ehh, dont you know nothing ?
42 is "the answer to the ultimate question of life, the Universe, and everything" (its from the Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy)
Hearts of Iron IV - Development Diary 1 - Our Vision
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42 is "the answer to the ultimate question of life, the Universe, and everything" (its from the Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy)
Just noticed this one. Will stick this thread to the favourites bar of my IE next to the Arsenal of Democracy and Darkest Hour icons
I just hope that the unit sizes will be closer to the HoI2 than HoI3. I never really liked the micromanagament those brigade sized units needed. HoI2 just does it better.
I just hope that the unit sizes will be closer to the HoI2 than HoI3. I never really liked the micromanagament those brigade sized units needed. HoI2 just does it better.
Puppets (and colonies) automatically agree - or at least have a very good chance to. If a country is not a puppet or colony I don't see much justification (although a degree of leverage might be available - relationship changing chances, essentially).
Of course - but the question is whether they sign up to a joint venture.
I think the system would need to ban this, once the plan is set in motion, for any but the plan's author. Adding tweaks to as-yet-unagreed plans is almost essential, but once the plan is agreed it is under military command.
Each plan will, it seems to me, need to be assigned a single, overall HQ in any case. The level of this HQ should depend on the scale of the plan, but split command is not something most militaries would countenance. Units that are agreed for the plan would need to get assigned to that HQ - becoming "expeditionary forces", in effect. The owner of the overall HQ is the only one able to change it once the preparation and execution phases have begun.
Welcome to the politics of alliances! The Normandy invasions didn't happen on a whim Churchill* woke up with one morning!
*: Or Eisenhower, or anyone else for that matter. Agreement of the target of the plan, agreement of the SHAEF staff and control, agreement of committed forces and so on and so on all had to be agreed beforehand. It took years.
They might. Withdrawal of forces from the combined HQ should certainly be possible after a certain time. But maintaining a successful combined force (under the control of whoever owns the Supreme Operational Headquarters) could be possible, too.
It looks like the AI will be executing all plans, anyway. At the lowest level, that's no different to earlier HoIs - you tell the program/AI to move unit B from province A to province C and leave the computer to get on with it - you dont have to click-and-drag the unit every pixel of the way.
In a combined plan, I guess this would/should work the same way. The plan can be as detailed or as outline as you like.
OK, but that has a few problems:
1) It means your only choice is to manage ALL an allies' actions - including the defensive and routine elements - rather than just the important combined operations.
2) It does not really suit combined operations in multi-player (where you are playing allies).
3) It allows cheesy exploits of sacrificing your allies in order to obtain your own objectives.
Broadly, what work in the game as "expeditionary forces" were very, very common between allies. The entire New Zealand navy existed as a fixed "expeditionary force" in the UK Royal Navy up until 1942. The core of what is needed is the ability to request/demand expeditionary forces of your allies. The battle plan mechanism simply adds some context and political reasoning around that.
Somewhere in the middle of the last post (Balesir) i just stopped and tought: If that was really to be expected to happen for HoI4 - why dont we have multi-side peace-negotiations in EU4, again?
I think the one most important aspect of allied cooperation in HoI4 will be it´s simplicity: If it ain´t simple, it´s not gonna work. Simple as in: You are allowed to check the plans of your allies, and they can do the same with yours - and each side decides on and offers assistance to one another as one decides is most helpful for a common AI, so to say.
A common AI - modules that work to judge and plan for more than one Nation at once - is probably the key, and the weight individual nation´s AIs assign to its conclusions. Puppets would subordinate totally to their masters, simpy because they´d consider things from the perspecives of them both, puppet+master, simultaniously, while two great powers in the same camp might be more inclined to follow their own interests seperately.
The weight given to said common AI conclusions should probably relate to the general power of the nations in question, with the Status of puppet just putting this to one extreme end (no matter what the real power relation is, sort of overriding the criteria). That means, assuming that the US is regarded as being more powerful than the UK, that the UK would be more inclined to Support US plans (=offer Units to commit to them), than vice versa. Of course, each unit already comitted, each % of force shared, will make a Nation less inclined to send even more, so that, eventually, a Balance is reached and one Nation does give all it has away.
