do in this or any scenario. Game has terrible documentation. Any advice?

[Main_Brain]

Start with Germany and not US.
gtg sorry, will post more after work (If I remember this Topic )

[Ecthy]

Starting a WWII game with playing the US

[Wiglaf]

Er, what's the problem..?

[RGBVideo]

Don't start playing with USA. Give up your current game, play through all the tutorials, it should take only like 40 minutes total and is relatively fun. If you MUST have to try the grand campaign first, pick up Germany or USSR; they both have land-based armed forces. Remember that you have to declare war on a nation from the main diplomacy menu before you can attack it.

I've turned almost all the pop-ups off, you can do it like this: when a pop-up comes up, right-click anywhere in it, and select "don't display this type of messages anymore" or one of the other options.

Here I have absolutely no clue how to predict a battle's outcome.

Well, if you have good techs and a good intelligence minister, you can look how many divisions they have on an army, then compare it on the division amount of your army.

If you turn on "counters" from main menu options, you can see the rough division strength of an army from the number of X's it has near the top of it's square (XX = 1 division, XXX = 2-9 div. XXXX = >9 div. or something like that).

Then there are things like the tech levels (1936 infantry is much stronger than '18 infantry; they're both techs you can invent from the technology menu), province terrain (woods and hill boost defenders, mud is Bad for armored divisions), weather (rain and snow hurt attackers), time of day (night usually means that neither side can hurt each other much), et cetera... like I said, it's best to play the tutorials through first. Please don't give up, the learning curve isn't really that steep, you just have to spend the half an hour learning with tutorials. This game is great in multiplayer.

[Ecthy]

Start playing as Red China.

[Wiglaf]

well like I said I did the tutorials but still don't understand a lot of basic concepts. such as production, what the difference is between the units, what techs to look for (the tutorial was literally "research is important" ) or anything about diplomacy/deals...if there's a billion countries, and there are, how do I know what to ask for, and from whom...there's just so many to ask.

So i started playing as germany. Ok, I've got these nice alliances and a sub fleet. I set him to "intercept convoy." Because that's what u-boats did, not because I know what that'll do in the game. All I'm really doing is moving my little guys around and approximating unit sizes (ie, if they have 5 infantry divisions, i wont attack with 4) to determine whether or not to launch an attack.

then i check my air planes. wow, i've got a lot, and issuing orders to entire divisions of them doesn't seem possible. i also have plenty of ships but I'm not sure what to do with them either.

ugh.

is the doomsday manual, which I have, worse or the saem as the HOI2 vanilla one?

[Nikolai]

No Paradox manual is any good. The games though is superb mosyly.

But what you really should do is to visit the official forums and use the HoI2 wiki.

[Ecthy]

Wiglaf, if I can give you just one hint: win that bloody war...

[Dinner]

The tutorials basically show you everything you need to know and the rest you can learn on the fly. Right click is your friend when building infastructure, factories, or other provience improvements. The rest is done from the build menu. The sliders should be self explanitory while you can see what your combat modifiers are by looking at the information screen in the upper right most tab.

To see what other people have you will have to send out spies so you can figure it out. For the rest read the HOI2 wiki.