Hearts of Iron IV - The Ultimate WWII Strategy Game

[Sranchammer]

Millennium dawn is far too unrealistic to me,especially the quantity of the nato army. In this days nato almost doesn't have an army let alone to rival that of Russia or China.

isn't the us part of nato

NATO is part of the US

 

[Raghar]

Millennium dawn is far too unrealistic to me,especially the quantity of the nato army. In this days nato almost doesn't have an army let alone to rival that of Russia or China.

isn't the us part of nato

NATO is US toy to impose theirs influence on EU. You shouldn't view them as equal partners. (BTW they refused Russia request to join NATO.)

 

[fantadomat]

Millennium dawn is far too unrealistic to me,especially the quantity of the nato army. In this days nato almost doesn't have an army let alone to rival that of Russia or China.

isn't the us part of nato

It is but how much time they will need to send troops if they decide to do it. Nato is very loose alliance block,many people won't even fight if something happens,others like Germany can't fight. Nato is not a unanimous war machine that could be fired up in a instant. Another big problem is the communication,in a training exercise it is ok but in real war it will be a shitshow. Too many different languages. Another question is how effective the US army is,they don't have any actual war experience. They do like to brag about how big their army is and how much they spend on it and that it is. A real war won't be bombing huts and caves with drones.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Pfah, US Army has the most actual war experience on the planet. Not even a contest there.

 

[Raghar]

Pfah, US Army has the most actual war experience on the planet. Not even a contest there.

Well, They started quite a lot of these wars. (Which they don't call wars because it would sound bad they started a war...)

 

[Delterius]

War experience these days is invading small countries, arming proxies and maintaining a fleet at key locations.

Who the hell does more of that than the US?

 

[Serus]

Millennium dawn is far too unrealistic to me,especially the quantity of the nato army. In this days nato almost doesn't have an army let alone to rival that of Russia or China.

isn't the us part of nato

It is but how much time they will need to send troops if they decide to do it. Nato is very loose alliance block,many people won't even fight if something happens,others like Germany can't fight. Nato is not a unanimous war machine that could be fired up in a instant. Another big problem is the communication,in a training exercise it is ok but in real war it will be a shitshow. Too many different languages. Another question is how effective the US army is,they don't have any actual war experience. They do like to brag about how big their army is and how much they spend on it and that it is. A real war won't be bombing huts and caves with drones.

You're being ridiculous here. If USA doesn't have "actual war experience" then not a single major power on this planet currently has any. No one fought as many armed conflicts as USA did in past ~30 years. Not even close, not even a contest. Whatever you think about the moral aspects of those, it's still remains a fact that USA fights someone almost all the time.
Sure it might not be the experience of a major conflict with an equal enemy but it is still relatively speaking a lot more "target practice" than Russia or especially China did in last few decades. Russia had a few occasions but not nearly as much as USA. And China had even less.
Whether other NATO armies are able to fight or not is irrelevant since 90% of NATO real military power is USA and politically USA = NATO anyway. As we already established USA is the major power with the most experienced and combat-ready army in the world - relatively speaking.
As to the "relatively speaking" part: no major power has real large scale experience with fighting an equal enemy in a "real" war these days. It's not like in first half of 20th century with the 2 World Wars. Or in the middle of 19th century (in the 1850s to 1870s period when France, Prussia, Austria, Russia, GB, USA were all in at least one major conflict - some were in 2 or 3 in the span of 2 decades). Or obviously in the 1600s and 1700s not to mention the Revolutionary France and Napoleonic era European "wargasm".
If we're talking about lesser countries, I'd say Iraq should have the most veteran army today :D. Think about it- they were in war the whole 80s, then in 90s against USA, and then again, and in the last many years they have constant war going in what's nominally their territory. They were in some sort of war for the major part of the last 40 years. They haven't won those wars but losing also grants experience points :D.
In short you're not thinking straight, probably because of being butthurt about USA politics which is OK but is irrelevant to the question of combat experience and readiness of any country.

 

[Destroid]

EU has a bigger military than Russia even without USA.

 

[Dayyālu]

EU has a bigger military than Russia even without USA.

Everything inside NATO can't work outside a NATO framework.

Don't check weapons an' shit, it's budget and logistics. Without the US, European militaries are helpless. Russkies run on fumes but at least their rusting fleet of Soviet-era stuff lets them act indipendently: bar France and maybe Britain (and even France has massive logistical problems) no Euro military is in any state to mantain minimal efficiency bar as American auxiliaries.

