Hearts of Iron 4 guides and tips Contents Abstract and Sources .............................................................................................................................. 4 Authors: .............................................................................................................................................. 4 Over 200 tips for new players ................................................................................................................. 5 Focus tree:........................................................................................................................................... 5 Research:............................................................................................................................................. 5 Diplomacy: .......................................................................................................................................... 7 Trade: .................................................................................................................................................. 7 Construction:....................................................................................................................................... 7 Battleplans: ....................................................................................................................................... 12 Airforce: ............................................................................................................................................ 13 Naval Invasions: ................................................................................................................................ 16 General tips: ...................................................................................................................................... 17 Beginner's Guide to Unit Types & Division Design................................................................................ 17 Abbreviations: ................................................................................................................................... 17 General Unit description ................................................................................................................... 17 Division Design Notes: ...................................................................................................................... 19 Example Division Designs:................................................................................................................. 20 Basic Main Combat Infantry:......................................................................................................... 20 Intermediate Main Combat Infantry:............................................................................................ 20 Deluxe Main Combat Infantry Division: ........................................................................................ 20 XL Deluxe Main Combat Infantry Division: ................................................................................... 20 Mass Assault Division: ................................................................................................................... 20 Artillery Division: ........................................................................................................................... 20 Anti-Tank Division: ........................................................................................................................ 21 Anti-Air Division: ........................................................................................................................... 21 Armored Spearhead: ..................................................................................................................... 21 Assault Gun Division: .................................................................................................................... 21 Mixed Armor Division: .................................................................................................................. 21 Motorized Division: ....................................................................................................................... 21 Security Division: ........................................................................................................................... 21 Garrison Division: .......................................................................................................................... 21
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Beginner's Guide to Doctrines .............................................................................................................. 22 Land Doctrines: ................................................................................................................................. 22 Blitzkrieg........................................................................................................................................ 22 Superior Firepower ....................................................................................................................... 22 Grand Battleplan ........................................................................................................................... 23 Mass Assault ................................................................................................................................. 23 Summary land doctrines ............................................................................................................... 24 Naval Doctrines: ................................................................................................................................ 24 Fleet in Being................................................................................................................................. 24 Trade Interdiction ......................................................................................................................... 25 Base Strike ..................................................................................................................................... 25 Summary naval doctrines ............................................................................................................. 25 Air Doctrines ..................................................................................................................................... 25 Strategic Destruction .................................................................................................................... 25 Battlefield Support ........................................................................................................................ 25 Operational Integrity..................................................................................................................... 26 Summary air doctrines .................................................................................................................. 26 Air Mechanics/Combat/Mission "Quick" Guide ................................................................................... 26 Attrition............................................................................................................................................. 27 Weather ............................................................................................................................................ 28 Air Coverage (A.K.A how range is Killing You .................................................................................... 29 Air Superiority ................................................................................................................................... 29 Missions (General information) ........................................................................................................ 29 CAS MISSION. (Close air support and Tactical Bomber) ................................................................... 30 Air Superiority/Interception.............................................................................................................. 32 AIR SUPERIORITY/INTERCEPTION ORGANIZATION ........................................................................... 33 Fighter Hunt on Home Regions (include sea regions close to home) → .......................................... 34 (Air superiority). ................................................................................................................................ 34 Bomber Hunt on Home Regions (Air interception) → ...................................................................... 35 Escort Mission (air superiority on enemy territory)→ ...................................................................... 35 Fighter hunt on enemy regions (Air superiority or bomb interception on enemy territory but no allied bombers to defend) → ............................................................................................................ 36 Doctrines: All doctrines also improve both missions. Some more than others. Operational integrity is clearly the best air superiority and interception doctrine. ........................................................... 36
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Strategic destruction: .................................................................................................................... 36 Battlefield Support: ....................................................................................................................... 36 Operational Integrity: ................................................................................................................... 36 How to compare Stats and hidden combat Bonus ........................................................................... 36 Plane analysis + Variants ................................................................................................................... 37 Close air Support. .......................................................................................................................... 38 CAS Variants options ..................................................................................................................... 38 Fighter → The king of the air. ....................................................................................................... 38 Fighter Variants recommendations. ............................................................................................. 39 Naval Bomber................................................................................................................................ 39 Naval Bomber Variant Recommendations.................................................................................... 40 Heavy fighter ................................................................................................................................. 40 Heavy fighter Variant Recommendations ..................................................................................... 40 Tactical Bomber ............................................................................................................................ 40 Tactical Bomber Variant recommendation ................................................................................... 41 Strategic bombers ......................................................................................................................... 41 Variants Strategic Bombers........................................................................................................... 41
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Abstract and Sources This document is a summary of the work of two people summarizing their work and give a better overview with a table of content to jump easily to the sections you are interested in. Also it’s good for printing and putting the papers next to you, when playing HOI4
Authors: Over 200 tips for new players https://www.reddit.com/r/hoi4/comments/4ndo2o/over_200_tips_for_new_players/ Written by user Emnel (https://www.reddit.com/user/Emnel) https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?members/emnel.488385/
Beginner's Guide to Unit Types & Division Design https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/beginners-guide-to-unit-types-divisiondesign.942449/ Beginner's Guide to Doctrines https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/beginners-guide-to-doctrines.942522/ Both written by user GAGA Extrem https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?members/gaga-extrem.26939/
Air Mechanics/Combat/Mission "Quick" Guide https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/air-mechanics-combat-mission-quickguide.947290/ Written by user sterrius https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?members/sterrius.132453/
Owner of this document: myself (XTC0r @ paradox int. forum) https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?members/xtc0r.1095270/
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Over 200 tips for new players Focus tree:
Almost all focus unlocks take 70 days. Use that to plan a "build" for a few years forward.
At the beginning try to get ones that give you extra research slots as well as free civilian and military factories.
Civilian factories are more important, unless you plan on going to war very early (like Japan).
Civilian and Military Factory focuses are extremely important for minor nations. Can't stress it enough.
Unlocks that allow you to peacefully annex a country are even better - usually provide more factories of both types.
Democracies such as UK or USA have some focuses gated behind the World Tension requirements.
Fascist focus for nations using generic focus tree grants up to 7% of recruitable population. That's huge.
One-time research bonuses from focus tree won't be consumed by already active research.
Dotted line means that you need either of the prerequisite unlocks.
Green arrows with a red exclamation mark between them mean that those unlocks are mutually exclusive.
If in doubt read the damn tool-tips. They are actually quite good.
You can click on a focus to find more information along with some flavor text.
Research:
Different nations start with different techs unlocked.
Try to not research things ahead of time.
Especially more than 6 months ahead of time.
Some focuses will remove the ahead of time penalty.
50% research bonus may make ahead of time research worth it, especially for important equipment models such as planes, ships or tanks.
You can stock up on up to 30 days of research before it goes to waste.
Always try to keep your electronic and industrial bonuses up to date.
Concentrated Industry is almost always better.
Don't ignore Encryption and Decryption. Side with decryption advantage gains combat bonus in all land battles.
Doctrines, especially land ones, grant very powerful bonuses and aren't limited by years. It's good to keep researching them whenever we can.
Mobile Warfare doctrine is best suited for farly open terrain and countries with powerful industrial base since it focuses on both motorized infantry and tanks.
Superior Firepower is best suited for more difficult terrain, countries will not-limitless manpower pool and not too powerful industry. It focuses on infantry warfare with heavy artillery support.
Grand Battleplan doctrine is most general one with bonuses useful for all types of forces as well as powerful increase in planning bonuses. Safe, but not very focused choice for most nations. Additional points if you want to utilized AI control of your armies a lot.
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Mass Assault land doctrine can provide massive manpower bonuses on top of great for the wide range of units, but mostly infantry. It is a good choice both for nations who have deep manpower pool but weak industry, but also for minor nations who would otherwise struggle with low manpower.
You can only follow one of the doctrines. Attempting to research a different one will remove all the progress from the one you followed before.
All of the Land Doctrine side paths are mutually exclusive. You can change them later but will lose all the techs from other branch.
Not all paths in Naval and Air doctrines are mutually exclusive. Look for dark gray squares with arrows.
For Air and Naval doctrines see their respective sections.
Naval Invasion technologies can be found on the very bottom of the Naval tree, below battleships, carriers and submarines.
That small icon in the top right corner of an aircraft research allows you to research a carrier version of it.
Carrier versions of the planes are more expensive to build and are weaker.
Similar icon with the red rocket on the Motorized unlock in the Infantry tab allows you to research Motorized Rocket Artillery.
You don't need to have standard Rocket Artillery unlocked to research and use a motorized version.
Each unlocked tack chassis allows you to research a Self-propelled (SP) anti tank, artillery or anti-air vehicle based on that chassis.
They are usually more expensive to build, but more powerful that the towed versions.
Production cost is, on top of required resources, a good indicator how expensive certain equipment is.
Researching a new type of basic land unit (tanks, motorized infantry, marines, paratroopers, mountaineers) will give you a division template utilizing that unit.
If you research tanks before mechanized infantry your tank division template will have standard leg infantry.
When choosing what and when to research keep in mind that it takes months before new equipment or kind of unit reaches front lines in amounts that can make a difference, while passive bonuses are applied instantly. Laws and government:
On normal difficulty you will gather 1 political power per day (2, but 1 is always paid for your focus).
Most of the changes to your laws and government cost 150 PP.
Communists and Fascists can switch to War Economy at any time. You should do that using your 1st 150 Political Power.
Most of the other nations can switch to Partial Mobilization as soon as world tension reaches 15%. It is also a very good idea to do it asap.
Total Mobilization cuts you recruitable population by 3%. That's a lot. Be careful.
Increasing conscription laws will add people to your manpower in an instant. No need to increase those laws before it's absolutely necessary.
Trade laws allow you to sacrifice % of your resources for industrial an research bonuses.
You will NOT have access to those resources even if no one will buy them.
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Theorists allow you to research doctrines faster and provide minor experience income. Some of them may be quite expensive.
