Hoi4 is 90 percent planning and 10 percent watching your guys execute. Just look at the numbers along your opponents line and come up with a strategy for attack or defense. There is a tool once you group troops under your field marshals and your generals that paints frontlines. Use that excessively. Don’t be afraid to pause to do so. Deliver individual commands as necessary. Trucks and tanks can be split off from your main infantry line to attack specific targets or to literally just cut off your opponents escape by getting around them

Go Ethiopia. Hide all your troops in the capital, Addis Abada. Build forts in your capital. Develop infantry guns upgrade. Break out of Addis Abada with the goal of taking italy’s 2 ports on the horn of Africa and in Etria. You basically win as Ethiopia once you take the ports.

If you’re trying to brute force learn with no DLC/ no mods, try playing as japan. They’ve got an early industrial and military advantage so you can get a feel for how the mechanics work, and it’s nearly an absolute advantage against china and the united front for the first few years. It’s not as critical to build your economy precisely, you can get away with just building military factories, as opposed to civilian factories.

Japan has a focus tree geared towards early war with china around late '36 at the earliest which A: they have a lot of debuffs for a few years B: mainly use infantry with few artillery at first, and C: is largely a soft land war for a while, so it isn’t as necessary to use an air force, navy, tanks, or big guns effectively to make gains. Tho fair warning, the United Front effectively doesnt run out of manpower unlike the most other nations, and expect heck from the other major nations in the later game around '41.

Tough a few games out and see how many casualties you’re taking with what equipment (i.e. using buncha artillery or tanks or air force) and adjust on each game. Once you start to see how the game is balanced, you can play pretty well with most nations and different military concentrations (arty, tanks, aerial) given a smartly developed economy.

If you think you’re starting to get it, a more moderate challenge would be defeating a major faction as germany or the Soviet union, tho each of these it’s much more critical to know how to manage your economy. Somebody else said to try Italy, I think they’re the hardest major country to play in vanilla.

Mods, take a crack at Kaiserreich, the New Order, Equestria at War, Road to '56 (this one especially if you dont mind playing the same game for a WHILE), and the Great War (this one for a challenge).

You’ll learn half the game from reading the flavor text from hovering your cursor over everything.

Play with iron man mode off for a while, much less frustration. And make sure autosave is set to go weekly or monthly, I think it’s either set to go annually or off by default. Resolves many learnin’ issues.

Been playing for a while, and it’s like my main PC game.

Hope this helps, typed this as I’m playing right now btw. Also, you win the game for good once you capitulate the US and Germany as communist Iran.

I enjoyed it but the learning curve is still a little steep for me. Been a few months since I torrented it and played. I’ve been getting really into Steel Division 2 tho, a bit smaller scale which I like a lot.

Download Equestria at War. Yes, the pony mod. It is both more approachable for new players while at the same time have more things going on in it than vanilla.

https://equestria-at-war.fandom.com/wiki/What_Country_Should_I_Play%3F

Its also on moddb https://www.moddb.com/mods/equestria-at-war/downloads/equestria-at-war-1831-in-the-shadow-of-mountains-nightmare-night