Hearts of Iron IV - The Ultimate WWII Strategy Game

[Corporate_Jew_Master]

Why would you spend all that time building carriers as China anyway? Just crap out a bunch of naval bombers and heavy fighters, then secure one sea zone with them, and spam marines until you make landfall and overrun the japs. Not like the losses will actually make a difference to you, should the IJN try to intercept (and they make a much easier target of themselves when they engage). Carriers and fleets took far longer for me to get set up, where as this method had Japan out in late 43 (and I probably could have moved faster, if I hadn't been screwing around with other stuff).

Just use paratroopers.

 

[XenomorphII]

Yep. Tried them recently and its way easier. Then got dicked at the peace conference.

 

[Space Satan]

+25% shore bombardment and secure approaches as well as contribution to the aerial supermacy

 

[Beastro]

And as a reward the fucking germans took the Falklands before I had a chance to claim them in the peace deal.

As it should be. :D

 

[Destroid]

So I'm in 43 and performance has tanked on my i5 3470. Speed 3 is a slideshow. Pretty sad after all these years, and especialy bad that their rendering/UI is stuck in the same loop as their turn processing so everything turns to shit when the game slows down.

 

[Makabb]

Shitty paradox coding, it happens for everyone.

 

[Corporate_Jew_Master]

So I'm in 43 and performance has tanked on my i5 3470. Speed 3 is a slideshow. Pretty sad after all these years, and especialy bad that their rendering/UI is stuck in the same loop as their turn processing so everything turns to shit when the game slows down.

i7 4790 and speed 5 still has slight lag at the end of the day especially. Didn't notice much difference with my previous cpu, pretty sure it's atrocious coding like Makabb said rather than your specs.

Problem is that divisions are spammed very hard. The allies has 12.000 planes over the english channel somehow and I surrounded and destroyed around 150 american divisions in France but they still sent another 100. The soviets are even worse, 600 factories and a thousand divisions by 1947.

The fact that their divisions have like 4 brigades max makes it even worse.

 

[Destroid]

Indeed, performance improved after I wiped a couple of hundred nazi divisions.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Yeah, the AI never seems to scale back and build industry, they just keep pumping divisions until the amount of units brings the game to a halt.

 

[KoolNoodles]

The AI in this game is atrocious in many regards, but the worst offense has to go to combat AI. Both with the "plans" you use, and the computer opponents. Every single game Germany does something stupid. Stops attacking France because over half its troops are staring at Russians, won't support Italy in Africa or otherwise, leaves France unguarded for an easy American invasion in 1942, etc.

Japan either sort of steam rolls China and then stops, or again, does something stupid like committing a ton of divisions to the border of Russia and then they get wiped out of China. Or, they will randomly send divisions to India, to Europe, wherever, while their home islands and China are getting wiped out.

Italy stops defending Italy. I don't know how many times Rome is captured by some Canadian division invading.

And player fronts/plans, where to begin? Just as an example, the AI will throw divisions into a surrounded port(i.e. a trapped division that is going to die), after using strategic movement to get the reinforcements to a friendly port for naval transport. Big surprise, those divisions show up worthless and everyone dies. It also has this terrible idea to pull troops back from the front and then move them up with strategic movement right into battle. They just keep ping ponging.

What's the point of plans if you have to constantly be checking to make sure the AI isn't doing something really stupid? Even just mediocre performance would make them theoretically worthwhile.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

The AI in this game is atrocious in many regards, but the worst offense has to go to combat AI. Both with the "plans" you use, and the computer opponents. Every single game Germany does something stupid. Stops attacking France because over half its troops are staring at Russians, won't support Italy in Africa or otherwise, leaves France unguarded for an easy American invasion in 1942, etc.

Japan either sort of steam rolls China and then stops, or again, does something stupid like committing a ton of divisions to the border of Russia and then they get wiped out of China. Or, they will randomly send divisions to India, to Europe, wherever, while their home islands and China are getting wiped out.

Italy stops defending Italy. I don't know how many times Rome is captured by some Canadian division invading.

And player fronts/plans, where to begin? Just as an example, the AI will throw divisions into a surrounded port(i.e. a trapped division that is going to die), after using strategic movement to get the reinforcements to a friendly port for naval transport. Big surprise, those divisions show up worthless and everyone dies. It also has this terrible idea to pull troops back from the front and then move them up with strategic movement right into battle. They just keep ping ponging.

What's the point of plans if you have to constantly be checking to make sure the AI isn't doing something really stupid? Even just mediocre performance would make them theoretically worthwhile.

Honestly, my experience with battle plans was that while AI does some stupid shit on the micro level, it eventually gets the job done. In my Japan save I went through entire Russia, East to West, using just battle plans. Obviously it's more effective if you just micro the entire front, but the planning is not so bad.

 

[Space Satan]

So when does holidays end in Sweden? 1 August?

 

[cw8]

Should I start WW3? The fascists have been wiped out of the map and I'm trying to paint the world red. Except the UK and US have a shit ton of units.

Won the Spanish Civil War early on with all armoured volunteers and they joined the Comintern, now they have a crap ton of units. Helped China win the Sino war and they joined me after the war with Axis was over. Puppeted Germany for the achievement. So basically Comintern has the most manpower in the world. At peace for the moment, waiting for UK to attack. Not gonna invade the UK with that many divisions they have in their home territory (about 500), probably will just nuke them. The US has like 700+ divisions. I have only 600 but China and Spain have like 300 each. Faction map:

China and my troops from Iran will probably take care of India pretty handily. My troops in Germany and Spain's troops will need to blitz France real quick, the insane number of divisions they have will make that easy unless they refuse to join the war or if UK invades.

