Even after so many updates, HOI4 still has massive problems

[amalric de g.]

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.

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.

Don´t try to extrapolate the reasoning of Hitler into only one aspect, you have to look on the whole picture.

The population, in 1910 germany had 64,000,000 people, in the old Reich territories. After 1919 the territory shrinked by 1/3, the population was 61,000,000.
In 1933 the population was 65,000,000, so your mentioned agricultural technology advance, was really eaten up by the growing population and by the lost territories.

If you compare the numbers with France, you get a impression. France was barely able to compensate the dead from WW 1 in the 14 years. Germany on the other side, compensated the losses from WW 1 and the population losses of the Versailles Treaty and had a plus of 1,000,000.

In May 1939 the population was allready 79,000,000 including the 9,000,000 austrians and sudetengermans, the original german population rose in 6 years from 65 million to 70 million.

Germany had the largest population density in Europe.

Germany imported 30% of the needed food, the rest was home grown. The UK imported 70% of her needs.
During the war food was rationed, until 1942 the rations were reasonable. After April 1942 the rations dropped by 1/3. The morale of the people was not good.

The reason is simple, the big losses of manpower during Barbarossa, the Nazis had to grab the reserves, farmers and farmhands. If you have no one to operate the machines, the output drops.

 

[Vikimh John jr]

The air war was handled better in HoI 3 . I liked the way you could set the range your planes operated at and weather it was a 360* arc (used for fighters) or cone shaped area (used it for attack missions ) Planes have ranges and the map is scaled so don't see why this is not used.

If they just added another building called dispersal field for aircraft it would improve air war 100 % ,,, these buildings would be proverance buildings instead of state level ... they could have say 25 aircraft per level allowing 250 max at level 10 . This would allow you to build fighter base's closer to the front line to cover your troops and extend the range of fighters to cover your bombers. by putting fighters closer to the front and bombers back from the front it would allow you to cover your bombers with fighters. As it is now with no control over range of your air wings your bombers are without fighter support. Which is ok most of the time , but there are times you don't want to let your bombers range fare and wide without fighters around .

As far as navy goes I haven't played any naval powers much , to deal with all the naval invasions from AI , I just spam little divisions with 3 battalions and place along coast then have a small reaction corps to deal with any invasion force that makes it ashore before you can react.

 

[Alex_brunius]

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:

Your exact words from the video: "it creates more headquarters then we actually need, so let's disband some"...

I also think there is some kind of language barrier here, because in that video you are starting out with a perfectly organized army already... ( neatly assigned in correct provinces with correct division types everywhere you want them ), and you still need 17 minutes + more off camera before to prepare it. Not 5 minutes. It would probably be faster to do manually to be honest then using the AI.

And yes naturally it won't go outside of range if you don't let it, much like if your country isn't big enough to put stuff out of range it won't do it That's not a good AI, it's just an AI following the basic rules and restrictions that are put on it since it's not physically possible to go out of range. Much like the AI in HoI4 won't use strategic redeployment between a 3 provinces wide front ever since it's not large enough.

 

[Katsuki126]

Don´t try to extrapolate the reasoning of Hitler into only one aspect, you have to look on the whole picture.

The population, in 1910 germany had 64,000,000 people, in the old Reich territories. After 1919 the territory shrinked by 1/3, the population was 61,000,000.
In 1933 the population was 65,000,000, so your mentioned agricultural technology advance, was really eaten up by the growing population and by the lost territories.

If you compare the numbers with France, you get a impression. France was barely able to compensate the dead from WW 1 in the 14 years. Germany on the other side, compensated the losses from WW 1 and the population losses of the Versailles Treaty and had a plus of 1,000,000.

In May 1939 the population was allready 79,000,000 including the 9,000,000 austrians and sudetengermans, the original german population rose in 6 years from 65 million to 70 million.

Germany had the largest population density in Europe.

Germany imported 30% of the needed food, the rest was home grown. The UK imported 70% of her needs.
During the war food was rationed, until 1942 the rations were reasonable. After April 1942 the rations dropped by 1/3. The morale of the people was not good.

The reason is simple, the big losses of manpower during Barbarossa, the Nazis had to grab the reserves, farmers and farmhands. If you have no one to operate the machines, the output drops.

