Hearts of Iron IV - 41st Development Diary - 22nd of January 2016

[The Albatross]

Will some leaders already have traits at game start? Like Rommel the "Desert Fox" trait? If so, will it be activated (100% developed)?
I could imagine one potential problem:
Let's say Manstein has already 4 traits developed at game start. His progress would then be very limited because he can only gain 1 more trait. A general with 0 traits could make much more progress in the game. Further more if you would promote Manstein to Field Marshall you would lose every starting trait.

*** SNIP ***

Good point @seattle --- As Spock would say --- "This is illogical Captain."
Using your example = von Manstein has 5 effective traits as a General.
He is now rewarded for being a great commander with a promotion to Field Marshal.
Suddenly = whoops-a-daisy, he forgets every war-fighting trait he ever developed???

No commander forgets the skills they develop/hone during their war-fighting career.
This is not what happens IRL when good commanders get promoted.

A more realistic method is to have a 2 tier system.
GEN ranks have their primary traits/skills at the stated levels.

Example: Panzer Leader at GEN level = ARMD DIVs -- units are 5% faster + 10% attack increase.
Upon promotion to FM, former GEN primary traits/skills now become secondary.
This preserves previously gained traits/skills + enables him/her to gain new primary traits/skills as FM.

Panzer Leader now is a secondary skill at FM level.
Example: ARMD DIVs - units are 2.5% faster + 5% attack increase.
He may then gain his new primary Fast Planner trait/skill of DIVs Plan 10% faster.

This ensures preservation of war-fighting skills + logical extension of the promotion system.

If the devs do not like the 50% reduction of GEN traits or skills, then review this % during beta testing.
If they think that a 60% reduction is applicable, then run with that.

IRL, this is how the military training & promotion system works.
Lets keep it realistic.

 

[bhark3]

Next week, we’ll take a deep look at Japan.

Well this should be good. Can't wait to give these guys insane amounts of tech and try to hold them off as Australia.

 

[OntoTR]

The OOB would look like this (in my perfect world):

Theatre - no commander just a large area of space - a limited number of Army Groups under it
->Army Group - Commanded by a Field Marshall - a limited number of Armies under it
->Army - Commanded by a General with a max 12 divisions

This was exactly my thought too after reading. It's already there so why no hierarchy?

It would be simple and awesome!

 

[No idea]

What would the conceptual benefit be for being able to make plans with loose units? If I want to make a plan for a single armored division rather than microing it, I can click up a general, -put the division under his leadership, and have him plan it. How's that worse than leaving the unit loose? I mean, it doesn't give me the capability to have a unit have it's own plan within a larger plan group, but I can't figure why you'd ever want to do that - the AI not being able to keep track of which units it actually has for the plan is not a good thing, and if the unit is reliably out of the hands of the main group to do an independent plan... then it functionally speaking is under another general already. You're absolutely permitted to have multiple groups operating on the same frontage (IE: A field marshal commanding overall infantry push, and two armies under your best panzer generals with your armored and motorized/mechanized troops doing spearheads and such in that same AO) without them actually needing to be the same group.

Yes, I also assume you can name a particular unit you want to "micromanage" the "Army" status, give it to a general and make a Battle Plan with that unit. The problem is that that might become a micromanagement hell soon enough. As I see it, the game is not made to micromanage. You can do it, but it is not optimized for being micromanaged, that is, we dont get good micromanagement tools. Which is ironic, as the game aims to get rid of the worst aspects of micromanagement. I think what they should have done is giving us better tools for micro, instead of making the game so that micro is not needed and if you want to do it it turns into a hell.

 

[Axe99]

Logically, in order for this to hold true the same must also be said for agrees, the net result being neutral, just saying

Were humans on the internet (or in general) equally balanced between negative and positive statements, I'd agree, but you tend to find that the emotional signals that spur people to negative action do so more easily and with less cause, leading to a bias towards less reliable feedback from the red X's than the green ticks. It's a "way humans are built emotionally thing" that one isn't the same as the other. That said, I'd say the blue circles are the most useful feedback, because, on average, someone responding with it is likely to have thought a bit more before providing a response. I don't want to go derailing the thread though, happy to keep discussing in PM if feeling philosophical .

 

[Acaios]

can't understand what was wrong with the old oob instead of this mess. A better interface with a faster access was the only thing required imho.

 

[Cpack]

....
I'm really getting frustrated with this forum and with the direction HoI IV is going. It has so much potential and so many things are brilliant, but then they remove features like OOBs, fuel and precision-air strikes and people love it. I don't get it.

That was my first thougth too. And I played HOI from 13 years ago till now.
I think pdox goes the way of avoiding bugs and unbalances in this HOI first, then concentrate on a bit more variance and complexity after everything works by DLC maybe.
And that's not the badest way.
If you include all thoose things you/we want from the beginning it's a herculean task, and we know, that HOI3 had problems with that.
In HOI3 I never managed to really balance all my additional things I modded in since 5 years...

So lets stay optimistic what comes with release and await good stuffs coming out step by step. This game has so much more potential, but it seems not at once.