Will initiate war once I have at least 5 nukes or when UK declares, whichever comes first. Gonna be fun.

 

[Zeriel]

I've been playing this a bit, one thing that struck me: it's very silly that you basically can't peace out of wars or leave your faction if you're in a stalemated war. There's no "okay, this has been going on for 10 years, let's just stop" failsafe like there is in practically every other Paradox game, you have to literally decapitate and destroy every enemy to have "peace in our time".

I suppose it's somewhat period accurate to a game about a World War, but still feels a bit broken.

 

[GarfunkeL]

it's not even that period accurate. WW2 was pretty unique that Roosevelt went for total victory and convinced Churchill and Stalin to stick to it too. Stalin was worried throughout the war that the Western Allies would make a separate peace with Germany. Moscow offered a very favorable peace to Berlin in the autumn of 1941 that Hitler either rejected or never even saw - sources conflict on that. Similarly, Japan tentatively asked for terms at least twice during the Pacific War but never got any reply from US. It is not far-fetched that non-total victory or defeat outcome would have happened, especially if the war stalemates badly.

 

[Zeriel]

Yeah, I'm not talking as a major power, either. As a podunk minor I'm forever locked into war until the game is basically over (US and UK annexed is the war ender, after all), seems rather unrealistic. I could understand not WANTING to peace out of the war out of fear the Axis would just turn around and annex you for pissing them off, but not even having the option to leave your faction if you want to? It's kind of absurd.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

It is, and it's more of a problem when you have wars that don't involve more than two countries and where the wargoal itself is rather limited. Though personally I think it doesn't really matter that much because World Tension will never reset or even decrease after a major war, so currently a Cold War in vanilla is just impossible (though to be fair this was never covered in any other HoI either). To have the makings of having major factions engage in Cold War after the big WW2 where one faction is eliminated, you need to have more refined nuclear war that the AI can actually use, and some manner of doomsday clock/war exhaustion mechanic to make sure most of the time majors don't go beyond proxy wars, and as an example Kwa or Soviet Union don't just dump their entire nearly 1000 divisions in Vietnam/Afghanistan (though this just ties in to the whole thing of minors and their function in the game beyond cannon fodder and resources).

I don't think there's even any peace events except for Winter War (though naturally Pdox still slacks on making a Continuation War chain) either.

Though overall I'm at least optimistic that they might actually make that Cold War expansion this time around.

 

[Raghar]

I missed an ability to release countries from UK. Some countries, like Viet-Nam would be VERY happy when they would be liberated without being occupied. And in fact, they wouldn't do nasty stuff to these who guarantee theirs independence and fighting against UK/France.

So far the best WWII strategy is still Daitenkoku, which isn't exactly about WWII.

 

[Destroid]

It is, and it's more of a problem when you have wars that don't involve more than two countries and where the wargoal itself is rather limited. Though personally I think it doesn't really matter that much because World Tension will never reset or even decrease after a major war, so currently a Cold War in vanilla is just impossible (though to be fair this was never covered in any other HoI either). To have the makings of having major factions engage in Cold War after the big WW2 where one faction is eliminated, you need to have more refined nuclear war that the AI can actually use, and some manner of doomsday clock/war exhaustion mechanic to make sure most of the time majors don't go beyond proxy wars, and as an example Kwa or Soviet Union don't just dump their entire nearly 1000 divisions in Vietnam/Afghanistan (though this just ties in to the whole thing of minors and their function in the game beyond cannon fodder and resources).

I don't think there's even any peace events except for Winter War (though naturally Pdox still slacks on making a Continuation War chain) either.

Though overall I'm at least optimistic that they might actually make that Cold War expansion this time around.

Vicky 2 has support for proxy wars doesn't it?

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Nah, only intervention which is generally something that exists only to annoy you the player because it forces you to always check for how near any GP of note is to Friendly whether you're defending or attacking, since either it just means a fuckhueg pile of shit you have to deal with for a tiny bit of lebensraum, or it ruins your carefully schemed ploy for defensive lebensraum.

 

[Destroid]

Well, I suppose HoI4 has volunteer forces and lend lease. The current rules allow you to send only a very small portion of your forces as volunteer forces into foreign wars.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Which is good because the Vicky type intervention has nothing proxy about it, while the HoI4 espionage system does allow for you to fabricate a civil war and then support your side in a limited manner.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Yeah being locked into wars for eternity is bullshit.

I've started a Greece save over weekend, and currently I'm occupying Bulgaria, Albania, Turkey, Iran, Iraq, part of India and a good chunk of USSR around the Black Sea. At this point I'm scraping for manpower just to man my borders, but I have to keep going until all Allies surrender.

 

[Raghar]

Which is good because the Vicky type intervention has nothing proxy about it, while the HoI4 espionage system does allow for you to fabricate a civil war and then support your side in a limited manner.

Only when you are in peace, which considering how you can't leave wars until whole coalition would finish them, doesn't mean you'd stay in peace for long. And they typically joins someone, which means theirs alliance would deploy hundreds of divisions...

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Which is good because the Vicky type intervention has nothing proxy about it, while the HoI4 espionage system does allow for you to fabricate a civil war and then support your side in a limited manner.

Only when you are in peace, which considering how you can't leave wars until whole coalition would finish them, doesn't mean you'd stay in peace for long. And they typically joins someone, which means theirs alliance would deploy hundreds of divisions...

Absolutely true, I was talking more about present features that could be expanded for post-war Cold War and proxy wars.