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Hearts of Iron IV - The Ultimate WWII Strategy Game

IHaveHugeNick

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Apr 5, 2015
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This game is such a ridiculous bullshit right now.

I figured I'll see how I can do with Poland against the overbuffed Germany.

I set up a line of level 2 forts behind two rivers in Warsaw, I built pure defensive army with 9 inf 1aa 1at divisions and I released eastern Ukraine as a free country so uncle Stalin doesn't fuck me from behind. And I calmly waited for 1939 to come.

Well, 1939 indeed came. But nothing happened. Adolf himself came to have look at my defenses and his comment was: "Nein, can't touch this. Just surround them with 150 divisions and stand there pretending to look important."

So they did.

Meannhile my small but brave fleet of mine-laying submarines mined the fuck out of the entire Miditerrean, Italian fleet got wrecked. France doesn't fall and Western front is a stalemate. For 3 years, nothing happens. Meanwhile I was slowly building up two a 2 million army.

Finally in mid 1942 finally Stalin gets bored sitting on his dick, so he attacks Germany.

So now it's full power of UK, France, United States, Soviet Union, Poland, Belgium and Netherlands against Germany.

Surely they get crushed now, you'd think?

Haha, yeah right.

It's been going like this for one ingame year and Germany has 300k loses total while all of major allies are in 1 million.

:thisisfine:
 

Vaarna_Aarne

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MCA Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2
I haven't tried minelayers yet myself, that's another thing that's basically a case of "why would you do this" and "why would you do anything but this" honestly, albeit a situation that could be rectified to an extent just by restricting the number of areas you can mine (so they benefit minors more than majors).

Anyway, I'm still mostly just waiting for KR and FR to patch, played Old World Blues a bit (here the problem is that I feel the scenario is much more poorly balanced and offers far fewer interesting groups compared to the HoI2 mod, added points lost because faction system is stupid) which has improved to a degree, and gave a try to the new version of The Great War, it still has that problem that land doctrine tech rush supported by air units is the only way to go. Tried R56, but I just got pissed off with the faction system again and will probably have to restart a campaign if I care to. I suppose I should check out Cold War and Millenium Dawn again once they update. But honestly, I just wait for next patch of KR because that's the best way to play HoI4 without exception so far, with Fuhrerreich as a POSSIBLE second way to do it (since the last version was still fairly barebones in a lot of ways, but fundamentally KR's changes to several mechanics like factions and politics is just the best way to do things).

I'm not entirely pleased with KR changing the Mongolian focus tree tho, it was fun trying to go apeshit with Ungern conquering left and right, making it "realistic" instead is boring. I've said it elsewhere and before, and I'll say it again, I don't care if you wanzers and Martians to KR, just as long as it makes the campaign more fun and varied and wild. Realism is shit.
 

IHaveHugeNick

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The most absurd thing about my story above, is that it isn't a historical WW2 Germany at peak of of its powers. This is 1938 Germany that only managed to occupy Czechoslovakia. They literally have like 1/5 of total Allied factories.

And mines are pretty fun. It's good but not so overpowered where it could make everything else pointless. They just give a buff to allied fleet and debuff to enemy fleet I think. And ship designer is versatile enough that you can make a dedicated mining sumbarine fleet for cheap, or just put one mining slot on destroyer and still have them be useful for normal fleet engagement.
 

Vaarna_Aarne

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Given how cheap subs are, next time I should probably make mine subs instead of raider subs, or split between both functions.
 
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Do fighting subs work? Looks like you can get obscenely high torpedo strength very cheaply and swarm enemies. I believe torpedoes ignore armor?
 

IHaveHugeNick

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Given how cheap subs are, next time I should probably make mine subs instead of raider subs, or split between both functions.

That's what I do when playing minor countries. At the start of the game I put all shipyards on 1936 minelaying subs, then I switch to raider subs when I get the 1940-tier sub.

By the time war starts I can completely mine 2-3 regions rather quickly and have a bunch of 1940 subs to run rampart in them.

