Hi All,
I am new to this forum, I am not an old Paradox games fan. I usually play something like Civilization, Witcher, Diablo or Stronghold but few years back I bought a HoI 3 Semper Fi box based on someone's recommendation. I remember that I installed it those few years ago and removed it after 5 minutes.
A week ago I came back to some of my old games and I decided to give HoI 3 a shot.
I played for a week.
No game have ever made me so annoyed
I can`t understand whether people who designed it had a great vision but no time or money for details or they were simply not smart enough to understand some basic relations between units, supply chain and other. I think, that what drives me nuts, is that there is no logic in some aspects of this game.
This is the first time I have created an account on a game forum, no other game have ever motivated me to do so.
I need to understand whether there is something wrong with me or the game
Also - I want to understand whether HoI 4 is free of those... imprefections, to say the least. The idea behind is great and this game has the potential to be super-addictive but the execution part in HoI 3 is rubbish.
1. Instructions were unclear...
Dear Paradox, you are not my wife, I should not be forced to read your mind!
Game Instructions as well as tutorials include only the basic information which is not even closely sufficient to succesfully play the game. Why do I need to base on unofficial YT tutorials to learn most important parts of the game? Some people posting those on YT are correct, some are plain wrong (I guess they were trying to read your mind unsuccesfully).
Examples:
- Convoys - From where maximum number of ships in convoy is coming from? Why I can create only 1 convoy to the same destination? If I assign additional ships to escort the convoy they are sailing only on limited part of the route? what is the limit?
- HQs - sometimes they are within range, sometimes out of range. What is the range? Does it vary depending on HQ level? If HQ is out of range what does it affect?
- Techs - I have done all the techs required for atomic bomb. For other units there is a tech that enables building them and when you research those you can find new unit options in production tab. Atomic bomb is not there, it is somehow created on its' own in the background and appears as options in Bombers, Rockets etc. Why? How often? what is the limit? C'mon!
I can list here every option in the game and there will be some "?" to each of those. No explanation in Instructions, in the tutorial nor in the game itself when you hoover over a unit, tech or a field. I can guess, I can assume but this is not the way it should be.
2. Supply chain - wet dream of an idiot
I work for the company which is among the best of the best worldwide when it comes to supply chain management. If we were doing our job like in supply chain in HoI 3 we would be among the worst of the worst.
A) All goods flow to capital and then they are distributed from the capital to other districts/states/cities. I can`t even comment...
B) No information about daily capacity of a port or infrastructure. I saw in YT tutorials that this info was in there, I did not have it, not sure why.
C) You can create convoys to destination harbours but you cannot decide from which harbour you units will get supply. Oh, my unit is 2 fields away from a harbour where convoys are unloading supply and gas. Let's supply it from a harbour 23 fields away... Jesus Christ...
D) I have controlled all main Japan islands playing USA. I also controlled big part of current China region (was conquered by Japanese so I had to hunt them down over there) and Korean Penisula. That was not enough for Japanese to give up (which is another sad story) so I could not produce any supply there, I had to bring it in convoys from US (again - assumption (point 1), because I am not sure that I could produce it if Japan gives up).
Tell me - No village and no factory on thousands of square kilometers of conquered land could not produce for me a single supply item just because the country did not give up yet? Right, local people don`t eat, don`t sleep and they have no tools. I forgot I invaded this land 150 000 BC... my bad
E) Infrastructure. I created a front in mainland China, I had to retreat after 2 weeks because of lack of supply. Might be I went to fast. I went back and formed a defense line around harbours I have invaded before to keep the troops on ground. I was not planning to give up on this yet. It took me 1.5 years (!) in the game to bring up infrastructure to levels which were sufficient to supply my troops - from 4/10 to 7/10...
Yes, modern highways require ages to be built but here we should be talking about concrete roads that do not have to meet any international standards. It just have to be sufficient to allow heavy trucks travel at high speed.
I landed there around 1944, it was almost 1946 when I could move forward. I should have won the war by then, I managed to build heavy cruisers, 50 ballistic rockets and other fancy things in the meantime, but I was not able to build a damn road.
