Hearts of Iron IV - The Ultimate WWII Strategy Game

[Commissar Draco]

My Byzantium in 1940 just after inventing free helicopter tactical bombers rides and preparing to remove the kebab from Ilyria, got very lucky cause Germany kicked out Shitler and went with their own Kaisar, Kwans got civil war and the commie puppet on wheel chair got replaced by Hue Long wanabie. So now the (((Anglo Saxons))) are ducking out between themselves over Haiti of all the things and the three Empires (Germany, Japan and BtR will take on Soviet Union) Polant exist being sensible enough to return Danzig and not being duped onto war by Perfidious Albion.

Comrade Serus yes the ai is very uneven when it comes to closing and liquidating pockets; sometimes you need to direct your divisions manually and this is why I do prefer to use the Superior firepower doctrines which are passive and hence work outside those battle plans.

Playing road to 1956 btw with custom Bizantium mod and some eye candy.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

I'm kind of mixed in regards to R56 myself. A lot of it provides excellent way to play WW2, but it's also got some notable balance issues like the additional tech and tech choices allowing for crazy stacking of research time bonus. At least it's the only way to play with historical focuses turned off.


(Also the planning bonuses work as long as the plan is active, you can manually move the Grand Battleplan divisions just fine; Superior Firepower is still probably the best universal doctrine choice tho)

 

[Commissar Draco]

I play it mostly for alternative history scenarios, KR and OWB as straight historically correct WWII is boring and predictable: its either Gaymanistan manages to overcome USSR till 1942 and hence has resources and industry to fight on or Japan attacks KWA first which causes them enter Allies and its Game Over; you can't win against country which has 700 Oil and is protected by two oceans. For this purpose Road is excellent although some individual country mods (like the one I used for Screenshot) are of course of lot better quality and less op original Greece had for example insane 10% industry efficiency bonus from olives; but where you can play and win as Ethiopia or lead Spanish Restoration from Honduras? Even countries like Iraq or Belgium have interesting focuses, events and choices galore. But I do agree some of those extra technologies are either very unbalanced, at-least its not black Ice where you are forced to research and produce Horse carts, hooves, harnesses and six kinds of arty. Of course I really think the game should start in 1932 when Japanese invaded China and Shitler was on the verge of gaining power; would give you couple solid years to prepare for war and build some industry and allow for a few more nice what if scenarios.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

The Cold War mod has potential, but currently it's mostly just a mod of watching nothing happen for decades (also some truly bizarre industry and national spirit/focus balance between USSR and Kwa) with features that only make it slower to run.

 

[fantadomat]

Same could be said about the Great war mod,last time i checked it out,i got the feeling that it is an abandoned. Only decent mod that i played is kaiserreich. But as a whole the base game is pretty meh,it is hard to make gold from shit. Any recommendations on a cool mod with a lot of unique focuses? Is the modern day mod any decent?

 

[Commissar Draco]

Old World Blues has some crazy cool unique paths for mayor and many minor factions like Reno, VC and with submod Arroyo. Path to 56 is good if very un even and I do play it with custom mods and that one which brings back the DoD and Waking Tiger content. Modern Day I played for LULZ as Syria but to be honest its feels very soulless with all those GDP, Wombyn rights and other its 2015 year stuff added, you can't change your ideology (here called outlook) if your neighbors are all Kwan puppets for example and this all feels like working as accountant and not role playing the leader of state. Its also not balanced with all countries including Porosh lead Banderistan ending up with 50K $ GDP by 2020. And of course no mention of refugee crises, social decay and all those wonderful gifts of modern age and legacy of perpetual ''Global war against the Terror'' but this I quite expected being on steam. KeiserReich is really the best among the bunch with even RL shitholes like Ethiopia (Sorry our African Orthodox bros but its true) having interesting focus trees. You might have more fun installing individual mods for single countries of course.

 

[Serus]

My Byzantium in 1940 just after inventing free helicopter tactical bombers rides and preparing to remove the kebab from Ilyria, got very lucky cause Germany kicked out Shitler and went with their own Kaisar, Kwans got civil war and the commie puppet on wheel chair got replaced by Hue Long wanabie. So now the (((Anglo Saxons))) are ducking out between themselves over Haiti of all the things and the three Empires (Germany, Japan and BtR will take on Soviet Union) Polant exist being sensible enough to return Danzig and not being duped onto war by Perfidious Albion.

Comrade Serus yes the ai is very uneven when it comes to closing and liquidating pockets; sometimes you need to direct your divisions manually and this is why I do prefer to use the Superior firepower doctrines which are passive and hence work outside those battle plans.

Playing road to 1956 btw with custom Bizantium mod and some eye candy.

Restoring Eastern Roman Empire in WW2 setting looks really cool. I imagine Roman Empire vibes but done well, less Italian buffons, more actual virtues and end results. Thumbs up.