Mind you that is not necessarily a good strategy in all cases. Works wonders against Japan, Italy and keeping US boxed in on their continent. Against UK though, I found that total submarine warfare isn't a good idea. They still have still, tungsteen and aluminum so they just sit on their island and by the time you want to invade them they have 3 million divisions there. :P
 

Vaarna_Aarne

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Subs also reach a Dockyard breakeven point far faster than any other type of navy, so they can actually sustain losses rather than anyone who isn't rocking 100+ Dockyards with only a third of that, with a far lower tech footprint.

It's sort of fucked up, but also kind of inevitable given the abstraction present.
 

Raghar

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Minelayers are awesome AI should use them extensively and become really hated by everyone. I tested naval combat extensively for about 3 weeks, just to see if I still can design better system.
1xRa7pr.jpg

Year 50 and I finally had proper naval combat.

Conclusion is they are unable to fight theirs way out of paper bag. If they simply left the old system, you would see carriers staying at distance, destroyers zipping at 45 kt to carriers, and if land based planes blew up these battleships or cruisers, they catch carrier and torpedo it. Sprinkled by occasional submarine torpedoing carrier, which while it was extraordinary rare to happen in pitched naval battle, the skill of admiral was sufficient to prepare submarines at line of retreat of enemy carrier.
Instead they reduced naval combat into three rows, as if they are playing DoTA2. While it might be fine for physical card game, it's too simple for strategy game like HoI4.

The funny is writing better naval combat abstraction is easily doable, and it will not create too many additional effort from player, because most of that stuff is transparent.

But there is little problem HoI4 programmers have no clue about naval tactics. From my tests I found the best way how to engage enemy major fleet is attacking convoys in correct area, because they are likely in that area on escort mission with the whole fleet.

Sending one lone destroyer to be terror of submarines until small task force sneaks on enemy destroyer and blow it up, or naval bombers would catch it, and kill it? Naw we are sending hordes of destroyers, which are missing in other sea zones.

Carriers? Well, with 3 slot system it's about until second slot would fail which allows strike at carriers. Obviously this makes heavy ships much stronger.

On the positive side, poor countries without navy can somehow try navy by sneaky submarine or destroyer attack. And the ship design system was step in the right direction. The abstract port system however allows submarine avoid dangerous sea zones between port and deep ocean, which makes submarines much less vulnerable. (Which would likely cause submarine nerf.)
 

Vaarna_Aarne

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Didn't take KR gang long to get that set-up after Paradox changed it that they're okay with modders selling merch and having Patreons or whatever (which doesn't surprise me at all given that you could essentially also sell HoI4 and its expansions specifically for playing HoI4's version of KR).
 

IHaveHugeNick

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Raghar

When fighting against the Soviets I usually do a naval invasion through the Black Sea to take over the massive oil fields in Baku. In one of my games I walk in there and turns out the whole sea is a minefield. AI planted maximum 1000 mines. Gave me a laugh.
 

IHaveHugeNick

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There's a new patch out, 1.6.2.

So I'm playing as Netherlands again, France has fallen again and I'm surrounded. Suddenly all the German units leave the front and I'm able to take back half of France and Germany with 40 divisions.

I've used a console to see what AI Hitler is doing, and he has 400 divisions at the Soviet border while I am about to ride into Berlin.
 
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Tried Fuhrerreich.

It's pretty fun but focus trees don't really need to be that massive with so many modifiers. Playing Germany I had around 25 national spirits and would probably get at least ten more before the end of the game, perhaps even end up in the 40s. That just feels bloated.

I also don't see the need for Dressler. They could've just used Glauer himself. He was quite a character and lived quite a life.
 

IHaveHugeNick

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I've used a console to see what AI Hitler is doing, and he has 400 divisions at the Soviet border while I am about to ride into Berlin.

The AI cannot into multiple front wars, this has been a problem since release...

That's the point. It hasn't been this bad since release. I played a lot of saves with Czechoslovakia and German AI may have struggled prioritizing the 3 fronts with France, Czechoslovakia and Poland, but it could at least hold the fucking line and it would move back more units if you stepped into native German borders.

With 1.6.2 it's just completely broken.
 

Agame

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Insert Title Here
I've used a console to see what AI Hitler is doing, and he has 400 divisions at the Soviet border while I am about to ride into Berlin.

