The Hearts of Iron 3 devs seem to be on the right track...

[Erzherzog]

http://www.europa-universalis.com/forum/showthread.php?t=378480

http://www.europa-universalis.com/forum/showthread.php?t=379317

Seems like they're definitely making a good, complex game. Plus the the concept of your research being affected by production is pretty cool...

 

[uhjghvt]

if they automate aircraft missions and troop transport and streamline navy management I'm in like flynn

 

[kris]

I am worried how they AI will cope with more provinces.

 

[dagorkan]

10,000 provinces? Wow, this is getting so beyond autistic, it's scary.

 

[Burning Bridges]

Re: The Hearts of Iron 3 devs seem to be on the right track.

Seems like they're definitely making a good, complex game. Plus the the concept of your research being affected by production is pretty cool...

The screenshots released so far say otherwise and show the most glaring mistakes. There is one that shows about 15 provinces around Berlin. And besides the fact that there are spelling mistakes in about a third, they have no relevance to the real geographical places. Afaik they are just town names copied from a present map of Germany with no further checking.

Further proof to the fact that historic research was nil (on the screens at least) is the province Eisenhüttenstadt. If there had been any research, it would have come to light that this particular city was founded only 1950 (Stalinstadt), one of the very few settlements that did not even exist in WWII. Moreover the area is called Niederlausitz, and it is west of the Oder, otherwise it would be in Poland today.

Reference: 2nd screenshot

I'm not saying they will not fix this until release but what research I have seen so far gives me the creeps.

 

[Spectacle]

Paradox has said that this time the province borders are chosen only to divide the world into properly sized chunks to fight over, and have nothing in common with any historical administrative divisions.

They can still do a better job at picking names for the provinces though, but the game is at least half a year away so there's plenty of time to nit-pick over the maps

 

[Burning Bridges]

In that case they should better display no province names at all.

 

[Serious_Business]

For some reason I can't help but think that having this many provinces is a horrible, horrible idea

 

[thesheeep]

Me, too.

And having them of almost equal size is even worse. It completely takes away their "unique" feeling and, on top of that, is completely unrealistic.
Provinces simply are of different sizes. Nothing bad about that.

Also, the more provinces there are in the game, the more will modders have to do to make them more accurate...

 

[Elwro]

Names of Polish provinces are also strange. Leszno? OK. Poznan? OK. Koscian? WTF?

 

[dagorkan]

I like how they've put fucking Kent and Sussex (two of a score or so historical English counties with a large populations and major towns) on an equal footing with Peterborough and King's Lynn (an insignificant town of 20,000 inhabitants mostly surrounded by swamps). If historically the British had lost just three 'provinces' of 'Dover', 'Brighton' and 'Southampton' they would probably be screwed having lost 10% of the English population and a larger portion of the commercial and agro-industrial base of the country.

There's something seriously wrong with their Geography in general.

 

[Spectacle]

In HoI2 you often had oddly shaped or oversized provinces having far more strategic importance than they had in real life, simply because all fighting and movement was by province. The new uniformly shaped and sized provinces are a big improvement. Hexes would be even better of course, but that would turn off the mass market. But notice that most of the new provinces are vaguely hex-shaped

Those who doubt the benefit of more provinces, consider the map of Britain. In HoI3 there will be room for actual strategic maneuvering during a campaign for Britain, both by the attackers and the defenders. This is a big improvement from HoI2, where conquering Britain involved moving one army up the east coast, and another up on the west.

And even though provinces are the same size, I'm sure they'll still have different ratings for industry, manpower and resources, so an urban-industrial center will have far more strategic importance than an equally sized swamp.

/fanboy mode off

 

[Destroid]

Production giving a bonus to technology looks like a good change to me. I hope that through changes to research they make it somewhat practical to field a reasonably modern navy, airforce and army concurrently.

All of those provinces look pretty daunting, should make defending your line a lot harder unless they make divisions a lot cheaper. Hopefully they make their systems a little clearer rather than relying on the public to decipher everything.

 

[kris]

You focusing on so strange things. Placeholder names and a unfinished map are not the things to put focus on.

Personally I like more provinces, worked well in victoria apart from micromanaging certain improvements. I am sure they learnt their lesson there though. No, for me the AI is a more important issue.

 

[oscar]

I think this should make the battles more detailed. Hopefully smaller provinces will make battles longer and cause more of a "frontline" as you have to spread your men out more, creating more oppertunites for breakthroughs and whatnot.

 

[Burning Bridges]

You focusing on so strange things. Placeholder names and a unfinished map are not the things to put focus on.

Dude, if I'd take my mouth as full as paradox does about research I would not release a dozen of screenshots that are so full of mistakes. It's very likely the final game will be different, but what I've seen so far does not indicate any research at all, just brainless copying from a fucking atlas, with not even a little spellchecking.

 

[Burning Bridges]

Names of Polish provinces are also strange. Leszno? OK. Poznan? OK. Koscian? WTF?

20.000 inhabitants LOL. Same nonsense as moving Greifswald from the baltic to the border of Berlin, not knowing that some larger east german towns did not exist before the Stalin era (Eisenhüttenstadt), or putting places like Erkner on the geopolitical map, a small fucking suburb of Berlin, some 20km from where I live.

 

[GeneralSamov]

You focusing on so strange things. Placeholder names and a unfinished map are not the things to put focus on.

Personally I like more provinces, worked well in victoria apart from micromanaging certain improvements. I am sure they learnt their lesson there though. No, for me the AI is a more important issue.

 

[Trash]

You focusing on so strange things. Placeholder names and a unfinished map are not the things to put focus on.

Personally I like more provinces, worked well in victoria apart from micromanaging certain improvements. I am sure they learnt their lesson there though. No, for me the AI is a more important issue.

 

[JarlFrank]

But seriously, if it's supposed to be a historical simulation and you can't do anything but facepalm and headdesk on seeing their maps, there certainly *is* something wrong with their geography.

 

[Destroid]

Since the new borders are going to be arbitrary lines drawn on a map to fit to a certain provice size they are going to have to get somewhat creative with the naming. There won't always be a city or administrative region handy to give a province a meaningful name.

 

[entertainer]

Diary #3:

http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/sho ... p?t=380145

No more tech teams, and research is not tied to IC eh? Sounds very weird...

 

[kris]

You focusing on so strange things. Placeholder names and a unfinished map are not the things to put focus on.

Dude, if I'd take my mouth as full as paradox does about research I would not release a dozen of screenshots that are so full of mistakes. It's very likely the final game will be different, but what I've seen so far does not indicate any research at all, just brainless copying from a fucking atlas, with not even a little spellchecking.

Read the diary. The provinces is not even close to final, but they need to have them there for playtesting.

Judge something this trivial by the end product instead.

 

[Erzherzog]

http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?t=380894

Another one. Fairly boring mundane idea that I don't necessarily understand the need for.

 

[Burning Bridges]

I wonder why they didn't go with a (nicer) 2D map in the first place, this generic grey puzzle is making me depressed already.

To stress my point, this is how a hand made 2D map can look like:

Hopefully my special friend LCJr isn't seeing this thread ..