Hearts of Iron IV - The Ultimate WWII Strategy Game

[Average Manatee]

Terrain can be -30% for hills and -30% for rivers. Combined that's 50% combat effectiveness. Planning bonus can go up to 110% which means the attacker attacking across rivers and into hills is attacking at 105% normal efficiency. And that's basically the worst case, in reality only idiot attacks with both rivers and terrain working against you. In the vast majority of cases the war is fought on standard plains and then the winner quickly destroys and overwhelms the loser. HoI4 has no logistics like HoI3 does to slow down offense, so when the attacker de-ORGs the defender they can just keep marching forward and killing the defender's ORG before it can recover.

Planning bonus pretty much lasts forever if you utilize it properly. It recharges any time a unit isn't moving and is lost very slowly. It's also lost for the defender while they are defending and retreating, which means that the aforementioned de-ORGed units are also losing their ability to counterattack properly unless they can sit for weeks to plan again.

 

[BelisariuS.F]

It's funny that - while you guys argue about whether the ToV was too punitive or too 'light' - it's main problem was that it was neither or.

Too harsh for conciliation and too soft to prevent a German resurgence. As Machiavelli once said: 'If an injury has to be done to a man it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared'. The Entente went against this sage advice by trying to appease Clemenceau and leave the Germans with the means to overturn the treaty at a later date. The result was predictable enough. Lloyd George called it a truce for 25 years. Foch called it a truce for 20. The latter guessed it to the year, just about.

Which reminds me of this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Caudine_Forks and Herennius's advice.

 

[Space Satan]

Defender gets bonuses from Night, weather, terrain, entrenchment, forts, ground effects(snow, mud, deep snow) and probably other stuff. That is more than enough to compensate for planning bonus. Also, defender also can get planning atop of that.
Main complaint now on the forums is how forts are insanely effective and with them you can create literally impenetrable line, but AI will not be able to use them as he will constantly move units around and shuffle the formations constantly, resetting all bonuses and entrenchments.

 

[Average Manatee]

Night: No bonus, it's a penalty to both sides equally
Weather: Nothing. It's only a penalty to air/sea combat.
Terrain: Covered
Forts: Yes, these are insanely cheesy if you build up maginot lines everywhere. HoI4 is very stupidly balanced in this regard, making them way too cheap.
Entrenchment: The way that combat is fought in HoI4 makes entrenchment useless. When combat happens in HoI4 the attacker can attack from 3+ provinces into 1 province. Having 3x the attacking force means the defender HAS to move units into a province to defend, which means no entrenchment bonus to them. Furthermore there is no entrenchment bonus built up before war starts and as soon as the war shifts one way or another its lost and will never have time to be built up again. It's basically only useful for division guarding ports and such.
Ground effects: AFAIK these only affect unit speed and attrition.
Defenders don't get any planning bonus.

Basically every important war including the One that Matters (Germany vs. Soviets) is conducted on plains with minimal amounts of rivers or forts to impede progress. Without logistics concerns once the initial few weeks/months are concluded the winner is left simply mopping up.

 

[Space Satan]

Yeah, entrenchment seems to be a planning counterpart.
Weather - cold result in -10% div.attack. Snow, mud and deep snow result in from -10 to -40% div.attack malus.
If you have a steady second fallback line then you can reinforce one line with another but even without pgraded engeneers right INF division composition can stall ARM advance, given you invested in TDs or AT. And that is pure land war we are talking, as Air superiority is waht decides war outcome 80% of the time.

 

[Average Manatee]

Entrenchment is just what you get from not moving for a while. It's all lost in a single hour if you give a move order. -10% attack from weather is almost irrelevant anyway and looking at the modifier I think its the same as Night, meaning both the attacker and the defender suffers it.

The important point to take is that wars are decided on flat plains with most modifiers not applying. By the time the battle line is pushed that deep into Russia the war is already over.

INF can stall the AI. It can't stall attackers that can output 10k soft attack. And Airpower is worthless at that point. Battles end before CAS can even make a single attack run.

 

[Space Satan]

No, only attacking division suffers from weather, defending suffer various attrition and org regain maluses along with attackers. 7-2 INF can crumble but 6-2-1 or variations of INF can deal shitload of damage to the attackers and you can fill MUCH more INF than anyone can fill with ARM. Air superiority cuts attackers by 50% top. That's huge. Probably will be cut in the next patch but losing 50% of attack power just to air superiority is an overkill.

 

[ThoseDeafMutes]

What's bizarre to me is the out of supply penalty capping at -33% and VPs giving supplies. On the one hand it's nice that dvisions holed up in cities sometimes put up a bit of a fight, on the other hand it's pretty silly in like the Spanish Civil War when your troops take months to defeat an encircled German division that is fully out of supply because German divisions are so much better in other ways than yours despite the supply penalties.

