Hearts of Iron IV - The Ultimate WWII Strategy Game

[fraxli]

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...evelopment-diary-6th-of-november-2015.890172/


Hello everyone and welcome back to another development diary for Hearts of Iron IV. This week have been rather focused as we are closing in on the beta milestone. Today we’ll take a deep look at USA.

The United States is one of the largest countries in the world in 1936, but the only major power outside euras]a. They control several islands in the pacific, and the Philippines is a puppet. All of the americas is guaranteed by USA at the start as well. Obviously the USA's states don't fit 1 to 1 on a game-mechanic-concept, so some lesser states have been merged.



When it comes to resources, the americans live in abundance. They have more than enough of Oil, Steel, Tungsten and Aluminium, and will profit greatly from their exports in the early game. They lack rubber and chromium, but Chromium can be gotten from Cuba and rubber from Brazil, augmented by synthetic production.

USA starts with two national spirits.
The Great Depression, costing 1 PP every day, until removed in the 1940 election.Home of the Free, which allows them to create factions, but not to join any faction led by another ideology.The US also have disarmed nation & undisturbed isolation as laws from the start, which needs to be changed to unleash their power.

The US Army is not that strong at the start, with 36 divisions, and about half of them being basically garrison brigades.

The Navy is relatively strong, with 3 carriers, 15 battleships, 15 heavy cruisers, 9 light cruisers, 115 destroyers and 77 submarines, but that is just a fraction of the power they will be able to unleash when they have built up.

The airforce is not that big, with less than 900 planes in it, and not yet any B-17’s available .

The focus tree for USA is big and gives plenty of options.
Issue War Bonds - Allows for powerful bonuses, but only possible if at war with another major.WPA & War Propaganda - Targeted buildups depending on which country USA ends at war with.Air War Plans Division - What to focus the US Airforce on?Bureau of Ships - How to strengthen the US Navy.Reaffirm Monroe Doctrine - Turning entire americas into democracies that like the US, with possibilities to create pro-democratic civil wars.

Next week we'll be explaining why its a bad idea to tell 40 mechanized divisions to attack the Gobi desert.


Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk

 

[Space Satan]

DD about supply. At last they are talking about important aspects, not some country sneak peeks

Spoiler

Another Friday, another diary! Today we will be talking about something a lot of you have been asking about for a long time: The Supply System. This is going to be a big one!

The HOI3 supply system had a lot of problems. It was hard to understand how it worked, and it was hard to know what to do to solve supply problems for the player because it was usually due to missing something some time ago. We even made a separate Arcade Mode for supply which of course nobody used (what self respecting player would pick something called "Arcade Mode"?).

After a couple of glasses of 16yo Lagavulin and some deep thoughts the following problems needed to be solved:

• It must at any point be possible to look at an area and see how many troops can work there without problems. Also for naval invasions.
• It must be possible to see exactly what the bottleneck in your supplies are and give the player possible actions to fix this that are clear.
• The supply system itself must not have long complicated flow networks where cause and effect are hidden by time.
• The supply system must not collapse if a capital is taken which was a big problem in HOI3 and both unrealistic and not fun.
• Holding out in cities should be possible even when cut off from the rest of your force.
• Resistance must be able to hurt your supply lines without being a Whac-A-Mole problem.
• Supply issues need to get gradually worse for a unit rather than feel binary like in HOI3.

Scary list? Sure is, but I think we managed to solve all of it. So how does it work then?

• The world is separated up in Supply Areas, made up of provinces. They are purely for gameplay and generally follow terrain types and such.
• Each area can tell you at a glance exactly how many divisions it can support and how much you are taking up.
• If you hover your mouse over an area it will show you an arrow tracing the path supply takes, and indicate what is limiting it. Areas also have quick buttons for helping solve problems right there (improve naval base level or infrastructure etc).
• The game will show alerts from areas with supply problems to notify player (super useful when you are, say, Britain and spread over many theaters).

