Hearts of Iron IV - The Ultimate WWII Strategy Game

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Every synth factory is a slot away from other factories tho, so it comes with a cost. It's kind of a tightrope anyway, since you should not go under the minimum effectiveness or it won't be worth the effort building any refineries.

As for Japan vs China, there's a general problem that it's hard to make a stalemate situation work, especially if a player is involved. Snowballing advantage is a recurring problem, but another issue is in what to actually do when a stalemate happens and how the game could handle it or make it fun. The Great War mod is kind of a good example of this, there's not really anything fun or interesting in just waiting and doing nothing on multiple fronts because nothing happens.

It works a little better in HoI4 IMO because there is no absolute pressure to have net positive oil, since in HoI2 the use of extra supplies and oil for offensives was extremely important. You would prefer never going to negative oil in HoI4, but if you absolutely need to you can try and wing it, so it makes for a more meaningful element of gameplay because the pros and cons are more on the level. There's also the additional aspect which is the way HoI4 changed how refineries work, since now you can sacrifice your IC potential in exchange for having net balance of oil and rubber by building refineries to your limited building slots.


Another problem with adding fuel is the whole "WW2 is poorly balanced" problem that comes with the scenario. Either fuel will serve no purpose, or it means Japan will be super-fucked and it's back to Germany vs Everyone Else.

Are you suggesting oil being (relatively) less important is a GOOD thing ? That's... weird. From the "fun" perspective it's better for the player to have more meaningful choices and problems to solve in my opinion. And from historical perspective, it's obviously better to be more accurate. Which makes your opinion really strange.
The Japanese problem is in general with the poor AI and the fact that Japan WAS actually "super-fucked" in reality.
Paradox might chose to buff them for game play reason. Giving them unrealistic fuel would not be impossible if that's what the goal is (=balance or "fun" vs realism).
Implementation is another thing. Already covered in the post to IHaveHugeNick

I didn't say less important, I said a gameplay element that has more functions than solely being a cap. In the present system, adding fuel is kind of a question mark because it's hard to see where fuel would fit in besides becoming an unnecessary and pointless step mechanic like in HoI3. The balance concern for the scenario is another thing, since the thing I'm talking about is super-fucked in game context alone since woulda-coulda is kinda pointless but any alternate ending to WW2 would have to consider the fact that the US possessed half the global GDP at the time and was essentially guaranteed to win (in fact, just as how Japan is not quite as super-fucked as IRL, Kwa is very much underpowered compared to IRL). As you said in the other post though, having oil in production and in fuel would be better replaced by refocusing oil entirely to however fuel will work.

And as I said, the biggest problem EVERY HoI game has is that from a gameplay perspective WW2 is very poorly balanced so you end up with the whole Germany vs Everyone Else problem or alternatively Germany getting steamrolled by 1940, but this is more of a "and that's why Kaiserreich is so much better as a scenario" topic because there's not really anything you can do about the constraints of the historical scenario.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Serus

The problem of historical accuracy vs. fun has been debated here a lot. WW2 setting is horribly unbalanced if you rigidly stick to historical data, because it was a stupid fucking war and Axis had no chance from the start. The only reason why Germans weren't crushed already by 1939, is because they were able to pick countries one by one while Allies didn't coordinate their efforts.

On the one side, you have the Allies. They have advantage in technology, resources, manpower, navy and geography where UK and US are impossible to actually invade.

On the other side, you have Italy that sucks, Japan that sucks even more, and for all practical purposes it's Germany vs. the world.

This just isn't a compelling setting for a strategy game with long term replayability, which is why Kaserreich has always been the most popular mod - because it takes all the cool things about WW2, but places them in alternative history setting that is actually viable for a video game.

