Hearts of Iron IV - The Ultimate WWII Strategy Game

[IHaveHugeNick]

Try ExpertAI+. You'll soon go to PRX forums whining about AI using OP templates and how it is nearlly impossible to win. Was priceless to see people facing classic Space Marine template against them and cannot do shit about it.

Doesn't matter much if the AI is still so braindead that you can get Germany to suicide its entire population on the Maginot line. You can get the AI to use proper divisions on a general basis but its still completely unable to realize that attacking across rivers into forts or bad terrain is a bad idea without specialized divisions.

Expert AI 2.0 makes the game pretty hard tbh.

 

[Space Satan]

DD about future plans

Spoiler

Hi everyone, this week I'm going to take some time and talk future plans with you all.

Right now
With the "Oak" 1.4.2 patch out the door and the team back from vacation its time to start looking at the future. This week we started work on the next DLC which is going to be a full-sized expansion. A lot of people have been asking for more mechanics and larger changes, and this will be it. As normal the expansion will arrive together with a free update we've dubbed 1.5 "Cornflakes".

As for exactly what these will contain you will need to bear with us a bit. As I said with us getting started on it now we need some time to actually make and test stuff before we start showing it off to you. This will mean that the next two diaries (if all goes according to plan) are going to be covering other stuff while we get ready. My plan there is to get some guest writing in from people who can talk about the business and process side of the company and team.

The five year plan
Not actually a five year plan, but I want to share with you some form of roadmap on what to expect in the future. Some of you may have seen me talk about some of this in my PdxCon talk earlier this year.

Just to be super clear, this is not any form of exhaustive or final list and unless we have already done it we can't promise anythings. Priorities change etc. The point of this is to give you an idea of things we would like to do. The order of things is also not in any kind of priority order, or order we would do them.

• Improve flavor and immersion with naming of things in the game. No more Infantry Division Type 1 etc.
• More player control over naval warfare and fleet battle behaviour
• A Chain of Command system allowing field marshals to command generals
• A logistics system with more actual player involvement (now you only care once stuff has gone very badly)
• Improved naval combat interfaces with good transparency to underlying mechanics (give it the 1.4 air treatment)
• Improve balance, feedback and mechanics for submarine warfare
• Long term goals and strategies to guide ai rather than random vs historical focus lists, visible to players
• Every starting nation has a custom portrait for historical leaders
• A way for players to take dynamic decisions, quickly. Somethign that fits between events and national focuses.
• Spies and espionage
• Changing National Unity to something that matters during most of the game rather than when you are losing only
• Improving peace conferences
• Update core national focus trees with alt-history paths and more options (Germany, Italy, USA, United Kingdom, Soviet, France, Japan)
• Wunderwaffen projects
• Properly represent fuel in some way in the game
• Add the ability to clean up your equipment stockpile from old stuff
• Rework how wars work with respect to merging etc as its a big source of problems
• More differences between sub-ideologies and government forms
• More National Focus trees. (Among most interesting: China, South America, Scandinavia, Spain, Turkey, Iran, Greece)
• An occupation system that isnt tied only to wars and where core vs non-core isn't so binary for access to things.
• Make defensive warfare more fun
• Adding mechanics to limit the size of your standing army, particularly post-war etc
• Allow greater access to resources through improving infrastructure
• Have doctrines more strongly affect division designing to get away from cookie cutter solutions and too ahistorical gamey setups

You'll notice that some of these are small and some of them are huge. I can't really talk too much details about this stuff though. That is stuff we will do once/if it makes it to dev diaries with feature highlights and has been implemented. Oh yeah, and before someone goes "why isn't improving AI on this list" the answer is that its not really something you can ever check off as done. We'll keep working on that in parallel with other stuff as we have since release.

There is no World War Wednesday stream today since the channel is all streaming from Gamescom today, but you can now check out last weeks episode on youtube to see me run the dev team as generals in a massive co-op.

 

[Stavrophore]

Devs of kaiserreich are the only thing that keeps this game afloat. Sadly when you've played couple of times you already know all events. Vanilla events and their amount is just a fucking joke compared to KR. HoI4 was too simple to begin with, more like a mobile game.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

• Adding mechanics to limit the size of your standing army, particularly post-war etc

Cold War here we come!

