Hearts of Iron 4 - The Ultimate WWII Strategy Game

How is balance at the moment? I've read stories of Tibet building nuclear reactors in 1941 and Poland conquering Germany in 1939 with hordes of cheap infantry.

 

The game is ok. I was surprised to see there are quite a few things I actually quite like, such as the new production system. Trade is meh but at least it's manageable. Tech/focuses feel more involved. The army-level AI is much more efficient than in HoI3 and you can actually try to be subtle with it rather than have it randomly hurl troops at the enemy.

The big downside, however, is that the game feels ridiculously easy. EU-style blobbing, in a WWII game? Oh well, mods will fix it.

 

I have an irrational hatred of censorship, and historical censorship is beyond the pale.

Having to pretend the Nazis never existed is shit-tier, super-faggy European censorship and I won't tolerate it.

From what I've read (it's not hard to Google up some pertinent results), Paradox actively oppose the creation of Nazi-themed mods for their HoI games, ergo my disgruntlement.

 

As far as I can recall the official policy is "No swastikas because of german censorship, no genocide because we at Paradox don't dig that shit." Besides that you can be as nazi as you want, as far as I can tell.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/42902/

That's a mod-turned-DLC for HoI3 that's pretty much all about fleshing out them Nazi's, or is that not what you mean with nazi-themed mods?

 

Stop it, ok? Just stop it. I don't like it either, but it's the way you do business these days. Nobody wants to fucking struggle with inane German whims, or spedning money and resources just to evade stupid decissions (i'm purposely not saying laws, because law is clear in this case).

Raven Software's Wolfenstein was banned in Germany and Israel because of swastikas. And the last Wolfenstein game had to go to ridiculous measures to whitewash nazism in Germany. I understand why companies don't want to deal with this shit. I mean, there are people who call for censorship because "lolocaust wasn't a game!!!11!!one (((((((((((((".

 

Meanwhile, I'm over in Australia like...

Very nice touch though that Fascist Australia is represented by the Eureka Flag.

 

Meanwhile, I'm over in Iran like...

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There is no victory against Russia, they just keep coming! Since they have military access with France, UK and whatnot, they just completely encircile me.....and Turkey got whooped.

As a note, later on (about 300k dead on their side later), they brought about double that amount of troop, some planes and just whooped me....then puppeted Iraq, Afghanistan and myself. I'm gonna continue a bit, try some more stuff, but I think my first game is coming to a close. Good fun but I should have factionned up early on otherwise I can see the Soviet gunning after me everytime.

 

Really enjoying this game. I'm currently fighting a ground war in the Australian outback after turning fascist and triggering a civil war. Australian loyalists, with help from American volunteers and reinforcements of the Netherlands, are trying to retake the country and control the West coast, so I'm reinforcing my position in Melbourne and Sydney to keep control of the main urban centres while I build up my forces. Eventually I plan to invade New Zealand. The war in Europe is raging on as usual, of course.

 

People giving in to whiners is exactly why whiners get their way. Banning swastikas is retarded security theater and always has been. It's done nil to prevent underground Neo-Nazi movements and similar.

I understand the "why" of it from all angles, but I don't have to like it. HoI is a WW2 game. WW2 movies can have swastikas (even in Germany, if it passes some threshold of "educational"), WW2 documentaries can obviously have swastikas, but in a wargame full of accurate historical figures, locations, and iconography, there can't be swastikas because... why? Someone might LARP Hitler?

They couldn't be bothered to create the proper graphics for regions that don't have ineffective security theater censoring, and they actively oppose modding them in, so I can't be bothered with this franchise. That's it.

I'm not condemning anyone else for enjoying the game or not being pissed off about retarded ineffective censorship, it's a personal issue. By all means, enjoy yourself.

 

Go write a letter of complaint to Merkel.

 

It kind of pisses me off too, but you can just patch in the flag so it's not a big deal to me. First thing I did before playing was download the swastika mod.

 

Hmmm can you turn Britain Fascist in this one with Mosley the Eternal Beady Eyed Anglo?

 

Swapping your faction seems to be easier than ever, first thing to do is just appoint an advisor that raises fascist popularity and within a year you'll be chilling with the Fuhrer in the ruins of Warsaw.

 

I cannot find one in the assets of the PG version I have, or the let's play ( http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...termenschen-in-panzer-general-complete.54610/ ) here on the Codex. Or any mention of this lawsuit. Please elaborate?

 

Interesting for Polish posters.

 

Poland, make up your damn mind!

 

Played from the early start until 1942 with Fascist Argentina today. I must be retarded because I feel like I'm fighting with the interface nonstop, and completely don't relate with the aforementioned comment about subtlety vs throwing random troops. I felt like it was a lot easier to get stuff to move around in a coherent fashion in HOI3.

