HoI IV vs HoI III

[ZuperHyperZam]

Hi
I am new to the hoi series and i did not play much hoi III but what is the most diffrent thing between III and IV from the infromation we have?

 

[Alijs]

I myself played very little of HoI 3, biggest reason being that for me it was too messy and complicated looking. I think every grand strategy game is but HoI takes it to an extreme. However it was interesting to say the least, for me it was way too complicated and therefore I played it very little. The biggest difference to me and as far as we can see now is I think the aesthetics of the game, it looks inviting and fresh; just like EU4 did compared to EU4. For the rest I think Paradox went for the comfortable approach: they kept the good things: gameplay, interesting way of a world war developing and managing an army and they removed the "bad" things: complicated mess on your screen, uninviting looking. So yeah, hope that cleared some stuff up.

 

[adam_grif]

There are many major differences.

1. The command structure is simplified to be more like HoI2, with one commander in charge of many many divisions instead of a full OoB featuring Theatre, Army Group, Army, Corps etc.
   
2. The production and training systems are completely different. Instead of putting a division in the build queue, which eats generic IC, you have factories that you assign to production lines. You produce specific tanks, infantry kits, aircraft etc, which go into a stockpile. You can create divisions almost instantly, but they require time to train up to par, and they have equipment needs that need to be fulfilled. But you can totally stockpile tons of tanks then quickly fill them into green divisions on short notice.
   
3. Instead of the old system of either manual control or AI control for units, you build "battle plans" for specific groups of units that the AI will do its best to execute. Then you can manually move around divisions within that battle plan to respond to changing needs quickly. But basically most of the time you'll be drawing an axis of advance here, a halt line there etc.
   
4. Technology is more similar to HoI2, with a small number of tech teams / companies doing research, instead of the system of generic "leadership" that controlled espionage, diplomacy, technology and officer ratios. There are fewer, but more significant technologies in the tech tree.
5. There is a system of national focuses that replace many of the old events. You can set your country to focus towards goals like "annex the sudetenland" instead of just triggering an event when the necessary year has passed. This has an opportunity cost, since you could be doing other national focuses instead of that one, which have other benefits associated. It also takes political power to do them. Political Power ("Fuhrer Mana") can be spent on other things like changing which politicians are in charge of things etc.