My bad, I had misread the dev diary. I thought that the alternative historical paths for Poland, were to be included as part of the upcoming Barbarossa DLC.
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A few thoughts about the recent dev diary responses
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My bad, I had misread the dev diary. I thought that the alternative historical paths for Poland, were to be included as part of the upcoming Barbarossa DLC.
I sometimes envy game developers. Being able to be upset over some mildly rude forum posts and the supportive crowd would rush to your defense. In non-gaming software development nobody defends you and you are alone with all the "it aint work terebl dvlpoer 1/5!!!!!"
In any case, this reaction shouldn't be hard to predict, especially considering that most of the rudeness seems to come from a few angry Poles, who feel that their country is treated like a joke.
It wouldn't be an issue if you marketed the game as Civilization, but with all the "serious history" drapping it might make sense to be careful with the content you put in and do just a little bit more research before rolling it out - it would be easy to avoid the pitchforks by simply replacing the most egregious goofiness with something more grounded in reality.
Or not. After all, it is just noise, as long as it doesn't harm sales.
In any case, this reaction shouldn't be hard to predict, especially considering that most of the rudeness seems to come from a few angry Poles, who feel that their country is treated like a joke.
It wouldn't be an issue if you marketed the game as Civilization, but with all the "serious history" drapping it might make sense to be careful with the content you put in and do just a little bit more research before rolling it out - it would be easy to avoid the pitchforks by simply replacing the most egregious goofiness with something more grounded in reality.
Or not. After all, it is just noise, as long as it doesn't harm sales.
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No links (just because it isn't clickable doesn't make it not a link)
also numerous offtopic posts removes, infractions etc... play nice or dont play.
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This is quite interesting to read who different things are seen among the playerbase.
In my opinion the German tree as whole is actually the best example how Alt-History should be implemented. One highly plausible branch (The Monarchy Compromise – which is very similar to what Beck/Goerdeler were actually aiming at, see https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schattenkabinett_Beck/Goerdeler), and one other tree with a good sub-brunch (An Alliance with the Shade, especially when you assume a communist France which is also OK from the standpoint of plausibility) and a mediocre sub-brunch (Willi II repeating WW1 is not great, but far better then a 2. Civil War in the US or a communist Japan).
And HRE doesn’t really count in my opinion because it is not part of the tree itself and clearly designed as an easter egg which is sufficiently locked away behind a bunch of nonsense-decisions and more or less necessary exploits.
There are other well-designed branches as well (e. g. Limited Intervention for the US) but as a whole the German Tree is unique among the reworked majors because it’s the only one which is free of complete Bullshit (HRE doesn’t count, see above).
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True Words Podcat. Sadly such Troublemakers you find anywere, which torpedo this things (like DD´s) like you said.
Normaly blocking them for such Parts is a perfect instrument. Means blocking them in that case for the DD´s.
We all are not perfect and get loud here and there, but in DD´s and similar important Informations gentlessnes is the Key. I know exactly what you mean and that have to be respectet. Not every Developer show or talk to the Community and there Paradox incl. your integrated Dev-Studios (like HBS), Firaxis and some smaller / medium independent Dev-Studious (like Goldhawk) are the Execptions.
Normaly blocking them for such Parts is a perfect instrument. Means blocking them in that case for the DD´s.
We all are not perfect and get loud here and there, but in DD´s and similar important Informations gentlessnes is the Key. I know exactly what you mean and that have to be respectet. Not every Developer show or talk to the Community and there Paradox incl. your integrated Dev-Studios (like HBS), Firaxis and some smaller / medium independent Dev-Studious (like Goldhawk) are the Execptions.
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Torpedoing DDs? Sounds like these "Troublemakers" (with a capital T) are actually submarines.
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Tito gets its own lacklustre focus path, which doesn't really adress the resistance of the Partisans to the Axis, which was vital in his rise to power.
The royal wedding focus is interesting, since historically Petar II did marry a foreign princess while the country was under (very harsh) occupation. This would make the focus historical, were it not for the fact that it isn't available while the country is occupied!
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Actually i think most of the complaints could be remedied if we got more robust settings for an ahistorical game so that we could switch which paths are allowed and which aren't. This way everyone could just disable any paths they want. These settings could be saved in profiles just like how you save mod profiles in the launcher.
The option for forcing a country to a specific path is already there. Extending it to be able to choose which paths they can go on shouldn't be so huge effort.
I like this idea so much i have opened a separate thread for it
Here it is.
The option for forcing a country to a specific path is already there. Extending it to be able to choose which paths they can go on shouldn't be so huge effort.