Anyway, the game seems okay. I declared a war on Uruguay and Chile and won with no real problems, then Paraguay suddenly jumped in and I took them out with similar ease. It definitely seems to allow you to pull more bullshit than HOI3, but you're still not going to be able to go too far into fantasy land if you're playing anyone in the Western Hemisphere other than the USA, given that the game still starts with them guaranteeing the independence of every single South American country. What's that supposed to represent historically anyway? I could understand it if they guaranteed the independence of Panama and Colombia, but the whole damned continent? I can only guess it's supposed to represent the idea that the USA ain't gonna deal with any competition in the subjugation biz when it comes to the Western hemisphere.

Computer seems to have some weird priorities. I keep getting invaded by the USA, AUS, and UK by piddly forces of at most 3 infantry divisions at a time. They don't pose any real threat but it seems next to impossible to keep them from landing, I have a decent navy but even when they show up and start shooting before the infantry lands it doesn't really stop it from happening, they just land anyway and then the transports haul ass back to North America, which makes me think it sure must feel bad to be an American soldier hearing that you're going to Argentina. Any way you slice it, it's a pain in the ass to deal with purely on account of having to move a whole army out to wherever they land with the front-line command, as all sorts of bad behavior seems to happen if you try to manually move just a few divisions around that are already part of an army.

Meanwhile, the USA doesn't really seem to give a fuck about Japan or Germany. It's actually pretty hard to tell just what they're doing with their unfathomable resources. On the converse, Japan doesn't seem to give a fuck about the USA either, even though they declared war on them at the appropriate historical time, it seems like it was more or less entirely ceremonial, and they are busy fighting the USSR after grabbing up all of India and China.

Germany OTOH seemed to play entirely historically.

 

Same here, but it gets better the more I play it. Still disagree with their interface decisions though, I get the feeling someone at paradox is drinking the Steve Jobs coolaid of "the average user doesn't need information, let's take it all away." I just want my fucking message settings.

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

On the top right it should throw up a small notification/anchor icon next to the name of sea zone if you're about to be invaded/are being invaded. Would be nice to get a popup and pause about it, but what can you do. Stevejobsitis is a horrible disease.

America always seems to engage in glorious isolationism, the most interesting way I've seen it solved was in black ICE in HoI3 before it turned to shit, where an event would pop up saying "Historically the USA invaded here around this time, spend resources to build a strike force and invade Northern Africa?" with the troops just magically spawning there after a month or so. It's gimmicky but at least the USA did something.

 

Soviet Union has at least 800 divisions around 1940. The only way to get anywhere in the "kill vata or die tryin" game is to switch to Fascism asap so you can get better laws, build roughly around 100 basic divisions (doable even with 3 million pop Finland), start boosting Fascist popularity in strategically important states (Nationalist Spain, Romania, Iran, Sweden, and Turkey) to make sure Japan, Spain, Turkey and Iran will be part of the Axis by 1941, and that you yourself can be ready to join the Axis at either 1940 or mid 1941. Doesn't matter if you declare war before hand or if you wait for Barbarossa (I didn't), but what you need to worry about is that if you start a war you don't call Germany in until several months later so they'll be in position and Soviets will have repositioned several hundred divisions to fight your surprise attack and Germans will have repositioned from their African vacation or whatever.

The whole thing hinges on three factors: A large Axis faction that can surround the USSR and have superior numbers and resource base, coordinating the attack so Soviets don't just tsunami over the AI, and building yourself up for the battle so you can first distract and corner Soviets (Finland is in a good position in this sense, since Olonets, Murmansk, and Onega are natural encirclement areas which also negate any possible tank advantage Red Army might bring to bear; and Leningrad is a natural target for a surprise attack and provides invaluable cannon fodder with Gentlest occupation policy as well as a river+urban defensive position). The key to building yourself up as a generic Focus tree minor is to blitz all the factories and research slots you can get ASAP, and then focus on Land Doctrine focus and then infantry equipment focus. You want to get as many factories built as possible, both Civilian and Military (though Civilian factories are less important if you have an export goodie, like Iran does). Go Free Trade for economic policy, the efficiency bonuses are always the better option and if you can't achieve total autarky you should just export resources for extra factory power anyway.

The reason you want to start off with cheap-ass basic infantry divisions is because you want to have that magical number of around 100 divisions as fast as possible. And you aren't going to train the bastards completely anyway either, you are going to get them the bare minimum equipment and training needed to spit em out and then send them to Exercise for their Regular tier XP and your invaluable Land XP. See, by around 1938 or 1939 you should have reached the point where your research and economic base can begin the next step in building your Russian-crushing army, which is choosing your monomaniac focus and updating your templates. IMO, all your templates should be updated to include a Field Hospital, Engineer, Signal, Logistics, and Recon support companies (not sure about Signal's value yet tho, but it's the lowest priority on this list keep in mind; could be Maintenance is superior because of Reliability reducing equipment bleed), so you can minimize your longterm losses of men and equipment, mitigate the negative effects of Soviet terrain, entrench harder, and make yourself better able concentrate force for overwhelming encirclement offensives. Since you're a minor, you need that Field Hospital trickleback.

