A list of things wrong with HOI3

[almondblight]

I started a game with Ecuador hoping to fight the 1941 war with Peru. Well, there was nothing to do with the first few years, and I could only do things once every five minutes are so, even on the highest speed (ended up playing it in the background). Finally I build up a small army, 1941 comes around and...nothing. I can't declare war on Peru, and it doesn't declare war on me. Our threat level is near zero, even though the two countries are historical enemies, and the highest threat to both of us is Germany, even though neither of us are allies.

Ah well. It's my first Paradox game, and it seems decent enough, but there are a number of screwy parts as well.

 

[GarfunkeL]

Your neutrality is too high to allow you to go to war since you're not a dictatorship. Germany has the highest threat because they are waging a massive war by 1941, doesn't matter whether you are in the Allies or not - neutrality & threat mechanics work outside the fixed alliances. You need to use spies to increase the threat of a country that shares a land border with you both (or at least with you), preferably one which has units on the border as well.

 

[Kane]

- Crashing. And crashing. And crashing. This game does not seem to have very good programming. I can't tell you how frustrating it is to have the game crash while my last save is months away.

Your PC is fucked.

 

[mondblut]

A list of things wrong with HOI3

No deathcamps [/thread]

 

[almondblight]

Your neutrality is too high to allow you to go to war since you're not a dictatorship. Germany has the highest threat because they are waging a massive war by 1941, doesn't matter whether you are in the Allies or not - neutrality & threat mechanics work outside the fixed alliances. You need to use spies to increase the threat of a country that shares a land border with you both (or at least with you), preferably one which has units on the border as well.

Well, I got that. I'm just saying that it's kind of stupid that Ecuador's actual enemy has a lower threat level than a country on the other side of the world that wouldn't and couldn't do anything to it, and that the mechanics of the game are such that they make it very difficult to fight a war that actually happened. I'm lowering my neutrality by like .03 a day, and at this rate (it's 1943) I won't be able to launch an attack before the game's over.

It'd be the equivalent of having a game in the 1960's where you play as Pakistan, and having the USSR be your biggest enemy instead of India, and preventing you from sending troops into Kashmir.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

The Threat mechanics work on a global scale and are generated via hostile actions taken and military power. Germany is bound to be the highest threat for all countries by 1943, even with distance modifiers.

However, this does NOT affect your ability to attack Peru AT ALL. What matters is the Mutual Threat between you and Peru, which is affected first and foremost by Spies and Prepare For War decision. Because of this, the first order of business should have been to use Leadership to generate 0.1 spies per day, send full capacity to home and then rest prioritized for Peru where they Increase Threat.

This of course posits the standard problem that Paradox has utterly fucked up giving minors enough Leadership, as 12 is the absolute minimum to have a barely functioning shithole, but I'm working casually on fixing this. Again.


Of course, you could just sidestep this entire issue and use a cheat to lower your Neutrality to 0.

 

[GarfunkeL]

Well, with CGM that TFH came with, you can lower your starting neutrality quite a bit, so you need less leadership in spies to get to war. And once you get that first war running, your threat to all your other neighbours shoots up enough that you can stop doing it.

 

[almondblight]

Vaarna_Aarne GarfunkeL

Well, I realized in 1943 that I need to have all spies (well, 10 which is the max?), working on lowering neutrality at home. But it was only being lowered by .03 a day, which by my calculations would take me over 6 years to get it to the level needed to attack (I need it at around 0.9 or something). I know I can raise the threat level of Peru as well, but I lose too many spies that way, and even then it would take me a few years.

Anyway, I understand the underlying gameplay mechanics, what I'm saying is that they should include more historical wars/animosities. Peru and Ecuador actually fought a war in 1941, but it's probably easier for me to start a fictional US/Canada war that fight a war that already happened. Likewise, the greatest threat for Ecuador or Peru in the 30's and 40's - the reason for their military - would have been each other, not some bizarre fear of Germany conquering Latin America. I thought (and still think, to some extent) this game was supposed to be somewhat historical, not just an upgraded version Axis & Allies. The threat/neutrality system, as it stands, doesn't work in this instance. I don't know about other cases (do the Chinese Communists feel the Nationalists are a greater threat to them than the Germans?).

