HOI3 is a good game, but i actually still like HOI1 better (HOI2 i decided not to play after a quick look at the tech tree so i can't compare to it). there are some interesting new things in HOI3 but unfortunately they don't quite work. so i think HOI4 might be a great game again, if those issues get fixed (and hopefully no new features with similar troubles are added).
some things might be done with patches/mods/expansions, but i doubt those will be enough. therefore my hope lies with HOI4. i made this list during my last game, it's in order of priority. this is based on v1.3 [and updated after one game with v1.4 as brazil]
1. game speed:
i think the speed issues are known. the interface lag is the most important fun-killing factor in my oppinion, altough its not that obvious. clicking through your units should be instant. [v1.4: game became very slow again when the big wars started. even after bitter peace cycling through the interface was very slow. i don't know if it improved, but it's not good enough in my oppinion.]
2. army leaders
2.a. a possibility to create skill 0 leaders (and name them myself)
2.b. it would be nice if small countries, that have only a few leaders would get additional ones with traits (skill can be low) if their army size increases.
2.c. in HOI3 i can change rank with skill/exp staying the same. that disappointed me alot, i liked the HOI1 system for promotions much better.
2.d. impact of high ranked leaders (like theater commandant) traits is too low. maybe the divisor should be 2/4/6/8 instead of 2/4/8/16 or even lower.
2.e. lower start skills and faster exp gain. the famous WW2 leaders likely didn't start with skill 5, they got there. [v1.4: faster exp gain was implemented, didn't test enough to say if it's to my liking now]
2.f. a chance to gain traits if i do correlating things (a leader who is fighting with a combined arms corps for 3 years should be likely to gain that trait, a leader who is winning a one year siege battle to a fortress should be likely to get a fortress buster trait). maybe an option to play the game either with historical leaders or with a more open approach as described here.
2.g. overall i liked the HOI1 traits better (except commando, that's great now)
2.h. an easy way to find a certain leader (i can look in the statistics but i cannot click it there)
2.i. a possiblity to delete leaders - "set them off duty" (low priority since it can be easily modded)
2.j. the HOI1 csv format for game files was much easier to mod in large scales because it could be done in excel.
2.k. in the list of commanders, all should be shown (and those alreay assgined listed with their unit - clickable)
2.l. an easy way to find all units that have no commander assigned
3. map:
3.a. i find river crossing penalties in many places altough i don't see a river. this makes planning impossible and should be fixed. the map as shown must match the combat values.
3.b. the map is too detailed. strategic points become meaningless because you can just go around them. it's impossible to protect a line of defense or shore. the attacker will just focus on a province and break through. this may be realistic, but i think it makes the game less interesting. HOI1 had some really though spots to get through, i didn't notice that in hoi3.
3.c. the high number of provinces doesn't really add anything to the game, its just more work and i assume its one reason why the game is so slow. i realize software developers don't take steps back (even if the new feature makes no sense), they usually just try to fix stuff or make it acceptable. so my suggestion is to make the game playable at region / corps level (with only those being displayed!) if players want to and let the AI take over the exact distribution of divisions among provinces.
3.d. panama channel should be closed unless you (or your allies) own panama as is the case with gibraltar [v1.4: didn't test, supposedly these things work better now]
4. stacking penalty:
this has been an issue since it was introduced with the later HOI1 patches and i'm surprised its still not fixed (maybe that leaves little hope for the rest as well).
4.a. land units
at the moment the best way to conquer heavily guarded provinces is to simply attack them. i won 40 brigades vs 200 in london simply because the stacking penalty made them unable to fight, same happened with venezuelas capital 16 vs 120. the fix is actually obvious: reserve units should not count for the stacking penalty. altough i think the combat width system removes the need for an artificial big stack balance (stacking penalty). maybe a penalty if units that don't belong to the same corps/army fight together would make sense.
4.b. sea units / balancing
i admit i don't understand the details of positioning but at the moment adding small ships to a fleet of capital ships adds -2% for everything is therefore mathematically not worth it. considering the cost relation between BB and small ships the only reason i see to add any of them is sub defense. suggested fixes: small ships should be much cheaper or large ships more expensive (as i think was in hoi1) and again i don't see the need for a stacking penalty at all. let it be handled by the maximum number of ships an admiral can command. or at least reduce stacking penalty for small ships (to 1%) - they are faster and much more flexible. [v1.4: sea balancing has been improved, but this basic problem still remains]
4.c. planes
i wonder why ****-air marshals can command 16 planes when it makes no sense at all to use such big stacks. its not a problem but its sad that i usually only need *-air leaders because i don't use larger plane stacks anyways.