As a minor, you'll want to focus only on Infantry and Cavalry, and either Artillery or Anti-Tank as your other battalion equipment type. Personally I'd go with Artillery because Soft targets are vastly more common. When I upgraded my divisions to include more douchebags, I went with 2:1 Infantry:Artillery ratio per column for my mainline infantry, and pure Cavalry brigades for my second division type. With this set-up your arms factories will be churning out Infantry Equipment (lion's share of your needs), Support Equipment, Artillery, and Trucks. I suppose it could be possible to replace Cavalry with Motorized, but IIRC the terrain bonuses are easier on Cavalry, and IIRC Cavalry count as Leg Infantry which is important for the following. I'd go with Infiltration Assault (Grand Battle Plan) as the Land Doctrine of choice, since the night combat bonus is a huge benefit and the path favors Leg Infantry.

I'd say the balance is possibly the best HoI balance yet when it comes to minors and majors. Tibet CAN build a nuclear reactor and so can any minor, but whether or not it's a strategically good investment is an entirely different matter. The new tri-factory and resource trade system is a huge improvement from the old IC and resources in terms of gameplay balance and resources are for the first time distributed with a global balance instead of being concentrated solely on the majors like in for example HoI3. Research is more restricted and strategic than before as well since all countries except Kwa are maxed at five slots and the fifth slot is perfectly possible to acquire with a minor if you put a little effort into your economic groundwork.

I suppose one downside would be that the game tends to favor monomaniac armies focusing on two or at most three types of divisions at most due to them being much more production line and research efficient.

 

Yeah, artillery as battalions/regiments is op as fuck. Watch that soft attack explode upwards. 160 artillery pieces per division + the number from support == death.

 

I wouldn't put a precious Support slot to Artillery if I'm packing regular Artillery battalions too. The whole point of the Support artillery type companies is that they can be paradropped and don't slow down the division, if you take battalion Artillery they serve no purpose except wasting a Support slot that you could have used for either Signal or Maintenance.

 

Didn't remove the copy from an inventory.

Bad:

- AI is Horrible. HORRIFUCKINGBLE. Far worse than HoI3. At least in HoI3 lone divisions usually didn't try to attack a province with 4+ divisions. It fucked up attacking across rivers and into mountains, but in HoI4 it attacks across rivers in to horrific odds. Sometimes you'll see a city encircled by 20 divisions and they'll just attack piecemeal and never take it down. And the AI basically gets itself encircled charging past lines for no reason. HoI3 did not have this problem if you only baited with 1-2 provinces open, but HoI4 just falls for the dupe every time.
- Can you avoid automation? Well... the UI is horrible. Feedback on what units are doing is horrible. You can't see shit unles you zoom in to ground level because the divisions are "lumped" together. It's really just hard to play. You can't even make control groups of tanks or w/e to keep them under your eye, a basic stable of RTS interfaces since (IIRC) Warcraft 2 that any decent RTS has kept. You can do it in EU, Victoria and HoI3, so don't tell me they somehow forgot.
- Other UI gripes: It's hard to see borders if you don't have a "plan" set up to border it. Several important map modes seem to be missing, I can't figure out where my cores are for instance. I can't figure out where VPs are. I don't have a ledger or some other way to view stats on how many casualties my planes are causing. Hell, I don't have any casualty information at all. I could be "winning" battles but taking 3x as many casualties as the enemy for all I know.
- Economy gets annoying to manage. Its fine early on but when you have 400+ factories cmon. There should be no reason that factories are capped at 15 per project because it just clutters the list when you have 10 factory groups all producing med tanks.
- You HAVE to use 1 military leader because its clearly better. Why? They gain experience which directly gives combat ability. When you have a rank 8 leader who gives +40% to all stats and several traits, its silly to let anyone else be in command and steal their XP that makes them even stronger. Kind of silly that 90% of leaders won't be used. This also makes the AI more of a pain, as you can't really manually control and you can't select individual units properly (click one and it shows the entire army of the nation).
- Planning bonus is FUCKING RIDICULULOUS OMG WTF. +50% for your shitty stupid plans? Well funny enough you can "plan" and them immediately remove units from the plan after executing it to control them yourself. So basically you might as well just draw random plans everywhere so you can activate them for continual bonuses, then go back to manually controlling units.
- Units are retarded. Why the hell does Artillery take 3 frontage while Infantry takes 2? Did these devs play the godawful piece of shit mod that is BlackICE and think it was somehow a good idea? Things simply don't make sense. There's also way too much of a focus on armored divisions to please the wehrmaboos, they are priced way too cheap and too effective compared to historical.
- Why does the UK and USA have half their army in the USSR fighting for them and taking land in the name of Stalin in my game? Let me make a list of plausible instances in which the USA/UK would have deployed forces there and a list of instances in which Stalin would allow them to:.
- Research is a joke. Basically everyone in the world gets min 4 slots after foci, along with most majors starting here. A few majors can get 5 eventually and USA can achieve 6. So even the most backwarter isolated shithole has only 33% less slots than the USA at full flown war capacity. Sense, this makes none. There's not even a practical knowledge option or anything, at most you can select some minor -10% research time government option for 2 or 3 techs.
- World tension is a dumb replacement for threat from HoI3.

