Hearts of Iron IV - The Ultimate WWII Strategy Game

[Space Satan]

HoI2 had godawful balance mechanic, where developers just strapped some combat effectiveness modifier to simulate historical outcomes. Like USSR had 0.2 multiplier to all divisions. HoIIV had no such thing and tries to balance it with in-game mechanics, like isolation penatly for USA, national spirits for France and disorganization for Chinas.
And if you start as a minor and start doing weird stuff don't be surprisd that things will go some weird way. Especially in non-historical AI settings.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Problem with Hoi3 is they killed tech team, and replaced them by "national leadership", which fucks minors.

HoI2 research had tech teams, where each tech team was proficient in different area. Thus poor countries like Africa countries, which are not simulated because WWII has only few countries because majority of them are listed as colonies which makes WWII less interesting than WWI games, or 1400 warfare where there was plethora of small countries. Tech team with skill 1 and expertise in certain areas was better than team with skill 1 and expertise in unrelated areas. And the kicker is Germany had teams with skill 8 and expertise in correct area. With tech team usable after annexing of a high tech country, a ComChi could get high end team with experience in ship building and aircraft manufacture.

HoI3 acts as every black and white are equal, there are no companies with long term experience in the field, which developed quite high tech, and all required is national leadership. The problem is it can't simulate a country with high research, but crap military leadership.

Another problem is WWII is quite unbalanced. Hobsbawn wrote about betting in US govenment, it was about when theirs president force Japanese into war. Japanese situation was completely fucked. They acted before war like complete morons and thought that US is free market, and as rule in free market they would sell for profit, and somehow didn't thought about consequence of losing scrap metal sales from US (for example when US would start do do something useful from that scrap). However US government wanted to screw Japanese, killing scrap metal exports to Japan, killing Japanese investments in US, killing Japanese oil imports, blocking Japanese assets in US. (Remember folks, never store your gold in US, it's bad idea. They have you by balls.)

As a consequence, US concentrated its effort against Europe, because even with 1/3 of effort Japanese would likely collapse on its own weight. Added with Japanese incompetence with ASW, and lack of transport ships, situation ended like UK would end when Donitz would get free hand with his plan. (But German HQ didn't want to overcommit into navy, and then lack land forces.)

Which causes problem with balance. The more you simulate the more Japan is hosed, thus better simulation starts to cause problems with game balance. Yea, they can add historical balance setting, for these who want to play bunch of cowards who are exaggerating danger, or win by a massive forces and massive loses even when they are completely oblivious to warfare.

Frankly, WWII game that tries too much to repeat history is worthy for about one playtrough. (It's not like HoI4 air interface wasn't designed by moneys for monkeys. But HoI3 managed to shoot itself into feet much more.)

My take is, the more strict you are about realism in your wargame, the smaller the scope of that game will have to be. If your wargame spans 1936-1945 and the scope is the whole world, it's very difficult to keep it historical.

If the scope is one theater (Like "Gary Grigsby's War in the East") it's easier to keep things "historical, considering the bigger picture". When the scope is just one theater, the player's diverging from history may be sending a few divisions on a different more efficient route towards the objective, and taking Moscow as a consequence. That's a big divergence from history, but the player can trace the reasons for why it turned out this way, and it's not like HoI4's Finland conquering Germany

HoI2 had godawful balance mechanic, where developers just strapped some combat effectiveness modifier to simulate historical outcomes.

It's a "wooden" mechanic, but it does the job. AGEOD's To End All Wars has an "event card", which is the equivalent of an ability the player can trigger - it's a "card" you drop on an enemy stack - which screws up that stack's combat and movement abilities, "in order to simulate the disorganization of the Russian army in the beginning of the war". It's very circumstantial and very anti-"emergent gameplay", but it's historical.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Unfortunately, deterministic gameplay tends to be very boring. HoI4 has solved the fundamental problem with presenting a branching and variable scenario, since national focus trees have really improved for example Kaiserreich, with HoI4 Kaiserreich being the peak of the franchise.