Interestingly enough, Paradox seems to have tried to implement the Ecuadorian-Peru war as an event, but at the moment it doesn't seem to trigger.

 

[Raghar]

Well they were simply incompetent. A simple, and working, solution would be: Set initial relations for each country to historical levels, and set reaction of state that guarantees theirs independence on what happen in limited war. US would probably will not give a damn about LA countries fighting each other, but it will be offended when UK would try to conquer stuff left and right close to its turf.

But of course typing down relations between each two neighboring states is tiresome work, and they would need to spend the effort to invent game mechanic, even as simple as I described, and to actually fill the data. Considering theirs data files looks bad and theirs scripting is atrocious (severally worse than writing it in C++ and compiling into DLL), I doubt they would be able to do that easily without producing incredible bugs.

 

[GarfunkeL]

You need to start lowering neutrality in 1936 already. There should be a decision as well for minors that lowers it considerably. In addition, there is an event for that war, has been in from HoI2 already. And again, the threat mechanic works, it's just that Germany is far more threatening than your neighbours - because your neighbour is not doing anything remotely threatening. This is not because Paradox is lazy or incompetent, it's because they went with a more sandboxy-approach in 3 as demanded by a significant portion of their fanbase.

Anyway, it's entirely possible. There are AARs of people playing with South-American countries and creating one super-state before starting a slugging match with USA.

 

[almondblight]

And again, the threat mechanic works, it's just that Germany is far more threatening than your neighbours - because your neighbour is not doing anything remotely threatening.

In the game, not in real life. How do you think the game would be if, say, war never broke out between Germany and France, China and Japan, or Italy and Ethiopia on its own, and those countries had close to 0% threat levels of each other? If the only way for them to go to war would be to play as one of them and push hard to lower the neutrality from the start, because if you didn't no war would break out anywhere in the game world? To say it's possible is missing the point entirely. It's possible to invade Canada with the US. The problem is that wars that actually happened should be easier to launch than wars that never happened, but as it stands now it's actually more difficult. The game is, I think, supposed to be at least somewhat historical and not entirely sandboxy - which is why Germany will attack France, Italy will attack Ethiopia, etc. But while some wars that happened during that time period are inevitable, others are much more difficult to duplicate, and are just as likely as non-historical events. The fact that you group a war that actually happened with a historical impossibility like a South American super-state only underscores this.

As Raghar said, a simple solution would be to set some starting threat levels taking into account the history of the countries.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

The only way for Germany to not be able to go to war with everybody is if they don't do ANY of their decisions reflecting Hitler's various powerplays in Austria and Czechoslovakia.

And actually I checked, the Ecuador-Peru war is started by a decision that Peru can make. The decision itself is disabled for some reason (file says "impossible trigger"), but the event chain and everything else relating to it is still there and can be reactivated with a single #. The event chain will most likely result in adjustments and peace effects of said war being done by event, since HoI3 doesn't cover minor border wars. Khalkin Gol and other skirmishes between Soviets and Japanese are also represented by events.

 

[GarfunkeL]

Well, what Raghar suggested is clearly impossible. Who gets to decide what such threat scores would be and how would they be counted? Threat also lowers in-game if a country is acting peaceful. And the randomness was what players wanted - it is possible to have a peaceful game, like when the UK doesn't guarantee Poland's independence.

But if the event chain is still in the files, it does raise the curious question why Pdox commented it out in the first place and why South-American players haven't raised a ruckus about it?

EDIT: Just checked what the war was about and yeah, it should be a single event like Khalkin Gol as it was a very minor thing. Shame it's not in.

 

[Raghar]

A simple mathematical analysis is sufficient to decide threat levels. Honestly even adhoc numbers would be better than current situation. Look at situation in China. Can you play comchi are beating up the crap out of opposition because Russia went to the war on theirs side in 1936? Even when Nat Chi was a existentional threat to com chi, you'd need to wait few years until com chi can do something about them.

 

[GarfunkeL]

What. USSR did not go to war on their side in 1936. I don't think it's even possible in-game in '36. And arbitrary numbers would make the situation worse.

