Hearts of Iron IV - The Ultimate WWII Strategy Game

[Life of the Party]

Announcing Home of the Brave!

Hello there this is the creator of Ride the Tiger and American Totalists making the official announcement for my American Civil War Rework Home of the Brave! You may have seen some teasers but currently all American factions are getting an update and rework and I expect the release to be in about 10-14 weeks from this announcement.

The conditions for the American Civil War are now different in order to have a more plausible setup (IMO) than the collapse of the Commune of France and Britain going syndicalist destroying the US economy. Currently, this is the reworked setup using my reworked version of the initial USA description/event:

"In 1936, the United States of America is gripped by unrelenting crisis. At first relieved it had managed to avoid the horrors of the Weltkrieg, Woodrow Wilson was the first US presidents to run and win a third-term as the “Man Who Kept the Peace” alongside his new running mate former Attorney General Alexander Mitchell Palmer. Unfortunately, good feelings did not last long as Wilson began to pass increasingly authoritarian policies in order to combat the rise of syndicalist organizations until he finally suffered a stroke in 1922. This set off a constitutional crises and left increasing power in the hands of Palmer until Wilson finally died in office. Officially elected in 1924, Palmer and the Wilson cabinet reacted to the French and British Revolutions and growth of American syndicalism with increasingly extreme crackdowns on union organizing and eventually a slew of organizations suspected to have connections to the radical left. As workers became radicalized in response and anarchist bombers made several attempts on Palmer’s life the political situation deteriorated alongside the economy as a combination of strikes and a loss of trading partners.

Palmer’s controversial presidency ended with the election of Herbert Hoover in 1928 whom attempted to calm the situation with a “Return to Normalcy” by re-legalizing many non-violent syndicalist outlets but this brief respite from chaos did not last as a cumulation of speculative investing sent the United States spiraling into the Great Panic and allowed the Berlin Stock Market to take its place at the forefront of the world economy.

The re-election of Herbert Hoover in 1932 did not help matters due to the victor being decided by congress due to no candidate winning the electoral college and he has since failed entirely to reverse the decline of the American economy, and by 1936 the country had spent over a decade in the midst of the worst financial crisis it had ever seen. This fueled the rise of radical politics in America from the far-left Socialist Party of America, the populist Share the Wealth Society under Huey Long and his national America First Party and the far-right Old Democratic Party, a faction of the Democratic Party that places the blame of syndicalist and civil rights uprisings at the feet of immigrants, Republican cosmopolitism and liberal toleration of the left.

Hoover's contentious re-election by means of the House of Representatives in 1932, and the ongoing Great Depression means that these problems are unlikely to be resolved any time soon. Many throughout the country fear the upheaval that would result should one of the extreme parties come to power, or should the Depression continue unabated."

The Current Factions (all getting new paths) assuming all of them spawn include:

-The American Government that is relegated to the East Coast around the capital

-The American Union State, Huey Long's populist state that stretches from Louisiana to the Midwest

-The Constitutional States of America, the far-right faction that stretches from the deep south to southern Indiana

-The Combined Syndicates of America (has less territory than the current set-up to be concentrated closer to high density areas)

-New England

-The PSA

-The Western Command Center (WCC), made up of MacArthur loyalists and stretches from Arizona to Idaho (hopefully this will fix the problem of the US army getting cut off from the capital and then starving to death).

However not all of these factions need be at war with each other, the PSA will often make an alliance depending on which party gets elected to power and will initially lean towards the AUS. Obviously the USA will obviously not often be at war with the WCC either.

Over the next few month I will be releasing teasers for this. Hope you enjoy!

Edit: Also I would like to make an announcement for another mod that I am not working on personally but would like to make potential devs/coders aware of. In their scenario neither England nor Russia joined World War One, resulting in a brutal stalemate. It is called After Shocks of the Revolution. Here is their discord: https://discord.gg/BD34dhe

Here is MY mods discord: https://discord.gg/tqCnbjR

 

[Space Satan]

DD Armored cars

Spoiler

Hi everyone and welcome to another dev diary. The team is working hard towards PdxCon that is coming up next week and we are looking forward to pretzels, beer, and of course meeting you guys!