Though in regards to realism and scope and history, that's sort of what the problem with kites and canoes is. At a scope like HoI, you really can't solve the issue of NAV and ships except in two outcomes, but in a game where you carefully manage both individual ships in a single engagement and airplanes, they do work together because the level of abstraction is far lesser thanks to the more focused scope. This is something that can't be done in HoI, so it might be better for gameplay to remove air missions at sea instead of struggling with a problem that has no solution.

HoI2 had godawful balance mechanic, where developers just strapped some combat effectiveness modifier to simulate historical outcomes. Like USSR had 0.2 multiplier to all divisions. HoIIV had no such thing and tries to balance it with in-game mechanics, like isolation penatly for USA, national spirits for France and disorganization for Chinas.
And if you start as a minor and start doing weird stuff don't be surprisd that things will go some weird way. Especially in non-historical AI settings.

Yea it's not exactly... Standard when Uganda is around and fascist in 1940. Heck, the odds of Uganda showing up in the base game without player actions in a peace conference against the Allies is basically zero. I haven't tried, but I'm not sure if even communist path UK would actually have to release the African colonies, or if the decolonization demand only applies to the puppets.

 

[Average Manatee]

HoI2 had godawful balance mechanic, where developers just strapped some combat effectiveness modifier to simulate historical outcomes. Like USSR had 0.2 multiplier to all divisions. HoIIV had no such thing and tries to balance it with in-game mechanics, like isolation penatly for USA, national spirits for France and disorganization for Chinas.
And if you start as a minor and start doing weird stuff don't be surprisd that things will go some weird way. Especially in non-historical AI settings.

Uhh, I'm like 90% sure those were just doctrinal modifiers. Human Wave was awful and had awful starting efficiency, but eventually upgraded to be pretty good (never as good as blitzkrieg in pure fighting, but with certain better stats, way better org/morale, and way cheaper infantry, which actually mattered in HoI2). You could get rid of your doctrine and switch to another just like in HoI4 (and it was kind of OP to do so since the blitzkrieg doctrine immediately started at almost max efficiency), but finishing the doctrine would take a lot longer since you usually had shit tech teams and a lack of event-granted blueprints unless you went the "right" path.

I'm not sure about base HoI2 though, only played DH.

 

[Raghar]

Look who is president of completely neutral US who let Europe to deal with its own stuff.

This is called smart diplomacy, aka my unwilingess to fight on two front cost Russia 9/10 of Asia.

 

[what am i doing]

Unfortunately, deterministic gameplay tends to be very boring.

Every RTS with working multiplayer is deterministic. Are they all very boring?

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Yes.

In case of these sort of games, multiplayer has a special place in hell too, because of the fate of East vs West.

 

[Raghar]

And thus US joined ComChi alliance.

 

[Dux]

And I guess that 40-50% of the states seceded from central government the following day? No?

I swear this game just seems utterly nonsensical. Fun, perhaps, in a Kaiserreich type of way but still nonsensical.

 

[Raghar]

And I guess that 40-50% of the states seceded from central government the following day? No?

I swear this game just seems utterly nonsensical. Fun, perhaps, in a Kaiserreich type of way but still nonsensical.

It actually has a lot of sense. Considering Germany controls half asia, and Italy conquered Africa and France, and ComChi just unified china under its government and conquered Japan which was with war with ComChi, it behaved far more dependably than UK, or Germany. Also ComChi buys steel from US for its navy manufacture, thus it's even US best trading partner.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

And I guess that 40-50% of the states seceded from central government the following day? No?

I swear this game just seems utterly nonsensical. Fun, perhaps, in a Kaiserreich type of way but still nonsensical.

It also requires having the AI either set to follow an alternate path or having Historical AI Focuses disabled, it doesn't happen randomly (using War Plan Crimson and Hemisphere Defense don't happen randomly either). That event's part of the communist focus path for the US, can't say if it's before or after the possible civil war because I haven't yet played around with the Kwa so I don't know what the exact MacArthur temporary appointment conditions are (I do know tho that everyone should get the Adam Hilter/Senor Hilter mod because that easter egg is great).

 

[Dux]

That explanation does sound more reasonable. I haven't played HoI4 yet, only its predecessors, so I'm used to somewhat tighter historical parameters.

What's the end date of this game, anyway?

