Thoughts about HOI IV

Ideological goals: I still don't feel there is much tension or difference between Allied, Axis, or Commitern factions in HOI 3 as it is currently. Most of the threat levels follows historical trends but there is no way to start a 1936 scenario and do something diplomatically different by the time you get to 1939 as there is no real benefit to making too drastic of a change than what happened in historical record. The benefits to Germany being belligerent out weights doing anything else other than starting world war 2 at roughly the same time as happened in history given the critical man power gain from annexing Austria and Czech prior to the Polish Campaign.

Ideological flavor: Currently there isn't much special to having one or a different ideological other than to play out WW2 differently. While Doctrine is a nice way to spice things up, I think there should be a way to develop the diplomatic push with ideological tenets to give something more for the player than playing as Team A, B, or C. CIV V did a neat job with the BNW expansion fleshing out the 3 ideological tenets during the late game (Freedom, Order, and Autocracy). HOI IV should do something roughly the same.

Ideological Volunteers: Quite simply put, if you managed to influence a nation and build a support base there but could not draw them into your Ideological Umbrella, conquering them or Puppet them kind of puts all that work down the drain in HOI 3. You should be able to reap the investment and create a core support base to help manage the new nation you aim to make into a new ally state. Depending on how good your ideological conversion is should show in the size of the newly formed puppet army and administration once the keys to the state have been handed over.

Creating your own Ideological Faction: There is no way to say in a 1936 campaign to use diplomatic efforts to create something other than Allied, Axis, or Commitern. It would be nice, say playing as Sweden, to create a Pan-Scandinavian Faction with Norway, Finland, and Denmark to rebuff being piecemeal absorbed by the 3 current factions in the game. It would give something interesting to do with non major power players in the game that otherwise MUST follow history with little leeway.

1 - I think wargoals should be more flexible, and have direct effects on the amount of revolt risk, threat, and support you get. Force a country to spin off a province that contains a significant percentage of your own ethnic group, and it's "business as usual" in Europe, with the customary resentment and intent to get it back again later. Take land that you have no valid claim on, and people start getting offended, both within the occupied area and throughout the surrounding countries.

2 - The amount of daily progress on research could be variable, so you could roughly estimate a completion date, but it would shift significantly one way or the other over time. Most researchers (in development, as opposed to pure science) had a pretty good idea of where they were heading, but didn't know exactly how well it would work or how difficult it would be to get there. I wouldn't advocate the research of "unknown" objectives, although the actual stat bonuses could be slightly varied, rather than a set +5% every time.

3 - A better selection of diplomatic tools, and consequences for using some of the more forceful ones, would be a huge improvement to the game. Having individual ministers provide a small effect on diplomatic drift would also help, so tools could include bribing, assassinating, or coercing those ministers to slightly affect a country's overall politics and diplomacy. The diplomatic and political aspects of the situation were pivotal in setting the scene for WWII, and the previous game essentially took an ever-increasing "on rails" approach with each expansion. If the developers are going to do that, why not just start the game in August of 1939 and skip the buildup? To me, the buildup should be the most critical part of the game; the shooting is just a way of resolving the mess which failed diplomacy and ideological fanaticism created.

Zisis001 said:

In this post I wrote down some thing or improvements I would like to see while playing HOI 3 series. I don’t really know if any/all of these are plausible but I would like to hear your opinion.
1. War goals: How about giving the player the ability to set any wargoal he wants. Like partition a country, give some part to an ally, release an nation or oblige someone to some limits, like no navy or most army (like in WWI armistice to the Germans) or even oblige someone to give you his navy or part of his navy or money/resources/war material etc.
2. Unknown tech tree: What I mean is that in that time, scientist and researchers didn’t really know if nukes where to be a true weapon or some science fiction toy, if a curved assault rifle would give any benefit or just waste resources. What if there was mode in which the player would set proportions of his leader ship in designated areas without knowing the exact benefit or the time needed to get it. For example set some Leadership in Better Tanks and get new armor or better gun/ammunition or even new tank design.
3. More diplomatic tools: I would like to see something more than influence in diplomacy. Nazi Germany used in more than once the threat “you come with me or I invade” in countries like Hungary.
Thanks for reading it.
Zisis

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We've had discussions regarding #2 many times.... basically you would need to redesign the game to have unknown technology as all countries share the same possible tech.

The way you could make this somewhat more interesting is that we add in events that increase/decrease the time for research. Let's say your research 1940 Tank Chasis, you receive an event that decreases research time by 2 months. It doesn't change the game tremendously, as everyone still has all the same tech, but you change the pace that WWII might unfold.

Yeah, although we haven't seen anything specific about research, the idea of a "hidden" tech tree is just too much of a departure from previous versions of HOI - not to mention any other wargame I am aware of! - to likely be part of this game.
I have always thought that diplomacy was pretty weak in HOI. Actually I think it's the weakest aspect of most Paradox games, although it has gradually improved over the years. That being said, the historical constraints on HOI as a game - namely, it's about WWII and it should usually involve the expected combatants on the expected sides - makes the opportunities for serious diplomatic maneuvering pretty limited.

Kriegsspieler said:

Yeah, although we haven't seen anything specific about research, the idea of a "hidden" tech tree is just too much of a departure from previous versions of HOI - not to mention any other wargame I am aware of! - to likely be part of this game.
I have always thought that diplomacy was pretty weak in HOI. Actually I think it's the weakest aspect of most Paradox games, although it has gradually improved over the years. That being said, the historical constraints on HOI as a game - namely, it's about WWII and it should usually involve the expected combatants on the expected sides - makes the opportunities for serious diplomatic maneuvering pretty limited.

