Guides and Tips

Starting the game

 * Game settings - The mod built for 1936 starting scenario with historical focus and tested using the Normal settings. As with all major overhauls ironman mode isn't recommended.


 * WARNING BlackICE is not for the faint hearted. If you have no experience with Hearts of Iron IV, it is strongly recommended you play vanilla first to get a feel of the mechanics of the game, or BICE can be a little overwhelming. If your only experience with HOI4 is with vanilla, you may feel as if you are playing a whole new game; BICE adds and changes so many things. Do not expect to win a campaign on the first try.

Game Mechanics Changes From Vanilla
BlackICE overhauls the equipment system, tech trees, national focus trees, government, and combat from vanilla Hearts of Iron IV. The result is a game with different dynamics (and hopefully much more historical immersion and realism) than vanilla HOI4. For players transitioning from vanilla to BICE, the following highlights are useful to keep in mind.

Key Mechanics

 * Mobilization: Lack of mobilization imposes steep combat penalty on the nation. With the exception of special cases from National Focus, each mobilization step takes several weeks. Be sure to check out the malus and timing of mobilization while planning for an upcoming war.
 * Government and Political Points: The number of positions in government is much expanded in BICE. Combined with more events and decisions, PP is more important in BICE compared to vanilla HOI4. As well, optimal filling of government positions is more than timing with research years. BICE players would be well advised to consider characters that increase PP income more and earlier than one would with vanilla HOI4.
 * Also note that in order to change national laws, some prerequisites may be required. Democracies are especially limited in conscription and economic laws.
 * Stability: Stability is not a new feature of BICE. However, the compounding effects of stability mean that stability is more important in BICE. As with the vanilla version, at 10% stability or below, strikes are near guaranteed to occur frequently, which deprives the player of either production or large quantity of Political Points; since low stability already reduces PP income, it can be near impossible to recover from low stability situations. If lack of mobilization is thrown into the mix, low stability can outright predicate total defeat.
 * When deciding how to steer a pre-WWII nation, new BICE players should pay special attention to stability upkeep and be aware that war reduces stability by 0.30% per week on top of the one time -30% common with vanilla HOI4; as well, BICE introduces a "being neighbour to superior enemy" malus of -0.20% stability per week.
 * Research and Equipment: BICE diversifies the equipment system of HOI4 to be more in line with historical reality compared to the simplified system in vanilla. There are, however, mechanics differences to BICE equipment system on top of additional flavour. New BICE players should be aware of the followings.
 * Not all 'upgrade' techs confer all-around improvements over the preceding and dependent techs. Not all upgrade techs require researching the replacement either. Thus, it can be more optimal to skip using a new tech despite researching it for quality reasons; and it can be more optimal to skip researching intermediate techs.
 * Later tech equipment cost more resources (ie. aluminum, chromium, etc) but not always more production costs. Instead of production efficiency reduction, as in vanilla HOI4, the increase in resource demand from a single upgrade is much more capable of crippling a nation's production in BICE.
 * Techs that do not outright introduce new equipment but instead improve existing battalions tend to be more significant in BICE than vanilla HOI4. Sidelining or delaying all such techs can add up to a significant deficiency in a nation's combat capability.
 * Defending towns and forts is made easier by Garrison and Garrison Artillery. Garrison units trade attack for high defense. Garrison artillery trade mobility and organization for high attack in towns and forts. (Garrison artillery practically make a division impossible to move for combat purpose.) New BICE players would be well advised to examine the stats of garrison units when deciding the force composition of a pre-WWII nation. As well, pay special attention to terrain modifiers.
 * Special force and special equipment (e.g. flamethrower) are more than infantry battalions in BICE. For example, at the cost of 1 special force unit, Amphibious Support Company can reduce the amphibious combat malus from 99% to ~80%, single-handedly making it possible to use a non-marine division in naval invasion that otherwise absolutely cannot in vanilla HOI4. New BICE players would be well advised to examine the stats of special equipment ahead of time.​
 * Similar to special force support companies, other companies and battalions may also confer terrain modifiers that materially change the combat potentials and movement speed of the division. For example, while divisional artillery (uses heavy artillery) offer an easy-to-obtain amount of soft attack, they slow down the division significantly. (This adds historical immersion: think the actual pace of German's penetration through Ardenne vs pre-WWII French estimate predicated on the movement of heavy artillery. Beyond flavour, it also adds gameplay changes that can surprise a vanillla HOI4 player.)
 * All in all, research and equipment upgrade is no longer linear in BICE. They are no longer the simple balance between racing towards later tech and maintaining production pace. BICE players are significantly rewarded by examining the exact stats of equipment and carefully selecting a subset of the total available equipment.


