HOI4 Dev Diary - Bag of Tricks #3

[him_15]

Finally a proper balkan!

 

[Daelyn75]

Yes hoi 2 and 3 have it i think hoi 4 have to it
and i think a big problem in tanks
i had written it
infantry divisions without anti-tank should not stop tanks Especially for heavy tanks
like real life

Yeah i'm not sure what exactly would be taking out the tanks in the beginning, but I believe that AA and artillery add to the units anti-tank bonus. Then later on with tech, anti-tank weapons are handed out to the soldiers so they can take out the tanks themselves.

 

[Farquarsen]

@aiakira Heavy tanks alone cannot dig out dug in infantry. Dug in Infantry will build tank traps, lay tank mines, lay out razor wire(known to wanna be's as barbed wire) layout cross fields of fire, making taking the infantry position without infantry impossible. Tanks are needed for exploitation, needed to protect the infantry digging out entrenched infantry. Artillery is always required as well as air parity/superiority and air combat support. The rule here is combined arms. One of the arms alone cannot win, even though some think it can be done with armor alone. Trust an old retired Infantry Officer, tanks alone are not the answer, it requires all of us together to make it work. That also includes all the support, logistics(supply), ordinance(maintenance), signal. In fact for every line private and every line pilot there are seven privates providing support of one form or another. A truly great game of combat will encompass all these aspects. HOI IV does a pretty good job of that. And while we are it, without the Navy providing or hindering SLoC, no land operation can occur. All powers learned that lesson again and again in WWII. As supplies became harder to come by, Germany lost more and more land as the war progressed. The US had to delay several landings in the pacific until supplies could catch up. I can go on and on but I think you get the picture.

 

[PotatoesOfDoom]

Is this screenshot the first confirmation that MTG will feature training for air units?:

Spoiler

Air and naval training were covered in the first Bag of Tricks for MtG, IIRC.

 

[HolyAmericanEmpire]

With the new changes to puppets, ideology, and national spirits, how does this interaction play out in a situation like China's? This is not exclusive to China, but they are a good example.

This is a focus (Legislative Yuan) that does more than just add party support (it modifies a national spirit which adds political power), so theoretically, it would be removed if it were taken BEFORE they become a puppet of Japan (which would make them fascist). But in a normal game with historical focuses and AI Japan and AI China, China will not get to this focus until they are a puppet of Japan. How does a situation like this play out? Is it bypassed or blocked from being able to take?

 

[RommelTheDesertFox]

@Bratyn I love all of these changes and I have only one question for you which is are post-war borders now possible (as when I beat Germany in Soviet playthroughs and American ones it bugs me that I can't take the upper half of Ost Preussen for the Union, have Bialystok when I shouldn't but when I don't it looks terrible, split up Austria properly, release the free city if Trieste, and split Berlin into east and west even though I don't mind Trieste or east and west Berlin nearly as much as the other things that I mentions but I just though I would mention those and I also know that figuring out to make Berlin one city for the capitol of Germany and then split it for post-war borders would be difficult so I don't really care about that)? Again love what you have done so far (especially with the borders and new nations)!

 

[DerGrößteRitter]

Wtf is this 'Wilhelmism' thing? Does this have any historical basis, or is it just for memes?

 

[egslim]

The original design suffered from, yes, being too constrained by historical plausibility.

Sad to read this remark from a developer.
Historical plausibility is key to the HOI series.

Otherwise, why bother with the detailed historical provinces and databases?

 

[Supersotamies]

Soon™

So maybe next week?

 

[Zarathustra_the]

Cheers for the DD Bratyn . Am very impressed by both the attention-to-detail and polish. Like Vanguard popping up where she was actually built .



Pic for today, because you can never have enough warfare, anti-submarine or otherwise .

View attachment 422292



There's a world of difference between a (21K tons) 'HMS Dreadnought' and a (35/40K tons) King George V/Lion though - the guns alone often took longer than a year to build (and in the mid-1930s the foundries hadn't been producing significant numbers of large-calibre guns for years by that stage, so would (and did, iirc) take a while to ramp-up). Even the US, who were the poster-boys of fast ship production in the period, never got close to 12 months for a battleship, and iirc the quickest they built an Essex was 16 months (may be 14, or something else entirely, but not under 12 - sorry, memory's hazy) and they pushed hard to get the (27K tons or so) Essexes out quick.