And what I should do then? move the front by 2-3 fields and wait for the road to be built again?
What is surprising, Japanese managed by AI conquered this huge land and more within 1-2 years. Having much smaller IC than US and also being forced to convoy the goods from their islands. Unless AI has special treatment?
F) Disappearing convoys - I landed on French coast a little bit ahead of schedule - April 1944.
I took over 5 harbours and I established convoys right away. Infrastructure was maxed already so it was supposed to be easy. Suddenly I stopped and had to retreat completely, back to GB. My convoys disappeared.
I had huge escorts and few fleets sailing around, there were hardly any attacks from hostile submarines, almost nothing was sunk.
Convoys became red in the overview and the number of ships was e.g. 0/12
I tried recreating them or adding ships manually. Back to 0 almost instantly after changes. No information why it happened, no blockade on Atlantic (I sailed it through to double-check) no attacks, no reason at all.
I don`t know - Bermuda triangle?
There are probably few more supply chain things that drove me crazy but this text is too long anyway so lets move to...
3. Troops and battles - Home Alone with useless toys
A) When I fought in mainland China and Korean penisula I have fought against 4-5 nations on... Japanese ground.
And there were hardly any Japanese troops. I killed them all when acquiring Japanese islands. This is fine, we have our allies, we fight together... do we now?
British guys couldn`t even defend their teritories in India effectively not to mention helping US in fighting Japan.
Other countries? - France, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden - long gone. Soviet Union - fighting their own agenda.
Seems that opponent AIs are fighting together but AIs in my alliance are not fighting at all. They could not even properly supply my troops stationing for 1 week in their harbour.
B) Atrillery, Rocket Artillery, Enginneers and many other "special units" are not able to fight on their own. They instantly lose the battle. When combined with infantry they take part in the battle but only in reserves, they never actually fight. So whey do I need them at all? Should I limit my troops only to infantry kinds (infantry, marine, mountain divisions) and light tanks?
Yeah, s. heavy tanks can`t fight on their own as well, they require... infantry to be part of the battle.
I also tried combining Engineers with other troops in one division to test if that would make them move faster. No, not really. So again - why do I need them?
C) Airforce - useless toys strike again! The only useful plane is the transportation plane. The rest is totally useless. 1 Wing is 100 aircrafts according to the instructions. That means I have sent 900 bombers over 1 district. Effect on hostile infantry - in the range from absolute zero to no effect. Yes, I have checked in the table which bombers have the biggest effect on "live force" and used exactly those.
Another great example - I have sent 16 wings of ballistic missiles (1600 rockets!) to destroy small airport. Effect? None.
Yeah, you can build a lot of planes, its fun! They will eat up huge part of you production capacity and they will be blocking your factories for 9-12 months and then they need another month to get their "organisation" maxed, whethever the hell that is. After all of that you can use them for multiple tasks - for example, flying between the basis or loosing their strenght and organisation in air battles that bring no benefit at all.
D) Maximum amount of ships that can be commanded by a particular commander. Usually 6, sometimes 12 or 18.
What does it affect other than the name is changing into red when you exceed the number? No idea. (link to part 1 - what about those instructions guys...)
Is this number even real? In the early fights with Japan I spotted one of their main fleets - 10 Aircraft Carriers, 2000 planes, 3-4 Battleships, dozen of light cruisers and destroyers, several submarines. So the max. number was exceeded twice by AI, unless Japan has commanders that can manage 40 ships. They were fighting just fine and I had big troubles fighting them back, regardless of huge stack penalty they should have etc.
4. Technologies
Here, most trouble is about understanding what is giving what benefits. Lets not talk about obvious, if a technology gives you +2 to infantry fight in mountains or +20% to organisation this is something understandable even if we are not talking about any specific units.
But technologies, especially those development technologies (which has no other effect than that) give bonuses to some funny little pictures presenting a little human with a riffle or a tank. Or a bulb. Or a propeller. And many others. When you finish researching you get a notification "Airforce practice +1".
Little progress bar in overview becomes a little bit greener and larger.
"That must be good news" you think. "But what the hell does that give me?..." - that is again linked to point 1 - instructions...
