Hearts of Iron IV - 35th Development Diary - 27th of November 2015
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Looking at that screenshot of the German-French border area, it appears that we will have fewer provinces in Europe than we had in HOI3. Hopefully this means we will have more provinces in other parts of the world so that province sizes are consistent, but it may make encirclements harder to pull off and reduce options for avenues of advance. The other thing I noticed is that while its easier to see forested areas than it was on the default HOI3 map ( I always play it in simplified terrain mode), parts of that area are rather rugged and I'm not sure if the hills just don't stand out that well or if there aren't that many there.
Cheers for the DD Podcat, Germany's looking great 
. Am a big fan of the General Staff buff - I'd been mulling over how Germany punched well above it's weight during the period, and that looks a good way to manage that in-game. National Focus options look great, lots of enjoyable plausible alt-history going on (as The Guru has mentioned, the 'Puppet Turkey' is a tiny bit eyebrow raising, interested in more info on that if easy/appropriate).
Looking forward to hearing about subs next week - any chance of hearing about how escorts, ASW and the like work at the same time?
Comments on naval things in case useful (noting I'm no expert, but I've got a reasonable source on these things) - please ignore if not :
- Weren't all three members of the Deutschland Class (Deutschland, Admiral Scheer and Admiral Graf Spee) completed by March 1936, in which case shouldn't Germany have 3 (modern, for the time) CA at game start?
- The 12 destroyers has me puzzled. In March '36, Germany should only have 4 'full' destroyers (1934 type), but they've also got 12 Torpedo Boats which, were you looking to give Germany a bit of a hand, could be snuck into the classification, which gives you 16 DDs. They've also got 12 DDs of the 1934A type in the build queue (all laid down by Jan '36, but the first isn't completed until 1937), then there are also 15 older (pre-WWI) DDs and TBs of 670 tons and smaller, although these are probably too small for HoI4's scale. Based on what was done in HoI3 with the post-WWI TBs making the cut but the pre-WWI, that'd give 16 DDs rather than 12, with another 12 in the build queue.
- Are the 2 BCs the Scharnhorst's (which should still in the build queue), or are the 2 BCs the old pre-war BBs (Schliesen and Schleswig-Holstein). If the Scharnhorst's, are these two old BBs going to make the cut (they might fit better into HoI's tech-tree structure as heavily-armoured CAs, but they were far too slow to be BCs. Would be good to have Schleswig-Holstein in the game, apparently it fired the first shots in Germany's invasion of Poland (so, arguably the first shots in WW2) and both got a run in Germany's early operations.
I'm not full bottle on what Germany could build (and I definitely wasn't when I played as Germany in HoI3), but I found them the easiest playthrough I had - easier than the US, even, if you're not using exploits. I had no difficulty rolling over the UK and USSR by the end of 1941. I know HoI3 was generally easy once you knew how it worked, I never felt Germany struggled (and I'm no min-maxer or power player, I prefer to have a more role-playing approach). Germany was also well OP in HoI2 (from what I recall, they were less OP in HoI3 relative to HoI2, but still OP relative to their historic performance/position).
Subs, we've been told in a later response by the good Podcat. When reading these DD's, as well as the first post, I always recommend hitting the 'show dev posts only' button (if you're not going to read the whole thread). The devs almost always answer a few questsion, and the answers are almost always worth reading .
. Am a big fan of the General Staff buff - I'd been mulling over how Germany punched well above it's weight during the period, and that looks a good way to manage that in-game. National Focus options look great, lots of enjoyable plausible alt-history going on (as The Guru has mentioned, the 'Puppet Turkey' is a tiny bit eyebrow raising, interested in more info on that if easy/appropriate).Looking forward to hearing about subs next week - any chance of hearing about how escorts, ASW and the like work at the same time?
Comments on naval things in case useful (noting I'm no expert, but I've got a reasonable source on these things) - please ignore if not
:- Weren't all three members of the Deutschland Class (Deutschland, Admiral Scheer and Admiral Graf Spee) completed by March 1936, in which case shouldn't Germany have 3 (modern, for the time) CA at game start?
- The 12 destroyers has me puzzled. In March '36, Germany should only have 4 'full' destroyers (1934 type), but they've also got 12 Torpedo Boats which, were you looking to give Germany a bit of a hand, could be snuck into the classification, which gives you 16 DDs. They've also got 12 DDs of the 1934A type in the build queue (all laid down by Jan '36, but the first isn't completed until 1937), then there are also 15 older (pre-WWI) DDs and TBs of 670 tons and smaller, although these are probably too small for HoI4's scale. Based on what was done in HoI3 with the post-WWI TBs making the cut but the pre-WWI, that'd give 16 DDs rather than 12, with another 12 in the build queue.
