So I have recently been playing HoI4 with a friend of mine, and he decided to play France and I in return played as Germany. Basically what he ended up doing was he spammed forts all over France and grabbed lots of things that give him bonuses to defense and entrenchment. I tried building strategic bombers and even had air superiority for a bit but it didn't seem to do much as the forts didn't take much damage. Eventually he ended up destroying all of my bombers with anti air. On top of that, I tried using Heavy Tanks and I still couldn't push into a single province. Eventually he had spammed so many divisions on the frontline that it felt essentially impossible to push him back and well he capitulated me not too long after. So how do I best destroy high level forts and also push frontlines when the other player has absurd amounts of units?
How long did you wait before going to war? France only gets stronger and stronger as time goes on. You should be attacking him in late 39 or early 40 before he can both fortify AND build a military industrial base
I did the 1936 start and attacked around early 40
Try and rush the Beneleux France as fast as your focus tree allows you. Both Belgium and the Netherlands start incredibly weak, as does France. France's debuffs make their army awful and their surrender limit so low. They start with a big army but they're barely equipped
Probably did the 1939 start.
Railway gun reduces fort effectiveness. CAS ignores entrenchement and forts IIRC. Bombing was a good call, but Bombers are "all or nothing" and you need huge amounts for them to work.
When it comes to unit amounts... Well, there should be no way for France to have more than Germany. It's impossible to say why that happened with this little info.
Also, if it was a 1v1, you could have just followed his lead, stop pushing and build up. They shouldn't be able to push you, and even if they do that just means giving up the forts which let's you counter attack.
Thanks for the advice! As for unit amounts, I meant to refer to the times he played as the Soviet Union and more or less had a meat wall defense of infantry.
Soft attack, and tanks with high break through to get through stuff like that… even a good heavy tank division will ignore fort. You just need a few really good tank divisions to make your pushes and your infantry to help hold the frontline and just encircling is the way to beat infantry spam
Heavy tank + m.flame tank + armored engineering vehicle + fortress buster general + full planning + 3-4 attack angle + air superiority bonus + cas + railway gun
Do all of these and you can plough through the tip of Maginot. But if he really knows what his doing he can near infinitely cycle with signal companies.
+ Spy in the region (reduces entrenchment bonus + provides combat intel bonus)
Dont forget super heavy arty, as it deals huge amounts of building damage, destroying the forts the fastest
Yeah but you can't get it in time.
medium tanks will be enough too but yeah you'll want to do most if not all of these
Damage wise thats likely, but hts have higher terrain bonuses against forts
Go around
After actually reading your post: Forget strat bombers, use CAS. With CAS, it is inevitable to de org the enemy divisions amd push. If I remember correctly, forts don't even help against CAS, probably only static anti air and division anti air. You will lose CAS, but if you have enough, you can push the enemy from their forts, which in turn will serve you.
Two out of three are correct. ✅ CAS damage is not diminished by forts. ❌ State AA does not help against CAS. It just doesn't attack them. ✅ Division AA reduces CAS damage (and so laughably little is needed that I'd treat that as the default damage), it also shoots down attacking CAS (scales linearly with air attack).
Right, static AA only helps against logistics strike.(If we talk about CAS airplains and the missions it can execute)
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… what?
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For a longer comment of five or so I'd have made two unordered lists,
True - . - . - .
False - . - .
but this struck me as silly for three statements. I could have used capitalisation to make clear which was NOT true. That looked weird. Had the statement which doesn't belong been first or last I'd have let it go unmarked altogether but in this case I felt it should be shown. What was I to do, then? Emoji, now those are very visible.
Besides, ChatGPT uses line breaks as you so helpfully demonstrated. Were I to use those to separate the entries, then the emoji seem redundant and I would simply re-order them.
Edit : I'm blocked. What a shame. I can't even read the reply. I am sure it was true Parthian shot for a parting barb.
I dont get it either
Well if your friend wants you to bleed yourself white taking a traditional invasion approach I'd try to switch tactics. Naval invasions and airdrops (within reason) are valid tactics. I know that strategic bombing missions can also specifically target forts but I'm not sure if that's going to be very efficient/effective.
