Hearts of Iron 4 - The Ultimate WWII Strategy Game

Playing as Romania in a non-historical mode. Having a bit of a blast. Completely fucked up Hungary beyond belief by instigating a Republican revolt in the west right when they massed on my border and declared war. Dumb fucks didn't see that coming.

Now I'm at a standstill against the Axis. Germany is declaring war on everyone when it doesn't make sense. They broke the Molotov-Ribbentrop treaty despite Poland (Who opted to form a Baltic alliance) still being mostly intact.

Focusing on swaying Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, and Turkey to Democratic. At least, so that I may prevent them from joining the Axis. I saw one previous game where Turkey went Axis and if either joined they would fuck me up. My southern border is defenseless.

 

Thanks for ruining Paradox games for me jerk.

Seriously, sometimes I get the feeling that whenever Johan sees people pull off things like that (and frankly, Denmark shouldn't be able to achieve jack shit in the WW2 timeframe if the game were remotely plausible) they nerf the hell out of systems and thus throw the baby out with the bathtub - the feat becomes impossible to achieve in exactly the same fashion, but it also becomes impossible for majors to achieve half a dozen historically perfectly plausible things in the process.

But maybe it'll be different from now on with their recent embracing of shallow "anything goes" gameplay.

 

To be fair, it took a couple of attempts to find the proper cheese for annexing Norway and Lithuania before the invasion of Poland. (Estonia was guaranteed by the UK and Latvia got gobbled up by Russia who attacked the same time I did). The conquest of Sweden happened during the Molotov-Ribbentorp pact and was assisted by a considerable number of Russians passing through on their way to Finland.

The Danish conquest of the British isles on the other hand... That was 100% pølse. The great North Sea Empire borders under Knud the Great are reestablished!

 

On one hand i want to play this and on second i would wait for a few dlc's/patches untill major things get sorted out.
like the cold war DLC probably will move the end date up.

 

My fascist Australia game is going well. Annexed New Zealand and some other islands and I'm working on seizing rubber and oil from the Netherlands' colonies. I already built 50 subs and over 600 bombers to deal with the UK or US navy if they send a fleet my way, hopefully it's enough.

 

Jesus Christ, Venezuela is determined to make a name for themselves as volunteer fascist mercenaries. Every game I fight the Fascists, they're there. Everywhere.

 

They volunteered one division for me and helped annex Java. Thanks, I guess. They're not even Axis.

 

For anyone interested in division composition, here's what I got:



In general: you want big 44 width divisions (= 40 width after the -10% width trait, which means you can stack cleanly up to 80 or other multiples of 40). Larger divisions are better than more smaller divisions because they concentrate their defensive scores (400 attack enemy fighting two of your 200 defense divisions could really hurt one of them, if its fighting one 400 defense division it won't hurt nearly as much). It's also good for AI control, since the AI's biggest fault is attacking with only one division when it has 4 in the province. Make the divisions bigger so its forced to attack with large strength. Also helps for naval invasions, for which you have a 10 division limit early on yet it doesn't care whether the division has 25 battalions or 5 battalions. This also maximizes the effects of support divisions.

Infantry division: You want Marines or Mountaineers over Infantry usually. The terrain bonuses are huge (especially for AI control who fucks up terrain otherwise) and the cost/HP decrease isn't so bad when you are building large divisions. One AT is enough to pierce almost everything, more AT doesn't stack the piercing much higher and stacking Hard Attack isn't worthwhile when tanks need MOT/MEC with them that bring down their hardness anyway. One Medium SP ART is there just to provide a very minimal amount of cheap armor while still applying huge firepower. If the enemy doesn't have AT they won't pierce the SPART and your whole division gets huge bonuses. Funny enough the AI doesn't seem to have much AT.

This division excels in poor terrain and supply. 2 of them are also enough to easily naval invade any port which really screws the AI, and they'll probably be able to hold it quite a long time. 10 naval landing division limit means you can do 5 of these attacks simultaneously. Also keep in mind that you can have both a mountaineer and a marine division and swap your divisions in the field, all it takes is about a week of time reinforcing it (though you do lose some XP).

Armor division: This is the real ballbuster and is just ridiculously OP. It looks insanely expensive but that's just because I have MEC there instead of MOT for a little bit of extra hardness which is mostly over the top and not needed. Using MOT instead of MEC drops the price to around 6k production bucks which is absurdly cheap. SPART is just OP when massed. Make sure to upgrade spart as +5 attack +1 reliability, armor as +5 armor +1 reliability, TD as +5 attack +1 reliability. You'll easily pierce anything and anything but dedicated TD won't be able to pierce you (maybe variant armor with improved guns could pierce, but definitely not regular med armor). Bear in mind that these are pre-battle buff stats, add in a +110% planning bonus (Its hilarious that Grand Battle Plan is the OP doctrine now), +40% from a skill 8 general, another +30% from tactics and country modifiers and you WILL see upwards of 3.5k soft attack in the battle screen coming out of a single division. Even if the enemy is 60% hard, they are toast.

