Hearts of Iron IV

Germany is one of the best starter nations. You have a large amount of control over whether you want to start the war early or late, unlike almost any other country. Choose Germany — it's one of the main options right on the country-select screen.

Before you launch, look at the toggles in the right-hand corner of the setup screen:

• Ironman mode — ON. Ironman is what lets you earn achievements.
• Historical focuses — ON. This keeps things easier and, well, literally historical — the AI follows the real-history focus paths.

Once you're in the game there are a lot of things to watch: political power, stability, war support, manpower, fuel, convoys, national focuses (below), logistics, and research. The simplest ones are here.

National focuses are more complicated, but you should always have one running. To find them: click on your flag in the upper-left corner, then click "select national focus." You can pick the ones that are lit up, near the top of the tree.

Focuses are useful for taking land, improving your forces, and getting resources — they can change a lot.

Logistics is in the left-hand corner, a bit further right — the book-and-pencil icon, or press I. Playing any "major" country, you'll see a lot going on here. The simple approach: hover over things to see what they do.

• Never go into the negatives — it will hurt your troops.
• Before you go on offense, make sure you have a lot stockpiled, because an offensive eats up supply quickly.

Research is important too. Open it with W, or the chemistry-flask icon in the upper-left corner. It improves a lot of things — resources, fuel gain, troop effectiveness, and much more.

At the start, research industry and electronics, then move into military. But make sure you keep at least 1 or 2 slots dedicated to industry even after you shift toward military.

Every division is stamped out from a template. You edit templates in the army screen by spending Army Experience (earned from training and fighting). The smart move: duplicate an existing template and tweak the copy — it's cheaper than building one from scratch, and editing a template upgrades every division that uses it.

Combat width

A battle has a limited combat width (a normal front fits roughly 80). Your division's width comes from its battalions, and you want a size that packs in without "overstacking." An infantry battalion is 2 width; artillery is 3. The classic sizes are 20 and 40; the current meta spreads across values like 16 / 18 / 20 / 35 / 36. As a beginner, a 20-width infantry and a ~40-width attacker will serve you fine.

Support companies — free bonuses

Support companies add power and take no combat width, so put good ones in every template:

• Engineers — better defense, entrenchment and river crossings.
• Recon — more speed and better movement in rough terrain.
• Support artillery — extra punch with no width cost.
• Field hospital — recover wounded, so you bleed less manpower.
• Logistics — uses less supply (pairs well with the Logistics screen).
• Maintenance — better reliability; keeps expensive tanks and guns from being lost.

Three starter templates

Focuses and construction build things over months; production is your factories cranking out equipment every day. There are three factory types:

Production efficiency — the big lesson

A production line starts inefficient (around 10%) and slowly climbs toward a cap the longer it runs the same item — reaching the top takes a long time (hundreds of days). So:

• Don't churn your lines. Switching to a new variant of the same model keeps most of your efficiency (~90%); switching to something unrelated dumps you back near the bottom (~10%).
• Pick a few lines and let them run: infantry equipment first (you always need it), then support equipment, artillery and anti-air; later add fighters, CAS, and a tank line.
• Assign factories to each line — lines higher in the list get factories first when you're short.

Air force

Build airbases, assign your air wings to an air region, then give them a mission.

• Fighters win Air Superiority. It isn't about kill counts — controlling the sky puts a big debuff on the enemy (it can cut their defense and breakthrough by up to about half), so your troops just win more fights.
• CAS (Close Air Support) scales with your air superiority — under "green air" it tears up enemy divisions in battles. Get fighters first, then add CAS.
• Naval bombers from coastal airfields wreck enemy ships.
• Some special operations need air control — paradrops want at least ~70% superiority over the drop zone.

Navy (only if you need the sea)

• Design ships for a role: screens (destroyers, light cruisers) want speed, torpedoes and anti-air; capital ships (battleships, heavy cruisers) want armor and heavy guns; submarines are cheap convoy-raiders that starve island nations.
• Put fleets on tasks: a Patrol spots the enemy; a Strike Force waits in port and pounces on fleets your patrols find.
• To launch a naval invasion you need Naval Supremacy in the sea zones you cross — win it with a fleet (or thin theirs with subs and planes), then your troops can land.

Remember the Historical Focuses toggle from setup? It's the switch between a predictable world and a wild one.

• ON (recommended while learning): the AI follows real history, so you can plan around what countries will do.
• OFF (ahistorical / "random" focuses): the world goes off-script. Germany might turn democratic or restore a monarchy, countries take unexpected focus paths, and alliances and wars form differently every game.

Off-historical is less predictable and can be much harder — a country that was your ally in history might not be this time. You flip it at the same right-hand toggles as Ironman, on the game-setup screen, before you start.

Win a war and a peace conference opens. You spend war score — earned by doing the actual fighting (your troops, planes and ships, and taking land) — to claim what you want from the losers. The more of the war you carried, the bigger your share.

Top-left of the conference, switch between how you're spending that score:

• Annex — take the land directly as your own. Simple, but occupied territory only pays off through occupation law and compliance (it never reaches 100%).
• Puppet — install a subject state. Cheaper in war score than annexing, and a puppet funnels you resources (up to 100% of its territory's) and can be dragged into your wars.
• Liberate / change government — free a nation, or flip its ideology to spin up a friendly state.

You don't have to shove every division around by hand — draw a plan and let the AI execute it.

• Front line — select an army, press Z, then click/drag along the border or the current contact line. Your divisions spread out to cover it.
• Offensive line — press X and drag arrows to where you want to advance. Divisions attack along those arrows; you can bend the arrows and chain several offensive lines together.
• Planning bonus — leave divisions sitting on a plan (not moving, not fighting) and they build a planning bonus each day up to a cap. It boosts attack and defense and is one of the biggest single modifiers in the game — let it fill before you attack.
• Press the execute/activate button to launch the plan; cycle between fronts with Tab.

Once Germany clicks, other majors teach different lessons. Good places to go next:

Battle plans win ground; encirclements win wars. Cutting a pocket off from supply destroys whole armies at once — but the AI won't do it for you, so this one is hands-on.

• Pick a weak point. Punch through where the enemy line is thin and the terrain is easy — flat plains with no river give them no defensive bonus.
• Pin the flanks. Launch small attacks on the tiles either side of your breakthrough so the enemy can't rush reinforcements in to plug the hole.
• Break through, then wrap around. Push fast divisions (motorized/armor) through the gap and swing them behind the enemy line to link up and seal the pocket.
• Mind your supply. Keep spearheads near railways and supply hubs; after each breakthrough, pause and read the new supply map before racing on — an attack that outruns its supply becomes a pocket of your making.