 

[what am i doing]

HoI 4 has no hard end date like earlier Paradox titles and I don't remember seeing the score screen without quitting even in the 50s. Even if all wars were concluded.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

I think it only asks you if you want to keep playing once and if you do it won't show the score unless you quit.

Anyway.

The end date of the base game is 1.1.1949, but you both have the option to keep playing regardless (IIRC it also doesn't show you the prompt to end campaign if you're at war with a Major).

 

[Space Satan]

The game will not end until last war between major powers will be finished. So you can declare on Allies and conquer the world and then finish off Australia

 

[Destroid]

You can nuke a country like 100 times and nothing useful happens

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Well, not necessarily. Nukes can be used to force capitulation faster, but if you have a 100 of them you could instead just go right for the enemy's manpower and production by bombing their troops before attacking, since nukes deal 75%+ damage to all divisions in the target province. Sure it can make breakthroughs hard (since you'll also damage infrastructure and therefore your ability to supply), but it will break any defense.

 

[Agame]

Ok I have messed around with "Ram the Bums" a bit as UK. Ship designer is the obvious highlight, who doesnt love slotting big caliber weapons into slots and tinkering with numbers? Tank/plane designer would be sweet, I am fairly sure this will happen at some point when we get "Air war/ground war" redo DLC.

Naval missions and combat seem ok, though apparently lots of balance issues, stuff like carriers now under-performing, maybe subs are OP (I am kind of ok with this to a point as subs SHOULD be a scourge for at least a few years of the war until the proper ASW tech catches up.) Mission system is good, its nice to have proper task forces that sit in port while your scouts patrol or do escort missions. It also makes fuel management interesting. One big issue with naval combat is they seem to have removed the 'approach' phase for combat, everything just lines up and starts blasting as if they all crashed into each other in a fog bank. This is one reason carriers are not performing. It also makes naval combats very fast and brutal, with massive ship losses. I think this needs some major adjustment.

And of course the Naval UI is a giant clusterfuck and unnecessarily confusing, they really did not have to change the previous UI that much to make it work. Feels like someone had all these "cool" ideas for the UI and went crazy designing it and no one came in and said slow it down a bit buddy... Even the ship designer seems a bit clunky and awkward.

Luckily Expert Ai is updated for current version, as all the same AI problems still exist, the main one for me being the AI will completely run out of basic equipment after a few years of war leading to total collapse, making German/Soviet war a farce.

Overall it is a significant upgrade to base game, really the first one as none of the previous DLC were that amazing. I think if we get a "Slam the Gums" BIG overhaul for both Air and Ground combat this could turn into a great game. But as always with Paradox we are looking years ahead and a large investment of cash to get there, which gets more and more painful when you buy a new game from them knowing its going to be bare bones "Minimum Viable Product" eg. upcoming Imperator.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

I feel the biggest thing is really just that the game seems really finnicky about how reinforcements and detaching automation works for the fleets. Like, sometimes it seems to me that the reinforcing just refuses to work, and the other thing is that what's the point in having automatic detach but NOT have the detached ship doesn't go to reserve until it repairs instead? I would think that'd be the most obvious thing to do with the new way fleets at least should in theory reinforce.

I don't like the missions tho. It feels far more confusing than what it's worth to me.

 

[Agame]

I don't like the missions tho. It feels far more confusing than what it's worth to me.

The problem is bad UI, the concept is good, but the implementation is awkward and counter-intuitive for some stuff. Its kind of amazing they took a year because there is some really obvious fixes needed, they must have a bare minimum skeleton crew working on HOI4, I thought the game sold ok, but its probably never going to be a ck2 crazy big monies.

 

[Raghar]

I spend a while with trying navy in Man the guns and there are some conclusions.

They should definitely implement more stuff to make it more of simulation. There is a lot of stuff from real naval warfare they could easily simulate, and it would result in easier interface. They for some weird reasons went with easy way by using percentages instead of real simulation and that feels like they artificaly limited themselves, or don't have sufficient brain to invent.

Now let's say something first, considering how that DLC changes the whole HoI4, it should be integral part of HoI4. As integral part it works well, as DLC it feels underwhelming, and it feels like you are paying for feature that should be integral part of main game, they just wants you to pay extra for it.