- Are the 2 BCs the Scharnhorst's (which should still in the build queue), or are the 2 BCs the old pre-war BBs (Schliesen and Schleswig-Holstein). If the Scharnhorst's, are these two old BBs going to make the cut (they might fit better into HoI's tech-tree structure as heavily-armoured CAs, but they were far too slow to be BCs. Would be good to have Schleswig-Holstein in the game, apparently it fired the first shots in Germany's invasion of Poland (so, arguably the first shots in WW2) and both got a run in Germany's early operations.
I'm not full bottle on what Germany could build (and I definitely wasn't when I played as Germany in HoI3), but I found them the easiest playthrough I had - easier than the US, even, if you're not using exploits. I had no difficulty rolling over the UK and USSR by the end of 1941. I know HoI3 was generally easy once you knew how it worked, I never felt Germany struggled (and I'm no min-maxer or power player, I prefer to have a more role-playing approach). Germany was also well OP in HoI2 (from what I recall, they were less OP in HoI3 relative to HoI2, but still OP relative to their historic performance/position).
What will be in the next DD?
Subs, we've been told in a later response by the good Podcat
. When reading these DD's, as well as the first post, I always recommend hitting the 'show dev posts only' button (if you're not going to read the whole thread). The devs almost always answer a few questsion, and the answers are almost always worth reading .- 6
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was there a mention of next weeks dev diary or does that mean there wont be one next week????
In this map I found a dam. It is great! I wonder these dams have anything.....it is fine for the scale:
Yeah, they confirmed very early in the development that the number of provinces stayed more or less the same between games, but got redistributed.
They also stated that one of their design concerns with the provinces is that their terrain is very clear. Since the provinces are not named anymore, they don't need to concern too much with political borders and shape them to fit the terrain instead. You are supposed to always be able to tell the terrain of any given province by glance. That is also the reason rivers are now strictly between provinces (so no doubt for when there is a river crossing).
I am not seeing any dam. Where did you found it? What I am seeing are factories though. I don't remember ever noticing them on map nor it being mentioned. Do that mean that factories are represented by province, even if they are build on states? Does that mean you know exactly which provinces to target when wanting to seize industrial capacity?
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How do you conclude that ? Any evidence ?
Just look carefully in this week DD picture we see that Germany has 6 potential research & production slots and 5 already filled. They are in 1937 and researching rocketry, so they are close to have to chose to get a sixth slot or focus on the the nukes.
In DD#27 Italy has 6 potential slots and 0 already filled. Other DDs also show countries with 6 potential slots (like Sweden). So 6 slots are the potential slots, but all countries will probably not be able to fill them all and some will need national focus(es) to unlock some slots.
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You seem to be a bit confused. Those things you are looking at are slots for ministers and tech companies which give bonuses. Everyone has exactly the same ones (see lower part of http://www.hoi4wiki.com/Ideas)
What I am talking about is the number of techs the country can research at any one time. If we look at the focus tree Germany starts with 4 research slots only gets one extra and it has to not get nukes to do so. Italy on the other hand starts with 4 gets 2 extra and can get nukes on top of that.
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Will have to run the numbers to see if it is worth it to trade Slovakia for Danzig but I love the options that you have as Germany.
You are right about the 6 slots which are for ministers and tech companies.
I'm ready to believe you, but where have you seen the number of slots for research for Germany and Italy ? Focus trees are not the same as research. From the same wiki you quoted it is written: Four research slots are shown, with a national focus unlocking a fifth slot. It is unknown whether this is the same for all countries. http://www.hoi4wiki.com/Research
From what I have seen in DDs #20 and #27, USSR and Italy can both get 1 more research slot from their focus trees. So my guess is they both begin with 4 as Germany. Be careful that the erlenmeyer bottles pictures are not all an extra research slot. My guess is they may accelerate research (but not more at the same time as an extra research slot).
In the Italy focus tree, after the "Treaty with Germany" erlenmeyer bottle, it unlocks "Secret Weapons" that may not necessarily be nukes, though the picture is a nuclear mushroom. The same for the USSR focus tree, "Progress Cult" is not an extra research slot which only comes after "Socialist Science". Also, in the second picture from this week DD we see that the extra research slot for Germany is not mutually exclusive with "Wunderwaffe", though we don't know if this includes nukes. While in DD#30 on France, we see that "Jet Effort" and "Nuclear Effort" are mutually exclusive.
