Hearts of Iron 4 - my opinion and wishes

[Booo Hoooo]

Well, after playing few nations and my last german campaign i would like to say what i like and what i dont and hope devs will read it and maybe use some of ideas or confirm that they are already working on it.

Easy war

First of all I think game is too easy, i am not a pro player, i played hoi darkest hour and i lost ww1 in a month as france soo.. while in hoi4 i destroyed russia as finland, with german help of course but before they reached my borders i pushed russians out and took leningrad. When playing as germany i was fighting in africa, russia and fighting spam of these stupid naval invasions (more about it later). While poland anad france can be easy to destroy then russia or africa was so dissapoiting.. i waas hoping to fight for years and then lose but i took whole africa and russia before 1942, started war with poland in 1939. So ww2 ended in 1942.. I did not even have navy and still i could supply my army in africa while british did not do anything about it, they dont block your supply lines or anything.

When i started war in russia i was expecting long, deadly war and all i got was 97% victory ratio, russians spamming everyone on the front line, they dont hold behind to let soldiers dig in and make it harder to attack. All i had to do was attack at the beginning to desttroy their organisation and strenght, then till the end i was just pushing almost destroyed units and they had no strenght to defend, they dont fall back to resupply and get more organisation, they just stay and die. Winter did not feel like winter, i did not notice and bad effects, same in africa. I know it gives some % of being slow etc but really, it did not affect my campaign in russia at all.

So this is my first complain, everything is too easy, AI is too stupid.

Smaller countries

When i played as germany i was really excited about winter war, i wanted to send so much stuff to finland, tanks, planes, just everything, just like in real life. But what went wrong? Well, russians destroyed them in few days.. c'mon.. finland is one of the most interesting countries during ww2. I really wish for DLC to focus on this country, but for now i think they should be fixed, they should not just lose winter war in a day, also when playing as russia they should not be easy pray, i think they need huge defence bonus and some bonus to building defences, some special tactics at winter etc. they don't feel like finland at all, they knew that russia will attack them, they mobilized army and this also should be event to get big bonus to creating infantry. (where are molotovs? )

Edit: i think hungarian-polish friendship should be in the game, hungary refused to attack poland and even helped them. Having hungary not care about it seems weird. It would make a nice event, hungary refusing to fight poland, also would be nice atmospheric thing.

More events

I really love events, especially the one you can make a choice, it's so great in 1936-39, so meny events but during war there is almost non. It does not need to be something huge and special, but event about winter coming while you fight in russia, about frozen soldiers or when you are fighting in some historical place etc.

Occupation

It's just bad.. i hope there will be dlc focusing on it, partisants keep destroying everything like crazy, even creating cavalery units with military police does not help, you just cant make so much of them to cover everything, in the end i had everything destroyed, while keep producing police to cover more and more lands, but it just does not help, they destroy everything faster than you can fix it, they do more damage than bombing england should not bomb cities, they should just drop partisants, they will do more damage than nuclear bombs. And even if you cover those lands then what? Your police just stay there, doing nothing, you don't control anything.. I would really like to see more interaction with it, sending police on missions, maybe hire civilians and make them as this civilian police they had during ww2, like i said there is no wat to create so many MP units, then why not to hire civilians, give them battons and they will just do it for you.

Naval invasions

No need to explain i guess.. just stop it, make event for one big invasion in france and smaller in italy for example, it's just horrible to watch 1 division doing d-day all over your lands, they just pop up everywhere and you have to move units to kill it, it's not a deadly threat but annoying pain in the butt

Air combat

"The failure of the Luftwaffe during Barbarossa (22 June – 5 December 1941(5 months, 1 week and 6 days) was reflected in its losses, with 2,093 aircraft of all types being destroyed. Soviet losses stand at 21,200 destroyed, 10,000 in combat, of which 7,500 were shot down by the Luftwaffe fighters"

I lost 1500 bf109 in 1 month, russians lost 1600. I guess there is no balance and every plane must be the same, since we had almost the same lossese, also they seem to die too fast, i lost aall my fighters in 1 month (so did russians since they did not put more anymore).
I also made 3 AA guns in infantry divisions to make some of them anti-air, is it worth? Stats said i shoot down around 20 planes during 1 month. Do the math, 1600 destroyed by fighters, 20 by AA guns.. seems like worthless line of production.

Modernisation

I am not 100% sure here but when making new vehicles or weapons you replace old ones, why?? It's war, i don't want to replace working things, i want to replace destroyed ones, also i think it's too much to have all planes fw190.. while bf109 was there till the end, making infantry units with stg44 only also seems.. why guns does not have some stats, rifles are better in open fields and smg in cities, stg44 combined these two, but army made off 1 gun type? C'mon, really wish for option to have % of these guns in division, we could created sturm units with smg to fight in cities while regular infantry would have mostly riflles and just some soldiers would get mp40 for example engineers etc.

