Hearts of Iron IV - The Ultimate WWII Strategy Game

[Chef_Hathaway]

All I can say is HoI 4 better have fucking "Support Attack" as an order again. Who the fuck thought taking out support attack would improve anything. It makes microing combat -THAT- much more tedious because I have to cancel all the move orders of each unit that I don't want to dogpile a single province. Fuck.

Fucking HoI 3 and me wanting to like it but not being able to because of all the inane and/or outright dumb design choices. I love how they redid the tech tree, I love they way you can at least try to persuade neutral countries into ahistorical alliances, but goddamn the actual combat part of it is tedious as fuck compared to HoI 2.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Dude, HoI3 *has* Support Attack order.

 

[Chef_Hathaway]

Dude, HoI3 *has* Support Attack order.

Where? I have never seen it. I'm probably just retarded but it always eluded me and was one of the reasons I stopped playing.

Edit: Well, apparently it isn't in the little pop-up order thing, you have to control + right click to do it. But I have to ask why it was removed from that?

In HoI 2, every order you could give popped up when you ordered an attack on a province, yet in this, they added an extra step to seeing every option. I know it's nitpicking, but it's seriously the small things in this game that add up to me disliking it.

 

[Kane]

OH FUCK GUYS MY LITTLE POPUP IS GONE ALL IS SHIT NOW

 

[mondblut]

Any game where I can be the fucking Hitler and wipe vatnikostan from the map is awesome in my book. They are like jerking off to porn, except better.

 

[Chef_Hathaway]

OH FUCK GUYS MY LITTLE POPUP IS GONE ALL IS SHIT NOW

Well there are many other things that are wrong with HoI 3, that's just one that irked me more than others.

I didn't say I hated it, I like what they did with the tech and diplo systems, the changes to air groups on carriers were also welcome, but the combat as a whole was tedious and pretty much made you want to set it to AI control.

Which makes playing the game kind of pointless seeing as that is its focus.

 

[Whisky]

Dude, HoI3 *has* Support Attack order.

Where? I have never seen it. I'm probably just retarded but it always eluded me and was one of the reasons I stopped playing.

Edit: Well, apparently it isn't in the little pop-up order thing, you have to control + right click to do it. But I have to ask why it was removed from that?

In HoI 2, every order you could give popped up when you ordered an attack on a province, yet in this, they added an extra step to seeing every option. I know it's nitpicking, but it's seriously the small things in this game that add up to me disliking it.

Actually, I never knew about Support Attack in HoI3 either. That would have improved my time with it immensely. Though I actually did like HoI3 and play it a lot before I gave Darkest Hour a try.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Sometimes I find it hard to play Kaiserreich after a HoI3 binge. It's just that HoI2 on a basic level is too much of a pure numbers game, it just doesn't provide the same support for force multipliers and chokepoints that HoI3 does.

 

[GarfunkeL]

How did you SR your troops? Let me guess, you never did.

 

[Corporate_Jew_Master]

Sometimes I find it hard to play Kaiserreich after a HoI3 binge. It's just that HoI2 on a basic level is too much of a pure numbers game, it just doesn't provide the same support for force multipliers and chokepoints that HoI3 does.

DH IS chokepoints. And CAS.

But yeah, KR needs the new map upgrade with the shitton of new provinces. Ever since I tried it out and I never had the urge to glance at HOI3 again.

 

[GarfunkeL]

But with more provinces, you kinda need the new division system as well, and that requires fiddling with manpower and IC values.

 

[KoolNoodles]

Been out of the loop, so HoI3 is dead development-wise? For some reason I was expecting another expansion to tie up the loose ends or expand upon it. Oh well. Too used to CK2 DLC I guess.

 

[Renegen]

Looks like you guys were playing HOI3 wrong, stick to Japan like me and its naval combat gameplay and you won't have to deal with micromanagement hell.

But maybe HOI4 can make playing as the Third Reich more fun, above all they need to do something about air combat IMO, fucking Britain permanently sends waves of those flies at you and no matter how many you swat they keep coming back because it costs them nothing. And maybe bombing can also be improved while we're at it, if not I'll stick to Japan again.

 

[GarfunkeL]

Learn2play.

Put fighter groups over all four UK airfields in southern England. They will intercept and maul all Allied planes trying to take-off. If you can spare the IC, you can keep an extra group on intercept duty over Reich itself, in case CAG's or the Strats actually get through at some point. You'll take some losses while the "Their Finest Hour" bonus is helping the RAF, but once that is gone - and you have kept up with tech & doctrines - Luftwaffe can easily keep RAF permanently grounded.

