The main menu is self-explanatory, as are the options.





Scenario Selection allows you to pick between the New Year's of 1936 and the 14th of August, 1939.
Always pick 1936. 1939 is pointless, even if you want something historically accurate the A.I in-game is dog-crap and will go off-script even with Historical A.I focus.


The Select Country menu lists the 7 major powers in-game and the minor/DLC powers. Powers is simply another term for 'country.' The bottom half of the menu gives you the basic info-summary of the country and its brief history. The middle shows the countries name, and below the nameplate, it shows (from left to right, bottom to top)

Ideology (The eagle badge in this example stands for a fascist dictatorship.)

National Spirits (National Spirits are buffs/debuffs that most significant powers come standard with, depending on the idea and the power it could also be enhanced, weakened, or removed entirely. Other spirits can be gained via the use of the focus trees menu as well. Hover over them for further information.)

Focus Tree Paths (The three circular emblems below national ideas can be hovered over to provide a short summary of what they represent as well.)

Whether you pick a major/minor power or select "Other Country" you will be taken to the Scenario Screen.

The Scenario Screen allows you to select whatever country you wish by clicking on them on the map, adjusting the difficulty, and the rule-set for your game. You can use the arrow keys or put your mouse to the edges of the screen to pan it around, the scroll wheel can be used to zoom in or out. The difficulty tooltips go as such, Regular is not present as it has no (visible) adjustments either way.





Custom Game Rules allow you to adjust how the game and the A.I function. These mutators are split into 6 categories:


Major Nation Buffs function via buffing the major powers similar to how the difficulties do.


A.I Behavior adjusts how the A.I function in politics, which affects all other aspects. Fascism is specifically denoted as the 'World Domination' path, meaning the A.I will convert the country to fascism if it hasn't already and turn aggressive and war-like.



The Foreign Policy tab dictates what diplomatic or political actions can be done, as well as their specifics, choose to restrict certain actions entirely, limit them to countries that share the same faction/ideology, limit it to purely focus-based actions, or remove the ability to do such forms diplomacy at all. The same goes for Covert Actions, however, the restrictions are based on whether or not the opponents are A.I or not. Gameplay Rules allow you to restrict whether or not Paratrooper drops are allowed and what the maximum fort level you desire is.


Game Setup allows you to decolonize and fragment specific regions and nations. Decolonization removes the territorial claims that most major and/or some minor powers have in regions like East Asia, Africa, and Central/South America. Replacing them with the nations they would come to be in the later era of the 20th century. Fragmentation splits mass territories and unitary states/republics/unions into their independent nations. (Oceania and Spain get unique settings which are "Polynesian Empire" and "11th of November" respectively.)

The HUD overview is going to be split into a myriad of different categories seen below.

This is a bar that will always be visible, it gives you an at-a-glance explanation of your most essential resources.

Political Power
Political Power (depicted by a white monument) is used for many things, making decisions, researching focuses, justifying war goals, etc. You gain it on a day-to-day basis and its usually slow from the start, however, it can be used to appoint political leaders that can ENHANCE the amount of political power gained.

Stability
Stability (depicted by a scale) is how politically and economically stable your country is, the lower it is, the lower your factory/dockyard output, the more resistance you get in occupied target, the less political power you get per day, and the more popular the ruling party is.

War Support
War Support (depicted by a flexed arm) is a showcase of how much your civilian population supports any currently ongoing or potential conflicts, this affects your command
Manpower

Factories
Factories are summed up with a showcase of all the civilian and military factories you own.

Fuel
Fuel is a measurement of the oil used by your vehicles. Simple as that.

Convoys
Self-Explanatory

Command Power
Command power is used for various different military actions as well as the promotion of generals into field marshals.

Experience (Land, Sea, and Air)

Experience is used to create your own custom division templates for your land army and modify and upgrade your planes and ships for your naval and air armies.

The right cluster is a summary of basic information, including the clock, timescale, world tension, main menu button, wiki, and dismissed alerts. The bottom half consists of the jukebox/music management, summaries of your land, naval, and air forces.
This cluster consists of the various different map modes and filters in order to allow the player to glean more information from the world map, this consists of:

Default (Land)

Naval

Air

Supply Areas

Terrain

Resistance

Compliance

Resource

Infrastructure

Factions

The Political Menu can be accessed by pressing either Q or clicking on the flag button in the top-left corner. This allows you to access a general summary of your country, showing:

Nation Leader (Usually either a prominent historical figure from the era which may come with additional buffs/debuffs for your nation. Ol' Adolf Hitler here (Unibrowall for short) comes with the 'Dictator' buff, giving him 25% additional Political Power generation.


