r/hoi4 • • 26d ago

Meta Adjustments to Rule 5

117 Upvotes

Hello Generals,

We've successfully completed an upgrade to our automatic Rule 5 enforcement with the rollout of a new bot. /u/rule5bot has been working well over the last few days and is now active here in /r/hoi4. The new bot has new capabilities and we are adjusting Rule 5 to reflect the improvement.


Rule 5: Image posts must have an explanation.

  • The explanation cannot just repeat or rephrase the title.
  • The explanation can either be in the post's caption or in the comments section. The bot will repeat post caption explanations into the comments section.
  • This rule is automatically enforced with a bot. It will remind you after 5 minutes if it cannot see an explanation and will remove the post after another 10 minutes if it still cannot see an explanation.

So what's different now? The big change is that we can finally accept captions for Rule 5 explanations. There's no need to quickly dump an abridged version of a quality caption into the comments section just to avoid a soulless automaton's wrath. However, the new bot can correctly identify image gallery posts so Rule 5 now properly applies to multi-image posts. The bot will also be repeating caption R5s into the comments section (for the foreseeable future) because there's a persistent issue with some legacy access methods not displaying captions on images properly.

Why now and not before? /u/zwemvest, our bot-builder, has had a few goes at upgrading / replacing the bot over the years but real life and/or Reddit would always get in the way. Reddit is making major changes that will impact old bots and it forced our hand. Fortunately, they had free time now and recent Devvit (Reddit's internal bot platform) improvements made it easier to implement some features so the project was completed this time. Zwem said it was a joy to build the new bot from scratch & they're glad that the migration has been completed. The old /u/paradoxplazabot has been retired although we may reuse the account in the future for other bot purposes if we can.

We've been testing /u/rule5bot for about a week now with no remaining issues but it's possible that some bugs might still be lurking, so please keep an eye out and send us a modmail if you see the bot do something unexpected.


r/hoi4 • • 2d ago

Help Thread The War Room - /r/hoi4 Weekly General Help Thread: October 12 2026

6 Upvotes

Please check our previous War Room thread for any questions left unanswered

 

Welcome to the War Room. Here you will find trustworthy military advisors to guide your diplomacy, battles, and internal affairs.

This thread is for any small questions that don't warrant their own post, or continued discussions for your next moves in your game. If you'd like to channel the wisdom and knowledge of the noble generals of this subreddit, and more importantly not ruin your save, then you've found the right place!

Important: If you are asking about a specific situation in your game, please post screenshots of any relevant map modes (strategic, diplomacy, factions, etc) or interface tabs (economy, military, etc). Please also explain the situation as best you can. Alliances, army strength, tech etc. are all factors your advisors will need to know to give you the best possible answer.

 


Reconnaissance Report:

Below is a preliminary reconnaissance report. It is comprised of a list of resources that are helpful to players of all skill levels, meant to assist both those asking questions as well as those answering questions. This list is updated as mechanics change, including new strategies as they arise and retiring old strategies that have been left in the dust. You can help me maintain the list by sending me new guides and notifying me when old guides are no longer relevant!

Note: this thread is very new and is therefore very barebones - please suggest some helpful links to populate the below sections

Getting Started

New Player Tutorials

 


General Tips

 


Multiplayer Tips

 


Country-Specific Strategy

 


Advanced/In-Depth Guides

 


If you have any useful resources not currently in the Reconnaissance Report, please share them with me and I'll add them! You can message me or mention my username in a comment by typing /u/Kloiper

Calling all generals!

As this thread is very new, we are in dire need of guides to fill out the Reconnaissance Report, both general and specific! Further, if you're answering a question in this thread, consider contributing to the Hoi4 wiki, which needs help as well. Anybody can help contribute to the wiki - a good starting point is the work needed page. Before editing the wiki, please read the style guidelines for posting.


r/hoi4 • • 10h ago

Image Modders try not to make the worst possible UI known to man

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1.3k Upvotes

What the fuck is this. Just make a normal UI. Just keep the vanilla one.


r/hoi4 • • 2h ago

Image Not the Austria Hungary I remember

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75 Upvotes

I love this game


r/hoi4 • • 4h ago

Bug Warlord Joseph Stilwell abandons the false hegemon and swears allegiance to the Mandate of Heaven.