I like this idea so much i have opened a separate thread for it
Here it is.
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This was adressed in the first posting of the thread:
The Dev Diary and the responses are not from a "corporate communictations" departement but from the DEV that has the done the content.
Joking around a bit is part of the "dev diary atmosphere".
I dont think it's unreasonable to ask us to be:
(See even here is a small joke. You might call it a "communication sin" to threaten customers with a flammenwerfer.)
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HoI IV is the first game in it's line that's a big departure from it's predecessors who were heavily skewed into historical gameplay, some might even refer to it as railroaded. This game is more of a sandbox in a WWII setting. You have part of the old playerbase and an entirely new one that plays more casual. I'm not implying 'filthy casuals', just pointing out the difference in expectations when it comes to content.
HoI IV feels like it has a split personality. It tries to be many things at the same time, and as result doesn't manage to be much of anything. It's design decisions clash with other design decisions, for example: ahistorical focus trees vs historical ones. If you allow one country to go ahistorical the game can't seem to cope with it and essentially becomes paralyzed and all kinds of silly stuff starts happening. Same goes for the battleplanner.
The battleplanner caters more to WWI type offensives instead of a WWII one. As a player I can employ these tactics, but the AI won't. This often leads to the player having a massive advantage and doesn't have to do anything. (Also, I'd like to point out that the 'blitz' button in the battleplanner is locked behind a DLC.) Yet, the division designer favours seperate division designs instead of combined ones. In SP everything goes, but if you're min-maxing you preferably seperate your tanks from your infantry. You have a battleplanner that does one thing and a division designer that promotes something else.
The game is overly streamlined, and it's detrimental to the franchise. The air war is the biggest victim of this, this leads to very silly situations of planes teleporting and not being able to be intercepted on their way to their destination. Biplanes station in Brest (France) can still help out over the maginot line can still help out even though they don't have the range to be anywhere near usefull there.
To be quite honest, I'd really like to hear podcat's sincerest opinion on HoI IV in general and if this really was the game he invisioned. After all.. we're all gamers here. And nobody likes the generic marketer spiel
HoI IV feels like it has a split personality. It tries to be many things at the same time, and as result doesn't manage to be much of anything. It's design decisions clash with other design decisions, for example: ahistorical focus trees vs historical ones. If you allow one country to go ahistorical the game can't seem to cope with it and essentially becomes paralyzed and all kinds of silly stuff starts happening. Same goes for the battleplanner.
The battleplanner caters more to WWI type offensives instead of a WWII one. As a player I can employ these tactics, but the AI won't. This often leads to the player having a massive advantage and doesn't have to do anything. (Also, I'd like to point out that the 'blitz' button in the battleplanner is locked behind a DLC.) Yet, the division designer favours seperate division designs instead of combined ones. In SP everything goes, but if you're min-maxing you preferably seperate your tanks from your infantry. You have a battleplanner that does one thing and a division designer that promotes something else.
The game is overly streamlined, and it's detrimental to the franchise. The air war is the biggest victim of this, this leads to very silly situations of planes teleporting and not being able to be intercepted on their way to their destination. Biplanes station in Brest (France) can still help out over the maginot line can still help out even though they don't have the range to be anywhere near usefull there.
To be quite honest, I'd really like to hear podcat's sincerest opinion on HoI IV in general and if this really was the game he invisioned. After all.. we're all gamers here. And nobody likes the generic marketer spiel
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And then there is me, an unpopular HOI4 player sponsoring the Total War mod as one of the best mod (IMO) in terms of historical realism and carefully recreating the historical divisional TOE when playing as any major nation
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Cotne22, yeah sounds funny, but have a grave Background in the Explenation. Such People destroy the Community or the Information-Flow from the Devs / Publisher for the friendly Community.
Have seen that in differnt Forums and see it very often in active Forums too (like in Steam).
In most cases the Devs / Publisher break off contact and don´t show new Infos anymore. Or if they bring out new Infos the Threat is hardcoded, means the Community can´t say anything, only read it.
Therefore the Devs here give that Troublemakers a Warning Shot across the bows. But not only them, that is for the full Community. Means if someone defection the gentlements Line no Dev Dirays will shown again.
Have seen that in differnt Forums and see it very often in active Forums too (like in Steam).
In most cases the Devs / Publisher break off contact and don´t show new Infos anymore. Or if they bring out new Infos the Threat is hardcoded, means the Community can´t say anything, only read it.