There is also the desire to pursue the colonization eastwards that the German Empire began. But this is slowly drifting into a discussion about some of the things that can only be mentioned on the Stellaris forum.

 

[BarrosRodrigues]

Your exact words from the video: "it creates more headquarters then we actually need, so let's disband some"...

I also think there is some kind of language barrier here, because in that video you are starting out with a perfectly organized army already... ( neatly assigned in correct provinces with correct division types everywhere you want them ), and you still need 17 minutes + more off camera before to prepare it. Not 5 minutes. It would probably be faster to do manually to be honest then using the AI.

Yeah never mind the fact that I then proceeded to say "I won´t bother with deleting them" and that they ended up being very useful for the divisions coming out of production (like I said above). :facepalm:

Maybe it was also "some kind of language barrier" that prevented you from understanding that I don´t need to explain everything in detail to myself so I can move much faster off-camera. Maybe it is yet "another language problem" at work if you think doing it all manually is faster, etc. etc. etc. The bottom line is that I think it is pointless to argue with you since the "language barrier" is always too strong when we chat. It’s funny because that "language barrier" basically only pops up when I am talking with you.

 

[Katsuki126]

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

Please stop being patronizing, such a behaviour can kill a constructive discussion.

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 (...)

But the AI always screwed up ! You couldn't send more than 5 divisions in a landing...
Plus managing the escort and all, it was a lot of micro.

You basically don´t need to worry with 0 strength aircraft and losing them if you put a few wings in reserve (...)

Niop, you did, reserve or not, your aircraft always ended up destroyed if you forgot them for a few weeks.

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 (...)

And that was the problem. You wanted to bomb some specific provinces ? You can't select them so welcome to the clickfest of setting the proper radius, and angle...

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.

I am beginning to think that we didn't played the same game. I look at the air map, place my fighters, forget them, and the enemy would just bomb someplace else. You constantly need to be aware of the provinces your enemy bombed and counter with your fighters. Then he will attack some place else. That is tedious micro, at least that was reduced in HoI4.

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.

1) The AI did it terribly.
2) It is suboptimal.
3) It is micro that you can turn to the AI (terrible game design btw), but micro nevertheless.
4) It was not explained, you had to learn by yourself how leaders interacted.
5) Even when done properly, three weeks om the offensive will destroy your beautiful OoB and you can't let the AI (poorly) restore it because your forces that should be im the same corps (mountaineers, marines, Armored division) might be thousands of miles apart.

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.

No it was not, it was stupid, ahistorical and pointless. And once again, I agree that you can turn it to AI, but micro is micro whatever you might think.
And the devs didn't label it exploitive, they labelled it tedious and pointless

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.

On this we agree, lack of mapmode is terrible in HoI4, but I don't find lack of uniform frontlines that problematic (though I am always making thousands of smaller frontlines so that might be it)

 

[rjohansen]

HOI3 OOB:

• I mostly agree with the points of @BarrosRodrigues, but I am sure it takes more than five minutes, at least for me as I also rename every single thing. But it's rewarding and enjoyable in my opinion.
• You can micro every single unit if you so wish, but in the past 1-2 years, I personally have moved away from it. I used to micro everything, it was fun in it's own way. But now I prefer to use the AI for almost every task. I then also feel I don't "cheat" on mind of the AI - because it is basically AI vs AI fighting.
  • This might actually resemble HOI4... But a whole lot more rewarding in my personal opinion.
• Here is how I personally run the game at the moment:
  • I set up the OOB - I don't control a single divisions, corps, army, army group or theatre, nor fleets or air-wings.
    • Few exceptions: Units in reserves are not on AI control. Units for special purposes are not on AI control. I have yet to understand how to use paratroopers on AI control for instance, but I normally only build 2-4 divisions anyway, but this corps is rarely on AI-control.
  • Some air and naval units are placed within the theater they are meant to defend/operate. I make a separate HQ for both Air and Navy and set orders accordingly.
  • Offensive operations are placed in an Army Group (or lower for minor operations/objectives) and detached from any theater. I also have air/navy units within this structure too. Works great, also for invasions.
    • One exception as I already have mentioned. Paratroopers. Haven't got that one working.
  • Every occupation-area gets it's own theater with - with set provinces - to take care of defense and partisans. Not to big of an area. These will also get air/naval unit when/if needed. Also I divide in other areas for defense:
    • For instance, playing Germany I usually just have one HQ Theater for the entire country, Playing USA, I use one for the East, one for the West and one for the Pacific and all islands. Remember, all fighting units are always detached from the theater any how.
  • For the AI I use the province objectives - both for defense and for offensive operations.
• Out of range HQ's?
  • Sure, it happens. But it will happen both for the AI and for me. But it's not that big of a problem as many says it is. When it happens to me, I just don't care. I just role-play my way around it.
    • When micro-controlling the units, you rarely had this problem. I even used to fill the HQ with units and make it fight like normal divisions - worked like a charm for boosting your generals. But I don't do that now and I don't miss it either.
• I have also used different variants on AI control, including I did the same as @BarrosRodrigues in the video he posted. I played Soviet and let the AI control every unit from theater down - it also worked like a charm. But I prefer my current method.

