Are wars a little too quick?

[Broetchenholer]

Currently playing as the Soviets in my last game before Death and Dishonor and i feel a little ahistorical. Not sure why, maybe you can tell me what the problem here is.

I decided to play a somewhat historical game, building up my forces and letting Germany declare on me, no aggressive wars from me. Only thing i did was to send 5 tank divisions to Spain and 7 to China, resulting in Republican Spain winning and China owning Korea and South-East Asia at 1941, Japan beaten back to it's Island. I started a strong industrial build up, then went for loads of infantry (maybe 140 on the western front) and some 12 medium tank divisions as well as around 24 motorized. Germany attacked late february 1941 and slowly started to lose. At the start it looked scary but after a while it stabilized and then i won, first only in Memel but when he had 400k losses to my 50k it startet to speed up. i Helped a little by declaring on Romania and then on hungary to encircle armies but at that point i probably could have won more ground by simply pushing through poland. It's now mid july and i am standing on the Oder, north of Prague and own Wien and Graz. I don't think i made very clever moves or outplayed the AI in any way, i also don't believe i had more troops. I probably had more on the border though, not sure, encryption was weak for me.

My point is, shouldn't the war take much longer? Even if i was numerically superior becausei build up more then real history Russia, i surely wasn't that strong. I was basically as fast as Germany was in conquering land up to Moscow. That makes no sense. Germany was not that weak compared to me. They lost according to the Warscreen 2.34m people in those 5 months. There seems to not be a point where both armies have a similar strength and a stalemate occurs, once one side wins a little, this seems to extremely fast escalate and results in a collapse of one side.

 

[Nussor]

It seems that despite all their concern for balance, HoI 4 is pretty unbalanced overall. I remember playing HoI2 back then has always been a real challange.

 

[The-False-Being26]

There are a lot of problems with the Germany AI right now. In 3 day the next patch will release which will adress a lot of these issues. However a decent human player will aways beat the AI, but the upcoming patch should make Germany less of a push over.

 

[Ironside121]

Germany sucks, is the best way to put it. For the game to be challenging Germany MUST be human controlled. And you're playing the Soviets too, which are basically another America, sit around, build up, roflstomp the rest of the world.

 

[Adonnus]

Far too quick as I pointed out in previous threads it's not only the AI but also the ultra nerfed winter effects in Hoi4. In DH normally combat would cease or crawl to a halt through the winter and mud seasons before resuming in April but in Hoi4 it's grind through all year long with no brakes and no penalties.

 

[epicmemory]

I don't really like to be the guy that says "get this mod!", but the serious AI issues that plague the game right now (poor templates and poor domestic macromanagement of production lines) are resolved in the Expert AI mod, or at least alleviated to the point where the AI presents a legitimate threat to a human player. An "Insane" USSR with me playing a purely historical Germany (no gamey early Anschluss and things like that, getting historically accurate naval OOB by Fall Weiss and so on) roundly kicked my butt the first couple times because I was unprepared for how much harder it would be, and my second game as the USSR against an "Insane" Germany AI again saw me get wrecked. I've got some 500 hours in the game and the Expert AI mod is the only time I've ever legitimately had anything resembling a challenge on any playthrough in single-player.

The changes to AI templates in DoD may help the vanilla game significantly with regards to the AI, but until front management is reworked in tandem with an overhaul of naval transportation priorities and domestic economic management, I don't have a lot of confidence in the vanilla game to ever present a reasonable challenge to an experienced player.

 

[Bolshevik-]

Depends on game speed and the actual war itself. If a war between Germany and USSR is over in 3 minutes its because AI is incompetent as always or player is noob or France and UK went Fascist making the war a rollover.

 

[hkrommel]

I've never had non-Germany WWII last past 1943, and the only time I've had a war after that date was an "operation unthinkable" situation. With Germany it takes a bit longer because you have to invade literally everywhere before you get a peace conference.

 

[adam_grif]

High division recovery rates (you can actually regen org while moving in hoi4), limited weather effects and a much, much more generous supply system (which you can mitigate further with logistics and maintenance companies) mean that campaigning in Russia is not that hard for a competent Germany. But the other side of the story is that Germany only succeeded so well in HoI3 in part because they got given a flat modifier as soon as Barbarossa started.

German destiny modifier increase combat movement speed by 20%, organization regain by 20%, soft attack by 20%, hard attack by 20%, and convoy raiding by 25%, and supply throughput by 10% for 150 days(5 months).

