Counters

[Stafroty]

Great minds think alike! A short while back i suggested that similar buffs/nerfs be implemented into the game, i specifically mentioned Russia and China.

I have called for such things because all the key elements (weather, terrain, supply, attrition, casualties etc...) are not really represented well enough. Also Org instead of casualties deciding combat is horrible. Im so tired of winning a battle and neither side taking a single casualty. The same unit lasting for years with no reinforcement never having been destroyed. Also we are not required any real downtime to recuperate and re-organize. This allows us say as Turkey to take a dozen infantry divisions and attack Greece, the day after Greece falls we attack Bulgaria, the day after Bulgaria falls we attack Yugoslavia and so on...

I proposed that each nation would have a military assessment ratiing (A-B-C-D etc...) based on their Military leadership, training, and so on.... If Im Turkey and My Military rating is say D, im pretty much a WW1 style army. I indicate to my General Staff I want to invade Greece. regardless of what my threa/neutrality is, they come back with a random determination modified by my rating, in this case it may be 6 months until they have a solid plan to to invade Greece. It doesnt matter if i have all my units on the Greek border i cannot invade until the time is up. Likewise after the completion of a campaign, there would be a re-organization and recuperation period (also modified and determined by my military rating), and then i would have to plan all over again for my next campaign.

While most players wouldnt like being restricted so, it would clearly give a more realistic account. Realistically speaking a nation like Turkey could at best hope for one or two victories in the period surrounding WW2. No more minors conquering the world (unless you play in sandbox mode). Remember Germany took Poland in 39, France in 40 and attacked the Soviet Union in 41. We are able to game the system attacking multiple nations at once with no planning and no rest in between campaigns. Too gamey for my tastes...

i like that planning part. as now everything happens right when command goes
instantly, no planning, no gathering of supplies for planned attack or anything.

And yes, org thing is horrible as is morale..

Morale should be easily boosted by hanging few mens from cowardise for example

 

[21oliver]

I was able to play a few different nations (Nat Spain comes to mind) and was able to conquer the world with the same dozen or so divisions by VP hopping. The divisions no longer received reinforcements when the MP ran out but it never mattered, the units never shattered. How many units in WW2 actually fought through the entire war and stayed like 95% intact????

The game just doesnt give the real feeling of war. If Turkey and Greece fight, the war should take a year, maybe two or three and their should be heavy casualties on both sides, fighting WWI style, poor terrrain, poorly trained infantry units with artillery barrages and so on. Instead its a few amphib maneuvers, grab VPs and whammo war over quickly. And the winner of such a war should be exhausted for another year or more afterwards and be forced to recover. Thats what the game should feel like.

 

[DarkCruor]

This is somewhat tangentially related but what did the Soviets and Warsaw Pact use instead of Counters?

 

[21oliver]

Dead Commisars?

 

[DarkCruor]

'Pool of blood is us, enemy tanks are toes, digits are infantry, and eyeballs are HQs'

'Why are we a pool of blood shouldn't we know what we have'

'Are you serious, tovarishch'

 

[Stafroty]

'Pool of blood is us, enemy tanks are toes, digits are infantry, and eyeballs are HQs'

'Why are we a pool of blood shouldn't we know what we have'

'Are you serious, tovarishch'

Ive been having idea about having manpool, and from that, seperated numbers of trained soldiers in its own little bar on top of screen. Showing like 10000(total) /2000 (trained)

so, laws which are in effect, determine how good troops you are training, and that then takes more time more better troops is trained.

So there should be seperation between trained quality, so window looks like: 100000/1500/300/200 (smallest amount is highest quality(experience) troops) and while just manpool is zero experience troops which also could be drawn.

Russians used to drawn directly from manpool the troops which allowed them to gather large armies but without any experience. ("here is your gun, and here your ammo, its reloaded like this. Trigger is here point that end at enemy and pull it") thats it
Some didnt even get a gun, but had to wait till one with gun would get hit..

so in production there would be selection tic, from which u select what quality troops u want build. Mountaineers with good experience? Basic infanrtry with excellent experience? or just militia with little experience?