Maybe former WarPact members haven't declined enough, but I know little about post-1990 eastern euro militaries.

It's all moot though, the US has a massive military with a massive budget, a gargantuan logistical system and plenty of military experience , be it from training or from shooting sand people. If the Americans want something done, they get it done.

It's the follow up that's the problem.

 

[Destroid]

EU has a bigger military than Russia even without USA.

Everything inside NATO can't work outside a NATO framework.

Don't check weapons an' shit, it's budget and logistics. Without the US, European militaries are helpless. Russkies run on fumes but at least their rusting fleet of Soviet-era stuff lets them act indipendently: bar France and maybe Britain (and even France has massive logistical problems) no Euro military is in any state to mantain minimal efficiency bar as American auxiliaries.

Maybe former WarPact members haven't declined enough, but I know little about post-1990 eastern euro militaries.

It's all moot though, the US has a massive military with a massive budget, a gargantuan logistical system and plenty of military experience , be it from training or from shooting sand people. If the Americans want something done, they get it done.

It's the follow up that's the problem.

That's just the natural state of things. If the EU states find they can't rely on daddy anymore they will build independent capability.

 

[Delterius]

Maybe former WarPact members

 

[Serus]

Old and out of date. Macierewicz is no longer the minister, this guy is :

Spoiler

Mariusz Błaszczak, can't compete in the "look" and meme-potential department with his predecessor but he's no woman. Still i wouldn't call Polish army at this point in time capable sadly.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Yeah, NATO is a slowly unwinding bureaucratic machine. You know what else takes a lot of time to unwind? War.

The build-up to WW1 took many years of increasing tensions and it was the same with WW2. EU has shit military because shit military is enough right now. If it ever stops being enough, there will be plenty of time to gear up and increase military readiness.

Putin is not a stupid man, he is well aware that he can only play Billy Big Cojones as long as he doesn't go too far and force the EU towards serious military build-up. Because push comes to shove we would have him outmanned, out-teched, outproduced, we aren't landlocked and we don't have to worry about 3 million Chinese rolling over the southern border of Russian Federation to take advantage of conflict in mainland Europe.

Americans are only relevant in this equation because they still cling to the illusion of global hegemony, so it's easy to milk their fat yankie titties and make them pay top dolla for our defenses.

 

[Dayyālu]

Yeah, NATO is a slowly unwinding bureaucratic machine. You know what else takes a lot of time to unwind? War.

Nukes. Everything you said is invalid.

Furthermore, a military has any use simply as a mean to a coherent foreign policy. The EU has no foreign policy (France has a foreign policy regarding former European colonies, but that's it). Most euro militaries are in the shitter because there's no use for them and the Americans want them to be dependant and useful just as auxiliaries. Also as a market for expensive military projects, but that's common since the Cold War.

There's no place in this world for "conventional war" like the one you describe. There's no place for a European foreign policy either: we do what the Americans want us to do. The idea that "But but but we're making them PAY for OUR defenses right guys aren't we so smart" is merely delusions: the US can do what it wants, the Russkies oppose clumsily American soft power with hard power (Ukraine) and the EU\NATO allies shut up and obey (or in the case of eastern euros, even beg for American bases). We need America: America does not need us if not to mantain the global hegemony they still have. The capabilities of the US military are astounding, and this comes from a left-winger with little love for the US.

In short, the US is powerful and rich, despite memes. All the others are American subjects in foreign\military policy or merely trying to keep their regional power up in limited ways. If things change, we'll see in the future.

Well, I forgot Israel, but they are a special case.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Nukes mean that everyone loses, so any kind of discussion if those are seen as a part of the equation by default is invalid.

It's also a false pretense that EU countries have no foreign policy or just blindly follow America's whims. Freedom Fries incident and the Coalition of the Willing come to mind, as do numerous other matters, such as the growing tariffs issue. Heck, just the disagreements about environmental issues are something EU and US never see truly eye to eye about. The key thing is that in the post-Cold War era of Pax Americana, military force was no longer seen as a necessity in vast majority of Europe. The international rules-based framework of relations and End Of History were seen as done deals. But this again overlooks the fact that Europe still has all it needs to rebuild its militaries in short order if there was just the political choice to do so, which is something Putin will never want to happen because Russia cannot hope to even come close to matching the EU in any metric save nukes (well, until their presently deteriorating expert manpower's depletion renders them unuseable).

Germany alone could easily outmatch Russia's backwards army if they wished to just build one, they have the cash, the technical expertise, and the industry to do it if they just wanted to. Heck, Germany could outfit the entire EU with cutting edge military hardware by itself if such production capacity was needed.

