For The Motherland

[Renegen]

And that's not even a good argument. Minor nations like Finland, Romania played a major part in WW2 and had very complex interactions with the major powers. This is not presented well in HOI3. I'd even add Vichy France to the list.

And on my playthroughs with France, England was jacking off not doing anything, not sending any expeditionary force and not building its RAF at all, and the USA was also non-existant. The diplomacy in this game is terrible. If you want coordinated actions between the UK and France, good luck. Basically the game only works if you play a major power that's self sufficient.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Do try out that little mod thingie I whipped up, it should fix a lot of things for Finland and minors in general.

 

[Kosmonaut]

This is a hotfix for the HPP mod.

 

[GarfunkeL]

And on my playthroughs with France, England was jacking off not doing anything, not sending any expeditionary force and not building its RAF at all, and the USA was also non-existant. The diplomacy in this game is terrible. If you want coordinated actions between the UK and France, good luck. Basically the game only works if you play a major power that's self sufficient.

@Renegen
And every time I've played HoI3, UK and Canada send plenty of troops to France and RAF seriously fights to the death with Luftwaffe, also running a strategic bombing campaign at the same time. I'm not even exaggerating at all. I once had Britain stage an amphibious invasion through Wilhemshaven while most of the Wehrmacht was bogged down in France and I don't think Kriegsmarine has ever survived into 1941 as a fighting force. It's wholly unjustified to slam a game this complex when you've played two or three campaigns.

 

[Random Word]

The game really shines in multiplayer, anyway. With ten or more players in an extended campaign it gets very interesting. We had one campaign where Germany and Italy took the Suez, Gibraltar and successfully pulled off Sealion. The Japs won decisively in the Pacific, seized Hawaii, invaded the West coast, seized Panama and launched in invasion near Florida and DC supported by the Germans. At this point the Allies were pretty sure they were done for, but then the USSR declared war on Germany while they had an armoured corps in the US and pushed into German Poland. The US took the opportunity to kick the joint Japanese/German invasion out of North America and proceeded to liberate the UK. The Japanese fleet decisively won again in the Atlantic after sending a large part of their navy through the Suez and the Germans retook the UK and started pushing the USSR back. The Italians invaded Turkey and pushed into the Caucasus. After a year or so of hard fighting the USSR stabilized their lines and the US seized Gibraltar before liberating the UK for the second time. Unfortunately for the beleaguered Americans the Japs were expecting them and kicked their asses at sea in the second major battle of the Atlantic and the game was called in favour of the Axis as the US Navy was pretty much nonexistant and the Americans were too demoralized to push on.

Real players always make the war much more interesting, and it's always wildly different every time. The game where France stonewalled Germany in 1939 and launched an amphibious joint Allied invasion of Italy in 1940 was pretty hilarious.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

The whole thing is gonna be wildly different with human players, especially in regards to France. Though with human players it's pretty much entirely limited to the great powers, since the human GP can easily just resolve any minor nation posing problems by applying overwhelming force (which would be mere fraction of their total).

Actually, you didn't tell how differently France was handled in that campaign. Also, was Motherland used so you'd have British Resistance?

EDIT: I'd be totally teh suck in those games, come to think of it. I'm too into building grandiose plans and taking my time. For example, the one time I've invaded the US as Germany I first built a highly industrialized Nazi Doom Fortress in Greenland as a "staging ground," just for fun.

 

[Erzherzog]

That's why I love to play as Japan. It's a great way to teach you that you need to win and win fast. If you're still building troops during your offensive for your offensive you failed. If you're unable to win with inferior forces in multiple fronts you failed. By 1939 I should be invading India, Siberia, and the Pacific. And it's far better to have an offensive stalled than it is to not launch an offensive at all.

 

[Random Word]

F:tM was used when the UK fell, but the UK player opted to co-op the USA and control his forces in exile. The major difference between the two mentioned campaigns as far as France was concerned was the amount of UK support - the BEF in the game where Germany was stonewalled consisted of 2 full corps of 2xMECH+2xTD reaching a full four by early 1940. Between this and some poor play on the part of both German players they were stalled in the Low Countries, again in Switzlerand, and a third time in the Alps.

Minors are useful in MP, if you have people to run them. Canada can supply some much needed air support for the UK, or produce the better part of an ARM corps. Hungary/Romania/Bulgaria/etc can handle INF requirements for the southern front in Russia effectively, and you get more resources for not occupying them. Minors do have to make heavy use of licensed production runs, though, but this is realistic. Canada just builds the latest UK and US aircraft and tanks, and the Axis minors use Germany or Japan's techs.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Problem is though that (unmodded) due to Leadership constraints the Hungarians and others are completely unable to do the job due to lagging behind on vital doctrines and a large army would decimate their officer ratio in short order.

And I do have to point out that licensed production runs is not completely realistic. More realistic would be if Germany could build the actual hardware and the recipient just chucks up the manpower. Currently there's nothing but possible events to model things like the StuG and Messerschmitt shipments to Finland, for example.

 

[Erzherzog]

Would be nice to see military hardware sales modeled in game. Would also allow countries to make ships for others. Which in turn could lead to drydocks required for large-scale naval building and a general naval overhaul. Would be useful to model post-ww2 situation as well. Funding partisans could allow civil wars to happen, and the U.S. and USSR can fund and equip their idealogy's side. The necessary espionage mechanics are already there anyways.

But I digress. I think I'm getting ahead of myself.

 

[Random Word]

You only need two doctrines for effective infantry - the ORG and Morale INF techs. Everything else is largely irrelevant. Using licensed weapons you only need to be able to keep two techs up to date to have effective INF. Even Hungary can handle that just fine. There are real problems with the game, but leadership allocation to minors isn't very high on the list. The big ones are the air and naval stacking penalty functions being linear and poorly chosen, and the Infrastructure repair function being exponential in the wrong direction - it's actually faster to repair infrastructure from 9 to 10 than it is from 0 to 1, so logistical bombing is really overpowered in MP and has to be heavily regulated.

