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Hearts of Iron IV - The Ultimate WWII Strategy Game

Agame

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Dev Diary "Naval Rework" (Missions)

Hello, and welcome back for the first in a series of dev diaries that will showcase the changes to the naval system beyond just building and designing new ships (aka the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Game Mode).

Today we will look at new mission types and changes to the naval interface. As we are still in development, you may see some stuff that is not strictly speaking finished (no matter how much Dan wants the hot pink coder art to go into the final build!)

As part of the rework, we have changed the Patrol as well as the Search & Destroy mission. While patrol still does mostly the same thing, Search and Destroy is gone and has been replaced with Strike Force. In the old system, the main difference between the missions was how many ships you had at the start of the battle.

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Now that is gone, and the primary difference is that Patrol sends the ships out to, well, patrol, while Strike Force makes the ships sit in harbor until a patrol has found an enemy. This is particularly useful if you want your fuel-hungry battleships to remain in port and not use up your precious fuel until you know there is actually something out there to sink.

Finding the enemy is the main purpose of the Patrol order, so you’ll want your ships with good surface detection values to make up the bulk of your patrols - particularly destroyers and cruisers, ideally equipped with Radar and/or floatplanes. If there is an enemy in a zone you patrol, you’ll gain spotting on them, which essentially goes from “there is something out there” to “It’s the Bismarck and Prinz Eugen!” (at this point HMS Hood sorties to destroy them, in an easy and painless victory for the Royal Navy). Weather, terrain and the amount of ships committed all affect how fast you gain spotting. If you time it right, your big ships might be able to break out into the Atlantic before the enemy knows they are there. Depending on your engagement level and enemy strength, your patrol group might just decide to deal with the enemy directly, without even calling in the big guns.

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As we mentioned before, your fleet is now made up from several task forces, each of which can have its own mission. Fleets are organized in Naval Theaters. While you can assign any number of sea zones to a fleet, a task force can only ever be in one place (with a few exceptions), so in order to cover all the zones, you should aim to have at least as many task forces as you have zones assigned. However, a single Strike Force can support several patrol task forces except that it can only support one combat at a time, so your poor little patrol force may find itself severely outgunned because your main force is off helping another patrol.

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(Art is not quite completely totally absolutely final on this one)

Every fleet can be led by an Admiral, and can only control a certain number of task forces. Since every task force usually only covers a single zone, you’ll want to make sure you have different fleets covering different parts of the globe. Particularly as a raider you will also want to cover a larger area to force the enemy to spread out more.

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You can customize your fleets and task forces with insignias and colors to keep track of them, much like with armies:

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Convoy Raiding still works much as you are used to. However, we have changed the convoy raiding impact to be a weekly tick rather than a flat modifier, so sinking convoys will bit by bit reduce war support for the country that loses them. More info on this comes in a future dev diary dedicated to raiding and subs.

Convoy escort task forces can be assigned to cover several zones and will try to defend any convoy in them. If you are too spread out and subs catch the convoys, few if any escorts will be available to defend it.

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Beyond that, we have added Invasion Support. A task force set to Invasion Support will defend transports in the area and remain off the beaches to provide naval gunfire support - ideal for your old battleships that just don’t cut it anymore against more modern opposition.

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In addition, mine warfare is conducted by mine laying and mine sweeping missions (although mine sweepers also provide a passive bonus to moving through minefields so you might want to add them to your other task forces as well), and naval exercises give ships experience as well as provide Naval Experience to design new ships with - at the cost of fuel.

Newly built ships are automatically added to a Reserve Fleet, which exists on the theater level. Ships in that fleet reinforce other task forces in the same theater. You can set up Task Force templates that the game will try to create from the available ships in the reserves, and will try to keep up to strength as best it can. If you don’t want to reinforce a unit because, say, it is the US Asiatic Fleet and the Japanese have just declared war, you can disable automatic reinforcements for each individual task force.

If you don’t want to micro-manage your task forces to this degree, we have added an auto-balance function that splits your existing task forces into several, trying to maintain a strike force and one or more patrol task forces.

