Hearts of Iron IV - The Ultimate WWII Strategy Game

[Citizen]

BTW, this is interesting. Why nuke Romania?

Gypsies.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

I've experimented with ignoring fleet completely and focusing entirely on land-based naval bombers. If you actually commit to it, you will absolutely wreck shit. It just works different than naval engagements, a death by 1000 cuts if you will instead of one large engagement and then mopping up.

 

[Raghar]

BTW Pentax said Multiplayer is dead, because Paradox killed game balance.

Looks like they are experts in game devolving.

 

[thesheeep]

In a game as HoI where one whole game can easily take dozens of hours, I doubt there is a very large multiplayer base to begin with.

 

[Average Manatee]

I'm sorry, there was a point where HoI4 had balance? What jokers made such a statement?

I've experimented with ignoring fleet completely and focusing entirely on land-based naval bombers. If you actually commit to it, you will absolutely wreck shit. It just works different than naval engagements, a death by 1000 cuts if you will instead of one large engagement and then mopping up.

That's sort of the opposite of ignoring it. If you're investing either land IC to build naval bombers or civilian IC to build more naval yards, you're diverting your other resources to naval stuff. Ignoring it is just setting all naval yards to spam battleships and then not caring.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

I'm sorry, there was a point where HoI4 had balance? What jokers made such a statement?

I've experimented with ignoring fleet completely and focusing entirely on land-based naval bombers. If you actually commit to it, you will absolutely wreck shit. It just works different than naval engagements, a death by 1000 cuts if you will instead of one large engagement and then mopping up.

That's sort of the opposite of ignoring it.

Except it's not. I only have to research air doctrine and I can skip fleet in the focus tree. This saves huge amount of resources.

 

[Space Satan]

In a game as HoI where one whole game can easily take dozens of hours, I doubt there is a very large multiplayer base to begin with.

No. It's just HoIIV multiplayer community is awful. Most games where people are not leaving is a House Rules games. Which means that they can range from decent to absolute garbage and insane shit. Example: You are forbidden to change doctrines as USSR, you are forbidden to add heavy armor to infantry divisions, you are forbidden to trade with X, you are forbidden to declare wars against X(while war declarations house rules could be reasonable, like USSR Lessons of War exploit prevention, they often spiral out of control to some batshit insane to the point where you are only allowed to be declared on), you are forbidden to research X until Y, you are forbidden to build civilian\military factories in X or until Y.
Longest house rules I've seen were two and a half pages of text. So to get entertainin games you need:
1. People who you know or community that plays with house rules fitting to you.
2. Find a time, where some of them will have time for a 3+ hpur long sessions.
After some time you just say "Ah, fuck it!@ and go to single player to get orgasms from 200 division encirclements and crushing countries left and right.

 

[Average Manatee]

Oh man, I remember the autistic rules lists for HoI3.

>Japan MUST declare war on USA Dec 7th 1941.
>USA MUST station at least half of their Pacific fleet in pearl harbor on Dec 7th 1941, with no planes defending or nearby fleets to assist
>USA MUST take at least the historical number of Islands before invading the Japanese mainland.
>Japan MUST take all historical objectives before invading Australia or India.
and so on

Can't imagine how bad the rules lists must be with how many exploits HoI4 has. Ruling out out how to prevent paratrooper exploiting must require a few paragraphs

I'm sorry, there was a point where HoI4 had balance? What jokers made such a statement?

I've experimented with ignoring fleet completely and focusing entirely on land-based naval bombers. If you actually commit to it, you will absolutely wreck shit. It just works different than naval engagements, a death by 1000 cuts if you will instead of one large engagement and then mopping up.

That's sort of the opposite of ignoring it.

Except it's not. I only have to research air doctrine and I can skip fleet in the focus tree. This saves huge amount of resources.

"If you commit to it"

So building 1000 naval bombers instead of 1000 CAS/Interceptors or a dozen armored divisions isn't costing resources?

Naval yards are free, you start with them. The only way your strategy makes sense is if you start with virtually no naval yards and the option is between building military factories for naval bombers or naval yards for battleships to establish sea dominance. Nations this would happen to are... China. And I guess an Axis-aligned Poland or Spain trying to invade England?