PS: The modability seems very promising to me, so lets see

 

[Lifthrasil]

Nope, no OOB

There is only groups of divisions with one Commander per Group here called Army. The Theater just gives the option of quicker access and reinforcement priority it has no other effect.
And the army only has one Commander either a General or a Marshal not both on multiples levels there are no levels. Army size is 1-12 divisions for generals and 1-unlimitied for Marshals.

Tha'ts a bummer -.-
They should change it, so that I can put generals under the control of Marshalls. A bit like in HOI3, but thus with less tedious "commander assigning" since divisions don't get one (which is good imo). What's the use in having 2 different groups of commanders?

 

[Raptor83]

can't understand what was wrong with the old oob instead of this mess. A better interface with a faster access was the only thing required imho.

IMO, only problem with HoI3 OOB, was that it was on-map mess of HQs. IMO, moving it off-map and improving UI would solve most of its problems.

 

[thexmassteam]

Hello, and welcome to the 41st development diary for Hearts of Iron IV.

In HoI4, we call our basic military unit for a division, even if it may be as small as a single battalion, or as large 30 battalions. These can be grouped into what we call Armies. They have been referred to as command groups in the past, but that concept was a bit confusing. An Army is the entity which interacts with battleplans, and be given a commander. You can have as many armies as you want, but you need at least 1 division in each. Each Army can be named to whatever you want it to be.

Armies are organised in Theatres, which is a convenient aspect to group divisions according to your needs. Theatres do not have a specific area they cover, but besides giving a proper UI for quick access and a reference name, you can also define the reinforcement priority for that theatre compared to others.

There are two levels of commanders that can be assigned to armies, generals and field marshals. They both have skill levels that grow as they gain experience, which impacts the abilties of the divisions to fight.

The commanders also have traits, which can be gained if they fullfill some relevant criteria while fighting. Progress in trait gaining is tracked, and when they reach 100%, the trait is activated.

However, a commander can only have 5 traits, so they won’t catch them all.

A general can command up to 12 divisions while giving them the full benefit of their skill and traits. They can always be promoted to a field marshal, but will then lose all their specific traits and 1 level of skill.

Generals can have the following traits.

• Trickster: Divisions get +25% better recon.
• Winter Specialist: Divisions takes 50% less attrition during Winter.
• Engineer: Divisions have +10% Attack when crossing a river.
• Fortress Buster: Divisions have +20% Attack when attacking a fort.
• Panzer Leader: Armored Divisons move 5% faster, and have +10% in attack.
• Commando: Divisions Out of Supply is impact at 50%
• Desert Fox: Divisions move 5% faster in desert terrain, and fight 10% better.
• Swamp Fox: Divisions move 5% faster in marsh terrain, and fight 10% better.
• Mountaineer: Divisions move 5% faster in mountain terrain, and fight 10% better.
• Hill Fighter: Divisions move 5% faster in hill terrain, and fight 10% better.
• Jungle Rat: Divisions move 5% faster in jungle terrain, and fight 10% better.
• Ranger: Divisions move 5% faster in forest terrain, and fight 10% better.
• Urban Assault: Divisions move 5% faster in urban terrain, and fight 10% better.
• Naval Invader: Divisions prepare 30% faster for naval invasions, and perform them 30% faster

Field Marshals have no command limit, and command armies of any size, and they have the following possible traits.

• Logistics Wizard: Divisions have 20% less supply consumption
• Offensive Doctrine: Divisions have 10% less Combat Width.
• Defensive Doctrine: Divisions can get 30% higher entrenchment.
• Fast Planner: Divisions Plan 10% faster.
• Throrough Planner: Divisions can get 50% higher maximum planning bonus.
• Organisational commander: Divisions have +2% Hourly Reinforce Chance
• Inspirational commander: Divisons have 10% Higher Morale

And of course, both of them have the Old Guard trait, which reduces experience gain by 25%, which is a rather bad trait.


Next week, we’ll take a deep look at Japan.

Hi Paradox,

How the divisions are sorted in the list? It seems it's not sorted by name or by type. So is it by province from north to south or by build date?
If I have a 10 provinces width front-line, and I field an Army with 40 divisions, 4 by province. How do I keep track of which division are from which province when I start an offensive where my 10 starting stacks have 10 distinct targets 4 provinces away?
Is there any way to sort or organize this list to quickly find one of my stack (according those two stacks could be in a same province on the way even if they have distinct final targets)?

 

[panzerzombie]

Tha'ts a bummer -.-
. What's the use in having 2 different groups of commanders?

Hm, well nothing exept the general use "tactical traits" and FM´s a different set of "strategic" traits.......if that justifies such a setup, idk.

 

[Obcisor]

Swamp Snake

 

[HeilLoki]

That was my first thougth too. And I played HOI from 13 years ago till now.
I think pdox goes the way of avoiding bugs and unbalances in this HOI first, then concentrate on a bit more variance and complexity after everything works by DLC maybe.
And that's not the badest way.
If you include all thoose things you/we want from the beginning it's a herculean task, and we know, that HOI3 had problems with that.
In HOI3 I never managed to really balance all my additional things I modded in since 5 years...