IF you have access to advisors that increase the speed of your civilian and military factory production they are a very good early choices.
So is advisor that increases your Political Power gain by 15%, but keep in mind that he needs 500 days to even pay for himself.
Design company bonus is applied then research FINISHES. It isn't important if you had a designed factory chosen when research started.
If you have enough PP it may be a good idea to keep switching them around for major researches.
Diplomacy:
Coming SoonTM.
Trade:
You have no control over the amount of your resources set aside by your trade laws. You won't have access to them no matter if anyone actually buys them.
You can buy 8 units of any resource per civilian factory used for trade.
Trade can be canceled instantly. You factories will be back constructing your buildings.
Countries you are at war with won't trade with you.
Countries will sell their resources to those who have highest trade influence over them.
Try not to buy less than 8 resources/factory. Especially early on.
If other countries actually buy resources that you export you will "get" the civilian factories they spend. Hover over "Exported: x"sections to see if anyone is buying.
You only get the civilian factory output if a nation actually buys anything from you. Rest of the "exported" goods are being wasted.
Construction:
Your civilian factories are used to construct all the buildings. That includes your military and civilian factories.
Up to 15 civilian factories can be used to produce one building.
They are assigned automatically from the top to the bottom of your list.
Hover over the progress bar to see details.
% of your civilian factories will be used to produce consumer goods. Those are basically lost to you.
That number is a % of all your factories (civilian + military ones) based on your economy law rounded up. For example if you have 50 civilian and 52 military factories and your economy law is War Economy then 16 of your civilian factories will be used to produce civilian goods (15% out of 102 rounded up). With 50 civilian ones and 52 military ones you're left with 34 civilian factories to do your construction. Now let's assume that you have 20 civilian factories and 82 military ones instead. You still need to use 15% of all those factories for civilian production, so 16 factories, but since you only have 20 that leaves you with just 4 factories to do do all of your constructions.
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Military factories are two times cheaper than civilian ones and they get additional bonuses from economy laws.
Synthetic Factories aren't worth building as long as you can buy oil and rubber since they are more expensive than civilian factories that can be used to buy more of those resources.
Resources produced by Synthetic Factories are affected by both your trade laws and being in occupied provinces. For example if you have a Free Trade policy your Synthetic Factory will only give you 1 Oil and 0 Rubber.
Airbases are really quick to build. Infrastructure and ports, not so much.
Amount of radar and synthetic factories you can build per state is limited by your radar and synthetic industry research. Radar is worth researching if you need it. Synthetics almost never are.
Converting factories to the other type is almost never worth it. Production:
Military factories use Production Efficiency system.
Naval Dockyards don't.
When you switch the production to a different commodity (light tanks to medium tanks, infantry equipment to motorized etc.) your efficiency on that line is reset to 10%.
When you switch to a different level of the same equipment (Infantry Weapons I to Infantry Weapons II, Light tank model 1934 to Light tank model 1936 etc.) you efficiency is cut in half.
You can use experience to create new variants of armored, airborne or naval equipment.
When you switch to a different exp. variant of the same equipment you only lose 10% of the efficiency.
Production Efficiency increases over time.
If you are missing some of the resources needed for production the equipment will still be produced, but slower. Hover over the yellow progress bar to see details.
Production Efficiency increase is also slower.
Support Equipment, Motorized and Convoys never get old. If in doubt produce some of those.
it may not be a bad idea to start producing an older model of an important new equipment that you ar researching to get a some headstart on Prod. Eff.
You can't use exp to modify equipment from Infantry&Artillery tab.
You can still modify Self-Propelled artillery, anti-air and anti-tank pieces. Division design:
Division is made of regiments (columns) that are made of battalions.
You can rename, duplicate and change equipment options of a division for free.
You can also mark those divisions Reserve, Regular or Elite - it affects the order they get their equipment. You can change it at any time for free as well.
There is no way of creating a "blank" division template. All new templates must be created by first duplicating and then changing. Give it a few tries to find a cheapest option for your liking.
Anschluss of Austria gives you their division designs.
Adding or removing a battalion costs 5 army exp.
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Adding a first new type of unit to a division (mobile or tank battalion to an infantry division or an infantry battalion to a tank division) costs 25 army exp. Next ones will cost 5 exp.
Adding or removing a support brigade costs 10 army exp.
Division has a combat width that is a sum of combat widths of all its lane battalions. All anti air and towed anti tank have width of 1, all artillery have width of 3, rest has a width of 2.
Division speed is a speed of the slowest battalion.
Support battalions have no width or speed. That makes support artillery a very good addition to your fast divisions.
Rocket artillery is a bit more offensively oriented than a standard one but their specific performance will depend on your techs.
Anti-air doesn't seem to be worth it at all.
Organization of the division is an average of the organization of all its parts.
Artillery, tanks and support battalions have very low organization making use of enough infantry battalions necessary.
9999/10000 of the battles are lost because one side ran out of organization.
Higher the hardness the better (unless enemy is actively spamming anti-tank guns or something).
If armor of a division is higher than piercing of the division it is fighting it will not only receive 50% less damage but it will also deal 50% more.
Recon and Engineer supports are worth it for almost every combat division.
Logistic company is also great, especially if you are fighting in a difficult, infrastructure-less terrain.
Field Hospitals are excellent choice if you are afraid of running out of manpower.
Combat Width in every province is equal to 80 + 20 per number of angles of attack if there is more than 1.
For that reason you should aim for divisions of with combat width of 20, or even 10.
I find divisions with strength around 10 a step too far. The organization hit from and a cost of support battalions is too high, unless you counteract it with very specific doctrines.
There are very few advantages to having really big divisions.
If they are to be used in Army Group under command od Field Marshal with "Offensive Doctrine" ability (10% combat width) then you can go for 22 and 11.
Optimal division designs depend on your chosen doctrines,c enemies you're facing and the terrain you're fighting in.
You won't need anti-tank fighting China in 1937, but should probably get some against Germany in 1940.
Tanks won't achieve much in Iran or western China, but will shine in European Soviet union. Against comparable enemy that is.
Good basic infantry division is made of 7 infantry battalions and 2 artillery battalions. (or 8 infantry if going for 22).
Good enough Marine/Mountaineer divisions are the same as Infantry ones, but with those types of infantry instead.
Very light infantry divisions (5/6 battalions with support artiller, recon and engineers) have their uses too, especially in difficult terrain.
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Tanks need infantry in their divisions to counteract their very low organization.
Decent early game tank division consists of 4 tank battalions and 2 motorized infantry.
Later on you can add another mot. infantry battalion and 2 self-propelled or motorized artillery units to get to the width of 20.
Once you unlock mechanized infantry you can replace your motorized units with it where they won't negatively affect the division's speed.
Motorized infantry division is a good, cheaper fast alternative to panzer divisions with less severe terrain penalties.
Later you can try replacing some of your regular infantry with mechanized units.
The more production-intensive, technologically advanced and equiped your army is the lower will be your losses. Mechanized divisions with a lot of heavy aritllery or heavy panzer divisions will take a fraction of casulties standard infantry division would take on the offensive.
Try to adjust your strategy to the capabilities of both your industry and manpower pool.
Early on it should simply consist of desired amount of Mot. Infantry battalions, but later you may want to add a few self-propelled or motorized artillery battalions to mirror Infantry Division setups.
Speed is often a better firepower than firepower itself.
Cavalry has twice the suppression of infantry. It is the best kind of unit for your policing needs.
Good military police divisions should consist of 6 cavalry battalions. Later add a Military Police support battalion, but don't sweat it. Unless you have half of Europe under occupation basic cav will do just fine.
Do not ignore the resistance, it will wreck your infrastructure and factories, disrupt your supply flow and so on.
Police divisions aren't supposed to fight. Don't wait for them to be fully trained, just deploy them as soon as they are 20% done.
Freshly recruited divisions will have an experienced level of "Trained", unless it was deployed earlier.
Divisions that don't have enough experience to reach "trained" are considered "Green" and suffer -25% penalty in combat.
You can exercise your divisions further till they reach next experience level of "regular" granting them +25% combat bonus.
Performing exercise costs equipment (equal to 6% attrition) and lowers your organization to 15% of max value.
It also provides you army experience.
It is better to go to war with "trained" but equipped army than with "Regular" that is lacking supply. Do not exercise more than your military production allows.
Adding new units to the divisions (for example by adding new battalions to existing division designs) will lower the training level of your divisions.
It is better for your troops to have 1 less artillery battalion than to go to war as "Green".
You can duplicate your division designs to be able to produce slightly upgraded versions of ones you have without dipping those already in the filed and fighting into "Green" territory. You upgrade those later.
If you have ports or coastlines that are prone to being naval invaded you may want to create dedicated garrison units.
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Dedicated "garrison units" (not to confuse with garrisoning order) don't have to be limited to 20 width, since they are meant to fight alone. Stick some more infantry and artillery in them and an engineer support and you have a cheap, powerful unit. Unlike the police units you want them to be fully trained.
I prefer sticking such dedicated "garrison units" into ports by using s series of mall fallback lines". That makes sure that all of those places are well defended. AI would attempt to do that if you were to use a garrison order, but they sometimes fail. You would also need kore such divisions, since they also garrison major inland cities.
Breakthrough is a defense stat used when your divisions are attacking. Defense is a defensive stat used when they are defending.
Infantry tends to have much higher defense than breakthrough. Tanks have it the other way around. Land combat:
Hover over combat stats of your and enemy's divisions. They will provide an amazing amount of useful information. Really. Keep doing that. Especially if you're losing.
Organization is binary. If you have some you fight at your max effectiveness. If you don't then you don't fight.
Divisions strength actually affects your combat stats - it is a representation of the % of available manpower and equipment.
Both defensive stats (Defense or Breakthrough, see above) only need to be equal to enemy attack stat after all modifiers are applied. All the enemy attacks in the battle up to the level of the defensive stat have 10% chance of inflicting damage. Once all of the defense is used up the rest of the attacks have 40% chance to harm.
