Hearts of Iron IV - The Ultimate WWII Strategy Game

[razvedchiki]

wasnt the whole point of hoi4 the alt history?i mean its pretty obvious that they arent interested in simulating ww2,as is their core audience.

 

[Kuattro]

wasnt the whole point of hoi4 the alt history?i mean its pretty obvious that they arent interested in simulating ww2,as is their core audience.

But there's "alternative history: Hitler gets killed in 1937 and now the whole of the west has to deal with the Soviet Union"*, and there's "alternative history: Trotsky flies back to the USSR, smashes into the Kremlin through a window, kicks Stalin in the gonads and now the permanent revolution is coming to the town".

Hell even that second one would be fine if there's no other mod that has come up with. My problem is not the existence of the alternative paths (yes, I also know that there's an option to force the AI to follow the historical foci), it's just that Paradox can't come up with something of their own, and seem pretty happy with copying mods as long as they get paid.

I'm fine with alternative scenarios if they allow players to replay the campaign multiple times. I just expect them to think their own, relatively plausible alternatives, that's all. Even implausible ones, they can add Nazi UFOs and moon bases if they want, just don't go taking them from mods. That's just lazy.

*Also, that's C&C:RA so...

 

[Theodora]

I for my part, apologize for getting way too abrasive.

I just get frustrated by the, in my opinion, completely lackluster DLCs Paradox releases, which are I think very lazy an uninspired. They already did this with Man The Guns, and now they seem to do exactly the same with La Résistance: they add a new, small, not that well designed in most cases, mechanic to the game, and then they glue to it a couple of new focus trees and some alternative history to justify asking 20€ for it. For that price, the least they could do with the alternative history is to sit down and think about what they are going to do about it, instead of looking at a popular mod and basically copying the idea: The second ACW for Man The Guns, and now the Spanish situation, again basically copied from Kaiserreich.

Kaiserreich deals with the ridiculousness by completely dispensing with the original context: There's a new timeline going all the way back to World War I, so they can come up with things like Carlism being the only refuge for the right wingers discontent with the Spanish monarchy, since fascism is not as popular in Europe as it was in real life, but that is clearly not the situation in 1936 and Vanilla HOI IV. Or a bloke that believes himself the second Gengis Khan.

I admit I haven't got the faintest idea if Paradox actually try to explain how this could happen, how Carlism could present a serious alternative to both liberal democracy and fascism in 1936, seeing its steady decline for all the XX century, but knowing Paradox, they probably don't, they just put the button there, and collect the 20€. They don't even try to hide it any more.

Let's see how long it takes them to add the Mongol Empire as alternative history to the vanilla game.

<3

What are you saying they copied from Kaiserreich? I haven't given it enough love. I keep meaning to go back and play the Darkest Hour version, but I struggle to get to grips with the UI.

For whatever it's worth I've seen the Carlists event happen during a dev stream (they were playing Republican into Anarchist Spain), and when the Carlists split off they were a small fragment. So I don't think they're just making it a quick and easy coup. It seems like going against history will be some sort of challenge. At the very least I'm glad they fixed the Spanish civil war so it's actually a war and not a quick skrimish.

I don't know if you'll find any further explanation for their thinking outside the details in the focus tree.

Admittedly it's no Red Alert, but it can be fun alt history wise if you don't take it too seriously. There's just real limits to the engine when it's confined to this sitting. And re: Carlism again, I don't think they're meant to be.. anything too special? Inasmuch as any nation can become non-aligned, which prior to this update – and the anarchists who work at Paradox (rightly) complaining against their original designation as communists – was only really for monarchies.

I'm hoping that Imperator is fleshed out to project fantastical alt histories that actually feel possible. They still have a chance there, and thankfully Arheo is no Johan.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Generally the big struggle with aiming for historical is that WW2 is NOT good for turning that into gameplay as grand strategy. Simply put in numbers terms Germany will always lose, and there's problems of hindsight with things like the value of carriers (then again, naval war is its entire own can of worms anyway).

Another thing of couse I figure is entertainment value. Millenium Dawn is MIND-BOGGLINGLY boring because it sticks to real history, or alternatively horribly balanced because it sticks to real history. And I'm one of the freaks who kinda likes their new economic and foreign influence mechanics!

 

[Fedora Master]

First impressions - the most pointless DLC so far. Spying adds colossal amount of busywork for little gain, while the new focus trees are so bloated and convoluted it's laughable.

Sounds exactly like any other modern PDX DLC.

 

[Average Manatee]

There's no ability to automate spying either. Just like there was no ability to automate bombing or research or navy or trade. Playing a historical Spy Master UK looks to be insanely tedious ontop of the already tedious issues of monitoring 4+ fronts for all the things that can go wrong or need to be mircroed.

HoI4: the only thing we let you automate away is the fun part of the game (moving armies around and encircling millions of Russians).

