Hearts of Iron IV - The Ultimate WWII Strategy Game

[Renegen]

The overly decisive naval battles were a good thing, I mean in real life it was even more decisive as the battle of Midway and the course of the whole Pacific War was decided in 15 minutes. Naval, air and ground combat better not all have the same feel to them.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

The problem was that the system had absolutely nothing to it except a 1/0 alternative, which was either you had a stack that could destroy all of your opponents ships effortlessly and thus either total naval superiority or no naval presence at all, or you spammed submarines if you gave enough fucks to that kind of exercise in futility. Naval warfare had barely any involvement or depth outside of having better and more carriers, it was by far the worst aspect in both previous HoI games (and generally a weakness in Pdox games which is why it's a good thing CK2 doesn't have it).

 

[Renegen]

I hadn't played multiplayer, but my experience with naval combat was that yes it is decisive but the fleets aren't actually destroyed, just crippled, and the real struggle is in invading the ports. Once you take their supply away, only then do you gain territorial control over the seas, which is how the real Pacific War was fought. Marines, radar, fortifications, ground planes were all important in naval supremacy in HOI3.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Nah man, a proper carrier doomstack will cause a near total wipeout at minimum. Taking the ports is irrelevant, because naval superiority was total after you take out the other sides stacks, none of their shit matters afterwards. Ground planes also have depending on patch and mod exactly two modes of contribution: Either NB does nothing at all, or NB renders need for a navy moot outside of shipping a horde of marines elsewhere. Presence of straggler remnants of a navy in the port province is irrelevant, because the stack will simply instantly obliterate them if they try to leave port or are forced to leave port. Radar bonus only affects the province installed in and neighbouring provinces, so it does not provide significant impact in majority of naval battles. HoI3 radar does influence detecting nearby fleets though, but this is not a major factor since the only decisive element is whether or not the stack is cutting edge (and possibly post-1943, which the death star year for ship techs in HoI3; in HoI2 it's more irrelevant because of how CAGs work).

Fact remains that naval warfare of the old model sucked total dick and contributed nothing to the game because of how it had absolutely no middle-grounds between "no navy at all" and "unquestioned lord of the sea." It was solely decided by having X expenditure in IC dedicated to having cutting edge stacks, and having the spare tech to get cutting edge ships needed for the stack on schedule. There weren't really any positive qualities to the model at all besides tech name and unit picture porn.

 

[Raghar]

Fact remains that naval warfare of the old model sucked total dick and contributed nothing to the game because of how it had absolutely no middle-grounds between "no navy at all" and "unquestioned lord of the sea."

And how do you think it works in real life?

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Fact remains that naval warfare of the old model sucked total dick and contributed nothing to the game because of how it had absolutely no middle-grounds between "no navy at all" and "unquestioned lord of the sea."

And how do you think it works in real life?

Trying to appeal to similarity in real life is never even remotely a valid argument for gameplay decisions.

 

[Renegen]

All of war is having superior resources to your enemy and putting them all in on the table to claim your victory. I see more complexity in the naval model of HOI3 actually, having marines tie up resources in a port prevents the death stack fleets from going in deeper waters, the fleets need marines of their own and if they use their carrier power to soften them, they leave themselves open to a fleet engagement. The port defenses are in effect a resource efficient strategy when losing the naval battle that delays long enough for your own death stack to fully materialize.

And ground planes are also resource efficient (or should be), their protection of the coasts protects production areas or makes large scale offensive naval action more costly then defensive actions, again adding a layer of strategy to the whole war. At the end of the day, X is bigger than Y therefore X wins, but getting there, or only obtaining a temporary advantage for this victory, is what makes strategy games fun.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Marines don't tie up resources in a port (since ports are not nodes for resources), they just allow you ship over the panzer elite. And you can never ship over marines UNLESS you have already decimated the enemy stacks or can do so at whim. There are so many ports clustered together that loss of ports rarely influences naval warfare at all because of how long naval supply ranges are (and how the model largely ignores all the intricacies on land). And none of the other port defenses matter as much as having your land army present, because marines can be defeated there and thus the naval portion only decides whether or not marine invasion happens at all. It's got nothing to do with naval warfare, it's solely an extension of your land army capability. Port defense and naval invasion has absolutely no layer of strategy to it, all it decides is whether or not you can expand your land war, and it's all down to whether or not your standard stack has the ability to destroy the entire opposing navy.