 

[Average Manatee]

No, only attacking division suffers from weather, defending suffer various attrition and org regain maluses along with attackers. 7-2 INF can crumble but 6-2-1 or variations of INF can deal shitload of damage to the attackers and you can fill MUCH more INF than anyone can fill with ARM. Air superiority cuts attackers by 50% top. That's huge. Probably will be cut in the next patch but losing 50% of attack power just to air superiority is an overkill.

No, NOTHING can stand up to 10k Soft Attack in a single battle. Bear in mind that because you are exceeding the defense you are actually effectively dealing out 40k soft attacks per hour. It is, quite literally, instant gibbing the enemy divisions. The enemy division composition doesn't matter because the fight is over in like 6 hours max, so their ability to fight back is fairly meaningless as they have no time to inflict real damage/deorg (any damage they've inflicted is reinforced before the next fight).

Air superiority is useless during the crucial early European years since producing that many aircraft means you won't have an army. Past that the war is already decided by who won in Germany vs. Soviet on the ground.

 

[Space Satan]

What are you talking about? What are the compositions that give 10k SA? It is min 40 width division, with the best equipment and spart variants. Where would you fit that en masse without losing supply even with logs?
Are you talking about gibbing AI? Because as it stands now GER can't outproduce SOV. And you are talking about massive spart/arm divisions to field vs high def infantry with +5 entrenchment bonusrs from doctrine.
General consensus on mp boards is that GER should be lucky to beat decent SOV in multiplayer parties alone. Because SOV can field 600-800 divs by 40-41 AND shotload of fighters atop of that.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Defender can also prepare a plan, and then *gasp* not attack. I didn't play MP, but it makes no sense that it would turn into some click war.

Obviously on flat planes and large fronts attacker will always have advantage, as it should be. But every save I play the AI gets absolutely cockblocked in Greece despite having 3-1 advantage in numbers. Invading Italy is always a nightmare for the same reason, it's a tight front that's all mountains and bunch of rivers cutting through it. Takes ages to punch through it even with massive number advantage. A human player will probably just take victory points with marines or paratroopers or something, but as a principle there are areas where defenders have advantage.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

What are you talking about? What are the compositions that give 10k SA? It is min 40 width division, with the best equipment and spart variants. Where would you fit that en masse without losing supply even with logs?
Are you talking about gibbing AI? Because as it stands now GER can't outproduce SOV. And you are talking about massive spart/arm divisions to field vs high def infantry with +5 entrenchment bonusrs from doctrine.
General consensus on mp boards is that GER should be lucky to beat decent SOV in multiplayer parties alone. Because SOV can field 600-800 divs by 40-41 AND shotload of fighters atop of that.

Yeah I can't imagine how would anyone even touch the Russians in multiplayer, considering that in single player I was able to roll Poland, Germany and Japan by the end of 1938, at which point I just dropped the save because there was no point continuing. The Soviets start with like 100 divisions, limitless resources, limitless manpower and great industry. There's no chance any major nation can take them on by themselves, unless the Soviet player messes up.

All you have to do is skip the Great Purge and just rape shit right off the bat. Which makes sense, since in the war the purges were also the reason for the Soviets early war problems. Rokossowky was a mastermind behind entire Soviet counterattack, and he was in jail when the war broke out if I remember correctly.

:russia:

 

[Beastro]

Rokossowky was a mastermind behind entire Soviet counterattack, and he was in jail when the war broke out if I remember correctly.

In Lubyanka with, iirc, a few missing fingers.

 

[Corporate_Jew_Master]

Rokossowky was a mastermind behind entire Soviet counterattack, and he was in jail when the war broke out if I remember correctly.

In Lubyanka with, iirc, a few missing fingers.

No, missing fingernails and teeth. Later were replaced by steel teeth.

 

[Average Manatee]

What are you talking about? What are the compositions that give 10k SA? It is min 40 width division, with the best equipment and spart variants. Where would you fit that en masse without losing supply even with logs?
Are you talking about gibbing AI? Because as it stands now GER can't outproduce SOV. And you are talking about massive spart/arm divisions to field vs high def infantry with +5 entrenchment bonusrs from doctrine.
General consensus on mp boards is that GER should be lucky to beat decent SOV in multiplayer parties alone. Because SOV can field 600-800 divs by 40-41 AND shotload of fighters atop of that.

Just stack SPART with INF. Upgrade the INF to MTN or MAR if you want, it's incredibly cheap and negates a huge part of the terrain penalties (It's a viable strat to not even produce INF, just spam MTN and MAR). Get level 9 general and stack your battle plan modifiers.

There's more than enough supply in the majority of the gameworld that matters. 80 width will take less than 10 supplies. Even if for some reason you do run out of supply its basically meaningless since the main effect is attrition (irrelevant with high reliability) and the combat effect is fairly minor as long as its only a small problem.