The supply level of an area are decided by the following things:

• A local scripted value. Think of it as base infrastructure that can't really be destroyed (will be basically 0 in mountains and deserts and pretty high in densely populated Europe).
• Any big cities/victory points will increase it. So holding out in these is possible.
• Local resistance movement activity in occupied territory disrupting things for you (we'll have a separate diary on these guys)
• Incoming supplies from neighbor area. We trace back to capital, or if capital is cut off the next best area. The supply you get is limited by the lowest infrastructure on your route (also possibly sabotaged by resistance), including your own infrastructure level. So for a player what you need to care about is what the bottleneck is, because that is what is going to affect how troops on the front fare. There is also some guaranteed spillover from neighbors to soften the transitions between bad and good areas (simulating that even if decent railway lines stop at a point it's feasible to transport some distance with trucks or horses etc).
• If we are cut off from home area, say fighting in Africa, or on an island, supply will travel overseas using convoys and be limited by the size of the ports receiving it. So making sure convoys are not sunk and bases are able to sustain you is important before doing any overseas activities.
• Put transport planes on a mission to drop supplies. Useful for cut off troops (this is still WIP so can't show it yet).
• It also worth noting that supply areas will change size if they are being fought over so actual levels will depend on how much you control.

When a unit finds itself out of supply it has a short period of time where they can live off their own supplies, after that their situation will gradually get worse up to about 30 days when things get very bad. Being out of supply makes you lose organization, move slower, not fight as effectively and take a lot more attrition. Veteran players of HOI know that the best way to beat the enemy is to cut off their supply, encircle them and then destroy them, and this remains true in HOI4.

So how can a player improve their supply situation?
You start by finding the bottleneck.

• Improve infrastructure to allow more supply into the area.
• If linked by sea, make sure to escort convoys and protect them from raiders.
• Build bigger naval bases to allow better throughput.
• Deal with local resistance.
• Research and attach Supply Companies to your division templates to help them manage.
• Airdrop supplies.
• Simply withdraw some troops from an area.

So, what is supply exactly?
In HOI3 supplies was something you produced and stockpiled, then fed into a flow network towards units. In HOI4 the only thing you can stockpile is equipment so this is what you do. Moving, training, fighting, being in bad weather or in particular in bad supply means equipment breaks down and this equipment needs to be shipped. The worse a supply situation is the longer it will take to send equipment and the more attrition you will take. So instead of a flow network we have a system being limited by bottlenecks.

So this means that the abstract "supply" of HOI3 is now instead requests for specific equipment instead which fits a lot better in with HOI4's equipment and production focus. This also means that there is no separate fuel need as such in the game, this instead is included in production of replacement equipment which need Oil (all tanks, trucks etc). Before everyone chokes on their friday beer give this some thought. Being able to stockpile fuel generally leads to the same problems as all other kinds of stockpiling when it comes to hindsight, so by wrapping it into the actual production of equipment requests to units (also nobody would request a tank without diesel to run it, and if they did it wouldn't really be usable as a tank) everything clicks into place and player doesn't have to micro manage all movement, airplane rebasing etc to try to avoid fuel waste and focus on making sure they have access to a strategic Oil resource and replacement equipment and a clear path for units to be supplied.

(p.s dont look too much at the numbers in all these screenshots, we havent really finished balancing supply yet)

Next diary we will take a look at civil wars and coups!

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Now this looks like a good direction, particularly all the allusions to making resistance groups work differently from previous.

 

[a Goat]

The question is whether it'll still be possible to launch uprisings.

 

[GarfunkeL]

Hahaha, no more fuel! That is so fucked up.

 

[Anthedon]

Check your e-mail if you have signed up for the beta.

 

[Space Satan]

DD, civil wars

Spoiler

Welcome back to the development diaries of Hearts of Iron IV. This week's diary is about the new system for civil wars and comes from the scripting side of the team, since this feature is closely tied to the political system and its events. I'm Rufus, scripter and content designer on Hearts of Iron IV, and have worked on many of the political events affecting the process you'll see a bit of today.

Rather than limiting the possibility of civil wars to a few predetermined countries such as Spain and China, the new system allows for any country to become divided over political differences if the conditions are right — or wrong, depending on which side of things you're standing when the war breaks out.

