The complete guide to playing the UK in Hearts of Iron IV

Comments · 225

• HA

  @hammotimee · 3 years ago · pinned

  🏍🥟 If you want to play on the other side, check out my video on how to play Germany! <br><br><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjlU52Ztj1I">https://youtu.be/pjlU52Ztj1I</a>

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• JI

  @jimberry33 · 3 years ago

  So much information my brain is full. &nbsp;And I&apos;m only 10 mins in. &nbsp;This must take a ton of work to put together. &nbsp;But I love these country deep dives!

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• EM

  @emil.jansson · 3 years ago

  The UK is by far the funniest democratic country to play as in HOI4. If you send the BEF to France and hold it against Germany, France won’t do it themselves they are set up in single player to lose, WW2 is usually over between 1942 – 1943.

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• CH

  @ChaptersOfTheBlood · 2 years ago

  I normally play the Germans or Italians and didn&apos;t realize how easy it is to defeat the Axis as the UK. &nbsp;I more or less just copied your opening strategy andjust capitulated the Italians in late 1941. &nbsp;I used CW troops to hold Africa while I farmed land and air XP in France with the BEF. &nbsp;I evacuated France to let the Germans win, redeployed the BEF to Africa and then defeated Italy in Libya and Ethiopia. I virtually wiped out the Luftwaffe, Kriegsmarine, Regia Aeronautica, and Regia Marina by SEP 1940. &nbsp;I reinforced Greece and Norway and I&apos;m still holding both fronts. &nbsp;When Barbarossa fired, I waited a month, and then invaded Sardinia, Sicily, and Italy simultaneously. &nbsp;Regno del Sud fired when I captured Rome and then I capitulated Italy not long after. I transfered as much as I could to the Pacific before the Japanese declared on the Phillipines. &nbsp;I&apos;ve got two refitted and powerful battle groups in Sri Lanka and my ASW hunter/killer groups are growing by the day. &nbsp;I only wish I could take direct control over the surviving puppet Italian ships. &nbsp;The Axis in europe are more or less defeated already. &nbsp;The Germans are overstretched and their logistics don&apos;t exist. The Axis are split between five fronts: &nbsp;Eastern, Norwegian, Italian, Greek, and French (Alps), and I&apos;m holding them down on four fronts with just 26 divisions and 14 of those are Italian puppet divisions. &nbsp;They&apos;re tying down 40+ divisions, many of them being partial strength German divisions that aren&apos;t reinforcing. &nbsp;Mentioning my air force is an afterthought. &nbsp;I&apos;ve got more fighters and CAS than I&apos;ll ever be able to use effectively.

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• NI

  @Niemand24 · 1 year ago

  This is why hoi4 is historically inaccurate. Before ww2 Britain was still the largest superpower in the world and the us was still quite far behind

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• JI

  @jimberry33 · 3 years ago

  That Australia bait and switch to New Zealand was pure treasure!

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• TO

  @tomiprofi · 3 years ago

  I just got the game, and i&apos;m using your guides to learn the game. You are a lifesaves, as a new player, thank you. It&apos;s a very good base, and i&apos;m already changing my playthroughs as it fits me. (I&apos;m still contemplating if it was a good idea to start with the british, looking back they are kind of overwhelming for a beginner lol.....well that&apos;s what i get for trying to learn using the Navy )

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• BA

  @bagmuk6 · 1 year ago

  I think doing a masters degree may be easier then learning how to play this game

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• GU

  @gudmundursteinar · 3 years ago (edited)

