31st July - Review from a Hearts of Iron Veteran

[CaptRobau]

If it's anything like HOI2 you'll never have enough transports and paratroopers to use them on a large enough scale to exploit. They take to long to re-organize and move when they're not dropping from the sky.

The way he said it confused me. I thought the way he conveyed it it sounded like they'd like auto-airdrop as if it was the only way paratroopers could be used. Which would be weird because most paratroopers fought as infantry divisions instead of being used for airdrops.

Probably not exploitable then. Good.

 

[unmerged(45977)]

actually.. if enough people want some sort of autoslider it would be in a patch.

i just never used that feature myself as i felt it was too silly.. i never really ran at 100% efficiency sliders either, i always overproduced some supplies, and not upgrade/reinforce everything at once.


besides, if you want to have AI control for production, just turn it on.

Without the auto slider you would have to pause every day to change it. If armies took damage and you had your reinforcements slider at 0 you wouldn't reinforce, after the reinforcements were done you were wasting IC on reinforcements. So pausing every day was necessary to keep your sliders optimal. Also, when new factories came online you had to change the sliders every day because a little bit of IC was added every day and you had to readjust it. Also, upgrading comes to mind: every now and then the upgrades need went under the amount you had assigned to it, thus leading to wasted IC.

I know that the auto slider was sometimes silly as it would prioritize supply over reinforcements, which is obviously suboptimal, but it was a great addition nonetheless. I really wonder why the auto slider was removed and replaced with AI production?

 

[Hagar]

Great news, CORE Rules!!!

Good to see our efforts are appreciated! But Paradox certainly deserves part of the credit, because without it's liberal modding policy CORE (and other mods) just wouldn't be possible.

 

[Threviel]

actually.. if enough people want some sort of autoslider it would be in a patch.

i just never used that feature myself as i felt it was too silly.. i never really ran at 100% efficiency sliders either, i always overproduced some supplies, and not upgrade/reinforce everything at once.


besides, if you want to have AI control for production, just turn it on.

If it didn't change each and every day that would be perfect. But just from 36-39 one has to (in order to play optimally)check the sliders 3*365 times. It was so bad that I gave myself resources and 1000 IC or whatever just so I didn't have to change the sliders. And it wasn't fun.

 

[unmerged(51140)]

Well... so much for preordering it...

 

[Alexander Seil]

If it didn't change each and every day that would be perfect. But just from 36-39 one has to (in order to play optimally)check the sliders 3*365 times. It was so bad that I gave myself resources and 1000 IC or whatever just so I didn't have to change the sliders. And it wasn't fun.

You don't need to play optimally, it's not a Mesoamerican ballgame where the losing team gets sacrificed to Quetzalcoatl.

 

[Threviel]

You don't need to play optimally, it's not a Mesoamerican ballgame where the losing team gets sacrificed to Quetzalcoatl.

Well, no, I don't have to and nor do I use to. But I do not like to forget changing sliders after my new battleship is ready and find out that I've wasted 12 IC for two weeks or whatever. Or that a new convoy had been set up and suddenly my armies are out of supplies. It's annoying and the solution with automatic sliders was simple and good enough, though I would prefer if one could set priorities in a better way.

 

[Lothos]

Well, no, I don't have to and nor do I use to. But I do not like to forget changing sliders after my new battleship is ready and find out that I've wasted 12 IC for two weeks or whatever. Or that a new convoy had been set up and suddenly my armies are out of supplies. It's annoying and the solution with automatic sliders was simple and good enough, though I would prefer if one could set priorities in a better way.

FYI, even though there is no auto sliders (unless you make all of produciton AI controled) you do get an alert on the left hand side saying if you are wasting IC.

 

[unmerged(51140)]

You don't need to play optimally, it's not a Mesoamerican ballgame where the losing team gets sacrificed to Quetzalcoatl.

The point is... giving the player the option to give AI control over stuff like entire naval and air operations with reserve units, let him give AI control to everything from division, corps, army up to entire areas like the eastern front, promoting that one wants to increase complexity while giving the player easy ways to avoid micromanagement... and then take out the production sliders because the lead designer though they were 'silly'...

I'm sorry guys but in HoI2 this was what a LOT of players were waiting for and I remember the cheers when it finally came... this lack of autosliders will affect new players who want to try out HoI2 the most. So I think the lack of this feature (this is a micromanagment that everyone will have to do unless one gives up the entire production to the AI) will actually cost you some new fans because some players will be annoyed by the need to micromanage that stuff.

 

[unmerged(51140)]

FYI, even though there is no auto sliders (unless you make all of produciton AI controled) you do get an alert on the left hand side saying if you are wasting IC.

That's one more alert that keeps popping up very often. To me that is no help, it is even more annoying. I'll be thinking constantly "If the AI is smart enough to notice this, why can't it simply fix it??"

 

[unmerged(143159)]

actually.. if enough people want some sort of autoslider it would be in a patch.

i just never used that feature myself as i felt it was too silly.. i never really ran at 100% efficiency sliders either, i always overproduced some supplies, and not upgrade/reinforce everything at once.


besides, if you want to have AI control for production, just turn it on.

