First of all, I would like to thank Paradox for the excellent NSB expansion, which greatly improved land combat and added some very nice touches to the game.
So building on this success, the question is where to go next? Very broadly, my impression is that at the moment the game has a good local balance in each theater (Axis vs. Soviets, Japan vs. China, etc), and the new supply system in combination with a neutral Vichy means that even Africa now looks much more reasonable.
And the game developers should be proud of showing the real history and contribution of the different groups in China, even though pointing out the limited Communist participation apparently was not appreciated by the current government in China.
However, the game is not very accurate in terms of the relative industrial strengths of the three factions, where the Allies - and in particular the US - have been dramatically nerfed. While this does not affect the playability of the game, it can give the impression that WW2 was mostly a "Germany vs USSR" affair, and that Stalin "saved the world from Fascism," - which is one of the popular myths currently being propagated in parts of the world (like that most of the Soviet deaths during WW2 were Russians rather than Ukrainians and Belorussians).
Thus, rebalancing the factions to better reflect the role of the democracies played in the war could have some merit in itself. Looking specifically at the US, although a smaller fraction of the industry was used for military production (and did not use slave labor from concentration camps and Gulags), the US industrial output exceeded that of the Axis and the USSR combined, both in terms of peak rates and the integral value. And while one can argue that the allocations were, with hindsight not optional, the overall impact was decisive.
And example of suboptimal allocations was the disproportionally large investment in the navy. For HOI4 players who struggle to build a couple of capital ships and maybe a few cruisers, it is worth recollecting that during the war the US built 10 modern battleships, 2 battle cruisers, 24 large aircraft carriers (Essex, with 2 Midways completed at the end of the war), 11 light carriers (cruiser hull conversions), as well as 54 escort carriers (which are not represented in the game, but were almost the same size as a CVL, ony slower), as well as cruisers, destroyers, and destroyer escorts by the hundreds. All of this was clearly not needed to defeat the axis navies or secure the shipping lanes, and one could prevent the player from allocating the industrial effort elsewhere, but the absence of the historic US navy nevertheless creates a potential misperception.
But production in other areas was equally staggering. For instance, the US built almost 35 thousand four-engined heavy bombers each of which was 10 times the size of a fighter plane or light attack aircraft. This alone would be very hard to match in HOI4, even if one did not build any other types of aircraft.
These examples show why during the entire war the majority of Axis industrial output was aimed at countering the threat posed by the West. The Eastern front was a "meat grinder," where a lot of lives were constantly lost in various skirmishes - but there was a limited number of decisive battles. With the exception of the first phase at Stalingrad, the success of these battles was usually decided by the availability of tanks, artillery, and air support rather than sheer numbers of foot soldiers. Thus, if the Axis has been able to focus their industry on defeating the USSR (not to mention effects of lend-lease), simple economical scaling suggests that they would be able to defeat the USSR rather quickly. Small-arms take up a large fraction of HOI4 production (which makes sense for game balance), but do in reality not require a major industrial effort. No army in WW2 lacked guns.
Also, looking at Soviet production numbers in particular can be a little confusing. The extreme focus extreme standardization, where a few items were built in large numbers, with poor quality control (since the life expectancy on the battlefield was very short, they did not need to be built to last). Thus, while some production numbers of, say, the T-34 can seem impressive, it hides the fact that except for weapons and alcohol (mandated by Stalin), the Red Army (just as Soviet society in general) suffered from constant shortages of everything else. For instance, the Soviet Army was one of few who found that socks were a luxury, and soldiers had instead wrap their feet with linen. And riflemen were issued with bayonets - bot no holders creating an everlasting challenge of where to put them. Just to give to slightly comical examples.
Thus, the poor performance on the battlefield was not only a matter of inferior tactics. If you look at numbers of produced, fielded, and lost vehicles (in, for instance in Zaloga & Ness' "Companion to the Red Army"), you can see that throughout most of the war the Red Army fielded about 4 times as any tanks as the German one (with the exception of '42 where they only had 50% more due to the heavy initial losses during Barbarossa). This superiority was much greater than in the number of infantrymen, for instance. But due to shortcomings in QA, maintenance, and logistics, it did not translate into a significant battlefield advantage until very late in the war (and in large part due to allied lend-lease, providing the USSR with a vast amount of reliable trucks). As a side note, it is also fun to note that (aside from '42), the number of tanks lost in combat was roughly proportional to the number deployed, giving the Germans a 4:1 (or so) advantage on paper - but since tanks were not the main cause of tank losses, it looks like the HOI4 model actually works quite well here.
While it is difficult to illustrate this rather extensive topic with only a few examples, I hope that future HOI4 expansions will find a way to better represent the decisive impact of the Allies war effort.