Defender can also prepare a plan, and then *gasp* not attack. I didn't play MP, but it makes no sense that it would turn into some click war.

Obviously on flat planes and large fronts attacker will always have advantage, as it should be. But every save I play the AI gets absolutely cockblocked in Greece despite having 3-1 advantage in numbers. Invading Italy is always a nightmare for the same reason, it's a tight front that's all mountains and bunch of rivers cutting through it. Takes ages to punch through it even with massive number advantage. A human player will probably just take victory points with marines or paratroopers or something, but as a principle there are areas where defenders have advantage.

Yeah and flat plains or very weak terrain like hills make up the vast majority of terrain in the game.

Why should an attacker have automatic advantage on flat terrain? They already have the strategic benefit of concentration of force. Attackers can also abuse Paradrops, decide the frontage, get additional encirclment/envelopment bonuses, and so on. Why should they get a magical +100% combat bonus, which is enough to outweigh even poor terrain?

Not attacking means that instead of you getting a +100% bonus the enemy does. That's a 400% power margin that you sacrifice if your enemy attacks before you do. What kind of crazy gameplay system gives an automatic 4x stat differential just from flipping who attacks and defends?

 

[Space Satan]

You present exaples where your attacking forces outnumber defenders 2 or 3 to one and ourproduce them, satisfying all that dibisional equipment demand but that somply never happens in sov-ger wars. That given you will not stumble upon mud in the plains with -50% to attack. Lvl9 general means you fight nonstop long before war, so why not take nukes and jets into account?

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Yeah and flat plains or very weak terrain like hills make up the vast majority of terrain in the game.

You do realize this is a world map of Earth, right?

Why should an attacker have automatic advantage on flat terrain?

Same reason why defender has automatic advantage in the mountains. Mountains are better suited for defending, clear and open flat terrain for attacking. A defender will from definition be outmanned and outgunned, and flat plain with clear line of sight doesn't give him any defensive position.

Not attacking means that instead of you getting a +100% bonus the enemy does.
That's a 400% power margin that you sacrifice if your enemy attacks before you do.
What kind of crazy gameplay system gives an automatic 4x stat differential just from flipping who attacks and defends?

Defender can prepare a plan and have the exact same bonus. Obviously you got roflstomped in multiplayer and you thought it's because of crazy gameplay systems. It's not, it's because you're shit.

 

[Corporate_Jew_Master]

You do realize this is a world map of Earth, right?

Problem is how many provinces are made of plains in comparison to the rest. That's where the fighting takes place.

 

[Average Manatee]

You present exaples where your attacking forces outnumber defenders 2 or 3 to one and ourproduce them, satisfying all that dibisional equipment demand but that somply never happens in sov-ger wars. That given you will not stumble upon mud in the plains with -50% to attack. Lvl9 general means you fight nonstop long before war, so why not take nukes and jets into account?

What? No, you don't need to outnumber the enemy 2:1 or 3:1. You get major bonuses on attack and automatically have 2:1 or 3:1 strength compared to the enemy. Mud is, again, irrelevant. Wars in HoI4 simply don't work like real wars and are decided very quickly on flat plains or at most a few hills and rivers (which don't even come close to offsetting attacker advantage from planning).

Germany can get a level 9 general during the war with Poland and everyone else will get one quickly as well. XP is based on number of divisions in combat, simply spam 1 INF or 2 INF divisions and have them all attack. Done right you'll have a level 9 general with most traits in under a month. Anyone competent in MP is doing this.

Yeah and flat plains or very weak terrain like hills make up the vast majority of terrain in the game.

You do realize this is a world map of Earth, right?

I didn't say plains shouldn't exist. I said that the attacker shouldn't auto-win across 80% of the earth's surface.

Same reason why defender has automatic advantage in the mountains. Mountains are better suited for defending, clear and open flat terrain for attacking. A defender will from definition be outmanned and outgunned, and flat plain with clear line of sight doesn't give him any defensive position.

No, the issue is that you don't need to outman and outgun someone. If 1 infantry brigade attacks 1 infantry brigade, at most the latter should have some kind of surprise penalty for a few hours. In HoI4 the former magically gains the power of 2 infantry brigades. Again, there is a 4x stat differential that is decided by who clicks first. That's just insane.

Say we have two divisions with 100 Soft Attack and 100 Defense. If you attack first with 100% planning bonus (bear in mind it goes up to 110%, but we'll be conservative here):

200 Atk/200 Def vs. 100 Atk/100 Def = You deal (100 * 1 + 100 * 4) = 500 damage to the enemy and receive 100 damage back. Remember that attacks in excess of defense are 4x as atrong.

In reverse, you would receive 500 damage and deal 100.

