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Devildread

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Aug 6, 2009
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Hi, and welcome to the third developer diary for the Hearts of Iron 3 DLC ”Dies Irae: Götterdämmerung” which features among many other things a German campaign focus. With Dies Irae: Götterdämmerung, you will be able to play Germany and only Germany, but like you never played it before in an Hearts of Iron game.

In this diary, we will mainly talk a about Barbarossa.


I had a comment in the previous diary, saying that we gave a lot of bonuses to Germany and that you might find the Dies Irae '36 campaign too easy.
Haha. You won't.

Operation Barbarossa

For us Dies Irae team, the Eastern Front is THE thing you don't want to miss in any historical german campaign. This is the very point of the last hours you spent in getting Europe and your OOB to act as you command. We heard the community about the soviet being a little to easy to break in the first weeks and then being a cakewalk. This is why we came with several features for both the AI and the player in order to make the whole thing a lot more difficult without too much cheating.


  • Strategic Effects and Technologies
    The first things we introduced were two strategic effects and their counter-technologies: General Winter and russian railways. As you know, the german soldiers weren't really prepared for a long campaign and like the french few decades earliers they were badly hit by winter. In DI:G, we changed some basic weather functions in order to have a very cold russian winter and to make units suffer from attrition a lot more than in vanilla HOI3. We also wanted to make the Barbarossa winter attrition even thougher by the addition of the strategic effect with 30% manpower income hit (abstractly representing the desertion/death or injuries due to the cold) and morale/organisation penalties.
    Another big change in how the meteo system works is the longer time the snow and mud stay on the map and the severe supply tax they create, making any offensive during winter a nightmare for both German and Soviet sides. That way, you can observe an historical winter "truce" with your units and the ennemy's not being able to carry offensive without issues.



    Left: Strategic Effects are very severe for the player, as historically the eastern front was not a cakewalk.
    Right: Both above-mentionned effects can be canceled as soon as you research the related techs. You can even prepare winter equipment way before starting Barbarossa and then never suffer from General Winter strategic effect!




  • A strong Soviet
    All those nasty negative modifiers are not enough for our evil mind. We also added a bunch of enhancements for the Soviet AI, starting by giving it the historical capacity of reinforcements and building units the Red Army had during the first months of Barbarossa. In order to achieve that goal, we made a simple rule: the less units the red army has, the more quickly it will be able to reinforce and build. For instance, with less than 150 divisions, it will be able to build any unit with 90% time reduction and so on (with more than 300 division it has no bonus at all). Thus, no matter how many troops you will encircle in the first weeks of the campaign (hundreds of thousands prisonners, historicaly), you'll still have to deal with all those eastern reinforcements and fresh troops, thrown in the combat as soon as they exit the factories.
    Along with those modifiers, we added little decisions for the Soviet AI to arm people from the factories whenever a german unit approach a major city. You as a player will experience some soviet partisans spawns in Leningrad, Kiev, Sevastopol or Moscow, willing to defend their cities against the fascist hordes and helped with a special partisan defense bonus in urban tiles. Just enough to slow down your advance a little and get some reinforcements in order to avoid the easy capture of Victory Points.

    Let's face the truth: the Eastern Front should become your worst nightmare and without some audacious move and Blitzkrieg tactics, you shouldn't be able to win in Russia anymore.


    December 42. Everything on AI control. I am starting to lose ground 300km from Moscow.

  • The Holy Balance
    Since we are also a little sadistic, we made impossible for Germany to choose anything else than Total Exploitation occupation policy in Soviet Union before '42. Then Full Occupation can be chosen, and in '43 you can have a Military Government. There is no way to have Collaboration Government in Soviet Union (or Poland by the way). That way you have a lot more ICs and ressources indeed, but you can't benefit from the soviet manpower and have to deal with some rebels. Also, you are not able to pick the Total Economic Mobilisation law before some conditions. Those conditions are to be met in the Totalen Krieg Speech decision, making almost impossible to go Total Economic Mobilisation before 43 (or anytime if you lose 15% of Germany core provinces, but I won't recommend you to try).

    I can see your face right now, thinking "hell, I will never be able to win! God this Devildread guy is totally reading my mind." But DON'T PANIC.
    We included a bunch of friendly stuff especially for you.
    • Combat events are now totally put into historical background. No longer "Successful Battle of the Bulges" in 1940 saying how strong is USA while they are not yet involved in the war. Now you only have events against the right enemy and during the right year. Those events can lead to several bonus (including two new bonus: +10% morale and +10% organisation) to choose or the same one called "captured equipment" that give you 1% IC efficiency for a month. That way we modeled the fact that German army used a lot of foreign equipment (allowing you to build your divisions 1% faster for a month).

    • Speaking of foreign equipment, as you might have seen in the Strategic Effect screenshot we also have a Foreign Wehrmacht Recruitment effect. This came from a decision you have to take earlier in the game (after you conquered your first foreign country) granting you some manpower bonus (10%) at the cost of 5% supplies penalty.



      This Foreign Recruitment policy can lead you to several foreign units events such as Indische Legion, Division Azul and many more.

    • You are not desarmed for Barbarossa, and if everything is done correctly, you are able to hit the Soviet so hard that the Red Army will take several days to get over it. We added a Surprise Attack decision leading to 50% land organisation and 70% air organisation hit for the Soviet Union during 21 days.

