Hearts of Iron IV - The Ultimate WWII Strategy Game

[Corporate_Jew_Master]

edit: i've been permabanned from pdoxplaza for the last few years so i can't use that.

Same here. Can let you use my friend's account that we share to dl mods or send you the mod files.

 

[Mr. Pink]

edit: i've been permabanned from pdoxplaza for the last few years so i can't use that.

Same here. Can let you use my friend's account that we share to dl mods or send you the mod files.

http://www.mediafire.com/download/g3gxlrp8tr40ldl/nzaiflagmod.rar

it's alright i found a fix, now i just need one to make all the portraits in this game real pictures and not cartoons

 

[Mr. Pink]

i can't believe a photograph mod doesn't exist on thet workshop yet. i'm desperate enough to use anime pictures, even that would be an improvement over this sim city 3000 adviser looking shit

edit: so clicking through the portraits i notice that every south american leader is the same, mao has a portrait from when he was 50, hitler is a shadow person and chinas borders are all fucked up.

3 minutes after launching, i've never hated a game so quickly in my entire life.

 

[Sulimo]

WTF, did I just imagine everything?

Nah, the game WAS put on the index in germany and back in the day we also assumed there must've been swastikas in it, but appearently this was never the case. You can read their (ridiculous) reasoning here - you'll have to run it through Google Translator if you can't read german though.

Fixed.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Well, chekhoslovakia, austria and others non-affilated historically DO went with "keep calm and keep sucking" approach to annexation.

That's already well-represented by cores (which are in HoI4, but I can't really tell what they do, in HoI3 they were what gave annexed territory 100% production/manpower/leadership). As it is you could annex the USA before they joined the allies and you'd get full production and no partisans. Or more realistically, majors like Italy/Japan/France along with powerful minors like China/Poland/Spain/etc.

Non-cores have -50% factory slot capacity and provide only (IIRC) 5% manpower.

 

[Ulminati]

Ya, the factories in annexed Finland are red on my production screen and only build a fraction of the tanks my regular factories do

 

[Corporate_Jew_Master]

add_core <state id>

 

[Ulminati]

Eh, I'd rather have a national focus that boosts the percentage of captured factories output you get.


Also, 4 games in a row now, ai Hitler has failed spectacularly to subdue France. He just throws all his best units away uselessly on the Maginot Line. I sent him 20 divisions to stop the allies from gobbling him up from Italy, but he just wasted them on French fortifications.

 

[BelisariuS.F]

Also, 4 games in a row now

How is it possible that a day or two after a game comes out I see people here saying things like "I've played this game for a 1000 hours and I'm on my 57th playthrough. Here's a list of impressions that I've spent a week compiling. It's a part of a book, which contains detailed analysis of the game, that I'm finishing writing and I'm publishing it tomorrow"?

 

[Ulminati]

Steam says I have 15 hours played. Those are 4 games, each of which lasted to around late 1941 when I quit and restart. I'm trying to figure out how to quickly mobilise a minor nation so I can make a meaningful contribution once the war starts. Is hard as dinmrk, especially when paradox decided Jutland should have a rural industrial capacity (4 building slots), even though 2 of the 4 largest cities are there and Frederecia was one of the most heavily industrialised regions in the start last century. Then again, people on the official forums are remarking that Sweden gets free factories and manpower up the wazoo - to the point where they can take on Denmark, Norway and Finland with ease. So it's probably just a classic case of paradox buffing Swedens early game as it's the minor the devs like to play.

DiNMRK desperately needs better industrial capacity though. Start of the game, Iceland sits at 0/4 slots, Jutland at 3/4 (1 civilian, 1 naval, 1 military) and sjælland+Fyn at 6/8 (4 civilian, 1 naval, 1 military). You're instantly losing 3 of your factories to import steel, oil and tungsten if you want to build convoys and artillery for your basic divisions. Evan if you rush the national focus to get more factories, your ability to construct is severely limited.

