HOI4 Dev Diary - Acclimatization and Special Forces

[Gamer_1745]

The target is something like 6 months (longer, so something like 8 if fully desert acclimatized) for full acclimatize. but it depends how bad weather is and if you are fighting or doing nothing. In really bad weather and fightign it will go fastest.

So 2 Russia winters? That does seem a bit long.

If a German unit was sent to North Africa at the start (March 1941) and was still around at the end (May 43) it would take about 1/3 of the campaign to get acclimatized? I would set a 3 months as standard target time. Last through one Russian Winter be ready for the next.



Also when a Cold Acclimatized unit is in normal (summer weather, not harsh deserts) weather on say the Russian Front will they keep there 'Winter' look?

 

[jimkoons]

Nice addition! it will enhance the immersion, and that's always good Can't wait for this and the name list on that part!
And nice to see that special forces will remain special too, that's a nice tweak.

One question though, do you get the bonus from acclimatization by fighting or simply by staying in a cold/hot area? Which is, I think, quite different in reality...

Edit: Ok, did not see the answer in former posts!

 

[Sleight of Hand]

Am I correct in saying that with acclimatization plus the new events system, that modders can historically recreate the disastrous Russian winter (no winter clothing) following Barbarossa?

Possibly, depending on exactly how this kind of stuff can be modded, but in vanilla I don't think this is the case... if anything, it looks like it might actually strengthen SOV, as they will have plenty of time to acclimatize right across Russia and the Eastern Front, whereas GER won't.

The only way this can really help GER is if they are able to make solid progress early on, grind to a halt, and then dig in -- however, the same bonuses will also apply to SOV, and so really it's a net gain for them, and they also have the advantage of being able to bring in more divisions that are already acclimatized (because so much of Russia will have these cold weather modifiers).

However, I echo @JerkyJerry's worries about the AI, because unless something miraculous has been done behind the scenes over the previous few months, I really don't see how it can be able to comprehend these modifiers, let alone use them to its advantage. Always happy to be proven wrong, of course, and I do recall hearing that Paradox had hired additional AI coders. We'll see.

 

[Chanbara]

Will acclimatisation "stick" to units who leave that area? Could you, for example, acclimatise some British regular divisions in the Scottish Highlands and then ship them over to Norway to fight off the likely German invasion?

 

[Conad1985]

we are speaking about a +10% or +5% to attrition we are anyway speaking about nuts... LOL... where are the TRUE big enhancements capable to give this game more actionability, realism and competitiveness?

 

[nauticalweasel]

... I echo @JerkyJerry's worries about the AI, because unless something miraculous has been done behind the scenes over the previous few months, I really don't see how it can be able to comprehend these modifiers, let alone use them to its advantage. Always happy to be proven wrong, of course, and I do recall hearing that Paradox had hired additional AI coders. We'll see.

Does acclimatization require any particularly complex tactics though? Just making the ai not shuffle troops between cold and hot theaters, and being less aggressive with un-acclimated troops, would probably serve the ai just fine, and since, unlike a player, the ai will know as soon as troops acclimate, this complexity might help the ai rather than hurt it.

 

[True Grit]

Across a large front troops could be hot at one end and cold at the other. With the AI so prone to shuffling troops all over the place across a large front how does the AI take acclimatized troops into account? Will it shuffle hot into cold and vice versa without a care and cause problems (males) for troops not properly acclimatized? Will it keep shuffling so much that nobody gets acclimatized?

 

[porta80]

I like these ideas, but I think you need to put in some national ideas for some countries to raise numbers. E.g. USA should be able to field more special forces. Else you will make dday nearly impossible in MP

 

[freejones912]

Soviet Spetznaz was not formed yet. Term is wildly anachronistic.

thats what I get for looking up a wikipedia article on special forces and doing no additional research I guess. Fair point

 

[Picard 359]

It won't, they confirmed it

I am sad due it, I was hope that we can play expansion for Holidays...

 

[facmanpob]

Will acclimatisation "stick" to units who leave that area? Could you, for example, acclimatise some British regular divisions in the Scottish Highlands and then ship them over to Norway to fight off the likely German invasion?

If you look closely at the tooltip in the screenshot in the OP, the acclimatisation is based not on which region the unit is in, but on what climate it is experiencing, so shipping units from one region with a harsh climate to a different region with the same harsh climate is not going to affect the acclimatisation.

 

[Te. Kenzo]

We can expect national focus to improve the cap (or the efficiency) for nation with a tradition with some special forces like Mountaineers and Marines? There are nation that for the fact the have important mountain range or an history with some kind of wars, have a strong presence of these type of units in their armies.

 

[redcoat22]

While you are tinkering with the template designer, can we rename “support companies” to support battalions please.

 

[Pandoricus]

Hmmm will this be out right after Christmas?

 

[Dreadlord]

oh I probably should have explained that more. Its visible in one of the screenshots with the tooltip. Being in the area with those effects will see you gain acclimatization. If you are actively fighting it however goes much faster

Does training in Hot/Cold zone also speed things up?

 

[pvt.conners]

The acclimatization mechanic looks great!
The improvements to special forces are a nice bonus.

 

[Constans]

I'm not feeling it at all. I just don't think my style of play lends itself to using these additions very often. To me thus far as I understand unless I'm rushing troops from the desert into a blizzard I'm going to have to wait "X" amount of time before they are 100% to fight? Um, ok. For how many countries? Germany &?
I don't know, it just seems to me this will be a seldom if ever used feature and when it is used it boils down to a time delay to wait for new uniforms to arrive? Again realistic but how often will it ever be a real factor of any type?

What deserts are we talking about here?
How much is this going to further handicap the AI? Is it going to be able to recognize any of this? How much front shifting will be going on because of it?

I see this as an option that will be exercised very rarely.

I disagree. It further prioritizes and emphasizes planning pre-war. it makes sense now to wait until 6 months (or whatever the time is) before planning on attacking Egypt as Italy, and then positioning all the troops you plan on using into Libya. that way you may have a decisive advantage in acclimatized troops over the Brits in the first few months of the war as they have to shift units from elsewhere.

 

[kevin00best]

Awesome!

 

[mjb2k]

I disagree with limiting the special forces battalions, at least by how much it's limited. 24 battalions is like 2 divisions... if they're 7-2s... if they're 14-4s or bigger it's one.... In MP this will be a massive problem because if you can only have a couple marine divisions at best then d-day becomes enormously harder, actually all naval invasions will become enourmously harder because at best you can have like a max of 10 marines because 5% of 2000 battalions (which is a shit ton) is not even 8 full 14-4 marines. Instead of seeing a weather acclimiation research path I would have liked to see more special forces (like Jungle or desert) but that isn't what really upsets me a lot. Paradox I recommend you have increase the amount of special forces signifigantly from 5% of the total battalions. Having only 7 divisions of marines when you have 2000 infantry battalions is cruddy.

 

[Bane5]

We can expect national focus to improve the cap (or the efficiency) for nation with a tradition with some special forces like Mountaineers and Marines? There are nation that for the fact the have important mountain range or an history with some kind of wars, have a strong presence of these type of units in their armies.

Let's say this was done: A problem arises in that giving each nation a pre-assigned number or idea is fraught with inaccuracies and a bit artificial.

In your case I think it'd be easier to just dynamically assign "mountain tradition" based on the number or percentage of core mountain (lesser hills) provinces you own. "Marine tradition" would come from number of overseas coastal provinces and navy size. Land-locked Switzerland won't be making strong marines, but they could have strong mountaineers. Overseas empires like the U.K. and Japan would be excellent choices for fielding marines naturally.