  Some more ideas and suggestions. <br>1. For convoy battles you need to hit with 4 up to date depth charges to sink a sub. So two fully up to date destroyers will sink a sub in one hit. If you can put 4 on a single ship, do it for the lulz. <br>2. There are three ways to spot subs <br>- a) patrol spotting your fleet on patrol will find the subs eventually and then start the battle with the subs spotted and have 4 rounds of combat<br>- b) active spotting in battle your average sub detection for the entire fleet has a medium chance of spotting subs in battle, put radar 3 on everything since it has sub detection<br>- c) passive spotting any fleet that has any sub detection has a low chance of finding subs in combat. Any roach destroyer has 1 sub detection. <br>run mostly cheap escort destroyers with some depth charges to escort convoys, back them up with high sub detection fleets (cl-asw and dd-asw setup) on patrol and/or strike force to kill the subs, and put radar 3 on everything since it will always help find subs in regular battles. <br>3. Subs on default agressiveness will always retreat from a destroyer, even if it has no depth charges or sonar or radar. Subs on high will still attack, players might set sub agresivveness to high. <br>4. Upgrade ships to suit their purposes, e.g. a default cl1 is mostly useless while an cl1 upgraded with sonar, depth charges, float planes and radar is a sub and convoy killer. If you have the dockyards upgrate air defense on capital ships. Always upgrade sonar, radar and firecontrol, its super cheap and gives massive bonuses in combat. <br>5. Aircraft have attack priorities, they attack from the back forwards, so CV and CONV first, BB, BC and CA second, DD, CL, SS last. Prioritize AA on carriers, battleships, battlecruisers and heavy cruisers. Ships mostly just defend themselves, this game does not model escorting ships providing aa support as happened historically. <br>6. With the exception of ethiopia almost all of your battles will be defensive, don&apos;t design tanks, design self propelled guns.<br>7. When building fighters compare your air attack to air defense. The stats are damage and hp for planes, &nbsp;you do not need more than air-defense +1 on your planes. <br>8. Put self sealing fuel tanks and drop tanks on all planes you can. Upgrade planes, especially the IW planes at start, they wont have agility, but they can have air attack and defense, the un upgraded ones will be slaughterd the upgraded ones can fight, not well, but htey can fight. <br>9. Use &apos;Request Forces&apos; from your non-player dominions, they will give you their entire army. It does mess up their AI so be careful and if you aren&apos;t using them let them have their army back. <br>10. If mines are allowed or you are in SP put them everywhere. Upgrade your at start subs to lay mines, they will be slaughtered if htey fight anything and cl, ca and dd are much better convoy raiders. Areas of importance are Between norway and denmark (be careful of getting stuck here if denmark falls), sice that can stop an invasion of norway and the &apos;inland sea&apos; areas in and around italy and japan. If you lay the south and east china seas up to 100% pre war then japan invades nothing. Also lay in the waters around britain since that will prevent cheap or silly invasions. You might even want to build 20-100 specialist mine laying destroyers just to fill all your rear areas up to 100% too. Doing the areas around america&apos;s pacific islands would also be super useful pre-war. <br>11. Be aware of speed on ships, your battleships are very slow BB1 is 22 knt, while the CV1 and BC1 are 30 knt. Your destroyers even with engine 1 are all over 30, so no need to spend resources on that, unless you want to make very speedy cruisers. Use the equipment tags to separate ships for role AND speed. putting your specialist fast fleet destroyers on convoy escort is something the AI WILL DO. &nbsp;<br>12. Ports are cheaper than supply hubs and also work as supply hubs, built them where you need them. It&apos;s important to remember that your main problem will be supply in ethiopia, egypt and burma-thailand. Spend time and resources thinking about supply before the war (basically build a rail road to and a supply hub in south sudan to keep your ethiopia army in supply. Try not to build rail roads in north africa since the axis can use htem if htey can connect the network while you still can always use boats while they can&apos;t. Never attack without supply and motorize supply and use air supply if you have bad supply.<br><br>and the final tip<br><br>13. Get the licence for the American Clemson destroyer. This will allow you to create a, and only one, useful variant of the ship when you get 43 of them with ships for bases. I suggest slapping on two depth charge 3s a radar 3 and sonar 2 and use them to fight subs letting your own dd2s work as fleet destroyers.<br><br>an extra final tip<br><br>14. Use the cruiser designer option to get a -80% pp cost for naval designers, use your first 35 exp to add the coastal naval designer to build your at start navy and then change later to build specialized ships since they can give +15% hard attack and armor on your battleships by simply adding radar 3 when you research it.

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• CH

  @Church_playz · 4 months ago

  This guide has helped me a lot. I’ve<br>wanted to learn how to play UK (I even have Churchill on my fyp) and from hardly retaking Ethiopia I went to running both North African campaign and operation countenance very smoothly. I use your advice, such as wait for axis to enter Barbarossa and build forts. Thank you very much

• GA

  @gavinwoods2737 · 4 months ago (edited)

  I&apos;ve had HOI4 for years but never got around to playing it. I decided to start tonight. This is very helpful; but you go so fast I have to keep rewinding lol. Brain implosion!

• BR

  @bravo2966 · 2 years ago

  Used to work with a guy from New Zealand, he always said Australia is a small island off the coast of New Zealand.

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