Hearts of Iron IV - The Ultimate WWII Strategy Game

[Average Manatee]

Yeah I don't think there's anything you can do to stop nationalist spain from joining the axis and sinking a dagger into your back. Since you can't send volunteers and nationalist spain is supposed to be stronger, you just have to get lucky and hope the republicans win without aid. "historical" just means the AI takes focuses in a certain order, the AI is still going to invite anyone it can and eventually every focus will be taken even if its ahistorical or inappropriate to the situation (in my game Germany declared war on the lowlands to get around the Maginot... while French troops were about 20 miles from Berlin).

You might try bunkering up behind the Maginot and naval invading Italy. From what I've seen Italy is a joke if you invade around Rome and split the country in two. The UK does it all the time, sometimes even before Poland has lost. That was the usual strategy for HoI3, where France didn't have a chance at immediately confronting Germany and the manpower issue was far worse.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

You shouldn't overdo your army size either, since you are limited by Combat Width and supply limits on how effectively you can use those divisions. Given that France has the advantage of Maginot Line significantly reducing their frontage, they actually need less forces to prevent Axis offensive (not to mention doesn't France has more manpower than UK anyway?) and can much more readily invest more into building an offensive army to take out Spain or Italy.

 

[mutonizer]

You shouldn't overdo your army size either, since you are limited by Combat Width and supply limits on how effectively you can use those divisions. Given that France has the advantage of Maginot Line significantly reducing their frontage, they actually need less forces to prevent Axis offensive (not to mention doesn't France has more manpower than UK anyway?) and can much more readily invest more into building an offensive army to take out Spain or Italy.

Thing is, Maginot line is great....till German are done in the East and then come around, fuck over BENELUX in a month, then run you over. In try 5, I almost managed to take out Italy early but ran out of manpower and Germany came around, and it's down hill from there.
Otherwise, I'd say I've seen Communist and Nationalist spain win 50% split. I always allow passage to Communist when asked, hoping it'll help them but haven't noticed either way.

Haven't tried Marine invasion yet but that seems a bit cheesy. Will try to see how the AI handles it.

Manpower issue comes from the fact that you just cannot switch laws due to PP starvation, at least for me so far. Without the mega penaly from Little Entente Yougslavia early engagement it'd be no problem. As said, I'll try complete backup of all PP generation JUST to absorb the penalty when it happens, get 50% world tension then switch. I'll also focus less on Infantry as advised.

 

[Ulminati]

Thing is, Maginot line is great....till German are done in the East and then come around, fuck over BENELUX in a month, then run you over.

If you don't mind pissing off benelux, you can take a NF to extend the maginot line.

 

[mutonizer]

If you don't mind pissing off benelux, you can take a NF to extend the maginot line.

Yea, but I arn't got time usually.

I mean, when I see the date ticker going, I'm usualy like this...

Spoiler

And then I get fucked

 

[Ulminati]

Well, you know Danzig or War happens in 1939 on historial focuses. A focus always takes just over 2 months to complete. so as long as you time your NFs so you can extend th emarginot by the time germany goes for poland, it'll be up before they can finish Around the Maginot.

Pay attention to anschluss of austria, fate of czechoslovakia, claiming memel, danzig or war etc. They're your doom countdown. Make sure you're ready.

 

[mutonizer]

Pay attention to anschluss of austria, fate of czechoslovakia, claiming memel, danzig or war etc. They're your doom countdown. Make sure you're ready.

With "Little Entente", you break from the Allies completely and form your own faction though, with Czecho, Yugoslavia and Romania. That happens soon as Germany goes on Czecho (earlier than usual with Allies) and Italy joins a month later usually. I'll need to ignore the Industrial/Extra research branch to get Maginot line in time but might be worth it indeed.

 

[Ulminati]

Can't remember what the fortification level is like, but I think it's worth delaying research a few months for it. The AI has a ton of trouble dealing with fortified positions

 

[Average Manatee]

Forts are like -10% combat ability per level I think. Completely brutal to the AI by level 4 or 5.

That said, if the little entente is giving you czechs, romania and yugoslavia, an offensive approach might be better. I'll give it a try. I won offensively really easy in the regular 1939 war, the issue I see with the little entente is that you won't have time to get medium tanks while light tanks start out pretty shitty and are a dead end. I expect that you could be a bit gamey and deploy a combined-arms formation with the cheapest light tank possible in every infantry division, exploiting the lack of AI Anti-Tank to give you cheap armor advantage everywhere. The AI is really bad about AT in HoI4 compared to HoI3 where every division had either AT or TD in it.

 

[Beastro]

This is a WW2 game?

What do you expect from the autistic?

Reading how this game plays out I couldn't stand it. Far too much hindsight given what I know of a time about weapons development.

