Hearts of Iron 3 Tips (SF, FtM, TfH)

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Dunno if ICE fixed that (ICE at the very least does plenty to fix Finland), it's really just that Poland campaigns tend to have a teensy problem (Axis Poland aside):

You either lose quick, or you win and cut WW2 short.

 

[Average Manatee]

HPP has a decision to call in the draft for nations. Poland's manpower rate goes up to about 500 manpower a month for two months. Can be done a second time, but you'll get hefty economic penalties. Works pretty well and avoids the problem of Germany getting too much manpower if you buffed the Polish resource nodes.

Winning vs Germany as Poland just means you get to fight the Soviet Union in about 2-3 years.

 

[Ivar the Boner]

Well, I'll be fucking damned. Puppeting Romania WAS a good idea afterall. Finally, ze Germans arrived and soviets seems to be moving most of their troops to Romania because they launched only two offensives on me in last month and both failed. At least I hope that they are concentrating on romania because I'm running out of potato to reinforce my divisions.

Also, Latvia is still around, not giving a fuck and shit.

 

[Humppaleka]

Just necro's this thread to ask if there is now any point in playing vanilla, or just go straight for Black ICE or some other mod? Never played HoI games before.

 

[Average Manatee]

HoI3 w/ expansions is a fine game. Most mods add flavor/diverging history paths/autism, but at its core HoI3 is a war game and mods tend to do far worse than vanilla balance-wise.

Also Black ICE is bad.

 

[Panzeroo]

Being the lead developer of Black ICE I occasionally come across people like you who whinge about the mod. After pressing them further it becomes very obvious that they either totally fail at being able to understand how the mod works , and/ or are basically just attention seekers. Its worth noting at this point that Black ICE has been in development for about 3 years and carried over from Diday's ICE from 2009. A lot of people have put time and effort into the mod, its free, and you don't need to play it.
Invariably the people who claim Black ICE is bad are unable to deal with the added complexity and difficulty in the mod. They invariably don't like losing to the AI and invariably have little in the way of constructive criticism.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

 

[Raghar]

It would be nice when lead developer would actually at least say what's that mod and more importantly what are these awesome features.

 

[Panzeroo]

Google is your friend there Though here are some links for the mod.
http://www.moddb.com/mods/black-ice
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Black-ICE-Mod-for-Hearts-Of-Iron-3/362588367155410
http://blackicemod.com/
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?467-BlackICE

Basically Black ICE is a total overhaul of HOI3 TFH and adds a massive amount of new content from 100's of new units, 100's of new techs, 1000's of new events and a radical overhaul of how the game is played. Its easily the most popular mod for HOI3 TFH.

 

[mondblut]

...not to mention arbitrary 1000% bonuses to anything the players were outed as being successful against in a previous version.

 

[Ulminati]

Being the lead developer of Black ICE I occasionally come across people like you who whinge about the mod. After pressing them further it becomes very obvious that they either totally fail at being able to understand how the mod works , and/ or are basically just attention seekers. Its worth noting at this point that Black ICE has been in development for about 3 years and carried over from Diday's ICE from 2009. A lot of people have put time and effort into the mod, its free, and you don't need to play it.
Invariably the people who claim Black ICE is bad are unable to deal with the added complexity and difficulty in the mod. They invariably don't like losing to the AI and invariably have little in the way of constructive criticism.

Being a poster on RPG Codex I occasionally come across modders like you who whinge about people having an opinion different from their own. After pressing them further it becomes very obvious that they either totally fail at being able to explain why the mod is worth playing , and/ or are basically just butthurt. It's worth noting at this point the RPG Codex has been around for about 12 years and has upset many primadonnas in the past. A lot of people have made many insigntful comments on the forums, we practice free speech, and you don't need to be here if you can't handle that.
Invariably the modders who sign up just because of a single forum comment are unable to deal with people not worshipping them as the second coming of Jesus. They invariably get upset and have little in the way of value to add to the thread.

 

[Panzeroo]

I was simply responding to the above comment " Black ICE is bad". The guy is entitled to his view as much as you are to your slight attempt at being witty (hint, its probably not your strong point). However I can easily point out why the mod is worth playing as much as what I will say its a mod so it makes zero difference as to whether you play it or not to anyone. I certainly didn't attack anyone's free speech.
I am adding to the thread proper information about a mod for HOI3, such as links to mod info and willing to answer questions about the mod. If you have a problem with that you could try asking some proper questions about the mod as it relates to the thread. Blabbering about butthurting and jesus doesn't add anything to the thread.

