Historical Playthroughs. Aka. Handycapping yourself

[Deinhardt]

Greetings. I recently tried to make a historical playthrough with Germany. While it works, it's also very suboptimal. The dispersed production of equipment alone is hampering any attempts of "powergaming", which I find quite refreshing. I am about to go into Barbarossa and my research and production is all over the place.

Question is. Do you do such things aswell? And what do you think of how Hoi4 presents the production and use of equipment in the army? I personally found such a historical playthrough gives a certain challenge, but there is a point where your research and production doesnt matter anymore, since the AI doesnt adjust to it. Meaning. I may start out with a subpar production of high end medium tanks, but I'll still have more and better organised Divisions of them, then the enemy.

Interested to hear your thoughts and if the game needs a fundamental change in this regard.

 

[Natethegreat]

Yeah i like historical-ish playthroughs as they are a bit more fun to me. I am not a fan of exploits and space marine templates.

 

[sekelsenmat]

Question is. Do you do such things aswell? And what do you think of how Hoi4 presents the production and use of equipment in the army?

I try to use the historical division layouts (rounded to 20, 21, 26, 27 or 40 widths, because otherwise the penalties are too harsh).

And I also try to use the same Order Of Battle in historical operations (same generals, same regions, same field marshalls, at the start of the operation). And build a navy similar (in ship types and designs) to the historical one the country used.

but there is a point where your research and production doesnt matter anymore, since the AI doesnt adjust to it.

Could you be more specific?

Interested to hear your thoughts and if the game needs a fundamental change in this regard.

A change with what purpose? Making the game more challenging?

The AI is decent at defending (meaning it can stay in a line and move troops really fast to fill holes, so it is not trivial to encircle it. And it can do naval invasions. But it can't attack at all. It has zero capability to do a Blitz encircling. If it encircles my forces it is usually when I tried to encircle or naval invade and did it badly.

It also doesn't make desperate attempts to break out or free encircled troops. It doesn't know that mountains are very valuable and should be defended more strongly. So that's it, you can't expect it to be truly challenging. It can overwhelm you if it brings far more units than you, but you can outsmart it.

To make the game more challenging I play on Veteran (except for minors)

 

[Volodio]

I suggest using mods. They make historical playthrough much more realistic and overall more enjoyable.

 

[General Von Trapp]

Interesting... which ones do you recommend or have played yourself @Sangokun?

I also prefer historical play through but I find that in terms of number of divisions, you have to be careful. If you stick to normal OOB’s too closely then you can do yourself over as the game is not optimised as such as in to give the player a challenge.

A UK historical play through is probably the easiest because you don’t have to spam a lot of divisions (UK fielded 43 divisions by the end of the war) and luckily in the lastest DLC, You CAN now rely on the USA to help you because of the improved naval invasion AI.

A German historical “blitz in the west“ is possible, Norway OOB can give you some problems because you just need a few more divisions. However a Barbarossa just cannot be done, you need to spam war that one and probably rightly so, this is a game after all. Same goes for the SU also because the game is programmed for a good fight.

Again latest patch allows you to land in Guadalcanal as a USA but forget the OOB as Japan can land 10 divisions on it and the game is geared towards divisions rather than regiments etc.

So in short I try to but it entirely depends on who you play along with extensive research on how the AI behaves per patch.

 

[marcelo r. r.]

I love play historical til fall of france, i declare war all on historical dates.
I find its easy. my normal run now is buff at max the UK, USA, USSR to increase some challenge.
After fall of France, then i conquer the rest of europe in that order: spain, portugal switzerland, sweden, finland, i help italians on Greece.
The i declare war on USSR on historical date 22/june/1941.

When i get more time i will try make some tutorial for historical run as germany with some "optimized" templates/economy, without exploiting too much.

Anyway against AI is a exploit anyway, if u master blitzkrieg u find that AI didnt know how to counter it.

the point of historical run is have key dates to declare war, and u must have be prepared to it, if u fail, them u restart a better otimized game. so the fun of historical run is that inst just throw equipment/man game.

 

[marcelo r. r.]

whats divide-me is the "close to historical" after barbarrosa:
a) run to sea lion
b) rush to conquer the remaining africa/asia allied territories
c) wait til 1944 to lauch full invasion of UK/allied empire in africa/asia.

i had find the C) the most enjoyable lately and the less ahistorical, .