 

[Space Satan]

While limiting artillery to X per Y width is reasonable to prevent exploitive stat crap where divisions are overrrun within hours, others are not. For each reasonable house rule there are five batshit insane.
Do not research heavy tanks as Japan, do not build battleships as USSR.
I still remember how my session broke because some guy had a meltdown after I paradropped strong divisions to his unprotected Constantinople while all his army have been stationed on Causacus mountain ridge. He cried how this is against rules and how I MUST break through his mountain entrenchments with fortifications. And the worst part is that other session members supported him. Another session have been ruined when GER player attacked through majonot line because FRA player put 90 of his forces to Belgium and left only token garrison. Again, everyone supported that GER should've been attack through Belgium.
HoIIV community is full of such crap.

 

[Raghar]

Another session have been ruined when GER player attacked through majonot line because FRA player put 90 of his forces to Belgium and left only token garrison. Again, everyone supported that GER should've been attack through Belgium.

Why not through Switzerland?

 

[Average Manatee]

Another session have been ruined when GER player attacked through majonot line because FRA player put 90 of his forces to Belgium and left only token garrison. Again, everyone supported that GER should've been attack through Belgium.

Why not through Switzerland?

Even if its not in the rules I'm sure the allies will say that it was an unwritten one and ragequit.

Also mountains are basically as bad as the Maginot. At least the Maginot can be worn down. Though nowadays general traits can be stacked to ignore around 80% of the penalty and easily break straight through either. I expect that's what the MP complainers are on about.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

"If you commit to it"

So building 1000 naval bombers instead of 1000 CAS/Interceptors or a dozen armored divisions isn't costing resources?

Naval yards are free, you start with them. The only way your strategy makes sense is if you start with virtually no naval yards and the option is between building military factories for naval bombers or naval yards for battleships to establish sea dominance. Nations this would happen to are... China. And I guess an Axis-aligned Poland or Spain trying to invade England?

No shit naval yards are free Sherlock. Here is shocking news for you - so are the military factories you start with.

Step 1: put 5 military factories on naval bombers right at the start of the game. Think you can manage that?

Step 2: Put your free naval yards on Destroyer 1 or whatever best ship you have available with good IC/effectiveness ratio and just leave it for the rest of the game.

Step 2: Come 1939/40 you should have enough naval bombers for 2-3 stacks of 300. Add more stacks in more places once you get more bombers

Step 3: Put those stacks, with fighter cover, in locations with fleet-heavy action but where allies don't have air supremacy. So that would typically be Mediterrean, west of France, west of Spain or the northern sea.

Step 4: Leave it alone and do your land war, deal with the Russians, whatever. Years and years go by and your bombers will be raping 100s of ships and cost allies millions of losses in convoys.

Step 5: take your fleet of Tier 1 shitty ships, which will now build into a massive doomstack and use that doomstack to invade on wherever you want, because nobody has any fleet anyway.

This saves you years and years in research time for higher tier ships and naval doctrine, and it saves you a year worth of focus tree, since you can skip the naval focuses alltogether.

You can also typically switch to free trade or another export doctrine, since you don't have your navy taking up steel and oil. So that adds another ++ to research time, building time and factory efficiency.

All that for the cost of couple military factories. So yeah, I damn way fucking think it saves resources.

I've been doing this for a while now and I see no reason whatsoever to bother with fleet in this game, at all. Literally just just ignore it, keep the fleet you started with and whatever your starting shipyars can build, and that's it.

In this game it's not about who has the biggest naval dick and can win the big battle, it's a war of attrition. The fleets have many issues, such as they have downtime when you need to repair your stacks. Bombers are cheap, saves a ton of resources and they put continued pressure on the Allies 24/7. A convoy there, a destroyer here, day after day, it all adds up and eventually you simpy outproduce them.

 

[Average Manatee]

Those military factories aren't free because there's an opportunity cost. You aren't producing useful equipment for your divisions by producing naval bombers. Naval Yards are free because there's nothing else to do with them.