Let's start out with a semi-historical example. Greece was plunged into civil war shortly after the end of World War II. But what if the political climate of Greece was different? What if the communist power base was larger, and the war broke out before Metaxas' death?

In the above screenshot, Greece has selected communist party leader Nikos Zachariadis in its ministers view. This does not represent Metaxas actually cooperating with Zachariadis, but rather allowing him to be active in the country, which is our tool for letting the player shift the nation's politics. While the change is slow, a combination of external factors such as other nations supporting the Communist Party of Greece and events causing shifts in popular opinion has allowed its popular support to grow significantly.

If it reaches high enough levels, the player may choose to side with the communists and start a civil war on their side. Even if not actively pursued, if support continues to grow due to external pressure despite the player's best efforts, a civil war will be inevitable and the player will have to choose their side.

In this case, the player chooses to side with the Metaxas regime. So what happens when the war breaks out? One nation becomes two. This is not a pre-scripted civil war, so how exactly the nation is divided may differ, but in this case, the Provisional Democratic Government, as the communist administration is declared, operates from Crete and Thrace. It immediately enters a state of war with the Metaxas regime, both seeking to reunite Greece under their rule.

In the case of historical civil wars that happen more or less on schedule, such as the one in Spain, the division is not arbitraty, but based on the historical circumstances. However, war will play out in a similar manner, and just as foreign support and volunteers played an important role in the Spanish Civil War, countries can try to intervene and support the side that they want to seize power in the country.

Lastly, civil wars can be triggered not only by internal political turmoil, but also by foreign-supported attempted coups. In the example below, Germany is planning a coup in Belgium. They will have to supply both Political Power and equipment for the attempt, but if they succeed, they can throw the nation off balance and possibly even get a friendly government in place without any direct military involvement.

Next week, we'll talk more about Germany and its role in the game.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Oh hell yes. The civil war style from CK and EU:Rome is really welcome and is another feature that allows the game to handle well beyond predetermined paths.

 

[XenomorphII]

I am getting so excited for this game. Hopefully, they will eventually do a Cold War and WWI DLC.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

WWI DLC isn't guaranteed due to Victoria 3 option, but I can bet Cold War DLC is the first big one they have planned.

 

[Makabb]

Just let me conquer whole world with Hitler and fly to the moon.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

As long as fly to the moon is euphenism for Cold War With Nazis.

 

[mondblut]

WWI DLC isn't guaranteed due to Victoria 3 option, but I can bet Cold War DLC is the first big one they have planned.

I think the first big DLC will be "you can play USSR in this innovative, groundbreaking expansion".

 

[Makabb]

As long as fly to the moon is euphenism for Cold War With Nazis.

cold war will probably be a dlc

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Yea, I think the base systems already seem to provide a good basis for making the first Hearts of Iron game that can MECHANICALLY handle peace-diplo-spies game without relying on events. What a Cold War DLC expansion would need is mechanics for proxy warfare and thermonuclear war.

 

[dehimos]

That guy isn't Franco. Reality:

Paradox:

 

[a Goat]

Wait, they've reduced number of parties to 4?

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

The political system was changed so that there are now four distinct ideological leanings in the world stage (democratic, fascist, communist, and neutral), and the number of parties I guess reflects that.

 

[a Goat]

Oh shit, why.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Well, since political ideology now has more functions than just a vague effect on what ministers you can choose and dictatorship/democracy division. One important feature that's in is that democracies may have to form coalition governments with fascists or communists, and the CK2/EU:R style civil war system.

And really, the large number of parties in HoI3 didn't serve any other purpose than to limit the minister pool and muddy the water (really, did the other two socialist parties serve any purpose whatsoever other than to be historical namedrops?), especially given how in most cases the initial or second ruling party would rule forever and the government type which determined the accepted minister pool was almost impossible to change from the inside. Not to mention the system was rather weird, given how America First Committee was treated as a party, and at that one that would have made it EASIER to go to war. By contrast, democracies having the interventionist vs isolationist paradigm from Democracy and Neutral ideologies will do considerably better in reflecting reality and providing actually meaningful mechanics, and Neutral (since the way it sounds like it is not linked to government form, just minding your own business) also enables for isolationist dictatorships of both stripes which is very good as well.