The AI cannot into multiple front wars, this has been a problem since release...

That's the point. It hasn't been this bad since release. I played a lot of saves with Czechoslovakia and German AI may have struggled prioritizing the 3 fronts with France, Czechoslovakia and Poland, but it could at least hold the fucking line and it would move back more units if you stepped into native German borders.

With 1.6.2 it's just completely broken.

Yea I think they done borked the AI (possibly while trying to make it better?), one of the reasons Soviets were collapsing after MTG release is when at war with Germany they completely remove all troops from Romanian border, which is obviously a disaster when Romania joins the war... And also putting far to many troops on Jap border.
 

Trithne

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Dec 3, 2008
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I'm not entirely pleased with KR changing the Mongolian focus tree tho, it was fun trying to go apeshit with Ungern conquering left and right, making it "realistic" instead is boring. I've said it elsewhere and before, and I'll say it again, I don't care if you wanzers and Martians to KR, just as long as it makes the campaign more fun and varied and wild. Realism is shit.

HoI4 KR devs are autistic as fuck. DH remains best version.
 

Raghar

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CZI6u0e.jpg

And this is why when Mexico declare on Honduras, which joined alliance where Australia is leader, you stay the fuck out of it.
 
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May 8, 2018
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I tried Kaiserreich and to be honest I think I prefer Fuhrerreich. It runs better, it's less chaotic and it doesn't feel like a communist power fantasy.
 

Raghar

Arcane
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Messages
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Kaiserreich means you can't be fucked up by Tanu Tuva when you play as Japan. Right. Tanu Tuva why? I played as Japan quing declared independence and I nearly conquered it but then Tanu Tuva joined war on Quing side... Merely month later Tanu Tuva invited Russia.
 

Space Satan

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DD break is over
Hi everyone! It’s time to touch base and start talking about what we have been up to since we released 1.6.2. We have been both preparing to start on the next big expansion which will come together with the 1.8 “Husky” Update as well as working on various tasks for 1.7 ‘Hydra’ which is the next upcoming release. Let's jump in. Beware, it’s going to be pretty wordy!

1.7 ‘Hydra’
So first up, why 1.7? This is because we are now going 64-bit which will mean you can no longer run HOI4 on 32-bit, so we want to make it clear it is a different technical base. More on this next dev diary though.
We have also worked on some of the bugs that have popped up since then, most importantly front issues for Germany vs Soviets. This was something that was reported during 1.6.2 development, but as we dug into things it turned out to require a lot more work than we had planned. We made the decision to do it for 1.7, and instead of just fixing that particular issue we also reworked a bit of how fronts and the ai work. This is going to be what the diary will be about today!
Oh and because people will ask... we are not super far away from the 1.7 release. We plan to let you help test it in open beta soon (where soon means like “within a week” or thereabouts).


What’s new on the eastern front?
Operation Barbarossa, which is the German invasion of the Soviet Union, is one of the pivotal balance points in HOI4 (and in all the HOI games) together with the fall of the low countries, Poland and the Sino-Japanese war. After 1.6.2 we had Germany beating the Soviets a bit too easily, and in particular, players had too easy of a time doing it. This had a lot of different reasons. The primary one is that we spent a lot of time overhauling the German strategic and planning AI which has made it very consistent and strong. Additionally for the AI, being good at defending is a much harder job than being good at attacking. What wasn’t working properly was that when the Soviets finally fell, it was often due to an issue related to frontline stability. The Soviet AI would misprioritize this and move a large part of its front elsewhere, leaving a hole that the German AI would often exploit (which players also definitely did). It’s also not fun beating an AI when it makes such a critical mistake. This particular case was extremely random, but the front reaching Crimea was a common factor. At that point, a new front would open at the same time as the line became long enough to require multiple Army Groups to cover it, which was another weakness for the AI. A lot of those technical issues should now behave a lot better and we are consistently seeing much better performance from the Soviets. Although, they do still generally lose in the end, but this is mostly by design.

