Development Diary #8 - 3rd of December 2008

[Bullfrog]

BTW, Hitler directly commanded army group south for a month or so.

[Geroshabu]

/start rant
What concerns me more is the artistic direction of the map. Not to ruin this festival of the Paradoxian Gods, but seriously, what's the hell is up with the map looking like dirt? Is it supposed to be some kind of a statement against environmental pollution? Why does the Bolivian Amazon look like it has been generously sprinkled with Agent Orange? I'm afraid that Paradox will lose a lot of sales simply because people will take a look at the game and be like - "Hey, those guys couldn't even draw a believable MAP in a WARGAME. The rest of the game must be crap." And they wouldn't even be shallow. It's a wargame. The MAP is an important component of that. If you want to see how a proper map is done, take a look at the Airborne Assault series. Or, better yet, just do it like you did in Rome. Right now the map looks like EU3 map's ugly Goth cousin. And given what the EU3 map looks like, the adjective "ugly" is to be taken seriously here. /end rant

/clarification
The political mode looks better though. I suppose this is going to be like Vicky, which no one ever plays in the "regular" map mode. /end clarification

I agree. The map looks increadibly boring. I know they want it to have a 'gritty' feel to it, but that's not necessarily a good thing; as of now, it looks more like the world of Mad Max than anything else. Warfare in a grey jungle doesn't seem all that stimulating to the imagination really.
Another thing about the map that bothers me, is the lack of height. The mountains look really weird, and even more so when the sea level actually is slightly below land.

But besides the map, the sprites seems like they're coming along fine, and just about everything else seems to be improving from HOI2.

[Kouak]

It's nice, sprites and diary

Will we have to create HQ unit, for Army, Army Group and Theater ?
And these units will eb able to participate in combats with their support, or combats unit ?

[Luka]

Yes, please more details about command structure

is it going to be possible to have a multinational structure? to what granularity?
Is it going to be possible to have something like an Allied Expeditionary Force "Theatre" composed of British and American Army Groups, while the British army group is composed of Canadian, British, Australian Armies? or even to have a Corp composed of British and Canadian divisions?

This is extrememly important. If forces from differing nationalities can be slotted into the command structure this way, then there is, for the first time, a possibility to represent multi-national armies properly.
Imagine a HoI3 D-Day with commonwealth and American forces combined under a single supreme allied commander. This is an absolute must!

[Alexander Seil]

I wouldn't bank on multi-national armies.

I'm also somewhat worried about the "independent divisions" thing. I mean, if the divisions are sitting in the same province, wouldn't it make sense to group them into stacks? I'm foreseeing a micromanagement nightmare here. UNLESS, Johan's enigmatic reference means that we pretty much issue orders to Corps HQs and let them move the divisions around (sort of like Airborne Assault)...but that opens a can of AI-related worms. Sure, it worked in Airborne Assault, but their AI is MUCH more robust than HoI2's clunky "Build-a-stack-to-the-Moon" operational AI.

Also, do the divisions NEED to exist in this structure? Can I skip Corps HQ's? Or does every independent 1-brigade "division" I use to capture Pacific islands as Japan need its own Corps HQ? That would be rather annoying. I hope we don't have to use all the levels (since some nations clearly did not). It would be the height of silliness if Yemen with its 1-brigade strong army needs to waste 3 out of 4 officers it has in the pool to command phantom "armies" and "theaters" it will never field. Maybe it's a feature to simulate the delusions of Central American dictators? Making it obligatory for Costa Rica to appoint a Theater Commander for Central America, and an Army Group commander for the Armed Forces of Costa Rica, an Army commander for the 1st Army, a corps commander for the Republican Guard and, finally, the last mj.general remaining to lead the glorious 1st Costa Rican Militia Brigade into combat.

EDIT: And I guarantee that if merely using the full structure guarantees arbitrary, non-officer-skill-related bonuses, then we will see a flood of AARs with players "rushing" to build HQs first thing when playing a minor like Bolivia. In fact, I've posted an AAR idea right here.

[Luka]

I wouldn't bank on multi-national armies.

I'm also somewhat worried about the "independent divisions" thing. I mean, if the divisions are sitting in the same province, wouldn't it make sense to group them into stacks? I'm foreseeing a micromanagement nightmare here. UNLESS, Johan's enigmatic reference means that we pretty much issue orders to Corps HQs and let them move the divisions around (sort of like Airborne Assault)...but that opens a can of AI-related worms. Sure, it worked in Airborne Assault, but their AI is MUCH more robust than HoI2's clunky "Build-a-stack-to-the-Moon" operational AI.

It's already been stated that this is the way it will work.

[Alexander Seil]

If we're not allowed in some ways to directly control non-independent divisions, the whole thing has a very good chance of becoming an unmitigated disaster in the hands of the AI. On a second thought, if the "helper" AI is working on the same level with its enemy counterpart, the AI will certainly seem to improve!

It's also a clever way to avoid teaching the AI how to stack units properly, which it never learned to do in HoI2 (even though it does it just fine in other Paradox games. Go figure).