HOI4 "OOB"

• Not sure if you can call it an actual OOB - but I personally feel that it doesn't really matter how you organize units in HOI4. I have tried to create actual armies, corps and much more. I also tried to have all units in "one" army. It all works. It doesn't look pretty and feels stupid, but still, works.

 

[BarrosRodrigues]

Please stop being patronizing, such a behaviour can kill a constructive discussion.



But the AI always screwed up ! You couldn't send more than 5 divisions in a landing...
Plus managing the escort and all, it was a lot of micro.

I am sorry but I don´t agree with basically everything you say and I don´t know how to say it better besides you still not knowing the best algorithm for managing the army, navy and air-force decently well almost without any micro (...); with that said here is another tip: in HOI III TFH you can set up all your fighters to protect your entire country/troops from enemy bombers and then assign hotkeys to your TAC, CAS or MR (ctrl+hotkey, for example ctrl 1). Then whenever you want to bomb a specific province you just hit the assigned key to select the bombers (and ofc select the bombing mission) if that is something you want to keep doing. If not, like I said above, just ground attack to the maximum range of your aircraft (and fighters protecting them). I wholeheartedly recommend MR for ground attack missions if your goal is to reduce the micro (...) if you are really interested in learning more stuff WRT HOI III you can also watch some of my videos.

 

[Atlantians]

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...

Except for the whole '282 bombers' dropping thousands of bombs over several hours part. Which is sort of what I was saying was different about the atomic bombs, had you paid attention to more than the five specific words in my post you felt like pretending was the whole of it.

 

[Atlantians]

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

Alternative interpretation: I do know how Tokyo worked, and am familiar with the power struggle, but did not believe long rendition of the background of said power struggle to be relevant to my point.

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.

This is all pop history written by folks trying to make names for themselves.

1945 August 6: Atom Bomb 1.
1945 August 8/9: Russian War Declaration.
1945 August 10: Atom Bomb 2.
1945 August 15: Japanese Unconditional Surrender.

The common sense assessment is pretty clear, having the last two major industrial cities on the Japanese Homeland vaporized, each by a single bomb dropped by a single bomber, 4 days apart, while the Soviets declared war and eliminated any hope that they could mediate with the USA on Japan's behalf, Japan surrendered.

Saying that the bombs were not a significant contributing factor is just patently absurd. The difference the Soviets made was pretty clearly the difference between a conditional and unconditional surrender, and the lost of all the Japanese Colonial possessions, but some form of surrender was inevitable due to the bombs alone.

There is a fundamental tactical and strategic difference between a single bomber and a single bomb, as opposed to mass bomber formations.

 

[Alex_brunius]

Except for the whole '282 bombers' dropping thousands of bombs over several hours part. Which is sort of what I was saying was different about the atomic bombs, had you paid attention to more than the five specific words in my post you felt like pretending was the whole of it.

There is a fundamental tactical and strategic difference between a single bomber and a single bomb, as opposed to mass bomber formations.

In what way?

The 282 bombers which burned Tokyo and so many other cities and all their bombs dropped didn't even cost a small fraction compared to the manhattan project to produce 2 bombs.