As to the doctrines - I went with superior fire power and 7inf + 2art (with 4 or 5 supports). It was what probably contributed to the ridiculous casualties ratios. That and soviets fighting poorly in 39~40 as mentioned. But as Varna said, you can use other doctrines, it's just that superior fire power (and possibly the human wave) one seems to be the most idiot friendly, not requiring any special input on your part. And it goes well with a lot of artillery and support brigades.
As to the pockets, you can give a nudge from time to time to the the AI-controlled divisions and the "aggressive" stance gives better results - though you need to watch AI more closely than in "balanced" for other reasons then. Overall, I've learnt to live with the AI unwillingness to attack pockets.

Spoiler

As to being duped into war... well historical hindsight is a great thing to have, once I get my hands into a time machine I'll fly over to the 1930s and show them proofs of where relying on French and Brits can lead to.
However remember that we do not have the hindsight into the alternative version of events so the end result might have lead to even worse outcomes. We simply cannot know. The huge shit storm was coming to Europe in late 30s one way or the other and Poland thanks to geopolitics was caught in the middle. Think of the situation as of this scene:
"There is a storm coming"

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

I suppose Grand Battle Plan is superior to Superior Firepower if you intend to turtle like crazy, due to its huge entrenchment bonuses.

Mobile Warfare gives you great tanks, but tanks are very cost heavy so you need a crazy amount of IC to use that path. Superior Firepower is just best when it comes to universal applicability.


And yea, Guerilla path of Human Wave is from what I understand widely considered the second-best doctrine in the meta since it allows low IC countries with massive manpower pools to punch way above their weight.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

I generally take Human Wave for every country except for Germany, where I go for Mobile Warfare, and Poland where I go for Grand Battleplan.

It's a nice balance of defense vs. offenese. For major countries that are fielding large armies, supply reductions and extra manpower makes a massive difference because you don't have to switch your government policy to one of manpower modes that decreases production. And for smaller countries it's easy to field a large army of simple divisions.

 

[Average Manatee]

I suppose Grand Battle Plan is superior to Superior Firepower if you intend to turtle like crazy, due to its huge entrenchment bonuses.

Problem there is that your border AI will shuffle shit around randomly and lose entrenchment. Plus Entrenchment is mostly only good for boosting SA (your defensive stats are already huge on defense), and Superior Firepower boosts your SA pretty well anyway.

It's a nice balance of defense vs. offenese. For major countries that are fielding large armies, supply reductions and extra manpower makes a massive difference because you don't have to switch your government policy to one of manpower modes that decreases production. And for smaller countries it's easy to field a large army of simple divisions.

Ehh, keep in mind the way that production modifiers stack (additively). In practice the manpower penalty from laws is actually around half what it appears, so Service By Requirement is basically nothing and it's rare to need more than that. In fact due to the way manpower trickles in now it's rare that higher laws even help, they don't make the manpower trickle faster and it takes forever to get up to SBR alone. If you ever want more manpower as a minor you're best off abusing puppets, just delete half your army and remake it with 50-80% of your subject's manpower. Let them go on Scraping the Barrel while your men are all flying or boating, occupations which magically teleport their occupants back to safety when their equipment is destroyed.

 

[Shoggot]

Last time I played the game was after the The Together For Victory was released.
Is the AI in the game now above "absolutely retarded" level? Is it possible now to play without feeling absolutely ridiculous?

Even though I'm not sure if I can ever go back to HoI (I've been die hard fan since HoI2), last two years I got totally consumed with Gary Grigby's War In The East.

 

[Wilian]

It's just a result from the brain dead Soviet AI that simply throws constantly all his army at my superior and entrenched divisions, often positioned behind rivers. They keep coming. Like lemmings.

Dunno, this seems like historically accurate to me.

 

[Raghar]

It's just a result from the brain dead Soviet AI that simply throws constantly all his army at my superior and entrenched divisions, often positioned behind rivers. They keep coming. Like lemmings.

Dunno, this seems like historically accurate to me.

Actually that was US tactics. Throw 100 shermans at one German tank and observe Germans would run out of tanks sooner.

 

[Wilian]

It's just a result from the brain dead Soviet AI that simply throws constantly all his army at my superior and entrenched divisions, often positioned behind rivers. They keep coming. Like lemmings.

Dunno, this seems like historically accurate to me.

Actually that was US tactics. Throw 100 shermans at one German tank and observe Germans would run out of tanks sooner.

Oh, US might not have been most efficient with tanks but at the rate Ruskies threw themselves in front of Finnish machine guns was short of amazing. It's like they begged to be mowed down rather than suffer from communism. It was probably the reason too.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

It's just a result from the brain dead Soviet AI that simply throws constantly all his army at my superior and entrenched divisions, often positioned behind rivers. They keep coming. Like lemmings.

