Hearts of Iron IV - The Ultimate WWII Strategy Game

[Vaarna_Aarne]

They probably should limit non-overseas demands based on geographical proximity and cores, and give pecking order based on that too so Bulgaria or Italy doesn't show up to divide Poland. The idea that demands are made in order based on contribution is pretty good and should create at least some kind of logical order to things. Could be just the pecking order takes care of this sort of stuff (with Germany demanding everything in Poland except Slovakian, Hungarian, and new Soviet cores)

 

[Space Satan]

Any mechanics will inevitably play against the possability of land invasion into USA mainland. Joint German and Jap landing and victory will be useless if all they can demand is puppet regime or stuff, without partition or annexation due to range malus.

 

[Average Manatee]

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.

That's quite a bit different from Bulgaria having a completely land locked and disconnected part of Poland. Gibraltar is a useful port and at least Prussia's HRE holdings were Germanic. Plus we're talking about what the AI should be limited to in order to not have illogical shit happen like Bulgaria blocking off Germany from reaching the Soviets.

 

[mondblut]

That's quite a bit different from Bulgaria having a completely land locked and disconnected part of Poland. Gibraltar is a useful port and at least Prussia's HRE holdings were Germanic. Plus we're talking about what the AI should be limited to in order to not have illogical shit happen like Bulgaria blocking off Germany from reaching the Soviets.

It's not about what AI should be limited to - maybe the bulgarian king has some childhood memories associated with a tiny mining town of Yòbkúrwă and wants to own it, who are you to judge him? It's about Germany having a say in it, "are you out of your ficken mind, kleine bruder? you want to bekome die protektorate der Frakia und Danubia, or something? Now run along, ally, and do not make me angry again". To which the AI would respond with either okayface.jpg, or "fuck you krauts, imma joining allies nao". Basically, the way it was done in EU4 was functional enough. The war leader got to distribute the spoils, and if an ally didn't receive something it occupied or had a claim over, it seriously damaged their relations.

 

[Average Manatee]

Basically, the way it was done in EU4 was functional enough. The war leader got to distribute the spoils, and if an ally didn't receive something it occupied or had a claim over, it seriously damaged their relations.

The concept of a "war leader" is highly dubious, especially in cases where other parties are performing the majority of the work (which is what this system is tracking).

Also who has ever seriously cared about damaging relations in EU4?

 

[mondblut]

The concept of a "war leader" is highly dubious, especially in cases where other parties are performing the majority of the work (which is what this system is tracking).

Well, introducing an entire new system for the singular occasion of "Hitler's dead, where is mah cold war dlc" seems wasteful. And on the other side of the fence, the "war leader" is pretty clear At best, it's about how exactly are Germany and the japs dividing USA or pacific colonies. Regardless of "limiting the AI", the outcome would be ugly.

Also who has ever seriously cared about damaging relations in EU4?

The problem in EU4 is that you always have more potential allies than diplomacy mana, so unless you're grooming them for vassalization, you don't care about keeping an ally around when you can replace him with another one immediately.

Then again, in HoI annexing the eastern europe is much more useful than larping history and keeping those useless turds as your "allies". Even as neutrals they are more useful; at least the enemy can't cross their territory. One time I made the mistake of inviting Turkeys into Axis; by the end of the month the brits were pouring into balkans and bombed me from the newly annexed Istanbul airfields. Never again

 

[Average Manatee]

Well, introducing an entire new system for the singular occasion of "Hitler's dead, where is mah cold war dlc" seems wasteful. And on the other side of the fence, the "war leader" is pretty clear At best, it's about how exactly are Germany and the japs dividing USA or pacific colonies. Regardless of "limiting the AI", the outcome would be ugly.

Then again, in HoI annexing the eastern europe is much more useful than larping history and keeping those useless turds as your "allies". Even as neutrals they are more useful; at least the enemy can't cross their territory. One time I made the mistake of inviting Turkeys into Axis; by the end of the month the brits were pouring into balkans and bombed me from the newly annexed Istanbul airfields. Never again

Yes, this is why I think the system would be better in an EU4 (or V2/3). In a WW2 game its probably going to be pretty clear which country wears the pants in the relationship, with Germany/Japan being the only nations which could readily take anything more than a token amount of land. In EU4 you can play as Navarre and have France give you half of Spain for the price of having your diplomat there for a year to get them to like you.

The problem in EU4 is that you always have more potential allies than diplomacy mana, so unless you're grooming them for vassalization, you don't care about keeping an ally around when you can replace him with another one immediately.

Yes well mana is an unfixable abomination that ruins everything it touches. No arguments here.

 

[GarfunkeL]

I sincerely hope that the screenshot is just a mock-up, as it conflicts with the text in the DD. If Germany conquers all of Poland, then her allies have no say. Only chance for Bulgaria to demand something of Poland would be some weird case where the Bulgarian army actually takes over some Polish lands - the DD said that occupying lands is more important than causing casualties.

This should also fix the post-WW2 clusterfuck that usually happens in all HoI games.

 

[mondblut]

I sincerely hope that the screenshot is just a mock-up, as it conflicts with the text in the DD. If Germany conquers all of Poland, then her allies have no say. Only chance for Bulgaria to demand something of Poland would be some weird case where the Bulgarian army actually takes over some Polish lands - the DD said that occupying lands is more important than causing casualties.

All the more reason not to bother with allies then. Fucking Romania occupying half the vatnikstan because you've been invading from their turf was bad enough in the previous iterations.