If USA had wanted to get the most "bang for the buck" they would have used 3000 bombers instead of 300 and flattened Hiroshima and Nagasaki for less money then the manhattan project cost them.

The Strategic and Tactical differences only had implications for the following cold war, not for WW2 or Japans situation. USAF had the capability to flatten any city of their choice for the evening in Japan by mid 1945, nuke or no nuke.


In another ahistorical setting or situation it might have mattered ( where large enough bases or time to get enough bombers in range didn't exist ), but for the surrender of Japan it didn't change anything in practice.

 

[Atlantians]

In what way?

The 282 bombers which burned Tokyo and so many other cities and all their bombs dropped didn't even cost a small fraction compared to the manhattan project to produce 2 bombs.

The Japanese didn't know this. Your entire argument is based on hindsight.

Also, you can hide from and maneuver away from carpet bombing, whether napalm or TNT.

The fire bombing of Tokyo was so effective due to secondary damage, not primary damage.

 

[Alex_brunius]

The Japanese didn't know this.

The Japanese didn't know that USA could bomb out one of their cities every second evening? Why wouldn't they be aware of this after it had been happening for half a year when the first nuke hit them and... flattened another city just like all larger previous raids had done?

 

[Katsuki126]

1945 August 6: Atom Bomb 1.
1945 August 8/9: Russian War Declaration.
1945 August 10: Atom Bomb 2.
1945 August 15: Japanese Unconditional Surrender.

You do not even have the date right.

August 6 : Hiroshima
August 9 : Nagasaki and soviet offensive
August 15 : Unconditional Surrender (Soviets have destroyed the one-million men strong Kwantung Army and are in Korea)

Now, if some kind of destruction blackmail occurred that forced Japan to surrender (unlikely because there was nothing left to be destroyed) why didn't Japan surrender the 10 or the 11 ? The USA would have send bomb on regular pulse until the Japanese surrendered. The Japanese would have surrender right away because they would have been afraid of another nuking.

The reality is that things do not work that way. You seriously underestimate the power struggle in Tokyo and their influence. You do not understand what kind of people were the Japanese militarist. You would have told them about the nukes, they would have fight until the end, seeing their destruction as a mark of pride and of glorious death because no enemy would have been able to properly defeat them. That is why the soviet invasion is so important. They conventionally defeat the last madmen of Tokyo and destroyed their influence and political clout in the capital.

This is all pop history written by folks trying to make names for themselves.

Or this is the common view of serious historian and you are ridiculous when you try to denigrate them.

 

[Axe99]

On the whole Japanese surrender thing, iirc (always some doubt here ), it was still almost a tie and the Emperor had to make the call - so the Japanese were only just convinced to surrender after lots of strategic bomb, two atom bombs and losing most/all of Manchuria in a week! Got to give them points for stubbornness .

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

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.

Not incorrect, but it's worth noting HoI3 had the AI railroaded into certain actions as well, and that some of these were at the engine level, so unmoddable. In that context, HoI4 at least allows us to mod these interactions. I'm not sure HoI4's approach to the historical side of things is so different from HoI3s, beyond making it more open to modders (and starting from scratch, so there are more situations where the script does silly things). Much of the 'realism' in the way HoI3 played out politically wasn't any deeper (and in some ways was shallower and more arbitrary) than HoI4. Not all of it, but I'd be reluctant to hold HoI3 up as a poster-boy of realistic political developments in gameplay (I'd argue EU4 and Vicky 2 both do a better (but rather different) job here).

 

[Camtheman]

Or, it is going to kill the game because it can only be supported and expanded by a professional crew if you pay for it.

Furthermore, as SteelVolt pointed out once, even if it is open source, few have the tools needed to compile the main code.

As Wiz always said : "For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong." And a lot of wrong answers had been suggested, but this one is the worst.

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

As for compiling, EU 4 appears to be written in C++. Microsoft Visual Studio, anyone?

For linux, how about the gcc command? Based on experiences with their games over the years since EU3 I can say Paradox does not hire the best programmers, and/or does not pay enough (look at Glassdoor reviews of them, lol)

That is part of the reason for how bad HOI4 is, and Stellaris as well (Utopia has improved it a moderate amount, Hoi4 needs a Utopia.)

