Hearts of Iron IV - The Ultimate WWII Strategy Game

[Sulimo]

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

Put him first on the capiat(al punishment)list when the Kalmar Union is reborn.

 

[Kane]

Paradox has had the 'do not respond to yellow posts' policy for over 10 years now. Perhaps better for us all that Codex Staff is only now discovering it.

 

[Mortmal]

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.

Theres no manual, a grave crime in my opinion, and its poorly explained, you dont have to redraw each time . If you add more units to an army they dont get assigned to the front , you have to CTRL+ left click on the front line to get them assigned. Still very cumbersome and not ergonomic, same for naval invasions, crt+ left click to get it started.
Well except that i pretty much agree , its not a wargame, its more like EU4 with modern weaponry .

 

[Average Manatee]

I'm 75% with the Gnog. Is HoI4 a better game than HoI3 for the average plebe? Yes.

Is it really though? Production in HoI3 is simple and easy to figure out. The sliders work well and are easily automated. The AI is better. The OoB looks confusing to set up, but you can just ignore it and put everyone under a single theater like in HoI4 and they'll still have better AI than HoI4, or just throw them under any old HQ. The UI has clearly labeled things like "production", "diplomacy", etc, rather than ridiculous abstract icons everywhere. Naval invasions are as simple as putting a unit in a transport and then telling them to get off somewhere, rather than HoI4 where my naval invasions all stalled for reasons that took me months to figure out and months more to figure out how to fix. There's no really distracting national focus system (as much as I like it, its really overwhelming at first glance and requires you to plan a bunch of stuff ahead). When you want to build a unit you have a max of 4 slots and can generally figure out what good combinations are, while in HoI4 you have 30 slots and can't figure out what to do with them.

 

[Sulimo]

I'm 75% with the Gnog. Is HoI4 a better game than HoI3 for the average plebe? Yes.

Is it really though? Production in HoI3 is simple and easy to figure out. The sliders work well and are easily automated. The AI is better. The OoB looks confusing to set up, but you can just ignore it and put everyone under a single theater like in HoI4 and they'll still have better AI than HoI4, or just throw them under any old HQ. The UI has clearly labeled things like "production", "diplomacy", etc, rather than ridiculous abstract icons everywhere. Naval invasions are as simple as putting a unit in a transport and then telling them to get off somewhere, rather than HoI4 where my naval invasions all stalled for reasons that took me months to figure out and months more to figure out how to fix. There's no really distracting national focus system (as much as I like it, its really overwhelming at first glance and requires you to plan a bunch of stuff ahead). When you want to build a unit you have a max of 4 slots and can generally figure out what good combinations are, while in HoI4 you have 30 slots and can't figure out what to do with them.

I never did quite get the hang of production in HoI3 exactly, with all it's under-the-hood recalculation of date of completion and such based on practical experience and the alignment of Saturn and Mars in Aries. Whereas in HoI4 building something will take as long as the game tells you it will take, every time. That's the kind of clarity Joe Schmuck can get behind. But besides that I agree with you on most of your points.

 

[Average Manatee]

Practical experience is basically the same as the gearing bonus in HoI4, except that it's global and doesn't punish you for needing to slightly fiddle with the quantities of what you are producing. And in HoI3 you don't have to request resources in batches of 8 and shit constantly, just ensure the overall resource rates are good.

In the end both games can be boiled down to "I want 70% infantry and 30% tanks" as far as your strategic planning goes. In HoI3 to accomplish this you just put 7 infantry divisions for each 3 tank divisions on the queue. In HoI4 you have to figure out the relative equipment cost and then align them to produce the right quantity to get the right mixture, which is pretty complicated math and if you don't do its you've wasted some production building up a surplus you probably don't need.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Playing as Dzäpään now, and really the guy who designed the overlay graphics needs to be kicked in the nuts. The default overlay looks acceptable only on a scant few countries (like Germany), but goddamnit it really shouldn't have that goddamn gradient country color fucking up everything so you can barely see the weather effects and so on they appear to have spent so much time on.

Really, default view = colored borders and occupation grid or some such, no extra shit. The rest various things should either be solid opaque colors because you're looking for one thing only, or different borders (ie with Air and Naval zones), that gradient shit needs to go. And the only time a border needs to glow is when selecting an Air zone to see the air superiority status for you and/or your faction.

