Hearts of Iron 4 - The Ultimate WWII Strategy Game

Playing more of HOI4 and I really don't like it, the combat is so simplistic it's offensive. It must be I guess to allow the battleplans to have any impact, but all you build is infantry and tanks. There's like 3 units that matter, infantry have insanely high defense, artillery have good soft attack, and tanks are really fast and resistant to soft attacks and are well rounded in damage, that's it. The AI instantly knows how many infantry to put on your borders and then you either advance slowly because you micro better / have better tech, or you better pull out some tank tactics and encircle or whatever.

Advancing with infantry is excruciatingly slow and it's like that on purpose because of retarded defense values. Oh and although planes are pretty cool in how they impact the battlefield, the number of planes that attack the enemy is dependent on their combat width or something, so basically you can't throw 1000 CAS on a lousy unit and take it out instantly, no sir, you go slowly through attrition for some plane damage no matter the battle size, you slowly do organization damage and advance. Or use tanks which are sort of your trump card but they have their own problems. Here units are so BALANCED that units fall into this simple MMO-like unit archetype. And then there's a hard cap on resources of sorts, you simply are never going to have tanks be more than a certain %. Technology is useless, costs are obscene to try to rush techs, but you want to anyway because they're one of the few ways you can outsmart the stupid chains you're tied to.

The game just feels extremely "balanced" or held inside a straight jacket. For EU4 that was fine because you got to larp a million national ideas and had 400 years to let stuff happen, here it's just annoying.

 

SOVIET UNION

 

russia

 

It beats listening to Quill18.

 

I can see the skeleton of a really good game, here.

But it needs fleshing out. Kaiserreich has already been announced, as has BICE.

I'm more about the former, than the latter, but I know some of you are gluttons for that railroadin' experience.

 

I'm pretty sure quill18 is at the other end of the spectrum. His voice and tone make his videos "easy listening" material, but ...
well, getting ON topic again, his vids on HoI4 show him just derping around doing things that are often clearly wrong or "dangerous", but the game/AI never punishes them.
It's insane how successful he was in his Italy playthrough, and none of it appeared to be challenging.
DDRJake bending game rules beyond recognition and thus pulling off insane feats is one thing, but quill plays far, far from optimally and doesn't seem to willingly/knowingly use exploits, yet he points his finger at something and his italian armies take it.
This, combined with the fact that in most streams Germany seems to struggle with the most basic things like taking Poland (or even Luxembourg) are what has discouraged me from trying this game myself so far.

 

It's actually not, at least for me. It wears on my nerves and I find myself closing it when I try to play him in the background when I'm playing something.

 

Really? Well, tastes differ, I guess.
I found myself closing streams of another streamer (the name doesn't spring to mind) because he said - in a specific, drawn out fashion - "okay" all the friggin time. For some reason it really got on my nerves.
At least there's no shortage of streamers on YT (albeit most of them suck in one way or another).

 

Yeah I'm on the verge of unsubscribing to him. Shenryyr isn't bad to listen to and has a nice, casual way of speaking that doesn't bother, however, his deliberate mispronunciation of country names drives me nuts.

He's made a subscriber outta me, I just have to get used to the odd v/w switch. His accent oddly reminds me of a no longer existent YouTuber from Bavaria with an easy going, but fun way of speaking. Name like JohnZoidberg or something.

I wish he'd completed his Betrayal of Krondor LP.

 

After messing with battleplans it looks like it's better to use them at all for any active fronts as for every bit of micromanaging and annoyance it saves the player it adds as much of it's own plus a bonus with ruined organisation. But from positive side it doesn't really need much of work to be useful, just AI should be prohibited from using strategic redeployement (who ever thought it was good idea to allow AI mess with it?) and something like "defend" or "wait" command for divisions which allow them stay in the province without AI constantly trying to move them in some other places.

 

Yeah, seeing that the game is getting QA and design feedback from the likes of that guy served to drop my expectations dramatically, and I think to a big extent explains the quality of design and gameplay. At this point I hope this is playable in a year, a year and a half.

BTW, all who bought this (a Paradox game) at release should be lined up and shot, and their profiles banned from a respectable gaming forum.

 

You have to combine battleplan with manual control for maximum effectivness. Set a battleplan for your whole army and control manualy 1-2 battalions (or more if you can manage it) to make breakthrough points and capture key strategic points.
Be sure you have 50% attacking bonus from battleplan even if you manualy control, you have to do this once, and then the bonus ticks down for some time, so you don't have to create it again every single fight.


Hoi 4 for me is best of Hoi 2 combined with streamlined hoi3. I always was more of a hoi 2 player so Hoi 4 is good for me.