And no, you don't get it, NB has only ever had two levels of contribution in naval warfare in the prior games: It either does nothing more than a symbolic effort that quickly has to go back home for repairs after accomplishing nothing, or it comes equipped with anti-ship death rays that wings can sink any fleet instantly. Which is the case depends only on the patch or mod used. The latter of course just means that NB effectiveness becomes solely part of the interception chaos that reigns largely outside of player control outside of assigning wing after wing to conflict areas.

The reason why the old system was shit because it had absolutely nothing more to it than X > Y check. Nothing else at all. Just contrast with land warfare, where a smaller force could exploit supply lines, terrain, quality, and specialization to cut off and destroy much larger forces. This was especially well presented in HoI3 where tech curve wasn't presented in increasingly large leaps in stats.

EDIT: Point is, the system needs more meat on its bones and more ways to get involved and use tactics and strategy beyond production strategy. A good example of Pdox doing something that adds to strategic depth is the new changes to Forts in upcoming EU4 expansion.

 

[GarfunkeL]

AI also ignores naval supply ranges because it cannot plan for them, so it is literally impossible to wage a historical Pacific War against AI USA or AI Japan. Their ships will just show up where-ever the AI happens to need them.

AI also does not always engage in doomstacks, so for human Germany, it is possible to follow a somewhat historical route of building a small but good quality navy and then keeping it at the Mouth of Thames, for example, where your INT can cover it against NB and CAG, while the AI UK throws Royal Navy against it in piecemeal fashion. It's the easiest way to get rid of RN. Of course, against the AI even that is not necessary because it's entirely feasible to quickly pull off Sealion before Royal Navy can intervene.

And the final nail to the coffin is how resource stockpiling works - any decent UK player (or the AI) will build a large enough stockpile before the war so that even if Germany sinks each and every British convoy, UK IC is not hampered. This tactic still works against the AI because it will keep building convoys, but a human UK will just disable all convoys when war starts and turn them on for 1 day every six months to get all stockpiled resources to his capital.

Certainly the naval combat model in HoI4 seems to be a much needed improvement over the old one. Still, the HoI3 one doesn't bother me too much as I'm mostly focused on the land side anyway.

 

[Destroid]

Might as well go back to HoI2 size provinces then.

 

[Andnjord]

Spoiler

It can hardly be described as dumbed down when the system greatly extends the amount of planning you must do beforehand considerably, and longterm decisions are much more necessary than before. They also haven't really discussed how closely you'll be able manage land warfare after drawing up the battleplans several weeks and months before they're put into action.

OOB itself seems largely to have been replaced by the battle plan system (which may be more meaningful if they elaborate more on what kind of snap changes you're allowed to do), and this is not necessarily a bad thing since OOB in HoI3's scale was prone to becoming so labyrinthine its meaningfulness deteriorated (and because snap changes to OOB were largely penalty free since the organization hit was never too much to deal with unless you were in Inner Buttfuckistan or something). OOB was largely a sexy feature, not a particularly important feature.

Moreover, unit leaders themselves are a non-issue because they largely acted as a initial combat capability modifier for each nation, which generally meant nothing more that Germany has a panzer elite formation with 5+ skill generals and everyone else had mostly or at best 3+. Individual division management is also secondary in importance to having large scale strategic depth, which something like having to draw up plans for an operation where you have to come up with contingencies for worst case scenarios you have to predict yourself would provide depth over adapting to individual battles via organizing retreats, encirclements or reinforcements from other divisions in the area. IF the battle plans system actually works, since it's a radical departure from the normal Pdox model we've become used to. At the very least the idea of longterm strategic decisions acting as a series of chains rooted in economics and politics as macroscale grand strategy is a sound idea on paper (the clincher remains on whether or not it is destroyed by microscale issues and in what way). A more important question is WHY AREN'T EU4 and CK2 using something closer to a combat model like HoI3 had to provide a better experience than Mega-Stack Deathmatch & Triathlon.

Victoria comparison to the model previewed would be a system where you draw up Five Year Plans (though since Pdox are pussies you obviously can't incorporate genocide and other mean things to your insane socio-political-economic-military plans for world domination).

Also, the NATO counters aren't THAT big of a deal, and I'll eat my proverbial hat if they haven't already come up with a devious plan to release at least one-three unit counter sets as DLC.

Normally I would have agreed with Varnaa. When they announced their focus on pre-battle planning (in the very first Dev Diary) I too thought this was a great idea as I love reading about the planning of real life operations. The problem I have is that since then Paradox has given me no confidence in their new feature. Let me explain.