For example if attacking infantry unit unit has 40 Breakthrough and the defenders have 60 soft attack then 10% of the 40 attack will do damage, but 20 that is left unchallenged will harm 40% of the time.
You units suffer attrition while moving, being out of supply or exercising. It is affected by terrain and weather condition.
Look our for mud. Mud is the most brutal of all terrain/weather modifiers. Do not attack into mud.
Russia has a lot of mud, especially in spring and autumn.
You can order your forces to assist in combat in a neighboring province instead of attacking by Ctrl+rclicking the battle indicator on the map. They won't advance into that province after the battle is won.
Make sure supplies are reaching your troops (press F4 to see the map). Lack of them will devastate your troops' performance.
Units that are out of supplies for too long will start passively losing organization and will suffer from -33% combat penalty.
Encirclement penalty of -30% is brutal, especially coupled with supply issues.
Having Air Superiority in the Air region (F3) will decrease defenses of enemy forces by up to 50% (!). It also lowers their movement speed by the same amount (!!!).
To achieve full Air Superiority you not only have to have more plains than the enemy, you also need to have enough planes in the region to cover it completely. Hover over that bar under the picture in Air Region screen (F3).
All the planes operation in the region count towards the air superiority.
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Bombers providing air support not only deal damage to enemies in who are fighting battles, but also provide combat bonuses to our troops. They aren't however as big as Air Superiority ones.
Ships anchored in the adjacent sea zone will provide Naval Bombardment penalties of -25% to enemies in shore provinces.
Rivers are no joke. Attacking through a river into mountains or urban areas into entrenched enemy positions is one of the best way of disposing of excessive manpower.
Using division designer learn how your troops are doing in various terrain. For example you shouldn't attempt to perform naval invasions or attack into urban areas with tanks.
Battleplans:
To gain planning bonus your divisions need to stand still at the frontline, while being assigned to attack order.
Planning bonus will slowly fade away while you aren't doing so. Be it if you are fighting, advancing or even standing in the same spot after the plan was deleted.
If you want to fully manually control your troops you should simply delete all the frontlines when you are starting the offensive. Planning bonus won't simply disappear (see above).
You can assign manual orders to units under Ai control. They will override AI ones, but unit will go back doing its thing the second your que-ed up orders are finished. That may mean your panzer divisions 1 provinces deep into enemy territory strategically redeploying to the far end of their frontline 30 provinces away.
If you want to keep one of your armies focused at the certain part of the front for example while advancing you can keep shortening their frontline, while holding Alt.
If you will have a line of frontlines one ending where other starts they will stay clipped like that. It doesn't prevent lines from expanding due to newly acquired territory.
Ctrl+r-click on a frontline or an order selects all the units assigned to it.
Ctrl+clicking on a frontline or an order assigns all selected units to it.
Assigning a unit to an order automatically assigns it to the proper frontline as well. Not the other way around if you have more than one order attached to the frontline.
Division can only be assigned to a single order/frontline.
Ctrl+H unassigns selected units from any orders/frontlines.
"S" is a shortcut for unselecting half of currently selected units. Useful along with those Crtl+key commands for assigning different amounts of divisions to various orders.
By pressing the right facing arrow button on top of your army icon you can activate all the orders for that army.
You can also Shift-click on that button and then on a specific order arrow on the map to activate only that order.
Red square button to the left simply stops all the orders in motion for that army. Tooltip is incorrect.
Red exclamation mark means that the unit is not assigned to any orders or frontlines.
Yellow exclamation mark means that the unit can't for some reason reach the position required of it by an order it is assigned to.
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Units will often bug out and stay in ports with the yellow exclamation mark. You need to manually select them and r-click on a port you want them to move on their way to their objective. They'll figure it out from there.
You can move units overseas by either assigning them to an order there or by moving them to the port and then manually r-clicking the port you want them to sail to. See the bug described above.
Units assigned to an order overseas will go to the nearest port and sail to the port that is nearest their desired position. They will not take the length of sea travel into account. For example Italian unit in Belgium ordered to move to Egypt with Gibraltar blocked will instead of going to the Marseille and catching a boat there embark in Belgium and sail all the way around Africa. Watch out for it.
Garrision order will do an ok-ish job of dealing with resistance, but won't help at all against enemy attack.
Use fallback line orders to establish defensive positions on your borders, shores etc.
You can use a fallback line behind your lines as a rally point for the troops that you're recruiting. Simply draw it and after clicking on that circle left from the location selection bar click on that fallback line. Your troops will go there after spawning. Useful if you are using AI to fight your battles since adding units straight to your fighting forces will confuse the battleplane AI and make your offensives stall.
Full shield indicator means maxed out entrenchment bonus.
Battleplan AI is, in general, way too conservative when on the offensive.
Airforce:
Your bombers can actually defend themselves fairly well, but will operate very rarely and not achieve their actual objective without a fighter coverage.
Air superiority is crucial for both air and land combat.
Enemy bombers need to be detected before they can be intercepted. Detection is provided by radar and planes on air superiority missions.
Unless you really need to kill the members before enemy fighters for some reason you shouldn't really use "Intercept" order and just stick to air superiority on your fighters.
Static air defenses may destroy a few bombers but fighters can kill hundreds of them. If you are in a position to invest in those do it.
Airforces used in Europe in early stages of the war are in a ballpark of 2k fighters and 2-3k bombers for each of major participants.
Agility and Speed are two most important statistics of a fighter.
Only real selling point of Heavy Fighters and Tactical Bombers is their operational range. And even that is not true for all the models. Unless you need that you are better of with Fighters and CAS.
You could strategically bomb, but I'd limit it to such places as Malta or Corsica to get rid of airfields without having to invade.
I don't bother with strategic bombing in single player. Why bomb when you can conquer?
Strategic bombing, however, adds a lot of "war participation" so if you are a minor member of a faction you can try to boost your future gains that way.
Transport planes can't drop supply. Their only point is to drop paratroopers.
Air Superiority gives major penalties to the enemy, but CAS can inflict serious damage and is especially important in difficult battles where your land troops have trouble due to defensive terrain.
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Both Radar and Air Superiority in a region provide Naval Intel.
Naval Strikes are borderline broken, especially since AI seems to almost never place any planes in fully sea Air Zones.
Port Strikes are very powerful too, if you can handle enemy fighters.
Ports are a part of land zones.
If you are unable to win air superiority over the region your ports are in (static AA won't cut it, don't even try. You need fighters.) and you can't face enemy navy in open seas (like, let's say Italy or germany early on) try to evacuate your ships to some distant provinces (be it yours of ally's) where enemy bombers can't reach them.
CAS are actually very effective against enemy ships.
In every Naval Battle non-carrier planes can attack only once upon entering combat. It doesn't matter if battle last an hour or a month. If enemy has only subs your planes won't do a thing.
Carrier planes can be rebased to land airfields if need be.
When starting a campaign you should disband all your airwings and create a new ones. Disbanded planes go back to your reserves.
It is best to keep planes in Airwings of 100. Ace bonuses are tailored for that size and it makes it easy to move them around.
As of today air statistics (Shortcut: L) and Air Doctrine research tab are still a total mess with conflicting tooltips and statistic names as well as contradictory descriptions and so on.
Strategic Destruction air doctrine is best suited for nations with powerful industrial base. It doesn't help you win air superiority but can provide very serious bonuses for already poweful Air Superiority effect. Or it can allow you to flatten enemy industry and infrastructure with a long range strategic bombardment, even without the fighter support.
Battlefield Support doctrine provides a bit more help for your fighters, but focuses on doing damage via combat bombing and Air Support bonuses for your troops. Perfect choice if you simply want to support your land advances and you have the industry to fight for air superiority with sheer numbers.
Operational Integrity is the most well rounded onewith little bit of everything and one that provides best bonuses for your fighters and does it quick-ish. It is by far the best choice for industrial underdogs who want to focus on trying keeping their skies free of enemy bombers and fighters alike. Navy:
Oddly enough all the ships seem to have their place.
Escort/Screens: Destroyers (DD) and Light Cruisers (CL)
Capital ships: Heavy Cruisers (CA), Battlecruisers (BC), Battleships (BB) and Carriers (CV).
It is a good idea to have 3 screen ships for every capital ship in your battle fleet.
On top of regular battle fleets you should use submarine flottillas; patrol fleets with a3-3 CAs/BCs few CLs and a bunch od DDs, as well as anti-submarine forces made of just couple DDs.
Destroyers are the backbone of your fleet. They are cheap, best at dealing with the subs and if enemy fleet runs out of screens of their own they will simply sink their capital ships with torpedoes with minimal loses. Always keep a good screen force.
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Light Cruisers are 3 times as expensive as destroyers, but provide better surface detection allowing you to find enemy navies/convoys faster, have more powerful torpedoes and guns while being almost as fast and slippery. Destroyers are more cost effective but you still want a few CL in your fleet.
Heavy Cruisers and Battlecruisers are fast enough to support your screens in early skirmishes against enemy screens preventing the situations when few dozen destroyers keep killing off your screens few at the time and then disengaging until they have such a screen advantage that they kill the rest and then all of your capitals in the last engagement. Battlecrusiers are significantly more expensive, but have much higher range. Having 2-3 battlecrusiers and a handful of Heavy Cruisers isn't a bad idea even if you re sleeping on Battleships and Carriers.
Battleships provide have the highest damage and HP in the fleet. They aren't fast enough to deal with enemy screen fleets but in actual fleet engagements will provide the highest dps of all the ships. They aren't nearly as affected by weather as carriers. Same goes for Superbattleships.
Carriers can't match the firepower of battleships if all-out naval battle, especially if affected by bad weather or, much worse, enemy brought few land-based airwings to the party, but have nice sustained damage that can chew through enemy ships if they battle isn't too decisive. They can also strike with their aircraft inland, but you've have to have at least a dozen of them to be able to even annoy any of major powers that will have thousands of fighters to fight you with. If forced into firing range of enemy anything they sink like steel planks they are.