 

[almondblight]

Well, what Raghar suggested is clearly impossible. Who gets to decide what such threat scores would be and how would they be counted? Threat also lowers in-game if a country is acting peaceful.

Paradox can decide threat scores. Would it be arbitrary? A bit. But so is the IC and research levels they choose for many of the countries, and even which provinces belong to which country. For instance, the disputed provinces in this conflict were given to Ecuador in HOI2, doubling the size of the country. In HOI3, they're given to Peru. I don't think changing numbers for historical rivalries would be any more arbitrary. Hell, even though the current threat score isn't arbitrary (sine it uses a system), the system for scoring it is, and is probably less historical than arbitrary numbers.

Of course the threat level should change depending on the actions of the countries, and not all countries have to have certain threat levels scored. But the current system is silly, since the main rivals are scored at almost no threat while other countries with no connection on the other side of the world are considered the greatest threat. I don't know how prevalent this is since I haven't played the game much - does Iran, for instance, view Great Britain and Russia as a large threat? Do the Communist Chinese view the Nationalists as high threats, and vice-versa?

And the randomness was what players wanted - it is possible to have a peaceful game, like when the UK doesn't guarantee Poland's independence.

I think changing the system would open up even more possibilities. As it is, it seems that places like Latin America doen't tend to do much on their own.

EDIT: Just checked what the war was about and yeah, it should be a single event like Khalkin Gol as it was a very minor thing. Shame it's not in.

Minor in comparison to WWII, but major for the two countries. Keep in mind, Ecuador only starts with 3,000 troops in the game, and 10 IC. It was the most important war those countries fought during this time period, and if you're making a war game that lets players play these countries during this time period, you should let them fight it, or why even bother playing as Ecuador/Peru?

Another option would be to have certain provinces be disputed territories, allowing either country to invade it, but only giving the defending country the ability to declare war. So if I'm Ecuador I can march into Iquitos, but not other parts of Peru. Peru can decide to declare war on me and attack other areas, or focus on defending Iquitos. If they lose and I take Iquitos, the situation reverses - they can attack to try to take back the province, but in doing so I would get the choice whether or not to go to war. This would be useful for other territorial disputes like the French-Thai war.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

And of course, Mao was in no position to do shit about KMT until after WW2.

 

[almondblight]

No position and unwilling aren't the same. Chang Kai-Shek had the resources and fought with the Communists as much as he felt he could. The Communists lacked the resources, so they focused (for the most part) on building up strength while the Nationalists were distracted.

"The uneasy alliance began to break down by late 1938, partially due to the Communists' aggressive efforts to expand their military strength by absorbing Chinese guerrilla forces behind Japanese lines. Chinese militia who refused to switch their allegiance were often labelled "collaborators" and attacked by CCP forces. For example, the Red Army led by He Long attacked and wiped out a brigade of Chinese militia led by Zhang Yin-wu in Hebei in June, 1939. Starting in 1940, open conflict between Nationalists and Communists became more frequent in the occupied areas outside of Japanese control, culminating in the New Fourth Army Incident in January 1941."

 

[Raghar]

What. USSR did not go to war on their side in 1936. I don't think it's even possible in-game in '36. And arbitrary numbers would make the situation worse.

That's the whole point, diplomatic decision and starting conditions matter next to nothing. You can't get comchi into war they were in historically because of high neutrality, you can't have chiang kai shek to piss off Molotov/Stalin, because the game doesn't support any notable diplomacy. They locked it to allow next to nothing. Thus gameplay is stale. Even when it wouldn't be simulation and would be a some kind of a history game, it should still give reasonable choices, and increase number of events. Simulation doesn't need massive number of special events, because it doesn't have hand holding, but they looks like they have problems to design rules to allow the simulation work properly and realistically.

Look at for example on WWI war. The neutrality and threat was low between both countries. The even that happened radically changed things. You'd need to script stuff like that in HOI3 to happen, and because these events can happen only when they are scripted, there are no "Ouchie" random events, the game looks even more stale. In addition, excessive "static" scripting can create even more bugs and cause even more problems.