Dunno, this seems like historically accurate to me.

Actually that was US tactics. Throw 100 shermans at one German tank and observe Germans would run out of tanks sooner.

Oh, US might not have been most efficient with tanks but at the rate Ruskies threw themselves in front of Finnish machine guns was short of amazing. It's like they begged to be mowed down rather than suffer from communism. It was probably the reason too.

But that was pre-Purge Red Army, which was an utter mess. It took a while but once papa Stalin got rid of old guard revolutionaries with their heads up their ass and build officer corps out of people promoted on merit, Soviet tactics became quite sophisticated. Americans love to masturbate about their Pattons and their Eisenhowers, but these jokers never even run an operation on a scale that Russians spent 4 years practicing on Eastern Front.

 

[Wilian]

It's just a result from the brain dead Soviet AI that simply throws constantly all his army at my superior and entrenched divisions, often positioned behind rivers. They keep coming. Like lemmings.

Dunno, this seems like historically accurate to me.

Actually that was US tactics. Throw 100 shermans at one German tank and observe Germans would run out of tanks sooner.

Oh, US might not have been most efficient with tanks but at the rate Ruskies threw themselves in front of Finnish machine guns was short of amazing. It's like they begged to be mowed down rather than suffer from communism. It was probably the reason too.

But that was pre-Purge Red Army, which was an utter mess. It took a while but once papa Stalin got rid of old guard revolutionaries with their heads up their ass and build officer corps out of people promoted on merit, Soviet tactics became quite sophisticated. Americans love to masturbate about their Pattons and their Eisenhowers, but these jokers never even run an operation on a scale that Russians spent 4 years practicing on Eastern Front.

Why are you so boring.

 

[Space Satan]

Twitter tease

 

[Raghar]

Russia and Lithuania allied and conquered US.

 

[Deflowerer]

Lithuania selling out, what a decline.

 

[Commissar Draco]

I tried Millennium Dawn looks like its much more fun if uglier than Modern Day 4; Of course you better not touch KWA cause its no challenge even for me rule still applies but playing with Russia, Polant and Ethiopia so far was very fun... Loved how I needed to use wave attacks of warriors with spears AKs to tie and soft entrenched Eitreans and sneaked rest of army armed with T-55s around to take Arab oil field. One problem is if you wait for focuses to conquer stuff those targets are already guaranteed by big Three or NATO members but it does adds nice race against the clock mechanics. Modded Polant has insane focus tree which allows you to all from going ful SJW and EU member to invasion of Russia, Sweden and Gaymany as either Korwin or King. And Russia has best equipment mod and shorter but fun tree when you either go historic Putin, switch to Romanovs or go full Nazbol with camps and shit. I wish they would marry both mods with MD flexible political game play and MD4 graphics and guerrilla forces.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

To me the problem with Millenium Dawn is really just that it does the boring thing and bases too much around what really happened. Ultimately this tends to lead in my experience to a pretty sterile experience (at least last time I played it, maybe they've gone wild with the border conflict system since then) because there's no major upset or stuff going on in general outside of the player's actions and reactions to them. FAR TOO MANY THINGS HAVE PEACEFUL RESOLUTION, and it has far too many random paths like aforementioned instead of generally leading up to something or around something. Last time I played there were just no real regional flashpoints. It should also do what Kaiserreich does and severely restrict joining and creating factions. In fact, every mod should do that.

 

[Commissar Draco]

Yes its not as wild and unpredictable as KR is still the AI can suprise you from time to time even with Historical Focuses on. Would be nice to have some monetary system when you buy your army gear from abroad too instead of using PPs and civilian factories, but for game engine which was done to simulate thirties and forties countries its still works quite well.

P.S. Ethiopia/Africa with its own Mod added is even more fun to play now thanks to really nerfing the start tech levels; this is continent made for Human Wave offensive.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

There's a monetary system of a sort in the Cold War mod, but I don't think it really works that well right now. In my test run game it just crapped out and stopped working. I also suspect it comes across as a net negative due to the added strain running the game.

By far the best way to try and create a monetary system would be to try and repurpose PP into a kind of abstract form of economic strength reserve combined with national idea driven system for representing for GDP/c, but the challenge is in creating it in a manner where it does not hamstring gameplay or add unnecessary complexity.


Overall I feel that the biggest issue with Millenium Dawn last I played it was still that due to factions working like basegame you have limited regional play, and as I said before the basic "storyline" just doesn't end up having more to it than the player mounting an insane world domination plot.

 

[fantadomat]

Millennium dawn is far too unrealistic to me,especially the quantity of the nato army. In this days nato almost doesn't have an army let alone to rival that of Russia or China.

 

[Delterius]

Millennium dawn is far too unrealistic to me,especially the quantity of the nato army. In this days nato almost doesn't have an army let alone to rival that of Russia or China.

isn't the us part of nato