The End of the Beginning

[qer]

One aspect that definitely needs to be introduced is for the Ai to actually keep reserves for what the OP describe - Once the line is broken, there is really no opposition left.

 

[BurningEGO]

I suck at math but according to my calculations you have played almost 6h everyday since release.

5 hours and 42 minutes more or less.

Highly questionable even for someone like me. I have played countless games on hoi4 and I have about 3000 hours total by now. I could probably have 8000 with extreme dedication but 11k hours is just impossible.

He was probably idling the game most of the time, as it is pratically impossible to play that much even for a teenager.

That said, I also use similar division templates, except for mountain or paras (and mecs since I rarely bother with them but depends). I usually use paras (with 1 battalion each) to snatch a strategic position fast. If they get killed, you barely lose men. They are not meant for engaging troops, merely for taking territory and securing it for others.

 

[The Colonel]

Isn't literally a big part of the NSB AI changes that they are supposed to be better at keeping troops in important theaters, having reserves, and actually prioritizing garrisoning ports? Not to mention the AI USSR will probably have some supply issues and thus have troops hanging back behind the front out of necessity. Not sure why people are saying it won't fix any of the issues.

 

[ltccone]

Within a month - that's admittedly quite a feat and speaks highly for your skill and experience. While NSB will most likely enforce some tuning to your strategy - have you considered playing with something closer to the historical OOB?

I mean, you start out with more than twice the ARM divs the Gerries had at campaign start and i also assume that your divs feature (much) more advanced equipment than it was in reality.

This is just an idea to keep you entertained - and some of it might even become a necessity due to the supply issues to be expected with NSB's introduction.

It looks like in NSB I won't be able to do close to that. In my Germany game I'm getting supply shortages IN Germany.

All of my panzer divisions consisted of PZKW IVs with a sprinkling of Panthers. But I was playing EAI and the Soviets had T-34s.

The Soviet AI has always been soooo bad. Mainly because the ai in general has no idea how to defend. They throw all their divisions on the frontlines so once you get the first encirclement it is GG.

They also never have tanks concentrated to counter attack. I was really hoping we would see more changes to the battle planner to help defend better. Which would help the ai...

I always get three encirlements: the Baltics, the Marshes, and the Carpathians. The hardest thing is breaking through, because the Soviets had numerous (but not concentrated) T-34 divisions at the border.

 

[ltccone]

I suck at math but according to my calculations you have played almost 6h everyday since release.

Take that with a grain of salt. I have the game running almost all of the time, and I think it still counts the time when I put my computer in sleep mode.

 

[ltccone]

5 hours and 42 minutes more or less.

Highly questionable even for someone like me. I have played countless games on hoi4 and I have about 3000 hours total by now. I could probably have 8000 with extreme dedication but 11k hours is just impossible.

He was probably idling the game most of the time, as it is pratically impossible to play that much even for a teenager.

That said, I also use similar division templates, except for mountain or paras (and mecs since I rarely bother with them but depends). I usually use paras (with 1 battalion each) to snatch a strategic position fast. If they get killed, you barely lose men. They are not meant for engaging troops, merely for taking territory and securing it for others.

 

[Fulmen]

@ltccone WitE 2 is on -50% discount right now, if you're still interested. Once it drops on Steam next month you'll also get the Steam key so you can unlock it on Steam and play it through there if you want to record your hours (in-game Steam overlay is already possible with non-Steam games, but that doesn't record hours). I'm buying it now myself.

Matrix Games

www.matrixgames.com

 

[ltccone]

@ltccone WitE 2 is on -50% discount right now, if you're still interested. Once it drops on Steam next month you'll also get the Steam key so you can unlock it on Steam and play it through there if you want to record your hours (in-game Steam overlay is already possible with non-Steam games, but that doesn't record hours). I'm buying it now myself.

Matrix Games

www.matrixgames.com

Bought!

 

[batata1]

People pat themselves on the back for basically breaking HOI4 with various cheesy builds and then congratulate themselves on the forums complain that it's too easy.

This isn't true for pre-NSB HoI4. It was easy to beat the vanilla AI with a totally standard build. As USSR, 40w inf with AT and AA behind the Stalin line beat AI Germany on Elite with max sliders. In fact I think it beat Expert AI Germany on Challenging, with Elite and max Sliders. I haven't done it for a few years precisely because it was too easy, but my memory is Germany would rarely cross the river.

By contrast, on mods like Total War and World Ablaze, beating AI Germany on regular difficulty is hard. Last time I tried World Ablaze on Elite / Max Sliders, the German tanks barely slowed down as they ran through my army.

I think this shows that if you want to, you can design HoI4 to be challenging. I'm not sure it's even that complicated. You just need to make sure that if tanks attack infantry with air superiority and air support, the infantry get over-run. Train the AI to build that equipment, give it enough IC to do it at scale, it will win. That's how any half decent mod works. I haven't played in vanilla so long that I don't remember if it does. I think maybe AA is so OP in vanilla that it doesn't. But if that's the case it's easy to fix.

 

[Fulmen]

Bought!

Hope you have fun. It certainly offers a much more immersive Eastern Front than HoI4, but has quite the learning curve. The manual and YouTube guides are your friends.

 

[Leinad965]

This isn't true for pre-NSB HoI4. It was easy to beat the vanilla AI with a totally standard build. As USSR, 40w inf with AT and AA behind the Stalin line beat AI Germany on Elite with max sliders. In fact I think it beat Expert AI Germany on Challenging, with Elite and max Sliders. I haven't done it for a few years precisely because it was too easy, but my memory is Germany would rarely cross the river.