 

[Thane Solus]

Stop it, ok? Just stop it. I don't like it either, but it's the way you do business these days. Nobody wants to fucking struggle with inane German whims

People giving in to whiners is exactly why whiners get their way. Banning swastikas is retarded security theater and always has been. It's done nil to prevent underground Neo-Nazi movements and similar.

I understand the "why" of it from all angles, but I don't have to like it. HoI is a WW2 game. WW2 movies can have swastikas (even in Germany, if it passes some threshold of "educational"), WW2 documentaries can obviously have swastikas, but in a wargame full of accurate historical figures, locations, and iconography, there can't be swastikas because... why? Someone might LARP Hitler?

They couldn't be bothered to create the proper graphics for regions that don't have ineffective security theater censoring, and they actively oppose modding them in, so I can't be bothered with this franchise. That's it.

I'm not condemning anyone else for enjoying the game or not being pissed off about retarded ineffective censorship, it's a personal issue. By all means, enjoy yourself.

While for once i agree with you Blaine, is the retardness of Germany and other countries. If you put swastika or other non political correct cuck fucking in your games, you cannot sell the game in that country.

Hitler/Fascism/Communism is BAD

Capitalism/Democracy and the ability to turn your country into a jungle with just one Walmart its ok. Okie, maybe a few drones too, if you got oil )) Also corporations are people ok? Lobbying is also great. The ability for any corporation to go to any country and destroy the local economy with their shity walmarts is also great.

Also, Putin is Bad too.

DONT YOU FUCKING WATCH TV BLAINE? How you will ever learn whats goin down in this world also history from history channel...

P.S.

Spoiler

As for the game, its better in some ways than HOI3 but as Stellaris, rushed too early to increase shares value. Expect that EU V and HOI V to be Candy Crash in space with Cucks.

 

[Lone Wolf]

So far, the production system and deployment is superior to the rest of the HoI series.

I don't mind the AI frontage stuff - until you start throwing around ~350 divisions as the Soviets, and your armies start to become an amorphous mass of shared frontage (unless you start to create ~70 division mega-armies under Field Marshals).

The AI has actually been reasonable, insofar as it's countered some of my offensives well (including a painful backhanded blow around Berlin, where they cut off a fairly significant chunk of my army...), but it's pretty standard, otherwise.

Of course, it's also had episodes of lunacy, like stacking ~70 divisions in the Odessa province (with the attendant attrition), getting them cut off, and Germany taking half a million casualties in the rear end for no particular reason.

Tech system is okay, but limited and in want of serious expansion.

 

[Beastro]

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.

In Hitler's case it was for bad GI problems and a good chance of Parkinson's the way his hands shook.

The guy did increasingly too much on his own later in the war on top of his anger problems. He was consumed by stress.

 

[Raghar]

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

Well, not exactly. Jan Masaryk was a rich whiner and when he had chance to defy the west bitches, he didn't shown spine. There is a German record from his phoning back to his leaders in Prague, and how many vulgar words he said, but the fact is he could refuse Munch. The same applied for the rest of government. I think right of western countries to decide stuff like this was part of treaty that was founding treaty of Czech republic. Well. They had country for a while, technically 1800 years, with small intermetzzo of being part of Habsburk monarchy, which didn't work well because of MASSIVE Germanization attempts. So saying no fuck young states like France, or UK, would work well. Bitches, that's what lack of pride and spine does in politics. Rich gets to do diplomatic missions, and fucks the country.

Then of course there was a bit annexation from Germany and Poland. Yes Poland shown lack of foresight, and didn't seen writing on the wall, and didn't refuse north parts with words "we don't want to change borders, first Poland would get these provinces, but then Germany would want pieces of Poland. Poland doesn't want that."
But Poland thought they have alliance with France and UK. The plan of France and UK was to let Germany conquer Poland, and use that time to prepare for war with Germany. The trouble was Germany conquered Poland too fast.

Don't you love allies like that?

Well, the reason why Czech army went down fast was peaceful merge between Germany and Austria. When czech army seen that, they surrendered immediately. Then when Munch happened, and Slovakia seen what happened with cutting stuff, they decided Hungary wants too, and they are 14 days from starting invasion, and the only way to stop it is going nazi. Tito decided to take the responsibilty on himself, tried to keep Slovakia relatively low nazi mode, and pretended that Slovakia guerrilla doesn't exist and avoided doing anything serious against it. He was executed anyway after the war.
There is even joke about the stuff that happened...

