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Hearts of Iron IV - The Ultimate WWII Strategy Game

Van-d-all

Erudite
Joined
Jan 18, 2017
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Standin' pretty. In this dust that was a city.
66,466 current Steam players online. DLC revievs very positive. That is a rare sight

You have to be literally mentally ill to give any Paradox game a positive review.
First few days, like pdx forums are for sycophants - stream viewers, wannabe meme lords and pseudo nerds - what seems to be their current audience. Give it a month for some actual players to spreadsheet it all and see how bugged and unbalanced it probably is.
 

Joggerino

Arcane
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Oct 28, 2020
Messages
4,472
After a few games I find the new supply system underwhelming. It's just not a huge change to the game although it's a positive one.
 
Joined
Dec 24, 2018
Messages
1,783
Is it just me, or is new system of doctrines simplified into: You have military XP, thus you can click, click, click and you have instant three steps of a doctrine. Effects are instant, and as long as you have mil XP, you can do spending.

Sounds like the mana that Paradox insists they aren't putting in their games.
 

Joggerino

Arcane
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Oct 28, 2020
Messages
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Just had a really enjoyable game as KMT. The best part was the new army doctrine and army xp system. Because before I would just have army doctrine on research but now I have to wait for the xp to come in and then I have to decide if I want to spend it to decrease some army penalties to China, to research a doctrine, or to appoint officers. The supply system wasn't a huge factor this time, the only big point was that if you are under logistical strikes you cannot use motorization on your supply depots because all your trucks will quickly get blown up.
 

Rean

Head Codexian Weeb
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Nov 14, 2020
Messages
1,910
Strap Yourselves In
Just had a really enjoyable game as KMT. The best part was the new army doctrine and army xp system. Because before I would just have army doctrine on research but now I have to wait for the xp to come in and then I have to decide if I want to spend it to decrease some army penalties to China, to research a doctrine, or to appoint officers. The supply system wasn't a huge factor this time, the only big point was that if you are under logistical strikes you cannot use motorization on your supply depots because all your trucks will quickly get blown up.

Asia is the only theater that is remotely interesting in this game, yes.
 

Joggerino

Arcane
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Oct 28, 2020
Messages
4,472
Just had a really enjoyable game as KMT. The best part was the new army doctrine and army xp system. Because before I would just have army doctrine on research but now I have to wait for the xp to come in and then I have to decide if I want to spend it to decrease some army penalties to China, to research a doctrine, or to appoint officers. The supply system wasn't a huge factor this time, the only big point was that if you are under logistical strikes you cannot use motorization on your supply depots because all your trucks will quickly get blown up.

Asia is the only theater that is remotely interesting in this game, yes.
I find Italy the best country to play but I'm so sick of playing Italy.
 

Eyestabber

Arcane
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Joined
Jan 15, 2015
Messages
4,733
Location
HUEland
PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015
Because I enjoyed CK 3 for what it is, I made the grave mistake of giving this a try. And HOLY SHIT what a pointless turd. I've never seen a game work so hard to make everything a fucking chore and an unending display of autism. Want to move a tank? Nope, must use some dysfunctional autoplanner shit. IC? Replaced with an autistic system of pipelines and resources I'm pretty sure the devs themselves don't know how it works. Ships? People on steam proudly claim they have like 1k hours in HOI4 and no clue how naval works. Trade? No longer "you give me X, I give you Y" but rather something about your factories magically importing/exporting shit. Resources? No longer a handful, but now it's like 8990739048908 types. Fun? NO, must keep clicking a new "Focus" and research every 30 days or waste time I could be advancing. Everything has six trillion stats and zero explanation on any of them.

Message log? Gone. Autopause? Gone. Solid colors with clearly defined borders? Replaced with eye cancer translucent colors. SCW is a total clusterfuck, with both Spains looking the fucking same. Apparently you need a PhD in Hearts of Cancer to disembark on a given enemy country. No simple way to tell planes to "bomb this shit right here" or boats to like "fuck this port here", nope. Need to figure out which one of the 90748907987r89475945790457 missions, groups and whatever-the-fuck might (maybe) do what I want them to do. Simple and intuitive government system of HoI 2 replaced with "political power" fueled decisions that amount to "5% more awesome / 3% less cool". All generals have like 9047390478957 stats, but sadly it doesn't allow them to actually win a battle in less than 87 days. Yes, I remember all the 87-day long battles of WW II :roll:

This game is my new go-to definition of "complexity for the sake of complexity". There's no payoff to learning as the game isn't even a sandbox anymore, but rather some gay ass "alt history simulator" with preset routes to most nations via the focus thing. Oh, and shit like "Carlist spain", "deposing hitler" and "Romanov Russia" aren't alt history but fantasy. Stalin deposed by Romanovs? Might as well add a decision to "Become Viking Raiders" as Denmark. :hahano:
 

Raghar

Arcane
Vatnik
Joined
Jul 16, 2009
Messages
22,506
After all these shit updates, still no new Japanese tree! :lol:
What for? You can make Japs become: Evil Fashists. Evil Rusophobe non Fashists. Commies. Or Evil Rusophobes Fashists who conquered China. Or evil Russophobe Democrats.
e8jDTKD.png

As you clearly see Japanese tree allows player to do whatever he wants. As long as it's either joining Russia, or fighting against Russia.
 

