Editing Hearts of Iron (section)

==Hearts of Iron 4==

tl;dr Buy all the DLC's if you want to enjoy it like Darkest Hour. And wait a decade. It started shit, now is getting better, but CPU-hungrier...

For the Old Guard of Spreadsheet-Masochism, the game came as a shock to some since it looks less like a spreadsheet war simulator with harsh numbers and more like a RTS/RPG hybrid game with many things made abstract, and countries' historical specialties being buffs and debuffs called "National Spirits". No longer bound by real life resource crises with the possibility of changing the worst excesses of WW2 through common sense and friendship in multiplayer, the game was noticeably more [[Noblebright]] and extremely streamlined with a heavily modular unit design, having taken some Acceptable Breaks From Reality. Now all economic activity in a country is named "civilian industry" which is completely upkeep-free, doesn't consume resources and builds infrastructure out of thin air (and can build more of itself too). Considering all civilian industry now needs is time to grow, any carebear roleplayer can make a world where absolutely no one attacks the other (save for Spanish Civil War) and simply pump up civilian infrastructure and industry and make heaven on earth. 

Combat is attempted to be streamlined with a "Battle Planner" system which makes armies automatically move and do things that would take hours of clicking by human users. On wide plains of Asia and open areas, it works like an angel. Put one lake or gimmicky US Canadian border, or God forbid the Asian island chains, it turns into total shit, meaning you still have to do things manually unless you want to watch AI struggle with your forces or pile an entire army group to that spot near the US border lakes and lose it to encirclement. Said that, due to general incompetence of AI (even for Paradox's low standards), it's still a a simple production management simulator and General's ability clicker a-la RPG when war kicks in, because front-wide offensive is more than enough in 99% of cases. There aren't even artillery barrage orders to reduce neighboring fortifications anymore(a real-life tactic in Siege of Berlin and Stalingrad), which have become meme level AI doorstoppers, [[Fail|and artillery is now just a bigger gun which is used in close combat rather than allowing the army unit to bombard without direct combat]]. Airplanes are useless unless the enemy units are clashing with you or your allies(at which they deal small amounts of damage to enemy combatants...occasionally...), making [[What|real life air raids on barracks and units in transit...simply a non-issue.]] 

The game streamlined the fuck out of everything that made core HoI gameplay for previous 15 years. Commanders are omnipresent, magically teleporting 24(or 30) division overseers with no special mobile HQ's, five commander answering to one easily promoted Marshal. Handful of researches, handful of division types, handful of governments and just one, win-all tactic: autistically memorizing all the timed actions/focus/exploits to strike at the best majors, avoid automatic AI declarations by keeping certain territories under certain nation's control and stay out of Hitler's European tardrage until you eat everyone. You don't even need to be sober. It's a running joke to post AARs with such superpowers like Liberia, Luxemburg or Bhutan conquering all of the world by the '42 mark. And they are rarely done by some sort of hardcore, high skill players. How bad AI is? You can load a '39 game as Poland, who got pwned in less than 30 days irl (and when run by AI, is dead in 15), go into ''defensive'' war as you fortify around Warsaw a massive circle with one opening and simply watch as Germans will bleed to death by throwing their army at your ad-hoc defensive, losing 2+ million people, while you sit and watch the show, and worse, use scavenger teams to loot German attacker equipment. Offensive? Who needs it against such dumb AI. Thus, if you ever wanted to paint a beige-brown map in your particular shade of beige-brown, this might be a game for you. Multiplayer is meanwhile all about piling up all the loopholes and game logic abuse you can find about against the other player (and expecting the same), because playing fair is a sign of weakness and will get you steam-rolled within an in-game week.

To add insult to injury, while initially Paradox threw out the baby with the bathwater in their streamlining, over the course of the next few years, they kept adding back old gameplay elements. Only this time, behind the paywall of DLCs and making sure to never include those "new" elements as free, baseline gameplay. So while there was no supplies or oil/fuel initially (which broke the game completely since Axis only needed oil to build and not to maintain), fuel then made a return in a DLC. So while there was no design of your ships (which made spam of specific models the only strategy), ship design made a return in a DLC (which meant spam of ''different'' models for different reasons- not that you'll have the time to spam anything but fast-and-furious destroyers and subs). So while there was initially no espionage, it made a return in a DLC. Armored Cars? Off-battlefield railgun artillery? Dee Ell See. [[EA]] and people managing Sims franchise would be proud of the shit Paradox is doing with the DLC system. If this was your entry point for the series, you should feel bad for yourself for being ripped off, and could try either vanilla HoI2 or Darkest Hour (but the second one might be too much if you are completely new, start with HoI2 and advance to Arsenal of Democracy, then Darkest Hour). If you are an old grog who still remembers HoI1 or at least HoI2 premiere, you probably felt like shit on sole announcement of this game being in production.

