Messpublican Spain's a bad start for a newbie to party in. Playing Romania, Hungary, Italy, or one of the majors might be an easier experience to learn with.

A lot of the game comes down to logistics, strategies, and army composition. Build up your civ then mil factories, never keep default brigade formations, prioritize getting your army armed with basic wargear first and fancy stuff like airplanes and tanks later. An underarmed army or an army with very few brigades are easy to get steamroller with.

Infantry armies are meant to hold the line and be the Cliff face that breaks the oncoming waves of enemy, attacking with them is a waste of manpower and equipment - barring circumstances such as superiorly designed and equipped brigades, holes in the enemy's line that you can snatch up without compromising your own line of defense, or to tie up and hold the enemy's forces from moving if you have an armored unit attempting a breakthrough and encirclement movement.

And so forth and so on. sniff

You have to prioritize breakthrough in specific tiles for strategic purposes.

There are like 2 primary ways to destroy an enemy frontline. Either go around or bust thru. If you aren't fast enough to get around your opponent with trucks and tanks, you need breakthrough and heavy firepower to force your enemy off tiles.

That requires compositions you probably don't have access to at the start. If you have any trucks or light tanks I would send them to your edges and try to overwhelm a flank with the majority of your forces. As the line faces resistance you can keep going wide or find a spot in the line that's weak and manually select units to push those tiles

Be glad that it's not HOI3. That shit was insane.

If you're just starting out, I would absolutely not start with Republican Spain. They start at a disadvantage and, at least in my experience, require you to micro your divisions in order to actually get anywhere. Also, a lot depends on how much support both sides are getting from the major powers. The major powers will be much more beginner friendly. The Soviet Union is pretty good because you'll have about 5 years of prep time before you get into a meaningful war, and by then you'll probably have done the winter war which will give you some practice in using front lines and battle orders.

Do I have to babysit certain battalions/armies to sit and wait until they’re organized and the pincer enemy positions?

If you want to micro your units, this is pretty much how you do it. It's a lot easier if you have tanks or motorized to do it

I would highly recommend you look up videos on parts you're confused about as you go, there's a ton to learn about this game. I have 1,500+ hours and I still feel like I'm missing a lot. I'll put some basic tips here so that combat is less frustrating. Division templates are very important, they're what dictate the stats of your divisions. For various reasons that I still don't quite understand, divisions should have a width of either 20 or 40. A generally good infantry division would look like 7 infantry battalions and 2 artillery battallions, or 14 inf/4 arty. Add support companies if you can afford them, I typically go with Signal, Engineers, Recon, AT, Support Artillery. For armored divisions you want something like 5 motorized or mechanized infantry and 5 tanks (medium is good all around, light is fast, I don't know much about heavy). You can up this to 40 width by just going 10/10. For armored support companies I would probably do Engineers, Recon, Signal, Maintenance, and Support Artillery. I generally don't deviate from these but you definitely can, these are just some decent divisions with good stats that make sure you're hitting 20 or 40 width. The best land doctrine right now is Superior Firepower, and when you come to the decisions go Integrated Support and Shock and Awe. Last thing, the air war is SO important if you can afford an airforce. Air superiority over a zone grants something like +25% combat bonus, or something like that.

I hope this helps somewhat. HoI4 is very fun once you get a handle on it, especially with the plethora of mods available, but there's a very steep learning curve.

This might not work because HoI4 doesn't simulate all these elements, but here are some tips based on Felix Morrow's account of the war:

• CNT and POUM leadership joined the popular front alongside the succdems, Communist Party, and libs. Assuming you're playing one of these parties, don't do this.

• Cooperate with Trotskyists in a united-front capacity if that option is available; MLs will go full sectarian and use covert tactics to kill your revolution for fear of pissing off England and France.

• If you're playing as POUM, purge the Maurinite right-oppositionist elements of the party, or split from POUM and join the 4th International.

• If you're playing as CNT, don't let the CNT's syndie tendency railroad you into fetishizing trade unions at the cost of building other aspects of working-class power.

• Promote friendly relations with French socialists (besides the useless CP of France) in opposition to the liberal and fascist factions there. Make agitprop appeals to the people living in the territory controlled by Franco (including Morocco!). Make appeals to Moroccans sympathetic to independence from Spain on the same basis as you appeal to those fighting for Catalonia's independence.

• If the game railroads you into the popular front, address the grievances raised by Libertarian Youth of Catalonia and Friends of Durruti.

• Commies will actively sabotage and attempt to purge the most forward-thinking elements of the workers' militias. They will sabotage circulation of CNT and POUM newspapers to slow the spread of important news.

• Make absolutely sure to have full working-class control of the press, the financial levers, land, and trade and customs. DO NOT let the liberal elements of the popular front seize control of these from the CNT or POUM.

• Keep the working-class armed, and disarm the liberal police and military, folding loyal soldiers into the workers' militias. Don't let the libs ban soldiers from being members of political parties. Make every decision possible to prevent the libs from disarming the workers or letting them fold workers' militias into their military command.

• Never stop developing instruments of dual power before you're ready to deal the finishing blow to the capitalist and fash enemies' bases of power. Keep the workers' councils running smoothly, and keep workers' and peasants' morale up by not betraying them. Your window of opportunity from mid-1936 to early 1937 is quite short. You want ironclad working-class control to progress from dual power to full socialist revolution.

• Do Not send only worker-militamen to the front lines and let the liberal military's soldiers hang back. They will fucking notice and resent leadership.

• If you consistently fuck up and let the May Days happen, you're all but doomed to lose the war.

I'm also pretty noob at HOI, so I might not know what I'm talking about, but unless I have a massive manpower and/or equipment advantage, I too am incapable of making gains in combat when I'm not microing my divisions like mad

I often don't even bother setting up plans at all anymore beyond just painting the frontline

planning bonus doesn't seem that good anyway, I'd rather have my armies maneuvering and attacking than sitting around doing literally nothing to gather a tiny percent bonus each day

Anyone who is trying to learn, I'd be happy to join your game and teach while handling some fronts/aspects of your country until you're ready to take the reigns.

DM me your steam name when you're and if I'm on I'll add you.

I'm good with TNO, EoW, KR, or OWB if you want to jump right to mods.

I'm using the legit version, but if you can figure out how to make mp work on a pirated version via hamachi or whatever, that's fine too.