Even after so many updates, HOI4 still has massive problems

[xSCAR45]

Summarized, you complain a lot, because HOI4 is not the game you was hoping for. That's ok. I don't like parts of the game, too. But the way you complain is exaggerated.

And now, let it rain "respectfully disagrees"

It seems acceptable in this forum to just complain about everything. The funny thing is that the people who complain the most are the ones that Pre-Order the game and then feel cheated when the game has problems at launch. Uh, hello? You bought into hype instead of following the facts from previous titles from Paradox. Remember HOI3 at lauch? Yeah. You needed Semper Fi to play the game.

When HOI4 first came out I was skeptical. Skeptical because the game seemed dumbed down from HOI3 and that urged me not to buy at launch. But I waited a year and picked up the game at 50% off and in general I have no complaints.

I won't buy DLC at full price. Like most people, I believe the game needs more work but I already spent enough money so I will wait. From what I have read, playing Mods seem to fix most problems with the game so I will get into BICE once its updated to patch 1.4.1.

 

[adam_grif]

When I talked about mechanics that make the AI look bad in HOI IV I was also referring to stuff that makes its usually terrible decision making more apparent; like the lack of actual transport ships in-game which makes it very easy for everyone and their mothers to embark anywhere usually with very dire consequences (like instant death or extremely stupid troop allocation, etc.), sitting idle waiting for some bonus when the coast is clear or "falling asleep" until eternity due to supply problems just to name a few.

I think the transport issue is interesting to mention. You may be right that the lack of transport ships is one of the most straight forward reasons why we get both invasion spam and also suicide convoys.

 

[Archon Raap]

I mostly agree with the OP with pretty much everything except with the need of having agriculture into the game. Honestly I don't think it would add that much to the game. And wasn't the whole "colonizing the East to gain a self-sufficient agricultural economy for Germany" just Nazi propaganda/bulshit?

Actually, I think Hitler actually believed having enough agricultural land to be self-sustainable is necessary for waging a World War, as in WW1 there was a crap ton of rationing and food shortages that hurt the civilian population and caused riots.

 

[CharlieFox]

Actually, I think Hitler actually believed having enough agricultural land to be self-sustainable is necessary for waging a World War, as in WW1 there was a crap ton of rationing and food shortages that hurt the civilian population and caused riots.

Hitler migh have believed that but I think improvements in agricultural technology greatly changed the situation compared to WW1. And certainly you don't need all of Poland and Russia to be able to grow enough food for Germany.

 

[rjohansen]

I wasn't sure if the younger audience thing was meant to be a bit snarky, if not then my apologies for miss reading it.

Not at all. The younger audience is younger audience. Nothing wrong with being young and nothing wrong with Paradox for aiming for a younger audience either, which I suspect they are trying to do.

 

[Atlantians]

And wasn't the whole "colonizing the East to gain a self-sufficient agricultural economy for Germany" just Nazi propaganda/bulshit?

This was actually very real. In WWI, the German Army and the civilian population nearly descended into abject famine.

The idea of Lebensraum was to provide a sustainable food supply to prevent that.

 

[Atlantians]

It is also debatable whether the nukes were the straw that broke the camels back, or was it Soviet decision to DOW Japan and their conquest of Manchuria. Japanese cities were already bombed out. Fire bombing of Tokyo destroyed more of the city and killed more people than two atomic bombs combined and Japan didn't surrender.

Those atomic bombs vaporized entire city blocks in an instant, and two of them functionally destroyed two major cities.

This was nothing like Tokyo, where hundreds of sorties dropped thousands of bombs. This was 2 bombs, in 2 planes, in 4 days.

The Americans then bluffed the Japanese that they had more of these things (they didn't, not for a while), and the Japanese had no reason not to believe otherwise.

See, the Japanese believed they could make America pay for every inch of land, every city they captured,every mile of territory with the blood of thousands of US Troops.

The bombs proved that all the USA had to do was wait... and send one plane over every major city and dissolve it into flame and soot, without a single blood of American infantry being shed.

There was no honour in this, no hope, no future, and what little Japanese civilization might survive, would be under Russian control.

 

[BobbyDylan]

I continue to assert that the NF system is broken. It railroads the AI into actions it shouldn't logically be taking.

