Hearts of Iron IV - The Ultimate WWII Strategy Game

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Hearts of Iron 3 vs Darkest Hour, which is better and why? Gonna pick one of them on GOG sale.

Tough call for me, for they are rather different games. I suppose its a question that should be changed based on your mod preference: Do you want mods that focus on improving and expanding the World War 2 campaign, or do you also want mods that provide alternate histories and scenarios (ie, Kaiserreich, Fallout's Doomsday, Modern Day Scenario). HoI3 for former, Darkest Hour for latter.

Though I suppose a tiebreaker for most might be that HoI2 is easier to get into and more streamlined, while HoI3 has a more indepth and IMO strategically better gameplay.

Me, I still have DH, HoI3, and HoI4 all installed because each of them is more than different enough not to step on the toes of the others.

 

[Average Manatee]

I misunderstood you, the higher conscription laws that grant those kinds of bonuses are pretty painful looking (never gone above extensive myself).

The final one IS pretty bad. But even still, consider that when you annex a nation you'll get around 50%-100% of their IC depending on whether they are in a faction or not, but only a much smaller fraction of their manpower. In that instance you can easily spare taking a big penalty to your IC to get more of the manpower.

Also the ai loves its planes, which seem super pointless to me as things stand, unless you want to hit someones navy.

From what I can tell the way Close Air Support works is that it only bombs units that are currently engaged in battle. So its completely devastating in the AI vs. AI wars that are primarily infantry with no Soft Attack that take a month to finish, completely useless in a player vs. AI war where armored formations with 10x the power are smashing through divisions in days or less, which may not even be enough time for the CAS to get a single bombing run off.

 

[Space Satan]

Heavy tanks are super effective, can crush and stomp through any defense with ease

 

[Beastro]

Honestly China is not "playable" now. At least not fun playable. Infantry is completely useless unsupported and that's all China has for the first year of war, because apparently researching things like Artillery is something you have to do in 1936.

Eventually you can do something but for a long time vs. Japan the only possible Chinese strategy is to have more men than the Japs have bullets and just rotate divisions in and out as bullet sponges. Give up trying to attack with a SA of around 30, it's WW1-levels of spending 100k troops and several months to advance one province.

Large numbers of the Chinese fought armed with pistols thanks to inter-war arms embargoes by the League of Nations that prevented them from buying anything else.

Mom and pop blacksmiths produced a ton of knock off weapons in China as well, often covered in randomly placed, bullshit markings trying to imitate Western quality control.

 

[Ulminati]

Ironman DiNMRK is going well. Massive nuke spam makes people give up without a fight

 

[Ulminati]

I had a weird bug during my conquest of Kwanzania.

I had staged a Free American Empire coup ages ago which failed miserably. Once I invaded the US, territory I claimed flipped to the Free American Empire, who began spawning troops again. So far, so good. most of the east coast belogns to them because of my invasion. but I had also been boosing fascist in regular US of A. Once they turned 51# fascist, they became a new, separate Free American Empire instead of joining the Axis of Awesome. Fast forward about a month, the Free American Empire on my side defects to the allies even though they're fascist. There's only one FAE now, but they're all against me and the territory I claimed flips to allies. All my armies were trapped in canada and had to fight their way back to the coast. fortunately, by the time I claimed new York and Washington, the kwans surrendrered. Carped bombing nukes had lowered their national unity to 10% base.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

I always had a suspicion that something would go bonkers if I kept boosting party popularity after staging a coup.

 

[Destroid]

Kinda weird to make long lance torpedoes a unique national focus instead of a tech.

 

[SmartCheetah]

Someone need to mod the aircraft tree. I can't understand the abstract logic behind it. Bf109 was in use for a duration of whole war and Kurfurst was something way different than first iterations of this aircraft. Simplified tree places it under the Fockewulf (which was inferior to 109 in some aspects) which is considered a fighter aircraft (while few models were equivalents of p47)

Oh, and about a coup - I love boosting the political parties of my biggest foes to 30-40% and then staging a coup. Fighting half of the USSR with Imperial Russia joining axis was a lot easier.

 

[Raghar]

I had a weird bug during my conquest of Kwanzania.

