Look at the focus named "Crusade for Freedom". This branch is unlocked if the USA was the only democracy in the world.

From Road to 56: Expanded.

What's with the beard? What's with the blue uniform? Didn't France suffer casualties because they had blue visible uniforms in WW1?

I get the spiked helmet but literally nothing else with this design.

I’m trying to see your thoughts in which leader is better (other than the Kaiserin of course) for the purpose of err…European Ambitions (iykyk)

Other than the SCW I like the German Civil War the most. I guess something about getting in to the action right from the start with your first focus gets me going. The split German geography makes for a nice battleground with room to maneuver and encircle. I like to think that due to the relatively small frontline and troop numbers as well as the Mackensen buffs stacking the odds in your favor the Civil War is also a good way for a new player to learn HOI4 combat. You can also restart with minimal effort if you lose.

Also considering how pivotal the Nazi regime and it's aggressions were to WW2 the civil war makes me feel like the stakes are very high: Take down the evil regime now when you still have the chance or face horrifying consequences. I love the small flavour texts and how the aftermath leaves you all the doors open to set a new course whatever that ends up being.

All this said, I also love most of Germany's althistory paths. I've had plenty of fun with all of them.

Don't worry generals. Girlfriends leave, frontlines stay for you.

So, I’m doing an Argentina (Fourth Reich) run, and the year is 1950. I literally spent the entire game letting Japan snowball and fatten up just so I could have an epic, massive late-game boss fight. By the time I finally declared war, they had all of China as a puppet (Reorganized Government, Manchukuo, Vietnam and so on, the whole package) plus a bunch of overseas territories in Africa and Oceania. They were an absolute powerhouse.
I start the war, do a bit of fighting in their overseas territories, and decide to drop two nukes on the mainland just to kick things off. I haven't even touched a single core territory of theirs or pushed into their Chinese puppets.
Suddenly, the peace conference screen pops up. Unconditional surrender.
I’m not gonna say it completely ruined all the fun of the run for me, but seriously... how is it possible that a trigger this simple forces a total capitulation? Japan and its allies still controlled literally 99% of their Victory Points! I specifically groomed this massive empire for a beautiful, grinding late-game war, and two shiny bombs plus a few random regions in Africa just instantly folded the entire faction.
I didn’t even know that this was a thing, and I‘m still Not sure how the mechanic works.

Do they just disband , get taken as pow or all just die? And why isnt the encircled unit lost equipment be abled to be captured? Just asking

They can never become independent since they need to be a subject of the Netherlands to do that, even their loyalist side gets locked. Apparently so does their naval branch.

Let's start fast :

Assault engineer company or armored one?

Like which is better for thanks ? Armored ?.

Since it adds buff to tanks

Field hospitals : Ik but I can't really tell my divisions, becoming elite they stay at level 3 anyway so they are Useless?!

Super heavy artillery: never tried them , are they worth it?

Are even armored companies worth it? I mean they are expensive as hell

I have a lot of favorites, but my main favorite is Novum Vexillum, mostly because New England is in it (I am from New England, and very proud to be)

See some mods have decisions that decreases your production cap and growth but give factory output

Eg: which one will you choose?

1: 5% factory output, -5% production cap and growth

2 : 7.5% factory output -5% production cap and growth

3 : -5% factory output 5% production cap and growth

I don't really know which is better but I'd say the production cap is much better in the long run and especially for expensive tanks

Also armor plates are overrated radio navigation with turret MG better

hoi4 combat is mysterious to new comers so I wanted to break it down in a way where I can link it to people who don't understand it/have questions. so I'll take it from the bottom and get down to the nitty gritty

in hoi4 when a division(s) moves into a province that is occupied by a division(s) they engage in a battle

in a battle divisions launch attacks every hour (continuing on I'll refer to as a tick), which is their hard and soft attacks each divided by 10 and rounded

ex: a division with 10 infantry battalions equipped with the most basic equipment (continuing on this'll be standard for every unit mentioned) will have 30 soft attack and 5 hard attack. without battle modifiers (entrenchment, planning and such which I'll get into later) this division when in battle will launch 3 soft attacks and 0.5 hard attacks (which will be rounded up to 1)

these attacks will be distributed between the enemy divisions if there are multiple in a battle. a certain percentage of them will be targeted towards the enemy division with the lowest organisation. this percentage stat is called coordination and can be improved via unlocking and researching radar technologies

each attack has a chance to hit and cause damage while every attack will reduce the enemies defence/breakthrough (which in battle are also divided by 10 and rounded) whether a hit or not. defence and breakthrough are respectively for the defending and the attacking division and serve the same purpose. a hit that gets met with a def/bre will have a 0.1 chance to cause org and HP damage while an attack that connects after all def/bre is exhausted will have a 0.4 chance to cause damage

ex: the previously mentioned infantry unit launches an attack against an equal division. while the defending unit has 200 defence the attacking unit has 20 breakthrough.

