This thread explains why you may want to wait a few patches on your Hearts of Iron 3 purchase.
Don’t have a Paradox forums account? Post below the cut:
Dipex writes:
(Please note, what follows is the result of me trying to figure out why neither England nor the US has done literally anything in a 1943 Soviet Union game I’ve had going, this is not the first time this has happened to me either, just the one that finally made me say “whelp.” Yes this is a new game started and played entirely in a 1.2 unmodded game.)
Hello, its 1943, and I am completely historical PM of England Stanley Baldwin
As you all know, its been under my strong noMinisterType leadership that we bravely stopped the Nazis at a mere 50% occupation of our great land
But now I need your help in pushing them back! And towards that goal, our best and brightest military officers have deduced an unstoppable plan! Transports? Transports… Transports!
Now, you may ask, “but Stanley… don’t we have enough transports already?”
And it would be a fair question, until I gave a hearty chuckle and set you straight, for you see, you can never have too many transports!
On which note I would like to thank you for your time and end by reminding you: it is your patriotic duty to ignore this image!
Hello Stanley Baldwin, I am the United States of America, and I have a BURNING NEED for all your transports. You see, this is because as one of the world’s major powers I have no need to build new ships!
Certainly not transports
Now I know what you’re saying, “11 transports, well that must certainly be enough!” And you would most certainly be wrong!
So what AM I building you ask? Well… I, of course, need about 100 IC worth of new industrial capacity
And I also obviously need another 100 IC worth of coastal forts
Of course, I assume you noticed that the pile of dudes in Washington contained only infanty, so let just throw another 300 IC worth of light tanks in there as well
Now I know, light tanks seem like kind of a weird thing to produce in mass like that, so why them over medium tanks, or perhaps mechanized infantry? Well you’re going to look like quite the fool when you realize its because in addition to not being able to research radar, I also can’t research light tank guns, or any cavalry tech, so obviously I can’t build medium tanks or mechanized infantry.
Actually on second thought you can keep the transports England. Despite, having largest army on earth I probably wouldn’t do very well in combat, seeing as how I’ve never researched a single theory tech anyways.
Again, this game was started and played entirely in a 1.2 patched game with no mods. The difficulty level was normal, I was playing the Soviet Union and I did not touch either the US or UK at all. This is not an isolated incident, I “restarted” 2 games due to this exact same problem before coming to this one.