Fluff and civilian industry aside, all arms production by military factories consume resources like steel, tungsten and chrome, and traded for which is streamlined into 8 resources per civilian factory, adding to the exporter's industrial output rather than calculating the trade in fiat money. Countries automatically use up some of their civilian industry value to placate its domestic economy which can be reduced by policies, war bonds, unique bonuses(like historical taxes) and stability. A mana-like abstract resource named Political Power defines all state decisions from diplomacy to triggering events, which is influenced by the country's stability and having strong politicians. 

Governments are extremely simplified to the point of simply being teams: Communist, Fascist, Democratic and Non-Aligned (generic: kings, generalissimos, minor nations' conservative republics and even anarchist city councils fit here) rather than the modular government styles of HoI2 and 3, which would show dozens of possible gameplay styles from three issues (Nazism being state economy/no elections/right wing, Stalinism state controlled/no elections/left wing, Italian Fascism Free Market/Right Wing/Totalitarian, Social Conservative Free Market/Right Wing/Elections et cetera with ALL different bonuses and gameplay styles) Basically fascists are the offensive country that can declare wars, recruit and gear up as much as they want to eat others, democracies need fascists to declare wars and act touch so they can ramp up their industry and army in response, and communists who are "Fascism Lite" with less military and more subversive, industrial bonuses who can also start wars. Non-Aligned are just plot-driven morons with none of the strengths but with all the weaknesses of all three except specific monarchy or anarchy based Plot powers.

Resources are now similar to Civilization 5 and 6: They are not stockpiled, but constantly produced in controlled areas and can be bought and sold as 8 output units per civilian industry cost (less if the exporter is a puppet country). What the player can stockpile is equipment to build said units rather than raw material itself. Even supplies do not need production anymore, but your capital territory produces an infinite amount, with delivery </s>being virtually a non-problem, breaking the ''entire'' concept of World War 2.</s> depending only on local infrastructure connections. Latest updates made it ''very'' dangerous to be out of supply, but there is always a quietly cheating AI for a division or two. Latest DLC finally made supplies a thing as railroads are the main arteries, and roads are capillaries and rushing into Russia will *obliterate* all but the most heavily mechanized supply chains because the fucking communists can destroy railways as they retreat and force the player into painstakingly rebuild like Simcity on crack.

Railroaded Events could be downplayed and changed, such as postponing the death of Atatürk (seeking treatment) or Spanish Civil war can be manipulated with the last DLC's. The rest of the events are defined by "National Focus", which is a streamlined version of "National Choice" of Darkest Hour and work as a plotline and decisions mechanism. Spending political power for about a month, now changed to 70 days(which COMPLETELY broke the game, because some pencil dick newly hired developer wanted "radical changes"), the played country can complete an action of sorts which triggers an event. For "generic" countries, this can be a few free instant civilian/military factories or quick infrastructure build, free tech boosts for specific areas, political leanings for specific sides or bonuses. For "special/significant" nations, unique "Focus trees" can start series of events and start plotlines, and ultimately change the flow of history. For example, the United States can either continue with the New Deal (taking a centrist and/or leftist position), or return to Gold Standard (centrist and/or right-wing, possibly even fascist or Neo-Confederate). Each choice limits the US to certain decisions, and further advances in Focii require certain conditions to advance, or bypass decisions entirely. The problem is, while Paradox tried a haphazard prevention at Railroading, it did not stop the retards from still making the AI choosing '''focuses''' after defeat and puppeting, leading to extremely stupid situations where a puppet Bulgaria still funds IMRO rebels in Macedonia, who have an almost magical way of inflicting 100% attrition to everyone passing by. Even modern superheavy tanks. And yes, National spirits are not only retarded but also made with the broadest brush in history: since they accept an entire nation no matter how large or small it is, a hydroelectrical Dam in Portugal can magically improve its economy as it encompasses the world merely due to the dam being in portuguese territory, even though the factories are in an obscure Siberian island chain or in the ass-end of China.

