Hearts of Iron 4 - The Ultimate WWII Strategy Game

The Italians were far from being competent, but I don't think they could have lost against that. Having British, American, French or German trained troops was pretty standard back then. But a modernised industrial European nation will win against a more or less backward small piece of desert, even with some British instruction.

Formidable? very ?

 

They wouldn't have stopped the Italians on their own, but they were very good. The Legion was the only conventional Arab force to outfight the Israelis with any consistency in 1948.

 

Italy focused on tankettes and light tanks for far too long, and Italian designers came up with a decent tank build only in late '42, by which time it was too late. But some of their planes were pretty good, like Fiat G.50, and there wasn't anything fundamentally wrong with their ships. The worst weakness Italy had was her officer corps, as already pointed out. The German reports from liaison officers and DAK are a scathing read.

 

Italian ships were of excellent design though crucially lacked radar. Most of the balls of the Italian armed forces seem to have been in the navy as well, where human torpedoes (the Italians were the first to train and utilise frogmen) were used to great effect against the British.

My big hope is non worthless minors. Weird seeing Australian, Canadian, NZ, Finnish, Dutch, Swiss, Swedish etc divisions ass backwards in technology and doctrine compared to Great Powers due to the system not differentiating between small/medium but advanced Western nations and places like Afghanistan or Tibet.

The obvious solution would be to base research off tech team quality rather than IC or leadership. This means we can finally distinguish between small but up-to-date nations and small and backwards nations.

 

No, I disagree. The bigger problem is that there is no method of accurately simulating sales of military equipment. Well, now that there are both product licenses and Lend-Lease, it alleviates the problem a little. It's not like the minors were keeping abreast with the big boys in every field. Germany sent radars, AT-weapons, tanks, and planes to Finland and Hungary, and in smaller numbers to Italy, Romania and Bulgaria. All Commonwealth countries used a mix of British and American equipment.

 

Exactly, which why the new system of production could be very interesting for lend-lease, as it shouldn't take as much IC to train men rather than building the equipment from scratch.

The thing about the Italian tanks is that they were outdated but also produced in very small numbers compared to pretty much every other power in WW2. The Italians had a very poor production model as most of their larger equipment was hand assembled rather than produced on assembly lines.

Same for their planes, though their planes stayed pretty competitive until about late '42/ early '43. They actually built a plane that was superior in performance to the later model 109s but didn't have the capacity or the resources to build them.

 

Yeah they definitely wouldn't have stopped them on their own - but an Italian invasion would have brought a great deal more of British resources into the region, which is what I was operating on, a hypothetical. I know way too much about King Abdullah I and Transjordan during this time period so I could go on forever about what if this and what if that.

What I do wonder is how HoI4 is going to handle the mechanization of armed forces in regions like the Middle-East/North Africa. I've read that the American arrival in the theater wasn't a game change just because of the increased number of forces, but because the Americans brought a completely endless supply of motors to jet men around the desert - and in that theater, mobility was king. This was also something the Italians lacked... always with the Italians...

 

That would be possible if there was an ahistorical option to have the Kaiserreich restored instead of Nazi Germany in a 1930 or 1933 game start.

 

Off topic, but all this talk about Italy has got me thinking...

Any good HoI Italy LPs out there? 2 or 3, I'll take either.

 

Look up Carnage Al Dente by CptEasy on the hoi3 aar forum in paradoxforums, best italian multiplayer HOI3 aar I seen.

Also, the main problem with the italians in their african campaign (along with the horrible officer corp) was their lack of equipment and supplies. There are numerous reports of italian soldiers starving, lacking fuel for transport (or transport altogether) and even critical ammo shortages. Italian soldiers who served under german officers performed well, some would say astronomically better than they did under their own countrymen, whom they didn't trust.

But by the time the allies had begun advancing up calabria all the fight had gone out of them and the entirety of them saw themselves as victims rather than combatants.

Tech tree mechanics look great though, can't wait to mod in all the extra prototype shit and equip romanian armored divisions with Pz IVs.