 

[Dayyālu]

Nukes mean that everyone loses, so any kind of discussion if those are seen as a part of the equation by default is invalid.

So why we're even having this discussion? It's like the endless banter about Soviet invasions during the Cold War "What could have happened if..." Nukes and after that silence. We're all larping.

It's also a false pretense that EU countries have no foreign policy or just blindly follow America's whims. Freedom Fries incident and the Coalition of the Willing come to mind, as do numerous other matters, such as the growing tariffs issue. Heck, just the disagreements about environmental issues are something EU and US never see truly eye to eye about.

The end line is again results. The EU can only grind its teeth and suffer, 'cause the Americans can do what they want. They can opt out of enviromental deals, nuke the Iran deals, place tariffs and easily outplay the frankly embarassing European diplomacy... the EU is weak and there isn't anything that can change that. Iraq told us that the US could start a unlawful war and get a shitton of countries to happily follow them as occupation troops.

Germany alone could easily outmatch Russia's backwards army if they wished to just build one, they have the cash, the technical expertise, and the industry to do it if they just wanted to. Heck, Germany could outfit the entire EU with cutting edge military hardware by itself if such production capacity was needed.

C'mon, that's just memes. Contemporary Germany has no guts, no military culture, and even their technological superiority is mostly theoretical. Let us not forget that the only time "heavy" German hardware has been used in the last 30 years it blew up like your stock variety T-55s against a bunch of goat fuckers. Half of Europe fell for the Leopard 1 in the Cold War, one can only wonder what would happen if we did that for a second time.

But again, all moot. Nukes! They solve everything! Why the fuck are we even discussing?

 

[fantadomat]

LoL the retarded assumptions and the american cock sucking is real in this thread. Why do people assume that the west have the most technological army and the rest of the world fight with sticks is beyond me. Another thing is that superior technology doesn't equal a practical usefulness. The only countries with actual millitary force in the European nato are Poland,Hungary and maybe the Baltic block. Another major thing is the state of mind of the populace and the country's stability. What do you thing will happen with all those arabs and niggers if a prolong war begins,will they join the army and fight for their glorious EU adopters or will they spread discontent and crime. Another important part is the raw resources,Russia have a lot of them while Europa doesn't and even depends on Russia for them.

 

[Raghar]

Putin don't care about EU rebuilding militaries, in conflict with Russia, all it has to do is to close valves. Then EU armies would have to dash to Russian oil fields, and we all know how much Germans were successful with that during WWII.

In fact Putin would prefer to have friendly relations with some EU countries, and dependable economic relations with other.

However militaries needs traditions and experience. When US killed few hundred thousand best Iraqi soldiers, the remaining population became less capable. When German population looks like it looks like, the best groups for quality German army are Turks, and Kurds. Because Turks and Kurds still stick together as a group. How many germans are willing to die for the Germany is quite unknown.

However from what I seen in Libya war, France and other EU countries were psyched up because "Finally a war close to Europe and we can do the same things as US.". Not because they have real need to blow stuff up instead of US. (Well, Germany threw 100 million euro to rebels instead of deploying forces, thus only real experience Germany has is from bombing random people without AA defense in remote countries if even that.)

So, majority of EU countries kinda sucks in military. And what advantage they had because of genetic, would be obliterated by allowing migrants in without massive restrictions. Remember, even Italians fought well under capable leadership. But what would happen when immigration and changes in culture/genetic would degrade leadership to WWII Italy level?

 

[Space Satan]

DD Fuel

Spoiler

Hi everyone! We have now been working on Man the Guns for a bit and it is time to kick off dev diaries again!

For those who missed it, Man the Guns is the expansion we are currently working on. The main theme is naval warfare and it will be accompanied by the 1.6 ‘Ironclad’ free update. There is no release date yet. We will let you know when we can commit to a date
So without further ado, rev up your engines! Today we are going to be talking about fuel...

Fuel is something we originally decided to abstract into the production of vehicles in HOI4. The reasons for this were twofold: It simplified things, making the game easier to get into and learn and it avoided issues with fuel stockpiling in HOI3 (I’ll get to that later). I still think these were worthwhile tradeoffs with the gameplay impacts it had, but some areas, particularly naval warfare, never felt right without an overall worry over a supply for fuel, which essentially drove Japanese war planning historically. This in combination with a feeling that our fans can for sure handle a little nudge towards complexity now kinda cemented the idea that we couldn’t really make a naval expansion without expanding on this area.