Even better, many "generic" countries are often bigger and more populous than "special" countries. Paradox made sure special fan countries only could reach their peepeepoopoo nazbol Byzantium/Turan/Totoman/Muh Fossil Monarchy memeruns with...yes. Paid DLC's.

Overall, countries were now far less historically accurate, but more "multiplayer balanced", with limitations such as civil wars due to sudden regime changes or release of colonies. Multiplayer and ahistorical paths is where HoI 4 attempts to shine(and does a bit). For example, Germany can immediately decide to depose Hitler in a coup or go as usual OTL. After Hitler is whacked, the next focii opens up a whole new set of possibilities like establishing elections or bringing back the Kaiser. If so, the WW1 can be re-enacted under the Kaiser (Ach scheisse, jetzt geht's wieder los), or establish a new, benevolent, centrist faction called "Central European Alliance" and resist the incoming Soviets as a second, more conservative Allied Nations. Or play Hitler and don't declare war at all, simply turning susceptible countries into fascist friends via coups.(Maybe the real Fascism was the "Völkisch" we made along the way!)

Later DLC's made sure all countries can go into alternate timelines, now including Russia which can turn into a fascist Tzardom, a constitutional one, or into two alternate interpretations of Communism (Trotskyite expansionism or Bukharinite progressivism). Pay up, of course.

One of the game's only early saving graces, customizable divisions are no longer bound to the 10000 soldiers or even being pure infantry or mobile. The centerpiece of the divisions are several brigades, usually six or more, with supporting battalions much like HoI2's support brigades up to five. The division's size determines its width, determining the amount of soldiers seeing combat per attack (was 40 width, now shit's changed), support battalions taking up none. (which encourages to use them as diversely as possible) The important part however, is now [[Experience points]] are a resource. Its gained by fighting, having your officers chosen as cabinet members, drilling the corresponding unit in open terrain per Wargames (eats up fuel and replacement parts), or sending military attaches to countries at war to siphon some of the fighting experience as your observers take notes. Last one gives the host country a bonus as well, and makes the enemy they are fighting very angry at you. Experience is consumed every time you add/remove/change a brigade or battalion to a division design. Just be sure you stocked up a lot of AA-gun carriages when you added a supporting AA-battalion to the infantry division design that constitutes your entire army. As for the divisions, they can now be spread with a brush of hand across frontlines and given automatic advance orders, so the player doesn't have to click for hours - unless, of course, there is a slightest terrain blocker and the army becomes automatically retarded. Needless to say, this made land combat easier, and faster to organize to watch the screams of gunfire and bombings with a glass of wine and Sabaton blaring in the background. Paradox, cheeky DLC fuckers that they are, put Sabaton songs as a purchasable. Because they apparently never heard about Alt+Tab. Then they proved they've completely lost their marbles by adding a DLC with handful of radio speeches by Allied leaders. You know, public domain stuff. And only Allied leaders, because [[/pol/ | who]] would want to hear the scary Hitler blasting something about conquering Eastern Untermenschen or Stalin spreading the glorious revolution, especially when it wouldn't be in English anyway.

The player no longer builds wholesale divisions with the industry, but produces individual weapons, tanks, artillery and materiel to slap them together with manpower into custom divisions. This sounds ominous at first, but once the production lines are well understood, it becomes just a question of changing a bit of production numbers once a month or so(and AI can design its armies quite decently, barring a few horrible abortions of reserve garrison debacles). This new feature is much more flexible than the old methods, allowing the player to produce mountains of armaments in peacetime, and only starting training at the time of his choosing and making unique solutions for unique situations around the world, such as using up idle Special Forces capacity to turn that 10 division army into mountaineers when mountains are in sight. It also allows bigger players (we are looking at you, USA) to produce mountains of guns, tanks, jeeps and ship them to friends who could simply maintain said guns with now abstract "supplies", a.k.a Lend Lease. Plus you can use "acquired" materiel from conquests, more so if your attacking armies have "maintenance battalions" repairing captured equipment, since defeated enemy units leave some equipment behind which can be used to outfit your divisions, ESPECIALLY when the divisions are encircled. OR you convince the bigger countries to give you production licenses, so that you can avoid researching that obscure unit down the research tree or have no time to research a tank when Roosevelt, Stalin or Hitler can give you Sherman/T-34/Panther designs for the cheap price of a few civilian factories working for them as long as you keep the license! Plus you can research the licensed unit's national equivalent faster and discard the license when done.

