Hearts of Iron IV - The Ultimate WWII Strategy Game

[Heroic Liberator]

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.

As long as it sates my desire for socialist pan-Balkanic tri moreta (which it does), I am content.

 

[fantadomat]

No lack of deranged "little dictators" to larps as neither.

If only you could see my dreams.....

 

[Raghar]

South European diplomacy.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Since you've mentioned mods, would y'all recommend any of the Cold War mods and if so which?

 

[jebsmoker]

if you want hoi 4 with some heavy alternate history flavor and story focus: The New Order: Last Days of Europe. although i would say that TNO has some optimization issues currently

if you want a polished hoi 2 cold war experience: Arsenal of Democracy

 

[AwesomeButton]

I keep wanting to play something else, but every night I start an ironman USSR. I just like the high stakes - you spend 5 years preparing and either you sweep through Eurasia, or you get locked in a stalemate, essentially lose the campaign, and there go a couple of hours of progress.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

I keep wanting to play something else, but every night I start an ironman USSR. I just like the high stakes - you spend 5 years preparing and either you sweep through Eurasia, or you get locked in a stalemate, essentially lose the campaign, and there go a couple of hours of progress.

I keep trying to play a Fascist Yugoslavia and conquer the Balkans while being allied with Italy, but so far only once did I manage to get Hungary to ally Italy and form the Pact of Rome before Italy gobbles Albania. If that happens, then it's all fine and dandy since I can pass that national focus which hands Italy's Adriatic possessions over in exchange for me joining its faction and then I can also conquer Albania since being together in a faction overrides Italy's guarantee on Albania.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

So... anyone playing Old World Blues? Honestly I think it deserves its own thread at this point. 3.0 just launched.

Oooo, they finally got the next big update done? Will have to check it out at some point before The New Order updates. Will have to check out what the update adds, judging by the Workshop page Texas and more Midwest has been added to the map.


Also, the Enclave Submod that it has is the second best HoI4 mod, it's got exquisite detail (as afforded to by a mod that focuses on just having one extensively detailed and varied campaign). We'll see when it updates to new OWB.

 

[XenomorphII]

I missed that 3.0 had launched since they created a new page for it on steamworkshop instead and kept the old one as a legacy version.

 

[XenomorphII]

Just curious, but in OWB how are you guys building divisions? I was doing 10s and 20s like you would do 20s and 40s in vanilla, but in 3.0 it seems like the 10s just aren't worth it. They seem to melt in the face of anything other than just plain old infantry, costing manpower that is extremely precious. The 20s seem good for holding, but their ability to push seems highly limited.

 

[Average Manatee]

Just played two quick OWB games, so I can answer.

In my Chichen Itza I went with 9 Infantry 3 Demoition battalions with a demolitions, fireteam and anti tank support. It required a good amount of micro to break the relatively narrow frontline with Aztlan but it absolutely demolished once the front thinned out and the enemy couldn't constantly rotate in fresh org troops. Probably worth mixing in more advanced stuff eventually but I didn't bother.

In my Vault City game I went with 7 infantry battalions with the same demo/fireteam/anti tank support. Reason being that otherwise I didn't have enough manpower to hold the long battle lines up there.I spent most of the rest of my factories on air power. Literally no one fields an airforce so you can just go with the CAS (Triplane Attacker line) to demolish anything. With 150 planes and 60 divisions probably 1/2 to 2/3rds of the damage I was dealing was coming from the planes despite the fact that the planes cost about as much as ~15 divisions.

In both cases obviously I went for asymmetric warfare and wasteland tactics. -0.5 width and a total of +30% breakthrough is what you want to push with infantry (which is something you should never really do in HoI4 unless the front is very sparse due to how stupidly weak breakthrough is on non-tanks, but oh well). If you are a nation that can get implants like Vault City then use those, they are wildly unbalanced and turn your infantry into space marines on the level of power armor. If you can get power armor then mixing in 1 support power armor to every division should give you armor advantage against 90% of the chaff incredibly cheaply and let you cut a wide swathe through most AIs.

Also in general you pretty much always want to rush techs, not sure on the specific difference but techs in OWB seem to have much lighter ahead of time penalties. The economic ones and infantry weapons can be gotten way ahead of time so that you are pumping out the best stuff immediately.

EDIT: Probably worth keeping a line of the weakest infantry equipment going just for garrison duty.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Question for OWB players, how does one go about colonizing the uninhabited territories on the map? Is it tied to the focus tree system or what?

 

[XenomorphII]

You don't as far as I know. The empty map is just work in progress that hasn't been filled in yet.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

You don't as far as I know. The empty map is just work in progress that hasn't been filled in yet.

Damn, hoped that I could colonize Cuba with one of the two small Chinese states.

 

[AwesomeButton]

I've been going through needless trouble fighting in the Spanish Civil War. A much better way to accumulate Army XP in the early game as the Soviets is to just DoW Poland as soon as possible. It also prevents Germany from taking over half of it and pushing the border needlessly east of Berlin.

After assisting the working people of Poland in throwing off the shackles of the oppresive reactionary regime there, a new and fatefully important task was arising before the Red Army. That was the liberation of the oppressed masses of Germany, suffering under the fascist yoke.