The Soviets got "Great Patriotic War" when their surrender progress reached a certain threshold, which gave them 25% territorial pride (extra power when they were on core territory). Assuming an average game, this meant that the Germans had a major buff at the start, made a lot of progress, then suddenly their offensive would stall 5 months in when the modifier wore off. The supply throughput buff would mean that by the time the modifiers wore off, the Germans would probably be near their supply limit, but that limit would suddenly drop, putting them from "precarious" into "overstretched". Depending on how well the Germans did, they would trigger the Soviet event which would strengthen them, most likely to the point where they could hold the Germans off or potentially counterattack.

It was a bit wobbly and gamey, honestly. The flat country modifiers sprinkled out in HoI3 to force roughly historical outcomes were quite blunt instruments, although effective when events went in a roughly historical direction.

The way to fix the Soviet front requires increasing the difficulties of the supply and weather systems. This will allow them to slow the campaign down a bit, regardless of who wins or loses. An overhaul of the logistics system in general is probably required for a fully satisfactory resolution to this problem.

 

[Alex_brunius]

They lost according to the Warscreen 2.34m people in those 5 months. There seems to not be a point where both armies have a similar strength and a stalemate occurs, once one side wins a little, this seems to extremely fast escalate and results in a collapse of one side.

I think that the important thing to look for to find the cause of what happens here is not the AI manpower losses, but their equipment losses.

Sadly the AI is pretty suicidal and will keep charging into your good defensive positions wasting away all their equipment and much of their manpower in the process. This makes them weaker and weaker every time accelerating their collapse greatly.

So what we are seeing is really a combination of defensive positions being very strong ( able to inflict over 5:1 losses for equal infantry formations on the attacker ), which is historical, combined with the AI being unable to handle this ( the AI both failing to use armor for breakthroughs, and failing to take a strategic break to allow it's industry to replace losses in equipment ).

 

[nordstern266]

I agree. With HoI2 or HoI3 you had to stop your offensive in the winter, because of very high loses. So the AI had time zu recover and rebuild the army (historically correct).

The other side is the AI, which ignores defence-bonuses. For example: I had a game as Germany. I attacked poland historically and wanted to attack France historically too. (more time i let the AI, the AI gets stronger and more challanging, so i allways use historical dates). Between Sept39 and Mai40 the Italien AI lost 1.4mio Soldiers in the Alps, because they tried to attack the france and they did mention that the defence in the alps is to strong.

And the third point is the support. The AI will never build harbours or convois, even if this means that 75% of the army will die. Example is Italy in africa or Japan in China.

Other points are: THE AI lacks in building produktion-queues. She thinks: Oh i have less tanks and enough guns... i will build more tanks as long as i have to less. After some time she thinks: Nice i habe to less guns... i will build them if i conquer new factories. But if she does not conquer one, she will run out of guns and die. She will never change existing productionlines.

Ressources and the lack of building more than one great command are other issues.


I have modded my HoI IV. I liberated the AI from the support-system (i increased the incircle-malus dramatically, otherwise you can not crush circles), ressource-system (+2500% ressources for the AI) and increased their manpower and factory output by 100%. Now the AI i able to challange me a litte bit more. She uses heavy counter attacks, is so numerous that you have problems to make a "blitzkrieg" with her, she as tenthousands of planes and starts invasions overall. I have seen that the AI-Germany conquerd great britain!
Italy comquerd africa and arabia or a germany that the AI (i am USA but defence to show what happans until the german AI conquerd england and i had to defence scotland to prevent UK for capitulation) makes historically correct war in the east. Sometimes she beats the russlands completly.

 

[Broetchenholer]

I am not necessarily saying the AI is too weak, there is very little Germany can do to win vs a Russia that is preparing for the war. I don't think the gameplay and the balance is ever able to handle the assymetry of the war. The focus trees are done in a way, that the player is always stronger then his nation was in history so that all the smaller nations can win as well. Which is fine.

My point is that this seemed to be a balanced war. I was actually quite scared at the start that i had not build up enough. It's hard to estimate the numbers correctly as my decryption was nonexistant and i don't know what they had on my border, but my defense was not that strong. They broke through at the start at some points and put up a good fight. It might have been when i called Republican spain into the war that they took too many people of the front but it's hard to tell. But even if they suddenly had too few people to defend, i don't think they should fall that fast. Like i said, in the soviet-german war, germany made as much ground in the same time when the russian army was in full chaotic fall back mode and i don't think Germany was that beaten.