Hearts of Iron IV - The Ultimate WWII Strategy Game

[Malakal]

Maybe one of those map modes that never made sense to me. Like weather?

 

[Reject_666_6]

The dog makes it look like a spoof.

Has a potential as a reaction image though.

Speaking of the debug dog, they say they wanna make it available to modders. Now you won't need third party tools to check your shitty event syntax.

 

[Reject_666_6]

Today we’ll talk a bit about land combat.

We felt that the role of air support in HOI3 was not really showing off its historical importance, so decided to make it vital in HOI4. First of all having air superiority over the area you are fighting limits the enemy’s ability to defend properly (its hard to dig trenches when someone is strafing you) as well as slowing down movement (its really hard to drive a truck when someone is strafing you). Planes can also directly join combats unlike HOI3 where they had their own separate combats they now join with the ground forces and when this happens it even gives a bonus to your divisions fighting ability (its a really good morale boost when a plane is strafing the enemy). Enemy divisions with AA battalions or support companies can fire back of course, but to remove the effects of air superiority completely you need your own flyboys to help out.

Combat tactics is something that we added to HOI3 with The Finest Hour to add more depth and interesting things happening in battles. When a battle starts each leader will pick a tactic for that day (a new tactics will be picked with the start of a new day if the combat drags on). Tactics are given based on what doctrine you have and terrain, troop composition and traits of the commander influence the choice. Tactics are also separated in different phases depending on location so you can get into a battle over a bridge, or close quarters fighting in cities, or performing a fighting retreat and the like. A commander with higher skill or better reconnaissance also has a chance to pick a counter to the enemy's tactic making it useless.

Notice how I wrote reconnaissance above? Reconnaissance is a new concept in HOI4. This stat is primarily coming from having Recon Companies in your divisions. Recon companies is one of the ten different support companies you can add to your divisions, where you can have an absolute maximum of 5, so it is one of the hard choices you have to make.

Here Sikorski elected for a tactic of Shock, which gives a -25% attack modifier to the defender, but since von Rundstedt has higher skill, and the panzer division has a recon company, they had the final pick of tactics, and could use the good counter of backhand blow, which nullifies the shock penalty and instead gives the attacker a -20% attack modifier. Next week we’ll go into detail about the support companies.

Combat width works a lot like in HOI3, but is now more detailed. Each division will have a combat width which will tell you how many divisions fit into the frontline for active fighting. The available width of the combat goes up the more directions you attack from, so tactical flanking is needed if you want to leverage a numerical advantage. Width is also affected by certain combat tactics (more on that below). Divisions that do not fit on the frontline at the start of combat end up in reserves and will have a chance to join every hour in as long as there is room. The chance to join is greatly affected by doctrine tech, or by having a signal company attached to the division, and is important if you want to be able to leverage a lot of units in a single location, because if the frontline fall your side is forced to retreat no matter what.

Winning in HOI4, just like HOI3 is still best achieved with encirclements and cutting off large parts of the enemy's army and not by grinding down your men in individual battles, but this is a topic for a later diary on battleplans and strategic planning.

 

[Reject_666_6]

Hello, and welcome back to another Hearts of Iron 4 Development Diary. This week we’ll talk about the different support companies you can add to your divisions.

First of all, we have added a new type of equipment called “Support Equipment”. This represents things like radios, jeeps, pontoons, medical kits, spades and other such items. This requires access to aluminium and steel to produce efficiently.

Secondly, we have added another technology tree, called the Support Tree, where you research various support companies and their improvement.

A division can have up to 5 different support companies, and they all have different roles, so you need to consider which of the 11 ones that fit your divisions.