That is all for today. Next week we will focus on a different part of the naval rework. Don’t forget to tune in for the stream at 1600 hours CET, where we continue with Mexico for another week.
 

Beastro

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Land-based fighters too, since even if they don't fight they disable carrier wings through sheer numbers. Not sure if they also spot everything.

Nah, that wouldn't work either. Either they're too good, or not good enough. Or they take too long to research, or not long enough. Middle ground is impossible.

The only real solution is to not have them at all.

I think the problem is naval warfare requires a lot of nuances Paradox games can't get into, something is even more pronounced with naval air warfare.

The main advantage of a naval air wing is mobility and the ability to attack from anywhere, while the aircraft used are typically inferior to land-base equivalents due to the requirements to get the navalized (Like sturdier landing gear and such adding weight that makes them slower and such).

A good example of what I'm talking about was an exercise in the 70s or 80s along the US Eastern Seaboard where an RN carrier raised hell conducting numerous attacks while evading USN assets trying to hunt her down and sink her. They eventually did, but not before her aircraft caused a hell of a lot of damage and chaos all due to the fact that no one knew when and from where she would attack. It's also for that reason that China's development of carriers will effectively render defence's moot, given that Taiwan was only able to afford to defend along the 90 degree axis facing the mainland, once their carriers become operationally effective their flanks and rear and now undefended.
 

Vaarna_Aarne

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It isn't a matter of nuance (nuance itself should never be used as a justification for a feature to begin with, as unnecessary complexity for the sake of complexity is never a good idea, QED Supreme Ruler), it's a matter of basic building blocks. Land-based aircraft simply add a layer that fundamentally can never function in a balanced manner in an abstract strategy game using this sort of time-scale.
 

Beastro

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It isn't a matter of nuance, it's a matter of basic building blocks. Land-based aircraft simply add a layer that fundamentally can never function in a balanced manner in an abstract strategy game using this sort of time-scale.

I suppose, and I think we agree just in different ways.

I always think about the lack of real fog of war in games like this (As oppose to ones like Rule the Waves, where if your ships don't spot the enemy, you can and will run into them in the middle of your formations by the time they fire on you, especially in night battles), which combined with the typical size of sea provinces results in a corralling of naval units into battles that simply ruins naval combat. This is all the worse given the love of WWII and the restricted geographic position a country like Germany is in that makes games unable to replicate the Battle of the Atlantic.
 
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Destroid

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It isn't a matter of nuance (nuance itself should never be used as a justification for a feature to begin with, as unnecessary complexity for the sake of complexity is never a good idea, QED Supreme Ruler), it's a matter of basic building blocks. Land-based aircraft simply add a layer that fundamentally can never function in a balanced manner in an abstract strategy game using this sort of time-scale.

The sorts of parameters you and Beastro are talking about can certainly be represented in HoI4, the mechanics of spotting and stealth/evasion are already in the game & it would be trivial to give naval aircraft a stealth bonus to reflect the unknown location of their carrier. These could be further fleshed out by having a scouting mission for air wings and being able to produce dedicated scouting aircraft.
 

Vaarna_Aarne

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Utterly irrelevant. The problem is that there are no alternatives except two extremes that are equally unworkable: Either land-based aircraft can never effect naval warfare, or land-based aircraft can brute force naval warfare 100%. There is zero middle ground. The only solution is not allow land-based aircraft to participate in naval warfare.
 
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Excuse me if you guys have already discussed this idea or if it does not r4eally make sense given the way the game is designed (have not played this version of the game yet), but.....

how about land based aircraft don't attack individually as units but instead the land based aircraft can affect naval combat based on an ability score given to air units (or maybe only certain types of air units, called something like Naval Assist score or something) which can be upgraded based upon doctrine and unit types and research etc... make it so that only aircraft based on islands or in coastal areas can contribute their naval assist score to ongoing combats or search...

in any case I actually came to this thread to ask a question about HoI4.... I own HOI 2 and 3 (and also Darkest Hour) and enjoyed them..is HOI4 worth getting into? Is it a better experience than 2 or 3 or perhaps adds a separate but interesting take based on game design? Its on sale now of course, so that's why I ask...I usually play the workshop mods etc, which I assume most people do?...TIA to anyone who might answer this question..
 

