HOI military strategy question

[Sava]

What are the best ways to schedule invasions? The tutorial showed me that I should airstrike an hour before a blitz, then a troop invasion an hour after a blitz. I still am quite a n00b at this game. What are the best ways to take territory? How should I schedule invasions? What ratio of troops/tanks/planes should I have to enemy troops? When I blitz, where should I breakthrough to? Should I airstrike, before, after, or during invasions? Or during all three?

please help! thx!

[ZargonX]

Airstriking immediately before an invasion is always good, as it softens up the troops. I think sunrise airstrikes are also more effective, but I might be wrong on that one. Also, scheduling simultaneous attacks from different directions gives you a very strong attack advantage, so if you can, do it.

[Uberslacker]

I'm going to try and answer your question on division ratios.
What you attack with should depend on what they have. If they have a lot of tanks, you need lots of hard attack. A lot of fighters and tactical bombers means you want air defence/ attack etc.
You can make do with simply rolling over them with as many divisions as you can get there, but this is inefficient and will only work if you outnumber them horribly on some difficulty levels.
Sometimes of course you simply won't have the units you need and you'll have to make do.
The techs that give you better intel as to what future (or current) enemies have are very useful in planning your military composition.
Because of the build times you really have to plan ahead. As well as matching your strengths to their strengths, you can (and should) exploit their weaknesses. An enemy that has mainly infantry is just asking for a bunch of tank divisions supported by mech infantry and dive bombers to roll over them while your infantry follows up to occupy the new territory.
(Can anyone spot the country I usually play.)
Again of course, what you build should also depend on what tech you have and what resources you have. If you have no tank techs worth a damn be wary of building too many of them.
This means then, that the tech choices you make at the start of your game reverberate throughout the game. You should really be planning your wars (assuming of course you're a war-mongering bastard), for quite a while before the actual fighting starts.
You also have to keep in mind any friends your proposed target may have. You may need units on the other side of your territory to defend against an attack from France once you start rolling over Poland.
How big is your front going to be? Attacking Russia (from Germany of course) requires a lot of units to keep your line unbroken. Attacking smaller nations (like Belgium) is a lot easier, not only because they (usually) won't have much units to stop your bullets from hitting the ground, but they won't have any units spare to try and break through your lines and start chwing up your home ground. The Russians do have enough units for that sort of gear, and if General Zhukov is around the bastard will try it.
Why are you fighting this war? Are you trying to capture some resources? Own a new country outright? Get some of your own stuff back?
If you just want some key resources and terriotories, then grab as many provinces you need to get them. It sounds obvious but you don;t want to over extend beyonf what you feel you actually need.
If you want to take out the whole country and annex it, then you need Victory Points. To annex a country you need to hold all the victory point locations and the capital. Take a look at where all these places are, you may not have to go very far into a country to achieve this.
Be aware that places like the UK have victory point provinces all over the place and are right bastards to annex. (But very satisfying once you do). Saudi Arabia has one Victory Point province, make a bead for it and you're done. Click on the Diplomacy icon in the top right of teh screen and select Annex. The country's military disappears completely, all the territories become yours, and some of your forces will be strategically redeployed.
Note that under thew 1.03b patch, you get a fraction of the actual IC production from a captured or annexed province. (You get more from an annexed province).

I hope this has helped you in some way, answered some of your questions. If not, I apologise for the fairly long post.

[Garth Vader]

To add to that, also note the terrain. Tanks in the mountains are not good for example.

I used to schedule things like the manual said, but I have since stopped using the blitz function, it's just as easy to move the tanks after the battle.

Now I just try to have a good mix, and make sure everything gets there as close to the same time as possible.

[ravagon]

Another point about airstrikes. Don't count on them. Particularly at the last minute.
The weather has a nasty habit of doing just the wrong thing just when you don't want it to.
Several airstikes the day before (when its not raining?) do just as much good and are more reliable.
As well as attacking from different directions - send one of your small forces in with a "feint" class attack. Logically this should work better with armour/mech or motorised/cav - something fast anyway, but I don't know if the game engine assesses such factors... ?

[Sava]

thanks for the help guys, I'll put your advice to good use.

One other question, say I've taken care of most of Europe with Germany. Is it worth taking over Italy or just keeping them as allies?

[Nikolai]

Regarding VPs, I think it isn't worth it. But I have never tried to do it anyway. Can you do it at all by the way? I haven't seen any option doing it...

[Sava]

VP?

[Nikolai]

Victory Points.

[Sava]

I don't care about VP's... I just want to conquer the world

[Nikolai]

I agree on your view of VP, but I for one don't like WC.