Sounds perfect for multiplayer, sadly is an absolute horrorfest for the AI who, in its silicon glory, designed a staggering swarm of 1-Brigade cavalry supported by a single HEAVY SELF PROPELLED brigade...as the United Fucking States who by now was 100% motorized and bumrushes you like Age of Empires on crack...Or designs a pure 39 width artillery-cavalry mix as Germany and LARP's Napoleonic Era. Later patches made sure the enemy designed powerful and functional divisions, but still occasionally shits out 1-2 brigade light infantry clogging the battlefield and gets shot to shit. Worse, as DLC's advance, each one being made by a cheaper, dumber and more spiteful third party Paradox could pay with their overblown Euro currency, balance is getting worse, focuses the DLC developer fanbois make to advertise his shithole of a country get more unbalanced, and the game becomes like a smudgier text with every penstroke.

Now burn all that you read and forget it. The game is completely remade, much to the chagrin of neckbeards having to re-learn meta.

The newest DLC, "No Step Back", FINALLY brings back and adds things that should have been added and then pisses all over it in typical Paradox fashion. Like a logistic system that is now beyond harsh, trains, armed trains, disposable temporary artifical docks, logistics strikes on turtling enemies, tank designs and fucks 5000$+ supercomputers in the ass because Paradox finally gave up on coding and sells mods all but in name as "DLC" without a care in the performance spike, much like the faggots running the TNO shitshow.

More DLC's. "Blood Alone" will bring much needed content for Italy, and...Switzerland and Ethiopia.

At least the game is no longer for toddlers! (though now many earlier achievements will be mathematically impossible to do)

Changes include: 

1-Infantry is no longer your bread, butter, and bread(and butter) knife after the game hits the 40's. Come the 40's, it won't even do the meme "orgwall" effectively anymore without good Anti-Tank and AA cannon support added. On offense post 1940, stereotypically sending trillions of bugmen armed with rifles, personal mortars and grenades can be ruinous due to harsher supply effects and can be cost effectively stopped by very thick armored close range howitzers, and post the Spring of 42-43, [[Manticore Rocket Launcher|motorized rocket artillery]] go brrr. You will have to think and adapt now, even if you go pure infantry, past 41 mark they will need supporting AA, AT and engineering to be a decent defender, free personal AT upgrades will only take them so far. On offensive, they can still hold ground, but as attackers you'll at least definitely need to add line artillery, if not self-propelled heavy armor artillery or said motorized rocket artilleries to be of any use.

1.2-Speaking of adapting, build your own fucking tanks. Expect tears and rage when people fail at math or discover a meta by accident. Rotation turret(more expensive-offense oriented) or superstructure(like a tank destroyer, cheaper but bad on attacking on its own)? How many men will be manning the guns? What is the tank's main armament? Rivet your armor or weld it? What is the suspension, Christie, Bogie, Torsion, Interleaved wheels? The drive engine? Repeat the "Schachtellauffwerk"(Interleaved wheels) debacle or use just Torsion bars? Smoke grenades or wet ammo canisters to avoid ammo blowouts on hits? [[Baneblade|How about a Tiger with sloped armor and 4 heavy machine guns and 2 turrets?]]

2- Doctrines (Universal combat buffs) cannot be researched in scientific institutions but must be "developed" spending experience points, doing by learning. Which is probably the best and most logical/realistic part of the new meta.

3- Supplies now use two separate infrastructures and have flow limits. Railways for "arteries" where supplies are carried by trains to "hubs" and roads which take the supplies to the units, or "normal infrastructure" for "capillaries". You need trains for railroads, nothing/trucks for roads, and convoy ships to transport by sea. Do produce a lot of trucks and cargo ships: horse carriage supplies are horrid, you know what happened on Ostfront. And yes, you will devote a good chunk of your military industry to pure logistics now (trains and trucks), and always devote civilian factories as frontlines expand and rails need to be laid. Transport planes can now make or break a desolate battlefield with supply drops. And even if you had a maxed out railroad, millions of planes, trucks and depots, there is STILL a limit how much supply can flow through a region. Entire wilderness regions with no railroad? Have fun pushing an army group through there without losing years of materiel to attrition only to die horribly with a sneeze; which also gives weaker, desolate minors a fighting chance to keep supply lines narrow... only to eventually buckle and go crunch, [[Victoria|and be railroaded into weakness]] since building infrastructure now takes at least five times as much effort. It goes without saying Chinese factions depending on ox carts are fucked against Japan now.