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I am not sure that this would need a hidden tech tree. It would just be less deterministic. Just because I spend 1 leadership point for six months doesn't mean I should have a widget with the same specs as country B's widget. Or maybe it is the same specs for the widget, but the time is now somewhat variable.

More luck != a better strategy game. I don't want my research to be a coin flip. I don't want my game to feel like its over because time after time my research is only giving my cavalry better movement.

ingwe said:

I am not sure that this would need a hidden tech tree. It would just be less deterministic. Just because I spend 1 leadership point for six months doesn't mean I should have a widget with the same specs as country B's widget. Or maybe it is the same specs for the widget, but the time is now somewhat variable.

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How is the timer variability you are talking about different than the use of tech teams to get that variability? Unless you are saying that you prefer randomness to any other sort of variability.

Yes, that might be interesting to see in a game, although perhaps a bit implausible in terms of how a real govt. would plan its research effort. Rocketry and nuclear fission involve pretty different kinds of expertise!

quote: "More luck != a better strategy game. I don't want my research to be a coin flip. I don't want my game to feel like its over because time after time my research is only giving my cavalry better movement."

I LIKE that! Longer horse legs tech 3!:rofl:

As I pointed out, there's a huge difference between pure science, where you're looking for new things and ideas, often by seeing a discrepancy between what's expected and what's actually measured, versus development, where you already know the basic principle and are trying to figure out how to actually build something to use it. In the first case, you don't have a firm idea of what you'll find, or whether it will have any practical application, like discovering a new element or wave phenomenon. In the latter case, you already know or strongly suspect that you can do something because of the previously discovered science or through practical experience, and are either improving what you already have, or are developing something practical from established scientific principles. Development should NOT be a surprise. Science can be. You don't go about developing an improved anti-tank gun and get a rocket engine instead. Of course, if you develop a rocket engine, you might then figure out a way to make an anti-tank weapon from it, but the AT weapon would be a known development objective based on the previously developed rocket engine. Most development consists of incremental improvements or new applications for known principles, not totally new ideas out of thin air.

Dalwin said:

How is the timer variability you are talking about different than the use of tech teams to get that variability? Unless you are saying that you prefer randomness to any other sort of variability.

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Not pure randomness. The way I would think about it is that techs would have error bars for the time it takes to develop it. It would be a bell curve that would be the same to everyone. However, things like the practical and theoretical weights from HOI3 would modify that mean time. So maybe Country A has high practical and theoretical in Tech A and Country B has mediocre practical and theoretical in Tech A. Most of the time Country A will get it first (when starting research at the same time) but Country B may get it first 5% of the time. The size of the error bars would be larger for more "pure research" areas and smaller for "engineering problems". Does that make sense? It would still be deterministic but not just "it takes 181.5 days to get Tech A because you have practical=5.6 and theoretical =6.2"

plasticpanzers said:

quote: "More luck != a better strategy game. I don't want my research to be a coin flip. I don't want my game to feel like its over because time after time my research is only giving my cavalry better movement."

I LIKE that! Longer horse legs tech 3!:rofl:

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10 researchers starting at the same place and with the same resources probably won't deliver the same tech on the same day. That is all I want to see reflected. The idea that it would be completely random is NOT at all what I want.

If you've got 25% daily random variation in how much progress is done on each project, that can lead to long-term variations which will "usually" be fairly trivial, but could approach that 25% if everything just happens to go right or wrong. The 100% deterministic approach we have now doesn't allow for unforeseen problems, unexpected breakthroughs, and other cases where reality gets in the way of a planned schedule. In most cases, "tech stealing" and "reverse engineering" should add a variable amount of research points toward a tech, not simply hand you the tech breakthrough on a silver platter. In the same manner as always having Germany declare war on Poland on the same day in every game, having the development of new techs and doctrines happen on schedule (other than due to boosts or degradations in the associated Practical) removes the element of uncertainty.

Kovax said:

If you've got 25% daily random variation in how much progress is done on each project, that can lead to long-term variations which will "usually" be fairly trivial, but could approach that 25% if everything just happens to go right or wrong. The 100% deterministic approach we have now doesn't allow for unforeseen problems, unexpected breakthroughs, and other cases where reality gets in the way of a planned schedule. In most cases, "tech stealing" and "reverse engineering" should add a variable amount of research points toward a tech, not simply hand you the tech breakthrough on a silver platter. In the same manner as always having Germany declare war on Poland on the same day in every game, having the development of new techs and doctrines happen on schedule (other than due to boosts or degradations in the associated Practical) removes the element of uncertainty.

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I think this is part of the reason they are bringing back Tech Teams, but not like HOI2 Tech teams.

If Tech teams have skill levels, and They earn skill levels based on the research they do... then Germany can unlock the same tank research in half the time as USA, but will take 4 times longer unlocking Carriers as the USA.

something like:
Time * ((20 - Skill_level)/10) * Practical_Experience_constructing_it

No Team can start above level 9 in any area in 1936, and highest skill level is 19, which shouldn't be reachable honestly

Bluestreak2k5 said:

I think this is part of the reason they are bringing back Tech Teams, but not like HOI2 Tech teams.

If Tech teams have skill levels, and They earn skill levels based on the research they do... then Germany can unlock the same tank research in half the time as USA, but will take 4 times longer unlocking Carriers as the USA.

something like:
Time * ((20 - Skill_level)/10) * Practical_Experience_constructing_it

No Team can start above level 9 in any area in 1936, and highest skill level is 19, which shouldn't be reachable honestly

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That sounds reasonable. I like having either exponential skill levels (10->11 takes much longer than 0->1) or throw a square root in there. Things should be more of a bell curve for time. Most take six months, some take 8 or 4, very few take 10 or 2 etc. Just pulling numbers out of thin air obviously.