HOI 4: What do you want to see?

[ssfsx17]

Diplomacy:
- Leaders of the Allies / Axis / Comintern should be changeable
- Instead of a rigid triangle, have multiple possible emergent factions, e.g. if the Axis is totally smashed then "Megacorporations" and "New Islamic Caliphate" may rise up.
- No more neutrality - instead it should be represented as "Desire to avoid a repeat of World War I," which would limit the laws that can be enacted.
- War goals only immediately apply to yourself - you also have to negotiate them with others.
- If a country surrenders, then all occupiers may negotiate over further war goals.
- A country may choose not to obey war goals it had previously agreed to, thus increasing its threat.
- Negotiating with other countries to decolonize / release satellites
- Tell a satellite to release more satellites and give territory back to other countries, so that you don't have to be so careful about the order in which you release satellites
- Giving territory back to other countries
- Political parties may try to become governments-in-exile, or countries may recognize certain people / parties as the legitimate governments, allowing for alternate history scenarios in which Hoover's worst nightmare is realized, or Heinrich Himmler's late plan actually succeeds.
- Sengoku / CK2 plot system, so that there is more flexibility in for example the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact

Intelligence:
- Instead of ten spies only being able to do one thing at a time, spies would instead be the number of different things that can be done at the same time
- Choose exactly which political party to support. Sometimes the party that it is "in your interests" to support is neither the ruling one nor the one that corresponds to your own!
- Replace "Lower Neutrality" with "Warmongering"
- "Increase Threat" can be given specific angles, e.g. "increase the threat against us" or "increase threat against the USA." This would be especially-important for modern-day scenarios
- Decrease Threat option, again with specific angles
- Attack specific political parties, both in your own country and other countries
- Very important for modern-day scenarios: make it seem like a war is happening when it really isn't, e.g. "Albania is invading the USA through Canada," in order to be able to change laws and improve national unity

Map & Military
- Fake divisions, thus encouraging the use of recon
- Divisions can be assigned to make provinces build & repair faster
- I am a big fan of Matrix Game's Advanced Tactics, so divisions should be able to be assigned their HQs by clicking on the HQ on the map itself. It should also be possible to create HQs by building them directly, then assigning units to them later.
- Another Advanced Tactics-esque feature: strategic transfers. This would probably be represented in an HOI game by setting a division to be in "transport" mode, then it would get massive bonuses to movement but be unable to fight.
- More possibilities for Air orders: "do the order when a division in this province is in combat," "the focus of the area for this order is a specific division," "do the order as soon as a specific air unit starts taking off," etc.

Politics
- New trait: Susceptibility to Threat as told by a specific country, e.g. Tony Blair would have high susceptibility to Threat Told By George W. Bush
- New trait: Resistance to Threat as told by a specific country/person
- The people as a whole have specific hatred and fear levels against other countries

 

[ssfsx17]

Another possible use for the Plot System: negotiating about where to attack.

Play as France and convince the Allies to liberate France before clearing out other areas.

Play as Germany and convince Japan to open up a second front against the Soviets.

Play as the Soviets and convince the Allies to hurry up that start of a second front against Germany.

 

[Chaplain]

What was Road to Moscow?

It was the most legendary, epic, wild dream piece of vaporware in the history of wargaming. If it would have happened, we would not be playing HOI today - but it just faded away, like those aliens in New Mexico ...

 

[Chaplain]

Cybvep see this link ... http://pc.ign.com/articles/131/131163p1.html

 

[Nicolas I]

Another Advanced Tactics-esque feature: strategic transfers. This would probably be represented in an HOI game by setting a division to be in "transport" mode, then it would get massive bonuses to movement but be unable to fight.

What is the difference with the current strategic redeployment feature ?

 

[ssfsx17]

What is the difference with the current strategic redeployment feature ?

There's a what feature? Goes to show what I know...

 

[unmerged(236784)]

Vanished Unit

When deleting a unit being upgraded in the production queue, return the original unit to the map.

 

[unmerged(203486)]

Better : Upgrading a unit should be done without taking the unit out of the map, like weapons upgrade.

 

[dsteve3]

I would still prefer a system for organizing all the different units in a separate menu away from the map. A Grand Planning Schedule, where the player can put together plans for entire campaigns.

The way I would like to see it work is that I could arrange ALL of my available forces in a proper Query program inside this menu, so that I could filter and sort ALL my units. Land, sea and air. I would then put them together in PLANNED Command Chains and place them on the planning map. This way, I can see what I still need before a campaign begins.

