The research path makes a few assumptions:

• Your navy will be based around several 1936 carriers and a large escort force.
• Your convoy raiding will be done mostly by surface ships backed up by your main naval strike force.
• Your ground army will be based around medium tank divisions for offense and infantry divisions for defense.
• Your airforce will be focused on light fighters and light CAS.

You can click on each item to mark it so you don't loose track of where you are.

Electronic Mechanical Engineering

Basic Machine Tools

Construction I

Synthetic Oil Experiments

Mechanical Computing

Disperesed Industry I

Radio

Improved Ship Torpedo Launcher - Newport News Shipbuilding

Construction II

Disperesed Industry II

Improved Machine Tools

Firefighting Drills - Newport News Shipbuilding (XP Boosted)

Radio Detection

Basic Fire Control System

Bracket Shooting - Newport News Shipbuilding (XP Boosted)

Seperate Fire Mains - Newport News Shipbuilding (XP Boosted)

Small Caliber Semi-Armor Piercing Shell - Newport News Shipbuilding

Armor Piercing Capped Medium Shell - Newport News Shipbuilding

Armor Piercing Cappped Shell - Brooklyn Naval Yard

Magnetic Detonator - Newport News Shipbuilding (XP Boosted)

Ladder Shooting - Newport News Shipbuilding (XP Boosted)

Diesel-Powered Emergency Pumps - Newport News Shipbuilding (XP Boosted)

Decimetric Radar

Rubber Processing

Shell Dyes - Newport News Shipbuilding (XP Boosted)

Excavation I

Computing Machine

Excavation II

1938 Medium - Chrysler

Interwar Artillery - Rock Island Arsenal

Basic Armor Protection - Chrysler

Improved Engine - Chrysler

Improved Infantry Equipment I - Springfield Armory

Maintenance Company I

Improved Armor Protection - Chrysler

Bar & Stokes Mortar - Springfield Armory

Range Improvmments - North American Aviation

105mm m101a1 - Rock Island Arsenal

Improved Fire Control system

Improved Decimetric Radar

Logistics Company I - Ford

Heavy MG - North American Aviation

Construction III

Dispersed Industry III

Advanced Machine Tools

M1 Thompson - Springfield Armory

Maintenance Company II

Engineer Company II

Survivability Studies - North American Aviation

USTAC S160 Class

Improved Rubber Processing

Anti-Air Upgrade - Rock Island Arsenal

Excavation III

M1917 Browning MG & M2 60mm Mortar

Engines III - North American Aviation

Heavy Bombs - North American Aviation

Improved Air Launched Torpedos - North American Aviation

Improved Small Airframme - North American Aviation

40mm M1 - Rock Island Arsenal

1940 Destroyer Hull - Newport News Shipbuilding

1940 Cruiser Hull - Newport News Shipbuilding

Improved Artillery Upgrade I - Rock Island Arsenal

1940 Medium - Chrysler

Improved Infantry Equipment II - Springfield Armory

M1919 Browning MG & M1 Mortar - Springfield Armory

Centimetric Radar

Landing Craft

Improved Computing Machine

M2 Half Track Car - Ford

Logistics Company II - Ford

Recon Company II

Electric Torpedo - Newport News Shipbuilding (XP Boosted)

Advanced Rubber Processing

Dispersed Industry IV

Construction IV

Assembly Line Production

Improved Artillery Upgrade II - Rock Island Arsenal

Improved Anti-Air Ugrade I - Rock Island Arsenal

M8 Rocket - Rock Island Arsenal

Advanced Armor protection - Chrysler

Advanced Engine - Chrysler

155mm M114 - Rock Island Arsenal

Excavation IV

Logistics company III - Ford

Improved Centimetric Radar

Advanced Fire Control System

Improved Anti-Air Upgrade II - Rock Island Arsenal

1943 Medium

M2 carbine - Springfield Armory

Modern Rubber Processing

Advanced Centimetric Radar

Advanced Small Airframe -- Only once you have the bonus from the Tizzard mission event.

M1941 Johnson MG & M2 4.2 Inch Mortar - Springfield Armory

Advanced Computing Machine

Engineer Company III

Recon Company III

M1 Bazoka - Springfield Armory

Advanced Artillery Upgrade - Rock Island Arsenal

90mm Gun M3 - Rock Island Arsenal

Past this point it doesn't really matter.

Start by building max level infrastructure in all states with at least 5 building slots plus Oregon and Nevada.

When the game informs you that you have free civilian factories queue up the maximum possible number of civilian factories in the following states:

• New York
• Pennsylvania
• Virginia
• California
• Tennessee
• South Carolina
• Washington
• Oregon
• Nevada
• Michigan
• Texas
• Oklahoma

Next build four civilian factories in Ohio.

