General advices Hearts of Iron IV Guide

Last update: 06 July 2016

In this part of the guide you will find a selection of advices related to each gameplay element.

Remember that available nation objectives of countries are same in each scenario. If you start the campaign in 1939, then you will have more time to prepare your country. In case of scenario in 1939 none of the national objectives will be completed by default.

• Beginning of the game
• Politics
• Economy
• Research
• Army
• Development directions
• September campaign 1939 in Poland

Beginning of the game

1. When selecting nation you should notice what modifiers will impact playing as the nation and take advantage of them or create some countermeasures to them.

2. Learn the keyboard shortcuts. Correct time management is most important in the game if you don't want to regularly use active pause.

3. Remember that spacebar is your greatest ally. Use active pause whenever you must make a decision.

4. Strengthen the industry of your nation. More factories will give you much more possibilities than a few more divisions.

5. Develop espionage. Additional information that you can obtain about your allies and rivals can have great importance when planning actions and neutralizing dangerous situations.

6. Check all political options that were determined and their modifiers.

7. Base the selection of national objective on how you like to develop your nation and what are your current needs.

8. Control the world tension level. Only after it reaches a certain level some political options become available.

9. Keep improving your units - technologically and by training and using them.

10. Always keep some active researches of new technologies. You can start a few projects simultaneously, use this function.

Politics

1. National objective doesn't cost you, but realizing it takes time. Make sure that not a single day in the game passes without a national objective selected.

2. If you don't want to modify your basic nation ideology, then you should select politics in such way that research time is reduced.

3. Check all available political options and their modifiers so that you know all the possibilities given by playing a specific nation.

4. You can select the politicians in such way so that they will lead to ideology change. In the chapter about nations you will find all information helpful in deciding if such change will be profitable.

5. If you can create faction, you should quickly find some allies and improve your relations with them.

6. If you can't find allies among the nations with similar ideology then you can start propaganda of your ideology in different nation. After some time its political system will change and you will remove the negative effects coming from different ideologies.

7. Trade improves relations. Trade with countries with which you want to cooperate and they will think more of you.

8. If the enemy is very powerful and you're afraid of a fight, you can start a coup in his country, forcing him to fight on two fronts.

9. Don't waste political power points on diplomacy early in the game. Instead, focus on introducing laws and assigning government members.

10. Remember that some laws in addition to profits also have negative effects. Read thoroughly descriptions of laws so that you won't be acting against yourself.

11. If you organize a coup in some country, then it will be very hard to change the political system of that country later.

12. Control the changes of support for political parties in your country so that you won't have to deal with civil war.

13. Territory of each country is related to specific number of victory points. High national unity equals a percentage of victory points from the territories that the enemy must obtain so that the nation is willing to capitulate.

14. Remember that in order to organize a coup you will have to produce enough equipment used by the revolutionists.

15. Before joining one of the main factions check with whom are the faction members at war and whether joining them will be dangerous or not.

Economy

1. Before you start mass-producing weapons, improve your industrial infrastructure. More factories will speed up the production of consumption goods and the process of building other infrastructure objects.

2. Don't use all available factories on trading early in the game. This will paralyze the country economy and greatly slow down the process of constructing new buildings.

3. Make sure that all military factories are always in use and distribute the buildings according to equipment needed from the logistics point of view.

4. Changes of political options can greatly impact the time needed for developing a strong economy. Check available possibilities and their conditions.

5. When trading, the most important factor to consider is location of your partner. If you use convoys for transporting goods that can be bought on the continent, then later in the game the production of additional transport ships will block the possibility to improve your navy.

6. The best source of obtaining oil and gum are refineries which can be build in the boundaries of your territory. These are the only resources you can obtain without using national resources.

7. Think thoroughly before you chance civil factories into military ones. This operation is quick only in one direction.

8. By developing political objectives for industry you can obtain a few factories without sacrificing time on constructing buildings.

9. Carefully select the common buildings in provinces. Construction of most of them takes long and if you constantly fill all slots, then there won't be enough places for buildings obtained during technology researches.

10. Develop infrastructure to level 10 so that the shipments can effectively move through the whole country.

11. Control the resource needs and close contracts which lead to resource surplus. Having surplus won't speed up the production and trading can be done immediately, so if you need a resource you can buy it quickly.

12. You can assign up to 15 factories on building and assembly lines. The remaining buildings will be producing objects from the building queue or you can distribute them on other assembly lines.

13. The position of the assembly line in the queue impacts the resource distribution. Equipment to be used by most receivers should be always at the top of the queue.

14. Keep production on a single assembly line for as long as it is possible without changing the production target. This will guarantee additional bonus to production efficiency. You can obtain additional bonuses for assigning maximum number of factories (15) to a single assembly line.

15. Check if there are templates of modern equipment available and upgrade the assembly lines. Remember not to turn off the old equipment from use in the army templates. If you do turn it off, then do it gradually, one at a time. Otherwise your economy will fall.

16. Popular equipment like rifles should be constantly in production in order to speed up army recruitment in case of sudden need.

17. If you change division templates and remove some equipment from usage, you must remember about removing it from assembly line.

18. Remember that the percentage of factories producing consumption goods is counted from the total number of all factories, not only the civilian factories.

Research

1. The first research objectives should be focused on areas where they will reduce the overall research time.

2. At the beginning of the game you must decide which army model you want to develop and on what will you build the strength of your country. If you activate research projects related to specific doctrines, then you should develop them as widely as possible so that you have many possibilities of using your units.

