HoI IV the least favorite child of Mother Paradox?

[Nicolas-]

I believe it was mentioned somewhere that Stellaris has the biggest team among all paradox games. HOI4's team is smaller but I think it's still bigger than EU4's at the moment.

 

[The Requimen]

I believe it was mentioned somewhere that Stellaris has the biggest team among all paradox games. HOI4's team is smaller but I think it's still bigger than EU4's at the moment.

Very interesting if EU4 actually has a smaller dev team, though the math doesn't check out though if we go off of DLC released. Two DLC released this year for EU4, with a third about to come out. One for HOI, with a big maybe for the second one this year.

The only team that is likely smaller than the one for HOI is CK2 at this point.

 

[Daelyn75]

@NFZed did you "steal" that thread title from my thread from almost a year ago?

I think I remember that one.

Do those figures include the "useless" Stellaris DLC which were graphical only with no new game mechanics? Adding plants as a playable race did zero for the game since the race you choose has zero impact on the game. It is all about the traits you choose for the species and not their shape or skin color etc.

Past versions of HOI had a slew of such fluff DLC that did nothing more than add sprites for certain nations etc. HOI4 has taken a different approach and is not marketing that way by selling graphical only DLC.

Yup, a couple of graphic patches are in there. Isn't one focused on story as well?

 

[Daelyn75]

Actually in many ways HOI is the most complex code out of all of those. It is also different from the rest. HOI, even though it has sandbox elements, is the only one on the list that is primarily a war game. The others are much more economic/social simulators in which wars occasionally happen. Furthermore the combat systems in HOI are much more complex than the rest of the Paradox lineup.

I think this is most of why the HOI AI struggles as much as it does. It is simply asked to do more complex things than the AI in those other games. Even with all the struggles that the regional governors had in Stellaris, those mostly amounted to a moderate drop in efficiency and were not in danger of ruining the game except for those players who obsessed over every point having to be spent perfectly.

This I think is the primary reason right here. I've been following the AI changes since HOI, even before I signed up for the Paradox boards. With all of the thousands of provinces, and the fact that the AI has to hold a line along the enemy provinces, and now with HOI4 and it's battleplanner, it's a lot of work. It's quite the beast to deal with when it comes to AI, by far the most complicated AI game series that they have going.

Don't forget that this game was delayed by many months because they couldn't get the battleplanner to work as expected.

This upcoming MtG and the last DLC are quite large. I don't think HOI is the least given resources of all the games Paradox is actively supporting right now, but I do believe it is the most complicated, and the most frustrating for them - especially the AI.

 

[HottestRod]

Popping here to give you all some more information on Man the Guns and its development! When we announced Man the Guns back during PDXCon 2018 the expansion was in its very early stages of development (contrary to Dharma or Holy Fury that were already in the middle of their development process). Yet, we wanted to share the good news with the community and to show that the development team was actively working on a big project! HoI IV is definitely not our “least favorite child”. Truth is it takes a long time to develop an expansion – hence why there is still no release date. We want to be sure to deliver a quality expansion to you all! Hope this will help to shed some light and that you'll keep enjoying our DDs and streams until we have a release date!

 

[Kheiran]

Wiz has stated on numerous occasions that he wasn't happy with the tile and pop system even before release of the base game of Stellaris. He even mentioned this far before the 2.0 update with the FTL revamp. Rest assured that the game system changes accompanying the next Stellaris DLC have been in the works for at least 2 years.

The next Stellaris DLC itself has very little content ("just" one new government type and associated mechanics) that definately took far less work than the overhaul of the entire naval combat mechanic and the implementation of the fuel mechanic for all kinds of land, air and sea vehicles(!!!) in HOI IV.

 

[DragonScythe]

I was one of the ones who was frustrated with HOI4's initial launch state and some of the early expansions, but I think it's now clear that Paradox has been working very hard to do right by their fans and customers. I'm by no means an expert on game development, but it seems like HOI4 is in many ways more complicated to develop for than the other titles, especially when it comes to the AI. I'm happy with my purchase and I hope they continue to release dlc and updates for the title.

 

[ArmChairAttila]

I have loved Hoi for well over a decade. HOI 4 is to annoying for me to play, mainly due to the inept battle planner. Fix it please so I can start playing this game again.

 

[NilsFabian]

Popping here to give you all some more information on Man the Guns and its development! When we announced Man the Guns back during PDXCon 2018 the expansion was in its very early stages of development (contrary to Dharma or Holy Fury that were already in the middle of their development process). Yet, we wanted to share the good news with the community and to show that the development team was actively working on a big project! HoI IV is definitely not our “least favorite child”. Truth is it takes a long time to develop an expansion – hence why there is still no release date. We want to be sure to deliver a quality expansion to you all! Hope this will help to shed some light and that you'll keep enjoying our DDs and streams until we have a release date!

Thank you a lot for your Explanation. I was hoping to get a learned authorative answer when I phrased my Question rather unkind. It feels weird that other games seem to be quicker between their Releases but I'd rather wait a year than have a Sh... product every 3 monh.
Thankfully PDX has (nearly) never done this to us. (Looking at you Enigmatic Fortress )​