To explain why this is a good target, let’s look at our balance targets for Barbarossa:
  • The Axis pushes the Soviet line in slowly until the Soviets lose in 1945 unless the Allies secure a big landing and relieve the Soviets, at which point Germany should start losing with its forces split across the 2-3 fronts.
So why is this a good target?
  • As an Axis player, it means business as usual. You get to beat the Soviets, and the better we make the German AI (which does the heavy lifting), the more challenging we can make it for a player Germany and still retain the balance target.
  • As a Comintern player it means you need to defend, hold out, and push back Germany. Here, the stronger we can make the German AI, the more challenging it is for a Soviet player. So to keep our balance target we want to make the Soviet as tough as possible, but on their own, they need to break by ‘45.
  • As an Allied player, you have a bit of a race on your hands. A Germany that has beaten the Soviets will be a very difficult target, so you need to build up your strength and preferably strike when the German army is as extended, as it will get some solid landing points (ai is better at defending too now, so this is not always so easy). From a balance point, we need to make sure that the eastern front holds up long enough for you to get ready to do this. If the Soviets can push back the Germans on their own, there is no reason to play someone on the Allied side. If Germany beats the Soviet too fast, you will not have time to get involved (especially since the Allies are much more spread across the world and contains more minor nations we wanna make sure can make it to the party).
Hopefully, that clarifies how we think about stuff. At the moment the allies do ok in Africa, but pulling off consistent D-Day scale invasions is something we have as more of a long term goal we are working on. Invasion skill for the AI has improved a lot, but the AI has also gotten better at defending. We have thought out a long term plan to also tackle this, but it requires a lot more strategic planning on the side of the AI with respect to theaters, so it is something you will need to look forward to in the future :)

AI in Hearts of Iron is a very complex problem and something we will always be working on improving. It will never really be “done”. We are feeling a lot better about the eastern front now and shuffling issues there, but there is, of course, lots of work left to do everywhere. It won’t fix everything, but I hope it will feel a lot better when you get to try fighting the Soviets again in 1.7 :)

Tools
So while I am talking about AI, let's take a look at some of the tools we use to stay on top of the strategic situation and to help find relevant savegames, etc.

Every night we run several machines hands-off that record various data for us and lets us check whether we broke something, measure improvements, etc. Loading 30 savegames every morning and going over them is neither fun nor effective, so we have developed this awesome web tool that gives us a quick timeline and map to scan over:

index.php


Heat maps also make it easy to scan over time and see where the AI is distributing and focusing its units. This example below is highlighting the Japanese forces late 41:

index.php


Unit Controller for Players
So that was all about the AI, but we have also done underlying changes as well as UI that will affect you as a player.

A lot of players liked using primarily Army Group Orders for their armies so we have been doing various improvements there. For example, if you do not want to mess with individual army orders on a front you could already hit Shift-Click when setting up the frontline and it would simply keep all the units on the army group order. This is primarily how the AI handles big fronts now. If you do it this way as a player we have cut down a lot of the clutter you get by spreading multiple armies over the same area by having divisions without individual orders and part of an army group order to simply show and group on the map by using the Army Group color. As an example, this is an Army Group Frontline where each army is assigned a piece:

index.php

Now, if you are the kind of player who has a big front and wants to simplify things by giving it all over to the Army Group (Shift-Click to create the frontline) you will get this:
index.php


There are still 3 armies there, but because you didn’t care to assign a position we won't clutter things by showing that (this also work for garrisoning which is really nice for big areas). You can still select the individual armies as normal in the bottom bar and in the selection lists etc.

For players who prefer to keep control over where each army is assigned we have also made that easier in two important ways:
  • Each army front piece on an army group front must connect, so no holes are allowed. That among other things means that you only need to adjust one point (the connection point) if you want to adjust how much frontline each gets, rather than trying to adjust 2 points, sometimes while the front was moving and with the game unpaused :S
  • We have added controls to be able to change the order of the armies if you want to reshuffle that. The middle of each line when in Edit Mode will now show arrows which let you swap position for that piece of the frontline with its neighbors.
index.php


We have also increased saturation on all the rendering of plans on the map to make sure they are easier to see and to make sure they match their respective army colors better.

Next week we will be going over other bugfixes, balance and other changes so tune in then!
 

Raghar

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What testing system?
 

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