The best I've managed so far if immediately getting a fascist or communist agitator so i can coup and switch to wartime economy. Beeline through industrial effort until new tech slot. Then do naval focus for 3 dockyards and military factory focus. Research focus on production tech. Try to get a synthetic refinery built asap so you can stop importing rubber and oil. That frees up 2 civilian factories.

Even so, by the time either axis or allies invade, I'm choked for production. Early expansion is nearly impossible, as Britain and France guarantee the safety of every minor I try to justify against.

 

[Beastro]

Onlysoviets help Rep. Spain it seems. They are pisspoor on forces and one encirclement is enough to drive one side to collapse.

Yeah. I'm playing the Republicans now and it's a fair grind. I am winnig, but all the undermanned divisions make it a pain in the butt to get rid of even encirceld forces, especially if they are in easily defensible terrain. Thank goodness for those 3 divisions the Russkies sent.

It seems that other countries, or at least France, can help the Republicans, but they have to go communist in order to do that. Republican Spain also becomes kinda unrepublican, since (at least in my game) it switched government to communist at the outbreak of the war. Wasn't anticipating that.

Yeah geee, not like that woulda happened had they won.

All the Westerners who fought for them didn't all go there as Useful Idiots, but the way the Commies coopted everything they quickly wound up being ones.

 

[Got bored and left]

Oh, sure, I was just surprised that it immediately went "ding! Communism!", the elected government stepped down, and the First Secretary of the Spanish Commie Party took over right away. Oh well, I guess I'll be spreading the Workers' Revolution now :russia:

I lol'd at Göring's quote in the loading screen: "No enemy bomber can reach the Ruhr. If one reaches the Ruhr, my name is not Göring. You may call me Meyer - Hermann Meyer"

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Morphine addiction is a helluva thing.

EDIT: In general it's kinda funny when you think about the amount of hard drugs that got used by nazi elite, whether recreational or medical reasons (one of Hitler's personal doctors had him on a serious cocktail involving heroine and cocaine-eyedrops among other stuff). Guess that means we can easily apply SMOKE WEED EVERY DAY to Nazi Germany's basics of decisionmaking.

 

[Thane Solus]

Steam says I have 15 hours played. Those are 4 games, each of which lasted to around late 1941 when I quit and restart. I'm trying to figure out how to quickly mobilise a minor nation so I can make a meaningful contribution once the war starts. Is hard as dinmrk, especially when paradox decided Jutland should have a rural industrial capacity (4 building slots), even though 2 of the 4 largest cities are there and Frederecia was one of the most heavily industrialised regions in the start last century. Then again, people on the official forums are remarking that Sweden gets free factories and manpower up the wazoo - to the point where they can take on Denmark, Norway and Finland with ease. So it's probably just a classic case of paradox buffing Swedens early game as it's the minor the devs like to play.

DiNMRK desperately needs better industrial capacity though. Start of the game, Iceland sits at 0/4 slots, Jutland at 3/4 (1 civilian, 1 naval, 1 military) and sjælland+Fyn at 6/8 (4 civilian, 1 naval, 1 military). You're instantly losing 3 of your factories to import steel, oil and tungsten if you want to build convoys and artillery for your basic divisions. Evan if you rush the national focus to get more factories, your ability to construct is severely limited.

The best I've managed so far if immediately getting a fascist or communist agitator so i can coup and switch to wartime economy. Beeline through industrial effort until new tech slot. Then do naval focus for 3 dockyards and military factory focus. Research focus on production tech. Try to get a synthetic refinery built asap so you can stop importing rubber and oil. That frees up 2 civilian factories.

Even so, by the time either axis or allies invade, I'm choked for production. Early expansion is nearly impossible, as Britain and France guarantee the safety of every minor I try to justify against.

Try to conquer liberate somebody before the world goes to 25% since then countries start to guarantee independence to others. So expand when the threshold is low, get a somebody near you quick to get more factories.