And to the guy saying the nukes didn't matter to Japan's surrender... lmao. Like saying slavery did not play a part in the US Civil War. It's just factually incorrect.

Also to OP

This thread will probably get deleted before any dev sees it due to all the profanity since most forumites including moderators are gentle snowflakes and are the reason that the forum medium is dying and has been since the late 90s. Reddit is taking over for a reason.

 

[Katsuki126]

I am sorry but I don´t agree with basically everything you say and I don´t know how to say it better besides you still not knowing the best algorithm for managing the army, navy and air-force decently well almost without any micro (...); with that said here is another tip: in HOI III TFH you can set up all your fighters to protect your entire country/troops from enemy bombers and then assign hotkeys to your TAC, CAS or MR (ctrl+hotkey, for example ctrl 1). Then whenever you want to bomb a specific province you just hit the assigned key to select the bombers (and ofc select the bombing mission) if that is something you want to keep doing. If not, like I said above, just ground attack to the maximum range of your aircraft (and fighters protecting them). I wholeheartedly recommend MR for ground attack missions if your goal is to reduce the micro (...) if you are really interested in learning more stuff WRT HOI III you can also watch some of my videos.

I know there is a lot of shortcut plus handing over to the AI but IMO it is still a lot of micro. We will just have to agree to disagree here, I guess it depends of how we see the game and its micro.

On the whole Japanese surrender thing, iirc (always some doubt here ), it was still almost a tie and the Emperor had to make the call - so the Japanese were only just convinced to surrender after lots of strategic bomb, two atom bombs and losing most/all of Manchuria in a week! Got to give them points for stubbornness .

The Emperor called the surrender, that much is certain, not the government (who tried to prevent it). Which begs two questions :
1) Why did he wanted to surrender ?
2) What gave him the power to do so ? (Mind that the Emperor does not have any power during WWII, the military-controlled government did control everything)

The answer to the first question is tricky, mostly because the only close sources to the Emperor are too loyal to him to say anything that could contradict the official reason (That the Emperor had always been a pacifist). However, when the Emperor insisted to see his people's suffering (against the wishes of the government) after the Tokyo bombing, it was a clear sign that he wanted to end the war. The nuke came later and his mind was probably already set. If anything the nuking would have only strengthen his resolve to seek peace by any means.

The second question however is the most important. Whatever the Emperor wishes was irrelevant because the military held the power. They power stood upon the long-lasting tradition of the shoguns. They power came from their dedication to defend Japan, and in the success they have in doing so. When the navy was crushed, the Admirals lost their powers and prestige. The destruction of the Kwantung army destroyed whatever pretention to power the generals retained.

That is why the impact of the nuke are overblown (pun intended) people failed, and it seems still fail, to realize how all those events unfolded, who held the power and what he was doing with it.

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

As for compiling, EU 4 appears to be written in C++. Microsoft Visual Studio, anyone?

There is language, there is compilation and there is game engine, I'm not (unlike you) pretending that I do know how Paradox games are coded and worked, I am merely stating what SteelVolt already stated.

And to the guy saying the nukes didn't matter to Japan's surrender... lmao. Like saying slavery did not play a part in the US Civil War. It's just factually incorrect.

Do you know what an apple is ? Do you realize it is not an orange ?

 

[D-Dave]

Germany still DOWs the Low Countries while still fighting in Poland.

Italy still sails unescorted troop transports through the English Channel, unharmed. Italy reinforces northern Germany which is nice of them, but they lose Sicily and Albania because of it.

The UK still launches a number of naval invasions in 39 and 40, but now mainly in the Mediterranean.

Oslo is still the safest place in the world because Germany does not perform any naval invasions.

Now more than a year after release and we still dont have a working game.

 

[Atlantians]

You do not even have the date right.

Congratulations, you have entirely refuted me; because, of the five dates I gave, one date was one day off.

I bow before your supreme intellect!

 

[Katsuki126]

Congratulations, you have entirely refuted me; because, of the five dates I gave, one date was one day off.

I bow before your supreme intellect!

Well, firstly, the dates are important and two of them were off, and secondly, I refuted you throughout the lengthy post that followed.

And you can always bow lower