Some basic tips to help out beginners

**($Jake$)** · December 31, 2018

Are you fairly new at the game? Do you have no idea how anything works because you are used to Hearts of Iron 4 or EU 4? Well, here's some simple tips from someone who manages to win most of their wars anyways.

1. There is never enough money.

I know, this sounds stupid, but when you play the game you tend to spend a lot of your money on research and such, and usually keep your income small so you develop as much as you can but trust me, THERE IS NEVER ENOUGH MONEY. Whether you are playing in 1440 and colonizing or playing in 2018 and trying to go up in ranks. You need a lot of money to colonize other places, in the end costing you a good few million. In 2018 there is a lot of nations that are fairly strong. If you're starting out in Europe, you can be taken out as Germany by Belgium if you are not careful enough. This connects with the next point.

2. There is never too much preparation

Countries in this game tend to use a surprising amount of their population as their army. I was playing as Russia against Armenia who had about 40,000 population but they had 5,000 army. After I was pushed back by their unbelievable force of 1/8th of their population, I quickly got troops from the caucasus region to go down there, by that time Armenia getting another 10,000 troops out of their ass. When you are going to war with a nation, you need a frontline and a defensive line a few provinces away from the frontline in case your attacks are taking too long (where they often do.). When you are fighting against Belgium in modern day (or ww2) be ready to have 10 to 15 thousand troops on their border waiting, and never attack with all of your troops. Always keep about 1/3 or 2/3 of your troops in the province, in case your attack fails or is instantly pushed back.

3. The technology menu really doesn't help you that much.

I know this might sound a bit controversial, but it is seriously not that big of a help to you. In the long run it's an ok investment, but if you're Austria and willing to recreate Austria-Hungary, you will only pump out population and economy in the tech menu, nothing else will really matter. If it's 1440, you might also add colonization to the list, but usually the tech menu is not useful to you, unless you're a country like Poland or Italy, which are fairly strong but still not at the very top of the ranks. If you are too small or too big, the tech menu will turn useless and research costs you a lot of money.

4. Taking a lot of land is a lot of effort.

In any scenario you play in, taking a lot of land will take a lot of effort. You will need to screw around with the population a lot. If you want to own a massive ethnostate, your hopes might aswell be ruined. Every single province will have to be assimilated which does not cost a lot at the start, but quickly racks up once you have 50 or so provinces to assimilate. If you want to get a bit creative, you can take out massive chunks of population from one massive city and move it to another to help it out. The game doesn't allow you to go full Hitler and open concentration camps to genocide the population, so you will have a lot of work to do once you take out the benelux, czechoslovakia, poland, austria and northern france and realize "Wait a second, I have to assimilate all of this land now?" Only to reach around 60% to 80% German population in those areas after 50 turns of assimilation.

These are some very basic tips that explain basic mechanics of the game. Hopefully it helps anyone who's just starting out with the game.

**goktug14** · December 31, 2018

I mostly agree 2nd. I made a only Middle East map, and only Turkey, Egypt and Qatar left. Turkey and Egypt had very good relations but there was always some soldiers at their border. AI is always prepared for an invasion.