Interface wise, i think it will be like this: In one way or another, we´ll have to assign troops to the arrows of our battleplans. Alternatively (or additionally), we will be able to set flags of our allies. This will prompt them to check out the plan as a whole. Then, said plan will be send to a combined AI of it and your Nation, eveluated, the results weighted according to things said above, computed with the nation´s individual AI and thus decided how much and what to attach to your arrow. You will be able to see what they are sending, Long before it arrives, in cases, as you can check what Forces are actually attached to your battleplan.
Said flags on the arrows should probably Feature some sort of quantity Options, even if only ´send more´, ´just right´ and ´less will do, thx´. Maybe there should be an optional way, allowing to set exact numbers (10 inf brig., 5 AT...), via some button opening a menu.
Ähh, yeah, i´ll stop Brainstorming and rather deactivate that f*****g spellchecker, now.
I think the one most important aspect of allied cooperation in HoI4 will be it´s simplicity: If it ain´t simple, it´s not gonna work. Simple as in: You are allowed to check the plans of your allies, and they can do the same with yours - and each side decides on and offers assistance to one another as one decides is most helpful for a common AI, so to say.
A common AI - modules that work to judge and plan for more than one Nation at once - is probably the key, and the weight individual nation´s AIs assign to its conclusions. Puppets would subordinate totally to their masters, simpy because they´d consider things from the perspecives of them both, puppet+master, simultaniously, while two great powers in the same camp might be more inclined to follow their own interests seperately.
The weight given to said common AI conclusions should probably relate to the general power of the nations in question, with the Status of puppet just putting this to one extreme end (no matter what the real power relation is, sort of overriding the criteria). That means, assuming that the US is regarded as being more powerful than the UK, that the UK would be more inclined to Support US plans (=offer Units to commit to them), than vice versa. Of course, each unit already comitted, each % of force shared, will make a Nation less inclined to send even more, so that, eventually, a Balance is reached and one Nation does give all it has away.
Interface wise, i think it will be like this: In one way or another, we´ll have to assign troops to the arrows of our battleplans. Alternatively (or additionally), we will be able to set flags of our allies. This will prompt them to check out the plan as a whole. Then, said plan will be send to a combined AI of it and your Nation, eveluated, the results weighted according to things said above, computed with the nation´s individual AI and thus decided how much and what to attach to your arrow. You will be able to see what they are sending, Long before it arrives, in cases, as you can check what Forces are actually attached to your battleplan.
Said flags on the arrows should probably Feature some sort of quantity Options, even if only ´send more´, ´just right´ and ´less will do, thx´. Maybe there should be an optional way, allowing to set exact numbers (10 inf brig., 5 AT...), via some button opening a menu.
Ähh, yeah, i´ll stop Brainstorming and rather deactivate that f*****g spellchecker, now.
Any info about starting dates? Again '36 as the earliest starting date?
Can't wait to see the interface.
Can't wait to see the interface.
I'm really looking forward to this
As one of the micro-managers, I'm hoping for the most detailed and complex WWII sim yet, coupled with the amazingly good interfaces of EUIV and CKII.
As one of the micro-managers, I'm hoping for the most detailed and complex WWII sim yet, coupled with the amazingly good interfaces of EUIV and CKII.
Then how do you take that god damn awful name from France in Africa? Srry but the HOI3 names of countries with zoom was a million times better.
I imagine that would be easy. Find the file. Change a line. Start the game. Done.
Wow, I am actually a lot more excited for this now! For me, the best things are:
1. Fascist German flag instead of the Imperial German Flag
2. No Faux-Cyrillic, YAY!
3. Amazing Day/Night cycles
4. Beautiful map!
5. Efficient, industrial looking tabs
My only question is, why is the text for "Soviet Union" shoved all the way past the Urals? I assume this will be fixed in the final game to go from roughly Moscow to Khabarovsk, right? Also, can we please get "USA" changed to "United States"? I don't want to do it in the game files like in HOI3 because I will want to play it in ironman and get some nice achievements
1. Fascist German flag instead of the Imperial German Flag
2. No Faux-Cyrillic, YAY!
3. Amazing Day/Night cycles
4. Beautiful map!
5. Efficient, industrial looking tabs
My only question is, why is the text for "Soviet Union" shoved all the way past the Urals? I assume this will be fixed in the final game to go from roughly Moscow to Khabarovsk, right? Also, can we please get "USA" changed to "United States"? I don't want to do it in the game files like in HOI3 because I will want to play it in ironman and get some nice achievements
damn me, i want company level units so i can build divisions by individual components and yeah minimum size unit would prefrably be battallion sized
more complexity not less. but then i love micro managing because the previous ai attempts are atrocious at implementing a plan.
i like the thought of the plans actually being a blueprint of the actual attack attempts.