5. supply and logistics:
i like the new supply system, if only it would work well.
5.a. since supply has become a serious issue i need to be able to take better control of it. i want to be able to change supply routes (keep them out of dangerous provinces). i want to be able to plan ahead and pile supplies where i know i will need them later. if the current system of a central supply depot per area is kept i want to choose where it is. i suggest an option for each province to choose where supplies are moved from there (a slider for each adjacent province). and a possiblity to reset those sliders to AI control for a lager number of provinces at once (either group them by assigning a number or draw a rectangle).
5.b. bugs: once in china when the central supply depot changed to a new province all my units run out of supply for a while until the supplies have been moved to the new depot (90.000 supplies simply vanished and about 1-2 weeks later reappeared in the new province). sometimes i get an out of supply penalty in combat even though my province has sufficient supplies. i assume this has something to do with supply being only calculated daily(?). not mentioning issues that are all over the boards like supply through puppet states.
5.c. in general i am out of supply too often without knowing why. often this occurs after a landing and exists for exactly one day even though there are supplies in the province (probably a bug).
5.d. players should be taken to the unit's supply base when clicking the unit's supply base
6. techs:
i love the HOI3 tech system, but since this is one of the most important aspects for me i list even small wishes.
6.a. when i click on a tech that is currently researched the game switches to the page where this tech is shown. that tech should also be highlighted so i can find it instantly. this would also make it alot easier for newbies (and therefore reducing one of the main problems with HOI in general). likewise, when i click on a tech in one of the tables i would like to see how it takes until it is finished, or it should be highlighted in the list of currently researched techs.
6.b. a tooltip that shows the estimated time when research would be finished would be nice (before i start researching it)
6.c. i would prefer if i was less dependent on when a tech was researched in reality. i liked the HOI1 system better. if artificial barriers (like the date influence) is kept it should have less impact. with the current system i would prefer if "old" techs could be researched faster (example: in 1940 a 1945 tech is slower, so a 1935 tech should be faster).
6.d. i think it was much harder to get nuclear weapons in HOI 1 and i liked that better. other secret techs should be harder too, and in return also better.
7. army management:
7.a. an easy way to reorganise the army (drag and drop in the outliner?)
7.b. an easy way to reorganise and select units in a stack
7.c. a possibility to give a corps a move/attack command (that is followed by all units belonging to it) without activating the AI
8. AI:
improvements of enemy AI is always welcome, i won't go into details here, but one example: in my last game portugal had 2 of its core provinces a bit south of lissabon occupied by UK and didn't take them back altough for over 4 years: the provinces were empty, UK was defeated, portugal was surrounded by its allies and had many units nearby that did nothing and were not needed.
what i'd like to see for the player supporting AI:
- army structure: even if i put part of my army under AI control it would be nice to be able to exclude some units farther down the tree.
- commands: when i tell the AI at corps level to conquer a certain province it should not run back to the center of my controlled provinces to fight some partisans. that might be someting to worry about for a theatre that gets AI control, but not for a corps. a anti-partisan stance would be nice, so the units does nothing except to move to and fight partisans.
- production: i would prefer a slider for the production that sets everything at needed lvl except supplies. at the moment when the needed IC is much higher the AI production always puts some resources to supply (putting other things below needed lvl) no matter what i do, and no matter how many supplies i have in stock.
- technologie: an AI like in the production menu that always leaves tech research at the needed value and puts the rest elsewhere (usually officers) but does not take any decisions.
- trade: auto-decline trade requests for certain goods. being able to influence if resources are converted (energy to oil, oil to fuel) or not - a slider would be best like production.
- possibility to turn on automatic leaders for AI controlled units only.
- possibility to restrict AI to certain areas. in my last game set AI to blitz moskov and they send some units to defend miami...
- separate pause and continue buttons (not really an AI issue but doesn't fit anywhere else)
9. events:
this is going to be the last entry because after i encountered the following event i stopped playing:
i (japan) had conquered most of soviet union (SU), germany had some parts and moskov. then the event "let us just keep what we still have" happened. everything that SU still had became german, including some provinces that were under my control. i lost almost everything between moskov and japan, those provinces became SU again. i deleted the event and reloaded and this time SU was annexed as usual and everything between moskov and japan belonged to me. somewhere i read that events became more flexible than in the older games to make more sense. this one certainly certainly needs some work.
so instead of adding lots of new stuff i'd like to see some existing issues fixed and improved. that would do the game much more good.