There is only one mention of this feature in all the 16 dev diaries, and it's in the very first:

More focus on planning and high level decisions.
Hearts of Iron III could either be played with full manual control, where micromanagement would be pretty heavy (often to the point where you would struggle to pay attention to all aspects of the game) or with AI assistance, where your control over the systems you surrendered to the AI was very limited. We are developing a planning system that gives you greater control while not being as taxing as the detailed manual play from the last Hearts of Iron game. We want to give you time to look at the bigger picture. In my opinion, this also adds a lot of immersion, since it feels more like I am guiding a military campaign rather just shuffling units between provinces.
For the micro-managers out there - you can still do very detailed plans and update them in real-time, which will basically work like the old manual control but the system will reward successful longer term plans, so expect to have a few things to learn! There won't be any large "automate this" buttons in the game. We want all parts to be fun and playable. If they are not, they get redesigned or replaced.

Since then they have not elaborated at all on this. The only information we have received (regarding OOB, leaders...) had to be mined out from the discussion threads of other Dev Diaries. For a game focused on WWII and descendant of the Heart of Iron series, this a remarkable silence. We have had no information on the how the land warfare has changed, yet it should be obvious from the previous quote and the info snippets we have received that it has changed. How significantly? We have no idea as they haven't told us anything.

Compare to this all the info we have received on sea and air warfare, industrial and political aspects (very much welcomed even thought it's a shame they don't have dynamic factions in game), it's obvious that they are not keen yet to advertise it. Why? Maybe because they are not confident in how it would be received or they themselves haven't actually figured it out? Or maybe they plan on a series of dev diaries that will all amazes us at how brilliantly they've done it. Their recently announced delay makes me this it's the former.

All the other features they had announced made me really excited at this new release, yet the obstinate silence (as of yet) on what had been traditionally the focus of the game series makes me think that this might not be the game I was hoping for.

Also, please let me know if I have missed any important info they have released that I might have missed, I'd be happy to be proved wrong.
I will be the very first to dance and sing a happy tune if it turns out I'm wrong, but right now I'm not feeling like it (also this is the codex, Hope is the first step on the road to disappointment and all that jazz...)

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

That's generally why I don't jump to any conclusions regarding the land warfare system, since there is basically no information at all outside of the techs and production lines involved.

I would think that the reason they haven't talked about it yet much is also why there have been so many long delays: It's not a finished gameplay aspect yet.

 

[GarfunkeL]

It can also kill the game - air and naval war are always peripheral and people can work around them but if the land war sucks donkey balls...

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Yea, which is probably what I think they took the latest half a year delay to work on (besides the obvious of avoiding a Classic Paradox Release Version scenario). And I agree, how battleplans gameplay works will either make or break the game.

 

[Andnjord]

We'll have to wait and see what will come out of it. To say that their silence is making me worried would be an understatement, but hey! let's hope for the best.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

To be fair I'd say the micro was only intensive in 3, and only in situations like Barbarossa, a naval invasion of the US, or fucking island hopping (a waste of time that one too).

And what they're doing (apparently) is not really a case of streamlining, since what it sounds like they are doing is shifting the strategic focus from microscale immediate decisions to macroscale longterm decisions. And what they did with air and naval warfare was to actually make them have real gameplay elements beyond stack production and upgrading contest.

 

[Corporate_Jew_Master]

Spoiler

It can hardly be described as dumbed down when the system greatly extends the amount of planning you must do beforehand considerably, and longterm decisions are much more necessary than before. They also haven't really discussed how closely you'll be able manage land warfare after drawing up the battleplans several weeks and months before they're put into action.

OOB itself seems largely to have been replaced by the battle plan system (which may be more meaningful if they elaborate more on what kind of snap changes you're allowed to do), and this is not necessarily a bad thing since OOB in HoI3's scale was prone to becoming so labyrinthine its meaningfulness deteriorated (and because snap changes to OOB were largely penalty free since the organization hit was never too much to deal with unless you were in Inner Buttfuckistan or something). OOB was largely a sexy feature, not a particularly important feature.