HoI3's engine isn't really well suited to post WW2, it would really fall apart quickly without a heavy overhaul. While those features would certainly be interesting, you'd be better off suggesting them for HoI4.

 

[Renegen]

Goddamn, that seems like the most epic game ever Random Word. I'm seriously attempting to start a Codex MP game and have our own fun. Doesn't matter if you're not a pro, we'll just put all the pro players in the axis (jk)

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

No can do, I'm too likely to start modding HoI3 whenever I play it.

 

[Random Word]

No can do, I'm too likely to start modding HoI3 whenever I play it.

We did, actually. We weren't satisfied with the base game for MP so we heavily modded the game for our campaigns, and the mod was updated after each game. Contrary to preventing you from playing MP, a desire to mod the game is pretty much a requirement

 

[20 Eyes]

Just started playing this. I like the game a lot so far, even though it makes my free time vanish like I'm playing at maximum speed. I did one campaign as the Irish. I managed to join the Allies and my grand contribution was one division of 9,000 Irishmen fighting alongside the Brits in Africa. I assume at least half of the 'Supplies' was SPF 10,000 sunscreen. The Germans, having nothing better to do, took advantage of my undefended homeland and occupied it. Then they stormed through to London, meeting minimal resistance, and that was that. I managed to pull one transport to Newfoundland and just watched for a while. The US never involved itself and the Axis attacked the Soviets after dealing with the UK, doing major damage and coming close to Moscow until the tide turned and they fell one by one. With the Resistance buildings, I managed to free Ireland from German occupation right before this happened but I was broke and useless and Germany was conquered before I could do anything about it (like get conquered in 10 hours again).

Then I tried a game as Brazil. I appreciated the vastly expanded industrial capacity and built a formidable army and navy, at least compared to my last game. I had 10's of thousands of infantry, an up-to-date light tank division, 8 or so warships and I was anxious to play with it all. I aligned myself with the Allies and waited for my chance to strike. And waited and waited and waited. By 1942 my 'Neutrality' was over 50 and I needed to drop it below 25 to join the fight. It was ticking away at 0.01 per week when I ragequit. I think it would be easier to get Brazil into the Axis, but as a new player I didn't even want to think of the massacre if the US decides to step in. The US did end up joining the allies in this game, so I would've been fucked.

 

[Renegen]

And the USA guarantees every south american nation so it isn't usually a good idea to go Axis with Brazil unless you know what to do.

But did you try everything? FtM has a button at the bottom of the decisions screen called "prepare for war" that rapidly drops your neutrality. Additionally, the way you can enter war is if someone's threat is really high, most likely Japan in that area. You can make their threat higher by sending spies. Just check the diplomacy screen for what nation causes the greatest threat to you. I also thought that if you were part of the Allies, you would automatically declare war on the Axis when it happens.

Finally, in your baby steps for learning the game like you're doing, I'd recommend Australia next. They enjoy America's protection but start the war immediately in 1939 and they are big enough to have a whole carrier fleet at sea. They are a great country to learn naval warfare and island hopping.

 

[20 Eyes]

And the USA guarantees every south american nation so it isn't usually a good idea to go Axis with Brazil unless you know what to do.

But did you try everything? FtM has a button at the bottom of the decisions screen called "prepare for war" that rapidly drops your neutrality. Additionally, the way you can enter war is if someone's threat is really high, most likely Japan in that area. You can make their threat higher by sending spies. Just check the diplomacy screen for what nation causes the greatest threat to you. I also thought that if you were part of the Allies, you would automatically declare war on the Axis when it happens.

Finally, in your baby steps for learning the game like you're doing, I'd recommend Australia next. They enjoy America's protection but start the war immediately in 1939 and they are big enough to have a whole carrier fleet at sea. They are a great country to learn naval warfare and island hopping.

Thanks for the tips. I remembered the Prepare for War decision, but it must've disappeared at some point because it wasn't on the main screen or in the menu. I started a new game to check, and there it was. Maybe I waited too long, but I'll definitely keep that in mind from now on.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

I'm pleased to let you folks know that I've started work on my Industrialization event/decision chain. First test version soon.

EDIT: Scratch that, currently not doable due to there being no IC checking trigger function that would utilize base IC, there's only one for Total IC.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Decided to play a Germany campaign in this before my Sword of Andhaira campaign. So far my best run in HoI3 yet. British Isles invaded completely by 1941, all of Europe (except for Portugal, the pussies) Axis by 1943 and Soviets defeated, Drang Nach Osten satisfied. British capitulate and become a puppet in 1944 after Luftwaffe brings paratrooper to India (a particularly fun moment was a single paratrooper division marching from Calcutta to Bombay to seal victory), Germania Line is finished in 1945 (Land Fort 10 all across the new border with the Soviets), with the grand finale in Winter 1946 when the Kriegsmarine rolls out its fancy new high seas fleets (3 Battleships, 6 Battlecruisers, 6 Carriers, 6 Escort Carriers and 60 Light Cruisers total) and proceeds to land 500,000 troops (20 Marine divisions, rest were the massively bloated Panzer army group that weighed 2092 on the transports), which was followed by nuclear blitzkrieg across the East Coast that made the Americans realize who is the boss on the planet (90%->0% national unity in two nuking runs).

One this I noticed during the run: Using paratroops + Puppet casus belli is almost like cheating, as it allows you to strongarm every smaller country you run across into your alliance without any effort at all. Puppet CB in general rocks.