 

[Ninjerk]

No, but it clearly rustles your jimmies.

 

[Cassidy]

Sure, Poland cannot into plausibly winning WW2 but losing because of such arbitrary and gigantic AI bonuses, including also nigh-impenetrable armor rating for even German MOTs , it simply isn't fun.

This makes the worst AI cheats in ubik's Magna Mundi Ultimate reasonable in comparison.

 

[Panzeroo]

Its not really AI cheating in that sense. There are modifiers in place for the German blitzkrieg which are also in the vanilla game. By themselves these won't make the Germans unstoppable. It is possible for example to halt the Germans as France despite the German blitzkrieg bonus. However with Poland its a different matter. They are going to be far behind in tech levels and quality of units. The German motorised units consist of some armor units. You can see in that screenshot the armor value is only 9.8. That's not all that high and if the Polish unit had some decent AT it would negate the armor value. However failure todo so is very nasty. So here we have a highly exoerienced well led Motorised unit with armor component conducting a breakthrough against an infantry unit in a plains province. Its an unfair fight whichever way you look at it.
The main modifier in that list is the effect of territorial pride. This functions as a multipler of other values so in combination it can be very high. this isn't only for the AI. A German player will also benefit from a high TP during this time frame. An invasion of Germany in 1939 isn't going to be much fun for the attacker.
In any case the modifers for BICE are very high across the board. Most values have been amped up. that basically means if you make mistakes you pay for it more. The AI is included in this. Where it does get extra bonuses is dependant on the difficulty levels and in certain situations. For example the soviet AI during the winter of 1941 gains some hefty bonuses over the german player. This is designed to blunt a players attack and allow the soviet AI to recover and allow the war to drag out into 1942. Without it very little prevents a player from finishing the soviets off without any trouble at the end of Barbarssa. Unfortunatley the AI in HOI3 isn't good enough to survive Barbarossa and recover enough to present any challenge.

The mod is fun once you realise you have to use certain units in certain ways with certain combinations. Stick some decent AT guns in that infantry division and defend behind a river or in a forest. It still probably won't go well for Poland. But some people have reported surviving into 1940.

 

[drew sharpe]

Being the lead developer of Black ICE I occasionally come across people like you who whinge about the mod. After pressing them further it becomes very obvious that they either totally fail at being able to understand how the mod works , and/ or are basically just attention seekers. Its worth noting at this point that Black ICE has been in development for about 3 years and carried over from Diday's ICE from 2009. A lot of people have put time and effort into the mod, its free, and you don't need to play it.
Invariably the people who claim Black ICE is bad are unable to deal with the added complexity and difficulty in the mod. They invariably don't like losing to the AI and invariably have little in the way of constructive criticism.

Being a poster on RPG Codex I occasionally come across modders like you who whinge about people having an opinion different from their own. After pressing them further it becomes very obvious that they either totally fail at being able to explain why the mod is worth playing , and/ or are basically just butthurt. It's worth noting at this point the RPG Codex has been around for about 12 years and has upset many primadonnas in the past. A lot of people have made many insigntful comments on the forums, we practice free speech, and you don't need to be here if you can't handle that.
Invariably the modders who sign up just because of a single forum comment are unable to deal with people not worshipping them as the second coming of Jesus. They invariably get upset and have little in the way of value to add to the thread.

Hmm, I wouldn't think that HOI3 would be on a RPG forum, but I can understand how BlackICE ended up here since many of the posts I've read about it are from people that enjoy it for the immersion factor that it allows. Now what caused me to post, and this will likely be my only post here ever, is: way to be a shit and welcome a new person to this forum. He has 4 posts and your way of greeting him is to be an ass and claim he's butthurt. Have you ever played the mod? If not what makes you think you have an opinion that matters about it? I got it, you must be psychic or omniscient, allowing you to judge what ye know not.

Wait that theory has a flaw, if you were either of those two things, you would have known I was going to join and post this, so you would have had a rebuttal already waiting for me prior to my post. OK so we can rule out you having a gift to see the future or have knowledge of all, so that must leave... you made an assumption. Oh dear.... If I was to guess by your post and your signature, you have 14889 posts on this forum that are worthless (you currently have 14,892)

 

[Humppaleka]

 

[Panzeroo]

whats with the obsession with butthurting here :D ? I mean each to their own but surely a little bit of variation from that part of the anatomy is healthy ? What about boob hurt ? or long legs hurt ?

