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Hearts of Iron IV - The Ultimate WWII Strategy Game

Vaarna_Aarne

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Well thing is that HoI3 didn't have enough meat on its bones besides the war mechanics, so it did very poorly if Germany didn't go to war and France didn't always lose.
 
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Well I can take Germany always going to war, but having it scripted to go to war on sept 1st 1939 because muh historical accuracy always killed tension. Same with Germany always invading France in the same space of a few months, always making the same half-hearted sealion attempt, then always attacking the Soviets. HPP for HoI3 did a good job of giving the AI a handful of extra tools, where sometimes Germany would fight the Soviets before the Allies, sometimes Italy would stay neutral, sometimes Japan would attack the Soviets rather than USA, sometimes war would start early. Even if Germany can't beat France or never even fights the allies, there's always the Soviets to worry about if you are the UK/France/USA.

Do you think HoI4 will be any better without hilariously ahistorical stuff like random Swedish superpowers out of nowhere? That stuff was basically impossible in HoI3 without extreme cheese, yet EU4 youtube noobs testing HoI4 were pulling it off in their first games.
 

GarfunkeL

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They didn't give in on the counters. You still only have 3D models on the map. The only thing they caved was that you can use NATO symbols on the zoomed out counters instead of their helmet/tank symbols.

Things can still go off-the rails, by the way, the odds are just against it. Czechs can deny München and start the war there. What Pdox changed was that diplomacy had less of an influence, so no more Nazi-USA by 1940.

In other news, I applied to become a beta tester for HoI4. I probably won't get in due to my acidic comments on their forums.
 

Grimlorn

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I don't see why they can't have both. Just have one that sticks close to the script like in HoI 3 and then have a more open ended custom one to play for people that want that. That's what I wanted anyways. After playing a couple games of HoI 3 it became boring because of how tedious it was and how you couldn't play as one of the random countries and have a good shot at affecting the war.
 

Vaarna_Aarne

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That's what the new system sounds to be trying to do, with most likely being that ai will choose factors are set to 100% for the historical path without player deviation changing the situation.
 

XenomorphII

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I remember a day a long time ago when Germany didn't declare war on me as USSR. Cause playing a WWII game without the WWII is so much fun.

Had you built the red army up to a nasty/insane size? As I recall Germany won't suicide on them.

It does suck (in a way, but it isn't like you cannot declare war anyway), but at the same time it is stupid for the ai to decide to declare war because of history when the reality of the situation could be utterly different (a USSR that would absolutely steamroll it for example, or had not shown such weakness in the Winter War).
 
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USSR being forced to declare war on Germany does mean it also has to fight Japan. But if you're so strong that Germany won't attack you, you probably need the extra challenge.

That said you can trick the AI to declare on you if you retreat your divisions back a few provinces so that it doesn't judge your strength too high.
 

Spectacle

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Seems like some ahistorical gameplay is possible:
CSL9NwcXIAAo13Q.png:large
 

Vaarna_Aarne

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I think what's really needed in the long term is a pre-war and post-war (or should we say, pre-WW2/3 and post-WW2/3) situation where conflicts can instead be local or proxy conflicts, and the major conflict itself can for example build up from Idi Amin trying to conquer the world after conquering much of Africa and forming a third faction.
 
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Idi Amin trying to conquer the world after conquering much of Africa and forming a third faction.
It would require certain elements that are not in HoI and were never mentioned in dev diaries.

Dynamically-changing resource production(sometimes appearing in new places!) and VP's tied to industrial/resource(including leadership and MP) base of the province.
 

Vaarna_Aarne

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Given how much more developed the tech, economic, and political side of the game has been so far, I wouldn't be surprised if a Cold War expansion would also change this stuff as well. At least, I'd hope so. The bastard child of Victoria 2 and Hearts of Iron has always been my dream Paradox game.
 

Vaarna_Aarne

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East vs West was hardly murdered, the correct term might either be euthanized but more likely simply autopsied or buried. Modders-to-devs mismanagement is what killed EvsW, not Pdox (personally I'd say the death knell was that they planned on including multiplayer when they clearly couldn't handle implementing it). Pdox still gave those guys more time and budget time after another, since they weren't delusional assholes like Ubik.
 

