Hearts of Iron 4 - The Ultimate WWII Strategy Game

The US is crippled in 1936-1940, reducing your manpower, your factory output and rendering you unable join wars unless attacked. You can beeline for tech that lets you join wars, but that will leave you with great depression tech and industry. Especially on historical focus, this lets Japan - and even Mexico to some degree - fuck up a considerable part of us factories in a surprise attack. Mexico beelining for fascism, invading Brazil and Venezuela for a few extra factories, then jumping the US in late 1938 should stand a good chance against the fractured US army.

Especially an early Venezuela would be good. They have a lot of oil, which Hitler will gladly buy off of you for extra factories

 

The issue is the logistics of doing all of that when the attack on Pearl Harbour was the very limit Japan was able to send their carriers to. People talk about Japan replacing the raid with an invasion of Hawaii, if only to give them lots of time to wreck the naval base but they simply lacked the transports and oilers to pull it off, something that would dog them through the entire war.

Does this game have anything like that?

For a game set in WWII to lack such an aspect is shocking, it would be like having one without an air warfare component.

Mexico invading the US would be in the same position Germany was against the Soviet Union, invading a front that was cone shaped, increasingly demanding more logistical support spread out over a wider area, father and father away from home with the men on a given area of the front spread out thinner and thinner.

The US wasn't crippled either, they just had to tighten their belts and start pumping shit out, which is what they did 39-41 effectively making a new military. That's the thing about the US in WWII, they not only did what they did, they did it while facing the Great Depression, which only ended when the war did.

But I'm not surprised Paradox has gone this way, it just feels like it's going way beyond even what you could manage in Victoria with a minor nation.

I mean, if they can buff Sweden as well, whose only claims to fame during the era were making the only service operational pusher prop fighter and decriminalizing homosexuality, what should I expect...

 

Mexico invading the US in the 30s or 40s is downright preposterous. Strictly military matters aside, Mexico lacked anything remotely resembling an industrial base. But Paradox has been steadily going farther from simulation and more toward beer & pretzels sandboxy just-have-fun-with-it games. Which are fun, but you have to adjust expectations going in. In HoI3, the AI completely ignored naval logistics limits. I wouldn't be surprised if the same were true in this iteration.

 

Paradox made an achievement for invading the USA as Mexico. Anything that has an achievement has to be reasonably doable for your average retard on steam.

 

I don't remember if someone said it here or on the official forums, but I recall someone stating that EU or CK style preposterous makes a certain amount of sense. Taking a one province minor to world conquest over the course of centuries? Highly unlikely, but not outside the realm of possibility. But the time scale of HoI makes this sort of things both patently obvious and downright silly.

Of course the more history you know the more absurd it seems. Mexico wasn't just extremely underdeveloped economically. It was a nation barely 20 years out of a brutal civil war. It still faced barely-suppressed internal socio-economic tensions and an embryonic political structure that relied upon careful balancing of a variety of those pressures to maintain legitimacy. And perhaps most of all, Mexican national identity even to this day is still closely tied up in non-interventionism. Especially back then, the idea of Mexico marauding through the Americas wouldn't simply have been horrifying or silly, it would have been unthinkable to every Mexican from the intelligentsia down to the rudest campesino. Mexico was separated from Santa Ana style ambitions by a century of intervention by foreign powers into their country which developed a strong sense of victimhood and an absolute commitment to national sovereignty, particularly of countries who lacked the power to enforce it themselves.

But there's no way to model that sort of thing in HoI 4. Pass the pretzels and click the Invade Button!

 

Even things like holding Poland ought to require a very, very skilled player let alone the AI itself apparently routinely managing to reach Berlin. Will wait for sales/mods.

 

Some quick googlefu shows the U.S. military in 1936 as:

National Guard strength was about 180,000 men, many of which were on... the Mexican border. Dunno the strength of other military arms.

But yeah, not happening. Pretty sure Texas alone could have fought off Mexico during this time period.

It makes for amusing ahistorical gameplay, I guess, but to me it just shows some flaws in the game design. Then again, you either find complicated ways to make minor states interesting or you just give them map painting skills like anybody else

 

People were conquering world as minors like Albania way back in HOI 3, so it's very silly talking about it as something new and unexpected is silly if not outright autistic. Fixing AI to not be braindead half of the time should make this matter more complicated and Paradox now is more eager to nerf cheese strategies and exploits than they were now, but even then players still find a way to accomplish ahistorical things against AI.
In their streams they claimed that none from their company could make Ethiopia work, but I wouldn't be that suprised to see Ethiopia annexing Italy in the near future.

 

This was done by AI in my current game. The trouble was it didn't fight for correct side, thus it has been destroyed already.

