Putting the 'role' back in role-playing games since 2002.
Donate to Codex
Good Old Games
  • Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.

    "This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.

Hearts of Iron IV - The Ultimate WWII Strategy Game

IHaveHugeNick

Arcane
Joined
Apr 5, 2015
Messages
1,870,124
Everyone does.

Pretty sure PDox is aware of Axis being overtuned, there was quite a bit of discussion on the official forums, I for one am happy that germany is a legitimate threat now. Obviously it does require some tweaking, the question is whether it happens before the next DLC...

There's being a threat, and there's conquering whole of Europe, Africa and Asia, in every save, without any help from the player. Playing as any non-major country is pointless right now. As Axis you can just start the save, let it run and go to work and the game will win itself. As Allies, well I had a 1 million army in Netherlands picking their noses for 3 ingame years, then I just quit the save after Soviets surrendered.

You need the majors to at least show up and fill the lines with decent units. Doesn't matter if I break out of my forts and take Berlin by myself, eventually AI Adolf will just pull back 30 fuckzillon spare units and just annihilate you.
 

Vaarna_Aarne

Notorious Internet Vandal
Joined
Jun 1, 2008
Messages
34,585
Location
Cell S-004
MCA Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2
I have heard that they've made the German AI perform better (as in it uses more meta divisions and strengthens itself better) and either didn't do the same to Soviet AI yet or haven't on purpose. I also can't say for sure, but I *think* the IC Germany has around 1941 when it invades the USSR is higher than before (like, Kwa level IC).
 

IHaveHugeNick

Arcane
Joined
Apr 5, 2015
Messages
1,870,124
I have heard that they've made the German AI perform better (as in it uses more meta divisions and strengthens itself better) and either didn't do the same to Soviet AI yet or haven't on purpose. I also can't say for sure, but I *think* the IC Germany has around 1941 when it invades the USSR is higher than before (like, Kwa level IC).

It's not just that they lose, it's that they lose so decisively and so fast. The best save I played went into like 1955 and Adolf vs. Uncle Joe were still at it with like 50 million loses on each side and I was trying to "rush" to Adolf's help as Japan by walking with infantry through Siberia. My rescue took like 3 days of gameplay because lag was insane this long in the game.

Here? I gave Soviets maximum slider buff, then from the console I gave them max stability, war support and enough political points to last Stalin a lifetime of happiness. He still lost in like early 1945.

Either way it's beyond retarded and the game is unplayable in this state far as I'm concerned. Playing as Axis is pointless and playing as non-major democracy or commies is also pointless. I played commie Mexico on my first run, took half of South America then I see Soviets are being overrun, so I ended up swimming my entire army half way across the map just to make it a stalemate.

I thin it's a combination of Axis being overbuffed, and Allies are being wrecked pretty badly by convoy raiding right now. I've seen UK reduced to almost no convoys.

Hopefully the mods will fix it, I'm gonna check later if Expert AI guy released new version for the 1.6. That guy deserves a medal, he's been doing better job fixing this game last 2 years than PDX.
 

Vaarna_Aarne

Notorious Internet Vandal
Joined
Jun 1, 2008
Messages
34,585
Location
Cell S-004
MCA Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2
Personally the thing I'm waiting for the most is Fuhrerreich to update, the incorporation of a metafictional premise and core mechanics from Kaiserreich should make for a more balanced and interesting WW2. A big problem is really that indeed there's no reason to play as minors right now, Hungary->Austria-Hungary being the only possible exception, but most minors will not even have possible goals of their own to achieve because of the way the war can only ever end in total defeat of the faction majors. Kaiserreich's severe restrictions to forming and joining factions is one of the best things it did and what helps its scenario tremendously (the other thing obviously being that given it's alt-history fiction it can create a much more dynamic and global scenario to go in tandem with not having everything bundle together into a single war).
 
Unwanted

Micormic

Unwanted
Joined
Mar 25, 2009
Messages
939
I have heard that they've made the German AI perform better (as in it uses more meta divisions and strengthens itself better) and either didn't do the same to Soviet AI yet or haven't on purpose. I also can't say for sure, but I *think* the IC Germany has around 1941 when it invades the USSR is higher than before (like, Kwa level IC).