 

[Average Manatee]

Devs of kaiserreich are the only thing that keeps this game afloat. Sadly when you've played couple of times you already know all events. Vanilla events and their amount is just a fucking joke compared to KR. HoI4 was too simple to begin with, more like a mobile game.

Paradox: Over a year past initial release and just now considering adding Chinese events/NFs
KR: Something like 80 NF trees for various countries, most of them way better than vanilla.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

On the subject of Kaiserreich, next version will have new focus trees for Fengtian, Japan, and Legation Cities, along with a reworked mechanic for Japanese control and influence in Fengtian. Along with this, Ethiopia and Somalia are getting extensive Focus Trees, which I think (still needs expanded South Africa and Mittelafrika/smaller colonies NF trees for proper rumble in the jungle) is neat because Africa largely existed as "the place the Kaiser flees to if he loses" on the map, so a little less conversation and a little more action to that continent is welcome too. That means that the only place without guaranteed action is 'straya.

 

[Space Satan]

DD/ Chain of Command

Spoiler

Hi everyone and welcome back to regular dev diaries. This and upcoming diaries will be covering stuff happening in the 1.5 "Cornflakes" update as well as the unannounced expansion that will come out together with it. One of the main focuses of those can be summarized as "making players care more about armies, leaders and troops" (our DLCs tend to have 1-3 main focuses or missions). The first feature that touches on this, and the topic of today's dev diary is adding a military chain of command to the game.

After Hearts of Iron III, where something like organizing the soviet chain of command could take about an hour of the players time we decided that we wanted something that was a lot less effort to work with for HOI4. We basically settled on a flat level with field marshals with no restriction on commanded divisions, and generals with a limit on division count but with a different set of traits. Over time we felt that we lost a bit too much of the WW2 military flavor with this abstraction, so we started thinking about how to do it in a more interesting way.

What we have done now for 1.5 is that field marshals are now leading an Army Group, which is a certain number of Armies (what we had before) led by Generals. There are then places in theaters as before. Theaters are like before just a geographical organizational tool for the player and don't have a commander or the like to keep them as flexible as possible. This means that we have a Theaters->Army Groups->Armies->Divisions structure now.
While the Generals still come with a soft cap for how many divisions they can efficiently command, the field marshals will now have a number of armies they can efficiently command.

I also want to make sure to point out that this is still very early on in development, so stuff is very likely to change, and some stuff aren't completely working as it should yet. So we are showing you this in progress rather than showing a completely finished feature, and as always any numbers you see are extremely subject to change Also I very sneekily hid the topbar for now

When it comes to controlling your troops the new system introduces some changes to the battle planner. You can either do a plan for each army in the army group, or have a central plan for the whole Army Group where each army has a part of the frontline assigned as its responsibility. You can also do a mix, in which case an Army will finish its plan and then fall back to executing the Army Group's plan. We are still iteration on this stuff though but I figured you all wanted to know how it would work in practice.

Something that does not really come across in the images is that we are working on ways to streamline the process for setting up fronts using the new army groups. This should make at least the basic cases feel smooth to set up, even with one more command level and more armies without a ton of extra clicking.

The sharp eyed reader will also notice that we have removed the skill level for generals. This is now replaced with separate skills of different kinds. Attack, Defense, Planning and Logistics. Attack and Defense do what you expect while Planning improves planning speed and Logistics lowers supply consumption. Field marshal stats apply together with army general stats at a reduced capacity, so you will always want to have a chain of command for best efficiency.

The chain of command feature is going to be part of the free update, although there is some cool DLC features that tie into it we will be revealing in later diaries. Also expect to read more details about the system itself like how things in combat are affected etc.

See you next week when we will be taking a look at national unity...

Also some Q&A
Q: Would the new "skill point" of commander increase over time? Or it is permanently fixed?
Will the leaders skills in attack, defence, planning and logistics change (up or down) with game play?
A:Yes
Q: The two questions that occur to me are (1) will we still be able to have "independent armies" and (2) would it be possible for a General to command a army group, albeit with a lower number of armies he is able to oversee then a Field Marshall*.
A: they have to be field marshals to do it. independent armies still work, but generally you will want to have a full chain for the bonuses

 

[Anthedon]

15 months after release this is the first dev diary that looks like it's going in the right direction.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Kaiserreich team is detailing new additions to Liberia and the upcoming and sweeping changes to Mittelafriika:

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/progress-report-29.1044230/

As I've said before, I strongly welcome there being rumble in the jungle as well from now on. Best part in Kaiserreich scenario, destruction and mayhem all over the world, is improved greatly. I also really dig the reworking of the Portuguese colonies and Mittelafrika shenanigans and the map rework. Hopefully overall this really does make so that Africa is no longer just the place the Kaiser goes to hide in order to creater perpetual war, and the place where panzers go to die (as in Elephants' graveyard sort of deal, I really welcome Africa being a deathtrap for mechanized armies too).