4- Combat width is no longer multiples of 20 but MANY multiples of 12 and width capacity is dynamic for certain terrains. Most for urban cities and plains, least for swamps etc. Plus there is a new value, "coordination" which defines damage dealt in an optimized way, meaning smaller, well trained infantries with radio support can melt a [[Tarpit]] army without taking ANY hits if extremely well coordinated.

5- No airforce while your enemy has even one plane? Fuck you. AA guns can (and in late game, MUST even with complete fighter coverage) protect your attacking army but when the enemy planes strafe every transport truck and train and horse cart in the countryside your men will starve. Germany can lose to Poland if all its trains are bombed by Polish planes which WILL happen. During combat, cover EVERY region which will transport supplies or keep combat units with planes, static AA emplacements and radar. Or die miserably eating your shoes and throwing rocks at enemy. Even WW1 Biplanes can threaten an unguarded supply line with gun/bomb strafing.

7-The AI has finally the means to manage his country, set up radar, infrastructure, good meta divisions and produces and cracks NUKES like fireworks. Maintain air supremacy or [[Exterminatus|get fucking glassed]]. And it can think; nukes targeting the one dock where your entire fleet is being repaired is not pleasant. A very unpleasant side effect being now that minors are doomed to be minors in single player. You can no longer exploit that much. China in singleplayer went from the beast of Asia to a paper tiger that keels over with one punch even when all the warlords submit as vassals. 

The braindead AI meme is gone now: you can no longer go roughshod on French with just 12 divisions of light tank popguns or conquer the world as Luxembourg in 1945, and have to invest in planes by any means necessary lest your trains get fucked up and actually direct divisions to punch through and avoid being flanked. Playing [[Nazi|the funny moustache man happy adventure]] on single player won't be the same fun blitz thanks to finally upgraded AI (hopefully it doesn't cheat but crossing fingers). Expect Dutch and British marines landing from multiple locations on German soil the moment France is threatened, Poland going Kamikaze on your supply lines with planes(they'll die but still bang you up so badly France can kill you), AI actually using commander abilities and trying to encircle the player, as well as your Reichsmarine getting dock bombed from day one. On a worse note, tanks are either cost-ineffective unbreakable mountains or little more than iron plated gun cars. Light tanks are now mostly only useful with specialized equipment as recon and no longer frontline raiders, though a dozerblade and flamethrower can make them urban nightmares, particularly when paired with specialist infantry.

So yeah, we got reshuffled division widths, Meta-using AI, niche tanks, minor nations doomed to weakness and punitive levels of logistics now.

At least they've [[Fail|FINALLY]] made Armoured Trains carry AA guns.

===Things I wish I knew that HOI4 doesn't explain===
1. TRUCKS: Trucks are by far the single most important thing you can build after guns, cannons, and support equipment. You don't always need one factory building trucks, but you always want to switch over production if your supply starts getting a bit low. If you can afford to upgrade your supply lines to use trains, they're also nice, but trucks are a rare bit of equipment that helps with both equipping divisions and feeding logistics needs, especially if factories are tight. You should research half tracks because they give extra protection to your motorized troops in trucks.

2. Aviation: If you want to win, Aviation is a requirement. The benefits that aircraft give you are so good that you should sacrifice pretty much anything else to produce airplanes. CAS will benefit your ground troops the most, but if you must, then TAC bombers can work, as they offer better range at the cost of attack.

Abridged list of aviation types and purposes:
*[[A-10 Warthog|CAS]]: Extremely important in Europe and tight spaces. You use them to directly support any ground combat, or even hit ships but we don't advise that (any AA-bristling destroyer can ruin weeks of production in a pass). Hampered by limited range, but you can make variants with improved range the somewhat negate this.
*Tactical Bombers: Long range planning, literally and figuratively. They can do strategic bombing, naval bombing, or CAS work if your CAS can't support the frontline due to them being far away. Can be fit with jet engines unlike CAS and boosted to fuck up even line-AA if the war goes on long enough.
*Fighters: MANDATORY. You never want to lose air superiority, or your CAS and TAC bombers can say goodbye to being any kind of efficient They can also be useful in interception missions. Even in regions with no enemy planes they give combat bonuses even if one plane is deployed.
*Naval Bombers: Mostly useful for recon over the ocean and convoy raiding. Can be Meme-level rage inducing if your main fleet doomstack runs into 2000 naval bombers.
*Heavy Fighters: Mostly for bomber interdiction. A little better at Air Superiority at the cost of being more difficult to produce. Longer range gives them an advantage in supporting strategic and tactical bombers. Niche use in pacific and East Asia.
*Strategic Bombers: Are you a large power? Do you have nukes? If neither of these questions are in the affirmative, don't waste your time.
**Carrier aircraft are not worth the effort unless you have aircraft carriers. They are the same as the land variants, only more complex to build, and therefore a waste of time and resources.  

