Hearts of Iron IV - Dev Diary 13 - Conscription & Training

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Can your divisions lose experience when their casualties are very high?

Can you train even if all your units got regular level to just gain more land combat experience?

This all looks very awesome, and all the choices will likely make pre-war US much more interesting to manage! Questions:
1. Will there be similar mechanisms for training naval units: i.e., both to simulate the difference between launch date and commissioning, as well as to simulate war games like the US Fleet Problems?
2. How about air unit training?
3. As a sanity check: I assume that launching naval vessels (and air wings) will require different rules than land units (i.e., a skeleton crew as opposed to "10% of equipment and manpower"), correct? Otherwise we could end up with funny situations like: "The Graf Zepplin has its keel and hull? Who cares if it has an engine, launch it! We need the Naval experience asap"
4. Will the reliability stat help reduce the attrition of those training Panzer Is?

1. Possibly not. We have it for army because its necessary for managing templates and such
2. ships and air only gain experience at war when doing missions atm
4. yes

Thank you for the Dev Diary.

What does the 'cat' View attachment 124309symbol stand for?

Its a work-in-progress planning tool for controlling axis of advance ;)

You need 10% equipment to do anything. But what if the only equipment in the pool is artillery, because you have not been building small arms, or you queue up lots of Divs that empty the pool? Is it balanced, that each type of equipment needs 10%?

Can you see in a tool tip exactly how many tanks, artillery etc are in a Div, in the Army Planner and on the map?

Are horses an "equipment" for cavalry?

- its 10% to deploy. but well if you dont deploy any frontlien battalion equipment at all you are goign to die horribly. you can still train a bit tho.
- yes, Tooltips show stuff like that.
- No, you cant build horses.


Can your divisions lose experience when their casualties are very high?

Yes
 
Can your divisions lose experience when their casualties are very high?

100% of your men are vets, 200% experience for the unit.

Lose half of them, and replace with green recruits. That should reduce your overall unit level to around Trained 100% experience. Only combat can increase it back to vet level.

100% of your men are trained, 100% experience for the unit. Lose half, and the experience level is down around 50%. But you can take them out of action and get them training to bring that back up.
 
Not too fond of needing experience to restructure templates, but I see the need for restricting those kind of actions. Pretty much the same like the artificial PP refraining you from changing ministers on a daily basis.

I have to say that this training and conscription module of the game exceeds my expectations. That is one heck of a design choice as it delivers a great deal of realism and keeps the player busy/entertained making decisions even in peace time. Beautiful piece of creativity.
 
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OH DEAR i can`t wait to read!!!

EDIT: Okey done, and i love what i read :) Also, visuals are the best, i adore soldier in the barrel picture and love soldiers doing push ups on the map! That is perfect, just the kind of Paradoxian humor i like :)
 
I love it in theory. I'm honestly worried some of these details will really open up for minmax issues which will could lead to rapid endings in multi player games. Hopefully the Beta will sort out ballance issues - and I hope the Beta will end up in some multi-player groups (especielly those Writing AARs about their games (hint hint ;))

A more direct question: If you disband a lot of very experienced troops (which I had to to do as Germany in a 1944 multi player game to be able to reinforce key panzer divisions (Blitz Carnage)) how will that effect your MP-pool, which may consist of "trained" soldiers? Will your disbanded "veterans" become "trained" or will you actually be able to reinforce existing divisions with "veterans"?

Thanks for making such an effort on HoI4.
 
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That was a great dev diary : training seems to be an interesting mechanic, and I hope it will be well-balanced in the game.

On a trollish note, the only thing I really dislike in what you've shown us recently is the Cavalry icon. The horse on it, with his head down, doesn't give the feeling of a division of heroic cavalrymen perpetuating the old traditions. Rather, it seems they are riding Eeyore.

Eeyore_3.jpg
 
For each division the game tracks experience as how many of its men are experienced soldiers and when casualties are removed during combat there is a higher chance that the fresh recruits were the ones who got taken out. This is both realistic and makes it easier to keep your divisions up in experience even when soldiers are lost.

Will this work the same or very similar with equipment loses during combat? Lighter (thinner armor) tanks taking heavier loses than heavier (thinker armor) tanks first?

Oh I loved everything I just read in this DD!!!!! :wub:
 
On a trollish note, the only thing I really dislike in what you've shown us recently is the Cavalry icon. The horse on it, with his head down, doesn't give the feeling of a division of heroic cavalrymen perpetuating the old traditions. Rather, it seems they are riding Eeyore. ]

its intentionally sad looking because people kept harassing me about building horses and cavalry special mechanics ;P
 
Podcat, you say: "ships and air only gain experience at war when doing missions atm".. I really hope this changes and your "atm" means you are serious thinking of it. Pilots went through extensive training before taking the air. Nations that trained their pilots pre-war showed when the war started. Navy seems a bit more complicated but hopefully training will be used for that too. Thanks Podcat! Gracias Amigo
 
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podcat said:
Manpower will see some big changes in HOI4. Rather than controlling only how much it ticks up per month your conscription laws now control what percentage of the population you can recruit from the full population count. Conscription laws also come with trade-offs in that recruiting more will impact efficiency of your industry and as you dig deeper and starts scraping the barrel of recruits their quality will drop requiring more training time to reach the same level of proficiency. The idea is to make it less clear cut than in hoi3 where more men was always best at all times.
This paragraph. There is population mechanic?
 
I have question about upgrages

dd13_off_map.jpg

1. What does the UPGRADING mean? Does it mean that we are upgrading Pz IV and we will get better armor and new gun for Pz IV or does it mean something else?

2. If Im building PzJäger I, then does it use old Panzer I for building it or will I get 100% new machine?
 
I have question about upgrages

View attachment 124310

1. What does the UPGRADING mean? Does it mean that we are upgrading Pz IV and we will get better armor and new gun for Pz IV or does it mean something else?

2. If Im building PzJäger I, then does it use old Panzer I for building it or will I get 100% new machine?
I'd say that it's for replacing old equipment.
 
I love the sound of this - amazing.

A question, though - how do air units work with regard to their creation? Are planes simply produced then attributed to airfields and then only gain experience in combat? If this is the case I'm sure you've a logical reason why they're not treated as land units (create a unit, assign equipment, train men, deploy) - would you be able you give some insight into this? It seems a shame not to share the same awesome mechanic with the air side of things (and the naval side of things tbh).
 
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podcat said earlier to the same question about upgrades:

yes, its say swapping out panzer Is for panzer IIs in healty divisions. old equipment goes back in storage.