 

[Kadanz]

This was actually very real. In WWI, the German Army and the civilian population nearly descended into abject famine.

The idea of Lebensraum was to provide a sustainable food supply to prevent that.

Yes, I don't know if you ever read his book but he also goes into detail about it in there how important it is for germany to become self sustainable on food and how the east could provide everything germany would need in the nearby and distant future.

I believe I read somewhere that germany also imported much of its food.

 

[Katsuki126]

Those atomic bombs vaporized entire city blocks in an instant, and two of them functionally destroyed two major cities.

This was nothing like Tokyo, where hundreds of sorties dropped thousands of bombs. This was 2 bombs, in 2 planes, in 4 days.

The Americans then bluffed the Japanese that they had more of these things (they didn't, not for a while), and the Japanese had no reason not to believe otherwise.

See, the Japanese believed they could make America pay for every inch of land, every city they captured,every mile of territory with the blood of thousands of US Troops.

The bombs proved that all the USA had to do was wait... and send one plane over every major city and dissolve it into flame and soot, without a single blood of American infantry being shed.

There was no honour in this, no hope, no future, and what little Japanese civilization might survive, would be under Russian control.

You do not seem to realize how things worked in Tokyo at this time.

One have to realize that the military seized power in Japan, prompted the war, and the Army and the Navy were competing for power. After being bogged down in China, the Army lost its leadership, allowing the Navy to control the government, forcing the "southern expansion" and war with the United States. It went badly, and only one force remained untouched in Japan : The one-million-men strong Kwantung Army.

Despite the terrible state of Japan in 1945, officers and generals still wanted to pursue a war they thought winnable. Then the soviet, exactly three month after the german surrender (as Staline promised) invaded Mandchuria and destroyed in a single week the Kwantung Army.

The Army lost its prestige, and its credibility, the officers were demoralized. The Emperor, as Meiji did 70 years before, used this at his advantage, he took back the power and made peace.

What drove the Emperor to peace is unknown, and will probably never be known, his confident always defended the official story claiming that he has always been a pacifist.
However I will advocate that if, and that is a bif if, the Emperor became a staunch advocate of peace because of the suffering of his people, the nuclear bombing were not the main factor, seeing his subject being burned alive might have been enough.

I hope it was clear enough, I thought it deserved to be explained that it was not the nuke that forced Japan to surrender. Most people tend to only have the same information as the Americans in 45'. Now that we have the full picture, we should temper our judgement. (and just so it's clear, if I was Truman or any high official in the American army, with the information and expectations they had, I would have supported the use of a nuclear bomb. I'm not blaming America here, simply saying that with hindsight, it was not necessary)



TL;DR : Japan did not surrender because of nuke. Japan did surrender when it's armies were destroyed letting powerless general unable to prevent the Emperor to take back the power in order to end the war.

 

[Alex_brunius]

Those atomic bombs vaporized entire city blocks in an instant, and two of them functionally destroyed two major cities.

This was nothing like Tokyo, where hundreds of sorties dropped thousands of bombs.

Actually it was pretty much exactly like Tokyo. The single firebombing raid on Tokyo with 282 bombers the night between 9:th and 10:th of March 1945 was equally if not more destructive then an atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima or Nagasaki was.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo

Tokyo: 41km^2 annihilated, 75k - 200k civilian deaths.
Hiroshima: 12km^2 annihilated, 70k - 126k civilian deaths.
Nagasaki: 11km^2 annihilated, 39k - 80k civilian deaths.

While an impressive technological feat the nukes added very little increase in how much damage the USAF could do to Japan. The USAF had almost 1000 Strategic Bombers stationed at the Marianas in range of Japan anyways and plenty of ordinary bombs but no more then 2 nukes.

This level of destruction in a single attack was nothing new or shocking to Japan at all by mid 1945.

The bombs proved that all the USA had to do was wait... and send one plane over every major city and dissolve it into flame and soot, without a single blood of American infantry being shed.

There were no major cities left to bomb in Japan at this point... Nagasaki and Hiroshima had intentionally been spared by the Strategic bombing efforts so they could evaluate the impact of the atomic bombs better. All other cities were bombed to such a degree that there was little buildings of value left and the millions who used to live there had mostly fled to the countryside by then.