Raghar

Arcane
Vatnik
Joined
Jul 16, 2009
Messages
22,506
Because I enjoyed CK 3 for what it is, I made the grave mistake of giving this a try. And HOLY SHIT what a pointless turd. I've never seen a game work so hard to make everything a fucking chore and an unending display of autism. Want to move a tank? Nope, must use some dysfunctional autoplanner shit.
1. You need to design tank. I could write better tank designer, but Paradox are bunch of idiots.
2. You design tank division. Division designer is actually acceptable and one of features that was designed before stream of DLCs.
3. You train tank division.
4. You deploy tank division.
5. If your division is deployed on location with path between division and target, you simply left click on division, then right click on target. Or better to province near target to prepare attack better.

IC? Replaced with an autistic system of pipelines and resources I'm pretty sure the devs themselves don't know how it works.
What pipelines and resources? You produce tanks, you need steel to produce tanks. When you need to produce both tanks and ships, you must choose how much steel you allocate to tanks, and how much to ships.
No steel, no ship. No Chromium, no advanced ships.

But most people found Paradox simplified system in Man the Guns DLC so much, they can ignore ships and use submarines, and some aircraft. (Or para.)

Ships? People on steam proudly claim they have like 1k hours in HOI4 and no clue how naval works.
It worked better before Man the Guns DLC that was supposed to improve naval combat and brought naval designer. Before DLC ship guns had range, thus Yamato BBE could fight Fletcher class DDT (or was it DD(ER)) at range of 20 km and Fletcher could have two choices. 1. Run as a group and dodging to efficient engagement range, and hope Japanese with theirs low ammo stores would run out of ammunition before they'd hit, and then JAPANESE WOULD BE SITTING DUCKS. 2. Bail out.

After Man the Guns, weapon ranges disappeared, and when there is not enough escorts, Fletchers can rain torpedoes at Japanese capital ships every 4 hours. (I didn't know US ships had so many reloads... to spend 24 hours every 4 hour to launch all torpedoes. But they can.) (With admiral skill, they can do it every 3 hours.)


Trade? No longer "you give me X, I give you Y" but rather something about your factories magically importing/exporting shit.
This was done for gamistic reasons to prevent Germans and Japanese to get around of resource scarcity.
Nowadays if they want more steel, they need to conquer steel producing area and repair infrastructure.
They CAN stockpile oil, when they build oil storage facilities.

Resources? No longer a handful, but now it's like 8990739048908 types. Fun? NO, must keep clicking a new "Focus" and research every 30 days or waste time I could be advancing. Everything has six trillion stats and zero explanation on any of them.
I didn't play latest DLC, but resources were:
Steel: Needed for ships and tanks and everything.
Tungsten: Needed for artillery, and medium tanks. And possibly even for jets.
Rubber: Needed for aircraft and trucks.
Aluminium: Needed for aircrafts and support equipment.
Chromium: Needed for anything big and advanced, especially MBT and top tier ships.
Oil: US have it, rest of the world don't or US owns it and blocks access, thus there is a war.

Steel:(Japanese and Italians are fucked.)
Tungsten:(Germans are fucked.)
Rubber: (Germany, UK, Italy, and Japanese are fucked.)
Aluminium: (Japanese are fucked.)

Apparently you need a PhD in Hearts of Cancer to disembark on a given enemy country. No simple way to tell planes to "bomb this shit right here" or boats to like "fuck this port here", nope. Need to figure out which one of the 90748907987r89475945790457 missions, groups and whatever-the-fuck might (maybe) do what I want them to do. Simple and intuitive government system of HoI 2 replaced with "political power" fueled decisions that amount to "5% more awesome / 3% less cool". All generals have like 9047390478957 stats, but sadly it doesn't allow them to actually win a battle in less than 87 days. Yes, I remember all the 87-day long battles of WW II

This game is my new go-to definition of "complexity for the sake of complexity". There's no payoff to learning as the game isn't even a sandbox anymore, but rather some gay ass "alt history simulator" with preset routes to most nations via the focus thing. Oh, and shit like "Carlist spain", "deposing hitler" and "Romanov Russia" aren't alt history but fantasy. Stalin deposed by Romanovs? Might as well add a decision to "Become Viking Raiders" as Denmark. :hahano:
I thought Denmark was taxing raiders.
 

