Hearts of Iron IV - The Ultimate WWII Strategy Game

[AwesomeButton]

I totally understand about the naming. I had to name all my forces according to the Soviet order of battle on the western front, including all the Special Military Districts, and the armies. When I was playing HoI2 as a student I had more time and I would go down to the divisions, but for now I just stop at the armies and army composition.

For simple stuff like renaming the nation, you could easily mod it yourself. As for period specifics, that's what irks me more - the real countries usually had possibilities which they don't have in the game, whereas the game gives them paths of political development which for anyone with knowledge of the country's history are obviously impossible. But that's the limits of the plausability this game has. When you turn back to HoI2 and 3, they seem less developed in the political simulation, but more developed in the military one.

Edit:

 

[AwesomeButton]

So, I won the Republicans their victory in the civil war. Time to get them into the Comintern, and with time acquaint them with the wonders of their new life under communism.

Enough smart encirclements, until the Nationalists are starved for divisions, and then break through their lines and snatch their victory points.

It's easiest to corner enemies around the borders or coastline.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

By the way, AwesomeButton, would you say that the AI is smart enough to fight its wars by itself (a.i. when you're playing a small country)? And on a particular note, does it know how to do oversea invasions now (e.g. Germany landing in the UK given Axis naval superiority)?

 

[Heroic Liberator]

bulgarians.jpg

 

[Heroic Liberator]

So what am I missing? Do I need 10 extra divisions beyond the ones assigned to these three zones?

 

[thesheeep]

And on a particular note, does it know how to do oversea invasions now (e.g. Germany landing in the UK given Axis naval superiority)?

No.

It's the weirdest thing, really.
They do manage, on occasion, to successfully land somewhere at their target. So far, so good.
But then they completely forget about it and that singular invasion force quickly gets pushed back into the ocean.

I think that the AI eventually realizes there is a good landing spot somewhere and uses it - which is why you can decide a war as a minor by doing one thing: Creating a landing and secure it with a handful of divisions.
Eventually, the AI will notice that spot and start using it.

However, it takes the AI too much time to notice it and it is too dumb to hold a landing on its own for long enough, which is why it generally fails.

Devs would really only need to make sure that successful naval invasions cause the AI to keep focusing on that particular frontline and send more, more and more reinforcements to it. Basically, have reinforcements ready before doing the naval invasion itself - just like a player would. Instead of completely forgetting about it and doing a different naval invasion somewhere else...
And of course make the AI faster in recognizing a good landing, no matter if it is their own or an ally's.
Sure, it still wouldn't be great, but such a change would probably be enough to improve the situation significantly.

 

[AwesomeButton]

By the way, AwesomeButton, would you say that the AI is smart enough to fight its wars by itself (a.i. when you're playing a small country)? And on a particular note, does it know how to do oversea invasions now (e.g. Germany landing in the UK given Axis naval superiority)?

In most cases the AI's decisions to go to war are stered by National Focuses. That was one of the reasons they added the whole National Focus concept in HoI 4, to add flavour and to direct the AI better. So, whether it can fight its wars on its own - sure, against another AI. The general rule is that focuses will have gone some way to set up the initial situation in each of the countries before they go to war.

For naval Invasions, I have no experience so far.

 

[shywn]

How many of these hunks of metal do I need to have to take on Japan's fleet? It takes about nine months to build one. Playing as Netherlands in Batavia.

(That's a heavy cruiser with mostly-up-to-date 1942 technology. With two heavy cruiser turrets, rest light cruiser turrets.)

FWIW, here is what Mr Yamamoto has:

Spoiler

That's three fleets: two recon fleets, and a strike force. The strike force is 2 CV, 2 BB, 3 CA, and 23 screens. The two recon fleets are responsible for the other 23 ships.

 

[razvedchiki]

this is in sp? because the AIs composition seems pretty sensible.

 

[AwesomeButton]

While everyone is playing the countries from the new expansion, I finally got the hang of the Soviet Union vs Germany:

Spoiler

This game turned out pretty weird. I don't know if it's because of the expansion or because I won over Spain to the Comintern. First, for some reason the Allies didn't take off as a faction. Instead, the Little Entante which started with Poland and Romania gradually added Czhechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Britain and France. Hungary on the other hand chose to join Japan in the Asian cooperation sphere. Germany took a long while to eat up Poland, but in the end returned Eastern Poland back to me, as per the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. Then they quickly dealt with Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and Romania, and then finally turned to France, but it was already the summer of 1941. I thought, the AI wouldn't be so stupid as to DoW me in the autumn, but it did, in September 41. By that time however I had so many division massed at the borders and also lvl 2 bunkers in each border tile, that the Germans didn't advance anywhere. They just DoW'd me and stood there. It appears the AI didn't like its chances anywhere along the front.

