Hearts of Iron IV - World War Wednesday Part IV - Livestream today at 14:30 CET

[Nesl]

Definitely ! These are multiple Divisions fighting. Which often wasn't over in an hour. Plus never had a mobility issue in HoI3, breakthroughs were relatively quick.

The fighting in France looked about right from the Vid. Shame we didn't get to see much of Poland's demise. That was over very fast.

Well i think in between hoi 3 and hoi 2 would be ideal for me.

 

[fabius]

Well i think in between hoi 3 and hoi 2 would be ideal for me.

I'll be cheeky: Maybe you didn't attack with optimal forces in optimal situation if your battles were all dragging???

But sure- I guess we have varied taste in this. I always find myself loosely tracking the days fought for individual battles. The long one's gives epic/heroic highlights.

 

[Devout]

A couple of user interface suggestions/questions:
1. On the production screen, the quantity needed is displayed as a negative number (i.e. "-3k) if there is a shortage. If there is excess inventory, it has green text saying "Filled". Please change this to a green number "+4k". When moving factories around, it would be good to know just how much the excess is. There is a big difference between having +50 artillery pieces and +50k artillery pieces. I know the information is on the logistics screen, but it helps a little having it on the production screen as well.
2. On the resource screen, please color code the final delta for easy viewing. You have to read each resource to see if it says shortage or surplus. A quick green/red to show problems would be helpful. I would actually prefer a 4 tier color system (significant shortage, slight shortage, slight surplus, significant surplus) as significant surplus may be considered just as bad as a shortage since you are not getting factories from trade.
3. I understand most of the columns in the logistics screen, except the green bar. Can someone explain what information this provides?

 

[Snow Wolf]

My biggest concern / fear is regarding the land battles.
- To me it looks like battle-resolution is even slower than in HOI 3, which was very slow compared to HOI 2.

I hope it is possible to have HOI 2 like mobile warfare play out in HOI 4.
Unfortunately it doesn't look like that from what i've seen so far.

I'd like to see a video where we can see a battle plan as it is desinged to use.
- the game speed seemed to be to high for the players to do that.
- i'm not sure if you are really quicker when designing a decent battle plan, than micromanaging each division. also when you design the plan you don't know where the enemy is so you would need to quickly be able to change it. I can't imagine how this could work, so I'd like to see



minor complaints:
- yellow message infrastructure damaged
- naval battle report could maybe try to see big/important battles easier or get rid of "lost 1 convoy" quicker
- japan navy doing nothing?

The battle resolution looked good? The game was played on speed 2/3! It took way longer in HoI3 (unless I'm spoilt by mods)

Battleplans weren't shown because they finally wanted to show war. They were in a hurry and had only an hour to stream..

I agree on the naval battle reports. While they are absolutely cool, useful and not disturbing at all, having these for convoys is contraproductive. Perhaps just an icon you can hover over, saying "we sunk x convoys in this region the last x days"?

 

[Nesl]

I'll be cheeky: Maybe you didn't attack with optimal forces in optimal situation if your battles were all dragging???

But sure- I guess we have varied taste in this. I always find myself loosely tracking the days fought for individual battles. The long one's gives epic/heroic highlights.

I was thinking of fights agains other players not ai. AI usuallsy doesn't do much and has much less and lower quality troops

 

[fabius]

I was thinking of fights agains other players not ai. AI usuallsy doesn't do much and has much less and lower quality troops

Ha, touché. Yeah, I mostly SP as never fell into a regular group.

 

[Simoleum]

@Johan

How could Jakob add Latvia to his faction when he signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact? Shouldnt that have layed Latvia in Soviets sphere. Shouldnt it either be impossible or cause a rapid shift in relations with the Soviets?

 

[Wraith11B]

I think that was because Latvia joined the Axis... much like how Finland joined the Allies. Once they're in a faction, they're not going to be yanked out for pesky agreements because that might trigger a war.

 

[Merrivale]

I agree that a really good use of WWW would be to have a real pro at battleplans show what they can do in SP (so time can be taken to get it right and explain what is going on). Right now the impression, right or wrong, is of a fairly crude instrument that just paints in fronts for troops to achieve followed by mass chaos. Let's see someone plan and execute an encirclement without resorting to massive amounts of manual orders.

 

[Simoleum]

I think that was because Latvia joined the Axis... much like how Finland joined the Allies. Once they're in a faction, they're not going to be yanked out for pesky agreements because that might trigger a war.

But they shouldnt be allowed by the Soviets in accordance with their agreement. Finland joining the Allies is alright, as that is outside the agreement between Germany and Soviet. The Allies did consider an intervention in Finland anyways. But that the Soviets should allow part of their sphere of inluence, as agreed upon with Germany, to fall into Germany's sphere can not just happen without a reaction

 

[Wraith11B]

Well, there was a reaction, though: if you might recall, Jakob stated that the Soviets had withdrawn from the M-R pact. I think that was caused by Latvia joining the Axis. It's not a cause for immediate war, but it's definitely put a crimp in the plans as Jakob has to wonder if the Soviets are going to start trying to pour across his border.