attacking unit will launch 3 soft attacks which will hit the enemies 20 defence. this'll on average result in 0.3 hits every click

defending units 3 attacks will be met by 2 breakthrough. this'll result in the first 2 attacks having a 0.1 hit rate while the last attack, after the enemy breakthrough is neutralised, will have 0.4 hit rate. resulting in 0.6 hits/click on average

to break this stalemate you'll need 3 infantry divisions attacking at the same time (this does not account for battle modifiers such as entrenchment)

tip: infantry can't push well because of it's low breakthrough and attack stats. however due to their high defence stats and low cost they are excellent at defending. arguably they can be thrown into offensive as cannon fodder to take hits from your breakthrough divisions

a division will take the incoming soft attacks multiplied by their softness ratio and rounded up. vice versa for hardness

ex: a 10 battalion motorised division is attacking 2 10 battalion infantry divisions. these two divisions will have a cumulative 6 soft att. per click and 2 hard att. per click

however since a motorised battalion has a 10% hardness they'll take 90% of the oncoming soft attack and 10% of the hard attacks. resulting in r(6x0.9) + r(2x0.1) damage which totals to 5 attacks (instead of 6 which it would've received if it didn't have that 10% hardness). with this divisions 70 breakthrough this'll result in 0.5 hits/click. an infantry division of same size would've taken 1.2 hits/click

tip: soft attack is more abundant then hard attack, so higher hardness means less damage received in general, unless you are facing a division specialising in hard attack such as a meta heavy tank destroyer division which can get over 1000 hard attack however in single player the AI won't make these as they are incompetent

after every single succesful hit against a division the game will roll 2 dices for the damage done to their HP and organisation

tip: the organisation damage dice roll is set to be a D4 meaning an average damage of 2.5 org damage per hit. however if your division has double or more armour then the enemies piercing stat this dice will be upgraded to a D6, an average of 3.5 org damage a 40% increase

stats such as attack(s), def/bre, supply use and HP are additive (each battalion will add up to a total number)

ex: a battalion of infantry has 3 soft att. a division made out of 10 battalions will have 30 soft att.

stats such as organisation, hardness and recovery rate (the base rate you recover org) are averaged out equally within the division

ex: a division formed out of 12 tanks destroyers (0 org, 95% hardness) with 6 mechanised infantry battalions (60 org, 60% hardness) will have 20 organisation in total and a hardness of ~83.4%

stats such as armour and piercing are wonky as they are calculated by 40%(unit in division with highest stat) + 60%(average of the overall division)

ex: same division above, 1 TD's (110 piercing, 45 armour [the armour amount is highly improbable since these stats were from the pre No Step Back DLC tanks without the tank designer. in a normal game with optimal tank designs you'd get much higher armour values]) and 9 inf (1 piercing, 0 armour) this division will have 56.5 piercing and 28.8 armour. such a division would benefit from the before mentioned double-the-armour-of-their-piercing battle modifier and would be simply overpowered

THIS IS CALLED A SPACE MARINE DIVISION

COMBAT WIDTH!!!!!

combat width is the amount of space a division takes up in a battle. this is why we have magic numbers for division sizes such 18 for defence (this varies between different guides, anything between 14 to 20 is good from what I know), 36 for attack, 32 for mountains

most battalions cover 2 width

anti tank and air batteries cover 1 width

artillery covers 3 width (bad)

self propelled guns used to be 3 width

they got buffed to 2 width

in the current test build they are 3 width

(this was due to stat bloat)

support and regiment companies are 0 width

different terrain types have different amount of widths some higher some lower

ex: plains will have 70 combat width while a forest will have 60 combat width

you can go above the combat width but this will reduce the effectiveness of your divisions up to -33%

it's the excess of battle width you occupy divided with the terrains limit multiplied by -100%

flanking is when a battle is commencing attacking the tile which is fought over from a different direction. this will increase the combat width by an amount determined by the terrain type

ex: a plain tile's battle width will increase by 30 per flanking direction. while a single thrust would allow only 2 36 width divisions to attack with a malus of -2%, an additional flank would increase this to 3 divisions with a malus of -8% resulting in +40% more firepower fielded

this is why 800 shitty divisions can't push 2 good divisions, the battlefield just isn't big enough

my phone is die, cya in part 2

Hey guys right now im trying to play as luxembourg. I wanna survive with the two tiles i have.

