Hearts of Iron IV - The Ultimate WWII Strategy Game

[Sranchammer]

At least this turd encouraged me to get Darkest Day and Kaisereich

 

[Average Manatee]

The idea of a "factory cap" is just weird. How can you possibly run out of space for building factories? The fact that they feel such a cap is needed strongly suggests some other game mechanic is fucked up.

Only legitimate reason I can think of would be to prevent Soviets from dropping 100 factories in Siberia to keep them away from Germany. But then I doubt it would actually accomplish that since Russia can't have less than several dozen regions in Siberia which will easily quadruple their factories even if they can only put one in each spot.

Maybe there are gearing bonuses for serial production of factories this time, and this is intended to benefit players who build up around major cities?

 

[Space Satan]

Most probable that clustering factories will be somehow linked to infrastructure, so putting 1 fact in 1 prov would be less effective due to need to improve infrastructure in every province.

 

[GarfunkeL]

That was supposed to happen in HoI3 but it was left out. The videos already showed that each zone of provinces can have only 1 construction project going on. So yes, you will build factories in each zone until you hit factory cap, which is nation wide.

 

[GarfunkeL]

Latest DD reveals that - SURPRISE SURPRISE - chain of command is back!

In a really pitiful streamlined version.

Basically, instead of division-corps-army-army group-theatre as we had in HoI3, Hoi4 will have division-army-theatre. Except you cannot do anything with individual divisions, so while that level exists, you only fiddle with either army or theater level. You can have as many divisions in an army as you want and as many armies under a theatre as you want. Commanders can only be placed on armies. They come at two ranks: Generals and Field Marshals. The former have a 12 division command limit, the latter have no command limit whatsoever. Interestingly, the traits that commander can have (max 5) are different for generals and FMs. If you promote a general to a field marshall, they will lose all their traits and one skill level, and then start collecting experience towards their new FM traits. No information whether we can abandon traits since the list of available traits is quite a bit longer than just five.

We're still supposed to use the AI battle planner to draw a front line and the axis of advance and let the AI handle the rest.

 

[AwesomeButton]

What I find hilarious in such situations - gameplay is being simplified and developers are weaseling out of admitting it, but at some point they make concessions - is the behavior of fanboys. At first they defend the streamlining, claiming that leaving out features improves the game. When then developers roll back and reintroduce some complexity, the fanboys are still happy, although the developers' argumentation runs counter to what they were claiming days ago. The Party is always right, even when it says that two plus two equals five.

 

[LizardWizard]

Finally watched one of the world war streams and it's fucking hilarious how the developers look to be basically fighting that godforsaken UI in real time and misclicking shit/getting lost every couple minutes.

 

[Raghar]

Finally watched one of the world war streams and it's fucking hilarious how the developers look to be basically fighting that godforsaken UI in real time and misclicking shit/getting lost every couple minutes.

They simplified gameplay and they become lost in UI. Perhaps making more complex gameplay would mean more intuitive UI.

(Or perhaps they are just incompetent players of strategy games.)

 

[Spectacle]

So people here actually liked the chain of command in HoI3? I found it to be tons of micromanagement for a very limited payoff, and not fun to play with, just work if you want to squeeze out those few extra % by having the right commanders everywhere. I guess it was good if you wanted to larp having the perfect Wehrmacht OOB, but that's not my kind of thing.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

It was pretty handy for delegating tasks for the AI.

 

[Makabb]

Finally watched one of the world war streams and it's fucking hilarious how the developers look to be basically fighting that godforsaken UI in real time and misclicking shit/getting lost every couple minutes.

They simplified gameplay and they become lost in UI. Perhaps making more complex gameplay would mean more intuitive UI.

(Or perhaps they are just incompetent players of strategy games.)

It happens when you become OLD, your coordination is not as good as when you were younger. You will understand once you are 30+.

 

[AwesomeButton]

So people here actually liked the chain of command in HoI3? I found it to be tons of micromanagement for a very limited payoff, and not fun to play with, just work if you want to squeeze out those few extra % by having the right commanders everywhere. I guess it was good if you wanted to larp having the perfect Wehrmacht OOB, but that's not my kind of thing.

First of all, I've never played HoI multiplayer, although I'd try it out if I had someone to try it out with.

My attempts at playing HoI 3 ended with starting up a scenario and seeing that the game is using the EU3 engine. Then I skipped HoI 3 for the same reason I skipped EU3 - I can't spend hours looking at a map that's so ugly.

Given that historical accuracy mods weren't yet available back then, I just got back to HoI 2 whenever I felt like playing HoI. I now own DH and I'm pretty happy with it.

So, I watched a "Let's Learn Hearts of Iron 3" video yesterday, and I really failed to see the use of such a detailed chain of command.

I realize HoI 4's chain of command is simplified even in comparison to HoI 2, but for me making a jump from HoI2 to HoI4 seems to bring some improvements. I was in the "not touching this turd with a bargepole" camp, but now I'm leaning towards "Will pirate at release day, buy it in a year or two if it's reasonably good".

 

[Spectacle]

It was pretty handy for delegating tasks for the AI.

And that seems to be the purpose of the HoI4 command system, except without a bunch of extraneous command layers.

 

[GarfunkeL]

The bonuses of the coc were handy and useful but it also kept your oob "clean" and useful even if you didn't use AI control - and if you did use AI control, the proper coc allowed you to focus on what you wanted while having AI taking care of less important bits without it ruining everything. Setting it up took 15 minutes at game start and maintaining it wasn't a big deal along the way. The supposed "headache" of it has always been exaggerated. It worked well no matter how many divisions you had and it enabled you to keep order and control even when division counts went over 200 or even 300 hundred.

