Hearts of Iron IV - The Ultimate WWII Strategy Game

[Joined on the 4th of July]

Does anyone like the focus trees as a feature? It seems like their main function is being a prominent place where modders can dump their memes in.

 

[Fedora Master]

Focus trees are the epitome of "click button receive buffs". Peak Paradox.

 

[fantadomat]

Does anyone like the focus trees as a feature? It seems like their main function is being a prominent place where modders can dump their memes in.

It is a spice of life really. It gives you a campaign like feeling that could entertain people that have done everything in the game by this point. Paradox GS games are pretty shallow and repetitive once you get used to their type. At this point i enjoy a lot more playing a nation with missions and only taking claimed provinces/land and finish the game once i go trough all the missions. Map painting and exploits becomes boring after certain time.

 

[Theodora]

Does anyone like the focus trees as a feature? It seems like their main function is being a prominent place where modders can dump their memes in.

HoI4 definitely attracts memers like nothing else, especially the kind on those imageboards etc. with niche political ideology memes that end up usurping the true meaning of the ideas they purport to represent with a mix of irony and misinformed nonsense.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Focus trees were fine at first, but Paradox kept expanding further and further into meme territory with every DLC until it became a joke. The Spain and France trees in latest DLC are obscenely overcomplicated with alternative history shit for no apparent reason.

 

[Life of the Party]

Obscure ideologies are the only reason to even play this game. Just like with religion and culture in CK and EU.

I hope no one here is seriously playing it for... what again? A high quality simulation of WWII?

 

[fantadomat]

A high quality simulation of WWII

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Having been on a bit of a Victoria 2 binge lately playing CWE, I think Focus Trees have several benefits about them. They provide something of a map that you can get a picture of what's happening and could happen, and they give a bit more player control. There being a more fleshed out alternate history, no matter how memed, is also a positive thing I think, at least it gives you more incentives to go off the rails (and after being able to decide AI behavior regarding focuses, how off the rails the entire campaign might go). If we wanted a realistic simulation of WW2 grand strategy, it'd suffer quite a bit in that the Axis would always get curbstomped because of insurmountable economic disparity and probably wouldn't even get too far in most situations due to how lucky the Germans were at every turn for the first few years of the war.

I'm also in general in the mind that fun>"realism," I think Kaiserreich for instance might bring back some of the more meme paths like turbo-Ungern and other huge core gains paths instead of being afraid of players getting too many factories during the game. They might as well throw wanzers into the game while at it, if they'd add to the fun, since fun is why we play these games (I actually feel that Pdox games are the purest "toy" games for me nowadays).

Does anyone like the focus trees as a feature? It seems like their main function is being a prominent place where modders can dump their memes in.

HoI4 definitely attracts memers like nothing else, especially the kind on those imageboards etc. with niche political ideology memes that end up usurping the true meaning of the ideas they purport to represent with a mix of irony and misinformed nonsense.

Especially enlightened centrists and loonies who think fascism totally could work out. That's actually one thing I quite dig about TNO, how a big emphasis in the storylines and focus paths of the mod is in all sorts of political dysfunction and some geniuses getting VERY GOOD IDEAS.

And honestly it'll kinda neat to get to play a Paradox mod where nuclear war is treated a bit more seriously than base HoI4's nuke sprees across entire fronts or CWE's situation where if you play the mechanics right you can kill half the population of the planet and everyone will be "that's totally fine, no biggie brah" (the game will be too, since Vicky 2's engine can't quite handle the global population that can be reached in CWE, so for a full campaign you'll have to kill at least a billion people).

 

[Theodora]

Especially enlightened centrists and loonies who think fascism totally could work out.

What do you mean by enlightened centrists? Radically fence-sitting dorks?

Anywaaay, interesting thing happened:
Games producer told to leave Sweden over former employer's error
https://www.thelocal.se/20200710/games-producer-told-to-leave-sweden-over-former-employers-error

Spoiler

One of Sweden's largest game developers is calling on the government to freeze deportations of work permit holders as one of its key staff members faces the threat of having to leave the country over a former employer's error.

For Vachon Pugh, moving to Sweden had always been a dream. And while Sweden's growing tech scene has been working hard to attract international talent, it was first and foremost the love for the country itself that brought the experienced games producer here – first to southern city Malmö, then to Stockholm and Paradox Interactive, where she landed her dream job overseeing the production of the Hearts of Iron IV game.

But her life and career were thrown into turmoil last month when a letter from the Migration Agency arrived, informing her that her work permit extension had been rejected and she had four weeks to leave Sweden.