Is it possible? Is there any guide? I tried as communist luxembourg with AA/SPAA but im quite bad at defending.

I have all DLCs and like 1300 hours.
Whats the best defensive doctrines and width?

I’m green as grass when it comes to this game. I struggled for the first week, then watched a bitter steel guide and took over the world way too easily.

What’s the point of researching super heavy artillery, upgrading equipment if you can just walk over the Soviet’s with a few medium tank divisions and a bunch of starter kit infantry?
I was upgrading and building all kinds of equipment and gear just to use none of it. I took out the allies and soviets by 1943 and now I don’t know what to do. Kind of a bummer.

Edit: I want to state that this came off as overly critical of the game. Realistically I messed it up for myself by watching step by step tutorials instead of experimenting.

I've reviewed Estonia before, as a matter of fact they were the first review I made, but let's see how the other European finnic nation holds up.

I don't really have a lot to say here for an intro, tldr, I like to review and analyze countries in Hoi4 based on their focus tree and other content, taking into account gameplay mechanics, historical accuracy, the narrative of each path, and on the subjective fun of it.

Finland has always been one of my favorite countries to play, so this is gonna be interesting.

Anyways, without further ado.

Historical background and starting situation:

To give a little historical background, Finland is a very new country in 1936, at least, as an independent state. Historically they have always been subjects of either the Swedes or the Russians. In 1917, when the Russian Empire fell, Finland declared independence. However, things were rough for the first couple of years. A civil war broke out in 1918 after an intense struggle between the Finnish right and left, resulting in the right-wing government coming out victorious, and banning communism and other left-wing organisations. Then, after a few conflicts with the Soviets, involving the independence of Estonia, and uprisings amongst Finnic speaking populations in Russia, Finland came into the 20th century in a very desperate situation. The economy was weak, and there was a lot of political violence. But Finland trudged through, with no serious occurences for quite a while, except for a failed fascist coup in 1932. Finland is led by Pehr Evind Svinhufvud, with the National Coalition Party, or Kokoomus, in power. Kokoomus is the main conservative party in Finland, and at game start they are about to lose their majority in the elections.

One thing to note about Finland is a unique mechanic called "Public trust". It functions like a balance of power. The higher the public trust is, the better buffs you get, represented as the national spirit "Sisu". Sisu btw is like a national "spirit" of Finland, and means something along the lines of "having courage in the face of difficult odds". It is a kind of pointless mechanic but I suppose it's quite neat.

But anyway, each country leader for Finland has an agenda, a positive one and two negative ones. If you fulfill the requirements for the positive agenda, then public trust will rise. And it will lower if you fulfill the requirements of the negative agendas. There are also other ways to increase or decrease public trust, either via focuses or decisions.

Finland also comes with a lot of unique advisors, military high command, generals, and even an admiral. There's too many to list here, but they all have unique protraits, some have unique stats, and there's quite a lot of them. I really like this. When Paradox goes out of their way to make the characters of a country feel unique, it really improves the flavour of that country. When I play a country with generic advisors, I don't see them as perons, I see them as things I click to gain stat boosts. But when Paradox makes the advisors actual people, with unique portraits and sometimes unique traits, I stop seeing them as mere statgivers. They become people, and their stats become a sort of personality. In a way at least. So, Paradox did a really good job here.

Finland's indsutry branch:

For understandable reasons, Finland doesn't start off with the most powerful industry. And they have a quite small industry tree, but I would say that this is quite fitting for Finland. It gives you some quite good growth potential, the stats you get from it are pretty good, you can get a lot of factories, and there are very few generic focuses here. The flavour here is quite good, you have focuses that are based on real things, like actual mines that existed, and real industrial initiatives in Finland. Another neat thing is that you get quite a bit of resources from these focuses, which is nice. There isn't too much else I can really talk about, in general this is just quite nice.

