Battle Log

[vector1]

After playing Stellaris, I was thinking to enhance the AAR writing potential of this game we need some form of logs. This may not necessarily be present on day 1, but I'm just putting it out there because everyone would appreciate being able to look back, as I saw on some other threads asking for end game summaries. Perhaps in a future DLC?

1) Detailed permanent event log with chosen paths
2) Battle log with divisions involved, losses etc for the entire war
3) Air battle log for bombing damage, air combat and a record of aces gained/lost
4) Detailed history log of provinces changing hands, though I assume this is directly hackable from save if they kept the HOI3 style province log in the save game.
5) Sortable/search functions within each log, like against damage, losses, date and names.

Things like that would allow us to follow the same division throughout the war, to feel a bit more connected to whoever we throw into the meat grinder as opposed to Da9l's style of mass disposable, interchangeable infantry divisions. Without individually putting effort into assembling divisions like HOI3, templates make divisions feel a little more faceless when used en-masse. I appreciate less micro, but I also want to follow the exploits of my divisions.

Imagine if such events were logged, we could even create special events to be monthly "newpapers" like the Victoria 2 style broadsheets to celebrate heroic victories, or cover-up terrible losses.

If anyone can enlighten me if any of this is already present I'd be real happy.

 

[Rommel41]

I often resorted to tagging over to opponents in HoI3, selecting divisions, armies, theaters, took note of how many men were in the selected force, tag back, fight a certain length of time, keeping mental track of losses during battles, would check in at the specific time and take note of remaining forces.

It was laborious to a degree (easy once you master console) but was the only way to keep any sort of real record of losses. You could average damage dealt by your air-attacks and naval was really a shot in the dark.

HoI2 was simple enough that accurate records for number of units and length of battles were recorded (see Arsenal of Democracy).

Now it's just stats that cover certain general categories for each side, divided by each conflict. Still better than HoI3 offered.

 

[vector1]

I particularly loved Uriah's AAR simply because it makes me feel invested in the divisions being thrown into battle. BICE supports far larger divisions than vanilla, and his detailed descriptions of causalities, gains and tactics battle by battle brings the entire front to life, as opposed to a general statement about an advance, and some battles won/lost. This is the feeling I want to have in HOI4, when looking at my divisions and realizing one of my Panzer divisions are such bad-asses that they fought in every major battle I had, sustaining high losses but still holding on etc etc.

There's plenty of room for emergent story telling just like stellaris with the proper support from the developers and it would be a pity to miss out on this.

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...r-the-untold-story-of-the-third-reich.639069/

 

[Dr. Frog]

I want to see, at the end game (so either end date or a special quit/end option to prevent people abusing this for achievements or in multiplayer, like, any way to make sure you couldn't peek mid game in a game that matters in any way):
-the following graphs (sortable by political type, countries, factions)
~Percentage of world military (and subgroups, like just airforce or just army)
~Percentage of land owned
~Percentage of industrial power (including the different types)
~Percentage of resources (also sortable by the different types)
~Etc; other things could be trade or about political power earned/spent
(Oh, and scrolling over any point on the graph should give further details, i.e. what kind of aircraft they had or which doctrines they'd researched)

If any or all of this was ever implemented, I'd be a very happy frog; I recall playing Age of Empires II and enjoying the fairly basic stats they gave at the end of the game, I'd like something comparable.