Joggerino

Arcane
Patron
Vatnik
Joined
Oct 28, 2020
Messages
4,472
What are you talking about??
There's plenty of steel in France for Italy and in China for Japan.
Tungsten, easy access to one of the biggest deposits in Portugal for trade and also in Sweden.
Rubber, Japan can naval invade and acquire biggest rubber deposits in the world. (SE Asia) Also synthetic factories for everyone else.
As for oil, everyone has access to some of it.
 

Raghar

Arcane
Vatnik
Joined
Jul 16, 2009
Messages
22,506
Guangxi, 3 provinces with base 15 steel + one with base 8 steel. Manchuko after annexation about 80.
Now one CV line needs 45 steel for 2 years.

As for rubber access for Japan, that's middle game, and more importantly sometimes stuff happens and if Japan invade these area, the whole world jumps on Japan. (While Germany is either Kaiserreich, or collapsed, or both.)
Things can be tinny bit complicated when France exist and German empire is part of allies.

Steel in France has problem of French owning the country. In addition, when Italy would get gains, Germany creates Vichy and Italy losses these steel deposits.
Portugal tungsten has problem of UK doing blockade, and well stuff like when Portugal gets its focus to conquer China.

And as for oil. Well, fuel consumption when you have multiple airzones stuffed with airplanes, and your advanced tanks are fighting with Germany/Russia in the middle of Russia tends to be high. If Paradox fixed stuff with naval invasions, and AI would actually do some naval operations in Pacific, ship oil consumption for Japan would skyrocket.

Let's look at some numbers: Army - 14K, Air - 8K, navy - 31K. As you can clearly see, to have some oil available will not cut it. (Of course Paradox AI can't use it against player, otherwise UK would deploy several fleets around Singapore, and make live of Japanese navy MUCH harder.)
 

Malakal

Arcane
Glory to Ukraine
Joined
Nov 14, 2009
Messages
10,266
Location
Poland
Oil is the most realistically situated but numbers are off... in favor of Axis. There is no way Romania should be able to supply as much as it is.

There is a lot of chromium and tungsten in Europe too and some sprinkled in Asia.

As for rubber there is some in South America and India but again, USA historically went for synthetic rubber despite having all the navy it needed to convoy it in.

Resources are obviously spread for balancing the game, I don't really like that but there it is.
 

Joggerino

Arcane
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Oct 28, 2020
Messages
4,472
Ok, I was talking about singleplayer only since I don't play HOI4 mp. Japan is obviously in trouble if they cannot secure SE Asia. You can trade for the tungsten through Spain, and you don't really need a lot of it anyway.
 

Sinilevä

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Jun 9, 2019
Messages
899
Location
Eurofagistan
Strap Yourselves In
The Romanovs focus is half-arsed, which is expected from paracucks. When you win the civil war you are stuck with a bunch of Soviet events, like Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. Seriously how hard is it to at least fix the text of the event? A rookie modder can probably do it in five minutes. Also during the civil war I captured Stalingrad from the Red Army and got an event "Great Patriotic war: hold Stalingrad" or some shit like that. The number of generals you get is also very limited. You just get a handful of old guard white generals, so you have to pray that competent Soviet generals defect to your side, otherwise you are screwed. Also for some reason couldn't appoint some generals to general staff, they were just greyed out, but there was no tooltip why. Paracucks can't be bothered making tooltips. All in all if you are planning to make something, make sure it is good, otherwise don't bother, especially if you are planning to charge people money for it. Kaiserreich pisses all over paracucks feeble attempts into alt history.:M
 

RobotSquirrel

Arcane
Developer
Joined
Aug 9, 2020
Messages
1,943
Location
Adelaide
After I refunded the new DLC I tried out World Ablaze. It has all the features from that DLC anyway with the added advantage of making oil and winter historically accurate.
I found myself reinacting hitler yelling "TAKE STALINGRAD ALREADY GOD DAMN IT" because you do really need the oil.
Synthetic Refineries are so important because of the added coal mechanic. Tanks are incredibly useful. If you neglect your tanks Normandy will go ahead and you'll be screwed.
Really fun mod best of all works with the base game without DLCs.

The only negative I have is that Sealion is impossible. And note I consider paradrops cheating because the AI can't use them so yeah you can paradrop a sealion but come on that's like beating up a lobotomised person.
 
Last edited:

RobotSquirrel

Arcane
Developer
Joined
Aug 9, 2020
Messages
1,943
Location
Adelaide
I stand corrected Sea Lion is possible, it just takes longer. You have to speedrun Barb to do it properly.
If Sealion succeeds the British Government goes into Exile in Canada. Eventually the USA signed a ceasefire.
An actual satisfying playthrough for a change.
and then Japan decides to man in the high castle me. Alright Hans get the a-bombs we got some Anime to invent.
 