[edit: edit some points that i forgot to mention here and was reminded by wangdus post below]
some things might be done with patches/mods/expansions, but i doubt those will be enough. therefore my hope lies with HOI4. i made this list during my last game, it's in order of priority. this is based on v1.3 [and updated after one game with v1.4 as brazil]
1. game speed:
i think the speed issues are known. the interface lag is the most important fun-killing factor in my oppinion, altough its not that obvious. clicking through your units should be instant. [v1.4: game became very slow again when the big wars started. even after bitter peace cycling through the interface was very slow. i don't know if it improved, but it's not good enough in my oppinion.]
2. army leaders
2.a. a possibility to create skill 0 leaders (and name them myself)
2.b. it would be nice if small countries, that have only a few leaders would get additional ones with traits (skill can be low) if their army size increases.
2.c. in HOI3 i can change rank with skill/exp staying the same. that disappointed me alot, i liked the HOI1 system for promotions much better.
2.d. impact of high ranked leaders (like theater commandant) traits is too low. maybe the divisor should be 2/4/6/8 instead of 2/4/8/16 or even lower.
2.e. lower start skills and faster exp gain. the famous WW2 leaders likely didn't start with skill 5, they got there. [v1.4: faster exp gain was implemented, didn't test enough to say if it's to my liking now]
2.f. a chance to gain traits if i do correlating things (a leader who is fighting with a combined arms corps for 3 years should be likely to gain that trait, a leader who is winning a one year siege battle to a fortress should be likely to get a fortress buster trait). maybe an option to play the game either with historical leaders or with a more open approach as described here.
2.g. overall i liked the HOI1 traits better (except commando, that's great now)
2.h. an easy way to find a certain leader (i can look in the statistics but i cannot click it there)
2.i. a possiblity to delete leaders - "set them off duty" (low priority since it can be easily modded)
2.j. the HOI1 csv format for game files was much easier to mod in large scales because it could be done in excel.
2.k. in the list of commanders, all should be shown (and those alreay assgined listed with their unit - clickable)
2.l. an easy way to find all units that have no commander assigned
3. map:
3.a. i find river crossing penalties in many places altough i don't see a river. this makes planning impossible and should be fixed. the map as shown must match the combat values.
3.b. the map is too detailed. strategic points become meaningless because you can just go around them. it's impossible to protect a line of defense or shore. the attacker will just focus on a province and break through. this may be realistic, but i think it makes the game less interesting. HOI1 had some really though spots to get through, i didn't notice that in hoi3.
3.c. the high number of provinces doesn't really add anything to the game, its just more work and i assume its one reason why the game is so slow. i realize software developers don't take steps back (even if the new feature makes no sense), they usually just try to fix stuff or make it acceptable. so my suggestion is to make the game playable at region / corps level (with only those being displayed!) if players want to and let the AI take over the exact distribution of divisions among provinces.
3.d. panama channel should be closed unless you (or your allies) own panama as is the case with gibraltar [v1.4: didn't test, supposedly these things work better now]
4. stacking penalty:
this has been an issue since it was introduced with the later HOI1 patches and i'm surprised its still not fixed (maybe that leaves little hope for the rest as well).
4.a. land units
at the moment the best way to conquer heavily guarded provinces is to simply attack them. i won 40 brigades vs 200 in london simply because the stacking penalty made them unable to fight, same happened with venezuelas capital 16 vs 120. the fix is actually obvious: reserve units should not count for the stacking penalty. altough i think the combat width system removes the need for an artificial big stack balance (stacking penalty). maybe a penalty if units that don't belong to the same corps/army fight together would make sense.
4.b. sea units / balancing
i admit i don't understand the details of positioning but at the moment adding small ships to a fleet of capital ships adds -2% for everything is therefore mathematically not worth it. considering the cost relation between BB and small ships the only reason i see to add any of them is sub defense. suggested fixes: small ships should be much cheaper or large ships more expensive (as i think was in hoi1) and again i don't see the need for a stacking penalty at all. let it be handled by the maximum number of ships an admiral can command. or at least reduce stacking penalty for small ships (to 1%) - they are faster and much more flexible. [v1.4: sea balancing has been improved, but this basic problem still remains]
4.c. planes
i wonder why ****-air marshals can command 16 planes when it makes no sense at all to use such big stacks. its not a problem but its sad that i usually only need *-air leaders because i don't use larger plane stacks anyways.