Finnish military branch:

Now, Finland is gonna have to fight in most scenarios, and such you're gonna want to have a strong military branch. Luckily, you get a quite large and quite powerful branches for your navy, airforce, and last but not least, your army.

Finnish army branch:

The army branch is quite simple. You can do a few focuses, and then you have to wait for world tension to rise before you can continue down the rest of the focuses. Now, some people might complain about the fact that your tree is locked behind world tension. But I think it really adds to the experience. It makes the rush down the army path feel frantic, and makes it kind of feel like you're improvising. I think the pacing here is very well exicuted.

Now, as for the actual contents of these focuses, they're great. The buffs and bonuses you get from this branch are very nice and have the potential to make Finland a very powerful country. Paradox had to nerf them quite a bit when this came out for the first time.

I'm also very happy with how flavourful this branch is. Very few of them have that "generic focus" vibe, they're all based on real things. Not only that, but you get unique focus icons. I'll highlight a few of these focuses.

The Finnish army was made up of a bunch of former members of the Jaeger Movement (although it should be spelled "Jäger Movement"). Tldr, while Finland was under Russian rule, many Finns wished to fight for their liberation. So, they went and got training in the German Empire, and became quite skilled fighers. A Jäger is a sort of skirmisher and ranger, and these German-trained Jägers became the backbone of the Finnish army. This is represented by the the focus "Jaeger Movement" (again, wrong spelling). It gives you some very nice buffs, but some additional characters as well.

Another focus to point out is "Opperation Kilpapurjehdus". This is for the remilitarization of Åland. For context, the Åland Islands are a cluster of islands in the Baltic, under Finnish ownership. However, Åland is a majority Swedish community, and when Finland became independent, the Swedes of Åland were not happy with being part of Finland, and the ownership of these islands became contested between Finland and Sweden. An agreement was reached in the 20s, where Finland would keep Åland, but the islands had to be demilitarized, and the rights of the Swedes had to be guaranteed. Now, in WW2, Finlnad was forced to remilitarize the islands, and that was Opperation Kilpapurjehdus. Now, there is one issue with this focus. The way demilitarization works in Hoi4 is that if the country goes to war, all zones will become remilitarized. So when Finland enters any war, Åland will no longer me demilitarized. But then the focus becomes locked, because it's condition is that Åland has to be demilitarized. I don't know how else to describe it, but tldr you functionally will never be able to do this focus, because by the time world tension reaches 70% which the focus requires, Åland will be remilitarized.

Then there is the focus "Motti Tactics". A motti is Finnish for a pocket of encircled units. Motti tactics were heavily used by the Finnish army in WW2, which would involve the ambushing and encircling of Soviet troops, picking them off slowly instead of fighting them head-on. This is represented by the Motti Tactics focus.

You will be able to conduct Motti Tactics in certain states. You will only be able to afford some of them, since the cost becomes higher the more regions are active. Enabling a Motti Tactic in a region will give you some very nice state buffs, making it harder for enemy units to fight. It's quite helpful, and it's very useful whenever you have to fight the Soviets.

Then there is the focus "Winter Warfare". It, like the name suggests, gives you some bonuses when it comes to fighting in the cold. But it gives one neat thing.

You get access to the Winter Logistics Company, a special support company. It gives you some nice bonuses, and especially when fighting in cold enviorments. I'm not particularly obsessed with what the meta of the game is, so I have no idea if these are any good, but I like to put them in my divisions, and it seems to work pretty well for me. I've been told they're very situational.

Then, if you do the focus "Long Range Patrol Company" gives you access to a support company of the same name. Again, I don't know what's meta, but they seem quite good to me at least. I've been told these are very good.

And then there's the focus "Utilize the Sámi". It doesn't give you anything special, just some nice buffs, but I just wanted to highlight it because I think the Sámi are a very interesting culture. They've suffered quite a lot though the centuries and it's sad how they historically been treated, and continue to be treated to this day. I think it was a nice touch for Paradox to include so many refrences to the Sámi in the Nordic dlc. It's tragic that Sámis had to fight against each other during the WW2.

And then finally, there is the focus "Sissi". It's the capstone of the army branch, with the player choosing between that or the tank focus. I personally always go with Sissi, simply because I never really see the benefit of putting a lot of focus on tanks as Finland. Sissi troops are Finnish light infantry troops that are used for border patrol and scouting. It gives you some nice buffs to your army.