Vaarna_Aarne

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I would say HoI4 is worth it for two reasons especially:

1) It's definately different enough to warrant playing,
2) but most importantly, it's mod support and selection of mods is by far the best in the series so far

Personally I'd say a lot of its features make for a more interesting experience, like factory production being assigned to equipment (which is fully moddable, which is why it's inevitable BICE will eventually have casings as production), it brings back branched Doctrines in style of HoI2 instead of HoI3's research-everything system, and its Focus Tree mechanic for decisions and events is just superior and creates for a much more varied experience (really, Focus Tree has been extremely beneficial for mods, and the upcoming feature to be able to custom-set AI paths on it will be REALLY good for Kaiserreich).

The main thing I personally am missing from the older versions is the excellent infrastructure bottlenecks from HoI3.
 
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I thought HoI3 sold well? Granted it still probably wouldn't sell as well as the casual stuff Paradox makes now
 

Space Satan

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HoIIII was a mess. Mess with command, mess with micromanagement hell, mess with research and war declarations. Their idiotic belligerance system. HoIIV is better in almost all aspects. It's like Sengoku and CKII.
 

razvedchiki

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So i decided to give it a spin with black ice mod,any advice as what to research/build as soviet union?
Saw they readded armies and will add fuel back,i guess in 2-3 expansions more we will have corps back.
 

Vaarna_Aarne

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Corps are honestly an unnecessary middle step gameplay-wise. Organization into armies and army groups is all that's really would add anything of value above division-level.

HoIIII was a mess. Mess with command, mess with micromanagement hell, mess with research and war declarations. Their idiotic belligerance system. HoIIV is better in almost all aspects. It's like Sengoku and CKII.
There's one thing I think HoI3 still has going for it, which would be the map. Or specifically, the map in VERY SPECIFIC PARTS of it (mainly Finland and China), where very low infrastructure dynamically making impassable provinces created bottlenecks. Ultimately tho, HoI4 could recreate the effect using impassable borders, if it were inclined to do so. Outside of those specific parts of the map, the huge number of provinces really didn't add much except busywork in overseeing attacks.
 
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HoIIII was a mess. Mess with command, mess with micromanagement hell, mess with research and war declarations. Their idiotic belligerance system. HoIIV is better in almost all aspects. It's like Sengoku and CKII.
Literally everything about this is wrong.

Command? You can play exactly like HoI4 with no command structure if you want.
Micromanagement? You need to micromange less in HoI3. In HoI4 there is no way to automate planes or navy or production or tech. Every month you have to look for new tech to research and swap planes across different arbitrary airzones whenever the front moves.
Research? Yeah, it has some depth there rather than a dumbed down research tree. In HoI4 you have one doctrine choice (highly unbalanced to begin with) with some non-choices afterwards. HoI3 forces actual choices when leadership is low. Also leadership is an amazing system to soft cap division spam since the overall org goes down and/or research suffers.
War declarations? What's the problem here?
Belligerence? It makes 100% sense. It makes zero sense that the Soviets causing threat can allow USA/UK to declare on a peaceful Germany or vice versa in HoI4. Hence why every MP game needs 10 pages of rules governing DoWs since otherwise the optimal strategy is for both to just start conquering everything in 1936. It also makes zero sense that threat is global rather than localized, where the Spanish Civil War affects USA just as much as it affects France. In HoI3 threat makes sense, if Germany is causing threat it only helps the allies declare on Germany and it only really affects people in Europe up until things get crazy.
 
