Hearts of Iron IV - The Ultimate WWII Strategy Game

[mondblut]

Uh, what am I doing wrong?

I went diploaxis as usual, this time succeeded in getting pretty much everybody aboard (except dumb japs ofc, they won't ever drag the real axis into banzaing the rest of the world combined again). In 1942, vatniks DOW muh potatolangist bros, annex L&L (but not Est) and shortly thereafter white peace finland. Finally, almost united Europe facing the goblinoid hordes together (no war with allies, in fact we share a war against crazy japs due to Netherlands being in the axis). Many hundreds of AI divisions, led by 150 elite german motorized divisions (8xmot, ltSPART, ltTD, MArm + 5 supports each).

Then the strange thing happens. I can't fucking advance. Like, at all. A couple of orc infantry divisions can hold fucking 50 divisions attacking them for 6 months on an open plain. My entire military (except for a few divisions left on maginot just in case) was moved to Baltic states, leaving the rest of the front to AI. And in over a year, I barely reached Riga, with a bunch of indestructible pockets of resistance left behind. No matter how many motorized and tank divisions I throw at the orcs, the battle counter is p.much always in the red. My techs are up to date, equipment mostly supplied, generals assigned, wtf? The AI states don't fare much better, their greatest achievements was almost surrounding Odessa. And that's p.much the entire european military east of froglandia (well, Italy and Neth sent some divisions to take pieces of china from the japs, but that's it). On a positive side, the orcs can't do shit either when it comes to attacking. It's like a defender automatically gains +500000% to everything, like in BICE at its most retarded, except anywhere.

So, uh, see the header.

 

[Thane Solus]

Uh, what am I doing wrong?

I went diploaxis as usual, this time succeeded in getting pretty much everybody aboard (except dumb japs ofc, they won't ever drag the real axis into banzaing the rest of the world combined again). In 1942, vatniks DOW muh potatolangist bros, annex L&L (but not Est) and shortly thereafter white peace finland. Finally, almost united Europe facing the goblinoid hordes together (no war with allies, in fact we share a war against crazy japs due to Netherlands being in the axis). Many hundreds of AI divisions, led by 150 elite german motorized divisions (8xmot, ltSPART, ltTD, MArm + 5 supports each).

Then the strange thing happens. I can't fucking advance. Like, at all. A couple of orc infantry divisions can hold fucking 50 divisions attacking them for 6 months on an open plain. My entire military (except for a few divisions left on maginot just in case) was moved to Baltic states, leaving the rest of the front to AI. And in over a year, I barely reached Riga, with a bunch of indestructible pockets of resistance left behind. No matter how many motorized and tank divisions I throw at the orcs, the battle counter is p.much always in the red. My techs are up to date, equipment mostly supplied, generals assigned, wtf? The AI states don't fare much better, their greatest achievements was almost surrounding Odessa. And that's p.much the entire european military east of froglandia (well, Italy and Neth sent some divisions to take pieces of china from the japs, but that's it). On a positive side, the orcs can't do shit either when it comes to attacking. It's like a defender automatically gains +500000% to everything, like in BICE at its most retarded, except anywhere.

So, uh, see the header.

See if they have air superiority, that can fuck an attack real bad, also check those regions width.

 

[Average Manatee]

You're attacking into bad terrain or across rivers or something. Hover over your Soft Attack stat in the combat window to see what is preventing it from fucking shit up.

Are you seriously only using LSPART, and only 1 of it? Dump that shit, spam MSPART to hell and back and make your armored divisions like 50% MSPART. Make sure to enchant make a +5 MSPART of Soft Attack variant.

The way Defense/Breakthrough (which is the defense stat used for offensive actions) work basically means that attacking with anything but armor means you are suffering roughly 3-4x as much damage as you dish out in a 1v1 on even ground. This is because virtually everything has huge defense but only armor has large breakthrough, and if you suffer more than your # of defense/breakthrough attacks per hour then all additional attacks are at 4x strength. The planning bonus somewhat mitigates this.

If you HAVE to attack across rivers or into mountains, use Mountaineers or Marines + Artillery. Usually its simpler to go another way through a stretch of plains, or even do a naval landing. The lack of a terrain mapmode is insanely aggravating and makes it very hard to plan offensives.

 

[Raghar]

Now only new Brazil republic remains. It's too remote from everywhere.