So while in principle I'm all on board that historical games should aim to be accurate, in HoI's case you really do need to game things significantly if the whole thing is going to be actually playable for more than couple of saves.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

And it bears repeating that the US GDP by the end of the war would be half the planet's total. The total GDP of the Allies was nearly ten times that of the Axis (and you can't really pool together German and Japanese economic strength because geography effectively prevented all major cooperation between the two). If you'd actually go with historical statistics, the only thing stopping US from bitchslapping the Axis in 1939 (probably Soviets too while at it because why not) under player control is arbitrary restrictions to doing exactly as how things happened historically. HoI always has to balance between history and what's good for a game, at the heart of which is player agency. It really doesn't have a choice but LET Germany be an economic superpower by 1939 or let Japan do quick work of China, since you kinda have little alternative when the final endpoint is total victory and it needs to be within player agency. Albeit Japan vs China steamroll thing currently happens quite easily due to the way things worked out in Waking the Tiger to Japan's advantage as long as they don't go with the historical focus to attack; it was kind of stupid to try and force stalemate the war by slapping Japan with giant offensive penalties in Chinese territory.


It's not like there isn't a geographic problem for Kaiserreich too, but it's something that the team is aware and what they can change because they aren't constrained by what's real, which is that a war between Germany and France just happens on too small a patch of easily traversed land for it to really be the Big War. Then again, it's why Kaiserreich always had the advantage of having shenanigans go on in various larger and more difficult to travel locations like continental US or Indian subcontinent rather than be constrained to mostly Europe.

 

[Serus]

Serus

The problem of historical accuracy vs. fun has been debated here a lot. WW2 setting is horribly unbalanced if you rigidly stick to historical data, because it was a stupid fucking war and Axis had no chance from the start. The only reason why Germans weren't crushed already by 1939, is because they were able to pick countries one by one while Allies didn't coordinate their efforts.

On the one side, you have the Allies. They have advantage in technology, resources, manpower, navy and geography where UK and US are impossible to actually invade.

On the other side, you have Italy that sucks, Japan that sucks even more, and for all practical purposes it's Germany vs. the world.

This just isn't a compelling setting for a strategy game with long term replayability, which is why Kaserreich has always been the most popular mod - because it takes all the cool things about WW2, but places them in alternative history setting that is actually viable for a video game.

So while in principle I'm all on board that historical games should aim to be accurate, in HoI's case you really do need to game things significantly if the whole thing is going to be actually playable for more than couple of saves.

I agree that fun vs realism needs to be balanced and HoI is not a historical game first but a "fun" game first.That doesn't mean historical, realistic WW2 games cannot be fun at least in theory. Losing can be fun, as can be attempting to take as many "bastards" to the grave first. As can be just trying to do your best even if in the grand scheme the final outcome is set in stone. But that's not the kind of game HoI is and that's ok.
On the other hand, shortages of oil/fuel could, if done right, could be interesting and fun. Retaining an ability to win but having to run against the clock / fuel gauge could produce some interesting scenarios and a lot of tension and choices. However I doubt a bunch of once talented but now mainly greedy Swedes could pull it off.

Spoiler

I believe Germany had one shot at "winning" if by winning you define rising to dominant power in Europe and not losing. Beating USA (and by extension UK) to submission was absolutely out of the question of curse. However eliminating Soviets and dominating continental Europe would result in a stalemate for many years. Could possibly even lead to permanent peace. All that assuming beating Soviets was possible (doubtful but perhaps not completely in the realm of impossibility).
Japan on the other hand was hopeless from the start. Even if beating the Soviets sounds highly unrealistic for Germany, at least it's a scenario where they "don't lose" while in case of Japan there simply isn't any scenario where Japan can do anything not to lose to USA once at war.

Vaarna_Aarne
What stops USA early isn't arbitrary at all. USA was historically in the 30s still an isolationist and democratic country. FDR had to basically trick the Japanese to attack USA using the embargo because he couldn't easily start a war himself even if he thought it was necessary. Nothing arbitrary about it. Allowing the player to do anything he wants would be stupid. There are alternative history mods for that.
Having a high GDP and big population is not the end of everything. What USA didn't have - at least initially - was the political will to go to war. HoI is also about politics. What is arbitrary, is You wanting for USA to be as strong economically as in real life but not having the political system to go along with it.