 * Specialized Factories: These are Shipyards, Tank Factories, and etc. They do not directly produce equipment like Military Factories which each gives a base production amount per day. Instead, each specialized factory gives 1% overall production output of the associated equipment, the exception being Shipyard, which each gives 2%.
 * The bonus from specialized factories is capped at 20% per type and Shipyard at 40% for non-submarine naval units. The bonus cap starts at 5%/10% and needs to be unlocked through Industry research.
 * Since naval production is limited to 3 Dockyards per ship, at 2% each, timely construction of Shipyards can materially expedites the naval program of a nation in BICE and thus change the course of a BICE player's naval compaign. BICE players should be aware that optimal timing of Shipyard construction is different from other specialized factories.

Other Mechanics

 * Combat Width: The standard combat width is reduced from 80 to 75 and additional combat width from flanking is increased from 20 to 25. Thus the 'standard' division combat width is changed from 40/20 to 25. Individual battllion combat widths are changed as well. All in all, while more difficult to comprehend, BICE divisions are more in line with historical WWII divisions. For new BICE players, be sure to check out combat widths of light tanks, artilery, and armor car support units when deciding what divisional templates to target for an upcoming war.
 * Armor and Piercing weights are changed to 60% and 50% respectively. The weights can be viewed in the Unit Details UI of a deployed unit. For the uninitiated, be sure to compare the armor difference between having 1 armored battalion vs having many of the same battalions: the difference is not nearly as significant as in vanilla HOI4.
 * Shipbuilding is changed. Among other things, ships are generally more expensive to build in BICE than vanilla HOI4 -- to be more in line with historical reality -- and range is now traded against production cost. BICE rewards players in carefully selecting the minimum naval requirements for its nation. Two good ships introduced early are much more effective than the best ship introduced after the nation has been blockaded to a loss. It is also more important in BICE to match the range of ships within a taskforce.
 * Sea zones have terrain modifiers in BICE. Especially of importance are modifiers to Visibility.
 * Each land area has its own max level cap on buildings such as Radar Stations and Airports. The cap is especially strict with islands. The mod imposes the limit to make the Pacific theatre more interesting. However, being a mod to the base game, the level cap is implemented by forcefully removing a constructed building past cap instead of preventing its construction.
 * Waffen SS divisions are activated by decisions according to their historical timelines, also with their PP costs and penalties.

Tips

 * Owing to the large variety of equipment in BICE, the equipment list of a given division can be near impossible to scroll through, making equipment specific division templates difficult to make. To circumvent the issue, one can take advantage of the fact that the equipment list is ordered by battalions. In other words, in order to choose Tiger I over Tiger II for a division for example, it is easier to make the first battalion the heavy tank battalion.
 * With the large number of planes that can perform multiple types of air missions beyond the typical boundaries in vanilla HOI4, the player should be careful whether activating one type of mission obstructs another. For example, Japanese naval bombers can perform strategic bombing. With naval missions active however, even if the strategic area in question has no sea tiles neighbouring nor harbours, the naval missions still obstruct the execution of strategic bombing.
 * Researching new equipment can lead to existing battalions requiring that equipment immediately, imposing combat penalties and potentially requiring an astronomical amount of transports for a prolonged period of time. This issue is more of a problem for countries that start off behind in tech and lack initial research slots, such as Japan and Italy. Producing such equipment under license ahead of time can mitigate the problem.

External Guides

 * Official Tutorial by ColonialRebel. Created with BlackICE V3.0.5a
 * Steam GameGuide by Crouching Lemur