 

[Katsuki126]

Actually it was pretty much exactly like Tokyo. The single firebombing raid on Tokyo with 282 bombers the night between 9:th and 10:th of March 1945 was equally if not more destructive then an atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima or Nagasaki was.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo

Tokyo: 41km^2 annihilated, 75k - 200k civilian deaths.
Hiroshima: 12km^2 annihilated, 70k - 126k civilian deaths.
Nagasaki: 11km^2 annihilated, 39k - 80k civilian deaths.

Yup, the single most destructive raid in human history was non-nuclear, mainly because Tokyo was build in wood and the Americans bombed it with Napalm

 

[Kovax]

Hiroshima was spared from conventional bombing, yes. It was designated as an A-bomb target. Nagasaki, on the other hand, was NOT a primary target for the A-bomb, had been spared mainly because it was not considered a significant military target, and was only hit because the primary target was heavily obscured by cloud cover.

The real oddity is that the historical fortress in the center of Nagasaki had been converted into a major command headquarters for the home defense of Japan, and the second nuclear bomb was essentially exploded directly over the fortress, vaporizing that military nerve center, along with practically all of the people in charge, in one instantaneous knockout blow. The effects of this are not clearly understood, but consider the situation in the eyes of the Emperor and top military officers: your secret HQ for home defense has been vaporized with a single bomb; obviously your military secrets aren't secret, and any resistance is ultimately futile. Not to say that this alone tipped the scale to the "surrender" side, but it has to weigh as a factor. Clearly, the Soviet declaration of war and the rapid destruction of the Kwantung army had to be another major factor, if not the main one.

 

[BarrosRodrigues]

What is "it" in this sentence ?
Naval ? You could patrol, but chasing and destroying needed micro. Naval invasion had to be micro'ed, the order did not work. Blockading + port strike = more micro.
Air ? If you didn't micro your planes, you always ended up with wings at 0 org and 0 strength, not to mention the chore it was to properly select, and reselect the provinces. When you were subjected to strategic bombing : More micro and wack a mole or 4 wings of fighters per strategic bombers.
Let's not bring the OoB im the slugfest of HoI3 micro.

That being said I loved it, the excitement of chase, the feelings that I was giving true orders to my air wings, and I really enjoyed creating my own OoB with my own general



It is not fine, but it is better. The AI trolled like hell in HoI3 remember those 1 energy vs 0.07 money trade deals Honduras and Liberia spammed you with ? And that they keep canceling right away ? It was far far worse than HoI4. And unlike the rest of the micro in HoI3, I especially disliked this one and turned it over to the AI.

EDIT : Made an error and wrote HoI4 where it should have been HoI3, corrected now

Like I said before you still don´t know how to avoid the micro in HOI III TFH.

For starters the naval invasion in HOI III TFH required much less clicks than what is needed in HOI IV even though to make sure the AI did not screw up we had to do them manually (...)
You basically don´t need to worry with 0 strength aircraft and losing them if you put a few wings in reserve (...)
You don´t need to select provinces, you can select whole regions, radius and even set angles (!) to save on clicks. You can even set it and forget it by enabling whatever mission to the maximum range of the aircraft (...)
You have an air map mode in HOI III TFH, use it to see what areas the enemy bombers are targeting and then place some fighters accordingly. Bombers are so weak that if they don´t have fighter coverage of their own they´ll be cut to pieces so this is usually a set it and forget thing really.

The dreaded OOB: I need 5 minutes or less to organize a full OOB (from scratch) for operation Barbarossa. There is a nice little button that allows the AI to organize the OOB (automatically creating/attaching HQs) and there is another one that automatically assigns leaders. I need 5 minutes to set it up because I still want to tweak it to my liking like replacing some HQ leaders, renaming some stuff and tweaking the HQ areas. You need to know how to set up the TH HQ in order to properly take advantage of these features.

The trade in HOI III TFH was far from perfect too but at least I could set it and forget it by automating it while in HOI IV it just punishes me. Like I said before trade in HOI IV is a very dumb and pointless click fest by comparison with its predecessor. Btw trade used to be somewhat better before the "Their Finest Hour" expansion because it worked like a paralel economic mini-game that if "microed" well could be very beneficial but I guess the devs labelled that mini-game as exploitive so they dumbed it down to oblivion.