There had been substantial changes in both the nature of the ships being built, and Britain's shipyard and armaments industry, between the pre-WW1 battleship race, and the run-up to WW2. However, as a counterpoint, it's still worth noting that even though the ships took longer to build, I vaguely remember reading somewhere (and somewhere that I'd trust - may have been Ian Buxton or David Brown, or perhaps Andrew Boyd) that in WW2 Britain completed more warship tonnage than in WW1, despite not being particularly quick about it (Buxton definitely makes the point that British shipbuilding industry was efficient but not particularly quick in aggregate, in Warship Building and Repair in the Second World War).



From the (embarrassingly) little I know of India's history, this could still be quite the game - but I agree it's place wouldn't be in HoI4 .



Interestingly enough, when I crunched the numbers, the Axis member that produced the greatest tonnage of fighting vessel (so counting everything from amphibious warships to minesweepers to the bigger ships we all know and love) was Germany (turns out, over 1000 submarines adds up to a whole lot of tonnage )



In my opinion (and it's just my 2 cents), Hobart, as a leader of on-map formations, was probably a bit low down the chain to make the cut (he could make an interesting theorist though, or one of the other staff positions). And I say this as someone who when an artist friend gave him the opportunity to do a head-and-shoulders of literally anyone, I chose Percy Hobart, so I am a fan .

Spoiler

View attachment 422291

Not trying to be contrarian, but (at least most of - I'm not familiar with all of them) those leaders were in charge of formations of aircraft, rather than ground units. Just because they were 'badged' army, doesn't suddenly make them qualified to manage ground formations. It's probably better to hold out hope for the introduction of air leaders at some stage in the future (I have no idea if this is on the cards, but this is where I'd see the appropriate place for these leaders).



This was touched on a bit by another poster, but as a random thought, what about 'AI only' NF trees? They'd be much easier to make (they wouldn't need any art or loc), and they could add some plausible (or implausible, as design desired) neutrality from nations during the period, adding depth to gameplay (but without cluttering up the focus trees for players). Please ignore if silly/impractical, and not for a second suggesting for MtG!



All credit should go to (at the time Commodore) Stephenson .

@Axe99 you missed the substance of the argument. Consider the shipbuilding time of the GKV's not withstanding the turret, they built those ships in two years. Which was a much faster turn around period than just about any other major power. The British were the most efficient at construction, they had by this point the most developed experience in ship construction. Thus under a scenario in the peace time period of the 1930s of another battleship race, I could easily see them pulling out a substantial production pace. Further, look at the construction of the Queen Elizabeth class. Those ships were some of the most effective battleships ever made. Their pace of construction was in effect two years. The Revenge Class was completed by the end of the first world war and numbered five. In effect, they were capable of highly rapid construction. Their failure tended to be not one of production but one of politics. With proper turret development, it is likely they would be able to achieve the old rate of one ship every eighteen months.

We can see this in admiralty documents and in the building process for Vanguard. Pulling her together from a cancelled project they had her fitted out and ready for operation by 1945. This was with an essentially moribund production que.

 

[Societal]

Yes. However, the system was built to be backwards compatible so these focuses give bonuses to cruiser hull research and associated techs. Focuses that gave bonuses to heavy cruiser research do the same.

Would the hull + module cost needed to jump from a "light" cruiser to a "heavy" rise over time with 1939, 1941, 1944 hulls or is it static?

 

[adil3tr]

First of all, all National Spirits that give ideology drift now either time out after 2-3 years, or, in the case of Spirits that have other effects than just ideology drift, and therefore need to be permanent, are removed when the ideology shifts away from the ideology drift they provide.

I’ve always found focuses with temporary boosts to be even worse. Often they do a lot less or you need them in your own country later on. Could it just be that when a country switches ideologies the drift stops?

In addition, we’ve added new decisions that give you greater control over the ideology of your subjects. These allow you to expend political power to give an ideology drift, and, when ideology support becomes high enough, forcibly swap them to your ideology.