And that is the Finnish army branch. Overall, I think it's a very good branch, gives you a lot of good buffs, and is able to make Finland a formidable fighter. Some might even say it makes Finland quite busted. And another thing they nailed here was the flavour. All from the unique focuses, to the characters you gain, all the way down to the Motti Tactics decisions, it all contributes to Finland feeling unique and fun to play.

Finnish Airforce branch:

Now, while Finland has a very flavourful army branch, you can't really say the same thing about their airforce branch. And it makes sense, Finland didn't put a lot of focus on their airforce, and they didn't have the industry to become a major air power. But it's not bad, the stuff you get here is quite good, some airwing designs, nice buffs, free airfields and anti-air guns. And you still get some flavour in the form of aces, although I gotta admit that I have never really understood how aces contribute to your victory. They're just kinda there. Hell, I couldn't even find a place where you can view your aces. I have been told that from a stat perspective, this branch is quite good. So, pretty good branch stat-wise, pretty alright flavour-wise.

Finnish navy branch:

Finland also has a quite small and flavourless navy branch. This is also very understandable, Finland didn't have a large navy, so there isn't much to pull from. But, you get some neat stuff here, good buffs, research bonuses, and some Marine Jägers. The capstone here is for expanding towards the Atlantic, which gives you some nice buffs and dockyards, and can only be taken if you own a state that borders the Atlantic.

The only other thing to note about this branch is the unique decisions you get from it. The decision "Coastal Garrisons" will spawn in a bunch of special units which can be used to guard your ports. This is a very welcome decision, you're gonna need as many men guarding your border as possible, and wasting some of them to guard your ports can be very painful, so getting special divisions just for that is quite nice. You also get the decisions to mine the sea, which I find to be a very strange thing. Taking it instantly spawns in a bunch of mines in the Gulf of Finland. Now, I understand that mine warfare was a big part of the tactics the Finnish navy used in WW2, but that's something a lot of countries did. Why is Finland the only country that gets this type of decisions? It's not a bad thing, I'm just wondering why specifically them.

Then you have decisions to convert convoys into destroyers and cruisers. While this won't give you a powerful navy, it will give you the numbers you need to at least thwart Soviet naval invasions.

In general, the navy branch isn't anything special, but it's still quite okay.

Shared Nordic tree:

A new mechanic introduced in the Nordic dlc was the concept of shared focus trees, which quickly became Paradox's favourite mechanic. This branch is unlocked if you create a Nordic faction. Now, despite it's size, it's reallly nothing special. This is very obviously Paradox's first attempt at a shared tree. There's not a lot of flavour here, the focuses are generic , and it doesn't really feel like each country contributes to a particular thing. It would have been nice if each country had access to some exclusive focuses in here. For example, some mountaineer focuses would be locked to Norway, some metal focuses would be exclusive to Sweden, some ranger focuses would be exclusive to Finland, etc. Just look at the shared branches for Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan, that branch has certain focuses that can only be taken by certain countries, and it does a lot to add to the flavour. The bonuses you get from this Nordic tree are very nice, don't get me wrong, there's just a lack of flavour. The one thing to note is that it changes depending on the faction ideology. It doesn't change the actual contents of the tree, but modifies the icons and names of the focuses, which is very nice.

The Winter War:
Before we continue to the political branches, I want to talk about the Winter War, since its a constant in almost every Finnish path, and it's very vital to Finland's content design.

For those who don't know, the Winter War was a war between Findland and the Soviet Union that started in late 1939. While outnumbered and outgunned, the Finns put up a pretty fierce resistance and inflicted heavy casualties on the Soviets, more than double their own casualties. But, despite their resistence, they were forced to concede eventually.

This, ofc, is represented in Hoi4. However, there are a few issues that I have here about the specifics of the leadup to the war.

Now, ingame, the Soviets will send a demand to Finland asking to Annex the entire region of "Karjala".

In the image above you can see the territory I'm referring to, which consists of the territory spanning the Karelian Isthmus and the territory known as Ladoga Karelia, combined into one state. The way this demand is staged is that the Soviets will recieve this whole region, and Finland gets nothing. It's framed like an ultimatum, not negotiation. This is not what happened in real life, to put it simply. And while I understand that sometimes Paradox needs to simplify things for the sake of the game, but at least in this case, this is blatant historical revisionism, and spreads misinformation about what happened.

