r/hoi4 • • 27d ago

Meta Adjustments to Rule 5

116 Upvotes

Hello Generals,

We've successfully completed an upgrade to our automatic Rule 5 enforcement with the rollout of a new bot. /u/rule5bot has been working well over the last few days and is now active here in /r/hoi4. The new bot has new capabilities and we are adjusting Rule 5 to reflect the improvement.


Rule 5: Image posts must have an explanation.

  • The explanation cannot just repeat or rephrase the title.
  • The explanation can either be in the post's caption or in the comments section. The bot will repeat post caption explanations into the comments section.
  • This rule is automatically enforced with a bot. It will remind you after 5 minutes if it cannot see an explanation and will remove the post after another 10 minutes if it still cannot see an explanation.

So what's different now? The big change is that we can finally accept captions for Rule 5 explanations. There's no need to quickly dump an abridged version of a quality caption into the comments section just to avoid a soulless automaton's wrath. However, the new bot can correctly identify image gallery posts so Rule 5 now properly applies to multi-image posts. The bot will also be repeating caption R5s into the comments section (for the foreseeable future) because there's a persistent issue with some legacy access methods not displaying captions on images properly.

Why now and not before? /u/zwemvest, our bot-builder, has had a few goes at upgrading / replacing the bot over the years but real life and/or Reddit would always get in the way. Reddit is making major changes that will impact old bots and it forced our hand. Fortunately, they had free time now and recent Devvit (Reddit's internal bot platform) improvements made it easier to implement some features so the project was completed this time. Zwem said it was a joy to build the new bot from scratch & they're glad that the migration has been completed. The old /u/paradoxplazabot has been retired although we may reuse the account in the future for other bot purposes if we can.

We've been testing /u/rule5bot for about a week now with no remaining issues but it's possible that some bugs might still be lurking, so please keep an eye out and send us a modmail if you see the bot do something unexpected.


r/hoi4 • • 3d ago

Help Thread The War Room - /r/hoi4 Weekly General Help Thread: October 12 2026

8 Upvotes

Please check our previous War Room thread for any questions left unanswered

 

Welcome to the War Room. Here you will find trustworthy military advisors to guide your diplomacy, battles, and internal affairs.

This thread is for any small questions that don't warrant their own post, or continued discussions for your next moves in your game. If you'd like to channel the wisdom and knowledge of the noble generals of this subreddit, and more importantly not ruin your save, then you've found the right place!

Important: If you are asking about a specific situation in your game, please post screenshots of any relevant map modes (strategic, diplomacy, factions, etc) or interface tabs (economy, military, etc). Please also explain the situation as best you can. Alliances, army strength, tech etc. are all factors your advisors will need to know to give you the best possible answer.

 


Reconnaissance Report:

Below is a preliminary reconnaissance report. It is comprised of a list of resources that are helpful to players of all skill levels, meant to assist both those asking questions as well as those answering questions. This list is updated as mechanics change, including new strategies as they arise and retiring old strategies that have been left in the dust. You can help me maintain the list by sending me new guides and notifying me when old guides are no longer relevant!

Note: this thread is very new and is therefore very barebones - please suggest some helpful links to populate the below sections

Getting Started

New Player Tutorials

 


General Tips

 


Multiplayer Tips

 


Country-Specific Strategy

 


Advanced/In-Depth Guides

 


If you have any useful resources not currently in the Reconnaissance Report, please share them with me and I'll add them! You can message me or mention my username in a comment by typing /u/Kloiper

Calling all generals!

As this thread is very new, we are in dire need of guides to fill out the Reconnaissance Report, both general and specific! Further, if you're answering a question in this thread, consider contributing to the Hoi4 wiki, which needs help as well. Anybody can help contribute to the wiki - a good starting point is the work needed page. Before editing the wiki, please read the style guidelines for posting.


r/hoi4 • • 5h ago

Mod (other) I made a mod that lets you rename basically anything in HOI4: your country, leaders, parties, factions, states, cities, your leader's picture, country flag, even your subjects!

Thumbnail
gallery
333 Upvotes

Upfront: I built this with AI coding agents (Claude Code and Codex). It's mainly for roleplay in my campaigns, a toy I tinker with after my day job as an AI software engineer. If the AI part bothers you, fair enough, just don't download it. I'm not going to argue about it.

