Started playing Hearts of Iron 3

[defanatic]

I know I'm rather late to playing this game, but it does have a terrible interface. While I think it has a bunch of interesting concepts, it being incredible difficult to do very basic things, and lacking an in game tutorial, did rather put me off.

However, I'm in a casual WW2-buff stint at the moment, and fired it up and gave it a shot. I like being able to enact real WW2 strategies to accomplish stuff (although my Nazi Germany was far more competent than real Nazi Germany). However, I have a couple of questions (that my poor google-fu skills failed to find the answer to):
Is there a way to enact a scorched earth strategy? There doesn't appear to be a way to demolish already constructed infrastructure/buildings/whatever without bombing them.
Sometimes threat doesn't increase, even if I have ten spies in a country increasing threat, and they have no counter-espionage. Is there a maximum threat a country can be?
How are things upgraded? I searched the wiki and stuff, but I could only find some loose links to upgrading things, and no explicit upgrade mechanic explanation.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

I know I'm rather late to playing this game, but it does have a terrible interface. While I think it has a bunch of interesting concepts, it being incredible difficult to do very basic things, and lacking an in game tutorial, did rather put me off.

The interface isn't that bad, really. Steep learning curve, yeah, but once you know where everything is it's easy to access everything you need to. The only complaint I'd put forth is that I wish it were easier to see how a given battle is going at a glance.

Is there a way to enact a scorched earth strategy? There doesn't appear to be a way to demolish already constructed infrastructure/buildings/whatever without bombing them.

Not to my knowledge. Though if you're wrecking a target country bad enough, it'll usually cause irreparable harm anyway. Then it comes down to your victory conditions for the war. e.g., rather than completely annexing Poland, I left half of it intact to act as a buffer for the Soviet Union, and simply enforced territorial claims on the rest.

Sometimes threat doesn't increase, even if I have ten spies in a country increasing threat, and they have no counter-espionage. Is there a maximum threat a country can be?

Neutrality and such are incredibly annoying, though if you're playing as Germany it should be a non-issue thanks to the many policies you can enact to reduce it. Threat is weird, though, but remember that the intel you get on a country isn't necessarily very accurate.

How are things upgraded? I searched the wiki and stuff, but I could only find some loose links to upgrading things, and no explicit upgrade mechanic explanation.

Huh, I don't remember it being very un-intuitive. What kind of upgrading do you mean? Small Arms 3 -> Small Arms 4? That sort of thing is handled automatically, as long as your Upgrade budget is maintained at the indicated levels. It takes some time, if you watch the unit over time you will see it listed as, for example:

Small Arms: MP40 (Gewehr 43: 42%)

or something to that effect, where the second is the upgraded equipment and the progress of the upgrade.

If you're talking about one unit upgrading to a new unit, it has to be retrained. Infantry can become Motorized, Motorized can become Mechanized, etc., but there is a retraining time of about a month.

[defanatic]

Well, say I upgrade from Small Arms 1 to 2. How long does it take one of my units, Infantry Division X, to benefit from that upgrade? In what way does the upgrade cost me IC? And so on. The tech tree is pretty good, but it is not exactly transparent what happens after you get a tech.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Well, say I upgrade from Small Arms 1 to 2. How long does it take one of my units, Infantry Division X, to benefit from that upgrade? In what way does the upgrade cost me IC? And so on. The tech tree is pretty good, but it is not exactly transparent what happens after you get a tech.

The IC cost is automatically computed as part of your required Upgrades budget. So hour-to-hour the minimum required Upgrades IC might change based upon your nation's needs. Say at Nov 17 23:00 you need 14.43 ICs dedicated to Upgrades, so you set it to 15. This means all of your currently outstanding upgrades are being performed at maximum speed (exact time varies, again, just watch the unit over time if you really want to see it progress). Say you get a new tech on Nov 18 that upgrades all of your armored brigades. If you look at your production screen, your Upgrades budget will have shot up to a required 26.36 or something, but is still set at your previously instructed 15, and is thus under-funded. All of your outstanding upgrades will now proceed at a less efficient speed, until you set your Upgrades budget to 26.36 or higher.

I usually leave mine with a few extra points of buffer to cover costs here and there. There's an icon near the top of the screen somewhere that tells you when you're wasting extra ICs, so you can re-adjust the budget accordingly.

[Tritio]

Is there a way to enact a scorched earth strategy? There doesn't appear to be a way to demolish already constructed infrastructure/buildings/whatever without bombing them.

Nope, the scorched earth tactic was requested by the forum goers a long time ago, IIRC, the devs decided not to include it for political purposes in order to avoid offending people.

Sometimes threat doesn't increase, even if I have ten spies in a country increasing threat, and they have no counter-espionage. Is there a maximum threat a country can be?

That can't be right. There isn't a maximum threat that I've known of. I've had countries go above 1000 on the threat level after many years of effort. It just takes a long time. Wait a few months and see.

[Kinyo]

I know I'm rather late to playing this game, but it does have a terrible interface. While I think it has a bunch of interesting concepts, it being incredible difficult to do very basic things, and lacking an in game tutorial, did rather put me off.

However, I'm in a casual WW2-buff stint at the moment, and fired it up and gave it a shot. I like being able to enact real WW2 strategies to accomplish stuff (although my Nazi Germany was far more competent than real Nazi Germany). However, I have a couple of questions (that my poor google-fu skills failed to find the answer to):
Is there a way to enact a scorched earth strategy? There doesn't appear to be a way to demolish already constructed infrastructure/buildings/whatever without bombing them.
Sometimes threat doesn't increase, even if I have ten spies in a country increasing threat, and they have no counter-espionage. Is there a maximum threat a country can be?
How are things upgraded? I searched the wiki and stuff, but I could only find some loose links to upgrading things, and no explicit upgrade mechanic explanation.

There is a tutorial, not very interactive but there is one. (Mocks a certain Austrian painter.) You can find it through one of the main menu (Not the select campaign where you pick a country). Its fiddly to find but its there and covers most aspects.

Scorched earth is a no no unfortunately. Paradox have decided that a lot of things about WW2 just aint being done in their games (Camps, scorched earth and other "questionable" tactics).

So if your after ruining industry and infrastructure is bombing (conventional and nuclear) or fighting and hoping its taking your opponent ages to repair it.

I found it hard to play the game at first but over a few goes I started picking up what I was meant to do and what I wanted to do and so on.