I would also use this Schedule to give long-range orders. Give Army Groups entire campaign orders, AND individual Armies and Army Corps within the AG separate orders as well. Even better - allow CONTINGENCY plans.

After the campaign starts, everything goes by the AI until I choose to intervene. I could TEMPORARILY pull a sub-command out of the chain, change their direction, then re-integrate them back into the chain afterwards.

The thing is, 75% of this already exists in the Land Command Chain now. It only needs a proper Schedule Planner to pull it all together.

I think the attack delay system should be replaced with an organizational delay. A single division encounters another (~) equal division while advancing. Both division decide to engage and try to hold or push the other other. They fight for more than a day. At the end of the battle, (let's say) the attack is rebuked and has to stop and the defender holds. BOTH divisions would suffer a FULL organizational delay effect due to having fully engaged. SCENARIO 2: an advancing division encounters a headquarters unit attempting to flee. The HQ decided to surrender 'no contest' as they can't get away. Since the combat is not involving, the advancing division suffers VERY LITTLE in the way of an organizational disruption, so they are free to carry on with little (if any) delay.

Air combat needs a major over-haul. We need to see squadrons broken down into viable segments that represent actual fighting groups. A new variable should be introduced - call it 'Diffusion.' An Interceptor Corps is tasked with protecting the airspace of a large provincial area. The Diffusion Level is set high so that small groups can quickly intercept in-coming bombers. The combat should be VERY quick - in a period of (~) two hours, the interceptors would (1) intercept; (2) engage bomber group; (3) play out the entire battle of interception, escort intervention, attack bombers; and (4) return to airport and report outcome.

In the cases where large-scale air attacks are planned, the Diffusion Level would be very low, resulting in higher losses. AT NO TIME would the number of squadrons engaging be more than ... what? Three? Four? These FOURTEEN SQUADRON air battles are FAR too common and simply ridiculous. Air Battles seem to be strictly AI-Mode now, with Win-By-Battle-Ball the RULE.

The last point is that a new system of Headquarters needs to be adopted. Air and Naval Headquarters need to be instituted, with their own ground protection forces, without having more counters. Would Air and Naval HQs be chained specifically to the on-map assets? As in Air HQs ONLY at airports and Naval HQs ONLY at Naval Bases?

 

[Liquid Ghost]

Proxy Wars

Two or more powers slugging it out indirectly through puppets or minor allies. Thus the URSS-Japan confrontations in the 30s could be played out as limited conflicts between Mongolia and Manchukuo instead as events.

 

[-Toni82-]

What I want to see?
An intelligent and possible export for existing HOI3 Mod's. Or maybe an unbuggy tool which can do it!

 

[unmerged(236784)]

We got a Truckin Convoy!

Currently FTM sea transports take a little over three days to move from Scotland to Archangel. An in game supply convoy running between the two ports delivers goods in 24 hours.

Real life WW II convoys (such as PQ 18) took from ten to twenty days to make the run (approximately 2000 miles) one-way.

I would like to see a similar tool to the water transports available for overland supply movement (discrete rail or truck convoys).

Yes, like the units making up the naval supply net, these dedicated land vehicles will require resources and time to build the constitute components, but that is up to the player to decide if the benefit is worth the cost.

 

[unmerged(203486)]

Oh, maybe a "worldmap" not flat and wrong, but something more like that?

Or... do something about the gigantic URSS and nord pacific !!

 

[unmerged(156365)]

I would really like to have something where there would be a change in color on the counters, if they are in a battle that is important. VP provinces, battles that are over 100k in men. So you can look in and see how these important battles are doing. I dont think this breaks the rules cause it doesnt add to the death count or anything.

 

[unmerged(236784)]

Oh, maybe a "worldmap" not flat and wrong, but something more like that?

Or... do something about the gigantic URSS and nord pacific !!

What he said!

 

[pnt]

The really unique aspect of the HOI series is that it has managed not only to be a war game, but provide a broader view of the conflict. Thus, the combat aspect is almost on equal footing with diplomacy, research, and production in terms of developing a successful strategy.

However, in HOI3 the latter two suffer from a fatal flaw - they are boring! Developing the production aspect into the possibility of managing industrial programs would greatly increase the fun for those who like it, and make it easier to guide the AI in historical directions (also for players who do not want to manage this aspect of the game). But how to do this in the best way would require some thought.

On the other hand, it would be easy to make the research system much more interesting! The once you get familiar with the current Civ style tech tree is just a matter of clicking and keeping things in the right place in the queue. And what comes out is totally generic - all countries are identical, and most majors can research every tech of interest.