Links

- Rename Anything on the Workshop: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3819937546

- CAPIE on the Workshop: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3819929471

- Rename Anything source: https://github.com/capie-mods/rename-anything

- CAPIE source and releases: https://github.com/capie-mods/capie

You click a pencil next to a name, type a new one, and press Enter. That works for:

- your country's name and adjective, without touching its flag or colour
- your leader and your parties (all four ideology groups)
- states, cities and other characters (generals, admirals, advisors)
- factions you lead
- your subjects, through a new "Rename this country" diplomatic action

There's also a flag picker (any flag from the game, or a subset, depending on the game rules you set) and a leader portrait picker. Game rules decide who may rename what, and any feature can be switched off. The host can also turn on a news event when someone renames a country. There's a 5-day cooldown between renames. Polish letters (ą, ę, ł and the rest - my native language) work, typed straight from your keyboard.

About the injector, because people will ask: HOI4 mods can't do this on its own. There's no way for a mod to read free text the player types, and the only way to change a country's name from script is a cosmetic tag. Cosmetic tags have to be written into the mod ahead of time, and they swap the flag and colour along with the name. I wanted any name, typed in game, without touching the flag.

So the mod comes with a small native library, CAPIE (Cyprian's API Extender, after my name). A launcher loads it into the game once the main menu is up, and the game files on disk stay as they are. It makes no network connections, and it only starts on the exact game build it was written for (1.19.3.0). On any other build it stays off and the game runs normally. You switch it on and off like a mod: there's a "CAPIE" item on the Workshop, and the launcher only loads CAPIE when that item is in your playset.

Without CAPIE the mod still partly works: characters, states and cities can be renamed with an on-screen keyboard, and everything else tells you it needs CAPIE.

A few things before you try it. Multiplayer hasn't been tested with two players yet. It might work, it might desync, so I'd play single player with it for now. It's also only for HOI4 1.19.3.0 currently; a game patch turns CAPIE off until I update it.

Some antivirus engines on VirusTotal flag the DLLs (4 out of 75 at most, all machine-learning or reputation engines; Defender, Kaspersky, ESET, Bitdefender and Avast don't). That's expected for a new, unsigned file that loads itself into another process. The results are linked in the release notes, and the code is open, so you can check what it does or build it yourself.

If something breaks, tell me here or open a GitHub issue. Ideas are welcome too. I'm thinking right now about giving an ability to switch your nation's colors, and in the future it'd be nice to create something resembling a custom nation builder.


r/hoi4 • • 7h ago

Question Are army sizes inflated in HOI4?

348 Upvotes

I recently learned that in the real WW2, the Soviet encirclement of the Axis forces at Stalingrad consisted of 22 encircled German divisions.

I feel like in HOI4, a 22 division encirclement would be nice, but wouldn't be a particularly large one that turns the tide of the whole war, as Stalingrad was.

Likewise when reading about the island hopping of the Southwest Pacific campaign, I read that the US had to deploy 6 divisions to deal with Japanese holdouts and remnants. Specifically Wikipedia has the following sentence:

Containing these Japanese forces tied up six American divisions, threatening to make the American Army the one that became strategically ineffective.

From all my HOI4 experience, six divisions of the US army is nothing in strategic terms. I might easily use more than six marine divisions to naval invade a single significant pacific island, like Guam, let alone deploying six divisions to clean up New Guinea or something.

So my question is, is the scale of HOI4 armed forces inflated compared to the real orders of battle?


r/hoi4 • • 18h ago

Humor Help

Post image
1.1k Upvotes

Any body have some supply tricks?


r/hoi4 • • 17h ago

Bug No Compromise No Surrender makes it impossible to befriend Japan as Italy on historical, since Japan needs to be Fascist and factionless while the new focuses make Japan a faction leader before becoming fascist.

Thumbnail
gallery
892 Upvotes

I don't even understand why Japan can't be in a faction for this focus in the first place.


r/hoi4 • • 2h ago

Question Been building a navy from scratch as Italy and decided to build cheap aircraft carriers as well to fight the Allies. Would this AC design work with that strategy knowing that Italy has very limited resources?

Post image
54 Upvotes

r/hoi4 • • 8h ago

Image Is this rare?

Post image
101 Upvotes

Franco-British union has formed


r/hoi4 • • 10h ago

Humor Accidentally formed Albion (?)