IMHO The only things that saves a shitton of time in HOI IV are the templates and the ability to detach ships (damaged, etc.) with only a couple of clicks but that is it because everything else (including >99% of the new UI) just makes me waste time by comparison with HOI III TFH. The lack of messages, lack of a ledger, lack of a mini-map, outliner and "HQs" taking massive (!!) amounts of screen "real estate" and the impossibility to create a single front line (whenever I border several different countries) are IMHO some of the most hideous and time consuming changes.

There is a LOT more to be said about this and this is one of the reasons why I started making HOI III videos over 4 years ago.

 

[Alex_brunius]

There is a nice little button that allows the AI to organize the OOB (automatically creating/attaching HQs) and there is another one that automatically assigns leaders.

Brilliant. I wonder why they didn't put it into HoI4?

 

[BarrosRodrigues]

Brilliant. I wonder why they didn't put it into HoI4?

Brilliant you still don´t know how to set up the HOI III TFH AI in order for it to keep the HQs in range. :facepalm: No wonder they were axed since apparently no one besides my viewers know how to do it.

 

[Alex_brunius]

Brilliant you still don´t know how to set up the HOI III TFH AI in order for it to keep the HQs in range.

Please tell me how to do it. I've never seen a single screenshot or example of the HoI3 AI being able to take an army of decent size (like the Soviet in picture) and:

• Keep all division and HQ levels inside command range
• Not create unnecessary HQs ( which cripples your officer ratio and use up all your leaders )
• Make decent leader allocations ( like not assigning the best Panzerleaders to your Militia divisions for a start ).

The picture above is what happens 100/100 times when you ask the AI to create and handle your OOB and Army in HoI III TFH.

I haven't seen a single video of you using the HoI3 AI to organize your OOB or handle your army btw... If the AI is so good at it, why are you not using it?

 

[BarrosRodrigues]

Please tell me how to do it. I've never seen a single screenshot or example of the HoI3 AI being able to take an army of decent size (like the Soviet in picture) and:

• Keep all division inside command range
• Not create unnecessary HQs ( which cripples your officer ratio )
• Make decent leader allocations ( like not assigning the best Panzerleaders to your Militia divisions for a start ).

The picture above is what happens 100/100 times when you ask the AI to create and handle your OOB and Army in HoI III TFH.

I haven't seen a single video of you using the HoI3 AI to organize your OOB btw... If the AI is so good at it, why are you not using it?

I don´t always play the same way; the difficulty of the campaign determines my level of min/max. For example: the campaign difficulty determines if I´ll use a full OOB or not (...)

With this in mind spare HQs can be useful for newer divisions coming out of production or not important at all if the difficulty of the campaign is not huge (because if it is I´ll delete them which still beats by miles building the whole OOB from scratch). I usually keep my armor on a "manual" HQ to keep them under my control (...)

Anyway I used the HQ reorganization quite a lot in many of my campaigns; here is the link of a video where I teach how to set up the AI for it to keep the HQs in range with minimal effort for the player (too bad I was kind of asleep when war broke out). Btw I´ve linked it before in threads where you were also active but apparently you did not see it:

 

[Kovax]

The bottom line is that HOI3 handled "realism" poorly, so HOI4 removed it from the game. Now "realism" doesn't get in the way of gameplay, and we can enjoy our sandbox game that would only bear random accidental similarities (aside from a few names and equipment types) to WWII, if not for the focus trees essentially locking AI behavior to "historical" options in some cases, and into ahistorical options in others, regardless of the "historical/non-historical" game setting.

 

[BarrosRodrigues]

The bottom line is that HOI3 handled "realism" poorly, so HOI4 removed it from the game. Now "realism" doesn't get in the way of gameplay, and we can enjoy our sandbox game that would only bear random accidental similarities (aside from a few names and equipment types) to WWII, if not for the focus trees essentially locking AI behavior to "historical" options in some cases, and into ahistorical options in others, regardless of the "historical/non-historical" game setting.

I could not agree more with you. This pattern was clear to me well before HOI IV came out.