Edit: Having said that, I never played Kaiserreich despite being a long time HOI2 (and it's spin-off games) player. I really need to play it some day, in HoI4 probably.

Edit2:

As for Japan vs China, there's a general problem that it's hard to make a stalemate situation work, especially if a player is involved. Snowballing advantage is a recurring problem, but another issue is in what to actually do when a stalemate happens and how the game could handle it or make it fun. The Great War mod is kind of a good example of this, there's not really anything fun or interesting in just waiting and doing nothing on multiple fronts because nothing happens

Not sure about the mod but The Great War consisting of "doing nothing on multiple fronts because nothing happens" is mostly an ahistorical myth. WW1 had many fronts and only the ones in France and Italy were somewhat static-ish. And even then not in first months and not in most of the last year of war And even then there were major offensive attempts on both sides during the 1915~1917 period. Front in Russia was mobile most of the time. There were also the Ottomans fighting on several fronts. And more.

 

[Agame]

Just to comment on WW1, if you want to see how dynamic it can be try playing To End All Wars. The european theatre is actually far more interesting than WW2, there is so much shit going on.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

What stops USA early isn't arbitrary at all. USA was historically in the 30s still an isolationist and democratic country. FDR had to basically trick the Japanese to attack USA using the embargo because he couldn't easily start a war himself even if he thought it was necessary. Nothing arbitrary about it. Allowing the player to do anything he wants would be stupid. There are alternative history mods for that.
Having a high GDP and big population is not the end of everything. What USA didn't have - at least initially - was the political will to go to war. HoI is also about politics. What is arbitrary, is You wanting for USA to be as strong economically as in real life but not having the political system to go along with it.

Edit: Having said that, I never played Kaiserreich despite being a long time HOI2 (and it's spin-off games) player. I really need to play it some day, in HoI4 probably.

Edit2:

As for Japan vs China, there's a general problem that it's hard to make a stalemate situation work, especially if a player is involved. Snowballing advantage is a recurring problem, but another issue is in what to actually do when a stalemate happens and how the game could handle it or make it fun. The Great War mod is kind of a good example of this, there's not really anything fun or interesting in just waiting and doing nothing on multiple fronts because nothing happens

Not sure about the mod but The Great War consisting of "doing nothing on multiple fronts because nothing happens" is mostly an ahistorical myth. WW1 had many fronts and only the ones in France and Italy were somewhat static-ish. And even then not in first months and not in most of the last year of war And even then there were major offensive attempts on both sides during the 1915~1917 period. Front in Russia was mobile most of the time. There were also the Ottomans fighting on several fronts. And more.

I was making an example of the inevitable conflict between player agency and between historical accuracy, because IRL WW2 makes for a very poorly balanced game. Which in turn requires ultimately arbitrary restrictions, abstractions, or alterations in service of gameplay to make things fun. My point is first and foremost about the enormous gulf between the US and the entire rest of the planet economically, which one obviously cannot put in a game in any form (it isn't even just isolationism which is usually a fairly straightforward thing that all HoI games have managed to handle, it's what comes after the player gets past that), or otherwise have anything remotely akin to the historical economics because then you go further down the rabbithole of trying to preserve historical accuracy elsewhere through endless situational modifiers and exceptions so Germany does as "well" as it did, etc. This is where Kaiserreich has that distinct advantage since due to being fictional it can balance its scenario and have it be all-around more involved (there's even shenanigans in Africa now, the continent of no-one-should-bother in HoI).


Also in regards to the Great War mod, the thing is the combined effects of equipment, terrain/forts/entrenchment, and doctrines that in vast majority of situations it is completely senseless to launch and offensive because the disparity between breakthrough and defense is so enormous it's basically just flushing manpower down the toilet. Ergo, it's better to just hunker down and try to out-tech the other side, which because it'll take roughly three years is not exactly a riveting experience as a game. Russia is the exception because of the hefty penalties they have slapped on them so they rarely make it beyond 1915 in my experience before the German snowball shoves them out of the war.