Moreover, unit leaders themselves are a non-issue because they largely acted as a initial combat capability modifier for each nation, which generally meant nothing more that Germany has a panzer elite formation with 5+ skill generals and everyone else had mostly or at best 3+. Individual division management is also secondary in importance to having large scale strategic depth, which something like having to draw up plans for an operation where you have to come up with contingencies for worst case scenarios you have to predict yourself would provide depth over adapting to individual battles via organizing retreats, encirclements or reinforcements from other divisions in the area. IF the battle plans system actually works, since it's a radical departure from the normal Pdox model we've become used to. At the very least the idea of longterm strategic decisions acting as a series of chains rooted in economics and politics as macroscale grand strategy is a sound idea on paper (the clincher remains on whether or not it is destroyed by microscale issues and in what way). A more important question is WHY AREN'T EU4 and CK2 using something closer to a combat model like HoI3 had to provide a better experience than Mega-Stack Deathmatch & Triathlon.

Victoria comparison to the model previewed would be a system where you draw up Five Year Plans (though since Pdox are pussies you obviously can't incorporate genocide and other mean things to your insane socio-political-economic-military plans for world domination).

Also, the NATO counters aren't THAT big of a deal, and I'll eat my proverbial hat if they haven't already come up with a devious plan to release at least one-three unit counter sets as DLC.

Normally I would have agreed with Varnaa. When they announced their focus on pre-battle planning (in the very first Dev Diary) I too thought this was a great idea as I love reading about the planning of real life operations. The problem I have is that since then Paradox has given me no confidence in their new feature. Let me explain.

There is only one mention of this feature in all the 16 dev diaries, and it's in the very first:

More focus on planning and high level decisions.
Hearts of Iron III could either be played with full manual control, where micromanagement would be pretty heavy (often to the point where you would struggle to pay attention to all aspects of the game) or with AI assistance, where your control over the systems you surrendered to the AI was very limited. We are developing a planning system that gives you greater control while not being as taxing as the detailed manual play from the last Hearts of Iron game. We want to give you time to look at the bigger picture. In my opinion, this also adds a lot of immersion, since it feels more like I am guiding a military campaign rather just shuffling units between provinces.
For the micro-managers out there - you can still do very detailed plans and update them in real-time, which will basically work like the old manual control but the system will reward successful longer term plans, so expect to have a few things to learn! There won't be any large "automate this" buttons in the game. We want all parts to be fun and playable. If they are not, they get redesigned or replaced.

Since then they have not elaborated at all on this. The only information we have received (regarding OOB, leaders...) had to be mined out from the discussion threads of other Dev Diaries. For a game focused on WWII and descendant of the Heart of Iron series, this a remarkable silence. We have had no information on the how the land warfare has changed, yet it should be obvious from the previous quote and the info snippets we have received that it has changed. How significantly? We have no idea as they haven't told us anything.

Compare to this all the info we have received on sea and air warfare, industrial and political aspects (very much welcomed even thought it's a shame they don't have dynamic factions in game), it's obvious that they are not keen yet to advertise it. Why? Maybe because they are not confident in how it would be received or they themselves haven't actually figured it out? Or maybe they plan on a series of dev diaries that will all amazes us at how brilliantly they've done it. Their recently announced delay makes me this it's the former.

I have this figured out as their EU4 model. Release the shit that give some depth (or the illusion thereof) in updates or updates tied to a plethora of DLCs that add more into the game.

In other words, game will be playable for more than a maximum of 8 hours after 18 months of patching and DLC milking, just like CK2 and EU4.

 

[a Goat]

I have no idea what to think about what will happen to this game.
On one side - technology, production system etc. seem to get huge improvement.
On the other - fuhrer mana, whatever they've decided to do with land combat and so on.

I guess it'll end up like with HoI3 - when I got it(it already had DLCs back then) it striked me as fucked-up when compared to HoI2 but after a while, I've realised that there are many improvements that make it better, even though there were completely half-assed mechanics(technology...), I just couldn't go back to HoI2.

 

[Reject_666_6]

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/within-2015-really.859521/&sdpDevPosts=1

We haven't given any new release date except for "when its done" for now. We shouldnt have annouanced the project so early, and in the future you wont see paradox titles announced before alpha.

We werent sure exactly how we would organize stuff in march etc so figured no info was better than potentially wrong info, BUT as we realized this was not a good decision, not with dedicated fans planning vacations and stuff around games its not showing proper respect.... but to iterate, when we decide an exact date we are 100% on holding we will communicate it, but not before this. We already made the mistake of giving out dates too early and have no wish to repeat the mistake again. Don't go expecting a release in summer though, thats not going to happen.

It will not be out this year. Alpha has been approved, but there is at least six months + holidays before we can have the earliest possible release.