I didn't say arbitrary numbers, I said adhoc numbers. A person who read a historic book about situation between Equador and Peru would make Ad hoc decision based on the book, then write some Ad hoc numbers related to what he read and his conclusion about the situation.

The main problem with that is, while the worst case is number of countries^2, the real number is number of countries * (15 + great powers), because only superpower's relations matter globally. Of course, even when you can do this stuff in about 5 minutes per country, this will still require about 5*500 minutes. This means enjoy your work for next two weeks (in the best case).

Ad hoc is a Latin phrase meaning "for this". It generally signifies a solution designed for a specific problem or task, non-generalizable, and not intended to be able to be adapted to other purposes

Ad hoc can also mean makeshift solutions, shifting contexts to create new meanings, inadequate planning, or improvised events.

Surprisingly wikipedia has reasonable explanation what Ad hoc, Ad priory, and other common latin based terms means.

 

[GarfunkeL]

Scripted events were reduced because that's what most players wanted - that was Pdox's reasoning. I didn't agree and still don't. Of course it would be brilliant if the game was sandboxy enough that you could replay history exactly through pure game mechanics without scripting but that's a pipe dream.

you can't have chiang kai shek to piss off Molotov/Stalin

He didn't piss off Stalin. Stalin supported Mao only when it became obvious that Mao is winning in 1949. Up to that point he had support Kuomintang because he wanted to bet on a winner.

ComChi used to start the game in a war against KMT but even with better than historical troops, fortifications and hostile terrain, KMT still managed to often overwhelm them. If not, the KMT AI did not cope against Japan AI at all because it was concentrating forces against ChiComs. I haven't checked but I thought a human ComChi can start the war again - definitely there's an event chain for it related to the Marco Polo incident.

Look at for example on WWI war. The neutrality and threat was low between both countries.

What are you talking about?

 

[Rostere]

Wow, there are so many historical misconceptions in this thread. I mean, HoI 3 is not a perfect game but it hardly deserves this treatment...

 

[almondblight]

Scripted events were reduced because that's what most players wanted - that was Pdox's reasoning. I didn't agree and still don't. Of course it would be brilliant if the game was sandboxy enough that you could replay history exactly through pure game mechanics without scripting but that's a pipe dream.

I haven't played HOI2, but I think having the game be unscripted works well enough so far. It just needs some improvements. What's wrong with Paradox adding certain high threat levels between some countries to nudge them closer to war? So Ecuador and Peru, or Vichy France and Thailand, would go to war maybe 2/3's of the time, but not always.

I also think it'd be an improvement if raising the threat level of a certain country could be done quicker than lowering neutrality, and done domestically. That'd both be more realistic and make the game more interesting.

And again, one of the things that minor powers really need to make them playable is a faster speed. As it is, you spending 95% of the time staring at the screen waiting for something to happen.

 

[Raghar]

you can't have chiang kai shek to piss off Molotov/Stalin

He didn't piss off Stalin. Stalin supported Mao only when it became obvious that Mao is winning in 1949. Up to that point he had support Kuomintang because he wanted to bet on a winner.

Of course he didn't pissed the Stalin historically, but we are talking about strategy game. Which doesn't allow chiang kai shek to piss off anyone, and prevents China to go to any war which wasn't scripted. What would happen to HOI3 when Japan will NOT go to war with China.

ComChi used to start the game in a war against KMT but even with better than historical troops, fortifications and hostile terrain, KMT still managed to often overwhelm them. If not, the KMT AI did not cope against Japan AI at all because it was concentrating forces against ChiComs.

That's because they chosen gamistic approach "all or nothing", and created exposed flanks. Thus they were mauled, as they should be. If HOI 3 would be more detailed, these gamistic approaches would work less. But considering AI is all or nothing, there is no psychmodeling and developers sucks strategically, it's unlikely these main problems would disappear.

Look at for example on WWI war. The neutrality and threat was low between both countries.

What are you talking about?