This is great, but is there some way this can be scaled? After the war your puppets may be wildly different in their size and it seems unnecessary to have to invest a ton of political power to drift Luxembourg.

 

[adil3tr]

I was not too pleased with the Monarchist path in the Netherlands focus tree, and so I’ve tinkered a little bit with it to make it more unique and (hopefully) more interesting. The original design suffered from, yes, being too constrained by historical plausibility.

This new tree looks really interesting, if a little gamey with the deserters. I hope communist trees in the future can get this treatment too: even if you have to lock them behind some special “very ahistorical mode” I was super dissapointed with the Japan communist tree, among others. Even the communist China tree was somewhat disappointing since bugs broke the social democratic path completely and the Marxist Leninist path didn’t really have anything fleshing it out.

 

[Archangel85]

Would the hull + module cost needed to jump from a "light" cruiser to a "heavy" rise over time with 1939, 1941, 1944 hulls or is it static?

If you have a main battery module above 6 inches on a cruiser hull you are a heavy cruiser.

 

[Ethereld]

Wtf is this 'Wilhelmism' thing? Does this have any historical basis, or is it just for memes?

It is just total fantasy, but so it is the notion of having the Queen assume power when the Dutch Government is still strong and not exiled. Just as the developers have an option for those players that don't want to wait to have Wilhelmina in power that last focus gives them some kind of late game objective.

I do like it, if you're going to give the player the fantasy option of giving Wilhelmina executive powers at the very least you can make it fun and unique.

 

[hitman222]

Yes now I can play as NI and take over Europe

 

[Axe99]

@Axe99 you missed the substance of the argument. Consider the shipbuilding time of the GKV's not withstanding the turret, they built those ships in two years. Which was a much faster turn around period than just about any other major power. The British were the most efficient at construction, they had by this point the most developed experience in ship construction. Thus under a scenario in the peace time period of the 1930s of another battleship race, I could easily see them pulling out a substantial production pace. Further, look at the construction of the Queen Elizabeth class. Those ships were some of the most effective battleships ever made. Their pace of construction was in effect two years. The Revenge Class was completed by the end of the first world war and numbered five. In effect, they were capable of highly rapid construction. Their failure tended to be not one of production but one of politics. With proper turret development, it is likely they would be able to achieve the old rate of one ship every eighteen months.

We can see this in admiralty documents and in the building process for Vanguard. Pulling her together from a cancelled project they had her fitted out and ready for operation by 1945. This was with an essentially moribund production que.

You did say (I think, correct me if I'm wrong) that they would have been able to build a BB in 12 months if they put the money into it. That was the biggest thing I was addressing - I'd argue that's far too fast for any BB of the period.

As for British shipbuilding more broadly, I haven't gotten the impression it was particularly quick, but that it was efficient (whereas American shipbuilding was relatively quick, but also relatively inefficient). With the only 1930s example you provide, the KGVs, saying something like 'notwithstanding the turret' is a bit misleading, as turrets plus guns are a huge part of battleship construction. I haven't gotten into the details, but wasn't Vanguard laid down in 1941 and completed in 1946 (but beset with delays because resources were sent to higher-priority tasks, so the time isn't really indicative)?

That said, that's just my impression - while I will argue strongly that a 12-month BB was not feasible, I wouldn't argue against your arguing for a British production time/cost reduction buff, that's far more a judgement thing.

 

[rust95]

@aiakira Dug in Infantry will build tank traps, lay tank mines, lay out razor wire(known to wanna be's as barbed wire) layout cross fields of fire, making taking the infantry position without infantry impossible.

Barbed wire and razor wire are different things!

 

[egslim]

You mean, a path that would entail the USA just sitting there doing nothing until 1948? Though they come up some times as ideas from a 'completionist' standpoint when we brainstorm focus tree designs, the sad reality is that they are, in fact, not very fun to play. Especially not considering HoI4 is a wargame.

Would make an interesting UK-game, though.

 

[Metz]

What about a quick fix to Ecuador's borders? They had a war in the middle of the HoI4 timeframe that makes them look as they do now.

A minor event that triggers said war over said region could be added quickly. No need for it to be elaborate. Then if South America gets looked at in the future, the event can be tweaked or perfected.