National Focus, National Focuses are an 'Ideological Tech Tree' of sorts, allowing you to follow the same historical path that a country took during the war or perhaps an alternate history. National Focuses are also used to gain additional buffs which can range from research bonuses, construction bonuses, and military bonuses all the way to gaining territorial claims which serve as war-goals or instantly building additional factories, infrastructure, or buildings. Depending on the country, and what DLC/Mods you have installed, these can be incredibly bland, simple, or highly complex and engaging. Certain Focuses may also require some form of pre-existing requirement, I.E ownership over a specific province, a certain amount of factories, etc etc.

National Spirits/Faction Allegiance, Self-explanatory. Hover over it for more info.

Ideology, See above.

Political pie-chart, showing what Ideologies make-up the population of your country. This can shift dramatically or stay relatively stagnant depending on your desires as well as the desires of other nations, be they A.I or player controlled.

Occupied Territories, Occupied Territories is the menu you'll be seeing a lot of after annexing a nation or province. This tells you the level of resistance and level of compliance towards your occupation, also allowing you to set-up what division template to use for occupation management, and what form of management you're using, everything from no oversight, to civilian offices, to military police, to brutal oppression and beyond.

Political Policies, Political Policies allow you to appoint companies alongside military and political staff to give you buffs of your choosing and select what kind of conscription and economic laws you desire. These cost Political Power to appoint and are usually based on historically significant staff/corporations.

Events & Decisions can be accessed via the Gavel/Hammer icon next to your country's flag button or pressing Shift+Q. It will grow and shrink as time goes on, they list out a series of...Well, events and decisions as they occur. For those who played Stellaris think of these as your Edicts.

The Research menu can be acessed via the button to the right of the Events & Decisions menu which looks like a Magnifying Glass and Flask or by pressing W, it consists of multiple different categories, divided as such:


Infantry, Guns, Support Kits, Specialized units, etc. The bread and butter infantry kits.

Support Companies, These are side companies which will be packaged alongside your normal Infantry/Motorized/Mechanized Companies, you can only have 5 at a time as they greatly buff your template.

Armor, Light, Medium, and Heavy tanks. Simple, may also include tank destroyers.

Artillery, Artillery guns split into 3 paths with one sub-path for standard artillery that allows for rocket artillery development.

Land Doctrine, this is where you choose HOW your soldiers fight. While you are capable of micromanaging/moving your divisions around, be it individually, within an army, or an army group, doctrines provide buffs and 'tactics' that the A.I use in order to combat your opponent, akin to a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors (well, considering the balancing of each its more like Rock, Paper, Handgun, Shotgun.) It should also be noted that Land Doctrines take an extremely long amount of time to develop beyond the first stage, recommend speccing into land doctrine research bonuses to alleviate this.



Naval, Develop all forms of seafaring ships, from submarines to battleships and even transports for naval invasions.

Naval Doctrine, Self Explanatory.



Air, Self-Explanatory

Air Doctrine, Self-Explanatory



Utility should be in your top 3 priorities, the Electrical tree grants bonuses to research speed that stack on-top of one another and leads into the ability to develop nuclear weapons, while the Industrial tree allows you to develop your own industry further, unlocking the ability to build resource factories (aluminum factory, synthetic oil plant, rubber plant, etc) as well as enhancing the output and efficiency of your production and construction you have ongoing already.

The Diplomacy menu can be accessed via the Handshake icon or by pressing E, you can also right click the country you wish to do diplomacy with on the map in order to head to their diplomacy menu directly. Here you can see a summary of their nation, their opinion of you and your opinion of them as well as their stability and war support collectively (shown as the balancing scales and flexed arm in the top-right.)

Declare War
Self-Explanatory
Justify War Goal
In order to gain the ability to declare war, you must justify a war goal against the country you wish to war with, this costs political power and takes time to generate. How much it costs and how long it takes depends on what your justification is, what provinces your claiming, your stability/war support, and a whole host of other things relating to your nation + the target nation.
Guarantee Independence
Self-Explanatory.
Ask For/Offer Military Access
Military Access = moving your military through their territory.
Improve Relations
Improve the opinion the target nation has of you, initial buy-in cost + a daily drain on your gross political power income.
Non-aggression Pact
Self-Explanatory
Invite to Faction
Can only be done by faction leaders.
Start Lend-Lease
Offer either a daily, percentage-based, or lump-sum delivery of equipment, vehicles, troops, or resources to a target nation.
Send Volunteers
Send military units to a country which you can control to assist them in fighting their conflicts, the amount of volunteers you can send is based off of how many provinces they hold.
Expeditionary Force
Same as Volunteers, but the target nation you're sending them to is able to control the units instead of you.
Return Expeditions
Forcibly recall your expeditions.
Boost Party Popularty
Boost the popularity of a specific political party in the targeted nation.
Stage a Coup
Stage a coup which causes a civil war that you can support in the target nation.