This should also fix the post-WW2 clusterfuck that usually happens in all HoI games.

Post-WW2 in HoI? What are you talking about?

Srsly, I wish there would be a way to disband Axis after the Allies and the Cumintern are where they belong to, then rip the remnants of the world from the japs' and the macaronis' cold dead hands, and rename Earth to Germania (then launch V-4s beyond Solar System and begin a World War 3 to seek moar lebensraum at the expense of extraterrestrial civilizations). Alas, filthy libruls at PDX refuse to consider this kind of cold war.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

The peace conference in the screenshot seems like a really big experiment with the system. The year isn't shown, but its clearly the final negotiations of a major war, given how French casualties are over two million and Italy's nearly a million. Poland is just one thing being negotated, Germany's also making demands in France.

I hope this doesn't mean there won't be a separate peace treaties within the larger war, since that's pretty important for things like Poland and Finland.

EDIT: They've confirmed dynamic factions for the game mondblut, so I'd assume it should be possible to kick members out of alliances without events or decisions like in HoI2 unlike in HoI3.

The whole point of the system I think is to set-up the game so it can support a Cold War expansion. Where else are they gonna go (HoI3 style fleshing out of aspects of the game aside)? WW1? That conflicts with Victoria's timeframe, and you know they are going to want a clean Victoria 3 pre-order situation for EU4 and HoI4 converter DLCs.

 

[mondblut]

I hope this doesn't mean there won't be a separate peace treaties within the larger war, since that's pretty important for things like Poland and Finland.

Were they ever? Previous HOI were governments in exile galore (which TBH was fairly historical), with the few exceptions like Vichy or Finland being handled by special events and decisions.

When are they getting to the disgusting whack-a-partisan-army minigame? :/

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

In regards to whack-a-partisan, I do hope they put more work into governments-in-exile organizing and preparing partisan groups. I'd prefer that actual fought-on-the-field rebels would go Home Army style so the uprising is dynamic and opportunist rather than random.

Regular random partisans themselves shouldn't be whacked, just have an extensive number of events where you have to deal with the bullshit they've served you in province X.

They tried to go this direction in HoI3, but ultimately I've *never* seen a government-in-exile use the feature added, and I never felt particularly interested to try since the system would have just been sitting on your ass for years and building endlessly more units before pressing da button.

 

[Spectacle]

That's quite a bit different from Bulgaria having a completely land locked and disconnected part of Poland. Gibraltar is a useful port and at least Prussia's HRE holdings were Germanic. Plus we're talking about what the AI should be limited to in order to not have illogical shit happen like Bulgaria blocking off Germany from reaching the Soviets.

Look at the screenshot, Bulgaria's part of Poland is on the baltic shore. They're going to have some challenges there to be sure, but better than coming home empty handed from the peace conference.

 

[Average Manatee]

Look at the screenshot, Bulgaria's part of Poland is on the baltic shore. They're going to have some challenges there to be sure, but better than coming home empty handed from the peace conference.

Unless I am misinformed and Latvia/Lithuania were in fact underwater countries during WW2, that Bulgarian land has zero shoreline.

 

[Lone Wolf]

Swit jayzus, that's a lot more dead Frenchies than historically.

That probably stands for either 'casualties' or 'permanent losses'. The former would include all combat losses, including WIA/MIA/KIA/POW. The latter would include those too injured to return to service, KIA, POW and MIA.

What I find funny is that WW2 is called 'the German-Polish War', according to the game.

 

[Space Satan]

Radical Yugoslavia, Legionary Romania, it seems Paradox tries to fight with the usual problem of HoI series - hindsight and meta. I suppose in HoIIV main goal is to randomize political situation until big showdown so no more preset DOWs and stuff and lots of unexpected alliances and country ideology shifts. Like HJapan in comintern, France in Axis etc. before, it was impossible to lose winter war or other predefined conflicts because you knew what to do, what AI will do and what to research best. Should they make this work, HoIIV have a chance.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

I would guess they're going to have the goals defined by the province->state->country structure they use nowadays.

 

[Trash]

Wait, no generals? Seriously?

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Well, no division-level generals. IIRC haven't they talked about how army groups do have generals?

 

[GarfunkeL]

Each country has a number of leaders that you can assign to politics or research or the military to gain certain bonuses. Since they ditched the chain of command system completely, you now select a random bunch of divisions with the mouse and, once selected, can appoint Rundstedt to conquer Poland with them. That's it.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

I hope the side effect or goal of that system is to fix the whole "god fucking dammit I ran out of leaders again" thing many minors had.

 

[GarfunkeL]

Probably but losing out on a proper OOB/CoC is still a massive decline in my eyes.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Division-level leaders, if introduced later, IMO should be handled through a random-generation method similar to Victoria or EU. Historical dudes should be used for the army-level leadership to avoid the whole "oops, ran out" problem.

 

[Average Manatee]

I feel bad for the dudes that went through and made the thousands of leaders for nations in HoI3, seeing all that effort scrapped.

I'm not particularly upset about losing division-level leaders (ultimately didn't add much other than an extra way to give Germany a +30% combat buff for all battles), but the rest is sad to see go.

 

[BlackAdderBG]

Look at the screenshot, Bulgaria's part of Poland is on the baltic shore. They're going to have some challenges there to be sure, but better than coming home empty handed from the peace conference.

We always come empty handed from peace conferences