It's not just that they lose, it's that they lose so decisively and so fast. The best save I played went into like 1955 and Adolf vs. Uncle Joe were still at it with like 50 million loses on each side and I was trying to "rush" to Adolf's help as Japan by walking with infantry through Siberia. My rescue took like 3 days of gameplay because lag was insane this long in the game.

Here? I gave Soviets maximum slider buff, then from the console I gave them max stability, war support and enough political points to last Stalin a lifetime of happiness. He still lost in like early 1945.

Either way it's beyond retarded and the game is unplayable in this state far as I'm concerned. Playing as Axis is pointless and playing as non-major democracy or commies is also pointless. I played commie Mexico on my first run, took half of South America then I see Soviets are being overrun, so I ended up swimming my entire army half way across the map just to make it a stalemate.

I thin it's a combination of Axis being overbuffed, and Allies are being wrecked pretty badly by convoy raiding right now. I've seen UK reduced to almost no convoys.

Hopefully the mods will fix it, I'm gonna check later if Expert AI guy released new version for the 1.6. That guy deserves a medal, he's been doing better job fixing this game last 2 years than PDX.


The game is just fucked lol. There's videos of people doing world conquests with el salvador and bhutan. It's just a not a good game, period.
 

IHaveHugeNick

Arcane
Joined
Apr 5, 2015
Messages
1,870,124
Personally the thing I'm waiting for the most is Fuhrerreich to update, the incorporation of a metafictional premise and core mechanics from Kaiserreich should make for a more balanced and interesting WW2. A big problem is really that indeed there's no reason to play as minors right now, Hungary->Austria-Hungary being the only possible exception, but most minors will not even have possible goals of their own to achieve because of the way the war can only ever end in total defeat of the faction majors. Kaiserreich's severe restrictions to forming and joining factions is one of the best things it did and what helps its scenario tremendously (the other thing obviously being that given it's alt-history fiction it can create a much more dynamic and global scenario to go in tandem with not having everything bundle together into a single war).

The way I play minors, is I use the sliders to buff the opposing faction to the max. The the goal is just to survive against hordes of Mordor and that used to be fun. But when one of the major is suddenly too weak it just makes no sense to play like that anymore.

And yeah, ultimately it was a mistake to make both a sandbox and a historical strategy, all in one game.

They keep adding so many alt-history focus trees and it's so stupid because the save still needs to be locked into WW2 vanilla game. If you try to play full sandbox, even if one country picks an bad focus tree, it often snowballs into complete clusterfuck that breaks the entire save. Just like here really. One ahistorical thing happens, Soviets lose too easily, and the whole game breaks.

One nice thing they've added though, is you can manually specify focuses for each country. So might be possible to experiment and have a sandbox mode that actually works.
 

Vaarna_Aarne

Notorious Internet Vandal
Joined
Jun 1, 2008
Messages
34,585
Location
Cell S-004
MCA Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2
You mean specify with greater precision down to order taken, or like the system that's in place right now? I'd say it's kind of fun, but it does leave a problem with Germany being too strong, and the alternate paths don't mesh well with the way faction formation and membership works like now.
 

IHaveHugeNick

Arcane
Joined
Apr 5, 2015
Messages
1,870,124
With new system you can specify alt-history path for each country when starting the save.

So for example one idea I had is set Germany for return of the Kaiser and set Japan where they ignore China and go for Soviets instead. So you redirect the aggression from Allies for a couple of years, France has more time to actually get going and Allies probably get to take out lone Italy who will form their own faction.

Could very well work.
 

Raghar

Arcane
Vatnik
Joined
Jul 16, 2009
Messages
22,506
Folks, I don't think Germany is that strong in 1.6.0. (I refuse to update until they would create another large patch, or DLC, or at least reports about new patch will not be more sane.) French can do number on Germany when AI is lucky. (When you play even smaller member of Axis than Italy, it could be bit problem. Even thought Italy is threatened on so many fronts, until closing Mediterranean, it's questionable if neutral Italy will not help Germany MUCH more.)



I just tried Italy, and it was first time I tried Italy in 1.5.0+ when Germany actually absorbed Austria peacefully. It was clusterfuck.
First time I played Italy Yugoslavia guarantee wasn't lifted before I finished fabrication. As a small consequence, the war didn't end by conquering Yugoslavia. Because declaring at Greece would open another can of worms, I delayed declaring until my units arrive to Greek border. 5 hour before declaring France guaranteed.

