Hearts of Iron 4 is an understandably intimidating game, especially for newcomers if this is their first Hearts of Iron game. It throws a lot of information at you spread across multiple screens, tabs and overlays with a bare bones tutorial being the only in-game help you get.
I am by no means an expert at the game, far from it in fact but I feel if I can help even a handful of people at least figure out enough so they can enjoy it as I do then that is a big win. There will likely be more Hearts of Iron 4 content on my blog going forward as well. I am certainly open to ideas for that content.
I realised part way through writing this 'small' set of tips that I couldn't cover everything, so anything more specific when it comes to tips or even guides will be made in separate posts in the future.This is also assuming you are playing single player, multiplayer would be an entirely different story altogether and I have not yet tried it myself.
Tip #1: Do the Tutorial
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| The tutorial might not cover everything but it's a good place to start. |
I know I said it was bare bones and it does miss a lot of aspects of the game out and explains the ones it does look at poorly but it is at least a starting point. It does feel as if it literally teaches you how to move units around and set up some basic production of equipment but barely touches on any one thing in any depth.
However I still recommend doing the tutorial to start off, bare bones as it is as it will at least give you something to start with. Part of me hopes they do an improved tutorial at some point especially as new DLC's and patches add or change existing mechanics.
Tip #2: Starting Nation
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| You can play literally any nation that existed at the time. |
Honestly I've seen a lot of good arguments for quite a lot of choices of nation to start you off in your Hearts of Iron 4 journey and you can pick literally any nation that existed at the time. Taking a large nation can seem tempting but it means far more to organise which may not be much fun if you are still learning the interface.
On the flip side taking a smaller nation can be a good way to learn the game relatively safely but you may quickly find yourself unable to expand without drawing the ire of larger nations.
My own personal recommendation is Italy, for several reasons the first of which being you have plenty of options with how to play them and where you could expand to. You start at war with Ethiopia and after you have won that you have a solid foothold in Africa if you feel like expanding there. In Europe itself you can also even expand East into Yugoslavia and on from there.
You also have access to a fairly solid navy and air force right off the bat without either one being so vast and spread out to make organising it a chore. Italy isn't the only possible good choice for a beginner but it is whom I started with.
Tip #3: Spend Some Time Learning the Interface
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| There's a lot of info to take in and yes that is republican Spain winning the civil war. |
I can't overstate this one enough, spend a while clicking every button, reading every tooltip and getting yourself comfortable with where everything is located, it will really help in the long-run. If you do this during the tutorial the game will give you some extra information
There are a lot of buttons, menu's and overlays which can be overwhelming for anyone just starting out even if you did the tutorial. It may take some time as this game throws a lot of information at you at once, so leave it paused or on the slowest speed and just take some time figuring out where everything is.
Also depending which nation you opt to play as you may have a lot of potential organising to do of things like your navies. The United Kingdom, Japan and America all have pretty extensive navies and also in a lot of cases far flung colonies.
Take it one step at a time and don't worry about it all at once.
Tip #4: Take Care of the Alerts at the Top
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| As in most Paradox Grand Strategies, alerts sit in the top center of the UI |
Much like other Paradox grand strategy titles this is usually a good first stop and the tutorial even indicates this even if it doesn't explain much along the way.
There are some alerts you shouldn't worry about too much such as having 'Unassigned Divisions' or 'Low Manpower' at the start anyway.
Unassigned divisions are basically any division that hasn't been assigned to an army which is quite prevalent for nations with a lot of colonies like the UK and France. Low manpower is to do with conscription laws (those can be changed by spending political power and is located at the top left of the laws and government section, click on that to change conscription laws when you need it.)
Tip #5: Early Research Choices & Why
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| 11 separate tabs of research categories can make it hard to know what to pick first. |
Again the tutorial gives you some vague impression of the what to aim for but doesn't really explain too well why those are best.
In general anything that increases production efficiency cap, factory output, construction speed and research speed are best researched as early as possible. So Production, Basic Machine Tools, Mechanical Computing and the like.