 

[Average Manatee]

Keep in mind that the USA was still pretty well stuck in the great depression well after Europe was recovering thanks to FDR being awful at economics. In many ways it wasn't just WW2 that pulled the USA out of the great depression, it was the Commonwealth being at war and spending their entire empire's treasury to initially gear up and then hang on for 1939-41. The USA in 1936 had nowhere near the readiness that it had in 1939 or 41. Furthermore a big reason the USA's population was so supportive of the UK and entering the war in Europe was because they owed the USA a lot of money and those loans wouldn't be repaid if Germany conquered them

Also in regards to the Great War mod, the thing is the combined effects of equipment, terrain/forts/entrenchment, and doctrines that in vast majority of situations it is completely senseless to launch and offensive because the disparity between breakthrough and defense is so enormous it's basically just flushing manpower down the toilet. Ergo, it's better to just hunker down and try to out-tech the other side, which because it'll take roughly three years is not exactly a riveting experience as a game. Russia is the exception because of the hefty penalties they have slapped on them so they rarely make it beyond 1915 in my experience before the German snowball shoves them out of the war.

HoI4 combat has really awful balance and bugs out the ass. Apparently Paradox believes it was impossible to conduct an offensive before the tank was invented. Dumbfucks. Even if you overhauled all the divisions to HoI3 stats though you'd still be left with wonky division behavior and a way too constrictive combat width. I've really come to dislike HoI3/4s combat width since it has no historical basis to be so small and it leads every army to have huge amounts of forces across a wide front rather than laser-focused penetrations.

 

[Hoaxmetal]

HoI4 (without DLC) is in the Humble Monthly (early unlock).

 

[Serus]

Ok, enough babbling about how games should be made on my part. I have a few specifics to ask.

Is it me or the game in 1.53 became harder since 1.4x ? I started with a non-removed version from inventory of 1.4x, took Germany to learn the basics of game because why not and was able to pull off a roughly "historical" blitzkrieg against France in 40 with cutting and destroying a strong army in Belgium/Northern France first. All that learning the game as I went along, I watched a tutorial or two but other than that - it was more or less a first attempt at it.
However now i'm playing 1.53 and it seems to be more difficult to pull off despite me already knowing the basics. Weird. The last time in a HoI game France 40 was challenging was in Darkest Hour (or was it Arsenal of Democracy? One of the 2). France not being easy is not a bad thing in itself but is unexpected. The AI in 1.53 also seem to behave differently, less suicidal small scale landings or attacks just because the AI "can". Which overall feels like an improvement when enemy AI is involved.

Questions:
Is there a way to prevent Italy joining the war already in 39 when I get puppets involved as Germany ? It's weird but if my puppet is in war against Poland then Italy can join the puppet without asking me if I agree. But If I don't have any puppets they can't do it and don't attack the Allies by themselves. Weird.

Vaarna_Aarne
I downloaded Kaiserreich for HoI4, France in Africa picked my attention (you can go Bonapartist absolute monarchy/dictatorship, how cool is that :D) but maybe you would recommend an easier faction to start ?

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Serus

Yeah, 1.5 patch series improved the AI a lot. Still need to use one of the AI mods (I play with Expert AI 4.0) to get a real challenge, but vanilla AI will do if you're just learning and starting out.

 

[Serus]

Serus

Yeah, 1.5 patch series improved the AI a lot. Still need to use one of the AI mods (I play with Expert AI 4.0) to get a real challenge, but vanilla AI will do if you're just learning and starting out.