3. Select projects that are compatible with your time line for research. Otherwise you can block one research window for a few years without gaining any profits from it.

4. It will be best if you assign the research windows in such way that each of them will have a specific application. One window will be always used for industry research/technologies, another for new units and weapons and the remaining windows on military doctrines. You can change this setting after the war starts, depending on what will be most needed for you.

5. Some countries (for example France) can have limitations related to time needed for specific researches. In that case you must adapt the structure of the country to different strategy and develop it while ignoring selected researches.

6. Change of technology located at the top of the tree leads to losing all further researches in that tree. At any time you can retreat from the project or even from the whole tree and focus on different research.

7. Remember that you can reduce the time needed for researching specific units by selecting some political objectives and by working together with consortiums that speed up the research.

8. Some technologies are required to make some seemingly useless units quite useful. For example, you can produce many aircraft carriers, but you won't place ships on them if you haven't developed technology related to sea bombers.

9. Remember that there are three researches available for each tank type. These researches determine the behavior of the tank.

10. Think before researching doctrines - the three has a hierarchy and you can easily lose progress of long research. You should check the dedicated chapter of this guide related to this topic.

Army

1. You need all weapon types for a complete victory on the battlefield. Don't limit yourself only to infantry or tanks.

2. Don't develop army templates until you develop technology that allows adding at least 2-4 new units to the template.

3. Remember that units that function as part of organized armies are much more effective in combat.

4. Make sure you have proper resources when you are preparing for war. Remember that you can change civil factories into military ones.

5. Increase the reach of civil recruitment when the soldiers start dying on the frontline. If you don't adapt the recruitment to current needs, you can quickly start lacking soldiers to create any division.

6. Always set frontline, even if you don't expect aggression. The units will be dispersed across the line and it will be easier for you to operate the supplies.

7. If you change army templates, then don't immediately remove the old supply. You can remove the oldest equipment every few months so that you won't disorganize supply production.

8. Remember that armored units, planes and ships can be strengthened by using experience points

9. Planes and ships should always have active missions so that they generate experience.

10. Land units should be always in training so that they generate army experience. The experience will be helpful when changing template.

11. Each division should use support battalions. Since early in the game make sure you have proper support.

12. You must control waters to start raids over the sea. This will allow you to perform landing and move supplies to armies stationed there.

Development directions

1. When developing industry, remember about consortiums which allow reducing the time needed for research. Political advisors can increase the speed of building factories, infrastructure and oil refineries. Through political objectives you will gain 4 civilian factories and 3 military factories. Additionally, it can provide small infrastructure backup and reduction of engineering and industrial works. Thanks to liberal trading law you will gain additional modifiers to fabrics efficiency and to speed of structures construction. Change of economical law is important as well.

2. Developing land armies is the most complex process. You will need the best rifles and varied units. Remember about the tank designer who will reduce the research time by 10%. Specific researches can be speeded up by related political objectives. Focus on developing military doctrines for land armies so that you gain additional profits. Keep modernizing the army and close lines that produce old equipment. Equipment designer can be helpful in greatly reducing time needed for developing projects related to rifles, artillery or cars.

3. Air forces require you to be more precise when deciding how to develop its branch. The base is the national objectives dedicated to development of this part of military forces. Additionally you can use the help of planes designer who will increase the basic statistics of produced machines. As for the doctrines, you can select from three development options which you can change during long game. You should also assign an air forces commander who will help in gathering experience that can be used for personalizing the planes.

4. Navy development, similarly as in case of other branches, should be started with national objectives. You should use modifiers that reduce time needed for developing specific ships. The base is also well development doctrines which can be selected out of three available variations. Before starting the research you should use the ship designer which will reduce the research time by 10%. Before opening ship's assembly lines you should select one of the available fleet experts. Thanks to him the units you produce will have greater effectiveness on missions.

September campaign 1939 in Poland

Advices for playing as Poland in the scenario 14.08.1939 on highest difficulty level.

1. Build defense fortifications on the western borders of province Plock-Warsaw-Kielce-Cracow. You won't be fast enough to build them all, but it is better to improve even a few regions before the incoming assault.

2. Group majority of units placed in the central part of the country across the line which you are fortifying. You should ignore Gdansk and Poznan in order to shorten the frontline.

3. Combine the squads into two armies and start training them. Stop the training only once the first enemy units enter your country.

4. Create a retreat line across the whole frontline.

5. Assign the highest commanders by using the available political power: Maczek, Bohusz - Szyszko and Anders.

6. In the same panel you should assign Kazimierz Sosnkowski as the infantry leader and Ludomil Rayski as the air force commander.

7. Check all available planes and set missions related to capturing and dominating in the area for them. Move as many planes as possible to the bases in regions which create the frontline.

8. Create eastern front on the line Bialystok-Lublin-Cracow. You have air bases in these legions thanks to which it will be easier to protect from the assault of Stalin's forces. Don't forget about securing the northern front with light forces.

9. Limit the usage of all production lines to 1 factory per line, close the airplanes production line. Set the highest priority for equipment restock distribution. At this point there is no need to set new forces since you won't manage to train them properly.

10. Depending on how the game will go, it might happen that Russians won't attack you or that Hitler will attack much later. The attack will occur at some point, so be prepared for it.