Thumbnail
gallery
127 Upvotes

Thanks to the genius of the hoi4 AI, during my invasion of Italy, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland all declared independence one after another, and all immediately joined the communist faction, pulling the Soviet Union into a war with me. After I retook Northern Ireland, suddenly I'm Albion now.


r/hoi4 • • 19h ago

Video When you forget the Italian front exists...

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

509 Upvotes

This could have turned into the biggest throw ever


r/hoi4 • • 6h ago

Humor Hungarian Italy in Libya asks for Independence

Post image
32 Upvotes

r/hoi4 • • 10h ago

Question Does Anyone Know What This Is?

Post image
53 Upvotes

I got it after releasing germany as a puppet of the funny argentina path, its now this.


r/hoi4 • • 1h ago

Question Shouldn't communist mongolia be a Soviet puppet?

• Upvotes

Why is it independent? Historically wasn't it a Soviet puppet just like Manchukuo was for Japan?


r/hoi4 • • 1h ago

Discussion Forget your best encirclements and world conquests, what's the *worst* you've bungled a game?

• Upvotes

Feeling pretty annoyed at myself after effectively losing an hours-long Imperial Germany game by getting too hyperfocused on the northern front and not noticing that my Balkan allies had all imploded. Therefore I'm curious to know what sorts of epic fuckups everyone else has managed, especially once you've gotten out of the "total noob who gets conquered by Belgium" phase. The more disastrous and improbable the better :)


r/hoi4 • • 16h ago

Bug Typo

Post image
82 Upvotes

There is a typo in "The Voice of the People" focus in the communist branch of the Norwegian focus tree.

"Only then will our Revolution will be achieved from the bottom up."


r/hoi4 • • 21h ago

Question UK somehow knowing my invasion plans?

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

216 Upvotes

This has been happening for a month now and it keeps me from invading GB.

I've looked up this online and apparently I'm the only one with this issue, because I couldn't find anyone with the same problem.

Edit: Apparently that's an intended feature, pretty unrealistic IMO.


r/hoi4 • • 9h ago

Tutorial I followed Bittersteel’s USSR guide, but I still keep losing to Germany. What am I doing wrong?

Thumbnail
gallery
20 Upvotes

Hey everyone,а е

I’ve been following Bittersteel’s guide for the Soviet Union, and I’ve tried to do everything properly. I built a decent, even pretty good, air force, developed a strong infantry industry, and got almost all my focuses done. My supply hubs are mostly motorized, and I’ve tried to prepare my country as well as possible before the German invasion.

I do have a small tank equipment deficit, but my overall industry is pretty strong. However, I still keep losing to the AI Germany, and I honestly have no idea what I’m doing wrong.

I usually lose the air war, which obviously makes things harder, but even when I try to play defensively, hold my borders, and wear the Germans down through attrition, they still manage to break through my lines in multiple places. I try to micro my divisions and respond to breakthroughs, but eventually the Germans push all the way toward Moscow.

By the time the fighting reaches Moscow, I haven’t upgraded the railways or supply hubs in that area, so the situation becomes pretty much hopeless.

One thing I should admit is that I haven’t built any tank divisions at all. Could that be a major mistake? I followed Bittersteel’s guide pretty closely, so I thought my preparation would be enough, but apparently I’m missing something important.

I’d really appreciate any advice, especially on how to defend against Germany effectively, win the air war, and stop the German breakthroughs without losing half the country.


r/hoi4 • • 3h ago

Art Hoi4 Mod Luxem Legacy

Thumbnail
gallery
6 Upvotes

# Welcome to Luxem Legacy 1.0!!!

Hello all who come, to my very first hoi4 mod. I am making this mod as a practice for future projects, and even as it’s still in development I am happy to announce that there are already 2 planned major expansions for after its release.

This mod is centered around Luxembourg, with playable content stretching from the Congo to the Benelux. The plan is a new, non-aligned, monarchist Luxembourg that you can eventually return to the glory days. Stay tuned for teasers, major developmental updates, and more!

Here is day 3 and day 5 to give you a rough idea of my progress and how fast the mod develops:

# Luxem Legacy Devlog October 13th (3 days into development)

Current Progress: Map is currently Fully Finished besides localization and naming conventions (No progress since last devlog)

Focus Tree: Politics Branch is approximately 50% Complete (With a Grain of Salt). Focus icons are being implemented, and 3 custom focus icons have been made. Added 5 focuses and fixed multiple.)