 

[Volodio]

Interesting... which ones do you recommend or have played yourself @Sangokun?

My favorite one is Total War. Pretty well balanced and supports a realistic way of playing, though there's a bit too much railroading sometimes. There's also Black Ice, but it feels less finished and stable imo.

 

[BurningEGO]

Mods used to work on previously installments to give you extra fun, but most of them add extreme lag to the game. You can only play the initial years of the war without lag, and even so, it's relative and depends on your computer. I had to give up on most of them, since they add a lot of stuff to everyone (even those south american minors no one plays or interacts with) which makes the game laggier by far.

Personally all I do is buff the AI. Play on Elite, or somewhere close. Give extra buffs to the AI as well. Depends on nation to nation. If you are playing as Germany, you need to handicap yourself severly. If you are playing as Italy, you can be more modest with AI buffs.

You can also toggle historical on or off, depending on what you want. A normal ww2 is fun, but an ahistorical ww2 game where you can't predict whats next can also be interesting.

 

[him_15]

As Germany, I normally play historically up until Barbarrosa.

 

[Crispin]

Historical immersion event pack is a light decent mod that makes things more historical with dates etc.

 

[kettyo]

The dispersed production of equipment alone is hampering any attempts of "powergaming",

Is concentrated really so much better?

 

[lonewolf371]

I don’t think concentrated is so much better. I even did a historical Germany run recently with historical panzer divisions for Barbarossa (very few tanks) and was still able to mostly demolish Russia in 1941. With a little bit of micro you don’t need any power gaming.

 

[safe-keeper]

I almost never min-max, and I tend to stick with historical playthroughs, although I might change things around for the sake of experimenting, or for gameplay. For example, as Germany I might invade Axis minors to keep their divisions from running around my frontlines, using up all my supply , and as the USSR, I like to secure Turkey. I like roleplaying and overcoming the same obstacles the various nations had to face in reality.

 

[Teadrinker]

Problem with historical is you have to nerf yourself.
Anyone have any guides for running a historical GB? I'd really like a proper D-day, but always end up running through Africa and Italy too fast and never feel like hanging around for years.

 

[lonewolf371]

Problem with historical is you have to nerf yourself.
Anyone have any guides for running a historical GB? I'd really like a proper D-day, but always end up running through Africa and Italy too fast and never feel like hanging around for years.

Strengthen Germany and Italy to the max.

For me I like to take as few casualties as possible (similar to historical UK).

 

[Tsavong]

Problem with historical is you have to nerf yourself.
Anyone have any guides for running a historical GB? I'd really like a proper D-day, but always end up running through Africa and Italy too fast and never feel like hanging around for years.

Use expert ai and set it to challenging build ( or historical if you want it to limit itself to 26 width) and set the difficulty to impossible. Ai then builds much more planes and gets free divisions from time to time. I use a simple own mod too thats adds off- map factories for some countries doubling their industrial capacity. In my opinion the ai is a much bigger threat with much more tanks, planes etc. .
The problem with few and more histrocial numbers of divisions is that it is no good managing frontlines, using spearheads , concentrating tanks and so on, but if it has tanks everywhere its harder. And with expert ai it actually builds proper tank division at all. Then you can enact performance mode : south america dont produce divisions with this on.

So if you want a harder time taking over italy i would do that. Ok taking over africa might still be easy as gb, but the axis will swarm your landing forces with an absurd number of proper divisions if you try early d-day.

 

[safe-keeper]

Strengthen Germany and Italy to the max.

The annoying thing then is that you can't only buff their production and research, or their combat stats. I would buff Germany's economic output, but then I also turn give them super-divisions. I wish all the combat stats for each major was a separate slider.

 

[Ketchup & friends]

Vanilla HoI IV is best suited for MP (sometimes coop, but often competitive). Those who want more historical immersion always play heavily modded versions.

 

[Teadrinker]

The annoying thing then is that you can't only buff their production and research, or their combat stats. I would buff Germany's economic output, but then I also turn give them super-divisions. I wish all the combat stats for each major was a separate slider.

Exactly, plus trying to dislodge a super division from a mountain, even when no supply is like trying to smash a rock with a sponge.