Subs are great at raiding convoys (duh!) but can also tear a semi decent fleet apart if it has too few destroyers, or if they get a lucky engagement. In 9/10 engagements destroyers will murder a fleet of subs their size, but that 1/10 times things can go wrong, few DDs sink and subs get to massacre the rest of the fleet with impunity. They are also a major annoyance with when engaged by a bigger fleet will mostly just posture for a few hours and disengage.
If you want to kill of a sub fleet just send a comparable or a bit smaller fleet made of only destroyers. They will engage them and usually die.
Any fleet can operate in 3 regions.
To provide naval bombardment fleet must me anchored (stationary with no order in the zone adjacent to the province you want to support. You need ships with actual shore bombardment stats in it. A few will do.
Each naval doctrine has separate sub-branches providing bonuses for subs and screens respectively.
Fleet in Being doctrine is best suited for powerful traditional navies who want to get decisive battles early on. The escort and sub sub-branches are fairly underwheling tho. You can b-line to the last tech pretty fast and ignore the rest.
Trade Interdiction is one that has most potential. The sum of the buffs it grants make other 2 doctrines pale in comparison. It provides very significant bonuses for all types of ships and should be picked by nations who want to power their way into the naval game and challange established powers with superbuffed screens, carriers and subs, and are willing to pay with a lot of research for it. Or by those who just want to harass the more powerful enemies and do it well.
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Base Strike doctrine focuses on carrier use. Its right sub-branch provides the very best bonuses for carriers and their aircraft hand down. Other two branches are nothing to write home about to put it mildly.
Sortie efficiency (carrier aircraft use in battle) is negatively affected if you operate their fleet in more than 1 region.
When building a carrier you can preselect her planes from the production menu by clicking on a blue plane icon on the carrier order card.
Deck size seems to be the way to go when modifying a carrier.
Naval Invasions:
Naval capacity is simply an amount of divisions you can use in naval invasions at the same time.
Weight of the divisions only affects how many convoys will be used to perform the invasions. That's it. You can invade with naval invasion capacity worth of weight 1 or weight 200 divisions, no problem.
Naval invasion order sometimes refuse to have your divisions assigned. Select the divisions and after manually selecting Divisions Assignment Mode from the bad click on the order's arrow to assign. Do it one division at the time if need be.
You can only perform 1 invasion at the time from each of your ports.
You can select one or more provinces you want you forces to land in. All have to be adjacent to the same naval province. Units will land randomly in those provinces.
You can click on a Naval Invasion order while holding Alt to modify it. Changing the landings does not affect the preparation time. Changing the starting port resets it to 0.
The bigger the invasion the longer it will take to prepare.
You can keep adding divisions to the invasion that is already preparing but it will increase the time needed.
When invading focus on capturing a port asap. Your troops will ran out of supply really fast and without a port those that already landed are doomed. Those that are repelled while performing an attack from the sea will be turned back to the port of origin.
If you established a beachhead you can keep adding divisions to that order (as long as less than your capacity are at sea) and they will instantly embark from the origin port and sail to reinforce said beachhead.
If you have a port, however, you can just transfer your troops there by normal means.
To execute the invasion order you need to have bot an intel or at least neutral naval supremacy in all the regions en route. Intel can be provided by either radar, planes (a lot of them) or ships on one of the orders in the zone. Ships that are fighting don't provide either.
Once the order is put in motion you don't need intel or supremacy anymore, the landing crafts will attempt to reach their goal, they can be, however, still intercepted sunk even while already coming ashore.
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General tips:
Italy is the best nation to learn the game with in my opinion. If you are totally new to it simply play tutorial, or, if you feel so inclined, check out my instructional Italian playthrough or other Youtube videos of that kind.
After pressing the flag in the top left corner or shortcut "Q" will take you to your Focus Tree as well as Laws & Government screen. *Upon selecting a country in Diplomacy screen (shortcut "E") you can switch between "Diplomacy" and "Detail" tabs. The latter will show you the extent of your knowledge of the nations. The extent of it depends on the Encryption and Decryption levels of both of you.
Once there you can switch between nations by clicking on their territory on the map. Including your own
Beginner's Guide to Unit Types & Division Design Abbreviations: DEF - Defence - Used to deflect attacks when defending. BRK - Breakthrough - Used to deflect attacks when attacking. SA - Soft Attack - Used to attack soft targets. HA - Hard Attack - Used to attack hard targets. HARD - Hardness - Used to define how many % of the SA and HA of an enemy will actually be used against this division. ARM - Armor - Average thickness of the armor for the division. If enemy can't pierce you deal extra damage and take less. PIER - Pierce - Used to penetrate Armor, if you can't pierce your enemy, he will suffer less damage and he will deal more SPD - Speed - Determines how fast the unit can move. High Speed gives a bonus to reinforce chance in combat. MP - Manpower - How many men you need. SUP - Supression - Used to keep partisan resistance in check. REC - Recon - Used to determine which side has the initative, which gives a better chance to pick a good tactic. ---------
General Unit description Infantry (INF) - Your basic combat unit. High DEF, but low stats otherwise - Use as main body for your army. Mountaineer (MTN) - Slightly better BRK than INF, but also much more costly - Use these for mountain warfare. Paratroopers (PAR) - Weak stats and limited in terms of design options - Use them to snatch provinces to delay an enemy or cut him off. Artillery (ART) - Very high SA, decent BRK, excellent firepower per frontage - Use them to increase your division's SA and offensive capacity. Anti-Tank (AT) - High HA and PRC - Use them to counter enemy tank divisions.
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Anti-Air (AA) - High Air Attack, decent HA, minor PRC - Use them to shoot down enemy air units that attack in combat and get a bit of extra HA against enemy tanks, particularly LARM. Rocket Artillery (R-ART) - High SA, decent BRK, excellent firepower per frontage. Almost the same as ART, but slightly better at offense - Use them to increase your division's SA and offensive capacity. Cavalry (CAV) - Good SPD, high SUP, subpar stats - Weak and more costly version of INF that's faster and better at garrision duty - Use them to supress partisans. Motorized (MOT) - High SPD- Faster version of INF - Use them to provide ORG for your tanks or for fast encirclement moves. Mechanized (MECH) - High Hardness, good stats, high HA. Much stronger stats than MOT, but also way more costly and much slower - Use them to provide ORG for your MARM and HARM or to create semiarmored attack divisions. Light Armor (LARM) - High SPD, high hardness, good BRK, low DEF, ARM, HA and PIER. Very low ORG. Weak against enemy armor - Use them for fast exploit divisions, to add BRK and a bit of ARM to your combat units or as breakthrough units against inferior enemies. Medium Armor (MARM) - Good SPD, High hardness, good ARM and PIER, balanced DEF/BRK and SA/HA, but low SA per IC cost. Very low ORG - Use them as Breakthrough units and to counter other LARM and MARM. Heavy Armor (HARM) - Very high hardness, ARM, PIER and HA. Low SA per IC cost. Rather low SPD. Very low ORG - Use these to counter enemy tanks if you have too much IC for some reason. Super Heavy Armor (SHARM) - Extreme Hardness, ARM, PIER and HA. Low SPD. Very low ORG. Insane IC cost - Use these if you are a maniac for whom HARM wouldn't drain enough resources. Self-Propelled Artillery (SP-ART) - Extreme SA, terrible HA, bad BRK, okay DEF, lower hardness, ARM and PIER. Trade stats for SA. Excellent firepower per frontage - Use these to give your tank divisions a big boost against soft targets. Tank Destroyer (TD) - Good HA and PIER, terrible SA, bad BRK, okay DEF. Trade stats for HA and PIER. Rather low HA difference to regular armor - Use these to counter enemy tanks of a higher class (LARM -> MARM, MARM -> HARM) or better tech level. Self-Propelled Anti-Air (SP-AA) - Mediocre AA. Bad DEF, BRK, ARM, HARD, SA, HA. Trades stats for AA Don't use them - they are terrible. Self-Propelled Rocket Artillery (SP-R-ART) - High SPD and SA, decent BRK, excellent firepower per frontage. Lower ARM and HARD than SPART, but slightly cheaper - Use them as a lot-tech replacement for SP-ART. Engineer (ENG) - Better dig-in, better SPD and defence for some terrain, better attack for invasions. Later models increase dig-in significantly and give minor benefits for fort, river and urban combat - Use these to make your units significantly stronger at defence, particularly when defending a river.
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Recon (REC) - Better SPD in difficult terrain. Provides REC. Later models provide more REC - Use them to make your units a bit faster and pick better tactics slightly more often. Seems more important when your leaders are inferior (or just on par) to the enemy. Military Policy (MP) - Improves SUP. Later models improve SUP bonus - Use these to supress partisans more efficiently. Maintenance (MAIN) - Improved Reliability. Reduces equipment losses (including attrition and training). Later models increase reliability - Use these with your most costly divisions to reduce equipment losses. Field Hospital (HOS) - Grants trickleback (returns some MP losses to your pool) and lower XP loss from combat losses. Later models improve trickleback and XP loss reduction - Use these to preserve precious manpower and boost XP gain from combat. Logistics (LOG) - Reduces Supply Usage - Later models reduce usage further - Use these to reduce your supply weight and field more units inside a supply region. Signal (SIG) - Increases Iniative, which givs a better chance to reinforce in comabt and improves planning speed. Later models gran more iniative - Use these to speed up your Battle Plans and to reinforce faster in combat.