The trade menu is denoted by a rate with two arrows surrounding it or by pressing the R key. The trade menu tells you how many factories you currently have as well as how many are used.

The resource counter is the net-amount of resources coming in, green means you have a surplus, yellow means you're making a trade you don't need to make, read is a deficit, and white is also a surplus that is self-produced. Clicking the icon with the green arrow and red x will cancel all trades related to that specific resource. Below that are a list of tabs allowing you to click what resources you can get. Below that are a list of regions you can filter by as well as filtering what countries neighbor your borders or if they're a subject of yours. The list shows how much of that material a country has out of how much they have total, what number of those resources are being delivered to you, and how many naval convoys they have.

It is important to say that when a country isn't neighboring you, they will have to transport the materials through land or sea trade routes which can be raided and destroyed, trades can also be cancelled due to lack of civilian factories, change in relations with either country, factions, etc. And a part of or even your entire import requests can end up going unfulfilled because of previously mentioned raids or because of the country you're trading with needing the resources more than you.

Construction in HoI4 is denoted by an excavator on its icon, it can also be accessed by pressing the T key.

The construction menu is where you'll be spending a lot of time, it allows you to build different types of buildings which provide defensive or industrial bonuses to your country. These are split in to 3 categories:



consist of:

Infrastructure which allows your troops to move faster through that individual province and speed up construction in those areas.

Air Bases which allow you to station airplanes, stacking these within the same province allows for a higher number of planes to be stored there.

Anti-Air that provides the province with defensive measures against opposing aircraft and bombers.

Radar Stations which allow you to gain intel on your opponent, increasing your knowledge of their forces whether it be land, sea, or air.



are buildings which share the same pool of slots, meaning you'll have to prioritize which buildings to spec into as you'll be working with limited space. These consist of:

Military Factories which allow you to produce land/air vehicles and equipment at a higher rate.

Civilian Factories which allow you to trade with more countries, construct OTHER BUILDINGS quicker, make repairs to damaged infrastructure/industry, and upgrade/maintain your intelligence agency.

Naval Dockyards that provide the ability to construct and maintain your naval fleet.

Synthetic Refineries that provide you with a steady source of Rubber.

Fuel Silos which allow you to larger amounts of oil for use in vehicles.

Rocket Sites which serve to assist in launching rockets.

Nuclear Reactors which provide the materials needed to produce nuclear reactors.



are buildings that buff the defensive capabilities of that specific province on a state-to-state basis. These consist of:

Naval Bases which serve as docking and supply outposts for your fleet and any other ally fleets, these also serve as access points for trade convoys and upgrading their level increases how many supplies can be pushed through them.

Land Forts which reduces the attacking capabilities of attacking armies by 15% per level.

Coastal Forts which reduces the effective capabilities of naval invasions and coastal bombardments by 15%

The production menu is represented by a gear overlaid with a wrench, it can also be accessed via the Y key. This menu allows you to view what military equipment and vehicles you're producing, cars, tanks, planes, ships, infantry equipment, etc are what make up this menu. Starting from the top, you can see the net-income of all your resources, clicking on the icon itself for the respective resource will bring you to its tab in the Trade menu. Below that it shows the lists of bonuses you've gotten from focuses, leaders, researched tech, and those you've appointed within the Political menu. Below that are a set of filters which allow you to view specific items being produced as well as filtering them by what's being refitted (large yellow arrow with a + in it,) what's being stockpiled (green garage,) what's being used for reinforcement of active troops (green arrows rotating around a red + sign) and what is being upgraded (small arrow with a + sign inside it.) Left click to hide that specific category, shift-click to hide all OTHER categories beside it, and right click to collapse all items that fall under that category.



Within the individual tabs, you'll see the placement in its list, the name of whatever equipment you're producing, as well as a bar which shows the production efficiency, gray is efficiency which has been reached, red means that the production efficiency has yet to reach its max and will be filled in as time goes on, and yellow is the cap. To the right of that you have - and + flanking a number, this represents the amount of military factories currently producing that specific piece of equipment or vehicle. To the right of that is the button to cancel the production line, Shift-Click if you wish to cancel all lines.