One should have barracks to do that training, and those should train mens according the laws, in that phase. More "faster" laws, less training takes and less experience is transferred to troops during training.

But there could be that "high quality" seperated from selected quality in same time. just not even nearly as much as selected quality, but % or 5% of that amount gets best training there is?

This would mean commandos, airborne rangers, brandenburdgers, NKVD etc-

 

[Modestus]

With regards the counters I hope Paradox can link the counter graphic to the template and not a brigade within the template, so rather then having an armoured division represented by a NATO symbol for armour you could have the historical insignia of the actual Division.

I do not expect Paradox themselves to have the actual insignia for every division the default would always be the brigade with the highest priority but perhaps the possibility that when a division is deployed there was a folder that allowed you to link a specific division to a specific graphic.

I would also suggest that perhaps a graphic could be linked to a province so that in the future modifications could assign graphics to certain parts of the game that you cannot do in HOI III.

Basically I am asking Paradox to consider allowing for more graphical opportunities then they require but could be of benefit to future modifications.

Perhaps it is not practical to do any of this?

 

[Stafroty]

here is somekind of example what im driving behind with color etc coding system. It tells right away which divs belong to what, and PREVENTS chaos between divisions. Also prevents unnecessary clickin for determinind where is which divisions HQ:s and where is HQ:s divisions. Colors tell it right away. Maybe having small colored flag NEXT to counter, so you can see them also even if they are under the stack or between the stack.

 

[EmperorTojo]

here is somekind of example what im driving behind with color etc coding system. It tells right away which divs belong to what, and PREVENTS chaos between divisions. Also prevents unnecessary clickin for determinind where is which divisions HQ:s and where is HQ:s divisions. Colors tell it right away. Maybe having small colored flag NEXT to counter, so you can see them also even if they are under the stack or between the stack.

View attachment 111229

This would be sweet.

 

[Stafroty]

also, retreating counter should be UNDER the counter who is controlling the province.

 

[21oliver]

And if they are defensive positions we can give them polka dots, offensive ones could have colored slanted lines and the retreating ones could glow in the dark. All i need to know is if its infantry or armor!

 

[Stafroty]

And if they are defensive positions we can give them polka dots, offensive ones could have colored slanted lines and the retreating ones could glow in the dark. All i need to know is if its infantry or armor!

well good idea.
i assume you dont play mods?

 

[21oliver]

One of the reasons i dont is that i dont like the busy counters tbh...

 

[Dalwin]

here is somekind of example what im driving behind with color etc coding system. It tells right away which divs belong to what, and PREVENTS chaos between divisions. Also prevents unnecessary clickin for determinind where is which divisions HQ:s and where is HQ:s divisions. Colors tell it right away. Maybe having small colored flag NEXT to counter, so you can see them also even if they are under the stack or between the stack.

View attachment 111230

I wouldn't mind that at all. Though I think to know whether that would be more functional than the blue lines from HOI3 we need to know more about the command and control rules for HOI4 than we currently do.

 

[21oliver]

I dont why i just cant bring myself to micro manage the game to that detail. I wish i could, but the knowledge that it simply isnt needed stops me from investing myself that much. When i know that i can just mouse over a large group of units, point and click on a capital and conquer that nation just about as effectively as those who spend hours planning, i just simply cannot bring myself to make river crossing units and break through armies etc... i guess thats why the extra info on the counters just seems like clutter to me. Im likely in the minority but i would love such a detailed game. I have no problem if the game lasted weeks instead of hours. In fact i twice proposed a huge multi player game whereby we all would assume roles (Political leader, Air force leader, Naval leader, Theater Commander etc...). I thought it would be a fun way for us all to interact, i thought we could make an AAR and post it on the forum and it might be fun for the new players to follow. You could have heard a pin drop! Apparently the loss of total control scared players away. Anyway i can see the allure of the micro managing...but knowing the AI and hardcoding as i do and that it doesnt really matter whether I use INFX3 ARTX1 or any other combo, i just cant seem to get into enough to do it...