On top of that there are some completely idiotic relations - to start researching atomic bomb (recommended year to start research 1943) you need to first have level 4 in civil nuclear research (year 1946 if I remember correctly).
It does not make any sense and it was in the opposite corner of Paradox storage to logic.
Historically - well, I am far from being an expert but I can read Wikipedia. It seems the base research started in 1930s, first bombs were dropped in 1945.
How do dates in the game relate to that?
5. Economy and IC (Production capacities)
When it comes to military and supply chain game is super complex but the economics part is like 1 board, 2 nails and a hammer. Maybe, unlike other strategic games I played so far, here the focus is on military and economy is there because there must be something and maybe this is fine. For me it is just strange to create such a complex game and build such simple economy model.
6. Politics, Espionage and Diplomacy
All tutorials on YT recommend to let AI control it. Paradox was trying to make a realistic game so those aspects were included but they were so simplified and they are lacking so many options that it hurts and it is truly better to let AI control it. I tried playing manually and I did not achieve anything. By the way, I let AI play and it also did not achieve anything. My intel was crap, my relations with Japan seconds before they declared me war were through the roof, domestic agents can do only 1 thing at a time and you cannot split them and assign to multiple tasks and politics can be summed up as: "10 windows, 4 options in some of them, only one which makes sense".
After a week of playing at least few hours a day I was in summer 1947. Playing USA, I was controlling big part of mainland China, almost entire Korean penisula and all bigger Japanese islands including big cities and capital.
Game crashed during saving. Now I cannot load the game I was saving. I tried rebooting computer, re-installing the game keeping the saves, I followed few YT guides on how to recover corrupted save files. Nothing works.
I spent a week trying to understand most annoying game in the universe, trying to explain to myself I did not get it or I am too stupid and then it crashes in the way I cannot even load my saved game
Great job Paradox!
In total:
Idea - 10/10
Driving Addiction - 10/10
Execution - 0/10
Annoyance - 12/10
If you got to this point and you played HoI 4 please let me know, considering my dislikes above, whether it is worth trying HoI 4 or should I simply give up on Paradox, because this is how they make all their games.
I am new to this forum, I am not an old Paradox games fan. I usually play something like Civilization, Witcher, Diablo or Stronghold but few years back I bought a HoI 3 Semper Fi box based on someone's recommendation. I remember that I installed it those few years ago and removed it after 5 minutes.
A week ago I came back to some of my old games and I decided to give HoI 3 a shot.
I played for a week.
No game have ever made me so annoyed
I can`t understand whether people who designed it had a great vision but no time or money for details or they were simply not smart enough to understand some basic relations between units, supply chain and other. I think, that what drives me nuts, is that there is no logic in some aspects of this game.
This is the first time I have created an account on a game forum, no other game have ever motivated me to do so.
I need to understand whether there is something wrong with me or the game
Also - I want to understand whether HoI 4 is free of those... imprefections, to say the least. The idea behind is great and this game has the potential to be super-addictive but the execution part in HoI 3 is rubbish.
1. Instructions were unclear...
Dear Paradox, you are not my wife, I should not be forced to read your mind!
Game Instructions as well as tutorials include only the basic information which is not even closely sufficient to succesfully play the game. Why do I need to base on unofficial YT tutorials to learn most important parts of the game? Some people posting those on YT are correct, some are plain wrong (I guess they were trying to read your mind unsuccesfully).
Examples:
- Convoys - From where maximum number of ships in convoy is coming from? Why I can create only 1 convoy to the same destination? If I assign additional ships to escort the convoy they are sailing only on limited part of the route? what is the limit?
- HQs - sometimes they are within range, sometimes out of range. What is the range? Does it vary depending on HQ level? If HQ is out of range what does it affect?
- Techs - I have done all the techs required for atomic bomb. For other units there is a tech that enables building them and when you research those you can find new unit options in production tab. Atomic bomb is not there, it is somehow created on its' own in the background and appears as options in Bombers, Rockets etc. Why? How often? what is the limit? C'mon!
I can list here every option in the game and there will be some "?" to each of those. No explanation in Instructions, in the tutorial nor in the game itself when you hoover over a unit, tech or a field. I can guess, I can assume but this is not the way it should be.