I actually thought I screwed up because Russia lost half Europe from UK and US troops.
Mao has been in Europe twice once against nazi germany, and second time against UK which had obnoxious number of troops and 30000 airplanes. I had half number of divisions than Russia, and we both together had one third of our enemies. But I liberated Leningrad, twice, and then cleaned whole Finland, and raped British raj, then continued to middle east. Which nearly killed all western front because Russia was nearly overrun.

US made landing in eastern Poland and pushed into Russia. Then we caught 50 divisions in Finland, and we reinforced Russia near Latvia. And then we caught some divisions near Latvia, and then we caught about 68 divisions near Crimea. After horrible crazy fight we captured Berlin, again.

 

[Raghar]

Uh, what am I doing wrong?

Git gut.

Do you have AA? I played nearly whole game at +2 with frequent pausing because of how much I was fucked. Also river crossing is bad.
(BTW look at map, do Russia have a mud season?)

 

[Agame]

Uh, what am I doing wrong?

Are you playing as a minor? Because I have no idea how you can be having trouble with the game atm, the AI is totally bugged and does not research tanks, planes or ships beyond 1936 level, and its also spamming out terrible divisions often made of just 6 inf with no support. Its really like taking candy from a retarded lobotomised baby once you hit 1940+.

Just use the "tag" console command to swap to the majors and see what a trainwreck the AI is.

This mod is attempting to fix it: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=704100462&searchtext=research

The game is a bit more interesting when the AI actually builds medium and heavy tanks...

Otherwise if you really are struggling with vanilla version I would say just load up your inf divisions with artillery for high soft attack to counter the AI inf spam, and build a ton of heavy tanks divisions because the AI will have nothing that can actually peirce the armor.

 

[Ulminati]

Heavies + SPART and the blitzkrieg doctrine to give then some org crushes faces.

If you haven't the factories for tanks, rush artillery II (15 def vs 0.2) and make 7 inf + 2 art divisions.

If you're still losing, try switching your controller to a mouse

 

[Talby]

"The battle is expected to be over in 27,237 days."

 

[mondblut]

See if they have air superiority, that can fuck an attack real bad

That might be it.

 

[Destroid]

My game as Italy has taken some interesting turns. The Soviet onslaught seemed like it was going to be too much for Germany to handle, but the AI turned it around (surprisingly the Balkan Axis front held up better), and has been pushing them back since. Japan has totally sucked, being kicked out of China and I'm fighting the Allies (including USA) in Spain, Turkey and Africa. The battles are going alright but my manpower is trickling away...

 

[Thane Solus]

Godam Germanz! i allied with them and now i have to fight on 4 fronts because they are retards. Hitler and his staff were genius, compared to the AI idiocy in this game. Its like they didnt test the AI, fuck it WILL DO IT LIVE! Why test and tweak the AI when you can sell unfinished games even when you have the money and people to do it properly (=QA and polish for peasants). Also Germany and Italy have no Fighters left for about 2 years, i have to do it all by myself wtf, and i am playing a minor. Fuck Paradox!

Its gona be a great game in 2020... Even Grimoire might be released by then...

 

[Raghar]

So a small guide to China. First. These bastards didn't say anything about Nationalist China modifier when you are starting real China. So throwing a lot of correct ideology on Nationalist would cause provinces to defect.

The interesting part is that it's different from start of other nations. In other nations you want do do national focuses fast, in China, you need these 25 points to fabricate claim on Shanxi fast. Then there is a small fun fact about creating another uprising in China. And then there is small problem you have two research slots only. And you are not advanced enough to have artillery.
It has advantage of not building civ factories, because you can capture them from Shanxi.

Basically you need to act with brain.

Actually I wonder how would work that minister that allows shifting to Germany like government. Would it be possible to work with Japan?

 

[Raghar]

Thane Solus What minor?
Low fighters on not UK side is a consequence of bombers being able to kill fighters with ease. It's common knowledge about HOI4.

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/bomber-relative-strength-to-fighters.943061/

 

[mondblut]

See if they have air superiority, that can fuck an attack real bad

That might be it.

Nah. It was I who had air superiority. It's just they have defense over 300 (and I over 500 when on defensive), while attack values rarely cross 100. I've sent 500 more CAS to the front and eventually cleared the baltic states by the end of 1943. Meanwhile, Italy overrun the whole interior China and made Mongolia capitulate (along with grabbing Crimea, Caucasus and Leningrad, lol), and Estonia proclaimed itself the Fourth Position movement, inviting the likes of Afghanistan and Venezuela.

