Hearts of Iron IV: Romania MP Guide

Romania is, while starting with a large army, by far the weakest country in the Balkans. Because of this, Romania is a good new player pick, as it’s pretty hard to screw up. Romania’s weakness comes from Consumer Goods debuffs related to King Carol II. Until Carol abdicates, around every 120 days you will have a choice between losing 90 PP and having Consumer Goods being increased by 3%, or having your Consumer Goods factories being increased by 20%. With the large amount of things you have to buy with your PP, you will almost always pick the 20% option. This will negatively affect your industry pretty badly in the early game.

Romania has a few very important, but also very simple responsibilities. In order of priority:

Research Fighter II early (if Italy doesn’t do it)

Max infrastructure on Muntenia

Research Excavation and Fuel Refining Tech

Get rid of Carol II

Make very good Marines

Let’s talk about the things you have to do to ensure these responsibilities are met.

Our priorities as Romania in regards to our focus tree are to rush IAR 80 if we’re rushing Fighter II for the Axis. After this, or first if we didn’t have to rush Fighter II, we want to work down to Force Abdication. In HMM and other vanilla lite mods, the focuses leading up to Force Abdication are usually shortened. After this, you want to Expand Ploiesti Oil Production, to get even more oil out of Muntenia.

If Rushing Fighter II, these go before all other focuses:

1. Expand the Air Force

2. Local Development

3. Air Superiority

4. IAR 80

If not, begin with Institute Royal Dictatorship

1. Institute Royal Dictatorship

2. Revise the Constitution

3. Flexible Foreign Policy

4. Appoint Pro Axis Government

5. Iron Guard

6. Force Abdication

7. Royal Foundation

8. Preserve Greater Romania

9. Civil Works

10. Agrarian Reform

11. Danubian Transport Network

12. MALAXA

13. Hunedoara Steel Works

14. Invest in the IAR

15. Expand Ploiesti Oil Production

16. Expand the University of Bucharest

This order is variable and depends on some factors. You could potentially grab your 4th Research Slot earlier, it’s really down to taste. If you’re hurting for army XP for your marines, Army Maneuvers can be slipped in anywhere after Force Abdication.

As said earlier, Romania’s research priority is Fighter II, Excav tech, and Fuel Refining Tech. You need Fighter 1 before you get to IAR 80. It’s not the absolute end of the world if you waste your bonus on Fighter 1, Italy could still theoretically rush fighter 2, but try explaining that to a HOI4 player. Save yourself the trouble and research Fighter 1 from the beginning, if you’re rushing it.

It’s important that your bonuses from Civil Works are used to rush either Excav or Fuel Refining early. Make sure you’re up to date on that tech before you finish Civil Works.

Doctrine is also very important, you have two options, Superior Firepower or Grand Battleplan. SF R-R is always a good choice, but GB R can also be very strong if you get your planning bonuses, in addition to getting a sweet 10% breakthrough. As the game goes on, GB will become weaker and SF will become stronger, but it’s unlikely you’ll be getting to the bottom of either doctrine. You have no bonuses to doctrine research in your tree, and XP is going to be a constant hustle as Romania.

Concentrated Industry is going to be the better choice over Dispersed, but ultimately, if you’re a Dispersed head and you can’t live without Production Efficiency retention, it’s unlikely to damage your build that badly.

Infantry tech and Artillery tech are good choices as well, some support Rocket Arty doesn’t hurt either if you have the time.

Also, make sure to research Marines and to research Transports. You don’t want to be ready for a Malta invasion just to realise you haven’t researched Transports yet.

These are gonna be open to interpretation, we’ll talk again about what we want to accomplish and what is available to us.

If rushing Fighter 2, it’s a good idea to grab the ICAR air designer. In a game where tech steals are banned, this is especially important.

Otherwise, there’s some things to think about.

In a vanilla game, you’re going to need a lot of XP. You might need to send an attache to Japan or China, or you might not, it depends.