2. Supply chain - wet dream of an idiot
I work for the company which is among the best of the best worldwide when it comes to supply chain management. If we were doing our job like in supply chain in HoI 3 we would be among the worst of the worst.
A) All goods flow to capital and then they are distributed from the capital to other districts/states/cities. I can`t even comment...
B) No information about daily capacity of a port or infrastructure. I saw in YT tutorials that this info was in there, I did not have it, not sure why.
C) You can create convoys to destination harbours but you cannot decide from which harbour you units will get supply. Oh, my unit is 2 fields away from a harbour where convoys are unloading supply and gas. Let's supply it from a harbour 23 fields away... Jesus Christ...
D) I have controlled all main Japan islands playing USA. I also controlled big part of current China region (was conquered by Japanese so I had to hunt them down over there) and Korean Penisula. That was not enough for Japanese to give up (which is another sad story) so I could not produce any supply there, I had to bring it in convoys from US (again - assumption (point 1), because I am not sure that I could produce it if Japan gives up).
Tell me - No village and no factory on thousands of square kilometers of conquered land could not produce for me a single supply item just because the country did not give up yet?
Right, local people don`t eat, don`t sleep and they have no tools. I forgot I invaded this land 150 000 BC... my badE) Infrastructure. I created a front in mainland China, I had to retreat after 2 weeks because of lack of supply. Might be I went to fast. I went back and formed a defense line around harbours I have invaded before to keep the troops on ground. I was not planning to give up on this yet. It took me 1.5 years (!) in the game to bring up infrastructure to levels which were sufficient to supply my troops - from 4/10 to 7/10...
Yes, modern highways require ages to be built but here we should be talking about concrete roads that do not have to meet any international standards. It just have to be sufficient to allow heavy trucks travel at high speed.
I landed there around 1944, it was almost 1946 when I could move forward. I should have won the war by then, I managed to build heavy cruisers, 50 ballistic rockets and other fancy things in the meantime, but I was not able to build a damn road.
And what I should do then? move the front by 2-3 fields and wait for the road to be built again?
What is surprising, Japanese managed by AI conquered this huge land and more within 1-2 years. Having much smaller IC than US and also being forced to convoy the goods from their islands. Unless AI has special treatment?
F) Disappearing convoys - I landed on French coast a little bit ahead of schedule - April 1944.
I took over 5 harbours and I established convoys right away. Infrastructure was maxed already so it was supposed to be easy. Suddenly I stopped and had to retreat completely, back to GB. My convoys disappeared.
I had huge escorts and few fleets sailing around, there were hardly any attacks from hostile submarines, almost nothing was sunk.
Convoys became red in the overview and the number of ships was e.g. 0/12
I tried recreating them or adding ships manually. Back to 0 almost instantly after changes. No information why it happened, no blockade on Atlantic (I sailed it through to double-check) no attacks, no reason at all.
I don`t know - Bermuda triangle?
There are probably few more supply chain things that drove me crazy but this text is too long anyway so lets move to...
3. Troops and battles - Home Alone with useless toys
A) When I fought in mainland China and Korean penisula I have fought against 4-5 nations on... Japanese ground.
And there were hardly any Japanese troops. I killed them all when acquiring Japanese islands. This is fine, we have our allies, we fight together... do we now?
British guys couldn`t even defend their teritories in India effectively not to mention helping US in fighting Japan.
Other countries? - France, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden - long gone. Soviet Union - fighting their own agenda.
Seems that opponent AIs are fighting together but AIs in my alliance are not fighting at all. They could not even properly supply my troops stationing for 1 week in their harbour.
B) Atrillery, Rocket Artillery, Enginneers and many other "special units" are not able to fight on their own. They instantly lose the battle. When combined with infantry they take part in the battle but only in reserves, they never actually fight. So whey do I need them at all? Should I limit my troops only to infantry kinds (infantry, marine, mountain divisions) and light tanks?
Yeah, s. heavy tanks can`t fight on their own as well, they require... infantry to be part of the battle.
I also tried combining Engineers with other troops in one division to test if that would make them move faster. No, not really. So again - why do I need them?