I wonder what other players will feel about giving up total control. The only game that doesn't make me paranoid about delegating to the AI is Airborne Assault. But it has the option of pulling a critical unit out of the command structure and ordering it independently (with a reduction in order processing delay) if that is necessary for your plan.

[Luka]

Well, it was stated that a unit can be given over to control of the AI and that is your choice. This is good if you want to deal with another theatre you can leave units somewhere knowing they wont sit there like a dumb sh*t if something happens.
I'm not sure if you have to delegate AI control to the top level in the command structure, or you can designate any unit to AI control then it, and all it's subordinates, will be under AI control, so AI control within a larger group.
Not sure, I tried to find the original post where Johan said this, but the (ming boggling) lack of a forum search stopped me.

[zeekater]

I'm interested in how the different levels of command and divisions will be named, seems like a difficult task to get right

The new divisions which are randomized, how to tell if an army group should be named 'South' or 'Nord'... shouldn't have been easy to name them well.

@Johan: need I be worried?

[Alexander Seil]

Well, it was stated that a unit can be given over to control of the AI and that is your choice. This is good if you want to deal with another theatre you can leave units somewhere knowing they wont sit there like a dumb sh*t if something happens.
I'm not sure if you have to delegate AI control to the top level in the command structure, or you can designate any unit to AI control then it, and all it's subordinates, will be under AI control, so AI control within a larger group.
Not sure, I tried to find the original post where Johan said this, but the (ming boggling) lack of a forum search stopped me.

No, you're right, it was said at some point, but it was said in connection to top-level command structures (theaters, in fact, if I remember correctly). What I'm wondering about is if there is any direct control over divisions assigned to Corps. It seems that this DD implies that there is not (otherwise, why wouldn't there be stacks for ease of management?). I'm not opposed to that, but it will create issues for some players (plus a question of how well the AI will handle the task).

[ecnan02]

What I'm hoping is that you actually get org problems if you start intermixing units from different corps and armies, just like what would happen in the real confusion when these units intermixed. Would make finding a seam between units much more important. Organizing your armies and creating operational graphics will become much more important. Would truly be awesome if the game came with a paint like tool that you could draw on the map to delineate corps / army / army group boundaries.

Also, I'm interested to see how attachment / detachment between higher HQs work. Perhaps a small decrease in org when first assigned (just like with a new commander). Also Strat redeploy will now be more realistic by necessity. The way I see it, if you're moving say, 2nd Panzer from Italy to the East front, you would have to detach it from its current korps, then strat redeploy it, where it will be unassigned until you reassign it to another korps.

Additionally, I hope that there will be negative effects with units being too far away from their HQ.

OT - Like the new look of the forum.

[Alexander Seil]

I wonder if it is possible only to delegate to army, army group and theater level HQs. How detailed are the orders for these groupings? Can we just order them to hold, retreat or advance, or can we actually specify, say, that Army Group South should aim to capture Kiev by July "x" of year 194...? How is cooperation with the air forces and naval forces handled? Can naval and air forces come under the command of Army Groups? Or will they just fly and sail around aimlessly not knowing how to work with the landlubbers?

[Rich Oliver]

So running from left to right you see of course Strength and Organisation. The next one is a new concept of combat width. Then we have the three attack values; soft, hard and air attack. Then the three defensive values; when you are on the defence, on the attack and air defence. The next one is unsurprisingly the speed of the unit. Then we have suppression value. The next two are supply and fuel consumption. Then we have IC cost, manpower cost and time.

Isn't this new or have I missed something?

[Myth]

Isn't this new or have I missed something?

No, units had suppression values in HoI2 to deal with the partisan level in occupied provinces.

[Markusw7]

Isn't this new or have I missed something?

no, its what reduces chance of partisans appearing garrisons with Milatry Police having the highest value in HOI2

[Wämö]

Looks cool enough. Good job.

[Kuipy]

Chile is the ROFLest of nations. Even with 10,000 + provinces in the worls they manage to be still one-province wide.

The new army system looks great but I hope that there is an auto-assignment system and that it can be toggled on/off by tier (as in letting all your division commander being appointed by computer but keeping control of the highest levels).

ETA : I like the map. It looks much better than EU3, and actually like, say, a map.

[Rich Oliver]

No, units had suppression values in HoI2 to deal with the partisan level in occupied provinces.

Ah shame, because enemy fire-power suppression is one of the major factors missing in HOI.

[Anraz]

From one side there are some long awaited, but previously brought up by players, changes and this is a very good news, but from the other side the more I look into those screens, the more I see... Civilization..., and this somehow make my alarm bell to ring rapidly...

[Alexander Seil]

I like the map. It looks much better than EU3, and actually like, say, a map.

Yeah, like a map that was dunked in a mud-filled shell crater...

Also, Anraz, it looks like EU3, not Civ. Don't encourage the "OMG, they're dumbing down the game" nonsense, because they're clearly not dumbing anything down. They're merely making it look lifeless and post-apocalyptic. BTW, Civilization looks nothing like that in terms of artistic direction. Non-pixellated depictions of little toy soldiers doesn't make for Civilization. There were toy soldiers before Sid Meier played with them, you know.