By comparison, it looks like HoI4 will again commit the mistake of WW2 being fought by less than 100 divisions by each major country. And I still haven't seen a zoomed-in screenshot of what the map looks like at the height of Barbarossa when both sides should have 200+ divisions on Ostfront.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

To me the biggest problem with the CoC in HoI3 was that the game was less able to support going wildly off the rails with minors because of the more limited number of generals most minors had compared to how many you might end up needing. Even without going crazy I tend to run out of generals with Finland around the end of Barbarossa. Another problem IMO is that HoI3 doesn't have certain command lines HoI2+rereleases had, most notably wake_leader so you end up having to do some really ass-backwards tricks if you want to increase officer pool under certain circumstances.

Ultimately I'd say the weakness of HoI3 that I hope the new system might be able to fix is that the AI is just not capable of handling all the variables it can face in HoI3, most notable being Japan AI which is completely helpless at everything.

 

[Raghar]

Ultimately I'd say the weakness of HoI3 that I hope the new system might be able to fix is that the AI is just not capable of handling all the variables it can face in HoI3, most notable being Japan AI which is completely helpless at everything.

WWII Japan was incapable to do anything.

 

[GarfunkeL]

You don't need to populate the entire CoC if you're a minor, the bonuses are not earth shattering. Just have corps and theatre or what Finland historically did - 3-5 corps HQ, 1 army HQ and theater HQ.

Another problem IMO is that HoI3 doesn't have certain command lines HoI2+rereleases had, most notably wake_leader so you end up having to do some really ass-backwards tricks if you want to increase officer pool under certain circumstances.

You can introduce leaders on later years than just 1936 though I don't know the exact mechanic on how to do it but I guess it doesn't work for coup events and such.

 

[Random Word]

I'm very impressed that you can set up CoC in HoI3 in 15 minutes.

I know from a dozen HoI3 MP campaigns that setting up and keeping the CoC updated caused a lot of slowdowns, and took up a lot of effort. Even on speed one, keeping the entire ostfront organized as either side was next to impossible, and corps coherency rapidly broke down in any area seeing heavy fighting, requiring regular exchanges of divisions between corps to keep everything organized.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Another problem IMO is that HoI3 doesn't have certain command lines HoI2+rereleases had, most notably wake_leader so you end up having to do some really ass-backwards tricks if you want to increase officer pool under certain circumstances.

You can introduce leaders on later years than just 1936 though I don't know the exact mechanic on how to do it but I guess it doesn't work for coup events and such.

Well, the key thing is that it doesn't work for anything but a hard year when they become available. Wake_leader was how HoI2+etal handled things like Germany getting Austrian leaders after Anschluss, while HoI3 either has every Austrian leader moonlight for the Germans from the start or become available in 1938. So it's not particularly flexible in that regard, as far as I could guess the only way to sidestep the limitation would be to have multiple "copy" tags where you swap to an entirely different country since I think that also changes leaders.

 

[Average Manatee]

If you let AI auto assign leaders for everything but theatre/army group (which were all that really mattered) you'd be able to make an OOB in like 5 mins for most nations, assuming you knew how to work the UI. It was useful for keeping track of your specialized divisions (redeploy your whole marine corps to a port to prepare for an invasion? takes 5s with an OOB, a minute of hunting down units without an OOB).

 

[GarfunkeL]

I'm very impressed that you can set up CoC in HoI3 in 15 minutes.

I know from a dozen HoI3 MP campaigns that setting up and keeping the CoC updated caused a lot of slowdowns, and took up a lot of effort. Even on speed one, keeping the entire ostfront organized as either side was next to impossible, and corps coherency rapidly broke down in any area seeing heavy fighting, requiring regular exchanges of divisions between corps to keep everything organized.

Well, not Soviet Union but for minors it took less than that and only some majors it takes longer, like Italy because their OOB is a total mess and needs always complete reorganization.

I've heard that complaint quite a few times and I just don't understand it. Do people not know that you can ctrl-click a HQ and that selects all divisions that belong to that HQ? That a stack of divisions don't have to do the same thing? I should probably record a video of how I keep my Ostfront in order during Barbarossa. I don't play MP so maybe I'm missing something, but I don't find it difficult to keep units organized. What I find difficult is keeping air units flying the tactically most beneficial missions on a daily basis - usually I give up and just assign TAC to do wide area interdictions and keep CAS in reserve.

 

[Erzherzog]

I'm definitely a low skill player, I normally play Japan because it's retarded easy to smash China and Britain/USSR's second strings.

That being said, even I have an easy time setting up Japan's CoC. Definitely nowhere close to 15 minutes.

I do want to point out however, CoC and OOB are two different things. Yeah OOB takes a while but so what? It should. The historical layouts of troops simply aren't gonna be the optimal playstyle but that's been true for both HoI 2 and 3. I'm sure it will be the case for 4 as well no matter how much they streamline it, because if they manage to streamline it to the point where I don't have to fuck with that it would hardly be a game at that point.

 

[Lone Wolf]

What's happening with this game? It was announced before Stellaris, but the latter already has a Steam page with a 'Coming Soon!' release notice. Where's HoI4?

 

[Erzherzog]

What's happening with this game? It was announced before Stellaris, but the latter already has a Steam page with a 'Coming Soon!' release notice. Where's HoI4?

Picture Dr. Frankenstein creating his monster. Takes a while to unleash an abomination.

 

[GarfunkeL]

What's happening with this game? It was announced before Stellaris, but the latter already has a Steam page with a 'Coming Soon!' release notice. Where's HoI4?

It's been delayed twice due to reworking design and mechanics.