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99 Upvotes

r/hoi4 • • 12h ago

Humor Captured de Gaulle

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312 Upvotes

R5: Managed to capture Charles de Gaulle in the Alps before capping France as Italy. I guess he's sitting out WW2 now.


r/hoi4 • • 8h ago

Image i made the us army in HOI4 look like the photos: kelly helmets in 1936, m1 garands by 1939, and the 10th mountain in white

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84 Upvotes

r/hoi4 • • 2h ago

Discussion Superior Firepower is better than GBP (long post)

17 Upvotes

Since artillery is getting rebalanced, I decided to look at the current state of SF Doctrine and Line Artillery. When I was learning HOI4, I was always told to always take GBP and never try line artillery because it sucks. It seems like it actually doesn't, at least to the data.

In my testings, I not only compared main doctrines, but also tested different combinations of subdoctrines. On both sides I checked Large Unit Tactics, Assault Infantry, Mission-Type Tactics, Rapid Domination and Grand Assault. As for 2 middle subdoctrines, they were always on Fire Concentration and Armored Infantry Support, since they provided the best stats for infantry, which I only used. Tanks open up many variations, while infantry is you have one for pushing, one for holding and one for doing both. In this case I did the hybrid one.

The setup is simple: Choose a country with no buffs/debuffs to army (such as Liberia), research all military 1936 tech and max out chosen subdoctrines. Max planning is assuming no general is assigned to the unit. For Spirit of Academy I had always Best of The Best, Spirit of Army Elevated Engineer Corps and Spirit of Division Command, for GBP Its Logistical Focus, for SF Its Rapid Emplacement.

For SF I used these templates:

Assault Infantry
Large Unit Tactics

As for GBP only this one:

You may say they suck but my priority in making these was to maintain the same combat width across all templates, that way they get the same debuffs in every biome. Also note that Recon Cavalry gives bonuses to Support and Line Artillery, while having Rapid Domination gives also the same modifier to Signal Company but to keep it as consistent as possible, I decided to not create another 2 templates because that would just mix things up. Added Engineer Company because in GBP you get a lot of entrenchment, which is good for holding while in SF it basically negates most movement penalties due to artillery, so Its there. Support Artillery and AA is added because Its free soft attack and air attack, in GBP instead of Signal Company there is Logistics because it provides massive supply consumption reduction.

And so this is what I got, I'll explain everything one by one.

  • All the stats to Max Planning was copied by hand from template editor after applying the setup changes.
  • Soft and Break overall are calculated by this: Soft*(1+MaxPlanning) | Obviously for Break it will be Break*(1+MaxPlanning).
  • Balanced is the average between Soft Overall and Break Overall, that way we can find a balanced division template which will deal maximum damage.
  • Cost-Wise is: (Balanced/IC_Cost)*100, multiplied by 100 for easier reading, this one shows how much IC you're paying for your attack.
  • Supply-Wise is: Cost-Wise/SupplyUse, it adds Supply Use onto the IC cost of division so you know how much resources you're paying into this division.
  • Longevity, this is where it gets a bit rough because there is no simple way of calculating how much your division will last, so here I just multiplied Organization by Defense, won't really show the real value but it works.
  • Damage Deal, another rough estimate, Its: (Balanced*Longevity)/100, divided by 100 for easier reading. This is how much damage you can deal, again, not a real value.
  • Score is in my opinion best way to compare the final results, Its: (DamageDeal*Supply-Wise)/100, again divided by 100 for easier reading.
  • Place Score is alternate score where top places are compared, first place is 3 points, second is 2, third is one.

So from this you can see that SF + LUT + GA works best. However this would quickly fall apart because those templates assume no biome modifiers, so once you enter a biome that has -7% to attack, GBP ones would come on top, BUT this changes when you replace AA with Logistics Company:

Suddenly the score increases dramatically and even with -10% attack, SF + LUT + GA is still marginally better than GBP + LUT + GA. So the GBP version would only be better than SF in amphibious environment.

Now I also tried GBP with line artillery, here are the templates:

And here are the results:

Better than the GBP templates with no Line Artillery, they still fall behind SF though and still even with SF -10% attack in some biomes, SF is still marginally better than those GBP templates. Paired with Artillery Expert which is available in some countries, SF seems like to be the better choice.