Anti-Air
These provide a few batteries of anti-air guns to the division, helping them shoot down hostile airplanes.
Requires Anti-Air Equipment

Anti-Tank
These provide a few batteries of anti-tank guns to the division, giving them some capability to take out tanks.
Requires Anti-Tank Equipment

Artillery
These provide a few batteries to the division, giving them some artillery support, giving them division a bit extra firepower.
Requires Artillery Equipment

Rocket Artillery
For when regular artillery are just not cool enough. Rocket artillery is a bit later technology and is more suited for breakthroughs than regular artillery (rockets will deliver a big punch to an area but are not as accurate as plain old artillery and their more mobile nature means they can fire and move quicker).
Requires Rocket-Artillery Equipment

Recon
These provide vital reconaissance to your divison, making it possible to counter enemy tactics in combat.
Requires Infantry Equipment and Support equipment.

Engineers
Helps out when attacking forts and crossing rivers, as well as making far better entrenchments and defending in forts and behind rivers.
Requires Infantry Equipment and Support equipment.

Field Hospital
This increases the amount of manpower you regain after a unit takes casualties, representing wounded that can be taken care of properly, as well as reducing experience loss in a division after losing men.
Requires Trucks & Support Equipment

Logistics Company
This company reduces the supply consumption of the entire division.
Requires Trucks & Support Equipment

Military Police
These provide the bulk of suppression a unit needs to keep insurgency down.
Requires Infantry Equipment and Support equipment.

Maintenance Company
These increases the reliability of equipment in the division, making it less likely equipment is lost in combat or from training.
Requires Support Equipment

Signal Company
This company provides coordination to the division, making them implement preparation for battle plans quicker, and more likely to reinforce a current battle.
Requires Trucks & Support Equipment

As you can see, different types of divisions and different types of doctrines will make you use different types of support.

And well.. in this screenshot I've toggled something that some of you will love I guess.

That's a lot of support, cap'n!

 

[GarfunkeL]

God damn do they never learn? Artillery doesn't belong there, every fucking division has it and it's usually present in such large numbers that it really needs to be modeled in the actual division part.

So it'll be two hours after the launch when the first grognard has opened the text files and crunches the numbers that shows which support companies are useful. Probably artillery again and then maybe recon for the combat events.

 

[Average Manatee]

Looking forward to spending Star Power to supercharge my divisions.

Thing is since they are 'extras' that you have to buy, you can pretty much be assured that all of them are good and that there is little reason not to add as many at a time as possible. Especially when you consider that you're supposed to only let the AI use them, just make a general division decent at everything rather than specialized divisions. The only limit will be star power and it will be pretty easy to figure out which order the expanded division options should be unlocked in.

So it'll be two hours after the launch when the first grognard has opened the text files and crunches the numbers that shows which support companies are useful. Probably artillery again and then maybe recon for the combat events.

Probably AT + ART. Since it sounds like they are sticking with HoI3 combat mechanics then AT effectively makes light and medium armor a useless hunk of metal. Depends on how much they've altered the stats though I guess.

 

[Destroid]

Paradox has also said, and I think it make a lot of sense, that the way the support system works for the other types of units doesn't mean that those types of support units don't exist in the rest of the divisions, it just means that divisions has additional support of that type.

For example all divisions have some medical capabilities, both organic units and higher echelon rear support units, but having a medical company abstracts the idea of that division having additional medical assets than the average division.

I have plenty of criticisms of other aspects of this game, but I think the stuff in this dev diary is pretty solid game design.

In that case shouldn't there also be a 'more of the same guys' option?

 

[GarfunkeL]

Artillery, Anti-tank, Rocket-Artillery, and Anti-Air (all the support units with a + in the corner) can exist as support units and as combat units in a brigade. All the rest of the units can only exist as support units. The support versions of these units take on the movement speed, any special movement abilities (like being airborne), and I believe terrain bonuses, of the overall division because they represent smaller quantities and lighter equipment that those units were able to self-carry or tow. When they exist as line units they have their own movement speeds which affects the overall division speed.

Where did you read that? If that's correct then it's pretty solid design indeed.

 

[GarfunkeL]

Okay that's good then, thanks.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Maybe Anti-Air will finally be worth dick.