So building on this success, the question is where to go next? Very broadly, my impression is that at the moment the game has a good local balance in each theater (Axis vs. Soviets, Japan vs. China, etc), and the new supply system in combination with a neutral Vichy means that even Africa now looks much more reasonable.
And the game developers should be proud of showing the real history and contribution of the different groups in China, even though pointing out the limited Communist participation apparently was not appreciated by the current government in China.
However, the game is not very accurate in terms of the relative industrial strengths of the three factions, where the Allies - and in particular the US - have been dramatically nerfed. While this does not affect the playability of the game, it can give the impression that WW2 was mostly a "Germany vs USSR" affair, and that Stalin "saved the world from Fascism," - which is one of the popular myths currently being propagated in parts of the world (like that most of the Soviet deaths during WW2 were Russians rather than Ukrainians and Belorussians).
Thus, rebalancing the factions to better reflect the role of the democracies played in the war could have some merit in itself. Looking specifically at the US, although a smaller fraction of the industry was used for military production (and did not use slave labor from concentration camps and Gulags), the US industrial output exceeded that of the Axis and the USSR combined, both in terms of peak rates and the integral value. And while one can argue that the allocations were, with hindsight not optional, the overall impact was decisive.
And example of suboptimal allocations was the disproportionally large investment in the navy. For HOI4 players who struggle to build a couple of capital ships and maybe a few cruisers, it is worth recollecting that during the war the US built 10 modern battleships, 2 battle cruisers, 24 large aircraft carriers (Essex, with 2 Midways completed at the end of the war), 11 light carriers (cruiser hull conversions), as well as 54 escort carriers (which are not represented in the game, but were almost the same size as a CVL, ony slower), as well as cruisers, destroyers, and destroyer escorts by the hundreds. All of this was clearly not needed to defeat the axis navies or secure the shipping lanes, and one could prevent the player from allocating the industrial effort elsewhere, but the absence of the historic US navy nevertheless creates a potential misperception.
But production in other areas was equally staggering. For instance, the US built almost 35 thousand four-engined heavy bombers each of which was 10 times the size of a fighter plane or light attack aircraft. This alone would be very hard to match in HOI4, even if one did not build any other types of aircraft.
These examples show why during the entire war the majority of Axis industrial output was aimed at countering the threat posed by the West. The Eastern front was a "meat grinder," where a lot of lives were constantly lost in various skirmishes - but there was a limited number of decisive battles. With the exception of the first phase at Stalingrad, the success of these battles was usually decided by the availability of tanks, artillery, and air support rather than sheer numbers of foot soldiers. Thus, if the Axis has been able to focus their industry on defeating the USSR (not to mention effects of lend-lease), simple economical scaling suggests that they would be able to defeat the USSR rather quickly. Small-arms take up a large fraction of HOI4 production (which makes sense for game balance), but do in reality not require a major industrial effort. No army in WW2 lacked guns.
Also, looking at Soviet production numbers in particular can be a little confusing. The extreme focus extreme standardization, where a few items were built in large numbers, with poor quality control (since the life expectancy on the battlefield was very short, they did not need to be built to last). Thus, while some production numbers of, say, the T-34 can seem impressive, it hides the fact that except for weapons and alcohol (mandated by Stalin), the Red Army (just as Soviet society in general) suffered from constant shortages of everything else. For instance, the Soviet Army was one of few who found that socks were a luxury, and soldiers had instead wrap their feet with linen. And riflemen were issued with bayonets - bot no holders creating an everlasting challenge of where to put them. Just to give to slightly comical examples.
Thus, the poor performance on the battlefield was not only a matter of inferior tactics. If you look at numbers of produced, fielded, and lost vehicles (in, for instance in Zaloga & Ness' "Companion to the Red Army"), you can see that throughout most of the war the Red Army fielded about 4 times as any tanks as the German one (with the exception of '42 where they only had 50% more due to the heavy initial losses during Barbarossa). This superiority was much greater than in the number of infantrymen, for instance. But due to shortcomings in QA, maintenance, and logistics, it did not translate into a significant battlefield advantage until very late in the war (and in large part due to allied lend-lease, providing the USSR with a vast amount of reliable trucks). As a side note, it is also fun to note that (aside from '42), the number of tanks lost in combat was roughly proportional to the number deployed, giving the Germans a 4:1 (or so) advantage on paper - but since tanks were not the main cause of tank losses, it looks like the HOI4 model actually works quite well here.
While it is difficult to illustrate this rather extensive topic with only a few examples, I hope that future HOI4 expansions will find a way to better represent the decisive impact of the Allies war effort.
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