 

Do naval logistics limits apply to AI in any paradox game?

 

the thing about ethiopia is that they are set against an superior opponent from the start. Human players win primarly due to better preparation/hindsight, all they have left with ethiopia is trying to outmanoeuvre the AI... with less units.

So the simplest solution in stopping the player from doing "silly" stuff is to remove the 1936 start.

 

The interesting bits from a game like this is to also try and do silly stuff though, especially for long term replayability.

 

This much should be obvious, otherwise only playable nations would be France, Germany, Italy, USA, UK, Soviet Union and Japan. Maybe China, depending on how well its represented.

 

Honestly China is not "playable" now. At least not fun playable. Infantry is completely useless unsupported and that's all China has for the first year of war, because apparently researching things like Artillery is something you have to do in 1936.

Eventually you can do something but for a long time vs. Japan the only possible Chinese strategy is to have more men than the Japs have bullets and just rotate divisions in and out as bullet sponges. Give up trying to attack with a SA of around 30, it's WW1-levels of spending 100k troops and several months to advance one province.

 

if japs declare war in '38-39 instead of '37-38 you've no problem

 

French historical ironman Little Entente failed attempt #12...

I can somewhat survive a bit more now if I don't do much but can't "beat" Germany or Italy. Eventually they just roll over with crazy planning and armies as I can't really keep up. If I attack Italy, my German front is too weak and collapses after BENELUX fails (forts are useless against tons of bomber and planning) and if I attack Germany, Italy cleans up his Eastern front and pushes through Nice like butter eventually.

Fucking Allies don't really do anything for years either.


Doesn't help that the battleplan AI is a bit fucked sometimes, which forces me to micro, which I don't want to do...

 

This is what I meant, well represented China should NOT be playable due to lack of organization, industry, technology and stability.

 

OR
well represented China should be playable, then you most likely get fucked due to lack of organization, industry, technology and stability, especially on historical setting.

BUT
If going non historical, then maybe Japan leaves you the fuck alone long enough for China to actually do something before 1949...


And that's my HoI4 game right here in the long run

 

No, I thing players players having about equal advantage over AI in both tactic and strategy. And tactical part is more important in HOI, unlike other Paradox series where strategy is having main role, because of it's focus on warfare. But of course if you leave players "only" with tactical advantage and then further diminish it by given AI handicap in terms of superior starting position, then yes, players would have way harder time than they have now.

Ethiopia case wasn't that big of the deal in HOI3, because of how easy it was to starve italians to death. With revamped supply system, which even AI could use, and the fact that, despite all his faults, he at least capable of guarding his ports, make this start way harder than in HOI3. Still AI in it's current form makes sense only about half the time even in the most basic situations like trying to surround the enemies and trying to prevent himself from being surrounded, which means that he know how to do the right things, but due to bugs or mistakes in code failing to perceive some situations where he should do them. And there is annoying thing with AI ruining his divisions organisation near frontline because of SR. Until these things are fixed I wouldn't consider Ethiopia as something completely impossible.

 

China had a good number of elite German-trained divisions that were supplied and commanded to at least the same standard as the average Japanese divisions. What happened was that China didn't go on to spread the knowledge gained to the rest of the army, and foolishly ordered all of their best divisions to make a final stand at Shanghai early in the war. The recall of German military advisors from China was actually a very important thing for Japan.

Unfortunately HoI4 doesn't really have "elite" units. It just has constantly increasing production and an overall constant increase in the amount of power your divisions have. The supposed "elite" designation that prioritizes for upgrades is almost meaningless in its actual effect. The worst way this shows up is in the lack of fuel for navy, where Japan had a bit of a soft cap to the amount of ships they could have in HoI3 yet in HoI4 its 5 carriers in 1938, 10 carriers in 1940, 20 carriers in 1942, etc.

 

Elite status for divisions might be a fairly good idea for giving minors more bang for their buck if the quantity of elite units was not relative to size but absolute as a value.

 

i doubt that fuel, ammo and industry will ever be fixed/introduced.

 

On a game with that scale?
Highly unlikely, if you ask me.

At least the fuel and ammo part.

They have to keep some balance here between Excel and Minesweeper.

 

Fuel and ammo are probably abstracted into the % of equipment that's consumed while fightan and training as well as having to stay in range of supply bases.

 

Being able to achieve much with any minor in a game taking place in the WW2 timeframe is a bit like being able to pick any of the people from the audience in the next FIFA game and win out against the pros.
I for one thing it's completely ridiculous how much you can achieve with minors in this game.

Hmm. I could swear HoI 1 - played on exactly the same scale - had fuel and ammo (or supplies).

Guess that's why this thread is tagged with "Decline"...