If only your own troops could act sensibly when given sensible orders... what annoys me the most is when they never seem to attack already created pockets with enemy divisions inside. They just wander around the pocket instead. I thought at first I was doing something wrong but it seems to be the "default" behaviour. I know, I know - you can command manually but that was what HoI2 was all about, I don't wan't to do it here all the time with all those nice battle plans and the ability to draw cool looking arrows and lines on the map. Besides HoI2 had army corpses for that purpose, here you need to order divisions which is less sensible.
To think about it, it probably makes the big (40 width) divisions. even better than they already are because of combat mechanics.
How do people on the Codex play it when it comes to using battle plans vs manually giving orders to most divisions ?

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Manual guidance of an active battle plain is worth it, since you need the battle plan for the planning bonuses but there are times when the AI is just being plain stupid like for instance in ignoring pockets. My personal pet peeve is when the fronts get altered by whatever reason (peace events can be very hard in this regard, particularly in Great War and Russia where I had two army groups relocate themselves to a single province of unsupplied Turkish mountains after Russia evented out of the war) which usually leads to catastrophe if you aren't on your toes.

I downloaded Kaiserreich for HoI4, France in Africa picked my attention (you can go Bonapartist absolute monarchy/dictatorship, how cool is that :D) but maybe you would recommend an easier faction to start ?

Easiest start for learning things is probably Russia, if you don't get yourself into a renewed civil war you have probably the largest degree of freedom of action right now and overall easy pickings in terms of foreign focuses, and generally the most accessible point for getting involved in other people's business.

Other good starting countries are Japan and Austria due to being again presented with a much larger degree of freedom of action thanks to location and political situation, but they're also more likely to get entangled in bigger things. Japan is due for a rework tho, but the old tree still by and large functions (then again, Austria's rework is still in progress too, but overall basics function). Mostly the issue you have to deal with is the possible war in the Pacific with Germany being kinda wonky in regards to peace events and when or how they trigger.

Commune of France is also simpler than Germany, but overall I feel that those two are kinda boring but that's because of the limitations of geography (which is to say the distance between Berlin and Paris).

National France is good fun, albeit one where you have to work pretty hard since Commune is simply way stronger than you are by every metric and you don't really have much in the way of help or easy expansion, and in case of the Commune you will have to balance between not letting Germany win and making over the sea. I suppose conquering Spain by any means necessary would be a good first step.

Kwa is also a lot of fun, but it is challenging winning the civil war since IMO overall the government is by far the worst off in regards to the combatants, with the possible exception of PSA if they become active participants in the Second American Civil War.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Battleplan the fronts, micro the breakthroughs, encirclements and clearing out the pockets. Although pockets can be left alone if you're not advancing very quick as they will eventually just run out of supplies.

 

[Average Manatee]

Serus

Yeah, 1.5 patch series improved the AI a lot. Still need to use one of the AI mods (I play with Expert AI 4.0) to get a real challenge, but vanilla AI will do if you're just learning and starting out.

If only your own troops could act sensibly when given sensible orders... what annoys me the most is when they never seem to attack already created pockets with enemy divisions inside. They just wander around the pocket instead. I thought at first I was doing something wrong but it seems to be the "default" behaviour. I know, I know - you can command manually but that was what HoI2 was all about, I don't wan't to do it here all the time with all those nice battle plans and the ability to draw cool looking arrows and lines on the map. Besides HoI2 had army corpses for that purpose, here you need to order divisions which is less sensible.

Yeah, it's funny how HoI4 tried to make the game HoI3 but more automated, yet you end up needing to do more manual work in times like this. By making orders more detailed they had to make it so units are forced to stick to the plan, and as soon as the plan changes they can't do anything.

How do people on the Codex play it when it comes to using battle plans vs manually giving orders to most divisions ?

Just use the frontline planner and do all attacks manually. Unless the enemy is incredibly pathetic. Unfortunately even the frontline planner sucks a lot of the time, randomly shuffling units around and leaving huge gaps in breakthroughs so all your tanks get encircled. On the other hand playing without frontlines at all makes it really hard to visually distinguish borders. The game just isn't meant for manual play.