Division Design Notes: (1) Always aim for a width of 5, 10 or 20. The regular frontage in combat is 80 + 40 per extra attack vector (from a different province). Exceeding frontge gives you signfiicant combat penalties. Design with width 11 or 22 if you plan to attach the unit to a leader with Offensive trait (-10% unit frontage). (2) Support brigades don't increase frontage, so it's a good idea to add ART (and maybe AT, AA) to all your designs. They don't affect speed or hardness of a divsion, but do lower ARM and PIER. (3) This means that a base design with 10/11 width has higher firepower per frontage than 20/22 (because you can squeeze in more support ART), but it also costs more equipment and Land XP to design (since most nations start with 8+ INF in their main template). (4) Do not use pure Armor divisions. Armor has extremely low ORG and should be teamed up with MOT or MECH. Even when using the Blitzkrieg Doctrine Tree a pure Armor division will be barely more than a breakthrough unit that can't sustain combat for more than a few days. (5) SP-ART has, by far, the highest SA per frontage (followed by ART). It also needs far less equipment per brigade, so you actually pay ~30 less for it than for a regular ARM brigade, even if production cost per unit are the same. (6) Related to that: Support ART, AT, AA and R-ART need less equipment than Frontline variants (but also provide less stats). LARM, MARM and HARM also have different equipment numbers (60, 50, 40), so while '41 costs are 10/13/27 IC less per equipment, the total IC cost per brigade is 60 * 10 = 600 vs. 50 * 13 = 650 vs 27 * 40 = 1080. (7) Remember you can use the DUPLICATE function to create new templates. Since every change to a template costs 5 XP per unit removed, exchanged or added (10 for support brigades), the duplicate function can save you a lot of Land XP. For example, if you want to have both LARM and MARM divisions with a few extra MOT, first finish your LARM template, then duplicate it and replace all LARM with MARM. That way you don't have to add the MOT units to both templates.
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(8) Any unit can capture territory, regardless of size. So if you want you can build single brigade MOT divisions to swarm out and capture territory. Just pray you aren't stopped by a "real" division. (9) ORG, ARM and PIER are calculated as an average (with some additional weights in it) of all your existing brigades. This means that adding a low ORG unit will lower your division's ORG, while adding a high ORG unit will slightly improve it (same for ARM / PIER). (10) ENG combines extremely well with a Defensive trait leader (+30% digin), even more so when the country also has Grand Battleplan (+10 dig-in) or Mass Assault Doctrine (+5 dig-in). France in particular can pull off some amazing dig-in values if they manage to grab the '39 model before the outbreak of the war - I have seen values up to 59% (just don't ask me HOW it is calculated). (11) When more comes to mind (or if there are some good questions in this thread), I'll add it here.
Example Division Designs: (Keep in mind these are just SUGGESTIONS to demonstrate how the system works, not necesarily the BEST DESIGNS). Support brigades are listed in [brackets].
Basic Main Combat Infantry: 10xINF [+ ART/ENG] (20 width) Cheap and affordable, but not much else. Good on defence. Useful for poor minors.
Intermediate Main Combat Infantry: 7xINF + 2xART [+ ART/AT/EN] (20 width) Same as above, but much better when attacking. Good for minors.
Deluxe Main Combat Infantry Division: 7xINF + 2xART [+ ART/AT/AA/ENG/LOG] (20 width) Good all-around division that can fend off tanks on it's own and even inflict minor losses to air units. LOG means you can squeeze in more divisions per Supply Region (great for GER / SOV / USA), ENG gives a good advantage when defending. Good for majors.
XL Deluxe Main Combat Infantry Division: 8xINF + 2xART [+ ART/AT/AA/ENG/LOG] (22 width) Same as above, just with an extra INF to get to 22 frontage. Good for majors with an Offensive leader.
Mass Assault Division: 10xINF + 2xART [+ART/AT/R-ART/ENG/LOG] Adjusted template that adds a few extra INF divisions to make use of the -0.4 frontage reduction from the Mass Assault Doctrine tree.
Artillery Division: 4xINF + 4xART [+ ART/R-ART/LOG] (20 width) Has lower ORG than regular Infantry, but more firepower per frontage. Good for breakthroughs.
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Anti-Tank Division: 4xINF + 2xAT [+ AT/ENG] (10 width) Great balance between SA, HA and cost. Keep them in reserve and use them in large stacks (8+) to halt enemy armored spearheads.
Anti-Air Division: 2xINF + 6xAA [+ AA/ENG] (10 width) Low ORG, but high AA. Keep them as a reserve in the rear and strat redeploy them into important battles where the enemy airforce is harassing you.
Armored Spearhead: 2xSP-ART + 3xARM + 4xMOT [+ ART/AT/MAIN/LOG] (20 width) Has great SA, good HA and decent ORG. A good spearhead and breakthrough division that can hold against counter-attacks.
Assault Gun Division: 4xSP-ART + 2xARM + 2xMOT [+ART] (20 width) Incredible SA that rips through enemy Infantry, with (barely) acceptable ORG value.
Mixed Armor Division: 2xSP-ART + 3xARM + 1xTD + 3xMECH (20 width) Mixed armor division that can deal with any situation.
Motorized Division: 7xMOT + 2xSP-ART [+ART/REC/ENG] A fast division with decent speed modifiers. Even rivers won't stop these guys.
Security Division: 5xCAV [+MP] Partisan suppression unit
Garrison Division: 4xINF + 2xAA [+ENG/AA] A defensive unit designed for island garrison duty where enemy air power is more threatening than tanks.
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Beginner's Guide to Doctrines Land Doctrines: Blitzkrieg Basics: - Better Armor combat stats - Makes pure ARM divisions (not SP-ART/TD variants!) sorta useable - Faster units - Faster planning - Very high ORG - Lots of good tactics (particularly offensive ones) - Slightly lower ORG loss while moving Branch #1 - Mobile Infantry (left side): - Good if you want to focus on INF, MOT and MECH over ARM Branch #1 - Blitzkrieg (right side): - Great if you want to focus on ARM Branch #2 - Desperate Defence (left side) - Grants 5% recruitable pop (can be used to fuel Total Mobilization economy law!) - Grants a fantastic defence doctrine to delay attackers - Slightly better partisans Branch #2 - Modern Blitzkrieg (right side) - Improves ARM and INF -> Blitzkrieg is best used if you prefer mobile warfare and momentum. Break the enemy line with powerful armor and then swarm the enemy with fast units to encircle them. However, keep in mind that armor is very, very costly and most benefits only apply to regular ARM (not SP-ART or TD), so the benefits are actually less impressive as they seem at first glance.
Superior Firepower Basics: - Big boost for SA and HA for all units, particularly artillery (note: first tech does NOT affect ART!) - Good defence benefits from early doctrines - Good offensive benefits from later doctrines - Lots of good tactics (particularly defensive ones) - Great for small templates and/or templates with lots of ART Branch #1 - Dispersed Support (left side) - Better SA and ORG regain for frontline artillery Branch #1 - Integrated Support (right side)
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- Much stronger SA and ORG for support brigades Branch #2 - AirLand Battle (left side) - More HA for all units - More SA and HA for all tanks (including SP-ART/TD!) - Better Air Support Branch #2 - Shock and Awe (right side) - Significantly more SA for all units (+15%!) - More HA for all units - Better Recon -> Superior Firepower is all about maximizing the SA and HA of your units, particularly ART. Small division templates (e.g. 2xINF + 2xART [+ART/AT]) are particularly powerful and allow you to have the best firepower-per-frontage ratio of all doctrines.
Grand Battleplan Basics: - Major dig-in bonus - Significantly higher Max Planning - Balance bonus to DEF, BRK and SA - Unlocks multiple good combat tactics (at least later on) Branch #1 - Assault (left side) - Significantly higher planning and planning speed - BRK bonus for all units Branch #2 - Infiltration (right side) - BRK bonus for all units - Big night combat bonus - Slightly lower supply consumption - Recon bonus -> Grand Battleplan starts off rather weak with a focus on defence, but develops into two very different directions later on. The left branch focuses on utilizing the Battle Planner to launch massive assaults with big planning boosts, while the right side offers the unique option to boost your night combat power (which becomes really good once you unlock Night Vision equipment in '43). The supply consumption reduction is small, but quite good outside of europe (think of it as being able to field 10% more units per supply region).
Mass Assault Basics: - Lower INF width allows design of bigger templates (or stronger ART focus) - Longer Supply Grace, much lower supply consumption and lower penalties for exceeding supply - Minor dig-in bonus
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Branch #1 - Deep Battle (left side) - Good mix of different tactics - Small planning bonus - BRK bonus for all units - Better ORG regain for MOT, MECH and ARM - Lower ORG loss while moving Branch #2 - Mass Mobilization - Two fantastic combat tactics - Insane ORG regain ratio for INF and good ORG regain for rest of the army - Provides +5% recruitable pop - Reduced division attrition (affects training losses!) - Major reduction to out-of-supply penalty - Much stronger partisans - Two less doctrines than other trees/branches
Summary land doctrines My personal recommendation is to pick whatever suits your playstile most. The doctrine trees are actually rather close in terms of power level, so there is no clear winner here. My personal favorite is "Mass Mobilization" (the right side of the Mass Assault tree). It might look weak at first glance, especially since it seems to be "missing" two techs - but trust me, the other ones are packed full of great and unique goodies that make up for it: (I) The lower INF width equals a pretty decent firepower-per-frontge bonus (even more so for countries that can't afford a lot of ART). (II) The supply effects are amazing. Your units might not get that many boosts, but you can deploy way more per Supply region (especially when also using LOG) - and *if* you end out of supply, the penalty is much lower (great for defence and offense). (III) Stronger partisans are pretty good if you can give up territory. (IV) The ORG regain is insane - a week is usually enough to bring your units close to max ORG, which means you can strat-redeploy at will, even when you have to expect combat. (V) You get a nice little dig-in bonus. (VI) The +5% recruitable pop perk is amazing, particularly for minors that have a very limited MP pool. (VII) The tactics are unique and powerful - Mass Assault is probably the best tactic to make use of numerical superiority, particularly when you have to attack head-on from a single province. Guerilla Tactics is amazing at delaying the enemy, giving you plenty of time to prepare secondary defence lines in case a breakthrough is threatened.
Naval Doctrines: Fleet in Being - Very good Escort efficiency - Very good to at Search & Destroy mission - Strong and unique capital ship bonuses - Good DDs
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- Weak Carriers -> Good for anyone who has a big "old school" fleet of BBs, CAs and the like. Great DDs allow you to escort convoys and murder enemy submarines. The Grand Battlefleet tech is very powerful and also offers some AA against CAGs.