    • In Dies Irae: Götterdämmerung, we also worked on the Reich Ministers, giving some bonus and penalties for some, and special events for others. If you manage your cabinet properly, you should be able to have some pretty powerful bonuses over your ennemies.



      Look at all those friendly faces and positive modifiers they bring with them.

I know I told you we planned to talk about U-Boats and Ministers in this Diary but this Barbarossa thing is long enough for the moment. Here some random screenshots for your pleasure instead.







For those who can't see the picture, you can find all of them in this ftp folder, thanks to Derkb for providing the server: http://didays.derkb.de/downloads/DiesIrae/

-Devildread and Danevang
 
Mind=blown.

Where should I send the check?

Oh, can't tell you how happy I am about the silly combat events. I had "successful bombing of Stuttgart!" ... while playing as Germany, in January 1940 just yesterday. Also, I know why you're getting pushed back by the Russians.. you have no fuel!
 
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Also, I know why you're getting pushed back by the Russians.. you have no fuel!

Yeah all of this is under AI control, I just set objectives and leave the PC so I do hope players will do better than that. ^^
In vanilla HOI3 when I do that I usually win before '43.

--edit: Haha good spot Darkrenown! This is an hidden feature, you give only caffeine to your crew in order to make them turn berserk (attack++ health--).
 
after watching the pictures, it seem that player can choose (diplomatics influences + events)to avoid USA join the allies and fight with Germany.

And it seems it is not possible to make a greater German Reich before beating the computer first?
 
For maybe the first time I might have trouble using my almost patented strategy in defeating the Soviets in under 4 months. I so look forward to it. One question.

It's one thing to allow the SU to build units really fast. It's another if those units have zero organization. The problem with all attempts to date is that the new units are placed about 2 to 4 provinces off the front lines. This is OK except I reach these new units and they have at most 10% organization. That just results in even more Soviet units retreating and being overrun. I can easily see the Soviet Union out of MP in 1941 as i destroy 150 divisions in the first two weeks and 150 divisions every few weeks after that.
 
after watching the pictures, it seem that player can choose (diplomatics influences + events)to avoid USA join the allies and fight with Germany.

And it seems it is not possible to make a greater German Reich before beating the computer first?

Ocuppying provinces is making a greater reich. You won't gain core or ownership before surrender of the ennemy though.

USA declares war as soon as it enter the allies (if the axis and allies are at war) so you have to manage that carefully (as in vanilla, + some more neutrality I have added to USA).
You can have common interest in Asia and for instance if you ally with China against Japan you can even take profit of the situation and backstab Japan in its own theatre while it is busy in the Pacific.
 
All those nasty negative modifiers are not enough for our evil mind. We also added a bunch of enhancements for the Soviet AI, starting by giving it the historical capacity of reinforcements and building units the Red Army had during the first months of Barbarossa. In order to achieve that goal, we made a simple rule: the less units the red army has, the more quickly it will be able to reinforce and build. For instance, with less than 150 divisions, it will be able to build any unit with 90% time reduction and so on

Uh-oh. Now I'm starting to worry. :)

Balance will be interesting!
 
For maybe the first time I might have trouble using my almost patented strategy in defeating the Soviets in under 4 months. I so look forward to it. One question.

It's one thing to allow the SU to build units really fast. It's another if those units have zero organization. The problem with all attempts to date is that the new units are placed about 2 to 4 provinces off the front lines. This is OK except I reach these new units and they have at most 10% organization. That just results in even more Soviet units retreating and being overrun. I can easily see the Soviet Union out of MP in 1941 as i destroy 150 divisions in the first two weeks and 150 divisions every few weeks after that.

I too am concerned for the USSR's manpower. They better have some serious buffs.. it's not uncommon to destroy ~20 divisions every few weeks.

I'll share some of the mechanics with you. :)

Along with the time bonus Soviet benefit from several other buff. For instance the biggest bonus they can have (when they have less than 150 divisions) is:
- manpower income +300%
- org regain speed +75%
- unit recruitment time -90%
- territorial pride (combat bonus on core provinces): +50%

Along with a permanent Great Patriotic War effect (as long as there is a war against germany):
- manpower income +100%
- reinforcement bonus +200%
- industrial efficiency +25%
- officer recruitment +25%
- research efficiency +25%
 
Even though you can only play germany is it possible to play MP with two players controlling germany? I cant see why it should be a problem but i thought i might as well ask.

There is no problem controlling the same country. The events/decisions and AI are meant for Germany only so as long as you all are on Germany you can even play with all your friends. ^^
 
Even though you can only play germany is it possible to play MP with two players controlling germany? I cant see why it should be a problem but i thought i might as well ask.

This will work.
 
I'll share some of the mechanics with you. :)

Along with the time bonus Soviet benefit from several other buff. For instance the biggest bonus they can have (when they have less than 150 divisions) is:
- manpower income +300%
- org regain speed +75%
- unit recruitment time -90%
- territorial pride (combat bonus on core provinces): +50%

Along with a permanent Great Patriotic War effect (as long as there is a war against germany):
- manpower income +100%
- reinforcement bonus +200%
- industrial efficiency +25%
- officer recruitment +25%
- research efficiency +25%

Wow. You covered all your bases, Devildread. Combined with Germany's penalties in the campaign, this is going to be golden. Finally an epic battle in the east.

I have another question.. I noticed that GD was a unique unit. Are there many of these? I.e. will we have unique SS or possibly Panzer Lehr units? Or the "Herman Göring" division?