Hearts of Iron 3: Their Finest Hour

[MetalDog]

Sorry about the empty quote.  Having problems with the forum software and didn't have time to correct it last night.  I was basically just going to say that I am a bit dense at times, so I did not notice that being the case, but I am sure it could be.

[jomni]

I just reinstalled this. Let's see how far I get.

[Silent Disapproval Robot]

Tuna asked for some screenshots, so here they are.  I am using two graphics mods, historical flags and Francesco's counters.  The latter swaps out the NATO symbols in favour of silhouettes.

Anyway, the winter of 1943 was nuts.  France and Germany slugged it out in a terrible war of attrition all along the Franco-Belgian border.  Cambrai and Charleville changed hands multiple times but by New Year's day, 1944 the Germans were pushed back to their starting lines (albeit at a cost of 300,000 French lives).

I was able to make some good inroads into northwestern Italy and pushed all the way to Milan, seizing the city the week before Christmas.

In southern Italy, I retook Taranto and the heel of the boot but I feel I have overextended myself and I'm having trouble containing the counter-attacks.

In the autumn of '43, Greece joined the Allies and made great inroads into Yugoslavia and Albania.  (Yugoslavia having joined the Axis several years earlier.)

In January 1944, the Canadians landed 8 divisions along the north German coast at Willhemshaven.  this looked to be another Dieppe writ large as the poor buggers were slaughtered on the beaches.  Their sacrifice did pull several German divisions away from Holland however and the Brits pounced.  They, along with the South Africans and one brigade of US Rangers, landed dozens of divisions in Holland and started driving the Germans inland. 

This was it!  Liberation! I sent my armies across the line into Belgium and took Brugge in a day.  The German battleships Tirpitz and Großdeutschland had been berthed in Brugge and they and their dozen cruiser escorts sallied out of port on a death or glory charge.  A turly epic naval battle took place in which the pride of the French fleet, the battleship Courbet was sent to the bottom along with two heavy cruisers and a number of destroyers.  The battleship Paris and the aircraft carrier Bearn were heavily damaged but only 3 destroyer squadrons of the Kriegsmarine escaped the guns of the French and Royal navies.

That's where I'm at now.  February 1944.



The Germans are getting pushed back from Belgium but they're stubbornly refusing to give up Luxembourg.  I've taken it twice and they've counter-attacked and taken it back once already and they're currently trying again.






Things are going well in NW Italy and I anticipate taking Genoa by March at the latest.


Down in the boot, things are going less well.  The Germans have arrived in Greece and driven the Greek armies back to their capital. German mechanized infantry are also making life tough for the French forces in and around Taranto and we're being slowly but surely ground down.  I may have to retreat to Sicily.



Convoy losses are getting critical.  Things were bad enough with just the U-boats to contend with.  Now the Japanese navy is weighing in as well and they've sunk anything flying the Tricolore from Madagascar east.  Not only is this causing supply shortages for the troops, it's also beginning to tell on civilian morale.  (You can see the negative mods in the top right of the screen.  It also doesn't help having a barking buffoon leading the nation during a time of war.  Oh well, elections are scheduled for May so hopefully they'll vote the idiot out this time.)

[Tuna]

Awesome AAR SDR, thanks for sharing!.. I'm sure your giving quite a few people an itch to fire this game up and learn it! (not just me  ;) )

[Martok]

Hell, this is almost making *me* want to get the game, despite my never having had a particular interest in the HoI series.  Good stuff SDR! 

[Silent Disapproval Robot]

Well, it's 50% off at Gamersgate now.  I think the sale ends today though.

[Yskonyn]

Wow SDR! Great continuation. I am hooked to the screen and I am ploughing through the manual and the strategy guide once more to try and learn the game proper.

Do you have some YouTube tutorials to recommend?
Also, can you share the links of those two mods you're using. Looks like something for me too!

:) Keep it up!

Just for my information; are you interested in HoI 3 multiplayer too?

[Tuna]

Wow SDR! Great continuation. I am hooked to the screen and I am ploughing through the manual and the strategy guide once more to try and learn the game proper.

Do you have some YouTube tutorials to recommend?
Also, can you share the links of those two mods you're using. Looks like something for me too!

:) Keep it up!

Just for my information; are you interested in HoI 3 multiplayer too?

I think this guy did a good job.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQ3D7qq61iw

But I'd like to find something that goes into the HQ Attacks. how to set your objectives and such.. remember learning it before, but lol. Forgot it all! I guess you could just control them manually.

I like the silhouettes too, but thought it was weird how they have French Heavy Armor as a King Tiger!