(no numbers are final etc )

Land
Fuel is used by trucks, tanks and other land equipment with engines in your divisions. They will use much more when fighting and moving than when stationary or during strategic redeployment (in fact right now those consume no fuel, but that might change with balance work). A division carries a bit of fuel with it ( much like how supply works), so there is a short grace period if cut off. If a division is in bad supply it will refill its fuel more slowly (meaning you won’t be able to attack or move rapidly as frequently), and you might even be unable to refill at all if totally cut off. Being without fuel will negatively affect the stats of the battalions that need it as well as severely impact speed depending on how low they are.

Air
Your active air wings will consume fuel. The amount will naturally depend on the type of plane (strat bombers love to guzzle down that fuel) but also what mission type. Planes on interception will be very fuel efficient as they only take off when there are enemies attacking ground targets or bombing etc. Transport planes on air supply missions will also be able to deliver fuel to pockets etc. When low on fuel air wings suffer big efficiency penalties.

Sea
Running a lot of active capital ships is something you will need to be careful with in Man the Guns. These behemoths will be going through your fuel stockpile like starved baby whales on the teat. To handle this and make fleets act more realistically and in a more controlled manner we have changed quite a bit here, so stay tuned for future diaries. The main point is that big fleets are costly to run and you will need to make decisions on how to best utilize them and how much to fit into the rest of your fuel use. Speaking of, you’ll be able to control who gets first dibs on fuel through prioritization just like with equipment (but we are also working on adding extra controls on top of this so you can more easily balance between the different branches of the armed forces). A fleet that is low on fuel will suffer penalties to its stats as well as operational range.


Production
Fuel is produced from unused oil, and equipment that used to use oil now no longer need that to be produced. I am currently looking into possibly adding copper or another resource in its place (and in some other places), but we will see if that ends up being a good idea or not Will let you know. Anyways, if you are low on fuel there are several ways to go:

• Acquire more oil rich states.
• Increase infrastructure on your own oil rich states.
• Trade for foreign oil.
• Build synthetic refineries.
• Lend leased fuel.
• Capture enemy stockpiles.
• Research improved oil to fuel conversion technologies.
• Each unit of oil you have access to use your current techs to generate a certain amount of fuel. This fuel is then put into your stockpile for use by your forces.

Stockpiling
Fuel is possible to stockpile, in fact it is necessary if you can’t guarantee a steady stream of produced fuel during wartime. The size of your national stockpile will depend on the number of states and their infrastructure, your economic law and if you have built Fuel Silos. This is a new building that takes up shared slots and will probably provide the majority of your stockpile space. It is also a building that can be damaged from bombing etc. which in the worst case could lead to a loss of fuel. Capitulating enemy neighbors is also going to be a good way of acquiring more fuel as it will work just like seizing their equipment stockpile in that respect.

HOI3 also had stockpilable fuel, and there it was quite a problem. As a beginner you did not know how much (or even that you had to) stockpile and as an experienced player there was no issue in making a stockpile big enough that you wouldn't ever have to worry. In HoI4 we are aiming to force a tradeoff between building up your industry and increasing the stockpile (have to spend civilian factories to get more oil from trade instead of building more factories) as well as trying to keep the total amount you can stockpile within reasonable bounds. Our goal is fuel as something you’ll need to consider for all your operations and playing it really safe will mean less industrial output in the long run.

Since I bet this will be the first question, fuel is going to be in the free update, but there will of course be features in the paid expansion that tie into it (stay tuned for more diaries!).

We are still working on all things fuel so I’ll wrap up here. Hopefully it gave you an idea of what we have done and are planning to do. I’ve saved some interfaces talk for future diaries, and also, be aware that many things could end up changing based on gameplay feedback. Rest assured though, I’ll keep you updated on stuff like that in these diaries up to release. This is not really anything out of the ordinary, but I usually keep systems like this that need long term balance and iteration for later. Fuel however ties into a lot of future topics, so I wanna make sure you are all clued in

Now for something completely different...
I assume nobody has managed to avoid having their mailbox fill up with fun updated privacy policies and things related to the new European General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR). During all this a really smooth looking lawyer dog in the smartest little suit I have ever seen came over to visit us from Brussels. He told us there are a bunch of regulations we too need to follow in our games… so to make sure we remained Good Boys in the eyes of the law we have added a couple of things to Hearts of Iron IV. The most important is to include our Privacy Policy in the game and making it easy to find.

Legal texts are long and boring and nothing has really changed in how we do things. So I would rather spend my time answering questions here and writing the rest of the diary, so I will refer you to check it out ingame or here if you want to.