As a consequence, I had quite a while a cold war, while I should prepare troops for fight in Lybia.

Then Germany started to pick war with France, probably by trying to conquer Luxembourg. Luckily it managed to join with Austria, thus it could bypass Suddetes, and attack from Austria directly. Meanwhile Romania joined allies and declared at Germany for no reason whatever. France surprise joined alies too, and declared war on me, the same with Greece. Which solved my problem how to declare on Greece. Greece was quickly reinforced by UK troops who was interested in Feta Cheese. Thus I had divisions in wrong position, didn't have time to make sufficient reserves of fuel, or even construct fuel storages. Now I was forced to quick research refineries, mostly for synthetic rubber to be able to build withing next half year 200 additional fighters, and 600 naval bombers to protect against France and UK naval domination. US said it will not bother with Europe idiocy, declared neutrality, and decided it would handle them later.
Thus at least there were no US naval invasions.

Naval battles with French fleet were:
First battle. I lost 33 DD, they lost 1 CL. I should wait 3 months to prepare more naval bombers. Green crews didn't help either. On the positive side I managed to save all BB.
Second battle, after several months of repair. (Actually I thought it was much worse, but it wasn't that bad.) I did lost several light cruisers, but all BB survived, and ONE French BB was finished off by CA.
Then improved naval bombers finally come online, and started to dominate in areas under fighter cover.
Then I managed to find French fleet in port, and had some naval strikes with new naval bombers with experienced crews from hunting submarines.

Current Italian two CV are half year sitting in port, because Italian designers didn't manage to develop carrier capable planes before CV were finished. I think another two CV would arrive before they would manufacture enough planes to actually fit all 4 CV. On the positive side Italy would soon have a tank division that uses something more powerful than light tank. Probably just one however, it would have hard time to support it.

When Germany was doing its stuff with Northern France front, namely staring at each other over Maginot line. Until they fabricated at Belgium, or was it Holland. I send hordes of CAS and fighters on Greece front, and after horrible slog, I managed to get to Athens and cut off defending army. Then I was wondering what Germans are doing, they probably are inside France already. Well, Germans lost Wilmhaven, and several cities on theirs territory and were defending on river line. French, UK, and Holland were able to push them back. It was obvious they are in trouble, and I either do something quickly, or they would be in even larger problems. Because war with Romania, and Hungary ended. Fascist Hungary joined allies, just because. I had 24 divisions in the area for recovery, which were send to Germany to help hold the line. Because they were dug in like a fuck and helping Germany with theirs ofensive would be incredibly manpower costly, and they had QUITE a lot of airforce in the area. I decided to try southern offensive. Send CAS from Greece, and fighters from Greece to be able to contest air in Southern France during offensive, and pushed through mountains.

230K Italian casualties later Italian army pushed through mountains, reached plains, and cut enemy armies by rushing to coast, and creating defensive line on river to protect attack from west.
(For some reason Germans had bright idea to increase defensive line by attacking Switzerland. I think the deployment of Italian divisions on North front seduced French they should move some units from South fortifications, not many.) BTW I had yellow air during that push.

Before I'd properly replenish equipment and modernize infantry weapons, Germany would likely declare on... Russia. On the positive side for Poland, it was not divided, it was conquered by Russia, and now has more welfare oriented government.



BTW that event that creates Vichi France punishes Italy that managed to conquer Southern France and Paris hard.

Meanwhile in Asia. Japan joined Kodoha faction, and ... declared war on China. They hated commies for some reason. Then they managed to get into fight with natinalists as well, and chinese made some united front that was. Then there was news that China joined China. And when Japan was in fight with China. Quing China backstabbed Japan thus Japan was in fight with China, China, and China. Ultimatelly they defeated China and China, and because people thought Quing china are morons, thus didn't wanted to fight, Quing China ran out of manpower. Russia suspiciously looks like it wants to declare war against China Japan.
 

Vaarna_Aarne

Notorious Internet Vandal
Joined
Jun 1, 2008
Messages
34,585
Location
Cell S-004
MCA Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2
R56 is neat, but I feel the problem of unrestricted factions still posits problems in the scenario.