So committee cleaned nearly everyone from suspicion of working for Nazi, after two months of hard work. Only local gypsy received minor punishment. Everyone was shocked he admitted the guilt.
When surprised people asked him, but why did you admitted the guilt, you could lie. He answered how could I lie to the committee? Every member of committee cooperated with nazi as my superior, they would know I'm lying.

 

[Ulminati]

Fascist DiNMRK ironman is going well now that I'm begining to figure out how things work

 

[Whisky]

Playing as Romania in a non-historical mode. Having a bit of a blast. Completely fucked up Hungary beyond belief by instigating a Republican revolt in the west right when they massed on my border and declared war. Dumb fucks didn't see that coming.

Now I'm at a standstill against the Axis. Germany is declaring war on everyone when it doesn't make sense. They broke the Molotov-Ribbentrop treaty despite Poland (Who opted to form a Baltic alliance) still being mostly intact.

Focusing on swaying Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, and Turkey to Democratic. At least, so that I may prevent them from joining the Axis. I saw one previous game where Turkey went Axis and if either joined they would fuck me up. My southern border is defenseless.

 

[rezaf]

Fascist DiNMRK ironman is going well now that I'm begining to figure out how things work

Thanks for ruining Paradox games for me jerk.

Seriously, sometimes I get the feeling that whenever Johan sees people pull off things like that (and frankly, Denmark shouldn't be able to achieve jack shit in the WW2 timeframe if the game were remotely plausible) they nerf the hell out of systems and thus throw the baby out with the bathtub - the feat becomes impossible to achieve in exactly the same fashion, but it also becomes impossible for majors to achieve half a dozen historically perfectly plausible things in the process.

But maybe it'll be different from now on with their recent embracing of shallow "anything goes" gameplay.

 

[Ulminati]

To be fair, it took a couple of attempts to find the proper cheese for annexing Norway and Lithuania before the invasion of Poland. (Estonia was guaranteed by the UK and Latvia got gobbled up by Russia who attacked the same time I did). The conquest of Sweden happened during the Molotov-Ribbentorp pact and was assisted by a considerable number of Russians passing through on their way to Finland.

The Danish conquest of the British isles on the other hand... That was 100% pølse. The great North Sea Empire borders under Knud the Great are reestablished!

 

[Makabb]

On one hand i want to play this and on second i would wait for a few dlc's/patches untill major things get sorted out.
like the cold war DLC probably will move the end date up.

 

[Talby]

My fascist Australia game is going well. Annexed New Zealand and some other islands and I'm working on seizing rubber and oil from the Netherlands' colonies. I already built 50 subs and over 600 bombers to deal with the UK or US navy if they send a fleet my way, hopefully it's enough.

 

[Whisky]

Jesus Christ, Venezuela is determined to make a name for themselves as volunteer fascist mercenaries. Every game I fight the Fascists, they're there. Everywhere.

 

[Talby]

Jesus Christ, Venezuela is determined to make a name for themselves as volunteer fascist mercenaries. Every game I fight the Fascists, they're there. Everywhere.

They volunteered one division for me and helped annex Java. Thanks, I guess. They're not even Axis.

 

[Average Manatee]

For anyone interested in division composition, here's what I got:

In general: you want big 44 width divisions (= 40 width after the -10% width trait, which means you can stack cleanly up to 80 or other multiples of 40). Larger divisions are better than more smaller divisions because they concentrate their defensive scores (400 attack enemy fighting two of your 200 defense divisions could really hurt one of them, if its fighting one 400 defense division it won't hurt nearly as much). It's also good for AI control, since the AI's biggest fault is attacking with only one division when it has 4 in the province. Make the divisions bigger so its forced to attack with large strength. Also helps for naval invasions, for which you have a 10 division limit early on yet it doesn't care whether the division has 25 battalions or 5 battalions. This also maximizes the effects of support divisions.

Infantry division: You want Marines or Mountaineers over Infantry usually. The terrain bonuses are huge (especially for AI control who fucks up terrain otherwise) and the cost/HP decrease isn't so bad when you are building large divisions. One AT is enough to pierce almost everything, more AT doesn't stack the piercing much higher and stacking Hard Attack isn't worthwhile when tanks need MOT/MEC with them that bring down their hardness anyway. One Medium SP ART is there just to provide a very minimal amount of cheap armor while still applying huge firepower. If the enemy doesn't have AT they won't pierce the SPART and your whole division gets huge bonuses. Funny enough the AI doesn't seem to have much AT.

