This is part two of a three part Preview of HOI3 published in the AARlander, magazine, AARland's monthly publication. Part one can be found here. The final part will be posted on July the first. Enjoy!
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EXCLUSIVE HOI3 Preview - Part II
by Singleton Mosby
[/anchor]by Singleton Mosby
Being mauled by the AI, HOI3 and combat
Quickly I realised the 1936 game I was playing wouldn't give me the impression of Hearts Of Iron 3 I wanted for many hours. Hence I returned to the scenario-menu and chose Republican Spain by simply clicking on the map. Only later I found out this early build wasn't yet stable enough to provide me with this.
1938. The Spanish Civil War is drawing to a close. But perhaps there will still be something to save for the Republicans. A better way to 'taste' the new combat system can't be found. Within two months the AI completely smashed me. Lines were pierced and my troops evaporated, I was completely mauled. But, I had fought!
On the divisional level not much has changed since HOI2. It worked fine it will work fine again. Move to click and ctrl-click for a support-attack or strategic movement order (how stupid of me not to find out I had to press ctrl and thinking this part of the game wasn't implemented yet). Air commands are a little bit more elaborate. You can decide to operate in a certain region, province or decide on a certain radius from a province. The last option is the most interesting: you can set the unit to operate in a V shape area from a certain radius behind a designated province. Thus, you know where you want to break through, bomb everything in and behind that province.
The major changes to the combat system are on the higher levels however. First a proper unit hierarchy is added. You don't build HQ's anymore; you simple create one when you need one. Attach units to a new corps or a corps to an already existing army. All the way up through Army, Armygroup and Theater command. Same goes for the fleets and air wings.
I had to clean up the hierarchy of my units beforehand though as I didn't want any divisions to be directly attached to the armies or army groups.
With the hierarchy in place you can decide to take command at a higher level. This will probably come in handy fighting on the Eastern Front although I haven't experienced warfare yet at such a humongous scale.
Several orders can be given to a corps. Attack or Blitz (don’t worry about being flanked!) a certain objective or several objectives. This thus leaves us two methods for the attack. The regular method on the divisional level, and the new method at corps level. Through some inside information from Paradox I found out however they are currently adding a few more ways. No promises yet so we will have to see. I most certainly hope they will try to implement the TOAW (the Operation Art Of War) method of arranging an attack on a province in detail.
The other options at corps level are: defend one or more provinces and stand at the ready at a certain location. The same orders can be used for armies. But keep in mind you can't give an order to a unit lower on the echelons once you have given an order to the corps or army.
So far I have only used the corps command orders to defend certain locations or, reassemble a corps after a long drive through Poland during which the divisions ended up all over the place.
A corps is ordered to attack the German lines, all subordinate units are highlighted.
After my first experience with the combat system playing as the Republicans I deemed taking the helm at the other side would be a simple walkover. How wrong could I have been! During several hours of play I fought an enervating battle for Spain. In the south my Nationalist troops were being driven back from Granada as far as Seville. In the north, around Barcelona I could hardly hold the line as well. Only on the central front, around Madrid, were my troops victorious. In the end I managed to cut the enemy in half and drive on Seville to aid my beleaguered and battered troops. HOI at it's best! Even though the grand-strategy of the AI didn’t make much sense. Instead of going for Seville they should have created a strong defence. The strategic AI, however, is one of the things Paradox is still improving before release. And already it was giving me a hard time at ‘normal’.
The war was over too early however, without a message or event (same thing I experienced playing as Poland). Madrid and Barcelona had fallen to my arms but in the south the Republicans had a good chance of capturing Seville. Valencia was still firm in their possession. My campaign against Poland, Fall WeiB was over just after I captured Warsaw and cut the Polish army in half, the Reds hadn't entered the war yet but got their slice of Poland all the same.
As seen in the division-designer not all types of units (brigades/regiments/battalions) are available right away. Some need to be researched before you can build them. Others will be improved through various levels of tech-research. As we know from HOI2 there are several categories of research. This time around there are more then ever! The categories are: Infantry and Armour, Escorts (including submarines and transports) and Capital ships (including carriers), Bombers and Fighters, Industry, Secret (yep, the nukes), Theory, Land doctrines, Naval doctrines and Air doctrines.
Unlike in HOI2 however there are no tech-teams. You distribute your available leadership over several tasks. In this way you can set the sliders to the amount of projects you wish to research. If for some reason you need to upgrade your Infantry units quickly you spend more points on leadership until these projects are completely researched, turning your attention to Diplomacy or Officers afterwards. Some of you might miss the tech-teams at first but be assured this new system works very well, especially for the smaller nations.
More on July 1st as we publish the preview in full including the third part
- More screenshots!
- AI aid
- Peace, annexation, exploitation
- “AAR-tools”
- and more
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