 

[Serus]

Played a bit more. After learning the basics using Germany I played a Poland Stronk game: Poland, Ironman, random focus choices for AI, going for my own faction from the start.
It took me 3 attempts but still was way too easy. The only difficulty lies in the fact that Hitler might go after You even if You give to his demands in 39. It was actually a pleasant surprise the first time as it is a very plausible scenario. Still the 3rd time a charm and after I gave him one province and did all to stay on good terms he left me alone. Which left me with "only" the Soviets to worry about. But what are soviets on normal difficulty against the combined might of Potato's ~80 infantry only divisions + Lithuania, Latvia and Finland (the last one only initially, they lost to Soviets despite me tying up most of the Red Army).
Took years to slowly grind them down but I wasn't in a hurry. In the end over 10 millions Soviets dead vs my ~250k (yep, more than a 1:40 ratio). Even Lithuanians with their small army killed over~1 million. Completely ridiculous. But the most ridiculous part is that it was done without micromanaging too much and without too many encirclements, probably less than 100 divisions in total lost by the soviets in pockets before the final stage when their army started to collapse. It's just a result from the brain dead Soviet AI that simply throws constantly all his army at my superior and entrenched divisions, often positioned behind rivers. They keep coming. Like lemmings. Once weakened I slowly advanced a few provinces at a time, never attacking strong positions directly, never taking risks. The only problem I had was that my puny economy could barely replace the equipment losses even if I only was building ~2 new divisions at once at a time. Ended the war with ~90 combat divisions.
It was as I said already several times ridiculous to the point of being comical.

Once you annex most of Soviet Union, you get all the factories and resources to take on anyone you want To make things easier Hitler by 44 managed to lose the war against the Allies lead in Europe by... Republican Spain. I just went in in time to grab eastern provinces of Germany. After that I lost interest. I was already building nuclear reactors and researching strategic bombers not to mention producing an upgraded 44 fighter model in large numbers. No point continuing.


Edit: I suppose the challenge would be to pull it off on the highest difficulty (and maybe giving USSR specifically a good boost).

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Fighting Soviets before 41 is easy mode. Great Purge debuff absolutely wrecks their combat capabilities.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

AI Germany lasting until 44 with a player-controlled Poland/any Eastern European non-Axis country is a pretty long time.


Hungary -> Habsburg Empire path is also pretty fun, and you have a tougher job resisting Germany since they want Czechoslovakia and you cannot afford to give it up.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

From what I've played with the 1.5 patch series, it's not that unusual for Germany to last long now. The AI got somewhat smarter about politics. Hitler doesn't just mindlessly trigger every war in his focus tree if he is already in the losing war or a stalemate.

 

[Space Satan]

The struggle is real

 

[Citizen]

The struggle is real

So, the crusades in the holy land and nazi germany are alternate history now? Nice illustration, though.

 

[fantadomat]

Next paradox game = No Mods!

 

[fantadomat]

The struggle is real

So, the crusades in the holy land and nazi germany are alternate history now? Nice illustration, though.

It is written by luke wanker,what do you expect?! Doubt that the creature have the intelligence to acquire any basic knowledge from the years wasted on education.

 

[Space Satan]

Strange how they've chosen HoIIV, the most neutral of the paradox bunch. In CKII you can go on a crusade, expell jews, in Stellaris you can enslave and purge species with quite a variety of methods, including eating them and breeding them for food.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Heck, if we want to get technical Stellaris is the only one with EXPLICIT genocide.

 

[Citizen]

Strange how they've chosen HoIIV, the most neutral of the paradox bunch. In CKII you can go on a crusade, expell jews, in Stellaris you can enslave and purge species with quite a variety of methods, including eating them and breeding them for food.

Most big scale strategies are muss murder simulators. Back then everyone was crying about kids playing violent shooters, they didn't even know what they didn't know. How many people you can kill in your average Duke or Doom? Few hundreds? Thousand? Thats pathetic. I was playing MoO2 at the time and laughing about mass media madness while genociding BILLIONS of people every time I destroyed a colony.