At this point I had about 26 Tank divisions. I moved the 12 under Zhukov from Odessa to the Carpathians, and easily took the two tiles wide corridor which was connecting conquered Poland with the conquered Romania. This put 33 German divisions out of direct connection with Berlin and trapped in Romania. I had to wait for my final batch of 14 Tank divisions to be ready in Kiev in mid-November, swung them to Odessa in place of Zhukov's divisions, and began a sweeping operation along the Danube valley. Pretty easy.

I developed three templates for infantry - the game's default Rifle Division, but improved (11 Inf battalions, Support Artillery, Engineers), The Defensive Infantry (14 infantry battalions, 1 towed anti-tank battalion, support artillery, support engineers, support armored recon), and the Far East Rifle Division (11 Infantry, 1 Towed Artillery, Support Artillery, Support Engineers, Support Armored Recon). My Tank Divisions are 6 Medium Tank battalions, 8 Motorized Infantry battalions, Engineers, Maintenance, Armored Recon.

I reached the historical size of my order of battle - 150-160 infantry divisions of all kinds (the Russians converted their motorized and cavalry divisions into infantry divisions in the first months, most of them were severely lacking equipment anyway), ~40 Tank divisions.

Due to Hungary not being part of the war I've got the Germans pretty well boxed in in Romania and they are going to lose 33 divisions there. I've also made one not bad encirclement around Brest-Litovsk. This should pretty much cripple them.

Finally, I devised on my own a way to get to T-34 tanks early. I rush for medium tanks, regardless of time penalty, so that I am already researching T-28 by the time Germany offers me the tech cooperation. This allows me to research T-34 with a reduced penalty and have it researched by January 1938. By then I already had two small production lines going, just in order to develop their production efficiency, and in 1938 simply switched them to T-34s. By 1941 I had produced 6000 T-34s which was enough to equip 15 divisions (8 battalions x 50 tanks x 15 divisions), all while gradually updating my pre-existing 12 divisions to T-34. The final 14 divisions which you see on the Southern front (The red stars on fronts are my tank divisions) got made a little later, in November 41.

As I said, this game turned out pretty weird although I set Historical focuses for AIs to "On". At some point I took a look at France and saw something called "French Commune" carved out in the middle of the country. It turned out to be a Republican Spain's puppet. Commendable, although I'm not sure if some deaths by firing squad aren't in order, on account of a suspiciously eager initiative. In the bottom left corner you can see Spain has quickly opened a second front in Central Italy right next to Rome. Not like those anglo-pussies who waited for 1944, right?

 

[Raghar]

this is in sp? because the AIs composition seems pretty sensible.

Of course it's SP, they are hunting submarines with all gun battleships.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Well, now all that I need to do is to build a mighty army and conquer the Italian and Turkish territories in the Balkans. Heh.

 

[Raghar]

How many of these hunks of metal do I need to have to take on Japan's fleet? It takes about nine months to build one. Playing as Netherlands in Batavia.

(That's a heavy cruiser with mostly-up-to-date 1942 technology. With two heavy cruiser turrets, rest light cruiser turrets.)

FWIW, here is what Mr Yamamoto has:

Spoiler

That's three fleets: two recon fleets, and a strike force. The strike force is 2 CV, 2 BB, 3 CA, and 23 screens. The two recon fleets are responsible for the other 23 ships.

You don't need that many ships, as long as you have units in Japan.

Also that cruiser is dead meat when fighting against carriers.

 

[shywn]

You don't need that many ships, as long as you have units in Japan.

I'm sorry, I don't follow. How am I supposed to get Mao to Japan?

The Chinas capitulated a while ago; there's an ongoing, surprisingly stable fight for Burma and French Indochina, but I can't spare any troops right now. Need all of them to fend off Japanese invasions of Malaysia/Sumatra/Java/Borneo/New Guinea.

Also that cruiser is dead meat when fighting against carriers.