The mere fact anyone can compete with the US in this timeframe, let alone defeat their navy and air force and invade CONUS, is absolute bullshit.

 

[mutonizer]

Forts are like -10% combat ability per level I think. Completely brutal to the AI by level 4 or 5.

That said, if the little entente is giving you czechs, romania and yugoslavia, an offensive approach might be better. I'll give it a try. I won offensively really easy in the regular 1939 war, the issue I see with the little entente is that you won't have time to get medium tanks while light tanks start out pretty shitty and are a dead end. I expect that you could be a bit gamey and deploy a combined-arms formation with the cheapest light tank possible in every infantry division, exploiting the lack of AI Anti-Tank to give you cheap armor advantage everywhere. The AI is really bad about AT in HoI4 compared to HoI3 where every division had either AT or TD in it.

Oh yea I'm sure anyone putting his mind into it can do it no problem, but I try to stick to the "role" and macro managing, not really any micro. I never control troops directly for example, only design plans, fallback lines and whatnot, then just assign and let AI handle it 100%.
I need to dive a bit more into army design though yea.

 

[Thane Solus]

This is a WW2 game?

What do you expect from the autistic?

Reading how this game plays out I couldn't stand it. Far too much hindsight given what I know of a time about weapons development.

The mere fact anyone can compete with the US in this timeframe, let alone defeat their navy and air force and invade CONUS, is absolute bullshit.

I didnt played against US, but if you do it before 1940 or so it is possible. Their navy was spread out and their factories didnt start to explode on manufacturing until a bit later. But yeah, like any Paradox game, is still needs a lot tweaking, but due to the "map painting" and some decent features its has more value than Stellaris at the moment. I am actually enjoy it but its quite flawed, but more playable for me than Hoi 3, which indeed was more complex or just had more micro management. As with all Paradox games, it might turn better in one year and at -75%...The trade and industry was better imho in Making History I Gold.

 

[Ulminati]

The US is crippled in 1936-1940, reducing your manpower, your factory output and rendering you unable join wars unless attacked. You can beeline for tech that lets you join wars, but that will leave you with great depression tech and industry. Especially on historical focus, this lets Japan - and even Mexico to some degree - fuck up a considerable part of us factories in a surprise attack. Mexico beelining for fascism, invading Brazil and Venezuela for a few extra factories, then jumping the US in late 1938 should stand a good chance against the fractured US army.

Especially an early Venezuela would be good. They have a lot of oil, which Hitler will gladly buy off of you for extra factories

 

[Beastro]

This is a WW2 game?

What do you expect from the autistic?

Reading how this game plays out I couldn't stand it. Far too much hindsight given what I know of a time about weapons development.

The mere fact anyone can compete with the US in this timeframe, let alone defeat their navy and air force and invade CONUS, is absolute bullshit.

I didnt played against US, but if you do it before 1940 or so it is possible. Their navy was spread out and their factories didnt start to explode on manufacturing until a bit later. But yeah, like any Paradox game, is still needs a lot tweaking, but due to the "map painting" and some decent features its has more value than Stellaris at the moment. I am actually enjoy it but its quite flawed, but more playable for me than Hoi 3, which indeed was more complex or just had more micro management. As with all Paradox games, it might turn better in one year and at -75%...The trade and industry was better imho in Making History I Gold.

The issue is the logistics of doing all of that when the attack on Pearl Harbour was the very limit Japan was able to send their carriers to. People talk about Japan replacing the raid with an invasion of Hawaii, if only to give them lots of time to wreck the naval base but they simply lacked the transports and oilers to pull it off, something that would dog them through the entire war.

Does this game have anything like that?

For a game set in WWII to lack such an aspect is shocking, it would be like having one without an air warfare component.

The US is crippled in 1936-1940, reducing your manpower, your factory output and rendering you unable join wars unless attacked.

Mexico invading the US would be in the same position Germany was against the Soviet Union, invading a front that was cone shaped, increasingly demanding more logistical support spread out over a wider area, father and father away from home with the men on a given area of the front spread out thinner and thinner.

The US wasn't crippled either, they just had to tighten their belts and start pumping shit out, which is what they did 39-41 effectively making a new military. That's the thing about the US in WWII, they not only did what they did, they did it while facing the Great Depression, which only ended when the war did.

But I'm not surprised Paradox has gone this way, it just feels like it's going way beyond even what you could manage in Victoria with a minor nation.

I mean, if they can buff Sweden as well, whose only claims to fame during the era were making the only service operational pusher prop fighter and decriminalizing homosexuality, what should I expect...

 

[not an artichoke]

Mexico invading the US in the 30s or 40s is downright preposterous. Strictly military matters aside, Mexico lacked anything remotely resembling an industrial base. But Paradox has been steadily going farther from simulation and more toward beer & pretzels sandboxy just-have-fun-with-it games. Which are fun, but you have to adjust expectations going in. In HoI3, the AI completely ignored naval logistics limits. I wouldn't be surprised if the same were true in this iteration.