Trade Interdiction - Excellent at Convoy raiding (both subs and capital ships) - Fantastic subs - Extremely low visibility for raiding BBs and BCs - Surpisingly decent Carriers - Weak Escort efficiency -> The best choice if you want to hunt down enemy convoys. Obviously leaning towards submarine warfare, but quite flexible since CVs are surprisingly decent with this tree.
Base Strike - Fantastic Carriers - Good Cruisers - Decent in all other regards -> You want to use carriers? Then this is your tree. Offers fantastic benefits for CVs and pretty big ORG boosters for CLs.
Summary naval doctrines When it comes to naval doctrines, your choice is obviously dictated by your existing navy and your own construction plans. A particularly interesting thing is that Germany can actually focus on carriers (you can 1xT1 and 3xT2 until late '39) and threaten the RN by picking the middle part of their tree. I personally have no preference - I usually stick to the tree I am starting with. Although I enjoy going Base Strick with a minor nation (like Canada, India or Australia) and annoy the Japanese with a small carrier fleet.
Air Doctrines Strategic Destruction - Decent Agility bonus for FGT and HFGT - Flexible choice between better Intercept or Air Superiority - Significantly better STRAT with choice between day or night bombardment tactics -> The main choice if you want to use FGT offensively or bomb the enemy to pieces with STRAT.
Battlefield Support - Agility bonus for CAS - Great air-to-ground support - Choice between Air Superiority or higher Ace chance
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- Decent boost for TAC to strategic bombing -> The main choice if you want to use FGT and CAS offensively or rely on TAC as a multirole unit.
Operational Integrity - Fantastic agility bonus for FGT and HFGT - Good Interception bonuses - Decent bonus chance for ace generation - Weak but safe strategic bombing -> The defensive air doctrine tree. Pick this if you primarily want to rely on FGT to defend your skies (and project Air Superiority penalty on your enemies once their air force is shot down).
Summary air doctrines I personally consider Air Doctrines to be quite unimportant. None of the trees has a vital effect on the air war (even the agility benefits are quite unimportant, since there seems to be a cap for agility difference between fighting planes). Unlike with land or naval units, production capacity is much more important here, since you usually trade units at a rather even rate. That's why I usually stick to Operational Integrity and just grab the first two techs to boost my defence capability. Although as USA it's obviously fun to bomb the enemy into oblivion with Mass Destruction.
Air Mechanics/Combat/Mission "Quick" Guide This guide aim is to help all new players to understand even if just a little more how air combat works behind the scenes and explain WHY they are losing. yes, its a very large text and believe me, i was very very specific and talked fast about a lot of things to make this a "Quick" guide. Its by no means a complete guide. The focus is Ground support and air combat. I will give a Air Analysis of Naval bombers and Strategic bombers in the last section of the guide when i talk about each plane, but don´t get your hopes too high. What i will show in this guide. (Chapters) Attrition = How it Work. Weather = How it affect missions and attrition. Day/Night cycle + Mission Duration= How aircrafts are influenced by day and night and how many missions they are able to perform on each cycle. Air Coverage/Range = How it works and how it affects the efficiency of your wings.
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Air Superiority bonus = All it’s known right now. CAS= How that mission works on detail and to maximize efficiency. Air superiority/interception = Most info about those 2 missions still have lots of variants not discovered. So i will just explain what you can control to improve your chances. How to compare Stats and hidden combat Bonus.= How to compare 2 planes and what affects the combat that the game is not showing you. Plane analysis + Variants = Here i will tell you how that plane perform vs others and what variants can do to help that plane survive more. Lets start simple, with basic mechanics that sometimes are hard to see.
Attrition Every time your plane starts a mission it will roll for accidents. The accident chance is 1% for each 10 reliability below 100. (Default 2%) Also when they land another roll is made. So its 2% two times everyday. As you can see you easily lose lots of planes to accidents. Weather can add a lot to this, só becareful when using planes on bad weather (Paradox make us a “dont fly on bad weather” button. its too much micro to control the weather for planes). Day/night Cycle and mission duration. This is a very simple thing to understand. Day = 9:00 to 00:00 (15h) Night = 1:00 to 8:00 (7h) At night bomb runs will have -50% efficiency but its also 20% harder for planes to be detected at night. It will not affect air combat performance. One mission = 7 Hours. This means a Plane can make 2 Missions at day and 1 mission at night. A plane can only do 2 missions in a row. After 2 missions in a row the plane must return to the airport and rest 4 hours. He will return to combat on the 5º hour. With this becomes easy to understand how planes perform. With day option on = Enter the fight at 9:00 and leaves at 23:00. It will rest to go again at 9:00
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With night option on = Enter at 1:00 and leave at 8:00. It will wait the next night. Day/Night on = It will perform for 14H. Rest 4 Hours and go back. (19h cycle giving you one more mission every 4-5 days).
Weather Be careful guys. Some climates are really dangerous and can destroy your airforce before you can even use them. (Careful with Blizzards and sandstorms). Got this from the game data. Rain air_detection = -10% air_accidents = +1% air_mission_efficiency = -10%
Heavy Rain air_detection = -20% air_accidents = +3% air_bombing_targetting = -50% air_mission_efficiency = -30%
Snow air_detection = -15% air_accidents = +1% air_mission_efficiency = -10%
Blizzard air_detection = -30% air_accidents = 3% air_bombing_targetting = -70% air_mission_efficiency = - 30%
Sandstorm air_detection = -90% (dont even bother heh)
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air_accidents = 6% air_bombing_targetting = - 100% air_mission_efficiency = - 50%
Air Coverage (A.K.A how range is Killing You) Air coverage will tell you how many planes will reach the mission. Its very important to understand this as this can be one of the main reasons lots and lots of players are losing planes in fights.
If a plane only have 50% air coverage, It means that for every 100 planes you send only 50 will arrive at the mission and actually do something. Cutting your strenght in half. The half that can´t reach still have to roll for atrittion (take off and landing) and is still vulnerable to being intercepted. So they are risking themselves without doing nothing.
So very careful when you plan to send planes to areas your planes reach is inferior to 50%. Increase the Wing size to make the mission viable or don´t bother and save your planes from atrittion and enemy fighters that will overwhelm them.
Air Superiority Everything is know right now is that 50 points of air superiority over a region will give -1% defense to all enemy troops on that region. It seems its capped at 50% but its not confirmed. Doctrines can improve this and improve from 50% up to 75%. You can see below the upgrades that improve this on each doctrine. Battlefield support is the best if you want to maximize this with strategic destruction as a close second. Strategic destruction: +25% (logistical bombing) / +25% (Offensive formations). Battlefield Support: +20% (Dive bombing) / +20% (hunt and destroy) / +20% (battlefield support) Operational Integrity: +15% (Operational destruction) / +15% (ground attack veteran iniative)
Missions (General information) Im not going to get extensive here. The game already tells you everything you need to know about them except 1 detail. If you select 2 or more missions the plane will Try 1 Mission first and only after he run out of targets is that he will try the second mission. I recommend you always only choose one mission.
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CAS MISSION. (Close air support and Tactical Bomber) (How to destroy IC without hurting 1 factory). The CAS Mission is extreme important on Hearts of Iron 4. All data i gathered sending german troops to their deaths on a 1939 game on the maginot line. (The french AI refuse to attack and german attack is 0 because of forts, this way i was able to control how many battles happened at same time, how many troops participated and how much dmg the planes did ). Right now the CAS is the best way to inflict Strenght Damage to units in Hearts of iron 4. With CAS you will be able to kill all those expensive equipment they are bringing to shot you in the face. It will really show its importance on long battles as the battle drags on and the enemy is bombed without mercy.
How a CAS mission Work? First you need one of the 2 planes above (CAS or Tactical Bomber) and make a Wing of them (one group). I will explain in steps a day operation. And below i will explain more the details. 1-> The CAS wing will leave airport at 9AM/1PM. 2-> They will Choose 1 Battle to Help. Its random. 3-> The Wing will stay 7 hours on that particular battle. (AA will fire at them every hour) 4-> They will always do the same damage. How fast depends on how many enemy troops are fighting. (enemy width). 5-> The Wing will choose a second battle and repeat the process. (if its night jump to step 6). If no other battle is available they stay. 6-> They will return home.
Damage = The damage is determined by the ground attack value. Its unavoidable so you can´t defend against CAS damage. The damage is done in 2 turns (at the start of the attack and after 4 hours). Those 4 hours give anti air some time to shoot them down. Organization damage = Ground attack – 90% Strength damage = Ground attack -90% / 2 Example: 10 tactical bombers I (1936) bomb an enemy during 7h. (1 mission). 6 ground attack x 10 = 60 – 90% = 0.6 Org Damage. 6 ground attack x 10 = 60 – 90% / 2 = 0.3 Strength damage.
The game will only show the damage once it reaches a full number. (1,2,3 etc). The damage of 1 plane looks insignificant, but dont underestimate strength damage.