I think you should make a poll, so you'll see that we're dieing ( I'm not sure how it spells ) for such a feature. Also, IMO it would be useful not to be able to waste IC nor Leadership. You can make a button or something, and choose where the wasted IC/leadership should be transferred automatically. That would be awesome for micromanagement-haters like me.

 

[Threviel]

FYI, even though there is no auto sliders (unless you make all of produciton AI controled) you do get an alert on the left hand side saying if you are wasting IC.

Yes, that is good and all, but the point is that the sliders is an unnecessary chore that the computer could just as easily do. It adds no fun to the game to be forced to enter a menu and change the sliders now and then.

But Johan said he will add the feature in a patch if enough people want it so I guess I just have to endure until then.

I don't really know what it means to let the computer handle all production, but I would like to control the rest of things.

PS. The best model for me would be if one could set priorities. For example,
1. Consumer goods
2. Reinforcement
3. Supply
4. Production

If I've just gotten myself in an unexpected war I would want to prioritize reinforcement and supplies and my new production can wait. In peace I might have set it:

1. Consumer goods
2. Production
3. Supply
4. Reinforcement

 

[unmerged(1823)]

If it didn't change each and every day that would be perfect. But just from 36-39 one has to (in order to play optimally)check the sliders 3*365 times. It was so bad that I gave myself resources and 1000 IC or whatever just so I didn't have to change the sliders. And it wasn't fun.

ehh?

the alert at top of the screen tells you when you waste any IC, you dont need to check them every day.

 

[unmerged(146787)]

If it didn't change each and every day that would be perfect. But just from 36-39 one has to (in order to play optimally)check the sliders 3*365 times. It was so bad that I gave myself resources and 1000 IC or whatever just so I didn't have to change the sliders. And it wasn't fun.

True! Also with any option missing for putting the IC distribution data in manually (via numpad), its just annoying for a more casual gamer like me (I really appreciate the guys who are able to handle these data graveyards completely by themselves!), so I would like to see an auto-slider-option as well.

On the other hand I do not want to give completely away the production control to the AI, since the general handling of the production is fun .

I just dont like to spend time on production features which are just optimising something (hence I am a casual gamer)

Soo, yeah, auto-sliders would be very nice .

 

[omnivorous]

Nice review, and thanks Lothos and Johan for answering questions...
And for me autosliders is almost must, i hate losing IC, and dont like to check sliders every day, specially not in wartime. I really liked drag and drop idea from this thread

http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?t=412232

 

[Robert3]

Lothos has been involved in HoI2 development, and was behind some of the most popular mods for both HoI1 and HoI2. I asked him for advice in the early development of Hearts of Iron 3, but he could not participate in the beta testing of the game due to outside circumstances. I asked him to give a veteran players view of the game, so you could see what someone with loads of experience of the games and modding them says.

It's pleasing that Paradox asked the Gamers and especially moder to improve the game really!

 

[Baneslave]

Auto-sliders would be nice, yes.

 

[Threviel]

ehh?

the alert at top of the screen tells you when you waste any IC, you dont need to check them every day.

I don't remember it doing that in HoI 2 1.00, but I might be wrong. But it does now and that is as I said above good and all, just not enough.

I am just not a hardcore enough player to find it amusing to change a slider each and every time something with my production changes. Even if there is a nifty way of letting me know when to do it.

PS. In the qoute above I was talking about my experience with HoI 2, not HoI 3.

PPS. Ohh, and can you set an autopause as soon as IC is wasted? Or do I have to pause for getting coffee or going to the toilet?

 

[unmerged(45977)]

ehh?

the alert at top of the screen tells you when you waste any IC, you dont need to check them every day.

Thats pretty nice. Will it also notify you if you're not reinforcing to the max?

And even with the notice, you'll be moving your sliders around a lot (if strength loss, upgrades and strat bombing are anything like HoI2) while your computer could just dedicated one of his cores to do it for you . And right now that would involve putting the entire production chain in the hands of the AI.

 

[alanschu]

Even when the slider management came in I never really bothered.

After building some IC I'd wait a few days for them to finish constructing to adjust the slider.

As for reinforcements and upgrades. Well, I'd rarely bother with ensuring I had 100% for upgrades. For reinforcements, I usually allocated a bit more than was initially necessary and then just never worried about it. Sure I'd waste some IC on occasion, and other times I might not be allocating reinforcements as aggressively, but I didn't care. Wasting 5 IC for a few days is hardly crippling. If there was strategic bombing, then I allocated a bit extra to my production, and always put something I didn't care so much about at the bottom of my queue.


For all those complaining that they were "taken out," though...they probably weren't. They just weren't bothered to be added since this is a new engine. I highly doubt they were actively removed from the game. Johan likely felt time was better spent working on something else instead.

Indeed. I would rather have automatic slider control where one can set priorities etc. than all those nifty sprites...

I doubt artists work on the automatic slider controls