This division excels in poor terrain and supply. 2 of them are also enough to easily naval invade any port which really screws the AI, and they'll probably be able to hold it quite a long time. 10 naval landing division limit means you can do 5 of these attacks simultaneously. Also keep in mind that you can have both a mountaineer and a marine division and swap your divisions in the field, all it takes is about a week of time reinforcing it (though you do lose some XP).

Armor division: This is the real ballbuster and is just ridiculously OP. It looks insanely expensive but that's just because I have MEC there instead of MOT for a little bit of extra hardness which is mostly over the top and not needed. Using MOT instead of MEC drops the price to around 6k production bucks which is absurdly cheap. SPART is just OP when massed. Make sure to upgrade spart as +5 attack +1 reliability, armor as +5 armor +1 reliability, TD as +5 attack +1 reliability. You'll easily pierce anything and anything but dedicated TD won't be able to pierce you (maybe variant armor with improved guns could pierce, but definitely not regular med armor). Bear in mind that these are pre-battle buff stats, add in a +110% planning bonus (Its hilarious that Grand Battle Plan is the OP doctrine now), +40% from a skill 8 general, another +30% from tactics and country modifiers and you WILL see upwards of 3.5k soft attack in the battle screen coming out of a single division. Even if the enemy is 60% hard, they are toast.

Once you can make armor divisions like this there's basically no reason not to make as many as possible. Unless you count the fact that the infantry divisions alone are enough to steamroll the game.

Edit: evidence of the silliness:

 

[Whisky]

Hah, had a run-in with Fascist Canada and it turns out the leader of it was a weird motherfucker in real life:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrien_Arcand

His party, then called the National Unity Party, was banned. In the internment camp, he sat on a throne built by other prisoners and spoke of how he would rule Canada when Hitler conquered it.[7]

 

[mondblut]

So they provided an alternative to fighting poles over Danzig, yay. I gave potatoes Slovakia (who needs it anyway), they turned fascist and... joined the Allies.

Then I befriended Denmark. Except they joined the Allies too.

Then I befriended Netherlands. Except they joined the Allies too (see the pattern now?). Japs (whom I wisely did not invite into Axis, knowing they always screw the things up for everyone by attacking USA instead of opening second front against mordor subhumans as a good ally should) DOWing them didn't help either. Now brits own half the China.

Then subhumans annex Finland. Who joins Allies too. Then they annex muh fascist Poland. Allies fight vatniks, except they can't reach them. Heck, I even give brits and frogs military access through the Aryan Reich, not like it does anything.

By 1943, butthurt romanians still don't join the glorious and peaceful Axis. And their 9% democratic party remains in control despite fascists having 60% popularity at the last elections. Here goes a coup. Here goes a civil war. Fascist Legionary Romania joins the axis. Then the former Romania joins the Allies, finally dragging the Axis into 3-way world war.

God, this game is beyond retarded.

Also, by 1943 civil war in Spain is still all the rage, and Franco gets a sound beating. This alone is a reason enough to uninstall.

At least Estonia is still peaceful and independent. GJ, paradox.

 

[PhantasmaNL]

`The Polish juggernaut cannot be stopped´

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHQyGGzRHYIZq9a6LYPLbXr3dgM15zWmI

Marbozir PT. After taking Berlin the flavor text mentioned Polish tanks ramming the Brandenburger Tor (one assumes drunk on fermented potato moonshine), which was a nice detail. He is fighting with divisions almost entirely composed of artillery, doing insane soft attack damage (i think it was 1800 plus). Cheap and completely OP, at least early on. I think someone in the comments calculated that artillery is actually the most efficient and effective damage dealer.

Im playing as the Reich myself, trying oddball strategies, since serious play means a walkover and a thousand year Reich basically right now.

 

[rezaf]

`The Polish juggernaut cannot be stopped´

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHQyGGzRHYIZq9a6LYPLbXr3dgM15zWmI

Marbozir PT.

How do you guys manage to tolerate the accent? Drugs?

He's probably a nice guy and all, but I really can't bring myself to watch an entire LP in his own special version of "itsa mee, Mario" .

 

[sser]

So the game's really good, but the AI is really retarded...?