You don't need any research or doctrine to dominate with battleships, 1936 + the eventual experience boosts are enough. Better Battleships are only needed if you want to invade the USA lategame or something (at which point you have infinite amounts of naval yards anyway). Seriously it's a joke how easy it is to rape the seas with just a few battleships. I don't think I've ever built a single naval yard in HoI4. As Italy I destroyed the Royal Navy with around 5-6 battleships when the AI was on +50% boosts, not a single ship lost.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Anyway, the state of this game after 1.5 is absolutely retarded. Out of 25-30 games so far, I have yet to see Hitler beat USSR, not once, not ever.

If you take rest of the allies out of equation, Germany still loses.

Like, in my Japan save, I wrecked entire allied fleet dpwn to zero, took Australia and entire Asia. And you'd think that would be enough. But no, the good old Adolf was being overrun so I ended up attacking USSR through Syberia and racing against the clock for a couple of years, until finally I was closing on Moscow from the east, while the Russians captured Berlin and shortly after Germans surrendered.

So then out of curiosity I've tried playing lend-lease game with Sweden, I used tech slingshots from focus tree to feed Adolf endless thousands of tier 3 weapons and tanks as early as 1940. Nope, he still loses. You could equip like 200 divisions with what I send. Nope, he still gets bogged down.

If you actually bother, you can literally play as UK, disable the Allies entirely, leave the game running and see what happens. 99% sure that the same thing will.

This is what happens if Pdx balances for multiplier.

 

[Raghar]

This is what happens if Pdx balances for multiplier.

But MP players are bitching they completely destroyed balance in latest version.

Also are you talking about early 1.5.1, or 1.5.3?

 

[Micormic]

EU and VIC games were always much better then the HOI series. Not that I'd consider HOI bad per say but they just don't appeal to me nearly as much as the earlier settings.


That being said HOI 3 was far too complex with way too much micro for me, where as HOI 4 was simple to the point where it basically plays itself, making it pointless.

 

[Space Satan]

EU and VIC games were always much better then the HOI series. Not that I'd consider HOI bad per say but they just don't appeal to me nearly as much as the earlier settings.


That being said HOI 3 was far too complex with way too much micro for me, where as HOI 4 was simple to the point where it basically plays itself, making it pointless.

HoI series is THE HoI2. And HoIIV is much moore successful according to steamcharts

 

[Micormic]

EU and VIC games were always much better then the HOI series. Not that I'd consider HOI bad per say but they just don't appeal to me nearly as much as the earlier settings.


That being said HOI 3 was far too complex with way too much micro for me, where as HOI 4 was simple to the point where it basically plays itself, making it pointless.

HoI series is THE HoI2. And HoIIV is much moore successful according to steamcharts

Well considering HOI 2 came out before steam really kicked off for games outside of valve.


Either way HOI4 was easily the worst paradox game I ever played, 2nd worse would be the Rome game they made.

 

[Raghar]

1.5.3 air power.

 

[Destroid]

So, land based air power does basically nothing to boats.

 

[Average Manatee]

Am I reading this right, 900 bombers shot down and then 8 hours later 1100 shot down?

Did Paradox just randomly decide to boost AA by 10,000%?

 

[Destroid]

Oh shit I didn't even notice that. I've been playing lately and have noted some absurd air casualties taken from enemy bombers in my current game though.

 

[Alfgart]

1.5.3 air power.

Please explain. I haven't played this crap since TfV was released

 

[Average Manatee]

I think the only explanation possible is that the Allies decided to adopt kamikaze tactics, but the pilots were not informed to aim for the big pieces of metal floating in the ocean rather than the small pieces of metal being shot into the sky.

 

[Blagrar]

I think it's the small air wing exploit that was supposed to be fixed. Air wings bonuses (like ace generation chance) are scaled depending on air wing size with 1.0x at size 100.
Ace bonuses worked the same way, so an air wing consisting of a single plane would get 100.0x the bonus of an ace.
Wiki says bonuses are capped at size 10 now, with additional drawbacks for smaller wings. Apparently this exploit still works for naval battles?