In the thread a Paradox developer said that they do not allow you to do multiple support units of the same type in one division because it is too exploitable. Apparently at one point they had it where you could have multiple support units of the same type in a division but during testing they found that it could be abused too easily. Probably the logistics and maintenance units if I were to make a guess. I'd imagine 5 logistics units stacked would reduce your supply consumption to a fraction of what they would normally be and 5 maintenance units would make it so you are losing very little equipment in battles. Especially after you research most of the upgrades for them.

This is good, it should naturally move towards having the system move towards specialized divisions and country focused (countries drowning in manpower shall obviously leave all the wounded to die), instead of a selection of catch-all optimal builds (aforementioned artillery thing).

 

[Makabb]

Did they move this to 2016?

 

[GarfunkeL]

Yeah they did.

 

[Space Satan]

Lokks like we missed two dev diaries:

Trade

Hi everyone, and welcome back to another development diary

Some aspects have already been mentioned regarding trade before, but we will repeat them here to have it all clarified for you.

First of all, there are no stockpiles of resources, as all you have are assumed to be used every day. There are six different types of resources that are spread around the world.

• Oil - Ships, Tanks & Planes.
• Rubber - Tanks, Trucks & Planes.
• Aluminum - Planes & Support Equipment
• Steel - Tanks, Ships & Guns
• Tungsten - Heavy artillery, Anti-tank guns and Jet planes
• Chromium - The most modern tanks.

If a production line lacks resources, either from not enough domestic resources, or traded for, there is a penalty of up to 100% on its output efficiency.

Trading for a resource locks civilian factories for its trade, which limits the amount of constructions of other buildings you can do, but if you export resources you will gain use of foreign civilian factories.

You have no control over who you export to, except you will not trade with anyone you are at war with. The amount of resources that are assigned to export depends on your trade laws which let your government demand resources for your own production. Embargos can be placed through certain national focuses as well to block trade.

Getting resources from another nation requires convoys, and it is always the buyer of goods that has to provide the convoys. Of course, this is all done automatically.

Each nation has a trade influence with another nation, which is depending on distance and relations, but can also be modified by placing troops on their borders to threaten them to trade to you before other nations. Any puppet nations are always forced to give up full trade rights to their masters.

Next week, we’ll talk about changes to laws and politics since last winter.

Hitler mana

Welcome to the 25th development diary for Hearts of Iron IV. This time we take a look at how the political mechanics have evolved during development.

Political Power has changed a bit, its now a currency which is used for almost everything related to managing your government and disruptive external diplomacy. It is used to influence other nations, support political parties, change laws, appoint which design companies develop your equipment, appointing military staff, justifying war to your population and introducing national focuses.

Default gain is 2 PP every day, while all ticking activities cost 1 each. Germany as an example though has Adolf Hitler, whose special ability (being a dictator) is to increase the PP gain by 50%.

Now if you compare the interface today with the one from DD#12 from last January, you’ll first notice that the goals have changed into national focus as we mentioned in DD#14. Secondly, you can now see your national spirits, which are unique attributes to your country, which you either start with or gain through national focuses. Germany starts with Bitter Loser, which makes them less likely to move away from fascism, and with General Staff that is a +5% to organisation & 25% faster planning speed, while France has a Victors of WW1 which gives 75% more expensive doctrine research until they have reached a point in their national focus tree that removes it.

Secondly, we have added the faction information to this screen, with the possibility to dismantle your faction if you so desire.

Finally, and the most important change, is that we have changed what was called “Manage Government” into three different categories, where each has six different slots that can hold something. Usually changing one of these cost about 150 political power.

The government has 3 different laws, Conscription Law, Trade Law & Economy Law. As mentioned before, these Laws have prerequisits of when you can enact them, as total mobilisation and war economy is not something you do at peacetime. There is also 3 slots for Political Advisors. Every country has 1 communist revolutionary, 1 fascist demagogue & 1 democratic reformer that you can employ to mould your nation towards a desired ideology. There are also various types of ministers that can be employed, like Albert Speer which makes Civilian to Military conversion of factories 25% faster, or a Martin Borman which gives you +10% more daily political power. However, you can only have 3 different advisors at the same time, so you need to select your cabinet carefullly.