This is fun and all, but I am going back to BICE. There, at least, I don't need 6 months to win a battle for a peasant village.

 

[Raghar]

Nah. It was I who had air superiority. It's just they have defense over 300

I seen defensive value over 1000 in UK infantry. Defense 300 is easy to run over. (It's bit more complicated when you'd have attack 3. China in mountain regions with normal infantry.)

 

[mondblut]

Well, I am not going back to 1936 to spam cheezy HARM+HSPART divisions. If a properly balanced, modern combined arms motorized or tank division designed more or less the way they are actually deployed IRL can't fight shit in this game, it is clearly doing it wrong.

 

[Average Manatee]

Nah. It was I who had air superiority. It's just they have defense over 300 (and I over 500 when on defensive), while attack values rarely cross 100. I've sent 500 more CAS to the front and eventually cleared the baltic states by the end of 1943. Meanwhile, Italy overrun the whole interior China and made Mongolia capitulate (along with grabbing Crimea, Caucasus and Leningrad, lol), and Estonia proclaimed itself the Fourth Position movement, inviting the likes of Afghanistan and Venezuela.

This is fun and all, but I am going back to BICE. There, at least, I don't need 6 months to win a battle for a peasant village.

Well, I am not going back to 1936 to spam cheezy HARM+HSPART divisions. If a properly balanced, modern combined arms motorized or tank division designed more or less the way they are actually deployed IRL can't fight shit in this game, it is clearly doing it wrong.

Everything other than Artillery or SPART has basically no offensive capability in this game. Armor is useless past 1 per division, while MSPART should be spammed to hell since they can have 120+ soft attack each. Don't even worry about HARM/HSPART, it's a complete waste of IC. Stack a lot of MSPART together and you can see in excess of 8k soft attack in a battle.

It's only slightly more dumb than BICE's retarded "I put 1 of everything in a division and have 150% uber l337 combined arms bonus!!1111"

 

[Space Satan]

Half of combat succees is about combat width and how much brigades can you squeeze into battle.

 

[Agame]

Yes if you have way to much piled into a combat you will have massive problems.

As Average Manatee said there is NO need to 'cheese' this game atm, all you need to win is to build medium tanks and put basic artillery in your inf divs. The AI is so crippled it will have nothing to deal with this and you can roflstomp all across the globe.

mondblut if you are having that much trouble with this build of the game then it could be you are really bad at hearts of iron? (Just saying...)

For anyone who actually wants a challenge I highly reccomend that mod I linked, its a bit more interesting when the USSR is actually researching and then building T34s and KV1s.

The biggest issue for me now with the game is the batshit crazy diplomatic AI, almost every game I play the Soviets are at war with the Allies by 1940-41. And Germany keeps declaring war on ALL of scandinavia... and random countries in africa, asia minor... Its almost impossible to have a game go even in a vaguely historical direction.

 

[Spectacle]

Any chance that Paradox will patch this to be an actual WW2 game before 2017? Or will they never do it and modders have to step in?

 

[Anthedon]

The AI using shit division templates should be easily fixable. If Paradox can't get the AI to figure out the division designer they could just manually assign decent templates.

Kaiserreich and a historical WWI mod are in the works, BICE too if I remember correctly.

 

[Space Satan]

Germany getting smashed to pieces by polacks' rebellion and Japs by chinese mobs are garbage. Just making AI to use artillery properly could turn majors into a juggernaught, now, get hardness and art and you can smash nay army, any numbers.

 

[LizardWizard]

The AI using shit division templates should be easily fixable. If Paradox can't get the AI to figure out the division designer they could just manually assign decent templates.

Kaiserreich and a historical WWI mod are in the works, BICE too if I remember correctly.

AI research and division tweaks mod does a decent enough job of fixing the shitastic ai templates and lack of tanks. Though there are other random balance things added that some may or may not agree with.

But as is, the AI is the most fucktarded that I can remember seeing in a major PDS release. There really isn't a point to playing until 1.1.. or more likely after they're back from vacation in two months.

 

[Raghar]

Actually I seen AI using tanks, they did considerable problems to me.

Look what we have here.

 

[XenomorphII]

The ai seems to start deploying more armor and such when it is too late (the late 40s early 50s is where I have noticed the enemy armies starting to be able to put up a little fight).