The end

I bet there is more but i don't remember now, i know i complained a lot but that was the point, there are good things in this game and i like it, just wanted to point out bad things so maybe it will be fixed or changed.
Feel free to "respectfully disagree"

 

[Misaka_Complex]

I agree with the part where you say that winter doesn't feel like winter at all. As Germany in Hoi4 I don't even look at what season it is when I invade the Soviet Union which definitely wasn't the case for Hitler during Barbarossa. The Soviet winter should give a huge penalty to Germany like it did in real life since they were never prepared for it.

 

[davej]

Air combat

"The failure of the Luftwaffe during Barbarossa (22 June – 5 December 1941(5 months, 1 week and 6 days) was reflected in its losses, with 2,093 aircraft of all types being destroyed. Soviet losses stand at 21,200 destroyed, 10,000 in combat, of which 7,500 were shot down by the Luftwaffe fighters"

I lost 1500 bf109 in 1 month, russians lost 1600. I guess there is no balance and every plane must be the same, since we had almost the same lossese, also they seem to die too fast, i lost aall my fighters in 1 month (so did russians since they did not put more anymore).
I also made 3 AA guns in infantry divisions to make some of them anti-air, is it worth? Stats said i shoot down around 20 planes during 1 month. Do the math, 1600 destroyed by fighters, 20 by AA guns.. seems like worthless line of production.

I agree, fighters drop like flies in this game. You have to run them on low intensity and spam them continuously. make sure to get 100% radar, and maximize the relevant air doctrines - better models with maxed variants too.

Occupation

It's just bad.. i hope there will be dlc focusing on it, partisants keep destroying everything like crazy, even creating cavalery units with military police does not help, you just cant make so much of them to cover everything, in the end i had everything destroyed, while keep producing police to cover more and more lands, but it just does not help, they destroy everything faster than you can fix it, they do more damage than bombing england should not bomb cities, they should just drop partisants, they will do more damage than nuclear bombs. And even if you cover those lands then what? Your police just stay there, doing nothing, you don't control anything.. I would really like to see more interaction with it, sending police on missions, maybe hire civilians and make them as this civilian police they had during ww2, like i said there is no wat to create so many MP units, then why not to hire civilians, give them battons and they will just do it for you.

Some regions are just harder than others, esp capital states. The garrison command can be buggy too if you use it, you may need to do it manually. You just have to play around with occupation policy, get additional political help if avail, use the new focus suppression, etc. Also, if it's a non core state, nobody says you have to, it might not be necessary.

Modernisation

I am not 100% sure here but when making new vehicles or weapons you replace old ones, why?? It's war, i don't want to replace working things, i want to replace destroyed ones, also i think it's too much to have all planes fw190.. while bf109 was there till the end, making infantry units with stg44 only also seems.. why guns does not have some stats, rifles are better in open fields and smg in cities, stg44 combined these two, but army made off 1 gun type? C'mon, really wish for option to have % of these guns in division, we could created sturm units with smg to fight in cities while regular infantry would have mostly riflles and just some soldiers would get mp40 for example engineers etc.

The "destroyed" ones are being replaced in your divisions, and the others being swapped out with the newer models when available. Most instances, this is a good thing, you want the better models over the older ones in your divisions, and the older ones just as a backup.

However, if you hate having to deal with all the clutter and sifting through endless models, the interface makes it very difficult to get rid of anything, esp planes. Lend lease is buggy, restrictive, and takes too long too IMO.

 

[Dalwin]

I agree with most of the OP's points except in regards to occupation. It is far from impossible, in fact it is far too easy to set all of Europe to maximum occupation and suppress 100% of the unrest. You don't even have to use the very unrealistic swarm of cavalry to do this. Infantry works also but it is a tradeoff to have better defenses in the region at the cost of more expensive occupation forces.

If you are struggling with occupation you are simply not leaving enough units behind to control the territory. You should not be able to take 90+% of your invading forces on to your next victim. The fact that a significant investment in occupation forces is necessary is one of the good parts of HOI4 design. That and the current system is much less tedious than the old whack a mole version of partisan warfare from HOI2 and 3.

The biggest problem that I have with HOI4 occupation is that it allows the conqueror to get 100% use of the factories and resources. It should not be nearly so high.

 

[Dan1109]

To add to dalwin's comments, you need to pay strict attention to the dissent tool tip on the state window in the lower left hand corner. You will better understand the mechanics with that info in hand. You can also modify your occupation policy which greatly affects your resistance. The less harsher the policy, the less resources and less resistance.

Also, remember that you don't have to keep resistance at zero with your supression. As an option, just put enough supression in the state to give you a very low growth rate. Partisan uprisings will there not happen often at all, but they will happen which can give some flavor.