critique of critics

[crazy canuck]

Everyone just take a deep breath a relax for a moment. It seems as though Paradox is a victim of their well deserved reputation for creating very good grand strategy games.

Lets look around the industry and see how others have done trying to create a WWII grand strategy game. The more recent attempts include the dismal failure to convert the board game Third Reich into a computer game and the ongoing attempt to convert World in Flames into a computer game. The last time I checked the WiF web site, which was several months ago, it seems that the developer is having such a difficult time programing the AI that the suggestion was that the game be released without AI so that it could only be played as a multiplayer game.

This isn't a criticism of the WiF developer but simply an eloquent illustration of how difficult it is to program AI for an period like WWII.

Paradox has come up with a game that has a workable AI and a game that is fun to play.

There are a lot of complaints that the game does not accurately model historical events. Most of the complaints arise from the fact that it is possible in HOI to conquer territories either outside the time period that was achieved in the actual war or that was not achieved at all in the actual war. But isn't that the point of the game. It is after all an alternative history time game. Not a simulation.

A comparison to EU2 is instructive. Nobody complains that you can substantially alter history. In fact altering history and playing a what if scenario is the very life blood of the game and so it is with HOI.

Can the AI be better. Yes, of course, and the great thing about Paradox is that they actually pay attention to these forums and make changes which are suggested by the community. If you haven't noticed they are in the process of testing v. 1.06 for EU2. Now that is committment to a community.

For all those who complain that the game is not perfect, please name just one grand strategy game that comes close to HOI. By all mean give constructive criticism - that process will only improve the game in later patches - but enough with the complaints that complaints that this game is unplayable. It is the best WWII grand strategy WWII game ever made and with the track record of Paradox improving their games over time, it will only get better.

 

[Tim O]

I think it is the short time span that gums up peoples expectations. In EUII you could take a small nation like Prussia and conquer the world in 400 years. It is much less plausible for Romania to conquer all of Europe in 12 years.

 

[unmerged(7761)]

My major gripe with the game (besides the obvious disappointment that they released the game with so many bugs it shouldnt have gone out of beta testing yet) is the fact that it attempts to be something that it isnt.

Let me elaborate; HoI tries to pose as a wargame (grand strategic warfare as it says on the box) which it is not. I was expecting something like "The operational art of war" but on a grander scale, and with resource management, diplomacy and research added. Instead I find a game of resource management, diplomacy and research with a substandard (compared to the rest of the game) management of war.

The original post asks for better games; try "Operational art of War". The game is something like 5 years old now, but still reigns supreme as a war game. And yes, the AI in it is good too. What it lacks is the ability to tie together the different parts of the war, and to control diplomacy, resources, research, production.

There are several things that could be done to improve the game, even while using the EU-engine, such as making sure that retreating troops doesnt suddenly toggle the area they are retreating from back into their own area, subs being more accurate (I've had 10 groups of high tech subs take on a convoy accompanied by 5 destroyers and still taken damage. Any uboat commander worth his name will take out at least one destroyer before they get close enough to use any countermeasures, so with twice as many subs as destroyers they shouldnt even see what hit them) and nukes being actually useful (I nuked away new york, washington and Philadelfia and the Us wont even agree to a pre-war-border-peace? They should be begging for an unconditional peace, just like Us subdued Japan) to name a few things.

Basically, it is a good strategy game (although ridicously buginfested) but it shouldnt try to pose as a war game on an operational level since it simply isnt and never will be that.

All IMO of course.

 

[Korpo]

Many game AIs are good because of the lack of game options, or they cheat. Or they are that stupidly hardwired, either if you find out what they do, you can no more lose, or if that is the ideal solution (and a game situation that offers you an ideal solution is simply shitty!!!) you copy it.

Those AIs are no fun. HOI AI may be. If it is thoroughly worked upon, it may become one of the most fascinating AIs, and HOI one of the most fascinating games.

 

[unmerged(12530)]

Originally posted by Timothy Ortiz
I think it is the short time span that gums up peoples expectations. In EUII you could take a small nation like Prussia and conquer the world in 400 years. It is much less plausible for Romania to conquer all of Europe in 12 years.

See, I think that's the problem. It is not "much less plausible." It is an absolute impossibility. If you look at Rumania in 1936, you look at the resources it had available, you look at its military tradition, there is simply no set of circumstances which could have occurred over any time span, let alone the next twelve years, that would have allowed it to become a world power. None. Zero. Zilch. Even if the German high command had defected en masse, it would have made no difference. If Einstein would have shown up in Belgrade and said, "Hey, you want to make an atom bomb?" it would have made no difference.

Again, you don't want a game that produces only a carbon copy of what historically happened. But when you have a game which permits you to do things which were not historically possible, you have a problem. At least if you're trying to market as being a realistic simulation of a particular era.