 

[Dalwin]

I dont why i just cant bring myself to micro manage the game to that detail. I wish i could, but the knowledge that it simply isnt needed stops me from investing myself that much. When i know that i can just mouse over a large group of units, point and click on a capital and conquer that nation just about as effectively as those who spend hours planning, i just simply cannot bring myself to make river crossing units and break through armies etc... i guess thats why the extra info on the counters just seems like clutter to me. Im likely in the minority but i would love such a detailed game. I have no problem if the game lasted weeks instead of hours. In fact i twice proposed a huge multi player game whereby we all would assume roles (Political leader, Air force leader, Naval leader, Theater Commander etc...). I thought it would be a fun way for us all to interact, i thought we could make an AAR and post it on the forum and it might be fun for the new players to follow. You could have heard a pin drop! Apparently the loss of total control scared players away. Anyway i can see the allure of the micro managing...but knowing the AI and hardcoding as i do and that it doesnt really matter whether I use INFX3 ARTX1 or any other combo, i just cant seem to get into enough to do it...

I understand your opinion there and to some extent share it, but like I said in another thread, if the struggle against the AI were more even, if the game was about simply doing better than was done historically instead of seeing how long it takes you to achieve total domination again; then I think you might start to care about some of these details.

I am still optimistic that some of the proposed changes to HOI4 might change the pattern we have seen in the first three. Yes, this too probably makes me naive, but it is what I choose to believe until disappointment proves otherwise. Do I believe this because I think it extremely likely? No, it is because it is what I really want. If I am wrong it will be just another game that goes on the proverbial dusty shelf after a month.

But, if I am right... oooh boy lookout.

 

[21oliver]

Ive always played games for the challenge primarily, entertainment secondary. My brother for example has never really played anything without cheat codes, me i dont even like to tag switch if i can help it. And if i have to apply house rules to make a game challenging it sort of defeats the purpose for me. So i really would welcome a challenging AI. The main reason i call for more randomization is that the unknown adds some difficulty in of itself, and i feel it could assist a weaker AI in making the game more challenging. For example as Turkey who seems to apply to alot of my equations, but as Turkey if i have to guard my Soviet border as well as the Balkan borders are have some risk of invasion, that now changes everything i may attempt to do. As an allied player if i didnt know that Germany would always invade Poland first, and always in Sept 1939 but rather whenever they got certain conditions met, well naturally that changes everything, and none of the above requires a better AI.

The way this game is set up as far as unit production as opposed to a board game imo it doesnt require as much info in regards to abilities on the counters. I could see the interest in knowing what higher units the counter in question belong to, but really only if that becomes more impactful. Right now i can play HOI3 and assign no leaders and pretty much accomplish the same things. Instead of just some minor general buffs if the Leaders of the units had a real impact then clearly knowing the hierarchy and placement would be of huge value. And here a better AI that wouldnt assign Patton and Montgomery to divisional leaders would help as well!

 

[Dalwin]

Leader assignment and promotion is an example of one of the things I didn't often bother with in other versions of HOI. I know other players are really into it and if it makes the game more fun for them, great.

We agree on variablility (I think randomness has arbitrary connotations that don't fit) that is based on conditions being met will be one big improvment though that really does involve the AI. It is better to think of it as having several AIs, one for tactical decisions, one for production, one for diplomacy etc.

Another area that I think yields huge improvements is changing the resource stockpiles in for a flow model. Now suddenly strategic warfare means much more than before.

The ones I am waiting to see because I think these will be key to having a system where the AI can be truly a competent opponent are the details of the new Air and Naval systems. If those come out looking like only a minor rehash of what we have seen before and do not include some fundamental changes, my interest level in the game will be reduced.

 

[21oliver]

Now suddenly strategic warfare means much more than before.

The removal of food in any impactful way has also effected the game in such that some nations were major suppliers of food stuffs and now have little or no strategic value. Even though its on a sexy subject and most players arent all that interested it is and always have been a valuable issue in warfare.

 

[sgt.stickybomb]

there will be no counters