Research & Production have six different designer slots. All provide at least a 10% research bonus to their technology type. A Tank designer is the first slot, where most majors have different companies that give you different styles of tanks, where some give you better armor, and some better speed. The other slots are Ship Designer, Aircraft Designer, Materiel Designer, Industrial Concern and finally, the Theorist. The Theorist is where you can select everything from a rocket scientist like Von Braun to a blitzkrieg theorist like Guderian.

The Military Staff has a Chief of Army, a Chief of Navy, a Chief or Air, and 3 slots for Military High Command. This lets you mould your military at a high strategic level. Should the focus for the army be offensive or defensive? Will you have a high capability in naval thinking?

Next week we’ll go into Naval Doctrines and Naval Technology… And hopefully see cool ships!

 

[GarfunkeL]

Well the political side has certainly improved from what it was.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Pity there doesn't appear to be a set of random names for Finnish materiel companies. I'm fairly sure you could sneak past companies with names like "Saatanan Tunarit" "Perhanan Mämmikourat" "HELVETTI" or "Prkl Prkl Prkl" without watchdog groups noticing.

 

[GarfunkeL]

Unless Pdox has changed radically, I expect those to be highly moddable. Will have historical companies for all significant countries in a month from release.

Since I'm still quite happy with HoI3, I'll probably succumb to get this but only once the Ultimate Edition with all expansions and DLC comes out. If they don't milk it as much as CK2 of course.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

CK2 gets milked that much mostly because it was a mega-success. They probably make more money on every CK2 major DLC than a new release. I'd pay money to see how Johann shat his pants when the first figures of CK2's sales came in.

 

[Sulimo]

Default gain is 2 PP every day, while all ticking activities cost 1 each. Germany as an example though has Adolf Hitler, whose special ability (being a dictator) is to increase the PP gain by 50%.

The Führer's special ability is 50% more führer mana? cool.

 

[GarfunkeL]

There's been more DDs again. It's now possible to form additional factions and each of the 3 main/traditional factions start with just one country: GB for Allies, GER for Axis and USSR for Comintern. You need wargoals before declaring war, democracies can't dow other democracies and France has a pretty extensive national focus tree which allows it to create its own faction with the Czechs, ally with GB or even go with either Italy or Germany.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

I swear there's gonna be yurt-rape if Sweden's national tree is bigger than Finland's.

Anyway, dynamic forming of factions is awesome and has real potential for post-WW2 gameplay (the whole thing gives me a major whiff of an East vs West type of Cold War thing as the first major expansion DLC).

 

[a Goat]

Sweden's national tree

Insert Sweden YES jokes

 

[Pirata Alma Negra]

There's been more DDs again. It's now possible to form additional factions and each of the 3 main/traditional factions start with just one country: GB for Allies, GER for Axis and USSR for Comintern. You need wargoals before declaring war, democracies can't dow other democracies and France has a pretty extensive national focus tree which allows it to create its own faction with the Czechs, ally with GB or even go with either Italy or Germany.

WOW, Paradox will finally give up any pretense of historical accuracy.

 

[a Goat]

Don't get me wrong but good riddance that they do.

I remember all that meta-play around EU2 where while playing some countries you've just waited for events giving you free stuff for nothing...

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

And in case of HoI, it was always a huge problem how the games couldn't handle major deviation from history very well, since the base sequence of events was so heavily ingrained in following the event/decision path. There's never been practically any sort of Post-War order established (in HoI3, not even a token attempt) and you might as well quit the game once Soviet Union or Germany beats the other. Kaiserreich is probably the best in this regard, but that's more a testament to the sheer number of event chains it has for multiple contingencies worldwide.

 

[Average Manatee]

Originally HoI3 was more openended but grognards disliked anything even slightly ahistorical (like, if Germany didn't declare war on Sept 1st 1939 it was a Bad Thing). Then Paradox retreated and scripted everything to happen on the right day, for France to always lose, etc.

Will be interesting to see if they do so again. They already gave in on the counters.