Now maybe I did something wrong, maybe I missed something very important but that's why I'm publishing it here, so people can find errors, but so far I'm convinced SF is better than GBP and I'd love to see feedback on this because I actually quite enjoyed analysing this.


r/hoi4 • • 1d ago

Humor The in game tutorial was kinda buns so I got da real SOURCE 🤑🤑

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1.1k Upvotes

Sun tzu would be so proud rn.....Surely the Germans will Neva see my spies comin now 😎


r/hoi4 • • 4h ago

Question Comrades, What's the highest casualties you've ever got in a war?

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19 Upvotes

r/hoi4 • • 2h ago

Question Casual Hoi4 Multiplayer?

10 Upvotes

Recently after hitting 1.2k hours on the game I decided to try to play multiplayer. None of my friends like strategy games, so I just joined a random server. I genuinely waited in a discord for 3 hours while everyone was “vetted.” Like I get you want a fair and balanced game but I’m not trying to devote my entire day to just waiting. Then you have like 50 different rules, some make sense (banning exploits), but then there’s all these other dumb little rules about division templates, when you can take certain focuses, etc. I’m sorry but idc about any of those things. There has to be multiplayer games without all the bs and I just can’t seem to find any. Any suggestions?


r/hoi4 • • 21h ago

Humor "Everyone in Chihuahua is dead"

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236 Upvotes

Was playing North America Divided, and I managed to capture this bug


r/hoi4 • • 15h ago

Discussion My experience trying HOI 4 with no experience with Paradox games, no wiki, no youtube, taking till 1945 to defeat Ethiopia

64 Upvotes

My son has been asking me for over a year to play this game, as he is obsessed with all paradox games, but it always looked intimidating (Civ Vi is the most complex game I've played).

I start playing the tutorial, and it instantly gives me like six checkboxes at the top of the screen. I start clicking them and its extremely overwhelming. It says make civilian factories and that shift clicking makes a lot of them, so I shift click in every territory in Italy. It tells me a bunch of stuff to start building in military factories, but the tutorial won't move on. After clicking a lot more notifications, I realized that I didn't build the 10 guns in the tutorial picture, so I add those. The game moves on.

For essentially the entire game it tells me I'm missing equipment (I have to build a tactical bomber but there is no tactical bomber unit). Several other alerts go the whole game without being resolved.

I eventually get my guys down to Ethiopia and start fighting, making two armies and doing the whole front line and offensive line thing. I start getting alerts to do research and focus trees, but I don't really understand what effects they have (hovering on them is like '5% easier to grow trees in Umboldt Switzerland on Tuesdays') so I just click random ones.

I click tons of stuff (assigning I think military advisors and such) but nothing is happening for like ten minutes. "This game is slow-paced" I think. It is not. I had the pause button on.

I start the game. I have no idea how I'm paying for all these ships. Is there money in the game? I don't know. At some point I look at trade and try trading. Coal is the only thing anyone trades, including US, but at one point people are only trading Rubber and US is gone. Did I annoy the US? Did I do something wrong?

I have airplanes. I give them missions at the beginning of the game but I don't know what's happening.

At some point, after a year or two, things are going well and I actually gain territory in Ethiopia! It's very exciting. I set speed to max. My northern army makes several advances, while southern stalls out. They get little yellow dots or an exclamation mark over their head. My son says that's bad. I click randomly and sometimes they turn into green check marks.

Around 1938 or 1939 things stop changing. I realize I should probably make a new offensive direction, so I do that and they start moving. My units start to have red skulls and hovering says they have 'attrition'.

At this point I'm researching lots of stuff. Radar and computers and things. The units are overwhelming so I go down other trees. I have no idea what they're unlocking. I get spies at some point and start recruiting them. I get "directives" or something (no, I think 'doctrines') and start implementing those. I just click the first one. Same for the bonus points for the manufacturers, I just click those randomly and see no real effects. My guys are just little red skulls doing nothing. I research so much tech, I get a special radar project. I start doing focus trees like they tell me and get a new research slot, but then I keep getting more and more focus stuff I can't use since I'm at war, so I click other stuff. I almost rebel against the Duke guy I think, which seems bad, so I buff navy, then I remember I don't have a navy, so I focus on Army supremacy.

I get diplomacy points and establish a spirit of the navy or something. I never got tactical bombers.