It would be easy to introduce a different, way of interfacing technologies, which would be more interesting and fun. Some of these ideas have already shown up in previous versions of HOI and other Paradox games.

What I would like to propose is a research structure similar to the political cabinet, but structured along the lines of an OOB, with the armaments minister at the top, and then a hierarchy below him. At each level there could be individuals or teams (like in HOI2) one could choose from. At the lower levels (say fighter, bomber, submarines, infantry weapons, etc), one could perhaps assign multiple teams. The teams could provide bonuses, but also penalties. Essentially, they would create a historic bias that would create a differentiation between the various countries, adding more flavor. At the same time, it would also offer more interesting strategies for the player, who would have to match cast of characters, and how much leadership he assigns to each area, with his strategy.

The tech tree as such would not be directly visible, and progress would be slightly random within the biases of the leadership. The simplest approach would be to keep the current style simple tree. But since the player would not interface it directly, one could also make it much more refined, allowing the leader bonuses to play out to their full potential.

 

[Cybvep]

What I would like to propose is a research structure similar to the political cabinet, but structured along the lines of an OOB, with the armaments minister at the top, and then a hierarchy below him. At each level there could be individuals or teams (like in HOI2) one could choose from. At the lower levels (say fighter, bomber, submarines, infantry weapons, etc), one could perhaps assign multiple teams. The teams could provide bonuses, but also penalties. Essentially, they would create a historic bias that would create a differentiation between the various countries, adding more flavor. At the same time, it would also offer more interesting strategies for the player, who would have to match cast of characters, and how much leadership he assigns to each area, with his strategy.

The tech tree as such would not be directly visible, and progress would be slightly random within the biases of the leadership. The simplest approach would be to keep the current style simple tree. But since the player would not interface it directly, one could also make it much more refined, allowing the leader bonuses to play out to their full potential.

This is interesting. Can you elaborate a bit?

 

[pnt]

Sure

Let me then approach it from another angle. Assume that you are the leader of a country. You realize that technology is important, but how do you interface with the research establishment? Well, there are three ways:

1. Assign people to leadership positions
2. Provide resourced (= leadership points)
3. Formulate strategic goals

Incidentally, this way of thinking is also much easier for the AI to understand than interfacing directly with an incomprehensible tech tree, for which it needs crutches in the form of Lothos' very specifc stripts.

Now, let us start from the end of the list. Anticipating certain needs you could give priorities to general strategic goals, like: developing industrial base, land combat, amphibious operations, naval supremacy, convoy attack or defense, strategic air operations, etc. Each would cover a range of technologies spanning air, land, and sea. The number of goals that would be assigned priorities could be fixed and global for all countries, and thus well understood by the AI.

The next question is resource allocation. Here, I would recommend that only a bulk amount of leadership is assigned. Instead, the assignment of leadership point will be determined by the strategic goals and the people who are given the task to implement them.

And this brings us to the first point, the leaders. Here one could envision a hierarchy which will have two functions, dividing up the leadership points between the leaders at the lower tier according to the strategic priorities and personal preferences of that leader, and to provide specific bonuses and penalties.

The tree could have the armaments minister at the top, who would divide leadership between basic, air, naval, and land research. Each of these would then have a leader of their own assigned, who would divide up the leadership between, various more specific areas, like carriers, capital ships, cruisers, escorts (including destroyers), and submarines. To each of these areas one could then assign one or more tech team, which would provide certain bonuses, penalties, and preferences. Having no leader or team assigned would genrally give poorer results, but would not break the flow, so there is no need to cover every area for every country.

For instance, Britain main have a high priority for ruling the seas, but some leaders would probably be less enthusiastic about carriers than some of their US and Japanese counterparts. It would be easy to tailor the system to guide the AI in a historically plausible direction for each country.

Since the player could not as easily abuse it, the underlying tech tree could be made much more fine grained. If assigned to making fighters, the Willy Messerschitt would probably have a prefernce for high-performace, short range fighters with advanced propulsion systems, while Kurt Tank (from Focke Wulf) would probably tend to promote sturdy multi-role fighters with heavy firepower. If both were assigned to building single engine aircract, they could each favor different technologies in the current tree. However, if there were more technologies with more levels each, the result could be a unique combination of features for each country.

 

[Cybvep]

You mean sth like this? If yes, then I think that the idea certainly has potential.

 

[comsubpac]

You mean sth like this? If yes, then I think that the idea certainly has potential.

you know that the system as it is now is actually closer to reality then this?