 

[Deflowerer]

So as a newfag to Hearts of Iron series, can anyone tell me if HoI4 is the best of the series as it is now (or will be, mods or otherwise)? Are there any major design differences that would make one prefer HoI2 or HoI3 instead?

 

[Riso]

Hoi4 takes concepts introduced in Hoi3 and makes them actually work while jettisoning all the weird stuff that didn't work.

You can choose between hoi2/Darkest Hour for scripted events and individual unit control or a more hands off strategic approach in Hoi4.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

I've said this before, but will say again anyway: I would say that as far as comparing the base games one has a sort of a major difficulty in that HoI2, HoI3, and HoI4 have important fundamental differences in their gameplay design. HoI2 is more like other Paradox games with several major improvements to warfare, HoI3 has an absurd number of provinces, supply model (though this ties in heavily with the number of provinces), and order of battle detail. HoI4 approaches from both a middle ground between HoI2 and HoI3 and new direction, with highest degree of modding support so far.

The last of which I would say is why HoI4 is definately the go-to choice for me at least. Thanks to fleshing out a number of non-war mechanics a bit more than previously (most notably the things that can be done with the ideology system) and the addition of national focuses and equipment, there's already the best Hearts of Iron, which is HoI4 version of Kaiserreich without even a contest. BlackICE's HoI4 version is sort of fun, but also a go-to example of modder feature bloat, but it does showcase interesting feature possibilities like unique and extensive equipment tech trees.

 

[Baptismbyfire]

I've said this before, but will say again anyway: I would say that as far as comparing the base games one has a sort of a major difficulty in that HoI2, HoI3, and HoI4 have important fundamental differences in their gameplay design. HoI2 is more like other Paradox games with several major improvements to warfare, HoI3 has an absurd number of provinces, supply model (though this ties in heavily with the number of provinces), and order of battle detail. HoI4 approaches from both a middle ground between HoI2 and HoI3 and new direction, with highest degree of modding support so far.

The last of which I would say is why HoI4 is definately the go-to choice for me at least. Thanks to fleshing out a number of non-war mechanics a bit more than previously (most notably the things that can be done with the ideology system) and the addition of national focuses and equipment, there's already the best Hearts of Iron, which is HoI4 version of Kaiserreich without even a contest. BlackICE's HoI4 version is sort of fun, but also a go-to example of modder feature bloat, but it does showcase interesting feature possibilities like unique and extensive equipment tech trees.

Yah, but is the AI any good?

 

[Average Manatee]

So as a newfag to Hearts of Iron series, can anyone tell me if HoI4 is the best of the series as it is now (or will be, mods or otherwise)? Are there any major design differences that would make one prefer HoI2 or HoI3 instead?

Definitely not, though it's highly up to taste. But in general:

HoI4:
- Much more simplified in most respects other than production line management. Units automagically walk across water, you have no chain of command (and no real reason to have more than 1 field marshal command your entire armed forces), you get free combat bonuses for letting the AI command your units rather than you doing it yourself, and so on.
- Most of the political and diplomatic systems are geared for an ahistorical game, very multiplayer-focused where anyone can do anything easily. Certain features have to be banned in MP because of how abusable they are (cause anyone's country to split in half in rebellion like the Spanish civil war, for free? wtf)
- AI is the worst, mostly because its just insanely overaggresive and basically tries to kill itself as fast as possible. If you play, say, France, you'll probably just do nothing the first few months of the war and let Germany take 1M casualties to your 10k.
- Divisions can be designed down to the battalion level (30 slots), which is a great feature but easy to abuse the highly imbalanced combat mechanics and be way stronger than the AI unless you hold yourself back.