"I was very surprised and panicked. I contacted my manager and I was completely freaking out," Pugh tells The Local. "I knew it was a risk that it could happen, because when we applied for renewal they asked for additional information, but I thought we had taken care of it and done everything we needed to do."

Pugh, 38, has been employed by three companies, including Paradox, since moving to Sweden from Florida almost three years ago. The Migration Agency found no fault with either her first or current employment – but her second employer failed to pay out a number of workplace and pension insurances during her trial period.

In 2015, Swedish laws were tightened to stop the exploitation of foreign workers. But as The Local has previously reported, it also led to the deportation of hundreds of work permit holders working for serious employers over often minor administrative errors. The situation has shown signs of improvement, but the phenomenon is so ubiquitous it has given rise to a new word, kompetensutvisning or 'talent deportation'.

The tough rules mean that the requirements for non-EU employees are in reality often higher than for EU citizens, and they face harsher punishments when they are not met. Pugh was the first international worker her previous company had employed, and it had been set to start paying out the workplace insurances as soon as the trial period ended. It has since changed its routines so that they take effect immediately.

"I don't believe that my previous employer had ill intentions, it was an oversight. I understand that the rules are there to stop people from being exploited, but I wasn't exploited, it was an accident," says Pugh.

Legislation passed in 2017 means that work permit extensions should not be rejected if action was taken to correct a mistake before it was pointed out by the Migration Agency. And judgments from the Migration Court of Appeal have set a precedent that decisions should be based on an overall assessment of factors (or helhetsbedömning), meaning that one minor mistake should not derail an otherwise good application.

But Pugh's situation still does not meet the requirements, according to the Migration Agency.

The rejection letter, seen by The Local, states that the mistakes were not rectified until the agency pointed them out, and that "a period of approximately five and a half months of lost insurances, during a period of two years of permits, is long enough to find that the conditions for your previous work permit were not met".

A spokesperson for the Migration Agency told Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet, which first wrote about Pugh's case, that rulings by the Migration Court of Appeal including on the practice of 'overall assessment' did not "give (them) the possibility to ignore all the mistakes committed by the employer".

Pugh is now appealing the decision to the Migration Court with the help of a lawyer paid for by Paradox.

"It's really good to know that your employer is fighting for you, but I'm stressed, to say the least," she says.

"It's scary and I don't know what's going to happen. I keep staring at my stuff, wondering if I'm going to have to pack it? I have two cats that I adopted from a shelter in Malmö, and I'm worried about what's going to happen to them. Also, it's in the middle of a pandemic."

"It's a personal tragedy, and it's a big loss for us. Vachon develops one of our most popular games. It's a difficult game to develop, and it's a very hard role to find senior people for. We as an employer are also a victim of this. Even if we're not at fault, and Vachon is not at fault, it still affects us," she tells The Local.

Sweden relies on foreign workers to plug skills shortages in the country, including the fast-growing tech sector, and a government inquiry is currently looking into addressing the problems of deportations. But the inquiry is not set to present its proposals until next year, and Ljungerud is calling on Sweden to act now.

"I wish they would freeze these deportations until they have been properly reevaluated. This problem has been talked about for years, everyone seems to agree that it is not the intent of the law," she says.

"Sweden as a country is trying to build our tech industry and that means we are trying to attract people from abroad. This reduces their willingness to move to Sweden for obvious reasons," Ljungerud adds.

"It's incredibly unfair and outrageous."

n.b. because I've already seen a million people misread this and similar article; it isn't Paradox who screwed up.

 

[Alexios]

Alternate history in vanilla is completely broken so if you play the game for that you're a huge cuck and a retard. The alternate history mods are also almost all shit, especially KR, so you are likewise a cuck if you play those.

Historical mode is decent at this point, but the glaring issues are still the idiocy of the AI, air combat, and overall lack of mechanical depth. Nothing stops even a mediocre Germany player from easily beating AI UK and USSR, but the German AI is god awful. It throws all its infantry into the Soviets at once, taking enormous casualties, and doesn't place its tanks strategically at all.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

The New Order has released its first full version.

What do you mean by enlightened centrists? Radically fence-sitting dorks?

Yea, the sort that just default to a completely misunderstood form of the horseshoe theory and the sort and who think simply avoiding any "extremes" will take care of things.

 

[what am i doing]

Having been on a bit of a Victoria 2 binge lately playing CWE, I think Focus Trees have several benefits about them.