Below that you'll see the icon for that piece of equipment, clicking on this allows you to replace that piece of equipment with another, it also show how many of that piece of equipment you're producing per day/week (anything beyond will be given a specific completion date I.E 8th March, 1941.) You'll also see whether or not the equipment being produced is being used for upgrades, reinforcements, or if its being stockpiled. To the right of that is a set of boxes which allows you to quickly set the amount of factories you want to have producing that specific set of equipment, with boxes to the left denoting whether you want each icon representing 5 or 10 factories per box. To the right of THAT is the resources required for to produce that much of a piece of equipment, this also previews the expected resource requirements when you hover over an empty box. Red means the resource requirement are not being met.



This is the menu which allows you to select what piece of equipment you want to start producing, you can show outdated equipment to produce if you wish to train your troops on the cheap, view the production cost in the bottom left, the resource cost on the right click the green/black button in the top right to decommission or recommission a piece of equipment (marking it as outdated or up-to-date) and use the orange Wrench/Screwdriver icon to create a variant of that equipment, allowing you to rename that equipment (SEND MINUTE RICE!)

The Recruit and Deploy menu can be accessed via clicking on the tank icon or by pressing the U key. Here you can modify what takes priority in terms of military management. Clicking on the empty dots flanking the orange-yellow one sets the priority of between low, normal, and high priority. To the right is the division designer menu button and then a list of each menu you can access. You can click on the emblem/icon to the left of the division name in order to change the emblem to something else if you desire.

The division designer menu is one of the most complicated-LOOKING parts of the game, but its a lot more simple than one may think. We're going to go through this like a book, top-right to bottom left, starting with the left-side:

Division Emblem same as I explained above.

Paratrooper & Special Forces Icon The Paratrooper icon represented by the parachute means that this specific division cannot be paradropped in via plane, with the winged knife icon meaning the template contains no special forces.

Preset Division Templates List is a drop-down list containing all the preset and custom divisions made so far, you can also use the 'create new' option that appears at the very top in order to make a blank template you can work on from scratch.

Equipment Sub-Menu is the menu which allows you to assign specific iterations of equipment to a specific division, enabling cheaper training.

Support Companies
Support Companies, despite their name and size in the U.I, drastically increase the combat effectiveness of your divisions.

Combat Battalions
Combat battalions make up the meat of your divisions and can be customized to your hearts content as long as you have the Army experience necessary to change it. Army experience can be gained by training or sending your divisions into active combat scenarios.

On the right half, you see a summary of your divisions statistics as well as their equipment cost, below that you can see the buffs and debuffs the specific division templates get within certain environment tiles. Hovering over the Boot, Sword, and Shield icons allow you to see just how much these debuffs or buffs affect the division.

Military units on the ground will have their icons grouped together in order to ensure that the map isn't crowded, this grouping is based on the proximity they have to eachother and will become less accurate the further you zoom out, with the opposite occurring the further you zoom in. In order to select a unit or a group of units, simply left click on one. To select more then one, hold down shift and left-click to select the units you want to have. To mass select units, hold down left click and drag, a selection box will appear. In order to assign divisions to an army, select what divisions you want to assign to an army and click the small portrait with the pulsating plus icon in the center, the small icon represents generals in command of an army, generals and their armies can then be grouped together into an army group which is lead by a field marshal. To assign armies to an army group, click the portraits of the generals leading each respective army and then click the larger portrait with the blank silhouette and plus icon. Not that unless you assign the army to a defensive order, a general can at most command 24 divisions, with each field marshal able to command only 5 armies at once.


The divisions list is the list which will show-up when you click on any division or group of divisions. The top left icon can be clicked to allow you to choose the army's insignia, name, and coloration (which can also be done with the color card on the far right.) To the right of their name is an icon consisting of a pair of fuel barrels, hovering over this allows you to view the amount of fuel the army is consuming, including the maximum theoretical amount of fuel they'd be able to consume. To the right of that is the total number of divisions within the army.

Below the army insignia will be the portrait of the person commanding the army/army group. clicking on this portrait will allow you to select one, replace the current commander with a new one, or dismiss them entirely. To the right of that is a list of the unit types that make-up the army, in the middle-left you can see a summary of the general/field marshal's skill, made up of Attack, Defense, Planning, and Supply Consumption. The plane icon next to the 'select all' button allows you to view air-wings that have been attached to that individual army.

Every entry within the army list itself contains summaries for that specific division, the green bar represents organization, with the orange bar representing fighting strength, the red exclamation point will notify you of issues such as attrition, dwindling supplies, and so on. To the right of the division's icon is a representation of their experience level. Seen below
To the right of that is a bar measuring how far along they are in their current XP level, the light grey bar beside that is their planning level. With the shovel icon being a space that describes the current action the division is taking, be it entrenchment, movement, combat, etc. Hover over it to learn more info.