Therefore the Devs here give that Troublemakers a Warning Shot across the bows. But not only them, that is for the full Community. Means if someone defection the gentlements Line no Dev Dirays will shown again.
We all like the Kaiser restoration tree, and while I think a German monarchical restoration was technically possible in the late 1930s and early 1940s, I don't think the initial tree is implemented well. There's no reason why 90% of the German generals would up and revolt against Hitler in 1936, even if a good number of them were monarchists. I think that restoring the Kaiser should be far more difficult, and basically serve as an Easter egg or reward for a skilled player. The player could slowly build up monarchist influence over time and coup Hitler if the war is not going well or if stability is too low or something. This probably wouldn't happen until at least 1940, meaning that you wouldn't be able to prevent WWII, but you could change the German goals and the war's outcome.
I know the HRE doesn't really "count" since it's just an Easter egg, but it's still nonsensical - why would the Hohenzollerns seek to restore the Holy Roman Empire, which was a patently Hapsburg institution for about six hundred years prior? Keep the HRE but let Austria-Hungary form it instead.
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I mean, a big reason why is tons of players want "nice Germany" where they can do all the same stuff as WW2 but without Hitler.
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I downvoted it because while I do think there is a problem with the alt-right, this post suggests that the best solution would be to remove the monarchist / fascist paths.This is so well-written and thought out that it deserves to be the OP of its own thread. Well said. Especially the ethnic cleansing part. Put in context like that, the Palestine/Madagascar path becomes disturbing.
I also wonder if the people downvoting it could perhaps tell us why
I am also a person who enjoys the fascist / monarchist paths, but I am not a nationalist, in fact, I consider myself quite liberal. I like playing these paths because they let you take land, expand your nation, and help drive the game forward, instead of sitting and waiting for Germany to attack. I'd rather not let a minority of nutso online fascists ruin my fun.
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You are forgetting one important thing, Germany is the main country in this game. Majority of the stuff revolves around them when it comes to balance, if Kaiser path would be delayed and if civil war would happen lets say in 39 or 40 it would force Germany out of the status of major country which would result in them getting defeated fast. Germany already loses half of army and economy takes a major hit once monarchists defeat the Nazis, but the difference is that you also have time to rebuild the country and prepare it for war, which is why Rhineland vs Oppose Hitler is a good decision not only story wise but also in the terms of gameplay and balance.
I like for example that you have to play Turkey for almost 3 years before you are allowed to restore Ottoman Empire, but the difference is that Turkey is a minor and historically they didn't really had much involvement in the WW2 and implementing similiar mechanics to Germany would ruin them.
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People saying German gets a huge economic hit when going Kaiserreich, I never felt that. I do the revolt very first focus usually, and then get Total Mob and Extensive Conscription as my first two picks. Germany on total mob is quite strong, and more than compensates for the loss of MEFO. Since you don't pay MEFO this also compensates for PP loss of not having Hitler anymore.
The one thing you are missing for buildup is Austria and Czechoslovakia annexations, but you can form Greater Germany with the Imperial Sentiment in AH territory, which gives you even more land, just a bit later.
The one thing you are missing for buildup is Austria and Czechoslovakia annexations, but you can form Greater Germany with the Imperial Sentiment in AH territory, which gives you even more land, just a bit later.
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When I wrote about a "coup" in my post, I was more imagining a soft coup where a bunch of officers bring their guns into Hitler's office and say "the Kaiser's in control now." The whole point of building up monarchist influence beforehand, something I also wrote about in my post, would be to curb the power of the SS and other radical elements that would start a civil war if not silenced before the coup. Maybe said coup could result in a civil war if handled improperly, which would require a very skilled player to solve since it would probably be taking place during WWII. Even still, I don't think "Oppose Hitler" is a very sensible decision from a narrative standpoint, because it still doesn't make any sense why half the military would try and stop Hitler at that point in time.
This whole thread is about how there are too many unrealistic and memey alt-history paths in the game, and when I criticize the contrived and sudden nature of the civil war in the Kaiser path, I get downvoted? Honestly if it's going to be like that no wonder the devs are confused as to what people want.
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It might be interesting to portray the Oster Conspiracy in-game. You could take decisions to increase the coup's influence and push Chamberlain into not giving up the Sudetenland, and when the Munich Conference is held, if the UK doesn't give in, the coup is executed. From there, a military junta, a monarchy (absolute or constitutional), or a republic could be implemented, maybe joining the allies in opposition to the USSR.
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He points out an inconsistent pattern. And I find this criticism valid, for historical and contemporary reasons.