I don't plan to fight in the open sea. Roughly half of my military factories are doing heavy fighters or naval bombers. I have a few unsinkable aircraft carriers (manufactured from dirt) in the area. You know, for air support.

Also, yes, single player.

 

[Raghar]

You don't need that many ships, as long as you have units in Japan.

I'm sorry, I don't follow. How am I supposed to get Mao to Japan?

Well, if you allowed Mao to die, you are out of luck. Someone hanged him on a tree already. And when you don't have spare units for invasion of Japan, well you can't invade Japan. You'd probably need to wait for US to kill Japanese fleet.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Well, now all that I need to do is to build a mighty army and conquer the Italian and Turkish territories in the Balkans. Heh.

The last patch definetly broke something about Germany's expansion, as a consequence of the cordon sanitaire joining the Allies too eagerly.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

On an unrelated note, Italy really needs a national focus tree rework and expansion.

And I'd hope that they'd allow for a focus-triggered faction including Fascist Italy and the Soviet Union akin to the already existing one in Germany's current national focus tree (a.i. the 'Unholy Alliance' focus creating the 'Moscow-Berlin Axis' faction). Could see an Italian focus path leading to the proclamation of the Italian Social Republic (which should've existed in the base game anyhow for the historical path), maybe adding Nicola Bombacci as a possible advisor and ending with the option to proclaim Italo-Soviet cooperation.

 

[thesheeep]

On an unrelated note, Italy really needs a national focus tree rework and expansion.

Never!
The memes stemming from Italy's absurd lack of everything must flow.

 

[Fedora Master]

fantadomat

 

[AwesomeButton]

It's beautiful though, and the thousands of tiles allow for map maneuvering that looks quite realistic.

Spoiler

 

[Heroic Liberator]

It's beautiful though, and the thousands of tiles allow for map maneuvering that looks quite realistic.

Spoiler

As somewhat of a noob, I feel intimidated of playing one of the Great Powers. Seems like it'd require lots of headaches to manage everything from navies (which you can straight up ignore with most of the other countries) to plenty of zones of occupation and multifront warfare.

 

[thesheeep]

It's beautiful though, and the thousands of tiles allow for map maneuvering that looks quite realistic.

Spoiler

As somewhat of a noob, I feel intimidated of playing one of the Great Powers. Seems like it'd require lots of headaches to manage everything from navies (which you can straight up ignore with most of the other countries) to plenty of zones of occupation and multifront warfare.

It definitely drags out the playtime. You just need to pause more to do all the things, but I wouldn't say it makes it more difficult per se.

Navies are a nightmare, though. It is completely unclear what you should build, what to put on ships, what things do, their exact effect, it's all a big black box.
And if you look for guides, you'll find 20 guides giving you 40 different ideas, mostly contradicting each other. Ask ten people about it, get twenty opinions from it.
In the end, frankly, as long as you do anything (e.g. focus on mines) and keep up in tech, all that matters is that you outproduce the enemy.

 

[AwesomeButton]

It's beautiful though, and the thousands of tiles allow for map maneuvering that looks quite realistic.

Spoiler

As somewhat of a noob, I feel intimidated of playing one of the Great Powers. Seems like it'd require lots of headaches to manage everything from navies (which you can straight up ignore with most of the other countries) to plenty of zones of occupation and multifront warfare.

It definitely drags out the playtime. You just need to pause more to do all the things, but I wouldn't say it makes it more difficult per se.

Navies are a nightmare, though. It is completely unclear what you should build, what to put on ships, what things do, their exact effect, it's all a big black box.
And if you look for guides, you'll find 20 guides giving you 40 different ideas, mostly contradicting each other. Ask ten people about it, get twenty opinions from it.
In the end, frankly, as long as you do anything (e.g. focus on mines) and keep up in tech, all that matters is that you outproduce the enemy.

I use Darkest Hour's Manual for a general guide, although things have changed a lot since then. It's free to download from DH's steam page.

 

[fantadomat]

fantadomat

Have no idea,haven't played the game for a year now. And yeah,that retard is insufferable,i did cursed him at least 5 time fro the first 5 minutes and then i stopped the video. The fucking cunt going democratic,the gall of that inbreed shit slurping scum!

 

[AwesomeButton]

Honestly speaking, Bulgaria may be the surprise best nation, or at least the most versatile one in Bosphorus. No lack of deranged "little dictators" to larps as neither.