RB

 

[unmerged(2695)]

The Operational Art of War is just what it says, an operational game: Fighting and winning battles and campaigns.

TOAW has its quirks. It does not reproduce anything resembling an historical outcome of the Fall of France. (The system just does not reproduce the tactical/operational superiority of the Germans over the French at that point of the war). And it is in its fifth or sixth incanation. Vastly imporved compared with the first edition.

HoI is a grand strategic game. Grand strategy is about winning wars, not battles. As such the resource management/force production/R&D module is at the core of the game. The combat module is really just an add-on. The player controls grand startegy. As such he does not make tactical decisions. That is, he should not make them. If he makes military decisons it should be on the "army-group level". (This makes for a very boring and hands-off game that I know would be unsalable. I don't recommend that combat should be handled in that manner. But having to manually secure all the Pacific Islands is tedious).

In terms of its stated aim of simulating grand strategy HoI fails abysmally in its diplomacy/politics module. The clock ticks towards war in a way that makes diplomacy futile. Or even downright silly. I had the Japanese Oil Embargo event for the US after Japan had declared war! Nationalist Spain consistently rebuffs my offers of alliance when playing Germany. Reoccupation of the Rhineland occurs after the fact and has wildely ahistorical consequences.
It's moot whether there should be any alliance systems at the start oif the game at all. The Anticomintern Pact was no military alliance. Neither was the understanding between Britain and France. The good ol' Casus Belli should be reintroduced.

The politics module is half-hearted. The German opposition to Hitler's adventurism (Beck's planned coup of 1938) is written out of history as is Hitler's purge of the OKH. Schacht can be replaced but not Beck. (Why?). American isolationism (a thorny subject) is hardly touched.

And, of course, the total unwillignes and inability of most countries to go to war is neglected.

 

[unmerged(8337)]

for sure....

HOI is the by far best game in that genre out there, and i dont know of another company who could do it better...

... so keep up Paradox..... PLEASE

another point is....

... does any1 know of another company listing that much to there customers (or better say fans) than Paradox? No I dont think so...

... keep patiance ppl, I am sure they will do everything to make the game even more fun.

The complexety of such a game is enormous, and i know of what i speak (as a old wargamer and software developer) ... I am sure not every aspect of criticism will be implemented in a future HOI patch, because it would cause major gamedesign changes. But personally I hope there will be a HOI2 in some time that might be as good as EU1.0 to EU2.0.5

your cristism will be heared, but ppl keep it constructive

 

[unmerged(12052)]

Don't take me wrong, I applaud and admire Paradox for their efforts in creating HoI, but, to be frank, they have virtually no competition. The only other available game is 'Strategic Command' - almost a replica of the 1993 classic 'Clash of Steel'. I've checked out the updates on 'World in Flames' and it seems that this is a one-man job; in my view an impossible task!

Unless the big game companies inject some hard cash into developing decent strategy games the only alternatives we're going to see will be 'home made' games like SC and the somnolent WiF. This is the root of the problem. Take 30 hard core games developers, backed by the latest bleeding edge technology, and you can do wonders, but with just one guy to do everything on a home PC and you will be waiting a VERY long time before anything serious comes out! This is a fact.

By the way, I've heard rumours that there is a new stategy games coming out in January that will be the MOTHER OF ALL STRATEGY GAMES! It's called 'Global Power' and has a revolutionary AI that relies on neural networks and learns from its mistakes!

Take a peep here: http://www.gmxmedia.net/gp/

 

[Johan]

Originally posted by offshoreman
I've checked out the updates on 'World in Flames' and it seems that this is a one-man job; in my view an impossible task![/url]

On HoI I was single programmer for 6 of the 12 months, then we were two programmers.

 

[unmerged(12052)]

Originally posted by Johan
On HoI I was single programmer for 6 of the 12 months, then we were two programmers.

In that case you did damn well! But the ideal would have been 4 or 5 programmers at least for a project of this size.

 

[Paradox Interactive]

Originally posted by offshoreman
In that case you did damn well! But the ideal would have been 4 or 5 programmers at least for a project of this size.

That would've been very nice but we don't have the financial resources for that...

We were 6 people working on HoI with a lot of additional input (invaluable) from the beta testers!


P

 

[unmerged(2695)]

You don't need hard core developers and programmers. You need designers with a feel for the period covered by the game.

So far I've not come across a single game that actually has managed to capture why the Germans were better than the French in 1940 - execpt HoI. WWII is impossibly difficult so simulate because the initial power-differentials that made the war possible were qualitative. This qualitative edge is simulated in HoI.