Then build three civilian factories each in:

• Indiana
• Missouri
• Kansas

Then build two civilian factories each in:

• Wisconsin
• Minnesota
• Kentucky

Then build one civilian factory each in:

• Iowa
• Illinois
• Florida

Then queue up enough dockyards to give you a total of 80. Remember that the Two Ocean Navy Act focus will give you 10 for free. You can hover the mouse over your factory count in the main UI (top, just left of center) to see your current dockyard count. Unless the Federal Housing Act focus gave you an extra slot or two you should have exactly the correct number of free building slots in your costal states.

Then queue up 30 synthetic refineries in the inland states you have built infrastructure in. Assuming the Federal Housing Act focus didn't mess with the slot counts you should have exacly 10 inland states with max infrastructure and at least three free building slots each.

Finally queue up a level 5 railway from Washington DC to San Diego.

Moving out of the mainland US for a bit build the following on the island of Guam in the Western Pacific:

• Max level port
• Level 2 Airfield
• Max level radar

Now build the following in Mindanao in the southern Philippines:

• Bring the existing port up to level 2.
• Four more level 2 ports next to each other. Two on each side of the existing port.
• One level of infrastructure.

This will allow you to use Mindanao as a staging point for naval invasions of Saipan, Iow Jima, and the Japanese home islands while allowing Guam to act as a naval supply hub for the region.

Back on the mainland convert all of the civilian factroies in the following states to military factroies:

• New England
• New York
• New Jersey
• Maryland
• Pennsylvania
• Virginia
• South Carolina
• Ohio
• Tennessee
• Indiana
• Michigan
• Illinois
• Wisconson
• Missouri
• Iowa
• Minnesota
• Oklahoma
• Texas
• California
• Oregon
• Washington

Next build a mix of civilian and military factories in states where you have max infrastructure to top off for the initial war effort.

As a final step queue up max level infrastructure in all states that don't already have it and then the maximum possible number of military factories in every state.

Past this point you can build a mix of civilian and military factories when you unlock the last level of disperesed industry or build in places like Alaska and Hawaii but it doesn't really matter any more.

There are a fair number of events that will offer you a choice of how to respond. From building up your economy faster to avoiding a civil war, many of these choices matter, a lot. Here are the responses that will put you on the fastest path to victory in the second world war. Note that there is an element of randomness here. You might not get every event listed here and you may get them in a different order.

Election of 1936:

• The Democrats. Four more years!

Senator from North Carolina offers Support:

• These kinds of deals are below the President.

Silver Legion protests:

• We must avoid escalating the situation.

<Some Country> Issues Diplomatic Protest: ^{(You will get this one several times.)}

• Our Attaches will be sent where we please.

Senate Committee investigates shipbuilding in <some state>

• We have bigger problems.

Senator from <Some State> offers Support

• This smells of corruption.

Turkey Deliver an Investment Portfolio

• We shall not sign their Faustian bargain.

The United Kingdom issues stern warning

• We would rather not find out what those measures are. -- Disband your Pensacola class heavy cruisers. They aren't that good anyway.

Mexican Oil Nationalized

• We will embargo trade with Mexico until they come to their senses.

Mexican Compensation

• Good, we can trade on these terms.

Roosevelt vs Willkie

• The Democrats. FDR is indispensable.

USS Panay Sunk in China!

• Demand Compensation

The Flying Tigers

• We must support them in any way we can.

Hungarian Bomber Competition

• We can't risk any leaks.

'Zoot Suit' Riots

• That sounds rather unlikely. How much are we paying these agents?

The Chester Concession

• We shall aid all friends of democracy.

The Tizard mission

• An excellent proposal!

A new general for China

• Send Joseph Stillwell

Sweeden requests trade of <something> for Ball Bearings

• A mutual beneficial trade

Mexican Entry Into The Allies

• We will sponsor Mexico's enterance into the Allies.

The US starts off with a powerful navy. Adding three more of the pre-designed Yorktown class carriers will give you the basis for two very powerful strike forces. I usually also build a couple of cruiser deck conversion light carriers for invasion support. But the vast majority of my naval production is focused into Destroyers and Light Cruisers. These ships are designed to take advantage of the fact that the higher a ship's speed and the lower its surface visibility, the harder it is to hit.

Initial Designs The Yorktown class is already designed and in prodcution at the start of the game. I add three more of these to the build queue. This gives me eight fleet carriers that will form the cores of my two strike forces. The loadout for all of them is three wings of fighters and three wings of multi role CAS/naval bombers. The Bouge class is the first ship I design as it does not require any additional research to put together. I make two of these for providing air superiority and CAS support for naval invasions. The loadout for them is two wings of fighters and two wings of mutli role CAS/naval bombers. Early Designs Around the time the carriers are done building you should be able to start making destroyers and light cruisers. The Mahan is the basic general purpose destroyer. It can patrol, convoy raid, convoy escort, and fight in fleet actions. It also provides some AA cover for itself and other ships in the fleet. The Helena is the intial light cruiser. It will bring considerable firepower to any fight it takes part in. Final Designs Moving up to the 1940 tier hull the Benson represents a major improvment over the Mahan in every area. By moving up to the 1940 tier hull the Cleveland outclasses the Helena in every way.