GarfunkeL

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Yeah, feature creep and unrealistic planning killed EvsW. Shame really.

Anyway, the different national focus trees that Pdox has showed do imply that ahistorical stuff will be quite possible - of course, it could be they are only available for the player.
 

Vaarna_Aarne

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It does need some kind of reaction tree or something on the side of the AI tho, or otherwise the system just doesn't add that much.
 
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Had you built the red army up to a nasty/insane size? As I recall Germany won't suicide on them.

It does suck (in a way, but it isn't like you cannot declare war anyway), but at the same time it is stupid for the ai to decide to declare war because of history when the reality of the situation could be utterly different (a USSR that would absolutely steamroll it for example, or had not shown such weakness in the Winter War).

Not insane as I never was a excellent player and wasn't adept of gaming the system, but yeah, I got this explanation in the time. It's just that when I play a WWII game I would like to play the WWII, especially when the other option is sticking around doing nothing.
 

Space Satan

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Hi everyone and welcome to another dev diary for Hearts of Iron IV. Today we are going to talk about peace conferences!

HOI3's peace system was extremely simplistic and easy to exploit and did not really capture WWII and looking at our other games a peace system like Europa Universalis where a war leader dictates terms also does not really fit with WWII. So we set out to make something completely new!

So how does it work? During a war your participation as a member in the war is tracked compared to the rest. Remember Mussolini’s famous quote when about to join the war against France and UK "I only need a few thousand dead so that I can sit at the peace conference as a man who has fought"? We actually track casualties now and that will also factor into your participation score. Most important however is actually conquering enemy territory.

npRhOBu.png


When the enemy finally surrenders the game initiates a peace conference. In multiplayer if there are several players involved this will pause the game and let everyone see what is decided in the conference even if you yourself is not in the war. Points representing the total value of things to grab among the losers is divvied out to the winners depending on what their war participation was at. Each country then takes turns deciding on what will happen to the losers. When you have less points than the person after you its their turn (you can also pass if you like) and on and on it goes until everyone has passed or run out of points. The losers have no say in this unless they have offered up a conditional surrender early on in which case they must approve the conference as well.

The above means that we can now model historical decisions to make sense. For example, there is a reason for USA to get involved in both the pacific war and Europe and not let Stalin decide the outcome on his own there. Taking control of Germany and liberating France will be a race for Berlin and will color how Europe looks after the war ends. The idea is very much to give you the feeling of the Yalta conference where Stalin’s position was very strong and the other heads of governments had less say.

y8stSxp.jpg


The cost of different options depends on wargoals selected before the peace conference so anyone with justified reasons will be able to get those things cheaper, and it will be more costly for others to select those. Do note that order of participation still applies, so someone who has done more could still grab some of your war goal claims, but this would mean that they would themselves get to pick less over all. Stuff like that can set up things for post-war tension should players not be able to come to a resolution everyone is happy with. The basic type of action also affects costs of course, so liberating someone is cheaper than setting up a puppet government under your control, and annexing is much more costly than simply moving the borders some.

The conference also indicates what kind of impact it will have on world tension in the end. This may be a reason to be more restrictive about your choices. Puppeting someone might keep you under a level where the Allies still can not go in and stop you while annexing them would push you over the tension limit.

Next week we'll talk about the sleeping giant - USA!
 

GarfunkeL

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Yeah, that's actually a good development.

Oh Pdox, why did you have to take my counters, generals and CoC away when everything else is shaping up to be really good?!
 
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"The old system was too easy to exploit"

"Here's a screenshot of Bulgaria demanding part of Poland"

Like the idea, hopefully the AI doesn't make stupid shit. Taking land that doesn't border yours should be right out.

This is a system that would be far more important in a game like EU4, hopefully they are thinking about backporting the feature.
 

mondblut

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Taking land that doesn't border yours should be right out.

This is a system that would be far more important in a game like EU4, hopefully they are thinking about backporting the feature.

Too bad England didn't knew that while taking Gibraltar. Or Prussia owning disconnected patches of turf all over the HRE. I don't even mention thirdworldian possessions.
 

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