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No they didn't. Most co-operation ended as soon as war broke out, and Hitler ordered that no new orders of arms and military equipment for China would be accepted.
Although outwardly Germany was still telling the Chinese that they would support them only weeks before Marco Polo, Hitler was probably already pissed off by the outcome of the Xi'an Incident. All meaningful support for China ended as soon as they signed the Non-Aggression Pact with the Soviets in about August 1937. Hitler had one of his famous rages when he heard.
Although Germany later offered to assist with peace negotiations it would have been on Japan's terms. By early 1938 Germany had strengthened their alliance with Japan and recognised Manchukuo. This reversed the position of Germany that the occupation of Manchuria in the Mukden Incident in 1931 had been illegal, and that control of the provinces should be returned to China.
The National Focus to choose China instead of Japan as an ally should only be available before war, and shouldn't be automatically accepted if China has the Unified Front. Hopefully, China won't have a generic Focus tree, but has some unique options of it's own to unify the country against Japan.
Chiang Kai-shek's son was not an officer in the Wehrmacht. His name was Chiang Ching-kuo. He went to university in Moscow, and returned to China around 1935, where he married, had six children and seemed to have entered the "family business" - working with his father in politics. Ching-kuo had various high offices in the post-war Republic of China (ie. Taiwan), and succeeded his father as Premier in 1972, then as leader of the KMT in 1975, before becoming President in 1978-88.
Perhaps you are mistaking him with someone else? There is a common pro-Nazi bit of propaganda that appears on many sites, trying to show that the Wehrmacht was multi-cultural and included Asians within its ranks. One of these was a man called Chiang Wei-kuo. He was thought to be the son of a senior KMT official and a Japanese woman, but the official hid the (at the time scandalous) relationship. The child was adopted by one of Chiang Kai-shek's two concubines, so grew-up as a small child as part of Chiang Kai-shek's extended family group until 1927, which also included Chiang's first wife.
Chiang Kai-shek dropped the two concubines and divorced his first wife in 1927, when he married Soong Mei-ling - known as Madame Chiang, she was the "first lady" of China, playing a prominent role in politics alongside her husband, and appears in many famous pictures and videos meeting Roosevelt, Stillwell, Churchill etc. She spoke excellent English and travelled to the US to rally support for Chinese.
The term "adopted son" is often used for Chiang Wei-kuo, but even this is tenuous, given that Chiang Kai-shek never married nor even officially recognised his relationship with the adoptive mother. Nevertheless, Chiang Kai-shek does appear to have continued to look out for the welfare of the boy, even after 1927. Publicly it was assumed that the concubine had given birth to Wei-kuo and that Chiang Kai-shek was therefore his father, but neither were true. Though interestingly Chiang Kai-shek never seems to have publicly stated the boy was not his son. It became public only in 1988.
Perhaps a little long explanation, but necessary given the subsequent claims that the leader of China supported Hitler's invasions in Europe by sending his son to fight in the Wehrmacht. And the importance that pro-Nazis attach to this man.
Chiang Kai-shek employed a group of military advisers, led at first by Seeckt and then by Falkenhyn, of former German officers. Note that Chiang employed them, paying them to work for him. They were not serving in the German Army at the time, nor were they there representing the German government. Another fact that pro-Nazis tend to "overlook". Plus Seeckt was in China before the Nazis seized power.
Seeckt and Falkenhyn and the men with them organised and trained new Divisions of the Chinese National Republican Army, building up 10 modern Divisions by the time of war with Japan, that were under Chiang's sole control. They used their contacts with industrialists in Germany to secure contracts for equipment and armaments for these, most distinctively they got German style uniforms and helmets, so are often referred to as the "German Divisions" as opposed to the locally recruited and controlled units of the NRA, which were not always so loyal to the central government. Most of the new officers of these Divisions were trained by the advisors in China.
But Falkenhyn was also able to secure positions for a small group of Chinese young men to travel to Germany and be trained by the Wehrmacht around 1936. There is nothing unusual in this - friendly nations often provided, and still do, officer training for foreign nationals, as part of reciprocal arrangements, when normally those foreigners would not be eligible to apply to join their army.
Wei-kou was one of these, and, given his links to Chiang, the most important. Wei-kuo became a Major at 28, a Lieutenant Colonel at 29, and a Colonel at 32 in charge of a tank battalion, and later a Major General. So he was a Colonel fighting in the Wehrmacht leading a panzer unit? Wow, they really weren't racists! About a 1,000 of the best German troops led by someone from Asia!! That's the message from pro-Nazis, who adorn Wei-kou's pictures across their websites and propaganda videos. And the same claim has been made previously in this forum by the main pro-Nazi cheer leader.