As the US you really only need two templates, one for attacking and one for defending. Don't pay too much attention to the stats in the images. Your stats will always be a bit different depending on where you are on tech, doctrines, and industrial production.

Infantry Division With a base training time of only 120 days and a fairly low production cost this division is designed to be stamped out in large numbers. Use them to man the front lines and keep the enemy from pushing you back. They are also reasonably effictive at performing amphibious landings. Armored Division Although somewhat expensive to produce this division excels at attacking and pushing back the enemy. Its speed makes it capable of creating encirclements and causing overruns.

As the US you only really need a figher and a multi-role CAS/naval bomber, and a carrier variant of each. So four designs total. Trying to make a figher-bomber aircraft just resilts in a plane that does both jobs poorly. All of the inital designs will be based on the improved small air frame. Upgrading to the advanced airframe and better engines later in the war is nice but generally unnecessary. I have not found any real use for aircraft based on medium or heavy airframes. At the start of the game disband all of your existing airwings and sell all of the planes on the market. The bonus construction speed is far more useful than the horribly outdated aircraft.

Carrier Based Aircraft There isn't much to the fighter design. It carries a lot of firepower on a very fast and rather survivable platform. Additional modules either don't fit the fighter role or are too expensive for what they do. The mutli-role bomber is the workhorse of your carrier strike groups. It is excelent at both naval strike and close air support missions. Ground Based Aircraft The ground based fighter is basically just the carrier figher with the slightly better base stats and lower cost of a non carrier capable airframe. The ground based mutli-role bomber is more of the same. It will decimate the enemy in both CAS and naval strike roles.

It is very important that you spend your first 35 Army XP on Relief of Command for Spirit of the Army under Army Command. The extra 25% Army XP is just too important to pass up. Once that is done save your Army XP for designing tanks, designing division templates, and unlocking your land doctrine. DO NOT spend Army XP to upgrade infantry equipment and the like to new MIO variants before you have your tanks, divisions templates, and land doctrine fully completed.

For Air Force Command you will want to pick up Air Crew Surveys for Spirit of the Air Force before you pick up any air doctrine items.

For Navy Command make sure to replace the Bureau of Ordnance naval debuff before the war starts. I prefer Efficient Communications in that slot.

For doctrines I recomend:

• Superior Firepower - Go to the right at both decision points.
• Base Strike - First the right path, then the left path. Do special forces before doing the middle path.
• Battlefield Support - Go to the left at the first split and then at the second split take both side paths ignoring Keypoint Bombing in the middle.
• Marines - Stay to the right all the way down.

Here is what my Officer Corps looks like once it is completed:

Newport News Shipbuilding is one of your most important MIOs. It will be building all of your ships and researching all of your naval tech. The build for it focuses on making your ships fast and hard hitting. This has the additional effect of making them harder to hit in combat. I recomend switching all the ships in production at the start of the game to this MIO to help level it up as fast as possible.

Recommended Policy: Stable Gunnery Platforms

Chrysler is your other pivotal MIO. It will be doing all of your tank related research and building all of your tanks. It focuses on reliability and general base stats.

Recommended Policy: Armor Welding Specialists

North American Aviation is your aircraft MIO. It focuses on giving your planes more range.

Recommended Policy: Modular Assembly

Ford is your truck and mechanized producer. I haven't found mechanized to be needed in single player so this setup is focused on trucks.

Recomended Policy: Mechanical genius

Springfield Armory is your infantry equipment producer. It provides some mild stat buffs.

Recomended Policy: Mechanical genius

Rock Island Arsenal is your artillery and AA manufacturer. It mostly provides increased production output.

Recomended Policy: Mechanical genius

As the US you only really need a general purpose medium tank and a medium flame tank. Upgrading to the 1940 medium tank chassis once you have the army XP to do so is nice but usually not really required. The AI doesn't field tanks of its own in any meaningful amount and has a very hard time dealing with these designs already. You will also have a monstrous amount of air superiority and CAS anyway.

Medium Tank

A general purpose tank. Designed to add armor and breakthrough to a division while being very reliable. It isn't terribly fast but its not horribly slow either.

Medium Flame Tank

The medium flame tank enables the powerful buffs of a flame tank support company for all of your divisions. It also brings a bit of armor and entrenchment while being fast enough to keep up with the regular tanks.

Improved Medium Tank

Faster and with more armor the Sherman saves on production cost by keeping the same main gun as the older model.

Improved Medium Flame Tank

More speed, armor, and breakthough. But overall not really much of an upgrade.