HoI3:
- Most complexity. Huge chain of command complexity with leaders in HQ represented on-map that need to be maneouvered like normal units (which can be offputting due to all the time required to set it up and constant micro to keep them in radio range). Most techs and a fairly complicated politics alignment system that doesn't really work well in practice (Paradox had a great idea but pretty much hard-coded WW2 to happen historically when they never got it to work in a historical manner). Very complex logistics system that makes invading Russia hell.
- Divisions designable with up to 5 brigade slots. Combat system much more balanced than HoI4.
- AI middle of the road. It's still poor and doesn't use its chain of command properly at all, but it knows the combat system quite well and won't kill itself in stupid battles. The game is still best played as a nation on the attack because on the defense it's fairly easy to just dig in so hard that the AI doesn't even try to attack and wars become a stalemate. Encirclements are pretty easy to pull off and you can win fairly ahistorically easy and quickly if you are good, but there is still always some challenge due to the logistics which WILL bite you in the ass when you think you're about to win and all your units suddenly become combat-incapable.

HoI2 (get Darkest Hour though):
- Middle of the road complexity. HQs are represented on-map but much more simplified with no chain of command structure, you just put them next to your big armies to reduce penalties for large stacks. Tech system has less options but individual tech teams are selected to research each tech (which can be annoyingly micro heavy). Logistics is highly simplified but can still bite you in the ass eventually.
- Most complex actually-working political system, which also makes various total conversion mods work better when they aren't just WW2 and done. All the best mods are in DH, compared to HoI3 which has almost no good modding scene and HoI4 which is mostly joke mods interspersed with mods that were better in their DH version.
- No divisional design, your only options are attaching a specialized brigade to each one.
- Best combat AI. Mostly it's similar to HoI3, but having far less provinces lets the AI focus its strength (head on attacks) better while its weakness (doing something dumb on large fronts) is minimized. Combat is realistically fairly bloody and in most cases winning the war is the hardest and the bloodiest of any game.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Darkest Hour> HoI4 > Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Kim Kardashian ruling the world> HoI 3.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Just to correct, the units don't automagically cross water, you need convoys to do that and the convoys are still prone to attacking. The thing removed is separate transport ships from other convoys.

This is actually one of the worst things with the AI since the AI *loves* to move stuff around by water whenever possible if it's even marginally faster, which in turn if you don't have total naval supremacy will lead to lots of coastal garrisons committing suicide by mass drowning.

 

[Average Manatee]

Just to correct, the units don't automagically cross water, you need convoys to do that and the convoys are still prone to attacking. The thing removed is separate transport ships from other convoys.

Everyone has plenty of convoys (due to them being cheap and shipyards having nothing else to build), so it's pretty automagical.

This is actually one of the worst things with the AI since the AI *loves* to move stuff around by water whenever possible if it's even marginally faster, which in turn if you don't have total naval supremacy will lead to lots of coastal garrisons committing suicide by mass drowning.

The AI in general has no concept of risk assessment in HoI4. See: Half the German army trying to support the Italians in Ethiopia... by taking a nice cruise across the English channel and planning to go around South Africa. I think Paradox is finally going to hardcode the AI to not ship armies across certain water zones (only more than a year after release major issues like this get fixed), but that really just shows that they have no way to teaching the AI not to do risky things, they can only hardcode it away.

 

[Alexios]

Just to correct, the units don't automagically cross water, you need convoys to do that and the convoys are still prone to attacking. The thing removed is separate transport ships from other convoys.

This is actually one of the worst things with the AI since the AI *loves* to move stuff around by water whenever possible if it's even marginally faster, which in turn if you don't have total naval supremacy will lead to lots of coastal garrisons committing suicide by mass drowning.

I still miss the casualty reports from HOI2. There was something very satisfying about getting to see that your naval bombers killed 13,000 soldiers when it sank a transport.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

This is actually one of the worst things with the AI since the AI *loves* to move stuff around by water whenever possible if it's even marginally faster, which in turn if you don't have total naval supremacy will lead to lots of coastal garrisons committing suicide by mass drowning.

The AI in general has no concept of risk assessment in HoI4. See: Half the German army trying to support the Italians in Ethiopia... by taking a nice cruise across the English channel and planning to go around South Africa. I think Paradox is finally going to hardcode the AI to not ship armies across certain water zones (only more than a year after release major issues like this get fixed), but that really just shows that they have no way to teaching the AI not to do risky things, they can only hardcode it away.