Now lets looks at stuff I like.
-Submarines can finally kill something. HoI2 had submarines which required a lot of superiorty and luck to be able to deal with few destroyers, or damage cruiser. Now I seen when leader is crazy, submarines can duke it with cruiser and destroyers, or kill unescorted heavy cruiser, or torpedo a lone stuff when it went stupidly in sub infected waters.
-Now you can make different types of carriers, and decide if you want to make also smaller carriers to get some carriers quicker, or having them in fleets that needs some air support, but will not be main striking forces.
-You can no longer add million of dockyards to battleship production, you need to wait.
-Fuel can ground your task forces and severally restrict your fleet behavior.
-Torpedoes can seriously screw up your capital ships. (Even if not kill them.) And capital ship half in repair because of two torpedo is really bad. Which is awesome.
-They list battle damage as "on fire" "screw damaged" and stuff like that. (However I'm not exactly sure they are really simulating it, and didn't put some percentage to something as a consequence of the damage.

Now things I dislike.
I tested stuff, and it feels like AI is using fleet at beginning, and when it's out, it's out. It throws resources on stuff even when it would cause it to lose naval combat long term.
Japan AI basically protects three zones, and doesn't change it's behavior according to current threats, nor it does long term planning. (Yes it does some decent naval invasions, but considering how they nerfed Japan during war in China it's a must. I seen Japan AI to evade the nerf few times. So all is not lost, you can have hard fight against unnerfed Japan when you play as China.)

In HoI2 I was able to set up warning for naval combat, and autopause. For some countries like Italy, it was either that, or lose the fleet, and be without capital ships for at least 2 years.
In HoI4, there is no such autopause for important combats. Typically you want it for about 3 fleets.

I tried to do naval combat as in proper simulations, and yea they are saying task forces, but it does something else. The previous way how to handle fleets behaved more like task force. Now you are deciding about SUBGROUPS of task force.
Basically I wanted to send some fleet to mine regions A and B, a fleet to do enemy ASW hunting in region B, and hide main fleet until Japanese 4 CV would find someting more interesting to kill than running around in backyard.

Now with current "bright idea" you can't have some groups not operating in certain areas. So if you want to have certain ships under ONE admiral, they would operate in ALL regions set for that fleet.

Another bright idea was removing rebasing. Now ships don't have home port, thus there is no need to bother with rebasing, stuff someohow happens, but when ships were based in some port, they returned to that port for repair. Thus you could have three fleets in region, but each based in different port, and supported from different port, and repaired in different port. I wonder if actually ships go to ports to refuel, or if they move through 3000 km with DD with range of 1000 without refueling. They kinda simulate fleet position, thus the whole route can be simulated as moving between ports 800 km distant, and everything would work. Or they decided to not bother, and DD for some reason are blazing at 30 speed through direct route arriving withing few days after order, instead of 10+ days. (Real world WWII destroyers did about 400 km/day at economical speed, increased to 500 - 600 before end of WWII. Moving from port to port can increase distance by 1000 thus 10 days is more than reasonable minimum time before they can start to resupply to begin the mission.)

There is no way to replay recent combats. Considering how rare is naval combat in some settings, it's amazing when it first happens. I remember how I tried Japan and in 45 I had first naval combat. My Battleship got one hit from destroyer, and carrier and other ship obliterated enemy few destroyers and light cruiser. (Expansion to north tree Japan, Japan army wet dream. Considering they would freeze solid in Russia, I wonder why.)

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

I think one thing that needs work is automatic rebasing, I often have to manually rebase ships, which is okay if you're only focused on one sea but if you're playing something like a Commie Kwa campaign it gets really irritating. It's one thing I feel would do well to be automated with the current mission structure.

 

[Agame]

They should definitely implement more stuff to make it more of simulation. There is a lot of stuff from real naval warfare they could easily simulate, and it would result in easier interface. They for some weird reasons went with easy way by using percentages instead of real simulation and that feels like they artificaly limited themselves, or don't have sufficient brain to invent.

