Hearts of Iron IV - The Ultimate WWII Strategy Game

[Makabb]

Nothing can be more convulted than HOI 3 mess so it was a given....... the battle plans were broken, the frontline was broken, moving every soldier was a chore. It was like hitting your balls with a hammer to play. The idea itself was good, but the execution was very bad. It was a very bad game on technical aspecs

 

[GarfunkeL]

Looks like this one has certainly earned his Shitposter tag

 

[Ulminati]

Skimmed some of the videos for this. The battle line system seemed pretty interesting - assigning different divisions to automatically distribute themselves along a line you drew, seeing up pushes etc. But I guess it will live or die by how intelligent the AI is. If the game places your forces the way stellaris sector governors distribute population, you're going to have a bad time.


Will probably torrent this in a week to see how unplayable it is before the inevitable DLC. I like how - in classic paradox fashion - tank models for the allies and axis are apparently day 1 DLC.

 

[Spectacle]

I wonder if Paradox realizes how much the cosmetic DLC milking machine is hurting their reputation? I suppose they might be super profitable, enough to make up for the loss of goodwill.

 

[Ulminati]

Have you seen their forums? Threads mentioning DLC has 20+ rabid fans jumping in to defend it within minutes. After about 3 hours, a mod deleted the thread.

 

[Wilian]

I wonder if Paradox realizes how much the cosmetic DLC milking machine is hurting their reputation? I suppose they might be super profitable, enough to make up for the loss of goodwill.

Why people care about cosmetic DLC in a game you can most likely mod for no money at all?

 

[Spectacle]

Have you seen their forums? Threads mentioning DLC has 20+ rabid fans jumping in to defend it within minutes. After about 3 hours, a mod deleted the thread.

What is your point? That Paradox have no idea what people think of their DLC policies because they have made their forums into an echo chamber? Or that they're satisfied with the trade-off of popularity vs DLC-sales to a small, rabid fanbase, and simply want the unhappy ex-fans to shut up and go away?

 

[Ulminati]

Spectacle My point is that paradox fans have stockholm syndrome and will put up with anything at this point. Paradox only steps in to stop dissenters from taking their loyal customers away.

 

[Renegen]

The let's plays are out, I loathe these digital hipsters having as much fun as they are telling me how I, the pleb that I am, should play the game correctly when I get to buy it on pleb release day. Still I'm watching the videos.

 

[Makabb]

CK2 is butchered, EU4 is neutered, Stellaris is boring, what will HOI 4 be ?

 

[Luka-boy]

 

[Corporate_Jew_Master]

in need of dlc

 

[Raghar]

The let's plays are out, I loathe these digital hipsters having as much fun as they are telling me how I, the pleb that I am, should play the game correctly when I get to buy it on pleb release day. Still I'm watching the videos.

What retarded company is sending game to streaming sites before they would release it?

 

[Fry]

The let's plays are out, I loathe these digital hipsters having as much fun as they are telling me how I, the pleb that I am, should play the game correctly when I get to buy it on pleb release day. Still I'm watching the videos.

What retarded company is sending game to streaming sites before they would release it?

Uh... all of them. I guess you haven't been paying attention recently.

Streamers income is based on getting games early, so publishers know they won't say anything to get themselves thrown off the early release list. Everyone wins. Except the consumer.

 

[Destroid]

It's time to talk about ethics in videogame streaming.

 

[Makabb]

The let's plays are out, I loathe these digital hipsters having as much fun as they are telling me how I, the pleb that I am, should play the game correctly when I get to buy it on pleb release day. Still I'm watching the videos.

What retarded company is sending game to streaming sites before they would release it?

it's called paradox

 

[Raghar]

The let's plays are out, I loathe these digital hipsters having as much fun as they are telling me how I, the pleb that I am, should play the game correctly when I get to buy it on pleb release day. Still I'm watching the videos.

What retarded company is sending game to streaming sites before they would release it?

Uh... all of them. I guess you haven't been paying attention recently.

Streamers income is based on getting games early, so publishers know they won't say anything to get themselves thrown off the early release list. Everyone wins. Except the consumer.

I paid attention. I seen how majority of streamers played Dark Souls 3 from beginning to the end, and... Why buy it after that? Lets wait for sale if you want multiplayer.

People complain about piracy, but lost sales because of pre-release streamers...

 

[Fry]

I seen how majority of streamers played Dark Souls 3 from beginning to the end, and... Why buy it after that? Lets wait for sale if you want multiplayer.

People complain about piracy, but lost sales because of pre-release streamers...

And much like piracy, if you sat and watched someone play though an entire game, you were probably never going to buy the game anyway.

 

[Yeesh]

People complain about piracy, but lost sales because of pre-release streamers...

I love making things up too, but let's not assume out of hand that successful companies don't know how to market their popular and successful games. There's a little more to it than common sense. For example, movie trailers have been getting more and more spoiler-tastic, intentionally. And not because that HURTS ticket sales, oh no. And of course you may have heard of the olden days when music companies would PAY to have DJs play their songs for free over the air as many times as possible... because people buy what they've been exposed to most.