Today we will be talking about Armored Cars! I have often been asked why HOI4 doesn't have them, and today you get to find out why now is the time time

Resistance Suppression
Part of the reason we are finally adding armored cars is that they go hand in hand with resistance suppression. Since its inception, the armored car has been a useful tool against lightly armed and armored opponents. As explained previously, Garrisons will work as a shield against resistance activity. If adequate, the garrison will absorb the vast amount of resistance attacks that would otherwise sabotage industry or resource extraction. Armored vehicles will be especially suited to this role as hardness will give damage reduction to attacks made by the resistance.

In addition to being more resilient and preserving manpower, armored cars will come with a higher suppression stat and a better ratio of suppression to deployed manpower. Armored cars will generally not be as protective as light tanks, but will have a great amount of manpower protection for their cost.

All of these things combine to make armored cars a good option for resistance suppression when manpower is more of a concern than some extra production cost. Horses will still have an edge when it comes to suppression vs production cost, however.

• Hardness to prevent losses
• High suppression value
• Cheap production cost compared to other armored vehicles
• Higher cost still than just horseboys

Main battalion Combat Role
Fighting on the frontlines as the main battle force is not a typical role for an armored car. In HoI4 it will be no different. In most situations, the armored car will be outclassed or simply not appropriate for the terrain. However, in a few cases, armored cars should work fairly well as main battle units.

In WW2 armored cars saw a good deal of combat in the deserts of Northern Africa and the Middle East. Their decreased supply needs, ability to move quickly in desert environments, and excellent capability in fighting poorly equipped enemies made them perform rather well in those theaters.

In HoI4, armored cars will work similarly. They will provide increased protection and breakthrough over say motorized or infantry while coming cheaper than light tanks. They will also be the fastest land unit in the game in the right terrain. These factors should make them dangerous opponents in secondary and tertiary theaters of combat.

Combat and Intel
We have split the recon support company into several now so that it can be tailored to the division type you have, and the speed it needs to move at because now the speed on the recon company will be limiting the whole division. Meaning that if you scout your trucks with cavalry they will need to move at cavalry speed.
We have:

• Cavalry Recon Detachment - regular horsey boys you are used to. Cheap, but not that fast.
• Motorized Recon Company - Motorized, so jeeps and light vehicles. Fast but weak
• Light Armored Recon Company - Armored cars
• Armored Recon Company - Light tanks

Armored cars is a good sweet spot of capability, speed and armor while light tanks help keep your hardness and armor up in tougher divisions.

Recon companies give you an edge when picking tactics in combat, and that remains the same. We have on the other hand been rebalancing tactics to make recon more worthwhile. Tactics are now rerolled twice as often and we have lowered the frequency of certain phases like close combat quite a bit (unless fighting in urban terrain).

Recon companies now also do one more thing, they let you generate more intel in combat. More intel you say? What is this? As part of this update we will be redoing how intel works, but we will be going into that in detail in the future. For now all I can say is that there will be several ways to acquire intel (where fighting is one) and that relative intel will be replacing the straight up combat bonus from having crypto techs.

Armored cars looks really cool, so here are some renders for the new models for you to enjoy:

Ingame tech wise armored cars depend on motorized, so to use the recon companies you need both that and to have unlocked the recon support companies.

Armored cars will be coming with the DLC while basic intel changes and the other recon companies are available for all with the ‘Husky’ update. Next week is PdxCon and we are also moving offices, so I’ve set my alarm clock on “Maximum chaos!” but I think we should be able to give you a bit of an update diary anyways Seeya then!

 

[Life of the Party]

Vaarna_Aarne

How do you feel about Support Companies?

I usually start with Recon and Engineers and then add the rest based on what kinda division it is, which is often tied to what kinda country I play.

However, did some reading now and it seems Recon is actually useless?

Here's what one Redditor had to say six months ago.

I think the usual recommendations people give are pretty wildly wrong. According to tests the tactic bonus that recon gives is either nonexistent or so small that it's worthless, it doesn't actually do what it says it does, and so recon companies only really give a marginal movement speed boost in certain terrains at a relatively heavy cost in org and equipment. Engineers, also, have more limited utility than people seem to think - unless you're using a very static infantry division you'll probably never accumulate much of an entrenchment bonus and you should avoid attacking across rivers anyway and so on frontline divisions it's usually another overpriced minor movement buff in practice. People also like sticking support artillery everywhere but in larger divisions a few more points of org is usually more important than a small boost to soft attack, especially later on when you're likely to be facing some high-hardness armor divisions. Support AT alone is often inadequate for piercing anything and support AA definitely is. Division AA used to be basically worthless but now in MtG it's apparently bugged and ultra-powerful and one support AA can max out penalties for enemy CAS aircraft and blow thousands of planes out of the sky, but it could get fixed at any time.

