Hearts of Iron IV – Beginners Guide

Basic Guide for New Players

Note: Credit goes to justorc

Choose a Beginner-Friendly Nation

Select a nation with straightforward gameplay mechanics for your first playthrough. Nations like Germany, Italy, or the United States offer a good balance of complexity and simplicity.

Enable Tutorial: Hearts of Iron IV offers an in-game tutorial that covers basic gameplay mechanics. Enable it to familiarize yourself with the game’s interface and controls.

Basic Gameplay Mechanics

Understanding Resources: Pay attention to resources like manpower, civilian factories, military factories, and natural resources. These are vital for your nation’s economy and military production.

Research: Invest in technologies that improve your military, industry, and infrastructure. Prioritize technologies that enhance your military capabilities, such as weapons and equipment upgrades.

Production: Focus on building military factories to produce weapons, equipment, and vehicles for your army. Allocate resources wisely to ensure a steady supply of essential items.

Military Strategy

Division Templates: Customize your army divisions based on your strategic needs. Start with basic templates like infantry divisions and gradually experiment with more complex compositions.

Battle Planning: Utilize the battle planning system to coordinate large-scale offensives and defenses. Draw battle plans to guide your troops and exploit enemy weaknesses.

Supply Lines: Ensure that your troops have access to adequate supplies by maintaining efficient supply lines. Avoid overextending your forces and protect your supply routes from enemy interference.

Diplomacy and Politics

Form Alliances: Forge alliances with other nations to strengthen your position and deter potential aggressors. Consider joining factions or forming your own coalition to increase your diplomatic influence.

Manage Diplomatic Relations: Be mindful of your diplomatic actions and their consequences. Consider the long-term effects of your decisions and adapt your strategy accordingly.

Negotiate Treaties: Negotiate treaties, trade agreements, and military alliances to secure your nation’s interests and achieve your objectives.

Learning Resources

Watch Tutorials: Look for beginner-friendly tutorials and guides available online. Video tutorials and written guides can help you understand game mechanics and learn advanced strategies.

Practice: Don’t be discouraged by initial setbacks. Practice and experimentation are key to improving your skills in Hearts of Iron IV. Learn from your mistakes and strive to improve with each playthrough.

Bonus: How to Beat Germany

Germany gets several significant buffs. They get a huge boost to their economy, numerous free cores, several ahead of time research bonuses, the General Staff trait where boosts planning speed and org, and so on. They’re not easy to defeat, they are designed to be the big bad boss of the game.

To defeat them you need to beat them first. This can be hard if they’re at full power, so do your best to shave off their advantages.

First, they’re heavily limited by rubber and oil. This is key, you NEED to win the airwar against them if you want to have any real chance at pushing them back quickly. Focus on fighters and eventually work in other planes (namely CAS) so that you can bomb them better.

Navy isn’t too hard, spam subs and surround them. Throw on a few destroyers to hunt their own subs.

Army is another tricky part. I’d suggest 18 width inf with eng, arty, and AA support. Build up medium tanks and make a handful of divisions. You don’t need a lot, but you do need several powerful (wide) divisions.

Where you attack them depends on who you’re playing. Historical is pretty close to what you want to do for a reason. If you’re playing the USA/Allies, try taking North Africa first. Use your more powerful navy to prevent them from resupplying. Once you control northern Africa, you can naval invade into parts of Italy or southern France. Doing naval invasions is much easier in-game than IRL. You can eaaily split Italy in half with two invasions.

Once you’ve got them distracted, you can go for an invasion from the north and push in. Start in France where you have air cover from Britian, then upgrade airfields as you push east.

If playing the USSR, focus on first blunting their attack and building up for the counter push. I would suggest focusing on the south first, taking out Romania will deny them access to oil, letting you win the air war far more easily. Upgrade infrastructure and railways as needed when you start pushing back. Remember to clear your army and airforce debuffs as quickly as you can.