[Jarhead0331]

Those are superb mods.  Especially the counter silhouettes.

[Silent Disapproval Robot]

Do you have some YouTube tutorials to recommend?
Also, can you share the links of those two mods you're using. Looks like something for me too!

Just for my information; are you interested in HoI 3 multiplayer too?

The link that Tuna provided is a very good one.  I learned a lot from watching that guy's videos.  One thing to keep in mind though is that there have been some major changes to the game mechanics with the release of Their Finest Hour.  The biggest one is how the combined arms bonus is derived.  I think eyebiter provided a link earlier in this thread but I'll repeat here.  In a lot of the tutorials you'll find online, they are still referencing the pre-TFH game mechanics and they'll tell you that you need to comprise a division with a certain softness percentage (I think 30-66% or something like that) in order to get the combined arms bonus.  That's no longer the case.  Now you need to have a mix of brigade types in your division to get the bonus.  Thankfully, the units in the production screen are colour-coded (armour is purple, infantry is tan, artillery is red, AT and AA are blue, engineers and armoured cars are green, etc) You'll also see a combined arms calculator on the right of the division build screen which informs you of what your combined arms bonus will be.  You always need at least one infantry unit to get the bonus (cavalry and garrisons don't count even though they're tan).  I'd recommend at least two infantry brigades or one infantry and one armour and then two support units such as arty and AT. 

Espionage is also different and expanded.  In addition to the stuff you can do from the main espionage page, you can also conduct spy missions from the province tabs on the map.  If you click on a province, it'll bring up the province tab and on the right-hand side a little less than half-way down you'll see a grey rectangle with a number in it right arrow tab.  Clicking that tab will bring up a spy options menu such as sabotage supplies, steal local battle plans and so on.  You'll need covert ops points to attempt these missions though and you can gain points from the main espionage menu.

Another site that helped me with the very basics is this one:
http://www.alteredgamer.com/hearts-of-iron/

This one is good for some country-specific tips.
http://www.paradoxian.org/hoi3wiki/Main_Page

This one was very helpful in explaining how to set up your armies so that they have optimal command structures. (although doing so is very, very tedious work.)
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?508595-TutAARial-or-How-I-learned-to-Stop-Fearing-Hearts-of-Iron-3-%28Semper-Fi%29

Mods:
The game creates a seperate sub-folder for Their Finest Hour within the main HOI folder, so you'll have to put the mods in there to get them to work.  The default folder name is tfh.

Flag mod: 
http://www.moddb.com/mods/einekatzes-hearts-of-iron-iii-flag-mod

Counters mod: (you need to be registered on the Paradox forums to see the post)
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?549028-MOD-Francesco-s-Counters-Mod

If you're not registered and don't want to be, you can get the .exe here:
http://www.mediafire.com/download/36ep6qss6lz35fq/Francesco%27s+Counters+Mod.exe

The guy who made the counter mod also made a model mod that replaces all the black and white unit photos with some really nice coloured artwork but it's not fully fleshed out for Their Finest Hour yet and the placeholder art looks terrible so I don't use it. 


I'd be interested in trying out an MP game but I wonder how long it would take to play out the war.  My game's taken me weeks to play and I've sometimes played 4 hours at a stretch.


Tuna, I don't really know how to use the HQ battle planner either so I've been doing everything manually.  About the only thing I do use is the HQ stance slider to select between offensive and defensive postures.  Honestly, I haven't found it to be a hassle as France, but I suspect that trying to manage the massive armies that the USSR wields could be a different story.

[undercovergeek]

can you still politically influence nations, i remember as germany spending a fortune on this for the US and right wing made great gains over in the US and they were very sympathetic to 'the cause'?

[Silent Disapproval Robot]

Yup.  You do it through the diplomacy page.  In TFH, it uses diplomatic influence points which you obtain by allocating some of your national leadership into diplomacy. 

[MetalDog]

I do not know if MP requires the same mods, but, I do know that you must be playing the same version of the game in order to mp.  Not sure where in III it is, but I know in II, at one of the selection screens before you started, the version you had was in the bottom corner.  Left or right I do not remember, but in order to MP, all players had to have the same version code.

[undercovergeek]

very tempted to jump in as Italy now, all testament to a) the game (which doesnt always receive good press) and b)SDR and his awesome story

[Yskonyn]

Yeah I know! I am totally into Paradox grand strategy games now too.
Learning to play CK 2 properly, learning to play HoI 3 properly and EU IV being on the horizon.... ouch.. so much to learn!
It helps that the Clausewitz Engine offers much of the same control mechanics for each game at least.