3. Specialist armor: Special armored vehicles like SPAA, SPG, AND TDs are actually slightly cheaper to build, just like they were in real life. You also retain some production on those vehicles, and combined with flexible line and dispersed industry is amazing. One may ask: Why not just use motorized artillery instead of building these big expensive vehicles? The answer is that tier one SPGs put out 34.0 damage compared to line artillery's 25.0. Additionally, they have hardness, something arty lacks. Bear in mind that building 36 vehicles per battalion will still take a while, so make sure you have as many industrial bonuses as possible and don't overdo it on the number that you need per division.

4. Concentrated Industry is a trap for major powers. It ''looks'' like a good deal, what with its boosted output over Dispersed and higher efficiency caps, but Dispersed not only still gives a fair bit of built-in output production (albeit 5% less per tier for a total of 25% less raw at max upgrades, although after modifiers it's a fair bit less), but maintains efficiency better when swapping out for upgraded designs or having to redistribute your production when you're short of one thing and have a surplus of another, gaining bonuses to efficiency retention rather than output that can be combined with Flexible Line to go from building infantry equipment to heavy tanks with as much as 80% retention. It also offers situational-but-sometimes-worth-it bonuses to resist enemy bombing and to switch back and forth between military and civilian factories.

*Caveat: Concentrated industry can be worth it if you're playing a smaller nation that's going to be fighting a war right off the bat(Ethiopia) or a country that has trouble banging rocks together to make factories(Liberia) and that cares more about pumping out as much shitty 1936-era infantry equipment as possible than putting together a modern army or upgrading literally ever(Yemen, Oman, Saudia Arabia) or go for the meme-level discount for rifles when playing Mao and raise 20 million CCP drone riflemen in 3 years.

*On top of that, never play any of the above unless you hate yourself or have a life. It's a military wargame, not an economy and infrastructure simulator.  

5. Support companies: Good, but don't concentrate a dumb number of them in your line infantry battalions. Hospitals, Engineers, and Artillery work just fine early on, though you'd be forgiven for adding in support AT companies. Leave the other stuff for Armored, mechanized, or special forces. Later game you'll want Line artillery to replace the support artillery and support AA because planes are the new meta. Keep in mind this isn't always a rule but a general guideline, and AA is always the poor man's [[Bolter]] to add that penetration force and hurt enemy plane production.

6. List Building: HOI4 is a lot like 40k list building in that you need to tailor your armies to what industrial, military, and resource strengths you have. Brazil has a decent supply of Aluminum and Rubber, so you bet your ass you're gonna be heavy on the air force. Compare this to Iran or Iraq who have fuck all but oil. This means you'll need to consider having recon and radio companies just to make your basic infantry worth anything, and you can forget about having any real kind of air force. In single player at least: in Multiplayer every player coalition is meta-wise under free trade and buy stuff from each other so it's often a question of using your population and designs fitting the battleground.

7. Occupation: Make sure to change your automatic rules when occupying to be secret police and cavalry. This is a minor thing that is never explained in the tutorial whatsoever and is easy to miss, and it makes a huge difference. Add military police support(after setting width of the template max) once you bloat and can afford the IC and aluminum.

8. Micromanaging: Do it. The AI can be dumb as fuck when trying to wage your battleplans, so if there is something you want to not exist, grab a ton of armored divisions and initiate Kursk 2.0. Sometimes in order to get a campaign moving, you'll have to pause the entire battleplan and manually order individual units to attack targets(especially outside wide plains of Eurasia). This is ok and to be expected. Some campaigns take forever to finish and that is how it should work.

9. Invasions: You typically want to have some divisions to break through the enemy line, mostly armored and motorized. These should be no more than two regions wide. The Mechanized make the breakthrough, while the motorized get into position and delay counterattack so the rest of your army can properly encircle the enemy. The rest of the front are your cookie cutter infantry divisions that protect yourself from counterinvasions by the enemy, and should push into the enemy set to "Cautious" battle plan execution.