One of the things I hate about the new interface is the combat screen, I actually really liked the old one, watching your ships drifting in and out of the firing line, and being able to see exactly who is firing at who. I mean why in the fuck cant we see which ships are firing now? Unless I am completely missing how the new interface works? And yea I agree they could easily add a whole bunch of realism simulation to the combat model, 90% of the user base have no idea whats happening anyway and dont care about the exact mathematics.

I tested stuff, and it feels like AI is using fleet at beginning, and when it's out, it's out. It throws resources on stuff even when it would cause it to lose naval combat long term.
Japan AI basically protects three zones, and doesn't change it's behavior according to current threats, nor it does long term planning. (Yes it does some decent naval invasions, but considering how they nerfed Japan during war in China it's a must. I seen Japan AI to evade the nerf few times. So all is not lost, you can have hard fight against unnerfed Japan when you play as China.)

From what I have seen they either forgot to program a naval AI, ran out of time, or literally dont give a fuck about it as again most of the user base dont care about challenging gameplay. In my UK game: WW2 starts in 39, germany rushes their entire fleet out of the Baltic and gets pulverized by my RN fleet in one massive engagement, losing probably 90% of their main fighting strength. Italy then joins the war in 40 and immediately rushes all their ships into the Med, once again getting pulverized by combined French/British fleets, and are now neutered for the rest of the war. I have also seen no Axis submarines being used in any sea zones not adjacent to the European continent.

In HoI2 I was able to set up warning for naval combat, and autopause. For some countries like Italy, it was either that, or lose the fleet, and be without capital ships for at least 2 years.
In HoI4, there is no such autopause for important combats. Typically you want it for about 3 fleets.

Welcome to degenerate Nu-Paradox, where the meme-multiplayer crowd scream and cry if there are any pop ups or messages, I have already seen someone on the official forum complaining because there are "to many naval combat indicators". Seriously fuck these morans, go play Starcraft you dumbfucks if your so upset about the game providing you with information (that can always be turned off anyway in previous games).

I tried to do naval combat as in proper simulations, and yea they are saying task forces, but it does something else. The previous way how to handle fleets behaved more like task force. Now you are deciding about SUBGROUPS of task force.
Basically I wanted to send some fleet to mine regions A and B, a fleet to do enemy ASW hunting in region B, and hide main fleet until Japanese 4 CV would find someting more interesting to kill than running around in backyard.

Now with current "bright idea" you can't have some groups not operating in certain areas. So if you want to have certain ships under ONE admiral, they would operate in ALL regions set for that fleet.

Yea I had the exact same problem, trying to set up mine laying as part of a larger Fleet Group in one area - doesnt work. Instead they mine the entire operational area... This is really clunky and annoying, dunno how they can fix it tbh.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Well the thing with the actual missions is really just that you have to set up fleets specifically for each given job. I usually end up having two or three Strike Force fleets (each with just one task force), 4+ Patrol fleets with multiple task forces, and a submarine fleet with multiple raider task forces. I haven't tried mines yet.

Right now the thing I'm having trouble with is grasping the ideal task force sizes, it seems you need a shitload of destroyers and light cruisers for a Strike Force to absorb fire, or something. My Commie US navy got almost pulverized because I was trying to skimp on the destroyers.


Also in light of the current way things work, or more specifically how long ships take to build, I'm serious curious if Coastal Defense Fleet designer is actually the best one now thanks to the production cost reductions meaning you can bring much greater numbers to bear or recover from losses better. Well, assuming your plan isn't to invade Kwa, since that might be out of Range then; unless perhaps you use a different designer for screens if you can afford the swaps. Could be the ideal designer now is either Escort Fleet designer (since stronger Screens might be more valuable than stronger capital ships, and the Pacific net effect is still there since Screen range is usually the more limiting factor), Raiding Fleet designer (since it seems submarines are much stronger than before with the current situation, and they don't have to worry about losses in the same way as everything else), or aforementioned Coastal Defense Fleet designer (with maybe switch to Escort or no designer for screens).

NAV still fucks up everything tho.

 

[Agame]

You do need a shit ton of DD, LC for screening and padding out patrol groups, which is ok as historically the big Navys had 100s of Destroyers when the war started. The good thing is cheapo DDs with bare minimum equipment and sonar are great for escorts and you can crank them out very fast.