But, wait a second... Wei-kou was born in 1916. So he became a Colonel commanding a tank battalion in 1948? Something doesn't add up here!
The facts are that Wei-kou took command of a tank battalion when he was fighting for the NRA against Mao's forces in the Civil War, before fleeing with the KMT leadership to Taiwan. And all of his officer posts are with the NRA serving in China, starting in the 1940s, during the war with Japan.
In early 1938 he was only 21 or 22, when the Anschluss took place. The "panzer unit" he commanded was a single tank. He wasn't even an officer, but a "sergeant officer-candidate". In other words, someone undergoing officer training. And that training, arranged by Falkenhyn, was in a unit that happened to be deployed to Austria during the Anschluss.
The implication is given time and again that Wei-kou and the 5 or 6 other Chinese that were undergoing officer training at the time were serving in the Wehrmacht as volunteers, that they supported the Nazi regime and they took part in the war. And by using a number of pictures of the same 5-6 people in different poses and groups, the pictures seem to imply there were more of them than was the case. And the link to Chiang Kai-shek is intended to imply that Chiang supported Nazi Germany in their invasions, and was close to joining the Axis.
As mentioned above, by early 1938 official relations between Germany and China were severely strained. Germany began to insist that Falkenhyn and his colleagues should return to Germany, rather than continuing to assist Chiang in resisting the Japanese. With their families in Germany threatened that they might be regarded as traitors for fighting against Germany's ally, they reluctantly agreed to leave China in mid-1938. They had served Chiang for about a year during the war, and although most of the 10 "German Divisions" were destroyed in the Battle of Shanghai, nevertheless, the advisers were invaluable in preventing the Japanese from over-running China.
Oddly, the German government didn't seem to be too bothered that they still had Chinese in the army who were being trained on modern use of tanks and the combined arms tactics that would be used so successfully in Poland, France etc. Perhaps they misguidedly assumed China would still collapse and sue for peace with Japan, or the Chinese were protected by those in important positions who disagreed with Hitler, and still preferred the idea of China as an ally rather than Japan. Either way, the officer cadets didn't return to China until late in 1938 or early 1939 (depending on source). But certainly before the invasion of Poland. So no Chinese were present in the Wehrmacht during the war. And there is no record that Wei-kou was actually ever made an officer by the Wehrmacht. It appears that when their training was complete, rather than get a commission as a normal officer cadet would (ie. a German citizen who met the racial law requirements), they left Germany. And probably that was the original arrangement made by Falkenhyn.
The value of this training appears to be entirely one-sided with hindsight, it's almost like Germany helped spies who learned their tactics and methods and took them back to China. Given their small numbers and young age, they may not have contributed significantly to fighting the Japanese, but before returning full-time to China to serve in the NRA, Wei-kou went on a tour of the USA and gave lectures to senior US officers on German panzer tactics!
It's one of the greatest ironies of WW2 that Germany was defeated, in part, because Japan refused to join the war against the Soviet Union, while still bogged down in China in July 1941. Stalin could afford to redeploy significant numbers of Divisions from the Far East to the Battle of Moscow. And, even though his German military advisers had gone, they had been instrumental in bringing the NRA to a point where Chiang Kai-shek could take on the Japanese in 1937, and successfully defend the interior and most of the south of the country for eight years. This was a major achievement, given the previous 100 years of China very quickly succumbing to outside military intervention. After the end of WW2 and the civil war in China, Chiang Kai-shek honoured Falkenhyn for his major contribution to protecting the country from Japan.
Hitler's policy in mid-1937 to support the Japanese when war broke out, not only made no difference to the outcome of the Sino-Japanese War, but instead left a vacuum which was quickly filled by the Soviets and the Allies in providing equipment to China. Falkenhyn's role was taken later by US military advisers.
Personally, as I noted above, it's not even clear that the choice was there to be made by Germany alone, especially after Xi'an and the signing of the Anti-Comintern Pact with Japan. It takes two to tango, and though China was happy to take the equipment it was being sold by Germany, it doesn't mean that it was open to a formal military alliance/joining the Axis. To what end? Faced with the two internal problems of the Communists in Shaanxi and the Japanese in Manchuria, the idea that China would commit the NRA to a potential war with either the Allies or the Soviets is ridiculous.