Just saying: you all want the game to be deep, not complex. Complexity is a negative byproduct of depth; it's never anything you want on its own.
"Deep" means that a brigade moving from Berlin to Potsdam takes into account the state of the roads, the weather, the hour of the day and the weight of its equipment in order to determine it's speed. "Complex" means that in order to move a brigade from Berlin to Potsdam you must click through thirty-seven windows, make some spreadsheets, look at the wiki to try to understand how to move a unit, do a rain dance and square the circle.
Everyone wants deep games (which invariably leads to a bit of complexity, but it can be mostly avoided by good design). No sane person could purposely want a complex game.
"Deep" means that a brigade moving from Berlin to Potsdam takes into account the state of the roads, the weather, the hour of the day and the weight of its equipment in order to determine it's speed. "Complex" means that in order to move a brigade from Berlin to Potsdam you must click through thirty-seven windows, make some spreadsheets, look at the wiki to try to understand how to move a unit, do a rain dance and square the circle.
Everyone wants deep games (which invariably leads to a bit of complexity, but it can be mostly avoided by good design). No sane person could purposely want a complex game.
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While what you say have some truth to it, complexity does not necessitate complex user interaction. Complexity in itself is is also by no means always a negative thing. A system such as the one you describe would for both examples be a complex system; The interaction of said system on the other hand need not be complex. The interaction might even be too simple, in such a way that the underlying complexity either is of no use to the player, or unnoticeable entirely. You could have all those interesting mechanics taken into account, but if the player couldn't choose which roads to take or when to stop
That said, these people most probably want a complex game, which for their case is synonym with deep. But that is saying little about how easy and functional they want the interaction to be.
Just to be on the same page about the exact definition of "deep" and "complex" (which seems to be the main point of contention), I'm basing my position on the insight given in this amazing episode of an awesome informative webseries about game design, explained by insiders for insiders. I strongly recommend it to everyone here, because it deals with something very important for Paradox games; they're even explicitly mentioned at a point (and I really hope the devs watched it too).
[video=youtube;jVL4st0blGU]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVL4st0blGU[/video]
So, no, by my definition of "complexity", it can never be a good thing on its own. But it may be worth it if a moderate amount of complexity "buys" a huge amount of depth.
The HoI games sometimes "bought" a dubious amount of depth with a gigantic amount of complexity. That's a bad trade-off.
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Im hoping the economy for this will be far more complex taking from EvW that way it gives a more realistic budgeting of ingame military and economy.
To Podcat
I just want to say that I very much like the overall aims that you have outlined in this development diary.
Im all for the idea of simplicity of operating the game without removing the depth of strategy involved .That should also make the game more saleable to new players.
As for not Railroading the game to force the historical out comes, that will have to be done very carefully. There should be enough railroading to ensure we actually get world war two, and don't have any crazy a-historic outcomes. But not not so much that we know what the outcome of each decision we make will be. I would like to see more variation in the timing of events than in whether or not they occur, and I would like to see less railroading of what a player can do than of AI controlled countries.
I just want to say that I very much like the overall aims that you have outlined in this development diary.
Im all for the idea of simplicity of operating the game without removing the depth of strategy involved .That should also make the game more saleable to new players.
As for not Railroading the game to force the historical out comes, that will have to be done very carefully. There should be enough railroading to ensure we actually get world war two, and don't have any crazy a-historic outcomes. But not not so much that we know what the outcome of each decision we make will be. I would like to see more variation in the timing of events than in whether or not they occur, and I would like to see less railroading of what a player can do than of AI controlled countries.
I think Joppos is right, people want depth, they merely tolerate complexity. It's hard to create depth without unneccessary complexity,and I think HOI3 generally takes it too far. If you think of depth and complexity as parallel quantities, what you want I think is depth with an equal amount of complexity, no more. Depth with much less complexity that there is depth comes across as shallow - it means there's a lot of interesting things going on in the background but the player can't access them and change them how he wants to. Whereas if there's far more complexity than there is depth, the player is forced to become like a computer, doing repetitive tasks over and over.
So no complexity isn't inherently bad, but it must be regulated.