5. supply and logistics:
i like the new supply system, if only it would work well.
5.a. since supply has become a serious issue i need to be able to take better control of it. i want to be able to change supply routes (keep them out of dangerous provinces). i want to be able to plan ahead and pile supplies where i know i will need them later. if the current system of a central supply depot per area is kept i want to choose where it is. i suggest an option for each province to choose where supplies are moved from there (a slider for each adjacent province). and a possiblity to reset those sliders to AI control for a lager number of provinces at once (either group them by assigning a number or draw a rectangle).
5.b. bugs: once in china when the central supply depot changed to a new province all my units run out of supply for a while until the supplies have been moved to the new depot (90.000 supplies simply vanished and about 1-2 weeks later reappeared in the new province). sometimes i get an out of supply penalty in combat even though my province has sufficient supplies. i assume this has something to do with supply being only calculated daily(?). not mentioning issues that are all over the boards like supply through puppet states.
5.c. in general i am out of supply too often without knowing why. often this occurs after a landing and exists for exactly one day even though there are supplies in the province (probably a bug).
5.d. players should be taken to the unit's supply base when clicking the unit's supply base
6. techs:
i love the HOI3 tech system, but since this is one of the most important aspects for me i list even small wishes.
6.a. when i click on a tech that is currently researched the game switches to the page where this tech is shown. that tech should also be highlighted so i can find it instantly. this would also make it alot easier for newbies (and therefore reducing one of the main problems with HOI in general). likewise, when i click on a tech in one of the tables i would like to see how it takes until it is finished, or it should be highlighted in the list of currently researched techs.
6.b. a tooltip that shows the estimated time when research would be finished would be nice (before i start researching it)
6.c. i would prefer if i was less dependent on when a tech was researched in reality. i liked the HOI1 system better. if artificial barriers (like the date influence) is kept it should have less impact. with the current system i would prefer if "old" techs could be researched faster (example: in 1940 a 1945 tech is slower, so a 1935 tech should be faster).
6.d. i think it was much harder to get nuclear weapons in HOI 1 and i liked that better. other secret techs should be harder too, and in return also better.
7. army management:
7.a. an easy way to reorganise the army (drag and drop in the outliner?)
7.b. an easy way to reorganise and select units in a stack
7.c. a possibility to give a corps a move/attack command (that is followed by all units belonging to it) without activating the AI
8. AI:
improvements of enemy AI is always welcome, i won't go into details here, but one example: in my last game portugal had 2 of its core provinces a bit south of lissabon occupied by UK and didn't take them back altough for over 4 years: the provinces were empty, UK was defeated, portugal was surrounded by its allies and had many units nearby that did nothing and were not needed.
what i'd like to see for the player supporting AI:
- army structure: even if i put part of my army under AI control it would be nice to be able to exclude some units farther down the tree.
- commands: when i tell the AI at corps level to conquer a certain province it should not run back to the center of my controlled provinces to fight some partisans. that might be someting to worry about for a theatre that gets AI control, but not for a corps. a anti-partisan stance would be nice, so the units does nothing except to move to and fight partisans.
- production: i would prefer a slider for the production that sets everything at needed lvl except supplies. at the moment when the needed IC is much higher the AI production always puts some resources to supply (putting other things below needed lvl) no matter what i do, and no matter how many supplies i have in stock.
- technologie: an AI like in the production menu that always leaves tech research at the needed value and puts the rest elsewhere (usually officers) but does not take any decisions.
- trade: auto-decline trade requests for certain goods. being able to influence if resources are converted (energy to oil, oil to fuel) or not - a slider would be best like production.
- possibility to turn on automatic leaders for AI controlled units only.
- possibility to restrict AI to certain areas. in my last game set AI to blitz moskov and they send some units to defend miami...
- separate pause and continue buttons (not really an AI issue but doesn't fit anywhere else)
9. events:
this is going to be the last entry because after i encountered the following event i stopped playing:
i (japan) had conquered most of soviet union (SU), germany had some parts and moskov. then the event "let us just keep what we still have" happened. everything that SU still had became german, including some provinces that were under my control. i lost almost everything between moskov and japan, those provinces became SU again. i deleted the event and reloaded and this time SU was annexed as usual and everything between moskov and japan belonged to me. somewhere i read that events became more flexible than in the older games to make more sense. this one certainly certainly needs some work.
so instead of adding lots of new stuff i'd like to see some existing issues fixed and improved. that would do the game much more good.
[edit: edit some points that i forgot to mention here and was reminded by wangdus post below]
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