To invade the Soviets in 1941 to divert units from fighting against the Germans in Barbarossa requires China to have first decisively defeated Japan. Since Japan really only got moral support from Germany, and little material and no manpower, then losing that support is going to make hardly any difference to Japan. It's almost impossible to transform the NRA from an army able to defend itself, especially in difficult terrain, into an offensive army that can defeat the Japanese on the north China plains and drive them out of Manchuria and Korea. Even then, it doesn't guarantee anything other than a long stalemate - China has no naval capability in the 1930-40s to retake Taiwan, never mind invade the Japanese home islands. And in game terms at least, you can see that Germany would need to send volunteers to China and lend lease of equipment, that at least matches what the Soviets and Allies supplied in the first few years, but which needs to significantly surpass what the US provided IRL, if China is to win the war. And Germany has to build alot of convoys to get it there 1937-39. It's going to impact German capability to fight the Allies.
Even if they can at first sustain Nat. China against Japan, the convoys will be destroyed quickly once war with the Allies starts. Germany can't afford to defend it's own supply convoys in European waters, never mind those taking equipment all the way to China, with Suez blocked and Allied fleets operating along the route out of Gibraltar, South Africa, Ceylon, Singapore and Hong Kong.
There is a real chance that Germany is just going to be wasting it's infantry equipment stockpiles by sending it to China, as there is no way Germany can also afford to send tanks, planes, trucks or artillery in significant quantities to make a real difference to the quality of the NRA. Germany will swap one useless ally in Asia for another useless ally that is probably bogged down in a long war of attrition, and with a fear of fighting Uncle Joe. If there is a United Front with the Communists in China, during war with Japan, then any attack on the Soviet Union by the NRA immediately causes the Chinese Civil War to break out again. So the NRA has also to decisively defeat the Communists before 1941.
Lastly, if you can go all ahistoric, and play the "what-if" game of China allying with Germany, then what's to prevent Japan allying with the Soviets in a Molotov-Tojo Pact that divides up China. Or even for Japan to join the Allies, as they did in WW1?
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Wow!
At first I thought, not another wall of text. But that slice of chinese military history was fascinating. Thanks Polski !
At first I thought, not another wall of text. But that slice of chinese military history was fascinating. Thanks Polski !
Does anyone know, have they mentioned whether there is an option prior to starting the game to keep AI historical? I would like, maybe, three different options, one to keep historical, one to allow some randomness, and one where they are ONLY ahistorical.
The devs have said that there's a 'historical' mode, where the AI will only take the historical national focus choices, as long as these are possible (ie, if the human player goes off the rails, the AI may need to change tack as well), as well as a sandbox mode where the AI can choose anything.
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I have a problem with a national focus path for Yugoslavia as Germany. Yugoslavia was a main resource partner of Germany in the whole south Eastern Europe at the time as was among the most experienced and manpower heavy of all countries in the region. Germany and Italy had countless trade and diplomatic deals with Yugoslavia (because of the mentioned resources 1st in Europe for copper (any and all electric things, from wires to power stations), 2nd in chromium, 2nd in bauxite (aluminum ore), 1st in led (bullets and batteries anyone?)) and they had no intentions to demand any part of it (Germany especially with Slovenia).
Only after the Yugoslav betrayal in 1941 and the fear of allied landing did the attack go on.
So a focus might be better to befriend Yugoslavia with economic and diplomatic deals? Or to have as national focus the REAL negotiations that were held with Germany and Italy to partition the Croatia and Slovenia while accepting the rest of Yugoslavia as Serbia, the 'southern Sweden' for Germany and Italy? But some made up Ljubljana Awards and a national focus of partitioning a country Germany never intended to invade in the first place?
But as you created 'Radical Yugoslavia' as a fascist state with next to no resources, I guess that this national focus for Germany fits well with the overall alternate history tone of the game.
Only after the Yugoslav betrayal in 1941 and the fear of allied landing did the attack go on.
So a focus might be better to befriend Yugoslavia with economic and diplomatic deals? Or to have as national focus the REAL negotiations that were held with Germany and Italy to partition the Croatia and Slovenia while accepting the rest of Yugoslavia as Serbia, the 'southern Sweden' for Germany and Italy? But some made up Ljubljana Awards and a national focus of partitioning a country Germany never intended to invade in the first place?
But as you created 'Radical Yugoslavia' as a fascist state with next to no resources, I guess that this national focus for Germany fits well with the overall alternate history tone of the game.
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post # 12: what is next week's DD about?
post #29: subs
post #32: yay subs
post # 38: what is next week's DD about?
post #53: yay subs
post #75: no DD next week how strange
post #85: what is next week's DD about?
post #92: what is next week's DD about?
post #105: subs
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