 

[Average Manatee]

Paradox made an achievement for invading the USA as Mexico. Anything that has an achievement has to be reasonably doable for your average retard on steam.

 

[not an artichoke]

I don't remember if someone said it here or on the official forums, but I recall someone stating that EU or CK style preposterous makes a certain amount of sense. Taking a one province minor to world conquest over the course of centuries? Highly unlikely, but not outside the realm of possibility. But the time scale of HoI makes this sort of things both patently obvious and downright silly.

Of course the more history you know the more absurd it seems. Mexico wasn't just extremely underdeveloped economically. It was a nation barely 20 years out of a brutal civil war. It still faced barely-suppressed internal socio-economic tensions and an embryonic political structure that relied upon careful balancing of a variety of those pressures to maintain legitimacy. And perhaps most of all, Mexican national identity even to this day is still closely tied up in non-interventionism. Especially back then, the idea of Mexico marauding through the Americas wouldn't simply have been horrifying or silly, it would have been unthinkable to every Mexican from the intelligentsia down to the rudest campesino. Mexico was separated from Santa Ana style ambitions by a century of intervention by foreign powers into their country which developed a strong sense of victimhood and an absolute commitment to national sovereignty, particularly of countries who lacked the power to enforce it themselves.

But there's no way to model that sort of thing in HoI 4. Pass the pretzels and click the Invade Button!

 

[oscar]

Even things like holding Poland ought to require a very, very skilled player let alone the AI itself apparently routinely managing to reach Berlin. Will wait for sales/mods.

 

[sser]

Some quick googlefu shows the U.S. military in 1936 as:

Congress limited the Regular Army to 12,000 commissioned officers and 125,000 enlisted men, not including the 7,000 or so in the Philippine Scouts; Army strength stabilized at about that level until 1936.

National Guard strength was about 180,000 men, many of which were on... the Mexican border. Dunno the strength of other military arms.

But yeah, not happening. Pretty sure Texas alone could have fought off Mexico during this time period.

It makes for amusing ahistorical gameplay, I guess, but to me it just shows some flaws in the game design. Then again, you either find complicated ways to make minor states interesting or you just give them map painting skills like anybody else

 

[Grinolf]

People were conquering world as minors like Albania way back in HOI 3, so it's very silly talking about it as something new and unexpected is silly if not outright autistic. Fixing AI to not be braindead half of the time should make this matter more complicated and Paradox now is more eager to nerf cheese strategies and exploits than they were now, but even then players still find a way to accomplish ahistorical things against AI.
In their streams they claimed that none from their company could make Ethiopia work, but I wouldn't be that suprised to see Ethiopia annexing Italy in the near future.

 

[Raghar]

Just got finished MAKING ANATOLIA GREEK AGAIN!

Now fighting the Allies, but I did not join the Axis; I will fight the Allies with the NEW ROMAN EMPIRE (Consisting of Slavs and Greeks)

This was done by AI in my current game. The trouble was it didn't fight for correct side, thus it has been destroyed already.

 

[Destroid]

Mexico invading the US in the 30s or 40s is downright preposterous. Strictly military matters aside, Mexico lacked anything remotely resembling an industrial base. But Paradox has been steadily going farther from simulation and more toward beer & pretzels sandboxy just-have-fun-with-it games. Which are fun, but you have to adjust expectations going in. In HoI3, the AI completely ignored naval logistics limits. I wouldn't be surprised if the same were true in this iteration.

Do naval logistics limits apply to AI in any paradox game?

 

[kris]

People were conquering world as minors like Albania way back in HOI 3, so it's very silly talking about it as something new and unexpected is silly if not outright autistic. Fixing AI to not be braindead half of the time should make this matter more complicated and Paradox now is more eager to nerf cheese strategies and exploits than they were now, but even then players still find a way to accomplish ahistorical things against AI.
In their streams they claimed that none from their company could make Ethiopia work, but I wouldn't be that suprised to see Ethiopia annexing Italy in the near future.

the thing about ethiopia is that they are set against an superior opponent from the start. Human players win primarly due to better preparation/hindsight, all they have left with ethiopia is trying to outmanoeuvre the AI... with less units.

So the simplest solution in stopping the player from doing "silly" stuff is to remove the 1936 start.

 

[mutonizer]

The interesting bits from a game like this is to also try and do silly stuff though, especially for long term replayability.

 

[Malakal]

The interesting bits from a game like this is to also try and do silly stuff though, especially for long term replayability.

This much should be obvious, otherwise only playable nations would be France, Germany, Italy, USA, UK, Soviet Union and Japan. Maybe China, depending on how well its represented.