Grabbing Partial Mob early isn’t a bad idea, but you are going to be upgrading to War Economy when you finish Force Abdication. If you don’t have to rush Fighter II, I might consider waiting.

In early 1938, the Axis will be going to war with Yugoslavia. You’re the oil hound, so that means you need to join the war, switch to closed economy, and lend lease Hungary (or whoever your AC is) 100% of your fuel. Keeping 150 PP for Yugoslavia is usually a good idea so you can switch to closed.

You’re gonna have to be ready to do naval invasions by the time France falls, so around January of 1940 at the earliest. You may also be expected to invade Denmark as well, maybe even Norway though that’s very rare. You’ll need your Army Offense Expert, your Infantry Expert and your Commando Expert before you go for your naval invasions in Malta.

Silent workhorse may be something to think about, as you’re going to need 6-8 buys in addition to something to increase your stability with so you don’t get strikes.

If I were to bang out a definite order, I’d probably do it like this:

• ICAR (if rushing Fighter II)
• Silent Workhorse
• Partial Mob
• Limited Conscription
• War Eco
• Closed Economy
• Military Theorist
• Army Offense
• Infantry Expert
• Commando Expert

These buys will take you around 3.5 years to get, after this you should take some stability boosting decisions, whether those are raids or improved worker conditions.

Pretty easy, Max Infrastructure on Mutentia, build Military Factories for the rest of the game. Most of the time Soviets won’t demand Bessarabia, but I still don’t build in Bucovina, Bessarabia, or Southern Bessarabia out of habit. Make sure to ask if Hungary will be demanding Transylvania or not. If the Axis hates you and wants to give it to Hungary, don’t build there.

You’ll have to fiddle with your own ratios, but I’d recommend putting 4 on guns, 1 on support equipment, 1 on motorized, and 1 on artillery at the start. The artillery is to keep the efficiency, but you’ll ideally want to research Arty 2 before you produce lots of arty. AA is something to think about, you’ll usually have air superiority over everywhere you’d be navally invading, but it’s never an awful choice. Rocket arty support is a good idea, so you’d have to fit that in there somewhere.

14/4 Marines is the name of the game, support companies are to taste. My setup would be Engineer (Required), Artillery (Required), Signal, Rocket Arty, and maybe some kind of Recon Company.

Make sure you do tradebacks with your allies.

Make sure you force attack while naval invading if/when the enemy last stands.

Make sure Italy has his strike force next to the tile you’re naval invading.

This is more of a “things to keep in mind” for your non-hist games.

Fascist Romania isn’t the strongest path on paper, Non-Aligned is. You get an extra 2% recruitable pop, 10% division recovery rate, and you don’t have to deal with emptied accounts after forced abdication. However, this route requires Balkans dominance, which means you lose out on your 2x 100% industry research bonuses, and you’re also gonna scare the ♥♥♥♥ out of Hungary if they’re a player. Just tell them to pick the second option where they offer a friendship treaty, and disband the faction after the focus.

Romania doesn’t get any cores, so if you’re playing Non-Hist, keep in mind that whatever faction you end up joining isn’t likely to be willing to give you any territory in the Balkans.

It’s very easy for Romania to switch sides quickly in Non-Hist. If your faction seems toxic, a fun prank to play is to wait for WWII to start, and then switch sides to the comintern. If you go to limited exports, you can starve your former allies of oil, and help ensure that they lose the air-war with the allies.

If you have spare time for your focuses, banning Communism and taking Deal with the Devil and Form Peasant Militias can get you an extra 1% Recruitable Pop, which isn’t so bad.

If you plan to stay out of the Axis, Mountaineers are gonna be your best friend. You have a lot of good terrain in your country, and with a little last stand micro, you could give the Axis a bloody nose when they invade you.

Heavy tank Romania isn’t very good, and I personally would play to your strengths with special forces rather than go heavy tanks.