My experience with the AI in HoI4 is that it's mentally unstable or something, since while it often does something like that then with certain countries (changes from patch to patch) it is very good at exploiting openings you forgot about or the sort. It's particularly more aggressive with naval invasions than in the previous HoI games, which I somewhat appreciate since HoI3 Japan and British AI was just hopeless (mostly just because the AI was just incapable of handling dispersed theaters that involved naval invasions; most mods IIRC in HoI3 dealt with this in regards to Japan just by spawning new troops for Japan at destination so the AI wouldn't just fail). Though Japan's AI is still probably the weakest one overall, invading the home islands is just effortless, at least the British nowadays have a large force there.

(Also since I play almost exclusive Kaiserreich in HoI4, I do have to note that I haven't yet seen the AI do a suicide run across entire hostile oceans, but this might be because Kaiserreich restricts factions and has a radically different map which might be easier for the AI's addled machine mind to understand; however as I noted previously they will still send far too many divisions to Africa and the Middle East when more than one country in the faction has plenty to send so supply limits are broken multiple times over and no one is going to get anywhere)

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

HoI4 AI is definitely lacking, but it's still good enough for 100-150h hours while you learn the ropes. After that AI mods and sliders can give easily give you additional 100-150h hours of decent fun until you learn to trash everything. And after that it's onto the total conversion mods.

I guess the issue is that classic strategy games of the past can be played and enjoyed indefinitely, while Hoi4 certainly has an expiration date after which you just can't be beaten by AI without extensive LARPing. But it's still fun for good couple hundred hours.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

I dunno, strategy game AI has *always* been beatable once you learn its pattern or what cheats it has. You need a specific sort of game where a computer will be unbeatable for a human player.

Personally I'd say there's nothing wrong with that, to me MK Walker AIs are for masochists.

 

[Space Satan]

I still miss the casualty reports from HOI2. There was something very satisfying about getting to see that your naval bombers killed 13,000 soldiers when it sank a transport.

HoIIV do have casualty repors. Per battle, per war and others.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

I still miss the casualty reports from HOI2. There was something very satisfying about getting to see that your naval bombers killed 13,000 soldiers when it sank a transport.

HoIIV do have casualty repors. Per battle, per war and others.

They're a bit hidden tho, and don't they have a 12 month limit? Or am I remembering that rong?

 

[Space Satan]

They count per war if I remember correctly, and I never had a situation when i checked losses for a year old battle.

As for comparison,
HoI II was great but still lacking and with a very difficult learning curve. Plus, it had atrocious balance decisions.
HoI III - unplayable due to micromanagement hell, it's like a Maste rof Orion III compared to MoO II. Political system was a clusterfuck, with belligerance castrating entire early game. Never bothered to check AI effectiveness because who cares about AI effectiveness when entire game is a mess.
HoI IV - easiest learning curve, customization is on okay level. Best of all, early game is no longer sitting for years and watching divisions being built. You can actually fight Spanish Civil War, instead of just clicking on an event like "se тв volunteers" resulting in +1000 manpower. Endorsed ahistorical play was a nice decision because historical games get boring very fast, especially given how easy it is to outsmart AI.

Overall, HoIIV in my opinion is the best HoI so far. Mostly because they took right direction of developement. They axed shitty balance decisions, like assigning cutting USSR combat effectivenes by 80% just to prevent early agression. Instead, they adde decisions to make players take Purge because it opens the path to another research slot. Early agression makes Axis and allies stronger etc. Overall, they decided to stick with soft counters instead of hard ones. AI is shit but it is manageable with time. And fact that mod like ExpertAI can turn Ais into a horror for unprepared players or those who got used to meta templates, is a proof that it could be used to full potential still. Also, devs said they want to move away from cookiecutter templates and stick division design to doctrine more.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Another thing to note about HoI3 is that without mods the game actively hated the idea of letting you play as anyone except the starting majors, and even there it really wanted you to stick with Germany, US, UK, or USSR. Even France, Japan, and Italy arguably had too little Leadership to be able to produce enough officers and to keep up with at least ONE tech area. Minors could at best keep up with a fraction of a single unit type's techs and have crap officer ratio.