Once you can make armor divisions like this there's basically no reason not to make as many as possible. Unless you count the fact that the infantry divisions alone are enough to steamroll the game.

Edit: evidence of the silliness:

 

Hah, had a run-in with Fascist Canada and it turns out the leader of it was a weird motherfucker in real life:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrien_Arcand

 

So they provided an alternative to fighting poles over Danzig, yay. I gave potatoes Slovakia (who needs it anyway), they turned fascist and... joined the Allies.

Then I befriended Denmark. Except they joined the Allies too.

Then I befriended Netherlands. Except they joined the Allies too (see the pattern now?). Japs (whom I wisely did not invite into Axis, knowing they always screw the things up for everyone by attacking USA instead of opening second front against mordor subhumans as a good ally should) DOWing them didn't help either. Now brits own half the China.

Then subhumans annex Finland. Who joins Allies too. Then they annex muh fascist Poland. Allies fight vatniks, except they can't reach them. Heck, I even give brits and frogs military access through the Aryan Reich, not like it does anything.

By 1943, butthurt romanians still don't join the glorious and peaceful Axis. And their 9% democratic party remains in control despite fascists having 60% popularity at the last elections. Here goes a coup. Here goes a civil war. Fascist Legionary Romania joins the axis. Then the former Romania joins the Allies, finally dragging the Axis into 3-way world war.

God, this game is beyond retarded.

Also, by 1943 civil war in Spain is still all the rage, and Franco gets a sound beating. This alone is a reason enough to uninstall.

At least Estonia is still peaceful and independent. GJ, paradox.

 

`The Polish juggernaut cannot be stopped´

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHQyGGzRHYIZq9a6LYPLbXr3dgM15zWmI

Marbozir PT. After taking Berlin the flavor text mentioned Polish tanks ramming the Brandenburger Tor (one assumes drunk on fermented potato moonshine), which was a nice detail. He is fighting with divisions almost entirely composed of artillery, doing insane soft attack damage (i think it was 1800 plus). Cheap and completely OP, at least early on. I think someone in the comments calculated that artillery is actually the most efficient and effective damage dealer.

Im playing as the Reich myself, trying oddball strategies, since serious play means a walkover and a thousand year Reich basically right now.

 

How do you guys manage to tolerate the accent? Drugs?

He's probably a nice guy and all, but I really can't bring myself to watch an entire LP in his own special version of "itsa mee, Mario" .

 

So the game's really good, but the AI is really retarded...?

 

Heh I remember winning against Germany as Poland in HoI and HoI2 at the beginning. Guess they're back to their roots.

 

Psst someone upload da Kaiserreich alpha.

 

Guess my next ironman play is Polant for the right to Bear Arms

 

His accent is actually one of his channels USPs imo.

Besides that Marbozir is one of the few gaming YT channels i can tolerate, contrary to YT trends the guy seems modest and isnt full of himself, doesnt shout and has pretty good to excellent strategic/tactical LPs (initially focussed on CIV, at a very high level for that game now, for what thats worth).

I think his HoI PTs is one of the better ones right now (compare it to Arumba for example).

 

Unique - or at least uncommon - it is, no doubt about that. And like I wrote, I'm not trying to belittle the guy, heavy accent is just not my kind of thing, that's all.
German is my first language and I simply can't watch german LPs no matter what.I also quit Freeman's Mind when I hit the piratespeak episodes.
I guess I'm weird.

 

I quit watching the Paradox HoI streams because I couldn't stop laughing every time the QA guy they've got running the games said "Yermany".

 

Marbozir has hardly grown his channel in a whole year, no one likes his accent. Youtube is littered with eccentric almost-famous failures that refuse to work on their weaknesses and actually produce some quality entertainment for us.

 

Am tempted to make a let's play... But we all know how those tend to end on page 2.

 

I played HOI4, I'm not entirely responsible for that horrible mess. Communistic Japan declared war on Japan... I tried as communistic China. We had three way war when UK was in war with Russia, and communistic China didn't. And they for some reason fought on Chinese territory.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzuMIbmbRX5JS0R5MGRGYmdqYXM/view?usp=sharing
This is save from when it was still relatively sane.

I kinda should send these weapons for rebelion, but I wanted just friendly government, who could know they would start rebellion themselves when they would be over 1/2. Then I fought with Japanese in Siam in war for libaration of Chinese province, and obliterated them with Russia in Korea. Germany managed to defeat them, and last from game I seen was Communistic US joined Axis...

Considering Russian defeat is much more drastic than it was in HOI2, without at least Russian resources and blocking Germany tanks from reaching China directly, the rest was probably impossible. (BTW defeat of Russia created GREAT MONGLOLIAN CHANATE.)

 

Communist US in Axis is pretty common if you're instigating Gommunism(TM). Once they declare war on Librul US, they're de facto at war with the allies. If Comintern isn't at war with allies yet, they join Axis instead.

 

Getting OT but i think with stellaris and now HoI he gained about 10 % in a few months.

 

But Russia was at war with UK.
Actually they joined after it was defeated... Wonder why they didn't join the other side.