HOI 3 Gameplay Help

No luck as Nationalist China, but I'm playing a game as Japan and know precisely what you mean. I had the same difficulties against Communist China as you are having. I eventually defeated them, but more by capitalizing on their mistakes. They have good defensive fortifications in mountain provinces, so you are taking massive penalties just to start the battle. What I had to do was completely surround CC and launch an attack on their capital. Wait for them to bring reinforcements to the battle and abandon other provinces. It took a while, but it was all I could do. In all the battles I fought against them, they never lost a single soldier. I still don't know why they surrendered.

 

playing as Nat. China on ICE i usually opt not to go to war with Communist China at the start of the game.

 

You really need to avoid war and start merging together units so they don't consist of 2-regiment divisions. You have the hard task of having to cover all your ports from seaborne invasion too. Certainly not a task I would look forward to!

 

Perhaps you have this correct Anderan. I would be better off avoiding war altogether with CC. This is ironic as in most cases it is an enviable position to bypass the entire neutrality lowering ceremony. To avoid fighting it out early on would allow much better preparation. It is hard to pass up however as the extra IC from conquering CC would be very nice.

CC would be a great country to choose to play as. As you pointed out Mike CC is in a very good defensive position. I too got in battles where I would lose hundreds and the defenders would lose only around 10 men.

Matt, I was building my divisions up in strength from serial producing infantry and artillery brigades but this was very slow going. It would be better to merge troops at the opportune times. The seaborne invasions do add to Nat China's pickle.

If I'm not mistaken Nat China has control of most of China as soon as Japan goes to war against it. This is very confusing. Not only do you have to scramble at war against CC, you also have to scramble to line up the added troop responsibility that also immediately goes to war.

I've been picking minor powers to improve my game skills. My aim is to play a faction that does not have a huge ammount of things to track all at once, so I can understand the game better. Perhaps Nationalist China is a bit too much confusion to take on.

 

Nat china is a bit of a challenge considering the state they start in, if you want to try a major power that doesn't have a lot to worry about actually try the USSR, generally all you really have to worry about is building up land and air forces to fight Germany while occasionally adding forces to your eastern forces to defend your border with japan. If you still want to play a minor power, Hungary would probably be an interesting choice, as would Greece (though Greece would probably be a bit difficult as you would more or less be isolated when the inevitable German/Italian invasion came).

 

It's fun to check out the options. I like the idea of trying a minor power as for me it is easier to see the effect of the more limited options. I still like to have somewhat of a good chance of getting somewhere in battle. I do believe most of the European options get swept under the rug as I've experienced with Romania against the Soviets, but they also have many great expansion options. I've considered Hungary and Greece yet they most likely have less staying power than Romania. Poland has a good sized starting force yet they appear to be in real trouble come 1939. I have been trying to discover ways of bringing minor powers to prominence. I haven't found any great ways to do this but you can't use a cookie cutter formula as each challenge is unique.

 

You could try Finland or one of the South American countries. Argentina and Brazil have the most IC so you could try to take over South America

 

I've been playing as Canada and have really been enjoying it. The first couple years are slow going as there's lots of building, training and research to catch up on. but once you get your first army settled it's off to the front to help your allies kick some ...! As long as you dont mind playing second fiddle to your more powerful allies in the early years of the war.

I'm in now in the year 1946 and WW2 is still raging. My military is now strong enough that i've pretty much secured Africa on my own (South Africa, vichy France with other Axis allies had taken it completely).. but it was a challenge, Especially when it came to keeping my motorized divisions supplied.

Speaking of which, I have a NEWB question: 2 divisions of Armour and Mot Inf. (6 brigades total) captured an enemy port. They shortly after ran out of supply.. I found this curious, considering according to their menu screen were being supplied from the port they had just captured. the port was a 3 tic, with 3 infrastructure. I decided to wait a few days.. and then a week went by and they were still out of supply, they had tons of fuel but not 1 extra wrench!. the port however had no problem supplying my other troops who had swung south as well as all the nearby provinces were fully supplied by the captured port!. curious eh? I tried moving them to new provinces on the map, ones that were in "green" supply. but once they had used up all the stored supply in the province they'd go back out of supply..

Any thoughts? perhaps a glitch? they were in contact with the theatre HQ but out of contact with their direct HQ. I think this might have something to do with it.. however some of my other troops were in the same situation but were still receiving supplies. Oh and my production allocation to re-supply is at 100%.

 

How are you Naval Convoys? It could be that you don't have enough of them (with all the African ports). You can also try to manually set up the supply routes as well. Or it just might not be a big enough port to support that amount of troops. At this point, Air Transports are your temporary savior

 

Yes, I think Naval Convoys is the answer you are looking for. These are not the same as the trading convoys. I learned the hard way.

Canada does sound like a very interesting choice. I will have to see if they have any promise. I briefly tried Guangxi Clique as they have a wonderful starting IC and Research rate. It really sucks when China's unification happens in 1937. Given the choice whether to unify I said yes, which was the wrong answer as it finished my brief campaign. I did have another chance to go it against Japan alone which I might try but it might be tough.

 

As Guangzi Clique, you'd be that Southern Province. So as long as you defend your ports, the Japanese can't attack you with out having to march the whole way across China. Gives you time to deploy troops and better research.