If you really want to ruin them, build 2 STR of your own. With RAF forced to stay on their fields, those can freely ruin the IC of most of UK, and you don't even need to research their doctrines. You can easily leave this whole operation on its own while you focus on Barbarossa.

Now if you couple that with U-boat wolfpacks, the UK IC will be wholly devoted to building convoys, with what little they have remaining. Even USA Lend-Lease won't lift them out of that swamp, and it also means that AI Italy should succeed in conquering North-Africa and Middle-East.

 

[Spectacle]

Learn2play.

Put fighter groups over all four UK airfields in southern England. They will intercept and maul all Allied planes trying to take-off. If you can spare the IC, you can keep an extra group on intercept duty over Reich itself, in case CAG's or the Strats actually get through at some point. You'll take some losses while the "Their Finest Hour" bonus is helping the RAF, but once that is gone - and you have kept up with tech & doctrines - Luftwaffe can easily keep RAF permanently grounded.

The Germans tried to do this IRL, but British radar fucked them up. The RAF knew exactly what the Luftwaffe were doing at all times, and were never around to be intercepted by any Luftwaffe formation large enough to be a threat, and always there to shoot down any vulnerable flights.

 

[GarfunkeL]

Yeah, I know. It's also because Fighter Command soon realized that it's not worth it to fight German fighters, when they come out to play, and only hit German bombers. The UK AI obviously does not do that. You can keep TAC/CAS/NAV safely away while your INT grinds the RAF down. Make a stack of four INT with a skill 3/4 general. With specialist training and up-to-date doctrines, the radar bonus will not help Brits enough. Just make sure you have 5 or preferably 6 INT groups in France/Belgium/Netherlands, so when one stack gets hurt, you can rotate them.

If the Brits had done that in real life, the numerical superiority and equal skill & technical levels of Germans would have killed Fighter Command. Even as it was, the bombing raids against airfields and radar stations, which the RAF had to respond to, almost succeeded - if not for Hitler's famous decision to switch over to bombing London/industry/docks, to which Luftwaffe was ill-suited.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Another plan one can try, should one be willing to swallow a minimum 100 IC risk pill, is dropping paratroops to one of the channel ports to establish a way to effectively invade the island. TPs can ship panzers and other stronger divisions over faster than the AI Royal Navy can intercept them if they simply zig-zag troops from a French port to Plymouth or something. And should the goddamn Italians have actually managed to be useful at that time, it's entirely possible with a strategic bombing campaign to make Britain fall before US joins the Allies, even if it's very tough.

 

[GarfunkeL]

Yeah, I hate doing a sneaky ninja-Sealion because it relies on the AI being incapable of intercepting transports efficiently, or of Royal Navy maintaining an actual blockade of Channel. At least now you have the amphibious invasion delay, so you need to use para's and UK AI usually is good enough to garrison the ports.

So I leave UK alone, except for Luftwaffe, until I've dealt with the USSR and only commence Sealion after the Royal Navy has been driven off the British Isles. Which is a good tactic anyway, as USSR always declares war on you when you occupy London.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

At best I've only managed to coincide Barbarossa and Flying Seelöwe, and even then only once. After TFH, UK AI is much better at maintaining military strength on the isles instead of shipping everyone to the colonies, so you need much more careful production coordination to have enough troops to relentlessly advance on both fronts (heck, usually I have to start producing the immense Barbarossa infantry+artillery+AT mainline already in 1939 for it to be anywhere near ready to push deep).

Has anyone ever tried using spies to cause Nazi-Kwa by supporting German-American Bund? Or better yet, succeeded?

One thing that's become a bit of an annoyance in my latest Japan campaign on ICE has been how hard it's to try and join the Allies instead of ze Germans. So far the course of the war has at best been co-belligerence against the Soviets; which incidentally made me realize that the Soviet surrender's Japanese swag is nothing but "thanks a lot asshole" level loot, the territory is almost worthless outside of Irkutsk fur and without core adding it's nothing but a hindrance. Beyond that I also noted that the same problem is faced by the Japanese puppet states that can be expanded, since their expansion does NOT grant them cores, which kinda defeats the entire purpose of expanding them since the puppet states could never effectively keep the uppity rebels down without your help so you might as well keep all the swag and build some much-needed roads.

 

[GarfunkeL]

Nazi-Kwa only worked for me in vanilla, though I haven't even tried in FTM or TFH.

 

[Whisky]

Has anyone ever tried using spies to cause Nazi-Kwa by supporting German-American Bund? Or better yet, succeeded?