 

I seem to be getting the hang of this whole peace conference thing in regards to making the AI stop cockblocking my glorious vision:

I gave the whole Diplo-Axis thing a go, and it went quite well for me. I beelined the stuff from get-go, figuring having a strong alliance beats earlier extra industry and research slot etc, and managed to get Poland to go fascist and join Axis, as well as carve up the Balkans into my backyard with only Bulgaria and Romania out of the Axis (I also figure it's better in the long run to divide Yugoslavia into two puppets, given that Croatia will be able to give the place a doubling down on the focuses that expand industry). The only thing that caused problems for me was AFTER this whole thing, when the damn Poles took a lot of savescumming NOT to give half their country for free to the Soviet Union (WHEN POLAND HAD A MASSIVE ALLIANCE BACKING THEM UP) and join the Allies (wat). World War II started in early 1940 when Soviet Union declares war on Poland, and United Kingdom invades Denmark. Why can't all these commies and degenerate islanders leave poor peaceful fascists alone

Did you manage to get the diplo focuses done BEFORE Japan makes some kind of peace conference in China that causes over 9000 world tension?

 

Damn, just finished first game as French, going full democratic "French Entente" and was a blast.
Ended up again the Axis and then later on Comintern and while it took a while to end the Fascists (Japan was a little bitch), that screen kinda made me chuckle...

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That's right, while I liberated and converted stuff, Iran just land grabbed like crazy and ended up with most Russian lands. Once we cleaned up Japan (bloody Allies where useless, as expected), Iran gone and grabbed Japan too while I consolidated France in Africa and some of the Pacific Islands.

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After that, it was world peace, until end of 1948 when, for some reason, Democratic Germany declared war on Yougoslavia, part of my Entente, and we proceeded to destroy Germany, again, before the end of the game a month or two later.


Overall, awesome game though it was a fucking bitch at first.
French option for "Little Entente" is really interesting and it makes sense too. The UK is safe on it's island so cannot be a reliable ally for a continental France since we perceive threats very differently. Meanwhile, aligning with Yugoslavia and Romania early on, then defending Poland, is bloody rough to handle once the shit breaks but insanely fun.

One thing that REALLY annoyed me is that securing peace had me cause insane amount of World Tension increase, something like 110% for war against Comintern and something alike for war against Axis. That made EVERYONE on Earth not part of my Entente hate me, which is fucking stupid! Aside from that, tons of fun

 

Dunno, but probably not. Tension went 100% by about 1940.

If I'll ever try this crap again, I'll probably go supporting party everywhere and do all the "befriend" foci before "award"/"fate of" stuff. Dunno if it has the "threat" mechanics like the blessed HoI3 did, but it appears me carving Yugos made everybody and their grandma run crying to the Brits. Should have invoked the more aggressive diplomacy last.

 

To me creating the bizarro alternate history where Adolf goes down in history as the guy who saved The White Man from the Red Tide and Irishmen seemed to work best to just rush the diplo-foci. Did you have Historical Focuses on? I had that turned off in order to get a crazy game.

 

Last French Entente run was historical turned off.

I'm going at it again actually since it was so much fun, ironman and historical this time. First try, I was doing "ok" but suddenly Franco spain entered the war before even finishing spanish war and caught me totally unaware and rolled through France while Both Germany and Italy made a push. Ended right then and there. Won't stop me from trying again though.

 

It was going so well. Then france and UK failed to attack italy, so I had to deal with that. Hungary declared war, so I had to make a front there too. Then Romania joined in. Then USSR and Axis allied...



I really want to shrink the front, but all of my poles are spent holding the line

 

Just got finished MAKING ANATOLIA GREEK AGAIN!

Now fighting the Allies, but I did not join the Axis; I will fight the Allies with the NEW ROMAN EMPIRE (Consisting of Slavs and Greeks)

 

Is this game out yet?

 

My Australian empire is going well.

I had planned to take the Philippines but the American navy was too strong, so I'm focusing on defence of the isles with ground forces while I build a larger navy. The US attempted several naval invasions but they were no match for the diggers.

 

So I finished my Germany game UND DER DEUTSCHES VOLK SIEG HEIL! Though given that it ended in Summer 1945 I figure I wasting time just building even biggerer and betterer stuff because I'm too cautious. The winning stroke was smuggling troops to New York after supporting a Silver Legion coup. I dunno if my Atomic Blitz that came with it made things faster or slower, because the entire Eastern Coast was bogged down at zero Organization for months because of the nuked Infrastructure and things didn't get better until I requested control of Boston just to rebuild its ports and infrastructure ASAP by Summer.

Seems like it's very important to focus on building as many Civilian Factories as you can by 1939 because that's what truly powers your war effort by letting you constantly keep up with the building slot cap increases.

 

Surprisingly easy at 1939-1940 tbh.

 

I think the best reason to stage coups mid-war is to have maps that make some goddamn sense. Also, I really wish they eventually add a Client State feature like EU4 has so you can do something about all these swathes of insanity.

Also, I had nothing to do with what's going on in Poland. They've had two civil wars now after joining the Axis, with communists winning the one they started around 1940 after Soviet Union was carved up (and the commies stayed in the Axis and all that, so what the shit mang), and after the war and the civil wars in BR and Argentina that German volunteers won they had another one and this time it's the Axis putting down the fascist coup what the fuck I don't even...

EDIT: Oh yea, and the Allies are still around, only members being Philippines and Liberia. Their opinion of Germany is magnificent -1391.