By contrast, on mods like Total War and World Ablaze, beating AI Germany on regular difficulty is hard. Last time I tried World Ablaze on Elite / Max Sliders, the German tanks barely slowed down as they ran through my army.

I think this shows that if you want to, you can design HoI4 to be challenging. I'm not sure it's even that complicated. You just need to make sure that if tanks attack infantry with air superiority and air support, the infantry get over-run. Train the AI to build that equipment, give it enough IC to do it at scale, it will win. That's how any half decent mod works. I haven't played in vanilla so long that I don't remember if it does. I think maybe AA is so OP in vanilla that it doesn't. But if that's the case it's easy to fix.

Mods like Total War and World Ablaze cheats heavilly even on normal difficulty.

 

[ltccone]

Hope you have fun. It certainly offers a much more immersive Eastern Front than HoI4, but has quite the learning curve. The manual and YouTube guides are your friends.

I'm old as dirt. I bought my first board wargame at 10, AH's Waterloo in 1965. I played just about every AH, VG, and SPI game there was up until the late 70s when I got married. I played a lot of Drang Nach Osten in college. At a glance this game looks similar to AH's Russian Campaign. But I will read the manual and watch the videos, and start on the scenarios and not the grand campaign.

 

[ltccone]

This isn't true for pre-NSB HoI4. It was easy to beat the vanilla AI with a totally standard build. As USSR, 40w inf with AT and AA behind the Stalin line beat AI Germany on Elite with max sliders. In fact I think it beat Expert AI Germany on Challenging, with Elite and max Sliders. I haven't done it for a few years precisely because it was too easy, but my memory is Germany would rarely cross the river.

By contrast, on mods like Total War and World Ablaze, beating AI Germany on regular difficulty is hard. Last time I tried World Ablaze on Elite / Max Sliders, the German tanks barely slowed down as they ran through my army.

I think this shows that if you want to, you can design HoI4 to be challenging. I'm not sure it's even that complicated. You just need to make sure that if tanks attack infantry with air superiority and air support, the infantry get over-run. Train the AI to build that equipment, give it enough IC to do it at scale, it will win. That's how any half decent mod works. I haven't played in vanilla so long that I don't remember if it does. I think maybe AA is so OP in vanilla that it doesn't. But if that's the case it's easy to fix.

Despite that I capitulated the USSR in a month, breaking through the EAI USSR line was diffcult. The Soviets had 40w T-34 armored divsions and mine were 20w. It was green air and thousands of CAS that enabled me to break through, though I lost a lot of CAS to AA.

Once I broke through I pocketed the marshes, Baltic states, and Carpathians. And then it was off to the races as there was NOTHING behind their front lines.

 

[Fulmen]

I'm old as dirt. I bought my first board wargame at 10, AH's Waterloo in 1965. I played just about every AH, VG, and SPI game there was up until the late 70s when I got married. I played a lot of Drang Nach Osten in college. At a glance this game looks similar to AH's Russian Campaign. But I will read the manual and watch the videos, and start on the scenarios and not the grand campaign.

That's quite the résumé, should be easier to get into the game then. By the way I forgot to say: the updater that comes in the install folder gets you up-to-date with the latest stable version, but if you want to try the beta version of a newer patch, you can find them on the Matrix website under My Page -> WitE 2 -> File downloads. You have to be logged in. The latest beta is v01.02.06 (Nov 19th, 2021).

Also before someone asks, no, I don't work for Matrix Games, but just as a tip from one strategy gamer to another, Gary Grigsby's War in the Pacific: Admiral's Edition and War in the West are also on sale at -80% and -70% respectively. You can find them both in the store on the Matrix Games website.

 

[ltccone]

That's quite the résumé, should be easier to get into the game then. By the way I forgot to say: the updater that comes in the install folder gets you up-to-date with the latest stable version, but if you want to try the beta version of a newer patch, you can find them on the Matrix website under My Page -> WitE 2 -> File downloads. You have to be logged in. The latest beta is v01.02.06 (Nov 19th, 2021).

Also before someone asks, no, I don't work for Matrix Games, but just as a tip from one strategy gamer to another, Gary Grigsby's War in the Pacific: Admiral's Edition and War in the West are also on sale at -80% and -70% respectively. You can find them both in the store on the Matrix Games website.

Thank you! I bought both plus the Torch DLS. Happy Thanksgiving to me!

 

[Praetori]

This isn't true for pre-NSB HoI4. It was easy to beat the vanilla AI with a totally standard build. As USSR, 40w inf with AT and AA behind the Stalin line beat AI Germany on Elite with max sliders. In fact I think it beat Expert AI Germany on Challenging, with Elite and max Sliders. I haven't done it for a few years precisely because it was too easy, but my memory is Germany would rarely cross the river.

By contrast, on mods like Total War and World Ablaze, beating AI Germany on regular difficulty is hard. Last time I tried World Ablaze on Elite / Max Sliders, the German tanks barely slowed down as they ran through my army.

I think this shows that if you want to, you can design HoI4 to be challenging. I'm not sure it's even that complicated. You just need to make sure that if tanks attack infantry with air superiority and air support, the infantry get over-run. Train the AI to build that equipment, give it enough IC to do it at scale, it will win. That's how any half decent mod works. I haven't played in vanilla so long that I don't remember if it does. I think maybe AA is so OP in vanilla that it doesn't. But if that's the case it's easy to fix.

You're missing my point. Building 40w INF with AT and AA in sufficient numbers and placing them behind the Stalin line means that you HAVE figured the game out. People still post threads about having issues understanding why they can't beat China as Japan (while running with huge deficiencies in small arms or support eq).

 

[batata1]

You wrote people beat the AI with cheesy builds like paras. You don't need that to beat vanilla HoI4. A basic build, executed well, will do it.