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Vaarna_Aarne

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Leadership system was extremely poorly balanced and generally served no purpose other than to cripple vast majority of countries. Japan was basically the very minimum Leadership you needed to have, because the research system had no depth as all it really encouraged was researching everything you could or did use. By contrast, Germany and US showcased how shallow the tech system truly was since they had the means to research literally everything. Tying it to the officer counter also did nothing but further reduce everyone but the majors to complete irrelevance in vanilla because of how ludicrously unbalanced Leadership distribution was and how low base Ld was, and did absolutely nothing to stop division spam for the majors.

HoI4's system for research is really just an improved version of what HoI2 used (since it replaces Tech Teams with companies and theorists, whose impact is also drastically reduced), and HoI2 already had a better tech system in place than HoI3's mess. Reintroducing different doctrines is also a plus, even if balance between doctrines is shaky (with three land being clearly superior, and the internal choice per land doctrine being unbalanced; while in case of naval and air doctrines the balance is much poorer)

As for the Command structure, the mess in case of HoI3 is really the unnecessary corps level being there, and the system lacking the UI improvements that its revised take in HoI4 has, so it's a lot more messier to use and it has a third wheel. It also doesn't do one of its main functions, the automation of front busywork, as well as HoI4 (albeit HoI4 does deserve a dressing down for the way its automation can go completely apeshit if borders change or it encounters impassable terrain dividing a front).
 

Vaarna_Aarne

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I would say their tech tree is kinda nice, the only real problem with it is really just that it comes with a rather... Unusual take on brigades. And it's kinda unbalanced in a lot of ways, pretty high wehrabooism for example (though kind of notably also internally, in air tech for example there's usually two or three fighters for example that are so much better than all others that you have no reason to research 90% of the tree), though naval trees are generally the most unbalanced (tank trees are actually relatively balanced, since high resource and slow production costs make something like statistically superior advanced German tanks uneconomical as a strategic weapon; while it initially seems decidedly inferior the Japanese tank tree for example just lacks resource hog deluxe variants so it's fairly economical if you build up and acquire factory capacity for investing in tank forces). But, I think it deserves a tip of the hat for how recklessly overboard it goes.

Really, in terms of equipment where it goes nuts is all the add-ons brigades can get, especially infantry. By the time you have 15+ different pieces of equipment being produced just for an infantry brigade, you know you may have gone too far.


In terms of things that I really don't like at all though, the event-spawned units are wonky and prone to causing crashes (I had to fix one myself, spawning SS Cavalry Florian Geyer used to crash the game in that version because of incorrect brigade data for the event; I just had to, since I still had to bait the Germans to try and attack the glorious Rising Sun in beyond the Urals). Also unfinished data on flags and names for a lot of countries in certain less-used political ideologies, most notably Monarchist (again relevant when you intend to make sure the other guy dies for the Emperor).
 
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Ah yes, black ice tech. Where researching warmer underwear takes comparable time and effort to researching jet aircraft or super heavy tanks. Then it takes as much army experience to upgrade your warmer underwear to even warming underwear or to double the armor thickness of your super heavy tanks. Which will you choose? Decisions decisions...

can anyone post some soviet info/guides/tips from the black ice mod page in paradox forums?

It's trivially easy to break black ICE balance in half if you are even mildly competent at any HoI game. When I tried it for HoI4 (long, long ago) you just researched all the infantry bonuses and then pure infantry divisions (i.e. insanely cheap shit) w/ support had 5k soft attack and were basically an all-terrain marines/mountaineers/desert warrior combo package.
 

Vaarna_Aarne

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IIRC the post Waking The Tiger versions limited the terrain specialists to special forces cap so it's better to leave that cap just for super marines, but even without specialized brigades infantry is extremely powerful in BICE due to how many add-ons they can get (and you can overcome terrain penalties just by stacking enough recon company types). You basically have to wait until much later before you start chucking out tank divisions designed to have overwhelming Breakthrough and Armor to negate infantry advantages (which is mostly possible because the AI won't min-max to the fullest and have Infantry with enough Piercing to negate the Armor bonus).

BICE is a lot of fun even if it's a hot mess, because it's so stubborn about being a hot mess it's almost admirable dedication to being an absolute mad lad.
 

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