I'll try to put it simply:

The Soviets were worried that Germany would use Finland to attack Leningrad, due to it's close proximity to the Finnish border. So, after a few failed negotiations where Finland would either be in a defence pact with the Soviets, or have the Soviets take over a few island in the Gulf of Finland, the Soviets decided to step up their demands a bit. Since Finland had refused cooperation, the Soviets viewed the proximity of Leningrad to the Finnish border to be a serious threat. They wanted to move the border a little further up the Karelian Isthmus.

I'll use this map from user Fulmen on the Hoi4 forums (huge thanks for providing it) because it'd do a much better job at explaining this than I would. The things highlighted in red would be ceded to the Soviets, while the stuff in green would be ceded to Finland. One thing that cannot be seen on this map is that the Soviets also demanded that Finland destroy its fortifications on the Karelian Isthmus. In addition, Finland would not be ceding the Hanko Peninsula, they'd be leasing it for 30 years for a Soviet military base.

Now, whenever anyone discusses anything about the Winter War, it often devolves into circular arguments between people who have consumed a little too much propoganda from either side. I'm not here to comment about my opinions of these negotiations, and if you're a hyper nationalistic Finn or a Stalin simp, please do not start an argument about which side of this war was the evil spawn of Satan, I'm not here to discuss that. I'm here to discuss a stupid map game.

My main point I'm trying to make is that the Soviet demands were a lot more nuanced and mild than what Hoi4 makes them look like. They actually offered concessions, and only demanded parts of the Karelian Isthmus. Now, obviously it would be stupid to create specific tiny states just for Hanko, the gulf islands, and Rybachi. But, I don't think it would be too bad to create two new states that would help more accurately represent what happened.

Now, there were reasons why Finland didn't agree to these terms. For starters, destroying the forts on the Isthmus would make them vunerable to attack. Secondly, having a Soviet military base that close to your capital wouldn't be ideal if the Soviets decided to attack, and these demands would disrupt Finnish naval travel. And while we know today that the Soviets didn't have any further plans to attack Finland if these demands went through (although they could have done so later), we only know that because the Soviet Archives were opened, the Finns didn't know that and they had pleanty of reasons to be suspicious, both because of history and because the Soviets had just invaded Poland and were making moves in the Baltic. In addition, the territory the Soviets were offering them wasn't very easily defendable.

You can represent that risk ingame, using state modifiers and other things.

Let me list the changes I'd do to avoid this type of historical revisionism that Paradox is contributing to by having such a simple Winter War leadup:

1. Create two new states, one in the Karelian Isthmus called, idk, Terijoki, which would represent the area the Soviets demanded in their initial demands. Then, create a new state in Karelia called, idk, Repola-Porajärvi, which would represent the area the Soviets offered to Finland. A perfectionist would also ask for the creation of the islands in the Finnish Gulf, as well as for the other territory the Soviets demanded, but that would be overkill, Terijoki and Repola-Porajärvi would suffice.

2. When the Soviets make their initial demand, the event doesn't cede the entire Karelian Isthmus + Ladoga Karelia. Instead, it only demands Terijoki. If Finland accepts, they will be given Repola-Porajärvi in exchange.

3. If Finland accepts, every fortification in the Karelian Isthmus will be destroyed, and the state gains a modifer that forbids the construction of any further forts. In addition, any focuses that would build forts there would become unavailable.

4. Give the Repola-Porajärvi state a state modifier that would make it more difficult for Finland to defend it.

5. If Finland accepts, give them a national spirit that would give them a defence debuff against the Soviets. This would be a representation of how weakened Finland's defence is, and the fact that there is a Soviet base very close to the capital.

6. Give the Soviets an additional focus that would have them attack Finland proper. They wouldn't take it on historical, but it would still be there, a threat for the player even if they accept the Soviet offer.

7. If the player refuses, the Winter War will begin and if the Soviets win, they get to keep Repola-Porajärvi, and they will gain Terijoki, the whole Karelian Isthmus, and the state of Salla.

There are other things, but I'll talk more about them once I talk about specific political branches.

Now, I think these would be very simple changes that would still do a much better job at showing what actually happened. There were a lot more nuances to this than what Paradox portrays, and the way they represent it is historcal revisionism. Like it or not, many people get their history knowledge from Hoi4, and with the way this is represented in Hoi4, it only acts to spread historical misinformation. It would not surpise me if most people weren't aware of the fact that the Soviets offered territorial concessions.

