New to the game, looking for advice

To answer a few,

3. YES, late game industry will save your butt. You can get it to level 5. Make sure to also build it in your core rural resource making provinces; rural industry is cheaper and goes up to 200% whole city is more expensive and stops at 100%. But yes, it’s only really good in cores, though in late games building in conquered cities with high morale is not a bad idea, if you have no where else.

4. No need for forts, but you’re kinda right. You can be aggressive and quickly attack. Build industry early game and hopefully have it full by mid game though. Either way, you build units, and attack at the best opportunity. While you start equal on most maps power differences grow far faster than in 1914 with some players getting 200 high level units to others with 80 low level ones. Also make sure to kill any AI asap, as they like to attack you with huge amounts of units late game.

5. No need. There are these things called supply drops, you’ll get notifications for them. If you take the province they are in, you gain either 3 resources of different type and numbers in the thousands, or you gain a random blueprint for one unit. Eventually you’ll get them all.

Some meta-advice: I'm relatively new to the game myself, and my play style is heavily skewed towards Comintern and Pan-Asian, so you'll want to filter anything I say through that information.

Daxiath wrote:

1: 1914 obviously has recruitment centers (passive infantry per day). This game doesn't seem to have that, and looking at infantry stats they don't seem particularly useful? I'd imagine you build them as meatshields (since they seem to be heavy on all things non metal/gas), but how many should you actually make? And are militia better?

Personally I prefer militia, as it's cheap as chips so I can mass-produce them, and it has stealth properties that are especially useful in mountains (Comintern) or forests (Pan-Asian). But then I play those two doctrines almost exclusively so my play style runs towards quantity of units rather than quality; for allied it's better to stick to infantry unless you start running out of resources. I don't know about Axis, but I suspect infantry is preferable there, too.

Daxiath wrote:

2: Right now I'm running with one of each production building. I'm getting a bit concerned that I'm building too many unit types and will find I can't keep up with the tech. For raw numbers it's day 4 and I have about 10 more inftantry than i started with, 5 armored cars, 5 light tanks, 5 AA guns, 5 AT guns, 10 artillery, 2 destroyers, 3 cruisers, and 5 interceptors. I imagine this isn't nearly as optimal as it should be, but hopefully someone can illustrate what a proper strategy in this is. (I seriously doubt this game aims for a 1914 strategy where it's all infantry and artillery with just a handful of cav/cars until lategame.

My advice is to pick a few specific unit types to focus on (in my case that's usually militia, artillery, and anti-air for every game, plus light tanks and armoured cars for Pan-Asian and medium tanks and rocket artillery for Comintern), develop them all up to Level 3, and mass-produce those. Unless you need a certain unit for a highly specific scenario, it's best to have a relatively small selection that you can then develop to higher levels than if you have nearly everything.

Naval, on the other hand, is something of a rock-paper-scissors; if you're going to be a naval power you do need decent-level of pretty much everything.

There probably are optimal armies and stacks for each doctrine, and possibly each country on each map (there's bound to be some obsessive player of Tibet or Poland or somesuch who plays it on HWW all the time and has perfected strategies for it), but I have not attempted to work out what they are.

Daxiath wrote:

3: Is industry even worth building? I can see you only get 25% of the income from areas you don't start with when they're captured, so I imagine at the very least I shouldn't build any industry outside of my starting areas? But if the game goes on for months like in 1914 I fear I could be mistaken. The returns just don't seem to be very impactful compared to the inputs, and dumping resources here would slow down conquest.

If you can't afford to upgrade everything, focus on provinces bearing resource you frequently run out of.

Daxiath wrote:

4: Given question #3 should you even be rushing to conquer your neighbors or should you be more opportunistic? In 1914 the whole point of being hyper aggressive is that more recruitment centerers = more infantry for free every turn and you get 100% of the territory's income. It almost feels like teching up (maybe focusing on forts/ industry) for a few days and then going on a rampage would be viable unlike in 1914.

Failing to declare war on someone almost immediately tends to end in someone else invading you, so in early game my advice is to pick a powerful country to ally with and collaborate with them on an invasion of someone on your border (said collaboration doesn't need to go above 'getting right of way and sneaking into your enemy's territory through the back entrance', the main point is having one less prospective enemy to worry about), and use any spare cash on industry and research.

I don't usually bother with fortifications (unless a naval power is bombarding me, as in my current game as Manchukuo) or infrastructure (until I get to the Massive Empire stage and don't want armies heading from my core to the front line to spend two days in transit if I can cut that down without using the Forced March).

Daxiath wrote:

5: Should I be saving my gold for blueprints? I don't tend to use it in 1914 (I'll usually buy a building or two at the start of a map, but I only use gold from winning games.) as I consider it unfair. I'm a bit fuzzy on how you earn blueprints if you don't buy them and how crippling it may be if you don't have the final tech upgrade for each unit lategame.

Hopefully some of this advice was helpful and actually answering the questions.

Welcome to the game!

My advice is to start with guides like Guide to artillery for 1.5 which explains ranged units. Using those effectively is the key to the game.

Not all the guides will steer you in the right direction, but many will, and over time you'll also find contributors who are more helpful than others.

General advice: Aggression is good. Turtling makes you a target. Early coalitions make you a target. Avoid construction, all your resources should go into units. I don't build more than 1 of each type of unit factory until late in the game. And obviously more than 1 per city is a waste because only 1 can produce. Every doctrine and country plays differently, but ranged units are good everywhere and the only way to avoid losing units in battle. Don't build navy until you understand the army. Avoid air power until you get the first two, because air is difficult to use properly. The first thing new players do is build one or two of each unit. The planes move fast so they attack first, they die, the player gets disappointed and leaves. Learn the basics first. Infantry. Artillery. Armored cars. With those 3 units, utilized properly, you can win the 22 player map 90% of the time.

Have fun

z00mz00m wrote:

I don't build more than 1 of each type of unit factory until late in the game. And obviously more than 1 per city is a waste because only 1 can produce.

Mind you, I also tend to run into critical resource shortages early on and stay there for much of the game, so you may have a point after all...

Think about what you will build where ahead of time. Ordnance is slow, build it closer to your first victim. Armor is faster, it can be further. You start with plenty of infantry, don't build any. You don't need air at all until much later.

The game is largely about making trade-offs. Do you need the option of building everything everywhere, or the reality of 10 extra units conquering your enemy and doubling the size of your empire?

Eh, still can have your infantry unit plus militia, and the 3 first plane types are good as hell when combined and leveled up.

You can do a lot of things.

What if the minimal number of things you need to do, in order to win?

Add complexity as you master the basics. Don't try to do everything right away. That's my main point

And if you build every factory in every city, that's a noob trademark, you will be harvested if you have a skilled neighbor.

Forts and propaganda centers, another noob marker.

z00mz00m wrote:

And if you build every factory in every city, that's a noob trademark, you will be harvested if you have a skilled neighbor.

Forts and propaganda centers, another noob marker.

z00mz00m wrote:

You can do a lot of things.

What if the minimal number of things you need to do, in order to win?

Add complexity as you master the basics. Don't try to do everything right away. That's my main point

Welcome back to strategy gaming! Transitioning from Supremacy 1914, focus on synergy in unit composition. Mix infantry for stability, but don't overlook other types. Prioritize capturing starting areas for industry; it's a long-term investment. Consider opportune expansion, and saving gold for blueprints is smart for enhanced gameplay. Enjoy the strategic journey!

oh please shut up OH MOST ANNOYING ROBOT