Joined
Sep 25, 2013
Messages
651
Ok, how the fuck do I make tanks Hungary viable in no step back without going meme austro-hungarian route, but a classic fascist one?
 

Joggerino

Arcane
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Messages
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After I refunded the new DLC I tried out World Ablaze. It has all the features from that DLC anyway with the added advantage of making oil and winter historically accurate.
I found myself reinacting hitler yelling "TAKE STALINGRAD ALREADY GOD DAMN IT" because you do really need the oil.
Synthetic Refineries are so important because of the added coal mechanic. Tanks are incredibly useful. If you neglect your tanks Normandy will go ahead and you'll be screwed.
Really fun mod best of all works with the base game without DLCs.
I tried out this mod and it's honestly the best hoi4 mod I played. Playing as Japan I didn't stockpile any oil because I thought I could always import some if needed like in vanilla. But after attacking China I was put under an oil embargo that left me only Venezuela as a supplier and after a year I couldn't import from anywhere. Because I had no stockpiles I couldn't push China properly and I barely had enough Oil production for a naval blockade around China. This was only solved after invading the SRZ in 1942 which was done on oil fumes produced by my synthetic refineries. :)
 

Joggerino

Arcane
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And I got wrecked.
japan.jpg
After Germany capitulated the Allies sent all their fleets and armies to my theater. I didn't really lose any decisive naval engagements but the sheer volume of their submarines, airforce and other units meant my free reign in the pacific was over. I cannot protect my convoys and Indonesia is getting overrun which means my supply of oil is about to dry up. The final nail was when the Soviet Union joined the war.
 

Sinilevä

Arcane
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Messages
899
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Eurofagistan
Strap Yourselves In
That World Ablaze mod is pretty
incline.png
. It makes the game harder, but unlike autistic mods like Black Ice, where you have to micromanage and control the production of boots for your army, it can actually be fun to play. I found that meeting historical deadlines in Germany was pretty challenging, because you need to have certain amount of troops on the field and if you don't want to train shitty troops it takes quite some time. I was lagging around 1.5 years behind the historical dates. Also in this mod out of all HoI games I saw Winter War ending in a White Peace. It was probably partially because as Germany I filled Finland to the brim with various weapons and trucks. For some unknown reason they refused my volunteer division though. I invaded Poland without a problem, but in France the Allies stopped me right before Paris. Despite the mod being a major incline, it's built upon a shitty parasux game and it shows. I just can't get over those shitty AI controlled battle plans, front lines being a mess, the map not being clear with some terrible blurred colors for the borders and the navy battle system, that noone seems to understand. Also by the time I got to Paris the performance slowed down to a crawl...
I wish someone included in a mod a possibility of just buying weapons from the major countries, instead of lend lease. Licensing doesn't make sense, because it still requires a minor country to have a solid industrial base. That would, however, require to overhaul the entire trade system.
 

Joggerino

Arcane
Patron
Vatnik
Joined
Oct 28, 2020
Messages
4,472
That World Ablaze mod is pretty
incline.png
. It makes the game harder, but unlike autistic mods like Black Ice, where you have to micromanage and control the production of boots for your army, it can actually be fun to play. I found that meeting historical deadlines in Germany was pretty challenging, because you need to have certain amount of troops on the field and if you don't want to train shitty troops it takes quite some time. I was lagging around 1.5 years behind the historical dates. Also in this mod out of all HoI games I saw Winter War ending in a White Peace. It was probably partially because as Germany I filled Finland to the brim with various weapons and trucks. For some unknown reason they refused my volunteer division though. I invaded Poland without a problem, but in France the Allies stopped me right before Paris. Despite the mod being a major incline, it's built upon a shitty parasux game and it shows. I just can't get over those shitty AI controlled battle plans, front lines being a mess, the map not being clear with some terrible blurred colors for the borders and the navy battle system, that noone seems to understand. Also by the time I got to Paris the performance slowed down to a crawl...
I wish someone included in a mod a possibility of just buying weapons from the major countries, instead of lend lease. Licensing doesn't make sense, because it still requires a minor country to have a solid industrial base. That would, however, require to overhaul the entire trade system.
Agreed, the AI still sucks and the mod uses modifiers and scripts to simulate major historical event. In my second Japan game I managed to beat China but it cost me 2 million troops and I had no manpower to spare for invading the SRZ and opening another front. Historically Japan lost over 2 000 000 troops in China but they also took over the whole of SE Asia.
 

RobotSquirrel

Arcane
Developer
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Aug 9, 2020
Messages
1,943
Location
Adelaide
Also by the time I got to Paris the performance slowed down to a crawl...
I find that anything after 1940 suffered huge performance hit with No Step Back.
Playing without that made it better but I still had slowdowns by about 1942 mostly stemming from Japan and the USA's entrance to the war.
 

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