The first couple of years before the war starts are usually best spent improving your industry and generally building up. You will also have to make a choice between concentrated industry or dispersed industry. The difference is basically whether you want the most bonus production from concentrated or feel you want the added resistance to damage from dispersed industry at a cost of some production.
Also never research anything ahead of time if you can help it the penalty it carries to research speed seldom makes it worthwhile.
Tip #6: National Focuses to Aim for First
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| That extra research slot is what I often go for first. |
Most of the major nations have their own unique national focus trees so take this tip as a rough guideline.
Until you know what you are doing and have specific plans in mind for what you want to achieve with your chosen nation a good first set of focuses to aim for are the ones that lead to the extra research slot.
Along with the research slot, anything that gives free factories or building slots are also good choices as well.
Tip #7: Division Templates
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| This really needed it's own tutorial. |
Another area the tutorial seems to lack on a little and something that is fairly complex and intimidating. It only applies to land divisions such as armour and infantry and you can only change, edit or make new ones by accruing 'Army Experience' (Seen at the top centre of the UI with a gold star.) This is typically gained by engaging in combat or training exercises.
There are likely some in-depth guides for this out there when you want to really start getting into the fine details of this. Adding support companies to your divisions is usually a good first step once you have those unlocked.
Adding artillery companies to your infantry divisions is a good way to vastly improve their offensive capabilities.
Also adding in maintenance companies to armour divisions can help deal with reliability issues and I also find adding in Anti-Air support can be beneficial as well.
Tip #8: Construction, Civilian & Military Factories
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| So many factories to build, so little time. |
In short each province has access to a number of building slots for factories and dockyards. Civilian factories are basically what build all your other buildings as well as produce consumer goods to keep the population happy and their output can be traded for resources from other nations.
At the start of the game it is best I find to start building civilian factories, I don't generally max out every province, leaving some slots for additional military factories when the war starts. You can convert civilian factories to military ones as well if need be.
Other buildings are typically given a level of construction that doesn't affect the building slots, such as infrastructure, state anti-air, radar and the air base.
Military factories build all your military equipment from rifles and uniforms to tanks and aircraft.
Dockyards are not unsurprisingly the buildings responsible for constructing your naval units.
Tip #9: Front-Lines, Offensive Lines & Battle-Plans
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| A very basic battle plan. |
This confused me for a while when I first started as well but I think the best way to view battle-plans is they are orders for your AI commanders.
Front-lines are set on borders of other nations and will be where the army you assign to it will move to and build up.
An offensive line is basically where you would like that particular army to attempt to move the front-line to. It's basically an attack-move to break it down to it's very basics and your divisions will attempt to take everything between the current front-line and the offensive line.
The spear-head is a more focused form of the offensive line, it will take the provinces in the order in which you painted the spearhead line. Useful if you want to push toward specific areas like ports, air-bases and victory points.
A fallback line is basically the opposite of an offensive line, it's where your units will reposition if pushed back into friendly territory. So you can use it to make use of defensive terrain like rivers or even forts.
The garrison area command is something I use a lot to make sure my armies cover all important things that need defending in my own territoryl like victory locations, ports etc
You can also issue the command to perform a training exercise to increase the experience level of your troops and to gain a little bit of army experience. It does however consume equipment (and I imagine supplies when that is added.) So make sure you have a surplus when using it.
Tip #10: Production & Trade
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| The screen where you build the weapons to fight with. |
The production tab is basically where you assign equipment production orders to your military factories and dockyards so long as you have the material to run them for that particular order. The more factories you assign to something, the faster you will produce things.
There are some quirks to this system such as production efficiency, which basically means how well that factory line produces things and the longer they produce the same thing the more efficient they get at it.
Trade is a little strange in this game as you don't technically trade one resource for another, you trade the output of a civilian factory (essentially removing it from your use) to gain resources from someone.
There is no stockpiling of resources so trading to build up a surplus is seldom required, ensure you have enough to keep your factories running and that should be good enough.
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