How to throw youre empire away

[phowa]

When i choose to start a game as Britain is there a easy way to get rid of the empire as i struggle to find where everything is when playing it and would like to just have Britain and no colonys.

[Ragabash]

You can always release nations as vassals and give them nearby colonies assuming you are playing EU3.

[phowa]

damn sorry i forgot to say i was playing Hearts of iron 2

[Tankfriend]

You can release colonies in HoI2 as well. Go to diplomacy, select your own nation and then select "Liberate Nation" on the diplomacy list. When you have released the colonies and still have territories left over, you can trade them away via diplomacy as well.
The last thing you have to do is to "free the puppets" (as your colonies are puppets now, directly under your control) and get rid of the military control over them, both via diplomacy again. If you have done that, you will be Britain-only and have a huge amount of dissent to deal with because the people are not happy about losing all those precious colonies.

[phowa]

yeh i lost basically the whole of the UK lol and had to try again is their another easy way to get rid of them without the dissent or should i just leave them to get attacked?

[Tankfriend]

Perhaps you could simply trade the colonies away without releasing them but that would mean a lot of work for you because you would have to get every single province of your colonies noted down somewhere so you don't miss something.

The only real thing you can do about dissent is increasing the production of consumer goods far above the needed amount, but that's not really feasible because it seriously weakens your production and unit supply. That's especially bad as Britain obviously is one of the very early targets for the Axis, so you need whatever preparation you can get.

I'd say simply leave them as they are and don't really care about them. The thing is that most of your colonies except North Africa will hardly ever be attacked (depending on difficulty) and North Africa is an obvious position to keep on fighting against the Axis until you can put whatever plan you make into action. The other thing about the colonies is that they provide you with important ressources like Rare Materials and Oil/Fuel which you would have to trade for if you released the colonies. And finally, they can be a useful staging area if you want to get involved in other areas around the globe.

[phowa]

Ok then yeh i was searching around the map and i dont think anyone will go after India and i built lvl 1 land forts on all my borders with italy so i should be ok i hope
gotta wait a year now to build about 8 factorys lol

[Tankfriend]

Ok then yeh i was searching around the map and i dont think anyone will go after India and i built lvl 1 land forts on all my borders with italy so i should be ok i hope
gotta wait a year now to build about 8 factorys lol

Don't build too many factories though, they're not really worth the effort because they only gain you one IC each. The further you get towards the start of the war, the more IC you will get because your peacetime modifier will be reduced from time to time.
The thing about the land forts: They are certainly quite useful, especially on higher levels and the province being stocked with infantry (as they're cheap compared to their strength) and support divisions (artillery etc.). But personally, I think that an "aggressive defense" is a lot better because that can preempt the need to defend your provinces in long-drawn battles. And if you lose a fortified province despite your efforts, that makes the reconquering all the more difficult.
Besides, you won't be engaged anywhere other than Africa for quite some time because you will need a lot of time to come up with the strength necessary for you to set up a beachhead in continental Europe, which enables you to concentrate the largest amount of your forces in Africa.

[phowa]

Yeh is its basicaly unstoppable to beat the Germans when they go to war or something?
As i have been pulling every division out of India putting them in Africa so that i can concentrate on Europe.

[Tankfriend]

I don't think it's impossible to stop Germany early on in Continental Europe, but you have to churn out infantry like mad and station them along the French border, especially at the French-Belgian border because that's where Germany will attack when they turn on France and you after having won the war with Poland. You could try to attack Germany when they're moving against Poland and that can earn you quite some territory but you likely won't be able to hold it for long because the front gets very long very fast when you move deeper into German territory.
If you stay with (and manage to) defending France against the first assaults, you'll most likely end up in a WW1-esque stalemate and you have to be creative about your future plans to break that situation. Besides, the situation in Africa is also not to be underestimated as that is the largest part of your ressource-providing colonies.

[hellheaven1987]

Fighting German as British in early stage is impossible, due to your inferior army doctrine (and things would not be better after 10 years of game time).

The only chance British can win the war is when German stuck in Russia.

[phowa]

Right well i got about 12 divisions to try and help france but i guess that wont be enough

[vizi]

Factories are always worth it pre-War. You will have enough supplies if you are the one doing the trading that is.

[phowa]

Yeh well my factories are taking so long to build is there any way to speed them up?

Well Germany went to war and i got 20 divisions waiting for em so i reckon i can hold them off

[Tankfriend]

Yeh well my factories are taking so long to build is there any way to speed them up?

Well Germany went to war and i got 20 divisions waiting for em so i reckon i can hold them off

You can put some research effort into "industrial" research topics, but they mainly boost the efficiency of your IC and the production of certain unit types, fortifications etc, I'm not sure if that has any impact on factories though.

Depending on the composition of your armies and the difficulty, they may or may not be enough (likely not). Look in the "statistics" topic at the top right of the screen, you should be able to access comparative data of the army sizes there. Germany does start out with 36 divisions though (as does France but that is split up for the colonies), so they will most likely have a lot more troops around. So when you get attacked, always pay attention to rivers, fortifications etc, they can seriously influence a battle.

[phowa]

Yeh well when they attacked i had 23 divisions france had about 12 in the area but we were screwed as soon as they came through belgium he had about 3 armys of 20 divisions so i just put both armys in mons held them of for a while but then they took Calais so i had to abandon France and sent 1 of the armys over to Africa where its basically a stalemate.

I didnt have a very good composition i think i had about 6 tanks in france then 1 army of foot inf other of motor inf

P.S how come Germanys navy is so strong i sent a fleet of 30 ships which had two carriers loads of battleships cruisers and only about 2 destroyers went to africa then they got completly killed

[yxc qwert!]

Maybe it was your reserve fleet, or maybe the Germans had a carrier (modern, IV)?

[Tankfriend]

or maybe the Germans had a carrier (modern, IV)?

Rather unlikely, as he fought against them at the start of the war.
It could be that they had some air support from land-based airfields nearby, that can pack a serious punch against almost anything if it comes on top of a combat situation. It's always happening to me as well though, the enemy (no matter who it is, unless the difference is too large of course) seems to almost always win any sea battle even if he is at a disadvantage - or at least cause huge casualties should he lose the battle.

[phowa]

Yeh quite annoyed me that did i know he didnt have any carriers as i got 10 spys in Germany so they only had like 2 battleships and 10 battlecruisers if anything i guess it would be the planes.

Then but same things is happening in Medeteranian Italy seems to just send there fleet and i will kill about 1 transport ship while they kill cruisers destroyers etc so the fleet went from 26 to 19 so far and they still manage to keep sending random bunchs of 13 ships not much going well in africa lol

[Spart]

Naval warfare requires some skill, if you put your ships in random groups you will get raped. First of all remember that you'll need 2 screens (destroyers, light cruisers) for every capital ship.

Have a look at this quide: http://www.paradoxian.org/hoi2wiki/i...p/Naval_Primer