Events: First Development Underway (No progress since last devlog)

Portraits: 1 Portrait is ready, 2 more are planned right now. (The mod will definitely get way more portraits than that though)

National Spirits: First Development Underway (No progress since last devlog)

No Other Progress Recorded

Summary of day 3’s Progress:

Yesterday, I fixed all of the errors with the current focus tree and added new focuses. Tomorrow and the days after, the goal will be to finish the politics tree, begin working on localization, add custom focus icons, a few events, hopefully a national spirit, and after all that I will begin working on localizing the states. That is the plan for the next week or so.

# Luxem Legacy Devlog October 15th (5 days into development)

Current Progress: Map is currently Fully Finished besides localization and naming conventions (No progress since last devlog)

Focus Tree: Politics Branch is approximately 100% Complete with over 2 dozen focuses. I also added 2 extra focuses to it, and started the industry tree with about 10 focuses already and up to 15 more planned. Localization for the entire politics tree is finished.

Events: First 3 events completed. (No progress)

Portraits: 1 Portrait is ready, 2 more are planned right now. (No progress since last Devlog)

National Spirits: I think I finished about 6-8, and all of them are now localized.

Summary of day 5ms Progress:

I didn’t have time to summarize while I was writing the devlog, as my entire morning is dedicated to modding and I have school immediately after, but the progress is clear.

(I will start posting pictures of the focus tree when it looks more attractive. Some focuses are missing pictures and clip into eachother, plus not everything needs leaked this early on.)

https://discord.gg/RhCGFNdy3


r/hoi4 • • 15h ago

Humor Yeah no, I don't think that originally happened...

Post image
52 Upvotes

Bridges go boom now I guess


r/hoi4 • • 4h ago

Question Help to organize my fleet as italy?

7 Upvotes

ive got 50 subs, 90 destroyers, 14 light and 10 heavy cruisers and 10 battle ships give or take,after a few weeks of figth i end up with around half my fleet sank by the brits.

i read that u should have all subs under one admiral and all non subs under another, i have 300 mines in every mediterranean tile and got all my ships patrolling and subs hunting convoys


r/hoi4 • • 1h ago

Image Why cant I form Rome?

• Upvotes

I have every single state in the med under my control, malta was (surprisingly) let free, I got the levant because Israel became a thing (RT56), and I own all other states through the wars I won. Yet it says I need to own all British states bordering the mediterranean, but I have ALL of them in and around the med so what do I need? Is it bugged? Because I did this three months ago with zero issues.


r/hoi4 • • 5h ago

Mod (other) Mod I’m making

Post image
7 Upvotes

As a high school student I don’t have much time on my hands, but after I finish my A levels next week I’ll have 3 months with nothing to do, so I’m planning on making a mod for Hoi4, does anyone want to guess the premise


r/hoi4 • • 1h ago

Bug week 2 of unable to launch game

Post image
• Upvotes

Ive done everything posted in the post below, including a fresh install and deleting of all folders related to hoi 4 and I still cannot get my game to launch. Any advice would be appreciated.

https://www.reddit.com/r/hoi4/comments/1x3uwad/i_have_tried_everything_every_post_has/


r/hoi4 • • 19h ago

Image Now I can focus on taking the Falklands

Post image
76 Upvotes

r/hoi4 • • 35m ago

Discussion Is this a good standard to decide how many factories I need?

• Upvotes

One of my weaknesses in the game currently is overproducing certain equipment, and not producing enough of others. So I'm trying to get it down to a science.

What I've come up with is to base my production on division training time. It takes, on average, 120 days, or 4 months, to train a division. So, my goal is to produce enough equipment to field a new division of every type I'm using (infantry, armor, mountaineers, etc) every 4 months.

So, for example, with artillery. I use it in my infantry, mountaineers, and marines. I use support company and two infantry gun regimental supports in each template, a total of 24 artillery per division.

So, to deploy a new infantry div, mountaineer div, and marine div every 4 months, I need to produce 72 artillery equipment in that same time frame.

Of course I'm not actually going to be deploying a new division of every type every 4 months, especially for special forces since they're hard capped. But, I feel like this standard would also provide me with sufficient output to replace combat and attrition losses.

So I ask the pros: is this a good standard to go by, or do you have a better one to recommend?