Neutral:
- I like the national focuses generally, but its really fucking stupid when "Hitler said that we need to industrialize, 70 days later 20 factories rise out of the ground at not cost to you". It's also pretty clear that this is DLC territory.
- Army experience just feels stupid and artificially limiting. It kind of goes away once in a major war but still. It's also incredibly annoying to micromange duplicating divisions and figuring out what division is the closest cost to the one you want to change(I have a 6xinf 3xart w/2 supports and a 5xmar division, which should I make as the base division for a 6xmar 3xart w/2 supports?). It should not take battle experience to say "hey, I want more artillery in a unit". Naval/Air experience gets it right, make a variant that is improved based on combat experience. I really like the way both of these work, even if its a bit gamey that you can stockpile experience and then load it all into a plane you've just researched and never even built yet to improve it further.


Good:
- I quite like the Air combat changes. Was on the fence earlier, but it works out well. HoI3 was a complete micro nightmare so the fact that this works pretty well in a fire-and-forget fashion is great. Kind of awkward to manage the UI though. You have to hunt down these hard-to-find airstrip icons to place your planes and half the time they are covered by troops.
- The production system paradigm of producing equipment works really well I think. Being able to just produce a shit ton of artillery and say "OK, now attach artillery to all infantry" works well. Similar for "I have a shit ton of light tanks but want to produce medium tanks, keep using old lights and switch divisions to the mediums as we run out of reserves". It does feel a bit OP in how you can flat out convert infantry->mountaineers or marines in the field almost instantly though.
- Peace system looks like it will be good for MP.

Overall 4/10 still better than HoI3 on release.

 

Honestly, the game feels like crap to me so far. The way the alliance system works is broken, the AI, occupation, dearth of historical events, lack of portraits, it's just so wrong in so many small but annoying ways that it drives me crazy. There are so many good ideas in this but it's all disturbingly slightly off. Portraits are now all in colour and hand drawn... but there are maybe 10% of them now - South America is led by some kind of presidential clone army. Trade system is an amazing quality of life upgrade... but the AI handles your exports so you have to enjoy the free civilian factories only when RNGesus wills it.

I was playing as Fascist Hungary invading the filthy gypsy thieves, war was going decently but slow. Suddenly, Molotov-Ribbentrop fires and the Soviets declare their own war on Romania. But hey, now all enemies of a certain country have automatic military access, so the red tide decided to waltz inside my Pannonian paradise, "bolster" my frontline and began to steal every bit of occupation from then on. "We will take things from here, comrade!"

Basically, what Manatee said above. The game has a lot of potential, though.

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Muh brotherhoodz.

 

To be fair, a wet paper towel with the word "Gotcha." written on it would still be a better video game release than HoI3.

 

They are, but compare it to an average armored brigade (if enemies can't pierce you'll get like a 4x effective combat bonus, and as I said armor is pretty OP and enemies usually won't pierce) + SPART (like regular Artillery but on steroids). Additionally 50% hardness on top of your armor bonus makes it a cakewalk to run over virtually anything.

e.g. Med tank x2 SP ART x4 MOT x3 gives 368 soft attack, about 50% hardness (takes 50% less soft attack damage, and hard attack damage is basically negligible). Cost 3000 prod and has low enough frontage that you can usually use like 4 of them at once where you could only use 2 infantry.

In comparison x6 inf x6 art x1 at has around 360 soft attack for 1.4k prod, but you're looking at getting 2-3 max in a battle. And if you fight the armor above you're dealing barely half as much damage due to hardness. So you need 2x as many regiments... at which point your prod cost is high enough that you might as well just made 1 tank division. And if you don't have the AT you'll be completely wtfowned because you basically deal zero damage and take much more.

Funny enough, the Tank division actually takes less supplies than the Infantry division, so its far lighter on your infrastructure than mass artillery. So there's not even the "but you wouldn't be able to supply them across siberia" excuse for making infantry instead.