C) Airforce - useless toys strike again! The only useful plane is the transportation plane. The rest is totally useless. 1 Wing is 100 aircrafts according to the instructions. That means I have sent 900 bombers over 1 district. Effect on hostile infantry - in the range from absolute zero to no effect. Yes, I have checked in the table which bombers have the biggest effect on "live force" and used exactly those.
Another great example - I have sent 16 wings of ballistic missiles (1600 rockets!) to destroy small airport. Effect? None.
Yeah, you can build a lot of planes, its fun! They will eat up huge part of you production capacity and they will be blocking your factories for 9-12 months and then they need another month to get their "organisation" maxed, whethever the hell that is. After all of that you can use them for multiple tasks - for example, flying between the basis or loosing their strenght and organisation in air battles that bring no benefit at all.
D) Maximum amount of ships that can be commanded by a particular commander. Usually 6, sometimes 12 or 18.
What does it affect other than the name is changing into red when you exceed the number? No idea. (link to part 1 - what about those instructions guys...)
Is this number even real? In the early fights with Japan I spotted one of their main fleets - 10 Aircraft Carriers, 2000 planes, 3-4 Battleships, dozen of light cruisers and destroyers, several submarines. So the max. number was exceeded twice by AI, unless Japan has commanders that can manage 40 ships. They were fighting just fine and I had big troubles fighting them back, regardless of huge stack penalty they should have etc.
4. Technologies
Here, most trouble is about understanding what is giving what benefits. Lets not talk about obvious, if a technology gives you +2 to infantry fight in mountains or +20% to organisation this is something understandable even if we are not talking about any specific units.
But technologies, especially those development technologies (which has no other effect than that) give bonuses to some funny little pictures presenting a little human with a riffle or a tank. Or a bulb. Or a propeller. And many others. When you finish researching you get a notification "Airforce practice +1".
Little progress bar in overview becomes a little bit greener and larger.
"That must be good news" you think. "But what the hell does that give me?..." - that is again linked to point 1 - instructions...
On top of that there are some completely idiotic relations - to start researching atomic bomb (recommended year to start research 1943) you need to first have level 4 in civil nuclear research (year 1946 if I remember correctly).
It does not make any sense and it was in the opposite corner of Paradox storage to logic.
Historically - well, I am far from being an expert but I can read Wikipedia. It seems the base research started in 1930s, first bombs were dropped in 1945.
How do dates in the game relate to that?
5. Economy and IC (Production capacities)
When it comes to military and supply chain game is super complex but the economics part is like 1 board, 2 nails and a hammer. Maybe, unlike other strategic games I played so far, here the focus is on military and economy is there because there must be something and maybe this is fine. For me it is just strange to create such a complex game and build such simple economy model.
6. Politics, Espionage and Diplomacy
All tutorials on YT recommend to let AI control it. Paradox was trying to make a realistic game so those aspects were included but they were so simplified and they are lacking so many options that it hurts and it is truly better to let AI control it. I tried playing manually and I did not achieve anything. By the way, I let AI play and it also did not achieve anything.
My intel was crap, my relations with Japan seconds before they declared me war were through the roof, domestic agents can do only 1 thing at a time and you cannot split them and assign to multiple tasks and politics can be summed up as: "10 windows, 4 options in some of them, only one which makes sense".After a week of playing at least few hours a day I was in summer 1947. Playing USA, I was controlling big part of mainland China, almost entire Korean penisula and all bigger Japanese islands including big cities and capital.
Game crashed during saving. Now I cannot load the game I was saving. I tried rebooting computer, re-installing the game keeping the saves, I followed few YT guides on how to recover corrupted save files. Nothing works.
I spent a week trying to understand most annoying game in the universe, trying to explain to myself I did not get it or I am too stupid and then it crashes in the way I cannot even load my saved game
Great job Paradox!
In total:
Idea - 10/10
Driving Addiction - 10/10
Execution - 0/10
Annoyance - 12/10
If you got to this point and you played HoI 4 please let me know, considering my dislikes above, whether it is worth trying HoI 4 or should I simply give up on Paradox, because this is how they make all their games.