I had staged a Free American Empire coup ages ago which failed miserably. Once I invaded the US, territory I claimed flipped to the Free American Empire, who began spawning troops again. So far, so good. most of the east coast belogns to them because of my invasion. but I had also been boosing fascist in regular US of A. Once they turned 51# fascist, they became a new, separate Free American Empire instead of joining the Axis of Awesome. Fast forward about a month, the Free American Empire on my side defects to the allies even though they're fascist. There's only one FAE now, but they're all against me and the territory I claimed flips to allies. All my armies were trapped in canada and had to fight their way back to the coast. fortunately, by the time I claimed new York and Washington, the kwans surrendrered. Carped bombing nukes had lowered their national unity to 10% base.

You liberated theirs territory, and because you supported theirs coup, you gave them theirs territory. Have you invited them into your faction?

 

[Raghar]

I just kicked out UK from India as comchi. Now I'm again fighting on west front, and in Iran, and near Crimea.
Trying to kill US fleet south of Japan. Trying to kill US fleet south of China. With success one destroyer each per month.

Strategic bombers are bombing France. And jet strategic bombers are bombing UK.

(And yes UK conquered Red Finland. That was really bad news.)

(I have deficit in 42000 infantry weapons. 2300 AA. 1800 Artillery. And not enough steel to make carriers.)

 

[Ulminati]

Just found out that the 3 symbols on the right side of tanks in the tech tree are separate techs you can research... d'oh! That wasn't terribly obvious. Oh well, I guess I'll roll with Netherlands or Belgium next and go for mechanised blitzkrieg with self-propelled arty

 

[Anthedon]

Armored divisions really start to shine with SP-ART due to the speed difference between towed and self propelled ART.

 

[Makabb]

What is the fastest way to create a custom faction without using the focus tree ?

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Pick a country that can form a faction from get-go, which I think means only Germany and UK. You can then disband the faction in question and create a new one when you can find someone willing to join.

 

[Makabb]

Can a two non-aligned countries create faction at 40% war tension withou focus tree?

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Not sure if there's any non-aligned countries that start with the ability to create a faction.

 

[Makabb]

Not sure if there's any non-aligned countries that start with the ability to create a faction.

Every country got a 'create faction' button in diplomacy, non aligned need 40% world tension, but idk if you need a national focus or not

 

[Ulminati]

US of A starts with the ability to create factions

 

[cw8]

3rd game as Nationalist China (first two as the US), turned Democratic. Held off the Japs from 1937 and then chased them off the mainland with infantry spam thanks to crazy manpower. Planned to get to the home islands. Researched Carrier 3, and DD 3, started building a single carrier fleet of 3 CVs, 5 CLs, and 25 DDs after many years. Stationed 100 Naval Bombers in Korea. Yamamoto's main CV fleet camping at the Yellow Sea. Slapped a level 1 Admiral on the single fleet. Went out of port from Shanghai and Yamamoto engaged in ship battle. 210 planes from my 3 Carriers and the 100 Naval Bombers in Korea engaged as well.

Best naval victory I ever had since playing HOI2. HOI3 the enemy carriers always seem to be able to escape. After this decisive naval battle, took the Home Islands. And turned half my divisions to free Nazi occupied Russia.

I'm neutral and I can't join the Allies thanks to the United Front faction. And the Allies were doing extremely poorly until late game. Compared to previous playthrough, where AI UK went bonkers, into godmode and with France, managed to destroy all the Axis powers save for Japan.

 

[Makabb]

Patch 1.1 coming at the end of the month.

 

[Malakal]

I see they adopted the 'arr rook same' model for China too, how fitting.

 

[Destroid]

How do you read the terrain on this map and tell wtf is going on with planes and ships?

 

[cw8]

How do you read the terrain on this map and tell wtf is going on with planes and ships?

You can zoom all the way in and look at it. Or mouse over for the tooltip which includes what terrain type the province is.
There are popups for naval battles which you can click on to watch the ongoing battle. Then they'll be popups for naval battle results. As for air combat, there's a seperate UI with a graph that shows troops bombed, enemy planes interrupted, buildings bombed, stuff like that.

 

[Lone Wolf]

Mod scene is already pretty good.

August Storm expands the timeline (in terms of techs, especially) and goes for a more historical set-up. Alpha release out.

Kaiserreich will scratch the alt-history itch (the Darkest Hour version is legendary). First release pending.

BICE will be a total overhaul, so might take a while.

But smaller mods are also getting playthroughs. For example, Persia Rising is really quite fun. A well-developed (if not balanced) focus tree, specific events etc; makes a Persia/Iran game quite enjoyable. There are two separate Byzantium mods out, but the Rhomania one looks like it will get the Persia Rising treatment and be quite in-depth.