EDIT: Another good example of how rather dumb the old party system was how German-American Bund was also a US Party, when really the only fascist party needed would have been Silver Legion of America. A similar case would be in Finland with only IKL being necessary, since Lapua Movement had de facto ended by the game's timeframe and Sinimustat was a minor youth organization with links to IKL and Lapua Movement before it was banned and reorganized as IKL's own youth organization.

 

[Average Manatee]

No fuel in a fucking WW2 game really smacks of a "the AI can't handle it so instead of fix the AI we dumbed the game down" philosophy. Their "fix" of stopping production when you lose control of a resource is silly. Japan didn't attack the Allies because they wanted to be able to have 4 carriers in the production queue rather than 2, they attacked because their thousands of ships would be 100% useless in a few months due to the oil embargo if that didn't.

Yeah, the 4 party thing has been known for a while. It's dumbing down but I can take that in a WW2 game. The HoI3 system had tons of weirdness (like, the UK can invest in espionage to sponsor a democratic coup in Japan in 1936, but the USA and France can't. Why? UK is Social Conservative while France and USA are both Social Liberal). It's a distinction that makes sense in a Victoria 3 game, not a HoI4 game.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

I could hardly call it dumbing down when it actually creates a new system that does something. The HoI3 system WAS dumber than a pile of bricks and had next to no mechanical value, what they promise here is NOT dumbed down (because there is nothing to dumb down) and actually promises to matter in the game.

As for fuel, the fuel system in HoI3 was a pointless addition that only added a second layer to Oil that served no purpose whatsoever. And the new system DOES still require fuel for your dudes, because supplies are now handled through specific goods, meaning tank supplies need tank production, which in turn requires oil. In that sense it's a more elegant system I'd say, since it actually needs you do something with the oil produced (since fuel in HoI3 was essentially completely the same as oil, being purely an unnecessary extra step). So in the new system, Japan's fleet should in theory require supplies that require oil to be produced.

 

[Average Manatee]

I could hardly call it dumbing down when it actually creates a new system that does something. The HoI3 system WAS dumber than a pile of bricks and had next to no mechanical value, what they promise here is NOT dumbed down (because there is nothing to dumb down) and actually promises to matter in the game.

Yeah I was referring specifically to the less number of parties, not the general system.

As for fuel, the fuel system in HoI3 was a pointless addition that only added a second layer to Oil that served no purpose whatsoever. And the new system DOES still require fuel for your dudes, because supplies are now handled through specific goods, meaning tank supplies need tank production, which in turn requires oil. In that sense it's a more elegant system I'd say, since it actually needs you do something with the oil produced (since fuel in HoI3 was essentially completely the same as oil, being purely an unnecessary extra step). So in the new system, Japan's fleet should in theory require supplies that require oil to be produced.

Japan is going to be producing ships, right? If Japan is producing ships then clearly they have a net-positive oilflow, which means that they won't have oil problems for supplying units. Extra oil only allows them to produce ships faster. This is doubly so considering that stockpiles are out, if Japan was actually running an oil-deficit then Japan players would be starting in 1936 by deleting 3/4ths of their fleet.

Oil/Fuel split did serve a purpose, since you could only convert x oil into fuel depending on your IC, and capturing oil supplies didn't immediately give you tons of fuel. It was simply badly balanced and too easy to manage for players because Paradox had to give extra fuel to offset how bad the AI was at managing it.

 

[Space Satan]

It's a tradeoff for hindsight, when in HoI3 players hoarded amount of fuel enough to last for entire war.

 

[GarfunkeL]

I don't mind that oil-fuel is merged into one but that it's amalgamated into replacements is abhorrent. Because a tank certainly used more than one tank of gas during its life time. And lack of fuel was a massive handicap in WW2. Maybe they will make the generic supplies to require oil but that's a bit ham-fisted too.