 

[Ulminati]

Yeah. I managed Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in 38. Norway takes too long because fuck reaching Narvik through all the mountains in a hurry. They usually join the allies before i can get my men there. Either way, DiNMRK gets exactly one war before world tension hits 25%.

I guess I can opt for communism, build forts in Jutland and let friend Stalin garrison Estonia/Latvia/Lithuania once the war starts. I really wish there was a way to get the production output necessary to take Scandinavia without the UK bombing me to smithereens, but I can't see how. I'd love to sit the first year or two of the war out ally with the allies before invading.

But without going fascist/communist in stuck with crummy civilian economy and limited means of justifying war goals

 

[Average Manatee]

Non-cores have -50% factory slot capacity and provide only (IIRC) 5% manpower.

Oh yeah, knew about the manpower. The factory slot thing seems... irrelevant? Unless you somehow run out room to build factories in your own territory.

Ya, the factories in annexed Finland are red on my production screen and only build a fraction of the tanks my regular factories do

Red means damaged, they'll repair automatically.

 

[Ulminati]

Given that you only get 2 free building slots in Denmark, is quite easy to run out of production slots. Every second tech the displeased industry tree opens 2 more. But the only thing that keeps you from being fully developed is that your pitiful production capacity prevents you from building them in a timely manner to begin with. Good help you if you try to build planes on top of an infantry division! Of your starting 6 factories, you need to trade one for rubber, 1 for oil, 1 for tungsten and 1-2 for steel. Leaving you with 1-2 tops for building new factories

 

[GarfunkeL]

The UI is god awful. Why does the auto-pause automatically go off when I click on a pop-up? I still have to select a new national focus or research idea stupid game, don't unpause yet! Oh but it will and there is nothing the player can do about it. Factory UI is a total mess but so are all the screens. Why do they not automatically resize for the resolution you use? I have to scroll sideways in the national focus screen because Paradox forces me to admire their shitty icons? Same in technology screens. All text is massive in size, buttons are big, icons are biggers. It looks like they wanted to make sure that the UI will work on touch screens. Why am I limited to 15 factories per production line? So that I have to create multiple production lines? That's just meaningless busywork. Cap the bonuses if they were getting too high.

AI GER will suicide against Maginot line because going through Belgium is a national focus, which is pretty damn deep in the tree. Similarly, I just occupied Poland and was surprised that Soviets didn't get the eastern part - because we hadn't signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop treaty because it's also deep in the focus tree and requires 850k manpower deployed to be valid. Which I hadn't at that point and since you can't switch focuses, I couldn't pick it later when I had enough of an army. So it's actually pretty damn impossible to get a historical game even if you are playing as Germany. I've seen AI Italy conquer France, Yugoslavia, Greece and Egypt at the same time while also having volunteers in Hungary and Bulgaria. Sure, that's feasible for Italy.

Battleplan AI is also fucking retarded and piss-poor. It leaves empty spots on the line but that doesn't matter because the enemy AI will not take advantage of them. But neither does your own AI. It will happily leave eight divisions guarding two encircled ones. I was wondering why my Panzergruppe Guderian was taking so fucking long to reach Warsaw but it's because it decided to leave all its panzer divisions guarding that aforementioned encirclement and was pressing on with just 1 mot division - and even then decided that crossing that river west of Warsaw was a good idea so that it could then attack Warsaw from the north and do ANOTHER river crossing, even though I had deliberately drew the offense line to be south of that fucking river for that exact reason.

I have no idea what is happening in the air war. There's a bar that shows control of air space in a region but that's all. Sure is nice to have all those fucking planes flying around, much better than having actual information. At least I can see the strength of each air group at a glance. Also, why the fuck is there no default air wing/squadron size? Each one has to be manually formed. How did nobody in QA think that that's fucking bullshit?

Naval combat model seems to be better. It's still annoying as fuck to try to follow in real time but at least the outcomes seem more reasonable. But again, I would love to have auto-pause on naval combat starting but THE GAME WON'T ALLOW THAT!