As for the AI: The AI need only have the intelligencf of a battering ram or steamroller - which was how the Allies and Soviets defeated Germany.

The weakest point in HoI is that the major Allied weapon: The blockade, is not simulated. It is regrettable that staregic minerals (nickel, chromium, molybdenium and wolfram) were not included in the resource mix. Their availability was the real limiting factor on German arms production until the decision to run the stocks down were taken in 1944. But by then the war was lost.

 

[Derek Pullem]

Originally posted by mlonnqvist
My major gripe with the game (besides the obvious disappointment that they released the game with so many bugs it shouldnt have gone out of beta testing yet) is the fact that it attempts to be something that it isnt.

Let me elaborate; HoI tries to pose as a wargame (grand strategic warfare as it says on the box) which it is not. I was expecting something like "The operational art of war" but on a grander scale, and with resource management, diplomacy and research added. Instead I find a game of resource management, diplomacy and research with a substandard (compared to the rest of the game) management of war.

The original post asks for better games; try "Operational art of War". The game is something like 5 years old now, but still reigns supreme as a war game. And yes, the AI in it is good too. What it lacks is the ability to tie together the different parts of the war, and to control diplomacy, resources, research, production.

*snip*

Basically, it is a good strategy game (although ridicously buginfested) but it shouldnt try to pose as a war game on an operational level since it simply isnt and never will be that.

All IMO of course.

I don't think that they did offer it as an operational level wargame. In fact my biggests dislike of HoI (and i'm a beta remember ) is when it does go "operational" for instance with the convoy management and air raids.

I also would challenge the suggestion that TOAW (which I own in three versions and love) could be adapted to simulate WW2. Many people have tried and the products have been mainly poor to useless.

HoI aimed high and missed on release - thats a fact and I'm not going to argue. I'd even agree that some of the basic design decisions are flawed (alliance structure, world market, international relations). But unless someone tried we wouldn't know.

I'd point to the Civ series of games - was Civ 1 bugged? It certainly had flaws. Was the Civ2 AI ridiculously easy - I could beat it on Deity so I'd say yes. But the basic design premise gave us a host of other games exploring the same theme. Some were good (Alpha Centauri, Test of Time) some were good after patching modding (CTP2, Civ3) and some were turkeys (CTP). Without the learning curve Civ 3 wouldn't be as complex as it is today. I'd say the same applies to the EU / HoI series.

By all means criticise - Paradox do listen and Johan has been working like a trojan recently to bring things into 1.02 so that more people can have a more enjoyable HoI Xmas - I was sending in patch reports at 11 pm swedish time yesterday so I know he was burning the midnight oil.

The point is that if we want strategy games we have to have someone producing the goods. Thats why some of the criticism thrown at HoI annoyed me as it almost seemed to say "I'd rather have nothing than a less than perfect game". That seems to be a self defeating point of view.

Before everyone complains that HoI 1.00 was much less than perfect - I agree. I will not apologise for the release cycle which was wrong IMHO for EU2 as well. But I don't know the economic imperatives. If it meant the difference between an independent Paradox or Paradox, a division of Ubisoft I know which I'd prefer

 

[unmerged(2695)]

Totally agree with you Derek. HoI is the best attempt at a WWII game so far. I don't think the flaws are irrepairable. I don't have the patch, but correcting the basic flaws in the economic model is a matter of making the world's coial and rubber supply in 1936 reasonably correct.

Peter Ebbesen's world conquest would not have been possble if militia divisions had been a zero movement factor.

I just hope that there will be a HoI version 1.10 released commercially as well.

 

[Derek Pullem]

Actually Hardu it's a bit more difficult to solve trade than that. Consider:

Argentina - quite a healthy economy back then. Why? Because it traded food mainly to other nations. How does HoI represent the economy? By your access to raw materials. These raw materials are important but they are not the only way to support a country.

It could be argued that there is an underlying minimum resource base that can function without access to coal, iron, rubber or oil. And that this resource base would be significantly affected by blockade etc.

Of course lack of oil or steel or rubber or coal should have severe effects on what kind of troops you can support. Trouble is now that many nations have additional resources or additional technologies (coal to oil to rubber) just to allow them to produce supplies and consumer goods to function in the game.

Plenty of ideas in beta but none really doable yet

 

[unmerged(2695)]

Originally posted by Derek Pullem
Of course lack of oil or steel or rubber or coal should have severe effects on what kind of troops you can support. Trouble is now that many nations have additional resources or additional technologies (coal to oil to rubber) just to allow them to produce supplies and consumer goods to function in the game.

Plenty of ideas in beta but none really doable yet

The distribution of taht technology is just wildely inaccurate, as I have mentioned in another thread.

 

[Derek Pullem]

We know - it was a necessary fudge for game balance