Can I also get an amen for an idea that I just had: a video walkthrough (maybe livestream) of all of the major segments of the game (the various diplo/production/trade/etc screens and the battleplanner, the naval interactions, the air interactions) in a single player match? These could take the place of a tutorial and only be a few minutes at a time (so, one one hour livestream could cover everything and break it down for youtube) and yet get far more interaction with regards to how each screen works in conjunction with the other and expose those of us on here to more in-depth understanding of the mechanics of how the game is going to work?

 

[Karelian]

Finland joining the Allies is alright, as that is outside the agreement between Germany and Soviet.

No, it is not. Finland was to be part of the Soviet sphere of interest just like Estonia, Latvia and later on Lithuania as well.
The fact that Stalin took a time-out due fear of Allied intervention to the Winter War in spring 1940 doesn't change the fact that Soviets were promised whole of Finland, they wanted to annex whole of Finland and prepared to do so when they invaded in 1939 by setting up a puppet government and insisting that it was the only legitimate government of Finland through most of the Winter War.

 

[Simoleum]

No, it is not. Finland was to be part of the Soviet sphere of interest just like Estonia, Latvia and later on Lithuania as well.
The fact that Stalin took a time-out due fear of Allied intervention to the Winter War in spring 1940 doesn't change the fact that Soviets were promised whole of Finland, they wanted to annex whole of Finland and prepared to do so when they invaded in 1939 by setting up a puppet government and insisting that it was the only legitimate government of Finland through most of the Winter War.

By outside of the agreement I mean that Finland joining the Allies has nothing to do with Germany, so Germany didnt break the pact.

 

[scroggin]

I noticed johan mention having an army of belgian and dutch divisions led by alanbrooke. How much control over allied divisions does a player have?

 

[ray4ever]

I realy like how the war is looking graphic wise. You see the units fighting, air planes roaring in the skies and the fleets sailing around in the ocean. I find this art style much more appealing than just some "moving boxes".
Expecially as they don't seem to clutter the screen too much with all the animations as all the informations I would like to see seem to be available when zoom out. Love how the navel battles are visualiesed and how you can review them at any point in time (and don't have to review the pop up message when you are doing something else).

 

[Karelian]

By outside of the agreement I mean that Finland joining the Allies has nothing to do with Germany, so Germany didnt break the pact.

Ah, true enough. I'm just generally mildly disappointed to the way Paradox has once again dealt with the Winter War and WW2 in Scandinavia. It's a workable solution, but it is also completely ahistorical and I had hopes that the new game mechanics would allow them to do a little better, especially since we are not talking about China here, it is easy and well within the scope of the game elements to model Winter War in a more historical fashion. Like this, for example:

1. Soviet demands (minor border change in the Isthmus, Hanko naval base)
Finns accept = more demands when the Soviets annex the Baltic states, if Finland accepts, annexation, if not, war between USSR and Finland, wargoal annexation.
Finns reject = war between USSR and Finland, wargoal annexation.
2. If Finland still at war after three weeks, activate event for UK and France - prepare aid for Finland or not?
If yes, event for Norway and Sweden: allow military access to Entente troops?
3. Regardless of the Norwegian and Swedish answers, Soviet event as a reaction to Allied intervention plans: 
Continue the war or sign an interim peace before the conflict escalates? (Historical alternative is to offer peace for the Finns.)
4. Finland considers the Soviet peace offer: Historical alternative is to sign the peace, ahistorical one is to request military help from the League of Nations, allowing UK and France to DOW Norway to occupy Narvik.
5. Regardless of the Finnish peace deal, UK now gets the event to mine the Norwegian coastal waters.
6. Germany gets an event to prepare for invasion of Denmark and Norway.

Since the Winter War was the catalyst to the Norwegian Campaign and thus to the rise of Churchill, among other things, it is a real pity that Paradox has again opted to portray the Winter War in Hearts of Iron in a completely unrealistic light.

The Soviets were not demanding Peace of Moscow borders in 1939, government of Finland could simply not have signed off 10% of their territory and second-largest city without a war, and the war was not originally about moving the border further away from Leningrad - it was a war of conquest that aimed to secure Leningrad by occupying whole of Finland. If it was some insignificant little detail like wrong Head of Government in Albania in 1943 I wouldn't give a damn, but we're talking about the course of events that brought Churchill to power and convinced Hitler that the Soviet Union was military weak enough to be beaten quickly - ignoring this in a WW2 grand strategy game is not cool.

 

[fabius]

I noticed johan mention having an army of belgian and dutch divisions led by alanbrooke. How much control over allied divisions does a player have?

He was offered and accepted expeditionary forces.

So far no evidence that we can battle plan, share plan, order, or even impact allies plans.

 

[GhengisKhan]

500 Land and Air experience, and still no variants, I hate you guys

Uh jakob made a fighter variant.

 

[GsusNSV]

Uh jakob made a fighter variant.

Well he wanted to make one, but raised every stat to the max and then saw that he only had 105 of the required 500 XP. So he pushed it back to later.

 

[paranoidsteve]

the British army has equipped the motorised infantry divisions with tank destroyers (for the extra hard attack)

Didn't the German player go against the terms of the Molotov-Ribbintrop pact by accepting one of the Baltic States into the Axis faction?