Drawing the battleplans isn't even fun. If you assign a division into an army, the army does not update its battleplan to take advantage of that division. You have to delete the battleplan and redraw it.

Oh and the arty, at and aa versions of tanks don't actually use the pre-existing tanks, you have to build them from scratch. THAT IS LITERALLY THE OPPOSITE of what it was supposed to be and how it historically went. If I have 920 Pz I in inventory, it makes sense to remove their useless machinegun-turret and replace it with the 47mm Skoda cannon I got as booty from Prague and call it JagdPanzer I. Because you're not building them from the scratch. At least I can ship off obsolete tanks to Nationalist Spain, not that it helps them as both games they lost out even with Italian and German help.

Finally, the leader/general system is retarded. The bonuses are so small and temporary when it comes to research, it really pushes you into switching designers every time you finish researching something. Like, have Rheinmetall there when you research artillery and then switch to Mauser when you research infantry weapons. But each change costs 150 leadership, so not even Germany can switch them around all the time. So in HoI3 where switching cabinet members was free, the bonuses were largely of the type that you would hardly ever replace them. In HoI4, where switching costs political power/leadership/Führer-mana, the bonuses are far more temporal. Great design choices there. As for generals, fucking good job. Because a Field Marshall has no limit to the number of divisions he commands and his bonus is applicable to EVERY fight that each of the divisions in his command takes place in, all you need is 1 good leader. And thanks to the Poland DLC, Poland has Wladyslav Anders, the genius military commander equal of Guderian, von Manstein and Rommel! Who, you ask? I have no fucking clue who, because he commanded a fucking cavalry brigade in 1939 and achieved jack fucking all, except got taken prisoner by the Soviets. But he is skill 4. As is Guderian, Rommel and von Manstein. Meaning that the highest starting skill level for an officer. So every Polish division gets a hefty bonus for fighting, but even more importantly they have a better chance of utilizing a good battle tactic because the leader with higher skill usually does. And von Rundstedt is skill 3. Fucking excellent job there. The battlefield tactics were meaningful in HoI3 because the general at the location picked it. Now it's OP as fuck when a single level 4 general can command your entire force and get to pick the best tactic at each battle. AGAIN, how the fuck did nobody in QA notice this?

Fuck you Paradox, just like Stellaris is babby's first 4X, HoI4 seems to be the wargame for people who don't like wargames. I'm going back to Aurora and HoI3.

 

[Hoaxmetal]

Maximum gnog achieved.

 

[Sulimo]

I'm 75% with the Gnog. Is HoI4 a better game than HoI3 for the average plebe? Yes. It is a better grand strategy game for HoI-fans? Nope. But fixing the AI would solve a lot of things. And it's a shame you'll never get that glorious sense of spending an hour to create an orderly OOB out of the starting mess of the soviet union with the 'new and improved' leader system.

Edit: And I miss the ability to adjust individual divisions on the fly, upgrading your militia to infantry and such without having to spend military mana to adjust a template.

 

[Talby]

Anyone else encounter a bug that changes your country to a completely different one? I was playing as fascist Australia until I loaded my save and I'm now playing as Ireland. Everything else is the same, I'm just playing as a different country and can't change back.

 

[Ulminati]

GarfunkeL

I'm mostly with you in the complaints.

Regarding air wings, I just add 1 plane, then change maximum reinforcement to however many planes I want in the wing. It takes a day longer to deploy and reinforce to fill strength, but fuck clicking "add 1 plane to wing" 200 times.

When you add divisions to an army, ctrl+ click the battle plan you want them to join rather than re-drawing it

 

[Fry]

All text is massive in size,

First time anyone has ever complained about text in a Paradox game being too big.

 

[Ulminati]

It is now forbidden to comment on moderator actions. Responding to the staff may result in a ban. Drones may only Obey.


Fucking swedish control freaks. Death by Muslim is too good for them.

 

[Hoaxmetal]

Maybe we got off easy with Infinitron.