Serbia caused war that wouldn't happen when someone would use HOI 3 game system. Neutrality was somewhat high, mutual threat was bellow levels that would permit a war.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Scripted events were reduced because that's what most players wanted - that was Pdox's reasoning. I didn't agree and still don't. Of course it would be brilliant if the game was sandboxy enough that you could replay history exactly through pure game mechanics without scripting but that's a pipe dream.

I haven't played HOI2, but I think having the game be unscripted works well enough so far. It just needs some improvements. What's wrong with Paradox adding certain high threat levels between some countries to nudge them closer to war? So Ecuador and Peru, or Vichy France and Thailand, would go to war maybe 2/3's of the time, but not always.

I also think it'd be an improvement if raising the threat level of a certain country could be done quicker than lowering neutrality, and done domestically. That'd both be more realistic and make the game more interesting.

And again, one of the things that minor powers really need to make them playable is a faster speed. As it is, you spending 95% of the time staring at the screen waiting for something to happen.

Actually the thing minors need the most is having slightly IC, more Resources and at least viable Leadership. Generally the main issue is that at the 3-4 Leadership most minors get, you aren't going to do jack. It's not enough for basic tech progression, or even army expanding. Not to mention this leads to a lot of ahistorical things in the long run. The root cause is that Leadership isn't a linear curve in effect, the difference of 1 Leadership can get exponential due to how research and other uses for it work. This is made worse further by the fact that leadership improvements are percentage based, leading to absurd bullshit.

The ideal situation is: Smaller countries have Leadership to spare and are able to maintain a highly efficient army a lot more easily than superpowers, but will run into troubles if tech research is spread out too thin.

Current situation is: Germany researches everything, minors operate at Great War tech level.


Issue in Hearts of Iron 3 is not that the mechanics or anything underlying, or the structure of events and decisions, is flawed. The thing wrong with it is that it's first and foremost Nazi Germany Conquers The World: The Game. The game design is clearly prioritized around the player being Germany.

 

[almondblight]

Actually the thing minors need the most is having slightly IC, more Resources and at least viable Leadership. Generally the main issue is that at the 3-4 Leadership most minors get, you aren't going to do jack. It's not enough for basic tech progression, or even army expanding. Not to mention this leads to a lot of ahistorical things in the long run. The root cause is that Leadership isn't a linear curve in effect, the difference of 1 Leadership can get exponential due to how research and other uses for it work. This is made worse further by the fact that leadership improvements are percentage based, leading to absurd bullshit.

I can only speak of my experience with Ecuador, but I felt like my IC, resources, and leadership were comparable to what Ecuador should have. It's not much, but it should be enough to fight a war with Peru, if it didn't take me years to bring about such a war. The bigger problem for me was that there wasn't a way to speed up the time any faster. I think the first factory or two I tried making took around two years of game time to make. I had almost nothing to do during that time, and it took forever for something to actually happen. I had to start running the game in the background with the auto-pause on and checking on it every few minutes. There should be a jump to auto-pause option, or at least the option to speed up the game a lot more.

Issue in Hearts of Iron 3 is not that the mechanics or anything underlying, or the structure of events and decisions, is flawed. The thing wrong with it is that it's first and foremost Nazi Germany Conquers The World: The Game. The game design is clearly prioritized around the player being Germany.

Well, that's the thing, the minors right now are getting the shaft. There are plenty of good ideas in the game, but the implementation is a little wonky.

Anyway, the more I read, the more it seems like Paradox is mostly in agreement about some of these issues, even if the solutions aren't there/are implemented poorly. For you guys who played HOI2, how was having claims to an area implemented? The way I'm reading it now, it's implemented similar to my suggestion above - a country with a claim to a territory is free to move troops into it (at least according to this). The problem is that it doesn't work in HOI3, from what I've seen (and things like Ecuador's claim for Iquitos doesn't exist). Also, it seems like they put in arbitrary neutrality at the start for different countries (good), but the numbers don't make sense. The UK has a 90% neutrality? The US has a 100%?

If they fixed these up a bit, bumped up the relative threat level of different countries (and changed the formula a bit - geographical proximity should have _much_ more weight), and brought back (?) claims, then that would solve a lot of the "going to war issues" I raised (or even if the current event triggered like it's supposed to).