What I would rather talk about is how gathering data from players is useful to us. Because it is. Super useful! Without telemetry we would be resorting to guesses and risk only the most vocal minorities to be heard. For example, telemetry data is one of the major things we look at for deciding what nations to develop focus trees on. We get data on how popular difference choices are for focuses, letting us spot balance issues or unpopular paths that could use some love and care. We can spot if new out of sync errors are introduced in multiplayer in graphs and get crash reports automatically uploaded to help us fix problems easily. All this, combined with a scoopful of forum reading, is what helps us steer this ship, so thanks for helping

Oh I almost forgot, because we had to make the GDPR compliance hotfix we managed to sneak in a fix you guys have been asking for. We solved an issue for a case in China (similar things could also happen elsewhere) when a nation had both a takeover and inherited wars (like when seizing ownership in the Chinese power struggle) and was at the same time occupied. As a Japanese player this would lead to the less than happy situation of seeing your occupied areas flip back to the enemy and leaving troops cut off from supply. We also fixed a crash issue that was reported in some big mods. The patch should be releasing shortly.

Next week some of the team will be on summer vacation (including me!) but Bratyn is going to be here to talk about all the awesome stuff he has been doing with Britain, so don't forget to tune in!

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Yeah, NATO is a slowly unwinding bureaucratic machine. You know what else takes a lot of time to unwind? War.

Nukes.

Nukes are irrelevant as long as mutually assured destruction is a thing. And it is a thing, because even without US involvement the British and the French have enough second strike capability to turn every major city in Russia into rubble.

We need America: America does not need us if not to mantain the global hegemony they still have.

Lol no. We needed US in the Cold War because they accounted for half of GDP of the entire fucking planet. Pull your head out of your ass and look at the calendar, this isn't 1950s. Back then US was the only relevant industrial and economical power left standing while everybody else was licking wounds after the war, right now I doubt they could even outproduce the rest of NATO countries.

Times have changed, they need us more than we need them, which is why most of NATO countries bolted on all of the latest US adventurers in the Middle East, even though you'd think everybody wold want to impress their savior and protector Uncle Sam. But no, nobody actually cared, apart from the British who sucked American dick for too long to remember they used to be a serious country, and the Baltics and Poland who are too close geographically to Russia to risk alienating the US.

 

[fantadomat]

Yeah, NATO is a slowly unwinding bureaucratic machine. You know what else takes a lot of time to unwind? War.

Nukes.

Nukes are irrelevant as long as mutually assured destruction is a thing. And it is a thing, because even without US involvement the British and the French have enough second strike capability to turn every major city in Russia into rubble.

The great Kamchatkan Empire will rise again!

 

[Destroid]

Yeah, NATO is a slowly unwinding bureaucratic machine. You know what else takes a lot of time to unwind? War.

Nukes.

Nukes are irrelevant as long as mutually assured destruction is a thing. And it is a thing, because even without US involvement the British and the French have enough second strike capability to turn every major city in Russia into rubble.

We need America: America does not need us if not to mantain the global hegemony they still have.

Lol no. We needed US in the Cold War because they accounted for half of GDP of the entire fucking planet. Pull your head out of your ass and look at the calendar, this isn't 1950s. Back then US was the only relevant industrial and economical power left standing while everybody else was licking wounds after the war, right now I doubt they could even outproduce the rest of NATO countries.

Times have changed, they need us more than we need them, which is why most of NATO countries bolted on all of the latest US adventurers in the Middle East, even though you'd think everybody wold want to impress their savior and protector Uncle Sam. But no, nobody actually cared, apart from the British who sucked American dick for too long to remember they used to be a serious country, and the Baltics and Poland who are too close geographically to Russia to risk alienating the US.

Don't forget Australia, #1 best buds with USA since WW2 (although we aren't in NATO).

 

[Average Manatee]

Don't forget Australia, #1 best buds with USA since WW2 (although we aren't in NATO).

We can provide a list of countries bordering the Atlantic for you to annex if you want to join.

 

[fantadomat]

Don't forget Australia, #1 best buds with USA since WW2 (although we aren't in NATO).

We can provide a list of countries bordering the Atlantic for you to annex if you want to join.

What a bunch of uneducated people! Australia is clearly an European country as Israel,they are both part of the glorious EuroVision!

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

There is a certain beauty in the way that BICE is a sprawling mess.

Albeit one thing I'd give them a hint with is that they really should not fuck around with the SS formation events most of their crashes are because of those.