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

First impressions - the most pointless DLC so far. Spying adds colossal amount of busywork for little gain, while the new focus trees are so bloated and convoluted it's laughable.

Sounds exactly like any other modern PDX DLC.

Not at all. While the other Hoi4 DLCs aren't great, they always add useful mechanics and features. Puppet system, decision system, fuel as a resource, technology licensing, shiping routes and so on and so on. All of these were good additions.

La Resistance on the other hand? Piece of garbage top to bottom. Spying is incredibly tedious and for all the work it takes to manage, it barely adds anything that wasn't in a game before (coups, resistance, cryptograghy and so on.

And don't make me start about new focus trees. In old DLCs like the Commowealth DLC, the new focus trees just added a bit of freshness to each country. They are clean, readable, they generally make sense historically and they add some much needed variety.

These new focus trees though, holy shit dude. Paradox went full retard with alt-history so Spain/France/Portugal suddenly have 50-levels deep focus tree for every alt-history option, no matter how inplausible. It's retarded.

 

[Life of the Party]

The Spanish Civil War feels very popamole.

Timers and Political Power for everything, including the whole Planned/Unplanned Offensives thing which ought to be covered by the very nature of the game and its most basic mechanics rather than some lazy modifiers you remove with Hitler mana.

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

HoI4: the only thing we let you automate away is the fun part of the game (moving armies around and encircling millions of Russians).

More like "Automate or else, Bitch". Its one of the reasons I haven't been able to get into HOI4.

 

[Average Manatee]

The Spanish Civil War feels very popamole.

Timers and Political Power for everything, including the whole Planned/Unplanned Offensives thing which ought to be covered by the very nature of the game and its most basic mechanics rather than some lazy modifiers you remove with Hitler mana.

Yeah its totally fucking retarded. Literally everyone in Spain, including volunteers, gets -90% attack (that can stack with terrain to be over -100% attack) until one side decides to spend PP to plan an offensive in the area, at which point everyone suddenly can fight.

 

[Lagole Gon]

 

[Theodora]

What is this? It looks as cursed as it gets.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

That's Red Flood, and it's basically full of this sort of stuff.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Kaiserreich is the only good mod.

 

[Lagole Gon]

I started whistling it when I noticed that local Lidl is almost empty...

 

[Theodora]

That's Red Flood, and it's basically full of this sort of stuff.

Meme mods bad.

Kaiserreich is the only good mod.

My skin crawls when I see a Millennium Dawn screenshot.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Millenium Dawn's big problem is that it doesn't do anything wild, which leads to a campaign that's both extremely unbalanced and extremely boring. It really needs to just go full alternate history from 2001 onwards. Heck if it can't come up with something to make things more riveting, it might as well have the Martians invade or something.

Kaiserreich's starting to have a bit of a similar problem IMO, they're far too concerned with trying to impose limitations and restrictions on what can and can't happen, ie how they've reined in fun campaigns like Mongolian world conquest. There's also certain elements that are too passive, best example IMO being Japan and Fengtian where as Japan the only thing you can do is react in the bare minimum and can't do anything pro-active. Or how having any partial peaces with Russia as Japan is a waste of time because they'll declare war again in a few months and you have to walk all the way back to the previous point because they always just annex your puppets, which is still more than a little ridiculous.

Kaiserreich has been greatly improved by the option to determine AI focus tree behavior, so you can at least force the AI to not pick the stupid and boring paths for your campaign.


(Also the best mod is the Fallout mod, and its Enclave submod is the gold standard against which all other focus trees and campaigns should be measured against)

 

[LizardWizard]

Old World Blues is the only good mod.

Fixed

 

[Lagole Gon]

Oh boy! New Red Flood content for Poland!

Spoiler

Oh... oookay...

 

[Mark.L.Joy]

Finally played this for real, navy play is meh subs seem most effective to wreck the home front maybe there's something else for sea invasion but naval bombers were doing fine there I seemed to have the conditions checked but never did try it, airforce is just attached to armies after some micro early game I don't even know if they are working, after some attempts and getting bogged down in the western front switched to Japan and got some 40 division encircled in Manchuria that was def the most fun in the game.

 

[Silva]

Hey faggots, is HoI4 worth it nowadays?

Just had a come back to Pdox games with this lockout and I'm having tons of fun with EU4 (never played before) and CK2 (hundreds of hours on it but it's completely different now after tons of dlcs).

I keep hearing this is the worst one of the bunch.

 

[BrotherFrank]

Hey faggots, is HoI4 worth it nowadays?

Just had a come back to Pdox games with this lockout and I'm having tons of fun with EU4 (never played before) and CK2 (hundreds of hours on it but it's completely different now after tons of dlcs).

I keep hearing this is the worst one of the bunch.

Base hoi4 is not worth it imo BUT the mod scene is pretty fun so would recommend it for that reason.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

It's okay.

 

[Silva]

I think I'll play Vicky 2 then, and try this one later.

Thanks.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

The New Order mod should be releasing in May.