When does it start to make sense?

When you stop playing as weak shitty countries like Poland as soon as you get the game.
Play as Germany and play until you lose to the Russians, you'll learn more than simply getting out-produced by the overpowered German AI as Poland.
Anyway yeah Hoi4 is the only current gen paradox game with a good combat system so you made a good choice in that regard, fighting ppl is actually engaging and not too RNG dependent, just learn how to encircle and you'll figure the rest out with time.
Also, this took me longer to figure out than it should've, but it's worth making battle plans even if you're actually going to move everything around manually because you get buffs to your attack from the planning bonus.

Why would you pick a weak nation that got two way gang fucked in WW2 as your first nation in a WW2 game?

>he can't outmicro retarded ai
lmao

Watch a couple youtube videos for basics and/or try the built in Italy tutorial, then play as a major like Germany, US, or Soviets, playing Poland as your first game, especially without any knowledge, is asking to get fucked in the ass like they were irl

That would be Stellaris. That one is the also the most tedious tho.

I never play tutorials and try to figure out games as I go along. Is this a retarded way to play strategy games?

When you start understanding all the chinlet pics that /gsg/ posts

spam fighters
win
ez

that's what I get for not actually ever learning game mechanics and just larping with railroaded mods

Play DH instead

Don't play as Poland in this game, seriously it is like ultra hard mode.

You can try learning as you play for grand strategy games, but just know you're going to get your ass pounded for quite a while, especially if you're playing as shitty minor nations like Poland for your first game.

It doesn't work for grand strategy, literally core mechanics are not explained anywhere in-game.
It would be technically possible for you to figure out "the basics" of how to play well on your own but it would take hundreds of hours of you actually paying attention and trying to figure shit out.
Much, much easier to just hear an overview from someone who has pulled information from a whole community.

I just pulled that screenshot. I’m playing as Hungary and letting the Germans do all the heavy lifting for me

CK2 is way easier than Stellaris
Stellaris is still a 4x, if you lose to badly you can never come back
CK2 however has incredibly forgiving comeback mechanics

literally the only way to learn those games user, the tutorials are fucking trash

So you will be doing nothing at all until the invasion of Yugoslavia, and then will have only a minimal impact on whether or not the invasion of the Soviet Union is successful?
eh, whatever, have fun I guess.

i dont know this game but it looks stupid. a good game gives you a simple rule set, with which the player can then use to combine objects in infinite variations in later stages of the game. this makes a "simple" game an everlasting classic. the game you shows looks like it has been developed to be overly complex from the start, and that's not good.

When you drop the gs meme and play normal rts instead. There's wh total war and you chose this? Watch memes online and skip the gameplay entirely.

It's really not that complicated. Make divisions with lots of soft attack, slap a decent general on them, and start encircling. ez.
Anything less would be totally inadequate for a supposedly realistic WW2 game.

>wh total war
Whorehammer isn't a real Total War game

You sound like you so know this game.