Look. A infantry have 25 HP. A artillery around 0.6 HP A Tank (any type) 2 HP
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So everytime 2 tactical 1936 bomb something 1 artilhary is blow up. (in theory as the damage will go to one random batallion inside the division). Now make that 20 planes. Better. 200. You will start to break tanks, artilhary, some infantary, Anti-tank equipment. All that equipment will need to be replaced and while they wait it will reduce the enemy division efficiency. Also the ground attack improves a lot with later models/variants. Max Allowed number of cas in an attack = Enemy Width x 3 - Mission Efficiency. So if an enemy width is 20. The maximum amount of CAS´s that can participate in that particular battle is 60. Some terrains affect this. (Hills -5%, forest and mountain -10%, jungle -25%, cities -50%). Multiple wings can participate in the same battle until the max number of planes is reached. Wings will not Split into multiple battles. If the wing is bigger the excess planes will do nothing and wait a extra enemy division to enter combat. They will also help with defense and take AA damage. Anti- Air = Anti-Air is problematic to CAS. Each Hour the AA will roll a number of attacks equal to their Air attack value. One random Cas will roll defense and try to avoid being hit, this repeats until the AA has run out of attacks. Once a plane run out of defense (HP) it will die. As each mission have 7 hours, multiple AA´s can make the planes blow up and make metal rain from the skys. Small wings will blow before they even can do its second attack. CAS vs Tactical bomber = Go to plane analysis for that. CAS WING ORGANIZATION = That depends on your air coverage. Below 50% = Go for Wings of 100 planes. This way at least some will reach the target. Above 50% = Go for Wings of 50 Planes. This way you can maximize the planes efficiency not losing much too low width. If the enemy is using AA go for wings of 100-200 planes. The only defense CAS and tactical bombers have against AA are numbers. This will reduce the amount of planes lost to AA. Day/night preference = Day. This way you perform 2 missions each day at 100% Efficiency. At night they only perform 1 mission (-50% dmg) and again take another -50% dmg for being at night. With day+Night you can do +1 missions every 4 days, but a lot of those missions will be at night and thats just not worth the risk. Operational preference = Normal operations (50%) = those wings are horrible if they are damaged, don´t send them to their deaths for nothing. They need to be full strength to be useful. If you're taking constant losses increase the wing size to 100-200 to make up for it and reach optimal results.
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Doctrines: Doctrines increase the damage the planes can do each day. Battlefield support being much better if you wish to maximize CAS damage. Strategic destruction: +10% (infrastructure destruction) Battlefield Support: +20% (direct ground support) / +20% (ground support Integration) Operational Integrity: +10% (Low echelon support).
Air Superiority/Interception Here i will tell you how those two mission works só you can know later what plane is better for mission A and the plane that is better for mission B. To know this go to Plane Analysis and Combat section below.
Air superiority in steps. Most of those info is already in the Wiki and i will not explain everything because some data is beyond your control and influence. The air superiority/interception is divided in some stages. I will deal with the part that matters and you have direct control. The Detection stage. This stage is the same for both missions. Just one is for fighters and other for bombers. detection Stage. Base detection chance on friendly/occupied state is 10%. (if you control half, half the bonus). This is affected by weather and you can see if you have the mouse over a air region. 1-> Fighters and H. Fighters Wings in interception mission will increase detection chance up to 5% (2000 planes in a region for maximum bonus and is the optimal amount). 2-> Radar increase detection chance up to 25% in a state. (the wiki is not clear but going by the logic of base detection being linked to your % of control it makes sense a radar should work the same way with coverage). 3-> Chance of detecting a bomber -50% (Looks like when you're looking for fighters, half that value is used to find bombers instead). Now that you found something the game will calculate how many. 1-> If he detected a wing. 10% of that wing will be automatically discovered. 2-> If its on a radar covered region adds 70%. (80% already). 3-> There is also a random factor of 10%. The wiki is not clear if its binary or can be a negative value, but most likely its works between -10% and +10%. (binary (0 or 10%) makes little sense here). Making an assumption but if the wing is a bomber it makes sense that the part of the wing not discovered will run away and will not help the part that was discovered. Fighters will use 100% of their wings to defend themselves if discovered and they also will reveal themselves to defend any allied bomber in the region.
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Why i make that assumption? Because of how the mechanic works on the Target stage below. Second Stage. Target Stage and 2vs1 fights. You have little control here but you must know about this to make the right decisions and why placing planes on no retreat will quickly lead to those crazy death numbers. You have detected a Wing, or at least part of that wing. Now you take off to intercept and your planes must choose their targets. If they're hunting for bombers they will try to outrun the enemy fighters defending them and go directly for the bombers. That chance is 25% and is increased by any agility + speed bonus your planes have over the enemy fighter. (Cap 95%). If your fighter is intercepted the bomber escaped no matter if you win or lose. Also if you have advantage in numbers for every extra plane you will have a 40% chance of that extra plane to help and make the fight a 2vs1. (it also works for the enemy). Example: 200 fighters vs 100 fighters. 100 fighters will roll a 40% chance of joining in one of the 100 battles that are happening and make the fight a 2vs1. So it will be 140 x 100 and the wing with less aircraft will have a huge disadvantage. There is a cap of 2. So there is no point trying to make a 3vs1 or more . It will not happen. When a 2v1 happens the game will take the average of attacks. (Example: 1 fighter 27 attack + 1 H. Fighter 36 attack are together in that battle. 27+36 = 63/2 = 32 attacks will be made vs the opponent.). There is two good things about a 2vs1. One is that the enemy now have to shoot 2 planes. Being much more difficulty for the plane to shoot one of them down. The second is that both fighters get a +18% hit chance. And finally. The last thing you have to know is that the Max number of wings that can participate in a combat. The wiki is not very clear if its 6 or 8. (it starts saying its 6, later changes to 8). But with 1000 planes being the max for each wing we know the maximum amount of aircraft that can participate in a battle at same time. 6000-8000 planes. (the wiki says 1000 but this makes little sense with the 2vs1 mechanic already limiting the max, number of planes in a fight). Using the 2vs1 logic the worst possible scenario is 5x3. (5 wings fighting 3 wings). I will use that scenario to configure our wings to the fight as i don´t know how many enemy wings can intercept 1 squadron. (4? all 7? the wiki don´t say).
AIR SUPERIORITY/INTERCEPTION ORGANIZATION Here things get really complicated.
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If you understood everything i said above we have thousands of combinations to go and its impossible to have a perfect formula. To make things simple i will list the most common objectives you want and give you the best Wing to achieve that objective without having to think much about it later. If you want to min-max be my guest but i don´t think its worth it. I will also give the best day/night cycle / best plane (why that choice go to analysis) / Operational Strenght and How many planes you need to fully defend that region and totally forget about it. (once you secure a air zone in this configuration you can jump to the next and repeat the process). You will also see that my configuration is mostly for a Europe Scenario where the air battle is intense and most countrys have multiple airfields in range. Adjust not only to your number of airfields but also the opponent.
Fighter Hunt on Home Regions (include sea regions close to home) → (Air superiority). Day/night cycle = day. You want those fighters to avoid Strategic bombers and hunt other nimble fighters like CAS, Naval bombers etc. Also this avoid your planes doing too many operations and getting killed for nothing Operational strength = Normal operations = Those wings will suffer horribly if they are outnumbered. Go max strength always. Recommended fighter = Light Fighter. Wing size = 1 to 5 Wings of 200-400 planes each. (More enemy airfields in range will demand more wings and fighters). 1000-2000 fighters are enough to fill an lvl10 airport. You have 100% air coverage (i hope) and your enemy don´t have that luxury. A lot of times the enemy will have 50% air coverage/range or less and that means for every 100 fighters he send 50 or more will be unable to join a battle. That means you want to press the number advantage as much as possible to make every battle a 2vs1 for your side and with this minimize losses. What will really determine the number of your wing is how many airports the enemy have. More airfields means they can send more planes to contest that region. Also you want big wings because even if you fly at 50% strength you will have a good size and will not be overwhelmed until help arrives. Never run this mission with a small size, you will be crushed as light fighters can´t take a 2v1 due to poor defense. This is one of the many reasons most players lose thousands of fighters a day.
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Because they make little wings. They get overwhelmed by a big AI wing and the game does not show why they keep losing.
Bomber Hunt on Home Regions (Air interception) → Day/Night cycle = Day and Night. You want to find those planes and kill them on sight. Operational strenght = Normal operations. You want the best strenght you can achieve. Recommended fighter = H. Fighter. Wing Size = 4 Wings of 250 (enough for the enemy bomber wing + Escorts). Bombers are a problem. Its a very large spectre of units that goes from CAS, Naval Bombers to the super hard to kill Stategic bombers. Plus they can be escorted and a 2vs1 fight of a Bomber +fighter vs 1 Heavy fighter will be impossible to win. You need number advantage. Also if you use fighters they will drop like flys as they barely survive a S. Bomber alone, even more with a enemy fighter helping them. With a size of 250 you can face a S. Bomber wing of 100 and still have 150 units to go for escorts. You need 4 wings because rarely you will have only 1 Wing bombing you. CAS wings are numerous and your wing can only engage 2 wings before going to rest. Reason why most players are failing to hunt CAS. They just can´t keep up with the numbers of wings.
Escort Mission (air superiority on enemy territory)→ day/night cycle → Night, the same as bombers and tac. Bombers. Operational strenght → Normal operations. Recommended fighter → Fighters or H. Fighters (both work) Wing Size → around 300 with a air coverage of 50%. More if its lower, less if its higher. Up to 150 at 100% Range efficiency. Here air coverage starts to go against you. I will assume a air coverage of only 50%. So only 150 Fighters will participate in battle. That means you total force will be around 200-300 and you will be the one facing 2v1 situations. Be warned and expect medium to high fighter losses. For 2v1 situations H. Fighters are better because of their defense. Your plan is not to kill fighters but to make your bombers get out alive. Each Bomber is worth 2 H. Fighters of IC. Fighters will be better if you can manage to make the fights more equal and they have the range for it. It really depends a lot on the theater of operations and the enemy you're facing.
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Fighter hunt on enemy regions (Air superiority or bomb interception on enemy territory but no allied bombers to defend) → NO. Just don´t.... you have nothing to gain trying to kill fighters in a territory where range works against you and you're not bombing anything. You're just wasting fighters and giving free air XP to them.
Doctrines: All doctrines also improve both missions. Some more than others. Operational integrity is clearly the best air superiority and interception doctrine. Strategic destruction: +10% fighter detection +10% Intercept detection +20% dmg to fighters going interception missions or +15% dmg for air superiority missions.
Battlefield Support: +15% Fighter detection +15% dmg on air superiority missions or ace generation -15% chance for enemy fighters to ignore your fighters saving more bombers that way. Operational Integrity: -20% chance of enemy fighters ignoring your fighters and going for bombers. +20% Dmg on interception missions. +20% Fighter detection +20% dmg on air superiority missions.