 

[Ulminati]

Drive-by butthurt.

At least the primadonna modder made an actual attempt to explain why his mod is "good". ("We gave the AI a bunch of arbitrary huge bonuses to punish the player if he doesn't play exactly the way we want him to"). It's not a very convincing argument, but partial points for trying.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Its not really AI cheating in that sense. There are modifiers in place for the German blitzkrieg which are also in the vanilla game. By themselves these won't make the Germans unstoppable. It is possible for example to halt the Germans as France despite the German blitzkrieg bonus. However with Poland its a different matter. They are going to be far behind in tech levels and quality of units. The German motorised units consist of some armor units. You can see in that screenshot the armor value is only 9.8. That's not all that high and if the Polish unit had some decent AT it would negate the armor value. However failure todo so is very nasty. So here we have a highly exoerienced well led Motorised unit with armor component conducting a breakthrough against an infantry unit in a plains province. Its an unfair fight whichever way you look at it.
The main modifier in that list is the effect of territorial pride. This functions as a multipler of other values so in combination it can be very high. this isn't only for the AI. A German player will also benefit from a high TP during this time frame. An invasion of Germany in 1939 isn't going to be much fun for the attacker.
In any case the modifers for BICE are very high across the board. Most values have been amped up. that basically means if you make mistakes you pay for it more. The AI is included in this. Where it does get extra bonuses is dependant on the difficulty levels and in certain situations. For example the soviet AI during the winter of 1941 gains some hefty bonuses over the german player. This is designed to blunt a players attack and allow the soviet AI to recover and allow the war to drag out into 1942. Without it very little prevents a player from finishing the soviets off without any trouble at the end of Barbarssa. Unfortunatley the AI in HOI3 isn't good enough to survive Barbarossa and recover enough to present any challenge.

The mod is fun once you realise you have to use certain units in certain ways with certain combinations. Stick some decent AT guns in that infantry division and defend behind a river or in a forest. It still probably won't go well for Poland. But some people have reported surviving into 1940.

I haven't played BICE in a while, so I'd like a little clarifications on a couple of things:

So I've heard that Artillery nowadays is halfway a frontline brigade instead of a pure support brigade as usually. Some here have claimed that this is highly exploitable due to Artillery's inherent qualities. True?

Additionally, this was a bit of a pet peeve of mine, but does the AI for all nations now research Ministry of Information tech? I used to at first manually use the console to switch around and make the AI nations that normally don't do this do it, since without it in VII you'd reach a point where all but the handful of nations that do research the tech are completely paralyzed by the need to produce Consumer Goods due to having four heavy Dissent penalties. Eventually I just set the penalty to being player only, to save myself the trouble of the prior method.

 

[Panzeroo]

Drive-by butthurt.

At least the primadonna modder made an actual attempt to explain why his mod is "good". ("We gave the AI a bunch of arbitrary huge bonuses to punish the player if he doesn't play exactly the way we want him to"). It's not a very convincing argument, but partial points for trying.

point to me where I said the player is punished by AI bonuses for not playing how we want the player to ? Fact is BICE is very open ended, however it is set within the historical parameters. In that sense you could describe BICE as being a historical immersion mod, or even historical fiction. It sets the broad outlines, and you get to respond to that. For example its full of historical events with various triggers. You have a few options to decide with each event and this then effects other things. The mod goes beyond this by introducing a definite role playing element. The player has unique national focus options for each year to choose from, and unique national espionage options. Each choice will change how your nation copes in the years to come. Its easy to make mistakes but also opens up a lot of different strategies. The correct strategy can result in winning easily enough, though this may not be at all historical. So for example you can play as Germany and role play the various paranoias Hitler and his ministers and thus lose badly.
However despite the butthurt weirdness claimed here I will say there are no arbitrary huge AI bonuses. to claim this is simply showing your ignorance of the mod. Sorry for any butt hurting you might otherwise enjoy fantasying about here.