I'd also suggest trying to fuck them over before the war starts. A front spanning all of France's land borders will stretch the manpower beyond their limits. Win Spanish support, coups in Belgium/Switzerland and with Italian support you can win.
Very funny SF build. Grand Battleplan with grand assault, assault inf, armored spearhead and siege artillery subdoctrines. First special project is super heavy arty and second is flames. You go right left right on mountaineer doctrine, left left right on Ranger doctrine. Split half and half 36w mountaineer rangers with medium flames and armored recon (max out breakthrough stats) support arty, support AA, and heavy howitzer. Can literally battleplan with this, have fun.
forget about strategic bombers, focus on CAS, build flame tanks, try naval invasions, or simply park your navy beside your army, put it on naval invasion support, it can grant you shore bombardment bonus, it is something like -20% defense
FeedbackGamimg did a video about breaking the maginot line as Germany:
https://youtu.be/nVxcKRY-5M0?si=fVuFaig5I9wtV0Fj
It is without the latest DLC so the new doctrines could make this even more powerful. And yes it’s SP so you can’t copy his strat but he gives lots of good tips and strats you could incorporate in your own strat.
Good luck defeating your friend!
Choke his ports
Forts dont do shit against good tanks. So just stack ad many planning and possible with as many base breakthrough as many as possible.
strat bombers are essentially useless for anything but a war of attrition and therefore commiting to that was a very bad idea considering that you're not really getting stronger while they are
you should be just building tanks and a couple railway guns with cas, having a general with engineer or whatever and fortification expert will help a ton because it will reduce the fort debuff and level the forts very quickly, especially on plain tiles and tiles that have multiple attacking directions. forts are actually pretty bad in the new update
Just build mills day 1 as Germany. Put it all on gun and supports you want. Dec on France as soon as you can
Set up
So what you need is a ton of Soft attack and enough breakthrough to stay alive. The goal is to kill their divs quickly enough to stop others from reinforcing and win the battle
Build an inter war medium tank with a heavy machine gun in it. Once you get the howitzer gun, modify the design to add that and convert all the tanks you’ve been building up not only cheaply but in huge quantities. Use Benz mio for production but use medium tank mio for design
Get a few thousand fighters and CAS using foke-wulf mio. This give a ton of range and is the best plane mio. CAS is king and even with anti air it’ll do dmg
For doctrines go Grand battle plan + Mobile infantry + Self propelled support + Armoured spearhead + Grand assault. All of these buff planning bonus which is a flat increase to stats and buff what you’re going to use which is
9 Medium SPG + 9 Mot/Mech with support artillery, anti air, medium flame tank, assault engineers, and armoured signal company
You need to stack fort attack to compensate for the fort debuffs so having a fortress buster general and once he is fighting use siege artillery ability to dmg the forts
Be a funny guy and paratrooper his ass.(idk if this works)
CAS
Stacking every bonus in the division aside and adding a rail gun and the right general, force attacks and keep attacking. Yes, you'll bleed. But especially with SH Arty the forts are gonna lose levels, and as long as they're in combat they can't be repaired. Any fort will yield if you're willing to pay the price for it.
Verdun would have worked for Germany if not for the offensives at the Somme. That's the playbook you should be looking at - give him the choice between losing ground if very slowly, or counter-attacking to your advantage with a force that spent all its IC on forts instead of more mils.
CAS
CAS, literally just Green air and CAS, maybe a decent tank. Forts are easily blown apart by bombing, Tact is alright, but a 300 stack of Strats will be it lot better, and once the Forts are down, thousands of CAS and green air will make his entrenchment nearly irrelevant. This will need a decent tank or Mountaineer to act as a buster division, but MP has had the solution to fort spam for years at this point.
Air superiority, CAS, TACs bombing the forts. Use manstains siege ability as your main army for pus trough. Go left side on economy, build civs till 38, then spam mills, prioritize fighters and cas, reasearch 1938 tankerinos.
If its just your buddy in france, you should be able to overwhelm him and the ai.