How to compare Stats and hidden combat Bonus Now im going to describe how you can compare 2 aicrafts. This way you will know if aircraft A have a chance vs aicraft B. (its never a 100% win chance, the combat was made in a way that a weaker plane always have a chance). I will not go too deep in how combat works because people are still figurint out how everything works, but what i can explain below is enough to start to predict with some confidence if you will win or lose a fight. Before we start calculating i need to explain how the unique atributes of a plane work. Mission stat = every plane have a number for the missions they can perform. For example. A fighter have a air superiority mission of 1.0. This is a direct multiplier to the plane stats.
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So if a plane have 10 attack and a air superiority mission of 1.2 it will have 12 attack while they are doing that mission. Thats why doctrines, aces, generals and manufacturers are só important. They can add multiple bonus to a plane and make a ton of a difference when added together. I highly recommend for you to choose 1 type of plane and focus eveything on them to maximize efficiency. Speed = Speed is very important if not the most important stat on a plane. A speed advantage give a lot of bonus that can make what looks like a bad plane in a killing machine. For each 10km/h above the opponent the airplane will get 2,5% buff to Attack and defense. Usually planes have a difference of 100-150km and this buff have no cap. So more speed is always better. Also Speed increase the chance you will attack first by 25%. (Air superiority vs air superiority only).
Agility = For every point of agility above the opponent your plane will get a +1% bonus. Also you can get up to 20% defense bonus for having a bigger agility. Example: 20 agility vs 10 agility the plane with 20 agility will receive a 10% bonus. This have a cap of 3 times the opponent agility. (lets say my opoonent agility was 1, the buff would go down from 10% to 3%). Attack and Defense works the same as ground forces. They will exhaust their attacks until the defense of one plane go to 0 and die. With this we can start to compare planes. For example. (Doctrines , etc are all the same for this test). Fighter I (1936) vs Fighter II (1940). Speed > FI 500km/h vs FII 650km/h (650-500 = 150 x 0.25 = 37.5% bonus to FII stats) Agility > F1 50 vs FII 65 (65 – 50 = 15% bonus to FII stats) 37.5% + 15 = 52.5% (67.5% for defense due to agility exclusive bonus). Attack FI 18 vs FII 27 +52.5% = 41 Defense FI 10 vs FII 16 + 67.5% = 26,8 Also you can get up to +20% chance to hit for having a better stat. Both agility and speed help to get this. With this you can see that a Fight 1940 can easily beat a figher 1936 in a 1x1 combat. The fighter II can still lose to a 2vs1 só you must be careful to not be overconfident.
Plane analysis + Variants Now im going to analyse each Plane and what you can do to improve them. I will go in order from right to the left in the research tree. I wil also explain where each variant can help them but just a quick tutorial on variants. - Each point in a variant increase the plane stats by 10%. (up to 50%).
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- Reliability is self explanatory, it will reduce atrittion and is useful for all aircrafts. Always keep it at minimum around 70%. - All my variant recommendations cost beetween 250-350XP and its very important you get them as soon as possible to help your factorys keep the production above your losses. Close Air Support →
Close air Support. The division Strength killer. The CAS have the best ground attack compared to the tactical bomber, its crazy cheap (for a plane). 1 production line of CAS is already enough to make a difference as you can make them work with small wings and they will need very little escort from fighters. They have the same range as fighters and you must avoid placing them on bad air coverage regions as you will have to increase the wings and risk more and more for too little damage. Build airports close to the front just for them and make them walk with the troops. The Battlefield support doctrine will increase their damage by 40%. It can make a 1944 CAS to go from 20 ground attack to 28. Enough for a single CAS to do 1,4 Strenght dmg on a division. On late game most divisions will have a very low hp as they replace infantary for tanks that have only 2HP, motorized are even more vulnerable for also being expensive. Most divisions widht 20 created by players will have around 130-180HP. So all you need now is to bomb them into oblivion and make the enemy factorys having to waste more time replacing everything.
A good player using a smart formation of CAS + Strategic bombers can starve a country of expensive materials and bomb them back to the napoleonic era.
CAS Variants options I recommend 2 types of CAS. Long Range CAS: Reliability 3 / Range 4 → Those variants will have a 1400km range. Enough to counter a lot of air coverage problems on big fronts. This will also improve its survival vs AA´s and planes as your wings will be closer to 100% effiency. Bomber CAS: Reliability 3 / Weapon 4 → This one is all about dmg. Use them on closer regions or airports you have just taken and can use with 100% coverage (or close to this). The extra attack will make them feel the pain of not having air superiority. Fighter → The king of the air. Versatile, fast, agile and with the right upgrades it can take down everything in the game. You want 1 to 3 production lines of fighters to keep up with losses.
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The fighter only face 3 problems, but those problems are huge. Problem number one > 2vs1 fights are brutal for them, they just don´t have a high defense and will go down if outnumbered. So they must work on Big wings to cover each other and regions with high air coverage. Problem number two > Strategic bombers will win most of the time a 1x1 fight if the fighter is not a variant version. Last problem → Low range (1k at 1940-44) also means they are meant only to hunt inside your territory. Never use them to fight the enemy at home. You will face severe Air Coverage problems most of the time and your fighters will drop like flys. The Operational integrity doctrine is the best one if you wish to buff fighters. It will greatly increase their agility and air interception and superiority missions. Also its the best for ace´s.
Fighter Variants recommendations. Anti-Strategic bomber fighter → Reliability 3 / Weapon 5 → This fighter is all about going against bombers and blowing them from the skys. In a 1x1 fight they will win most of the time as they continue to have a speed and agility advantage. The problem is that now they are vulnerable to enemy fighters and Heavy fighters. Its a cheap way to go for Strategic bombers if your country can´t afford to research all the planes. You place everything on the fighter basket and live with it. If you go that route i also recommend a manufactory that gives +10% Speed and agility to fighters if they are available.
Anti- Fighter → Speed 3 / Weapon 1 / Reliability 3 → This one will get tired of killing planes. The extra speed and agility buff will make sure you have even more bonus to face the enemy and will always have the advantage vs other fighters. The small increase in weapon will also help a lot.
Pacific Fighter → Range 3-5 / Speed 0-2/ Reliability 3 → This fighter is only recommended on the pacific theater or places where the territory is só big that even if you place a airport there you still have range problems. South america, Pacific, Africa, Parts of asia. All those theaters enter in this field and if you wish to use fighters there you need this. Naval Bomber I don´t talked much about those. Mostly because my knowledge of the naval war is minimal. What i can tell is that no doctrine benefits naval bombers very well. (strategic destruction have a 15% bonus, but the others have a 10% bonus). Its not worth choosing a doctrine with a naval bomber in mind. I can´t say if speed will help a naval bomber to avoid AA. The only defense i can tell you to use is numbers numbers and numbers. More bombers in the skys more targets the AA will shoot helping each plane to go back home alive.
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What naval bombers need the most is range. Most sea regions are very big and it will be very commom for the naval bomber to not find ships because of the air coverage.
Naval Bomber Variant Recommendations. Pacific naval bomber → range 4 / Reliability 4 formula. If your naval war is close to home like italy for example maybe its worth going Weapon 2 / Range 3 / Reliability 3 to increase your chances.
Heavy fighter Jack of all trades, Master of none. The heavy fighter is by far the plane with most air attack of the game. Its low agility also make sure they will give all the air vs air bonus to a fighter and lose in a 1x1 because of that. They are perfect bomber escorts because of their range and bomber hunters because of their armor. Being able to fight a Strategic bomber + Fighter in a 2v1 and hope to survive and live to tell the tale. At worst he will be able to live enough to do some damage. Operational integrity can buff them a lot and is the best doctrine for them. Also a particular industry can increase their reliability by 20%. That can make his variant very very cheap as you don´t need to increase reliability.
Heavy fighter Variant Recommendations Escort H. Fighter → Speed 2 / Range 3 / Reliability 3 → This fighter only purpose is to stop a enemy fighter of getting your Strategic bomber and help him out to survive. The range is to help more H. Fighters to enter in the battle and avoid a huge air coverage penalty. Also the speed will help those fighters come back home alive. Bomber Killer → Speed 2 / weapon 2 / Reliability 3 → All they need to hunt a bomber and kill them. Also improve his survival chance vs fighters.
Tactical Bomber A lot of people ignore them for having worse stats. Sure, they can´t compete with a CAS and can´t compete with a Strategic bomber. But they can do Both main missions and cost only 27IC while a S. Bomber + CAS would cost around 80IC. Countrys that have problems researching fighters or factory output problems should focus on those bombers instead. They will do the job and can survive with escort.
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Strategic destruction doctrine is the best tree for them. Giving +25% defense for them.
Tactical Bomber Variant recommendation Quick Bomber → Speed 5 / reliability 3. This variant will get almost 500km/h on a 1940 version and will have 30+ agility. Add the +20% defense and they will be a fighter very hard to take down without the right upgrades. You want to avoid putting range into bombers because otherwise the H. Fighters will be unable to escort them. (Unless you make a full range version for this).
Strategic bombers Right now the most hated bomber of the game, not because its bad but because its good. Without any upgrades a Strategic bomber is a sight to fear. They have the best defense of all planes and unless they face a number disadvantage they will be able to tear fighters apart easily. Even a Heavy fighter will find problems to survive if they end up fighting 2 bombers or one bomber +1 fighter. The problem is that the S. Bomber is so slow that no speed bonus will save him. They should always work at night to avoid detection. A damaged industry can be bombed again tomorrow, but not if you lose the bomber. They are also very expensive and only some countrys can afford them. The Strategic destruction doctrine is the best for them giving tons of defense (+25%) plus they remove the night disadvantage for bombers.
Variants Strategic Bombers Super long ranged bomber→ Range 5 / reliability 3 Worth in the pacific and other regions where you have no way to have escorts no matter what you do. Also super interesting to jump whole regions and hurt the enemy well behind the lines if he is concetrating the airforce on the front. With a 9000km range in 1944 no place is safe from this variant.
Air supremacy bomber → Engine 5 / reliability 3 The speed buff is minimal, the agility actually hurt you. But its still worth it. Its enough to remove just a little of the enemy buff and give you a slight better chance of taking them down.
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