When we have a fixed date, we'll tell you.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

This is what happens when you don't kill your babies.

 

[sser]

I have to wonder if they're having Spore-like inner divisions between presenting a complex wargame and one that is a tad more accessible.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Nah I think they're just trying to make too many things and greatly underestimated the time and resources needed.

 

[mondblut]

In other words, game will be playable for more than a maximum of 8 hours after 18 months of patching and DLC milking, just like CK2 and EU4.

I wonder which is better, to have the Axis playable out of the box rather than the other two, or to have an Axis DLC with awesome new features further down the line. If CK2 is anything to go by, the vanilla content is doomed to cry on the sidelines once new stuff begins to get unlocked. Are SS retinues and the holocaust decisions worth hoping for Axis as a DLC and the vanilla being allies-only?

Spoiler

 

[Infinitron]

Hands On: Hearts Of Iron IV

In theory, the battle interface is a smart combination of high level strategy and more intricate tactical considerations. Companies can be grouped under the leadership of a single character, bestowing bonuses on them, and orders are given to the collection as a whole. Fronts can be painted across borders, causing soldiers to spread themselves evenly across the line. Attack plans can then be drawn onto the map, defensive lines placed and pincer movements planned. With the plans in place, the group waits until the order to execute the plan comes down from on high.

In practice, drawing plans is somewhat inelegant, spaghetti-like masses of lines criss-crossing one another as orders pile up. Again, it’s worth stressing that: a) the interface isn’t ready yet b) I’m not hugely experienced with this iteration of Hearts of Iron c) multiplayer real-time strategy is played a faster pace than singleplayer. If I’m playing solo, there’s no way in hell I’ll ever fiddle with plans while the game is running and with the world paused, I can tinker away to my heart-of-cotton’s content. In the fight against the Soviets, I found myself resorting to CK/EU tactics however, simply selecting huge groups of soldiers and right clicking on the region I wanted them to invade. It was so effective – partly because the Allies had opened up a path to Moscow which had distracted my Russian chum somewhat – that I didn’t consider the complexities of proper planning for the rest of the session.

Playing as most people will, solo and slowly, the interface issues might not be as noticeable. It’s worth stressing again that there is plenty of time to iron out the wrinkles – Paradox are showing the game early and they’re fully aware that there is still work to be done. I suspect that some of my doubts relate to the actual direction of Hearts of Iron though, caught somewhere between grand strategy and focused wargame. The best way to play Germany, as I’ve been attempting to do in a couple of solo experiments, appears to involve following the historical script until everything falls apart. Pre-empt the mistakes and avoid them while sticking with the plans that worked. The delicate nature of the European situation means that everything can collapse in a few in-game weeks and the (current) inflexible nature of the Axis and Allied factions doesn’t allow for the truly weird alternate histories that EU IV or CK II can generate.

The hope is that HOI IV is at a pivotal stage of development. All of the foundations are in place and there are plenty of cleverly designed systems in place. I particularly enjoy the smooth flow of military production, which requires little in the way of micromanagement but – once the process is fully understood – allows an enormous amount of control over the composition and deloyment of forces.

But if the foundations are strong, the structure on top of them still seems dangerously unbalanced. In the current build, the Americans and Germans are both capable of toppling it by leaning in the wrong direction at the wrong time. These are multiplayer problems to an extent. Throw a bunch of people into any game and they’ll try to break it, sometimes unintentionally. People behave in ways that the AI never will, either through lack of experience, or because they’re made of meat and jelly rather than circuits and other clever things. There’s a thrill to that and even when my Brazilian adventure ended so terribly, I loved watching the weird wars unfolding across the globe.

Long-term though, I’m not entirely sure if Hearts of Iron will find the sweet spot it’s searching for, the one that encourages strategic experimentation while maintaining at least the outline of its historical house of cards. I’m not sure that it can find that sweet spot but I’m glad there’s more development time to search for it. Whatever else it might be when it finally releases, Hearts of Iron IV is unlikely to be dull – it’s packed with far too many interesting systems and scenarios – but I’m not yet convinced its hybrid approach will lend it the lasting appeal of its grand strategy stablemates, or the careful deliberation of the best wargames.

 

[Azeot]

I have absolutely no experience in previous HoIs, but I don't like the fact that some nations must play in a certain way. It's ww2, I get it, but if the same war - axis vs allies - is the only thing I can play over and over again, but from different perspectives, then what's the point?