 

[Makabb]

because people buy what they've been exposed to most.

True, most people will buy a shit product over a good product just because they are being constantly exposed to it.

 

[Average Manatee]

Paradox at least has the excuse that most "real journalists" seem incapable of grasping even the simplest strategy game with a scale larger than Starcraft 2, see the Rock Paper Shotgun article crying about Stellaris, so it makes sense to just hand out keys to any youtuber with 1000+ viewcount to anyone who asks. The assumption being that anyone who asks is already at least interested in the game and probably far more competent/willing to learn than a reviewer whose only goal is to play for 2 hours and crap out a few paragraphs of summary.

Lets be honest, I don't know how dumbed down HoI4 may be compared to HoI3 but I'm pretty sure you still control more units at a time in HoI4 than you do in DotA, so its way beyond the assumed skill set of most mainstream site reviewers.

 

[Reject_666_6]

Here are some timelapses I've found so far. They show you in a nutshell how you should expect the AI to act. All the clips have the Historical AI Focus enabled.

1939, ends in somewhat of a stalemate:

Spoiler

* There's some very weird shit happening with Vichy France early on, Germany donating random tracts of land to the fallen frogs or something?
* Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact fires after Poland is fully annexed, Soviets never join in.
* AI frontlines tend to be very dynamic, it seems like geographical barriers don't really have any effect on stabilising the front.
* AI also likes to use HoI3 cheese tactics, funnily enough. A few times you see breakthroughs of one cavalry or light armour division sprinting through the enemy heartlands. I'm not sure how effective they would be here, but in HoI3 this would cripple enemy supply lines.
* Mighty Turk army manages to survive German occupation with one province worth of Kebab Points.

1939, long war, but the Nazis are beaten in 1948:

Spoiler

* Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact fires after Fall of Potato again, but this time it seems to then lead into instant Barbarossa.
* In a strange twist, we have a Hungary going rogue and siding with the librulz, all the while sparking the ire of Axis Yugoslavia.
* France pretends to lose to Italy, only to launch a switcheroo attack on the Italian peninsula out of nowhere. And it almost worked, too.
* Soviet Union turns against the Allies halfway through the war, which proves to be its downfall, as the Purple Phoenix rises again.
* Kwa decides to stage C-day from Sevastopol itself and breaks the Germans' backs.

1939, Nazis on the brink of victory but Balkan invasion puts the dream to an end:

Spoiler

* No Vichy France, but more shenanigans going on with land donations to Italy out of nowhere.
* How the hell did they funnel enough troops through Greece that they managed to tear the Nazis apart in weeks?
* Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact fires after Fall of Potato yet again. I don't mind this being an option but why do the Sowjets never carve out eastern Potato!?? I'm starting to suspect that they can't code the Soviet attack without bringing them into the war against France and England as well. Spaghetti code for dinner, kids!
* Borders look like crap.

All in all it's standard Paradox fare for game launches, so I'm not terribly disappointed.

 

[Average Manatee]

Polish uprising annexes Germany in under 4 months in the third video? Can any resident codex potatoes weigh in on the historicity of this simulation? I don't feel that this is entirely plausible.

Also Sweden joining the allies in #2 and not immediately getting annexed by Germany. I see Paradox is keen to rewrite history and pretend the swedes weren't filthy nazi collaborators.

 

[Got bored and left]

Polish uprising annexes Germany in under 4 months in the third video? Can any resident codex potatoes weigh in on the historicity of this simulation? I don't feel that this is entirely plausible.

Also Sweden joining the allies in #2 and not immediately getting annexed by Germany. I see Paradox is keen to rewrite history and pretend the swedes weren't filthy nazi collaborators.

Yeah, the Polish thing was... odd. The only explanation I can think of is that all German forces were tied up so deep in Soviet territory that the uprising (probably helped by British forces and local uprisings in other areas) could just beeline for Berlin mostly unopposed and then force a surrender. As far as the historical probability of such a thing: I'm no expert on the fighting capacity of the Polish Home Army, but, yeah, no.
Still, it was really fun to watch

Edit. Oh, I just noticed the Greek thing in the video. So, I guess, Allied troops attacking through the Balkans prompted an Allied-backed uprising, which carried them to victory? The way territorial change is signalled is kinda confusing.

 

[Grinolf]

Polish uprising annexes Germany in under 4 months in the third video? Can any resident codex potatoes weigh in on the historicity of this simulation? I don't feel that this is entirely plausible.

Also Sweden joining the allies in #2 and not immediately getting annexed by Germany. I see Paradox is keen to rewrite history and pretend the swedes weren't filthy nazi collaborators.

Looks more like Allies restoring Poland after invading through Croatia. After that or AI decided to give occupied land to Poland because of some silly adjacency reasons, or Poland somehow managed to seize them when Germans collapsed. Occupations shouldn't affect peaсe deal, and Poland in theory shouldn't have enough participation to get the whole Germany in the end, but still looks silly.