Spoiler

I was still under -30% to division organization, coming from the Great Purge modifier, but I tried to counter it as much as I could with the decryption bonus and with waiting for Germany to attack the Netherlands and Belgium, which it was obliging enough to do some weeks before my Casus Belli had expired. Just in time to backstab them. Regardless I was still expecting a much tougher time than what I got:

Spoiler

In the end I puppeted Germany for the achievement.

 

[Raghar]

Do you know what mistake Poland AI did?

When ComChi was in war with Tibet, it allowed Tibet into its faction.

The problem is ComChi is in comintern, it didn't leave yet. In fact, leaving comintern would be suicide, because both Japan and Quin China are in comintern.
So Poland is in position when even when it win war against Italy, it's tick tick.

 

[Delterius]

Do you know what mistake Poland AI did?

and here i thought you meant the sudetes

 

[Raghar]

Do you know what mistake Poland AI did?

and here i thought you meant the sudetes

Well, if czechoslovakia is in allies, then Poland is dead because Poland robbed czechs of Ash region. On the other hand if czechoslovakia is in mezimoří, they have to suck it. Poland used political backstabbery to rob them of Ash region and got away with it.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Ash region?

 

[Raghar]

Ash region?

It's called that in czech language. That western most part of czech basin. That small part that Poland grabbed from Germany.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Yea I know where it is, just had never heard it called Ash Region.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Some Kaiserreich memes:

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

The New Order's 1.1 update 'Cutting Room Floor' is out now.

Major Additions

• Content for the Großafrikanisher Reichsstaat
  
  
• Content for the three OFN mandates in Africa (accessed via the USA)
  
  
• Content for the Central African Republic (accessed via the USA)
  
  
• New mechanic for Ultravisionary Russia, added the beginnings of new paths at the end of the game
  
  
• New mechanic for Eurasia, with several archaeological event chains
  
  
• 1 new path for Magadan, with 2 new mechanics (WerBell)
  
  
• Full content for 2 unifiers with their own paths and mechanics: Novosibirsk and the People's Revolutionary Council
  
  
• Several, several, several fixes to Göring that should make him much more playable now
  
  
• New diplomatic & dismantlement focus trees for Bormann
  
  
• New Oil Crisis focus tree & mechanic for Speer
  
  
• The RND has received a significant expansion in content, and Bormann now has his own version in form of the HVA
  
  
• Full content for Heydrich’s Germany
  
  
• Added epilogue trees to all 6 potential candidates in the 72 election. Providing a glimpse of their planned content
  
  
• Added a CIA mechanic allowing the player to influence how the cold war plays out by nudging certain countries towards US favorable paths/sabotaging enemies
  
  
• Reworked Battle for Italy to have a GUI and be more interactive and transparent
  
  
• Full 5 years content for Ireland including 3 mechanics, 150 focuses and 300 events
  
  
• New mechanic for Collab England to deal with the Cornwall Garrison
  
  
• Reworked 1970s Foreign Policy tree and its decisions
  
  
• Around 150 new events, including a new event chain and 130+ flavor events
  
  
• Added progress bar to the Caudillo Popularity decision category so that the player knows the current balance of popularity
  
  
• Added a new game rule to prevent Diplo Crises from escalating to WW3
  
  
• Ceylon now starts independent from India
  

https://www.reddit.com/r/TNOmod/comments/jyjln6/tno_patch_v11_cutting_room_floor/

 

[thesheeep]

I made the mistake of playing Ostafrika in TNO on Hard mode.
What a load of bollocks - South African Union gets endless supplies (after years of war, they still had thousands of excess guns, support, artillery) as well as some US volunteer units that can only be described as Space Marines.
And I did play as South Africa once and you definitely don't have anything close to the amount of factories or resources required for that.
I thought at first "maybe they get insane leases from tons of friends" - but after tagging them I could see that was not the case, it must be from scripting.
Even after I decided to cheat myself endless supplies as well I was only winning since their manpower did eventually run out (about a few months before mine did ).

Meanwhile, all those decisions you get to mildly boost your war efforts are so expensive that you can only use them very rarely - and the black market hasn't worked for me once in several years. Fails every single time.
Oh, and your allies (Südwest + Zentralafrika) just idle at home doing absolutely nothing with any of their divisions despite having all their manpower & supplies.

Apparently, other countries with a Hard mode have a similarly insane experience.
So... yeah, don't be an idiot like me and take Hard mode. It's not hard - it's actually impossible without cheating.

At least they fixed their events, though.
Now when you take some focus or event that says you receive factories/stability/etc. - that actually happens, instead of just doing absolutely nothing as it used to.

 

[Raghar]

I just had naval combat between US and Fashist UK. C'mon why damaging arguably somehow working naval combat by replacing it by DoTA like mechanic of Front Mid Back? Front when obliterated enemy front can get at mid, mid can shoot at enemy front and mid, and back can shoot at anyone. That's bad idea to simplify CARRIER combat this way.

Add into the mix the idiocy that carrier airwing replenishes once per 24 hours, thus aircombat losses are just short term malus. And add into it the problem, that in contrast to early version when fighters actually fought against each other and bombers, and had massive losses, nowadays the combat is done just by percentages and well, if you don't care about percentage reduction, wouldn't it be easier to simply use bombers only?

It's kinda funny, streamer vs competent Italy.