So lets stay optimistic what comes with release and await good stuffs coming out step by step. This game has so much more potential, but it seems not at once.

PS: The modability seems very promising to me, so lets see

Sure, I really hope some of the things I'm complaining about will find their way into the game with free patches/DLCs, but for me that means one thing: I won't buy this game until it's done, which results in another year of waiting, IF this game has enough people willing to buy it from day 1.

And things like an OOB aren't that hard to implement. Just give me one more level and the ability to assign generals to each level. These levels shouldn't even be mandatory. So there's no issue with AI or people who don't want to manage their armies properly. That's not a "herculean task" at all. I understand why captured equipment isn't it. It's probably not that easy to program and I can wait, but an OOB?! OOB is core to the game. I just can't imagine not getting frustrated as soon as I have to deal with more than 100 divisions.


Edit: Since there are mainly fanboys left in my opinion, I'm not even sure Pdx will implement the things I worry about and I really am worried about this game not being received with kind words from the gaming press.

Edit 2: And yes, there are a lot of great things implemented in this game.

 

[Praetori]

Well it is not. You should keep in mind that you can put a pretty big number of brigades when you create your templates (divisions)

It makes for some bad historicity though. It works well enough for Soviet army formations after the early war reforms but the setup becomes kinda ahistorical for other forces such as German army-formations with 20+ divisions organized in several corps. Now I guess there's nothing stopping you from naming your "armies" as Corps but then you won't have any armies.

I'm not saying the current system is bad from a gameplay standpoint but I can't shake the feeling that something was taken away from HOI3 going to HOI4 making the sequel less historical than it's predecessor (on that particular point).

 

[paranoidsteve]

I would like to know more about starting a new theatre. Before Barbarossa can I make 3 theaters on the eastern frount , and name them armys North , Central and South?

 

[Norrec]

et yourselves for the balancing and clarity enough time.
But not overdo it with the units graphics and the 3D map.
Personally, I need only dispense an ordinary political map and NATO symbols.

Japan next week

 

[seattle]

Good point @seattle --- As Spock would say --- "This is illogical Captain."
Using your example = von Manstein has 5 effective traits as a General.
He is now rewarded for being a great commander with a promotion to Field Marshal.
Suddenly = whoops-a-daisy, he forgets every war-fighting trait he ever developed???

No commander forgets the skills they develop/hone during their war-fighting career.
This is not what happens IRL when good commanders get promoted.

A more realistic method is to have a 2 tier system.
GEN ranks have their primary traits/skills at the stated levels.
...

Very nice suggestions, love the colours!
One thing I didn't even think about before: The promotion system works exactly the opposite way of what's logical!
Take von Manstein. He starts as general, will gain many traits and become a 5-trait general. In real life this is the moment when he gets his well-deserved promotion (seniority + achievements = promotion).
In HoI4, the more seniority and the more traits a general earns, the less incentive there is to promote him to field marshal! This leads to the extremely unsatisfying mechanism of you only promoting the least experienced general who haven't earned a single trait to field marshal. It doesn't make sense whatsoever.

It reminds me of "Brave New World" with a twist: You are born alpha (field marshal) or beta (general) and that's the role you stick with forever. The twist is that only the most useless betas are promoted to alpha.

 

[Centerbe]

looking on HOI4 wiki there are 4 generals.....

than no more Major General and Lieutenant General ?

only General and Field Marshal ?

 

[potski]

I would like to know more about starting a new theatre. Before Barbarossa can I make 3 theaters on the eastern frount , and name them armys North , Central and South?

Johan already covered that:

Armies are organised in Theatres, which is a convenient aspect to group divisions according to your needs. Theatres do not have a specific area they cover, but besides giving a proper UI for quick access and a reference name

You can see in the screenshot there is a button below the existing theaters to create a new theater.

In vanilla HOI3 theater areas were defined for you by the AI, then later you could set the provinces covered by a theater. The HOI3 theater areas could not overlap.

HOI4 does not have theaters tied to a specific area. And you can name them anything you want.

So Germany in 1939 can have theaters which you name as:
- Germany or
- France, Poland or
- Army Group South, Army Group North, Army Group C

 

[paranoidsteve]

Johan already covered that:


You can see in the screenshot there is a button below the existing theaters to create a new theater.

In vanilla HOI3 theater areas were defined for you by the AI, then later you could set the provinces covered by a theater. The HOI3 theater areas could not overlap.

HOI4 does not have theaters tied to a specific area. And you can name them anything you want.

So Germany in 1939 can have theaters which you name as:
- Germany or
- France, Poland or
- Army Group South, Army Group North, Army Group C

I know that, but how does it work? Do I drag generals commands from a theatre to add them to a new one I've made? How do I locate a theatre I have made onto the map? Is a theatre actually a geographical area or is it a collection of generals command groups? Must a theatre have generals in it?

Refering back to the first picture in the DD; what does the 'burning' fuel can underneath the Mediterranean reinforcement priority pop out mean? Is the whole (or part of) Mediterranean theatre out of fuel? out of supplies? I thought that fuel had been removed from the game. If the army command groups (or parts of them) are out of supplies, does the same apply to any naval units whose port (home base) are in the theatre?