 

News from the front:



HoI2-style doctrine trees are back. No more pick'n'mix, you select your path and that's it. It will be possible to switch paths, with some sort of cost. Additionally, some paths share some techs, so after switching you don't have to start from the very top. As it was in HoI2, the country-examples for paths are Germany, USA, Britain, Soviet Union.

Divisional leaders are also gone, here's Darkrenown on the topic:

I wonder if the chain of command will be next to go? It's one that probably most often leaves newbies scratching their head (SOOO DIFFICULT) and is just as much work as assigning divisional leaders.

 

I'd prefer more branches on my doctrine tree. Also desperate measures as a doctrine? Which part of "desperate" they don't understand? I hope that despite the name it will be a viable choice.

Also hilarious icons.

 

That's the historical Germany path, so they don't have to "respecc" to put it in MMO-terms, in 1944. More victorious Germany can continue with the Modern Blitz path.

 

I know they went that way but you wont tell me some senior German officers sat down and designed a doctrine about conscripting children and handicapped. It was done out of necessity not a true doctrine of the army.

 

I hope it is better than the HoI2 version of it, cause that shit was awful.

Also, I hope the tech, under mobile infantry, with the horse and the cart?/rocket arty piece over the prohibition sign is called Goodbye Horses.

 

Malakal, that's true. The tree-system doesn't fit very well at all with anything that tries to model reality. Except for trees themselves. It's not like any of the big players religiously followed only a single doctrine all the time. It's strange that when they are finally moving away from the rigid tree-structure when it comes to tank/ship/plane models, they return to it in doctrines.

 

Boys are you aware you can research stuff from both branches simultaneously?

 

In a way I'm happy they did this, I liked the old doctrine trees better than the HoI3 thou-must-research-almost-everything approach. Still, it's amusing how they went back to this while redoing some other things.

Any news on the national special bonuses they talked about (I'm still placing 50:50 odds on there being a special bonus for Sweden but only a generic one for Finland)?

Yea, the HoI2 doctrines were REALLY unbalanced. That was the downside there. I think Darkest Hour and other re-releases actually made that shit even worse in terms of balance.

 

No you can't. Some stuff is identical to multiple trees, as the icons show, but you can only research one branch at a time, and there's exclusive stuff even inside branches.

 

Britain as GBP? Soviets as Mass Assault? Cmon Paradox, you aren't really this dumb are you?

Realistically Mass Assault isn't a doctrine, it's the lack of a doctrine, and no one was dumb enough to just throw men away like that. Everyone should be GBP before the war breaks out, at which point Mobile and SFP open up. And I'm not even sure Mobile and SFP should really be separate doctrines, but we will see what they do with them.

The announcement of these fills me with dread.

 

It's also amusing how much damage control Pdox devs are doing at their forums. Darkrenown already called me a troll and Johan said I'm being ridiculous for wanting non-Steam version of the game. Every other comment from them is "guys guys wait and see, it'll be awesome" or "4/10 bad trolling" or "we're NOT dumbing down the game, just streamlining it and making it more accessible".

 

GBP is the UK and Japan, iirc. Japan uses the old infiltration assault doctrines from WW1 while UK uses the slow, but steady advance.

I'm curious to see how Shock and Awe is portrayed vs Air Land Battle, because I'm pretty sure that doctrine (S&A) is from the mid 1990s.

Yeah, they did. They pretty much made the big three's doctrines the only good ones, GBP got buffed and nerfed, they very slighty buffed the French and British part of it and massively nerfed the Jap one. I hope infiltration assault is good again.

 

The advantages of Steam for Paradox have been established, not sure why argue against that.

 

Ridiculous for wanting nonsteam game?

Isn't Shock and Awe a name for using ridiculous number of guided missiles?
I tried Shock and Awe in my todays game in SupCom. Pissed everyone, and explained back player he should make missile defense. In retrospective it was hugely successful. One missile got through. I exploded 3 minutes later on GC when they were not dazzed by Shock and Awe. Thought I bound two opponents by being aggressive. If center used the chance, they could get trough. You can watch the replay in FAF vault as 2119002.