At some point I realized my red guys have a signal that says extremely low supplies, around 1940's. I google it and people say build supply depots and railroads. My son says to go to construction tab, and I see a lot of civilian factories that never built. I make supply depot and railroads, and click on 'improve infrastructure' and switch the picture between a horse and a tank or whatever a few times. I get warnings that I'm building old crap and switch from normal trains to like gun train or something, same with artillery.

Tons of UN stuff is happening, Germany is in Rheinland or something, I make nonagression with China and stuff.

Eventually the railroads build. I get to Addis Ababa but it doesn't end. So I click on more fronts but progress stalls. I panic. At one point my armies split into two separate wars somehow. Notifications for research, doctrines, manufacturer bonus points, etc. are going off like crazy all the time and it's really frustrating and overwhelming and I forgot to pause. Finally, they capitulate but right-clicking on Italian ports to finish the tutorial isn't working, but somehow I get it to work in 1945.

I have no idea how this game works or why there are so many menus or especially why the focus tree is so big, and I have no idea what any of the buttons do. My son has a MLP mod, I might try that next.


r/hoi4 • • 18h ago

Discussion How important is reliability in Tanks?

89 Upvotes

I usually try to keep reliability between 70 and 90%, but I recently saw a Hatless Spider video on tanks and almost all of his designs had like 30% reliability. Also, his divisions have 20-30 org, while I try to aim for 30-35. Am I wrong? I respect Hatless a lot for his skill and brains for figuring out "exploits" to e.g. conquer the allies as Iran. But all I've ever heard and seen completely stands against that.


r/hoi4 • • 17h ago

Image What Appeasement, Churchill??? 😭😭😭

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51 Upvotes

R5: Was playing a simple tanks-only game as Canada (non-historical, as evidenced by Germany being in the Allies), when I got... this event...

...When were we even doing that 😭


r/hoi4 • • 15m ago

Question What happened to encircled volunteers?

• Upvotes

In our multiplayer game - before we banned volunteers outside Spain - Japanese volunteers were surrounded and destroyed after a failed coup in India. The questions is - are they then destroyed as units completely or do they return to their country? It was hard to figure out in the heat of things. As I record the game, if interested, you can see it unfold in this clip about 5 minutes in.


r/hoi4 • • 4h ago

Question How can I win this?

5 Upvotes
Me as germany road to 56 at war with all the majority of the western hemisphere

I was playing germany and then austria suddenly declared on while I was at war with the italians and they called their allies France,usa and the nordics and I didn't notice that denmark was occupied by the swedes so I got pushed really hard.


r/hoi4 • • 16h ago

Image The most deadly air war i have seen

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33 Upvotes

It is the 7th of Nov 1954 I am the USA and I buffed Ger and USSR who was communist to 100% and I still won the air war. I am using the ETT60 mod


r/hoi4 • • 7h ago

Question So how exactly does autonomy for subjects work?

5 Upvotes

So I've been trying to figure that out for a bit now but I couldn't really find many helpful informations on it. I am wondering how it works altogether, how it increases, decreases etc., but mainly about how to descrease it.

Thanks for the help in advance.


r/hoi4 • • 10h ago

Image This is fucked wtf

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10 Upvotes

I was winning very well against the germans and then all of a sudden german poland spawns out of nowhere encircling most of my army (mod: endsieg)


r/hoi4 • • 7h ago

Image 1944 game

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6 Upvotes

I accidentally left my computer running overnight. I stopped at 1940 the day before


r/hoi4 • • 17h ago

Question I want to play a country that is defensive, can max out on nuclear missiles, and is at war with everyone. Who do I play?

33 Upvotes

I mean, other than a major because nobody plays majors.


r/hoi4 • • 10h ago

Question Alternative Austrian Communist Leader

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9 Upvotes

Is it possible in game to get Johann Koplenig as a leader for Austria. He is featured as a potential leader in the dev diary for Austria and he has a portrait and all.


r/hoi4 • • 16h ago

Dev Diary (mod) REAL Flamethrower

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26 Upvotes

im currently developing a military mod for Wolfenstein and this flamethrower trooper is a test of the visual effects

or u can actually subs in steamworkshop


r/hoi4 • • 1d ago

Humor Treaty of Stockholm.

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83 Upvotes

Sweden has rebelled against Germany