So in this instance the difference between attacking and defending is a change from 20% of the enemy's power to 500%. This is a 2500% difference in damage output based purely on who manages to click to attack first.

Let me also point out that we're talking attacking on the strategic level. Abstracted away is the tactical level. At the tactical level generals already choose tactics like "counterattack" and so on, so clearly the defender isn't just sitting there being shot without moving. Yet the attacker gets a massive advantage regardless. I mean you'd expect a defender "ambushing" an attacker attacking with "mass charge" to have the advantage, right? Nope, in HoI4 the tactics don't even begin to match the planning bonus aiding the attacker.

Defender can prepare a plan and have the exact same bonus. Obviously you got roflstomped in multiplayer and you thought it's because of crazy gameplay systems. It's not, it's because you're shit.

There is no planning bonus for defending. If you don't even know that then you are pretty incompetent at HoI4.

FWIW I have both won as Germany in MP and won as Soviets without even fighting because my 10 divisions in France and China were enough to turn the tide. Granted my opponents were trash. The only game I've lost was my very first one before I even knew that you had to change production lines to produce newer equipment, I thought it was all automatic like HoI3.

 

[Corporate_Jew_Master]

This is why you don't play paracuck games in multiplayer if at all.

 

[Average Manatee]

HoI3 and 2 work fairly alright. There's obscure abusable bugs and exploits but mechanically they are pretty sound. Games like EU/CK/Victoria are kind of designed to be clusterfucky anyway and if you play them that's what you have to expect.

 

[Space Satan]

Hotjoin

Spoiler

Hi everyone, it feels good to be back! With the team trickling back after well deserved vacation this week, rested and tanned (well the ones who didn't spend most of it playing games in the dark), we are getting back into gear for the 1.2 patch which we've named "Sunflower" (bonus points for whoever figures out the reference first).

There will be more details in the future, but top priority for the patch is AI where we have identified division template designing and troop allocation to places like Africa as some of the more important issues we want to make sure we nail first. It doesn't mean we stop there though, for the patch or long term, AI will continue to always be top priority for us as we work on HOI4. A challenging opponent is important to keep things interesting and to keep the game alive and fresh as much as new features to play with.

Speaking of features, and a place with even more challenging opponents, we got a nice treat for the multiplayer community: @Guraan has been doing multiplayer voodoo and with the help of the great spirit penguin in the sky has managed to add hotjoin support to HOI4. That means that should an out of sync happen you no longer have to restart the session and can just resync, and if a friend needs to drop in later thats is fine too and they just can without everyone having to quit and rehost. This should make multiplayer a lot smoother for everyone when the patch is ready!

 

[Corporate_Jew_Master]

thats pr nifty

 

[Raghar]

Say we have two divisions with 100 Soft Attack and 100 Defense. If you attack first with 100% planning bonus (bear in mind it goes up to 110%, but we'll be conservative here):

200 Atk/200 Def vs. 100 Atk/100 Def = You deal (100 * 1 + 100 * 4) = 500 damage to the enemy and receive 100 damage back. Remember that attacks in excess of defense are 4x as atrong.

200/30 vs 100/100. Do it properly. And that assumes he didn't researched more than one level of engineers, and forgot to add eng to division. With properly eng divisions that are entrenched it looks like WWI battle of Somme. Only airforce fucks them up.

 

[Space Satan]

DD

Custom Difficulty
First up, despite some sickness we have managed to add a neat feature that I hope is going to help bring more challenge to the game (in combination with the AI improvements). There is now a game setup screen with custom difficulty settings for AI.

In the above screen you can buff certain nations and make them stronger, so for example as Germany if you want a tough soviet opponent you can pull up the "Strengthen Soviet" slider. The actual bonuses are a bit work in progress at the moment and you might see some changes after we have had time to playtest more.

By the way the system is easily moddable for adding more settings. Settings can work with any regular modifier bonuses and you can specify which nations you want to apply them to, so making a "Strengthen european minors" slider is possible, or a slider just to control american industry etc.

AI
Time to hand the mic over to @SteelVolt to give us an update on AI:

Some of you have voiced concerns over certain aspects of the AI, and we have heard you. In the upcoming patch you can look forward to things like an AI not sending 75% of its army to fight in Africa as well as an AI that is able to efficiently swap out old templates for new ones, both for units in training and units in the field. For that last one it turned out that it was not only incapable of changing light armor to medium, but it only considered a single division every 14 days for upgrade. Needless to say, this was a massive handicap, particularly for larger countries with big armies. At this very moment I am working on making this progression fully scriptable so we can have much better control over how the AI evolves its division templates.

Apart from this there are of course minor tweaks and fixes here and there being done also (like managing straits and choke points better).

Next week I should be able to give you a rough date for release of Sunflower. See you then!