Field hospitals are useful if you're constrained on manpower but not production and you put them on divisions that are in heavy combat so they can keep more veterancy - if you're unlikely to run out of manpower and your divisions aren't going to be in constant combat for years they're not going to justify their cost. Logistics companies only help when you'd otherwise be over your supply cap for the area, so they're pretty situational as well. Maintenance companies are only worth it when you've got a lot of heavy equipment in a division - so only armor and maybe motorized divisions, infantry equipment is dirt cheap and highly reliable anyway. Signals companies are also as situational as the others and depend on your doctrines and how crowded your combats generally are. MPs have an even more limited use.

Support equipment is expensive and takes both aluminum and steel that you'd rather put into aircraft and tanks. Trucks are even worse since they cost rubber which no major really has an adequate, secure supply of. IMO the most efficient division layout for many situations, including for frontline infantry divisions which are going to make up the bulk of any army, often only has one very specific support company or no support companies at all. If you're filling up all your support company slots you're paying a big price for a lot of stuff you won't get enough use out of. Lots of people make jack of all trades divisions with half the org and twice the production cost and training time of a simpler division that could do the same job.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Well I never gave it that much thought, usually I just had a go-to and I assumed the recon bonus would outweigh any losses from an artillery support. Otherwise main concern is really just whether or not a hospital support is worth it for conserving manpower. Main concern is really just if there's enough factories to go around to handle large-scale support deployment (so usually I stick to raw or only artillery support for early on before more factories are available). Supply company is basically the same deal, only useful if you really need it (and you probably won't have a large number of divisions that really benefit from its fuel bonus). So in principle I agree with the Redditor there, prioritizing small arms is way more important, weight of numbers matters.

Not so in agreement with the rubber thing. Anyone except Kwa is going to need a huge number of oil refineries (especially if they have even a single boat), so you can probably get your car tires rubber sorted by 1939 if you are lucky, and Kwa might as well build refineries in order to get all the rubber it ever needs. Though I dunno if pure light tanks would be more efficient than light tanks with motorized for the speedy division that can pull your encirclements.

Although in BICE I feel recon is worth it for the movement bonuses. Being really fast can help you achieve really harsh overruns after all. Though BICE division balance is wacky in all sorts of ways so not really a point of comparison.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Eh, that post is silly, all support companies have their uses. Every little bit of speed can make a difference between closing the encirclement or not, so engineers and recon are useful regardless of all other considerations. Attacking across a river is sometimes unavoidable and then engineers make a difference between winning or losing. Hospitals not only conserve manpower, but keep experience level of your units from fallling down, so they're worth keeping around even with unlimited manpower. Liikewise, if you expect to be beaten in the air, support AA is definitely an option worth considering.

The only one with questionable usefullness is support AT - it does penetrate nearly everything early in the war but there are too few tanks at that point in the war to worry about. And past 1943 you need to supplement it with frontline AT.

And cars are super cheap to produce and usually just a matter of placing like 2 factories on them in 1936 will set you up for all your needs for support cars for a long time.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Yea engineers are always worth it IMO, the urban bonus they have is also important.

 

[razvedchiki]

when is the soviet union rework,even mexico got one but not the deep battle folk lel lol?

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

I thought that was one of the things slated for the upcoming DLC? The garrison rework is also seemingly more tailored to the Eastern Front it seems.

 

[razvedchiki]

what garrison shit?im talking ABOUT MOBILE fucking WARFARE here,with t-34s running amok behind the nazi lines liberating the motherland from the spawn of capitalism.

 

[Raghar]

They need garrison rework for these hordes of Russian tanks... Which are not properly simulated anyway.

 

[Lagole Gon]

I'm not man enough to form Byzantium.



Pasta Man or Adolf always steal at least a part of Yugo.

 

[razvedchiki]

by the way is there a mod that replaces the ugly plastic ui of the divisions attachments?

 

[Space Satan]

French parody of a resistance movement is in

• New Focus Trees for France: New National Focuses for Free France and the Vichy Regime, as well as an option for conservatives to restore the old French Monarchy.
• More in Depth Spanish Campaign: New National Focuses for Republican and Nationalist Spain, as well as an expanded Spanish Civil War that can spiral into a wider conflict..
• Espionage: Use you Intelligence Agency to train spies to specialize in certain types of information warfare and develop passive resistance to enemy espionage, then send them on special operations.
• Support Resistance: Use your agents to assist allied resistance movements, giving them what they need to damage the enemy.
• Collaboration Governments: Use your agents to prepare the ground for collaborators to fill the void once you’ve conquered your target.
• Code Cracking: Decrypt enemy communications to gain short term battlefield advantages.
• Recon units: Scout planes can provide useful information on nearby areas while armored cars help in detecting and suppressing resistance activities.