 

[Panzeroo]

Its not really AI cheating in that sense. There are modifiers in place for the German blitzkrieg which are also in the vanilla game. By themselves these won't make the Germans unstoppable. It is possible for example to halt the Germans as France despite the German blitzkrieg bonus. However with Poland its a different matter. They are going to be far behind in tech levels and quality of units. The German motorised units consist of some armor units. You can see in that screenshot the armor value is only 9.8. That's not all that high and if the Polish unit had some decent AT it would negate the armor value. However failure todo so is very nasty. So here we have a highly exoerienced well led Motorised unit with armor component conducting a breakthrough against an infantry unit in a plains province. Its an unfair fight whichever way you look at it.
The main modifier in that list is the effect of territorial pride. This functions as a multipler of other values so in combination it can be very high. this isn't only for the AI. A German player will also benefit from a high TP during this time frame. An invasion of Germany in 1939 isn't going to be much fun for the attacker.
In any case the modifers for BICE are very high across the board. Most values have been amped up. that basically means if you make mistakes you pay for it more. The AI is included in this. Where it does get extra bonuses is dependant on the difficulty levels and in certain situations. For example the soviet AI during the winter of 1941 gains some hefty bonuses over the german player. This is designed to blunt a players attack and allow the soviet AI to recover and allow the war to drag out into 1942. Without it very little prevents a player from finishing the soviets off without any trouble at the end of Barbarssa. Unfortunatley the AI in HOI3 isn't good enough to survive Barbarossa and recover enough to present any challenge.

The mod is fun once you realise you have to use certain units in certain ways with certain combinations. Stick some decent AT guns in that infantry division and defend behind a river or in a forest. It still probably won't go well for Poland. But some people have reported surviving into 1940.

I haven't played BICE in a while, so I'd like a little clarifications on a couple of things:

So I've heard that Artillery nowadays is halfway a frontline brigade instead of a pure support brigade as usually. Some here have claimed that this is highly exploitable due to Artillery's inherent qualities. True?

Additionally, this was a bit of a pet peeve of mine, but does the AI for all nations now research Ministry of Information tech? I used to at first manually use the console to switch around and make the AI nations that normally don't do this do it, since without it in VII you'd reach a point where all but the handful of nations that do research the tech are completely paralyzed by the need to produce Consumer Goods due to having four heavy Dissent penalties. Eventually I just set the penalty to being player only, to save myself the trouble of the prior method.

Artillery and in fact all units have some degree of frontage. So you can in fact defend with just an AT unit. However the difference is such a unit will likely vaporise due to low strength very quickly. Artillery was open to an exploit in previous versions of the mod due to its high soft attack value. So basically the best division was all artillery with an AT unit. However this has been squashed by giving artillery more frontage and less strength. It means you can't "fit" many of those artillery only divisions in a battle and they will vaporise quickly. So all you will do it send those types of divisions to die one by one.
If I follow you correctly about the minister of information tech, as in the general secretary events ? These have been removed completely. Mainly due to the disadvantage to AI nations !

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

If I follow you correctly about the minister of information tech, as in the general secretary events ? These have been removed completely. Mainly due to the disadvantage to AI nations !

General Secretary controls X (good riddance, personally I don't particularly like completely random variables), and the more predictable triggered modifier where a nation gets a -3% dissent penalty (four of them that stack) after X battles (100, 250, 500, 1000 battles IIRC), which is also influenced by the same tech (rather, you need X value in the tech to prevent the penalty modifier). End result was that most AI nations were spending 80% of their IC on consumer goods just to avoid dissent spiraling out of control, since only Germany, UK (not sure about UK, actually), USA and USSR AIs actually researched the tech.

EDIT: Actually, other questions:

Does Finland have a special national focus decision yet?

Have the Leader and Minister pools for smaller nations been expanded?

Do Reichskoms have larger minister pools?

Have you included or thought of including a list of used ID ranges for events, leaders, ministers, et al to give a little help for personalizing one's own copy of the mod?


I'm not even going to ask if you've managed to make democracy HoS HoG selections make more sense, or elections in general making more sense, since that's just impossible given how HoI3 is innately geared towards being one-party dictatorships and one-party democracies game .

 

[WhiskeyWolf]

Oi, butthurt-mod-diva. I would ask you not to post NSFW shit without the spoiler tag... or at all.

 

[Panzeroo]

sorry I am new here and didn't realise the spoiler trick could be used. I wouldn't normally post that sort of stuff anyway, the butt hurt name calling made me think of that painting for some reason.