(Also timeline extensions on its scale are sort of overboard, considering that by 1950 most countries will have exhausted their manpower)

With new system you can specify alt-history path for each country when starting the save.

So for example one idea I had is set Germany for return of the Kaiser and set Japan where they ignore China and go for Soviets instead. So you redirect the aggression from Allies for a couple of years, France has more time to actually get going and Allies probably get to take out lone Italy who will form their own faction.

Could very well work.
Based on what I fiddled around in the base game, most fun combination seems to be Kaiser Germany, Italian-Spanish alliance, Communist France, Fascist or King's Party Britain (btw, King's Party is a lot of fun to play, you can even try for the whole hog and get the imperial federation cores because they aren't exclusive), Hungary to Austria-Hungary, and fascist or Communist Kwa. With Kaiser Germany, Poland should also form their own faction.

Communist AI Germany might also be kind of interesting if you want the Allies to be around.
 

IHaveHugeNick

Arcane
Joined
Apr 5, 2015
Messages
1,870,124
Another thing I might try is to switch Japan and British Raj to communism, and switch Germany and Italy to democracy.

Then you can (hopefully) have West vs East massive war. One block with superior technology, the other with unlimited manpower.
 

Agame

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Mar 29, 2015
Messages
1,702
Location
I cum from a land down under
Insert Title Here
Hopefully the mods will fix it, I'm gonna check later if Expert AI guy released new version for the 1.6. That guy deserves a medal, he's been doing better job fixing this game last 2 years than PDX.

Expert AI is updated to 1.6, but you still may want to wait for awhile and let Pdox get more patches out as there are bugs that Chondrite cannot do anything about that effect the AI. That man is a goddamn legend and if he ever stops working on the mod HOI4 would become "literally!!?" unplayable.

A lot of what he does is really basic stuff eg. make it so Soviets dont waste time researching Naval tech and start building medium tanks before the 1950s... If Pdox and the "community" wasnt so obsessed with m-muh sandbox they could do this stuff themselves, I mean would it really be so terrible to make a mostly landlocked country focus on land warfare?
 

Raghar

Arcane
Vatnik
Joined
Jul 16, 2009
Messages
22,506
A lot of what he does is really basic stuff eg. make it so Soviets dont waste time researching Naval tech and start building medium tanks before the 1950s... If Pdox and the "community" wasnt so obsessed with m-muh sandbox they could do this stuff themselves, I mean would it really be so terrible to make a mostly landlocked country focus on land warfare?

The problem is Russia did naval research, and build some large ships before WWII. And when they make stuff too efficient, it would feel weird. Also how would Germany + Austria 76 million country (including Poles imigrants) beat up 160 million country like Russia? Well, they had some allies, but that has also consequences of disjointed command. Russia was under unified command where branches were more integrated than US branches in 1960.

And frankly these German allies were mostly as useful as what US called coalition of weasels. Not like UK didn't bomb India to force people in India to support UK war, some people had zero reason to bleed for UK. So when someone do overly efficient AI, better than Russians in real WWII, Russia would slaughter rest of europe, and then what? When you play Victoria II as British Empire, it's easy mode. WWII Russia would be easier than in real WWII in current combat and logistic system.
 
Unwanted

Micormic

Unwanted
Joined
Mar 25, 2009
Messages
939
As a player Poland I can routinely beat Germany which was way harder in HoI 1 2 and 3 but I have never seen AI Germany lose to AI Poland.

I was talking about the Soviets. They lose to everyone.

Might have something to do with this:

https://www.reddit.com/r/hoi4/comments/b23lmp/ai_soviets_mid_1940/

Has anyone tried The Road To 56?



R56 is weird.



Can't really explain it, give it a shot and you'll see some really bizarre things.


I recall a game where the Netherlands was split into 2, demo and commie. The commies were a puppet of demo while being at war with them while being allied to them in another war.


Didn't play much of it because I don't like HOI4 in general but there were a few mods that were much better then Vanilla.


DH kaiserreich is still king but HOI4 kaiserreich isn't bad. Cold war a world divided was ok but laggy, few others I can't remember were ok. Like I said I didnt play much HOI4 though since it's fundamentally broken .
 

Raghar

Arcane
Vatnik
Joined
Jul 16, 2009
Messages
22,506
6u7TsSJ.jpg

Derpitz.