 

[Fedora Master]

Finally a reason for these cucks to add WAHMEN

 

[razvedchiki]

lol what french resistance?compared to the soviet/yugoslavian/greek resistance french look like a joke.
also vichy.

 

[Space Satan]

They said on the con that Hearts of Iron 4 had 2 million copies of base games sold. TWO MILLION FFS

 

[Malakal]

They said on the con that Hearts of Iron 4 had 2 million copies of base games sold. TWO MILLION FFS

Well it is better than all the previous parts, more complicated too so I can see why.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Lol my thoughts exactly, who the fuck uses French to promote resistance DLC. Soviet women were flying bombers while French women were riding Gestapo dicks.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

There is a very simple answer to all of that:

American education system.

 

[Malakal]

There is a very simple answer to all of that:

American education system.

More accurately one of these countries has euro and a big market for video games while no one gives a fuck about Yugoslavians and their roubles(?)

 

[ZeniBot]

• Espionage: Use you Intelligence Agency to train spies to specialize in certain types of information warfare and develop passive resistance to enemy espionage, then send them on special operations.
• Support Resistance: Use your agents to assist allied resistance movements, giving them what they need to damage the enemy.
• Collaboration Governments: Use your agents to prepare the ground for collaborators to fill the void once you’ve conquered your target.
• Code Cracking: Decrypt enemy communications to gain short term battlefield advantages.

This shit is going to be so broken and OP on launch.

 

[Preben]

There is a very simple answer to all of that:

American education system.

Pretty much this. To the average Burger (or Limey for that matter) organized resistance was in France. Period. Additionally the Jews were the only ones to actually took up arms.

The rest of Europe was happy to collaborate with Nazis and lived the good life off stolen Jewish property.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

• Espionage: Use you Intelligence Agency to train spies to specialize in certain types of information warfare and develop passive resistance to enemy espionage, then send them on special operations.
• Support Resistance: Use your agents to assist allied resistance movements, giving them what they need to damage the enemy.
• Collaboration Governments: Use your agents to prepare the ground for collaborators to fill the void once you’ve conquered your target.
• Code Cracking: Decrypt enemy communications to gain short term battlefield advantages.

This shit is going to be so broken and OP on launch.

In a more serious note, that is a serious concern. You honestly can't truly balance this sort of thing as an active component, because either it ends up like in previous entries where you just pumped espionage level to avoid having to deal with the nuisance of enemy sabotage (and at most you might try stealing blueprints from time to time, or smear so you can declare war), or it might end in a situation where it's so OP it can't be ignored.

Ideally I figure espionage should be something of a give-and-take set of advantages (and through the absence, disadvantages), where you have an X maximum capacity of where your total espionage can take you but the possible uses just outnumber the capacity even if you have country-specific extra (which you know the Brits at least will have because pop culture). It might also be a good idea to not have counterespionage in this sort of set-up (because ability to universally reduce hostile espionage bonuses is just the most obvious pick if it isn't a pitifully low reduction), and focus purely on what espionage can do when used. Avoiding random success and failure is also a good idea, because that would only turn the whole thing into a chore on top of even more difficult to balance. So in a sense it could be a more fluid take on the way doctrines work.

(Also unless there's some hefty cooldowns between missions, this is going to get really tiresome with 15 day missions)

 

[Space Satan]

If it will stop snowballing that would be okay. Because Germany bloats with military factories it get for almost free. It is the opposite of what happened. The more territories youconquer, the harder it is to manage them, but in HoIIV all newly conquered territories will bring only profit, nod downsides. No rebellons and resistanse now is ajoke

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Well it's a joke to Germany, since Germany has the IC and PP to simply spam occupation any way it pleases.

I don't really miss lack of rebel armies tho, the whack-a-mole rears its head in BlackICE in China and in KR's Murrican civil war and it's irritating as hell in both and mostly just tests you noticing it. The new system talked about regarding needing to put in manpower and equipment seems like a better solution, since that might actually sap strength instead of just diverting a motorized division.