They're essentially decision - event chains that are laid out visually instead of being largely hidden. I prefer when a game causes things to go a certain way through its own mechanics rather than through scripted events (Victoria 2's industrialization process is a good example of this as it uses a bunch of pop and economy mechanics to cause countries to gradually industrialize over time without needing scripted events) but if a game is going to rely heavily on events then focus trees are probably the best way Paradox has come up with of handling it. CWE is a good example of where Victoria 2's decisions / events system falls flat compared to focus trees, it's just not a good interface for them. They essentially keep a bunch of stuff "hidden" that really doesn't need to be hidden, and pack a ton of stuff into one cluttered list.

I guess the biggest limitation of focus trees is that, as implemented in HoI4, they're only good for a limited time span, but that's really just a design issue, you could have multiple focus trees that are added to the game and removed at certain dates, or just expand the size of the tree.

 

[thesheeep]

The New Order has released its first full version.

What do you mean by enlightened centrists? Radically fence-sitting dorks?

Yea, the sort that just default to a completely misunderstood form of the horseshoe theory and the sort and who think simply avoiding any "extremes" will take care of things.

D&D druids?
To be honest, though, not being a raving extremist is already a pretty good first step to not being a human failure.


Anyway...
I am really digging Old World Blues, except for a few minor things:

• The naval techs are just way too fine-grained. They are already too fine-grained in vanilla (at least with MtG) - I don't want to play a ship model simulator, just give me handful of ship types and be done with it. But OWB goes totally overboard (huehue) here. A million different naval modules, all of which practically pointless as naval is almost irrelevant in the game - and even if you do play a coastal nation, superior numbers are everything. Just focus on one or two naval trees, stick to it and outproduce everyone, doesn't matter what exactly you put on your ships as long as it is new.
• Is it just me or is OWB much easier than most mods and even vanilla? I played as Dredgers, New Vegas and NCR and one of the Mexican nations. Only Dredgers was somewhat challenging at the start, and maybe that was only because that was my first OWB game.
• What's the point of demolition? It only gives a minor bonus to energy consumption, but other than that has only various mali to stats (and makes the division slower). Is this a bug, maybe? Forgot to add a positive piercing modifier?
• Hoover Dam is completely OP - I get the significance for the setting, but man it should not be as strong as it is.
• Haven't seen a single game in which Caesar's Legion does not completely annihilate everything and would win if the player doesn't stop them. NCR wasn't even able to beat me as New Vegas prior to me grabbing Hoover Dam and also prior to getting those free 12+ securitron divisions.
• On that note... those free divisions really shocked me. "Okay... you just gave me the strongest army in the entire wasteland. Just like that. GG"
• I don't like the general system where it is always better to upgrade that political tech for better generals, then fire your old ones and hire better new generals. Instead, that tech should upgrade your existing generals.

 

[Theodora]

The New Order has released its first full version.

I kinda dig the visuals.

Spoiler

Can't think of a good way to describe it, 'alt. cold-war cyberpunk'? (Interestingly Steam also says it has a DMCA claim filed on it.)

Yea, the sort that just default to a completely misunderstood form of the horseshoe theory and the sort and who think simply avoiding any "extremes" will take care of things.

Yeah, clown brains.

D&D druids?
To be honest, though, not being a raving extremist is already a pretty good first step to not being a human failure.

Thinking "everything different from the status quo is the same and evil" is a bit of a failure of critical thought.

 

[Life of the Party]

Can't think of a good way to describe it, 'alt. cold-war cyberpunk'?

A description I came across is 'neon colours with a muted colour scheme'.

And yeah, like some others, I find it a complete eyesore.

(Interestingly Steam also says it has a DMCA claim filed on it.)

Just a bit of trolling, if I'm not mistaken.

 

[Theodora]

And yeah, like some others, I find it a complete eyesore.

I dunno, it's obviously not professional, but I appreciate the effort beyond stock HoI4, which most mods keep and just doesn't feel thematically suitable. It's their willingness to create new UI elements more generally that makse me interested in it.

Just a bit of trolling, if I'm not mistaken.

Huh, never seen that before.

 

[thesheeep]

And yeah, like some others, I find it a complete eyesore.

I dunno, it's obviously not professional, but I appreciate the effort beyond stock HoI4, which most mods keep and just doesn't feel thematically suitable. It's their willingness to create new UI elements more generally that makse me interested in it.

I like the visuals as well, but they are really hard on the eyes. I seriously had to take breaks from looking at the game for a bit when I checked out the mod. Human eyes are not made to look at extreme neon-black contrasts like that for a prolonged period.
It would be extremely helpful if they reduced the contrast across the board, making all bright colors somewhat darker.