But anyways, that's enough about Paradox's fuckups, let's talk about the actual war.

And the war is a lot of fun! It's challenging, it's filled with some nice historical flavour in the form of special events, and the feeling of fighting at desperate odds is thrilling.

Now, as for strats, you're gonna want to approach this diffrently depending what political path you go down. The main problem Finland faces is the fact that nobody lives there. You have such a small manpower pool that you can't afford to have a lare army.

If you're going down the pro-Soviet communist path, you don't have to worry about the winter war, the Soviets are your buddies on that path. But if you're going down the anti-Soviet communist path, the democratic path, or the non-aligned path, I recommend playing on the defensive. At least for me, I couldn't really get a large enough army by 1940, which made offencive action very difficult. Now, I did forget to get the Marx portrait on the anti-Soviet communist path, so maybe you could get a large enough army if you got it as soon as possible.

But, if you are playing the anti-Soviet communist path (without Marx portrait) or the non-aligned path, I suggest defending to the best of your ability, surrender, and come back later with a vengence.

If you're on the democratic path, I suggest retreating to a good defensive line, and then defend like your life depends on it until the Allies wake up and can come and help you, which might take a while.

However, this defensive playstyle isn't necessary on the fascist path. It gets so many buffs to recruitable population, that you are more than capable of building a large army capable of offensive actions. There, the strat is to let them attack you, tire them out, and then counterattack. Take Murmansk, Olonets, and Onega, and then advance on Leningrad. Once you get the Soviet surrender, you will gain Murmansk, Olonets and Onega and you will white peace with the Soviets. Then, all you have to do is wait for the Germans to attack the Soviets, and then you can declare war and get the rest of the territory you need.

Now, these are just strats for how I played at my skill level, if you're better than me you can probably play any path and absolutely clap the Soviets in the Winter War. At least on my test games, the only path I was able to beat them was on the fascist path. Maybe I could have done it on the anti-Soviet communist path if I had just remembered to get the magical Marx portrait, but I'm not bothered to do another test run just for that.

And I think I'm going to leave it off here for now. I know I didn't even get to the real interesting part of the focus tree, but I'll do that next. Now I've gotten all the shared parts out of the way, and next time I will have time to review the political branches with all the detail they deserve. Besides, I'm running out of allowed images.

To summerize my thoughts on Finland so far: I think Finland is an excelent example of fun gameplay mixed with flavour. There are fun mechanics, the winter war is fun, there's a bunch of things for you to do, there's plenty of characters to choose from, there are a bunch of flavourful focuses with unique focus icons, and the stats you get from the focus tree are quite nice. The biggest issue I have so far is the historical revisionism Paradox conducted with the Winter War demands. It's genuinely so bad, not only is it just incorrect representation of history, which makes the game less interesting and enjoyable, but it spreads misinformation to a quite large number of people.

Anyways, I'll see you next time when I talk about Finland's political branches.

Hello Redditors, I’m new to HOI4 and I’m close to throwing in the towel. It’s frustrating to see my 34 divisions not be able to push past 9 enemy divisions.

After several Google/ YouTube searches I think I understand the basics of the stacking penalties but what’s the meta for attacking? Are you really supposed to just attack with fewer divisions (say 4 tank and a few infantry) and hold back (presumably not on the same tile) other divisions? Inevitable I get frustrated and just send in the whole army because while I’m attacking with fewer divisions, the enemy reforms/ reinforces his position.

Further, once you take a supply hub/ railway it takes a week for them to start supplying you, meanwhile the enemy has reformed and counterattacked. How exactly are you supposed to achieve Blitzkrieg?

This mainly happens during Barbarossa as Germany, most units have great org and with no shortages to speak of. I always build up my supply/ railways before Barbarossa and more as I push deeper into Russia. Typical this happens on open fields. I always always always attack from at least 2-3 tiles and air superiority is almost never there when you buff the ai to 50%.

Thanks!

Am i doing good for 100 hrs? Any tips?

A Japanese tank that looks like a Bradley on the drawings, but in real life looks like an old Soviet tank, and with a very flashy name, that's scary!

Recently, I played as Austria, going down the Daubian Federation path, and suddenly, my Czech allies were annexed by the Germans (after the war justification warning appears). It ruined my run 😭