It's actually really easy to get one of the autocratic parties elected to the USA, it just takes time and only prioritizing the USA. Unfortunately, it's often too late and by the time it happens, they'll agree to get dragged into the war on the Allies side.

 

[Renegen]

I turn the USA into nazis most games as Japan so I only have 1 navy to deal with, the AI unfortunately doesn't react to the whole Pacific being swallowed up by the Japanese Empire. My last game I was finally ready to face the US navy and have a 2 front war, I had everything planned out years in advance, 8 carrier fleets, a clear research strategy focused on speed and firepower, radars ready in advance, whole marine corps and their logistics but unfortunately the mod that I was running caused the game to crash every hour and that run has been... scuttled.

 

[Average Manatee]

Has anyone ever tried using spies to cause Nazi-Kwa by supporting German-American Bund? Or better yet, succeeded?

It's quite easy to get the USA fascist either through elections or coups, but what's hard is getting it down to your corner of the influence triangle before Japan hits the Pearl Harbor button which sends them to the Allies instantly. You can avoid that by not allowing Japan to join the Axis though.

One fun trick to know is that Japan actually starts the game with a huge democratic party organization, so the Allies can pretty easily coup Japan and have them eventually join the Allies without a shot fired and with a paltry amount of leadership investment. And of course France is always pretty easy change parties in, though you can't get them out of the Allies with an election.

The main thing to know about using spies to Lower National Unity or Support Party is that enemy spies WILL counter your effects (unless you are supporting your party and their national unity is shit, they will prioritize NU, see: France) and their spies are more efficient at the actions than you are, so you always need to counterespionage at around 40% if not 60% for nations with a huge amount of leadership (AI always invests leadership into spies proportional to their total leadership, at about 5% IIRC). And effects that give +counterespionage help a ton. +counterintelligence is useless. Not sure about +espionage bonuses, might only improve the specific missions or your overall espionage.

One thing that's become a bit of an annoyance in my latest Japan campaign on ICE has been how hard it's to try and join the Allies instead of ze Germans. So far the course of the war has at best been co-belligerence against the Soviets; which incidentally made me realize that the Soviet surrender's Japanese swag is nothing but "thanks a lot asshole" level loot, the territory is almost worthless outside of Irkutsk fur and without core adding it's nothing but a hindrance. Beyond that I also noted that the same problem is faced by the Japanese puppet states that can be expanded, since their expansion does NOT grant them cores, which kinda defeats the entire purpose of expanding them since the puppet states could never effectively keep the uppity rebels down without your help so you might as well keep all the swag and build some much-needed roads.

Seriously, stop playing ICE. It's horrible. It's shit. It's one of the worst mods ever made and it screws up just about everything it touches. Play HPP if you want a decent HoI3 mod, it has some allowances for alt-history and Japan has the 2-26 coup which IIRC can turn it into Constitutional Monarchy and very Ally-leaning.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

GarfunkeL gimme an expert's hand here. I'm refining the post-German victory in the East decisions and events for setting up Greater Finland, and I was wondering something regarding the political situation of the time. Since sources are scarce, I haven't figured out if the situation would have been more favourable to Kokoomus or IKL (you can also weigh in on whether or not hypothetical Estonian vote would have swung things either way).

 

[GarfunkeL]

IKL was pretty much dead by then. Mäntsälän kapina and how it was put down destroyed their credibility. So Kokoomus would have been the party to benefit most from that. Estonia should not become part of Greater Finland. To my knowledge, no-one serious ever even suggested it, and throughout '41-'44 Estonians kept asking Finns to lobby for them with the Germans, so that Estonia would get independence back, or at least some sort of autonomy. JR200 (the Estonian regiment) would have become the core of the new Estonian army - the plan, that Foreign Ministry had tentatively agreed on, was that the NCO's would be sent to Kadettikoulu and rank-file trained as NCO's, so they could form the cadre of the new independent Estonian military. So, IMHO, Finland annexing Estonia is extremely unrealistic. Kuola peninsula, East Karelia all the way to White Sea, Karelian Isthmus all the way to Leningrad, but that's it. There's that very convenient river line on the HoI3 map, that's close enough to what AKS (Akateeminen Karjala Seura) planned for as the eastern border of Greater Finland. If I play Germany, I make sure to capture all provinces south of that river line and let AI Finland take everything north of it.

Just checked Google Maps, and it's river Svir, running from Ladoga to Onega (Ääninen). Too bad there's no convenient river line from Onega to White Sea, but, IIRC, the provinces work out a fairly straight line or so.