 

[Stavrophore]

New update for the memest mod.





May I interest you in some E A G L E A X E ?

Nice to see "toporzeł".

 

[thesheeep]

Playing some more TNO, I'd strongly recommend to stay away from it for a while more.

In my game as Ostafrika, quite simply none of the focuses worked.
Some promised more stability, some promised more mil factories - but none of that ever happened when researching them.

 

[Stavrophore]

Why such ambitious mod have no soundtrack? Kinda lame.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

There's a soundtrack submod someone made for it, which uses the Burgundian Lullaby track (which is REALLY FUCKING GOOD with the mod's loading screens btw).

Playing some more TNO, I'd strongly recommend to stay away from it for a while more.

In my game as Ostafrika, quite simply none of the focuses worked.
Some promised more stability, some promised more mil factories - but none of that ever happened when researching them.

There's plenty of other rough edges too, doom shrimps and ita deez nuts and all, ie Japan's got a lot of localization that hasn't been done yet (mostly for Takagi, who was rushed to make it in because Takagi is also the failstate successor for Ikeda and Kaya governments) and there are other elements that haven't been finished yet like the Oil Crisis which is at the ass-end of the time covered so it's also understandable (not sure why it's already really). Takagi's second five years tree is also rough in many places.

HOWEVER

I would still say that the intricate focus tree design and the sheer wealth of extremely high quality narrative is worth it. In terms of writing it's easily the highest quality strategy game ever, and albeit this is not a high bar it's still very high end for game writing overall (it's possibly the best-written mod I guess).


Currently playing a Bob Kennedy campaign after wrapping up with Takagi (supposedly it's possible for RFK to avoid the family weakness to bullets, so want to try that out). I think next I'll do Speer before heading off to the magical Mad Max land of former Soviet Union.

 

[thesheeep]

I would still say that the intricate focus tree design and the sheer wealth of extremely high quality narrative is worth it. In terms of writing it's easily the highest quality strategy game ever, and albeit this is not a high bar it's still very high end for game writing overall (it's possibly the best-written mod I guess).

Oh, yes, the writing is great.
I just don't want to spoil the game for myself before it can be reasonably played (mostly) bug-free - and not just the narrative parts.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Right now it seems to be really down to knowing beforehand which countries and specific paths are the most finished. My understanding is that this would mean Burgundy, Germany, and the American paths, and several of the Russian warlords (people have been praising the darker choices like Amur for being really bleak, but also Sablin as a counterweight to that with his noblebright Leninist-Shounenism). Though supposedly the Russian nuclear weapons development thing is pretty buggy.

EDIT: Albeit it might be a good idea to wait a bit anyway, since they're currently doing daily patches and because of the amount of content covered by the patches save compatibility is not always guaranteed.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Finished Bobby Kennedy campaign, and I can now say that your end date for any campaign is at most somewhere in the early 70's. The Oil Crisis is not finished content, for instance its end is not yet in at all, so don't worry about it (it also shows in that the SAW style situation doesn't happen in it at all, the war ends in days at most). Kennedy campaign was alright, it does demonstrate that the proxy war structure works much better for HoI4's conflict model (limited to only a few divisions you can send means you have to weigh making encirclements) because it reduces the importance of mass in industry and troops.

Two things I feel that need tweaking is that there could be more information feedback regarding assassination chances for RFK (or preferably, the assassination should operate purely on a threshold rather than semi-RNG), but more importantly airborne units need to be nerfed, they're so unbelievably fast that they need to be far less combat capable (at current speed, possibly almost entirely incapable of winning a battle). I also think that RFK's focus tree time total is slightly too high, since if you have stuff happening otherwise (ie, I had Indonesian War, Iranian Civil War, Oil Crisis, and negotiated back Hawaii) you barely have enough time to reach the tree's closing event by the end of the second term. I dunno if it's possible, but one thing that comes to mind that they might look into for avoiding the obvious problem in players clearing a focus tree too early is if they might be able to decouple PP gain (since outside of proxy wars and event chain option guessing, the primary thing RFK does is ration PP for endless Chewbacca Defence or calling LBJ) from whether or not a focus is active.

Additional expenditures scaling needs a little work too I think, since because they scale to GDP in a game that would go to presumably 1991 you basically want to avoid every focus you don't need to do that makes you take one of those. It ends up making expenditures in your budget feel pretty weird I think. At least I seem to have finally adjusted to the Economy button being there between Construction and Production, I guess Espionage button ended up shaking up the muscle memory enough inbetween now and the first demo.

 

[Lagole Gon]

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