Whip out the Schwerer Gustav
Paradrop supply hubs and naval invade a bunch of random places and snake so he has to pull troops away. Also use high level cas and have good fighters/air dominance
CAS plus a couple good tank divisions. Your friend as France cannot outproduce air force to you unless he loses a lot of strength in his army. if he’s using infantry spam, high soft attack high breakthrough cuts through infantry like butter
cas and railway guns also attack from multiple directions to reduce fort level
Cas. Cas is king
High soft attack tank divisions+heavy railway guns
Did you choose your bombers to target AA and forts only? It might be good idea in this kind of situation. Manstein ECT. Has engineering trait, you can pick fort buster for him for free at the start. Then active siege artillery ability before attacking fort tiles and he will start damaging forts greatly.
Fort's bonuses are negated for each angle of attack. Attack from multiple directions. Also, forts take damage over time during fighting, so build divisions that can stay in a fight a long time and not take too much damage yourself. You need a lot of breakthrough to negate their damage when attacking. Check the collateral damage stats on your divisions.
So what you wanna do is this.
Attack no later than 39
Make planes. Fighters with as much defense as you can carry after maxing out air attack. Tho i find all light 2x machine guns fine.
Make cas with the anti tank and nothing else. Get some defense snd drop tanks.
MAKE RAILROAD ARRTY
Take a field marshal with rhe engineer trait. Give him forttress buster.
take a general with engineer. Give him fortress buster
Take all the generals woth engineer and guve fortress buster.
Spam navy xp and swap one of your armies to marines and ( i use 8/3 marine arty + support companies) mainly just bevause marines go brrrrrrrrt.
Take the army specialisation thing "eleavated engineering corp" i think its called.
Make sure you got your infantry expert high command .
Once youve got 72 units. And enough planes to cover relevant air zones. And a few rail road arty attached tp your marines (and others if you managed) youre good to go.
Bonus points if you change the marine icon so he doesnt know unless he hovers over them what they are.
Cover the belenux like your plan it to attack there. MARINE armY should covwr the maginot. You want him to think youre gonna attack benelux.
MAKE YOUR BATTLE PLAN WITH MARINES TO GO RIGHT THROUGH THE MAGINOT. have anothrr army behind marines ready to rush in and cover defense.
You only attack with marines. Or an infantry unit thats stacked with arty.
WHEN YOURE READY TO PULL THE TRIGGER. MAKE SURE RAILROAD ARTY IS IN PLACE.
HIT THE SIEGE ARTY SKILL ON MARINE GENERAL OR FIELD MARSHAL IF OTHER ARMIES ATTACKING TOO.
CAS AND FIGHTERS DOING THEIR THING.
THEN HIT THAT WAR BUTTON AND EXECUTE PLANS.
then laugh your ass off as your friends starts screaming WTF as you break the maginot and gut him like a pig.
Remeeber. You dont need to break the whole line. Just grt through and get those marines passed the maginot. Use other infantry to hold the defense. And dont forget supply! Build a railroad through maginot connect up any depots you capture.
Good luck!
Consider using combined arms to break through his defenses. Heavy tanks supported by mobile infantry can create breaches, while CAS and strategic bombers can weaken forts beforehand. Flanking maneuvers via naval invasions or paratroopers can also distract and stretch his defenses. Use deception to force him to allocate resources unevenly, then strike when he is vulnerable.
I have 3k hours on the game and don't use tanks at all. I literally just love WW1 tactics. Ridiculous amounts of forts, a shitton of arty and then an ocean of manpower. Basically just human wave. I always finish with at least 6 million casualties pretty much no matter what country I play with. I've never not had fun tho
In multiplayer I play ussr because countering sweaty medium tank builds with 7 consecutive Maginot lines, level 5 anti air every province and decent 450 infantry divisions is just so fucking good. They will inevitably break the line somewhere but I'll just human wave across the whole Frontline because my infantry beats theirs no matter what and therefore I will push them back massively everywhere so that they are forced to defend with tanks.
I always play France or USSR pretty much because I'm irl really r4cist torwards Germans.
Learn grinding generals and make heavy tanks. If he only spamd inf make spgs. Also grind veterans for your tanks.
Build a decent navy and get the kreigsmarines in.
paradrop paris
CAS is inevitable. So long as you have green air you just have to press the attack, preferably with concentrated, armored pushes.