The sole purpose of this ship is to survive British navy, and make British navy life miserable.
(Alas they made much less complex ship designer than is shown on the image I posted.)
GOGoRLd.png
 

Space Satan

Arcane
Vatnik
Joined
May 13, 2013
Messages
6,216
Location
Space Hell
As a player Poland I can routinely beat Germany which was way harder in HoI 1 2 and 3 but I have never seen AI Germany lose to AI Poland.

I was talking about the Soviets. They lose to everyone.

Might have something to do with this:

https://www.reddit.com/r/hoi4/comments/b23lmp/ai_soviets_mid_1940/

Has anyone tried The Road To 56?
No, there is a bug in AI script when estimating japanese threat and SOV AI is screwed by constantly reshuffling units to german front and Siberia with jap puppet border.
 

Vaarna_Aarne

Notorious Internet Vandal
Joined
Jun 1, 2008
Messages
34,585
Location
Cell S-004
MCA Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2
Yea I've noticed that even if they get a non-aggression pact which is still timelocked the Soviets will insist on fully manning the Manchurian (and most likely later also Mongolian and Sinkiang) border, which will put a drain on them. They do that even if there's a timelocked non-aggression pact and the Japanese are all in India or something.
 

Space Satan

Arcane
Vatnik
Joined
May 13, 2013
Messages
6,216
Location
Space Hell
It is worse, there are some modifier called japan_threat>0.1 which doubles abother modifier and this results on SOV AI to havetwo strategic behaviours at once - to put all forces to JAP bordr and to man german border. And they tick every day or so, so AI have to deal with two conflicting orders of placing forces on the other sides of 1/6 of planet's landmass.
 

IHaveHugeNick

Arcane
Joined
Apr 5, 2015
Messages
1,870,124
Yeah the problem with custom game states is that a lot of other stuff needs to line up for them to work, like civil war ending quickly or pacts running out.

Anyway, Expert AI seems to have fixed things a bit, Soviets are still weaker then I'd like but they last until 1945 at least and sometimes much longer. Chondrite is a fucking hero.

Of course all you really need to knock Allies out of the war is to build a doomstack of 1940-tier submarines and put them around UK and on the east and west coast of the US. They'll spend rest of the wars lacking convoys to even travel the sea. But cheese tactics I can at least avoid myself, whereas when AI factions are unbalanced that's much worse.
 
Joined
May 8, 2018
Messages
3,535
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1665294477

INTRODUCTION

Set in the destructive period of the Unification Wars, this mod attempts to bring to life the massive and detailed universe of Warhammer 40k on a (relatively) smaller scale. Play as the Imperium and reunite the lands of Terra, fight as one of the wild tribes of the Rus, struggle to maintain the Achaemenid's ancient peace, or succumb to the dark powers of the Immaterium—the future of mankind's home is in your hands.

FEATURES
  • A new set of techno-barbarian nations
  • Two fully completed focus trees (Imperium and a general tree) and one in production
  • A new texture for the Imperial Auxilia
  • New custom units for the Custodes, Thunder-Warriors and Astartes
  • A new technology tree
  • A large custom soundtrack for that grimdark, 30k feel
FUTURE GOALS
  • A new map representing the evaporation of Earth's oceans
  • More focus trees for Ursh, the Achaemenid Empire (halfway done!) the Pan-Pacific Empire, and more
  • Custom textures and models for units
  • More detail and flavor for events, ideas, generals, flags, and more
  • An expanded technology tree
  • A new event chain that places you in the mind of the God-Emperor of Mankind
 

Fedora Master

Arcane
Patron
Edgy
Joined
Jun 28, 2017
Messages
27,819
Good idea, bad execution.
Land Raiders during the Unification Wars.
Any game set in that timeframe should be more Fallout than Warhams.
 

Raghar

Arcane
Vatnik
Joined
Jul 16, 2009
Messages
22,506
P70UW8V.jpg

I wanted to have some proper ship design, so I tried this. That rotary multibarrel rapid fire 250 mm gun on the back is there as counterweight to prevent ship to stand on front. Also it's quite efficient to kill PT boats, and yes cruisers too.

Evaluator says command is crap, and armor is crap.
 

As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.
Back
Top Bottom