HOI4 Dev Diary - Back from Christmas

[cml239]

I think (just my 2 cents, but in case it helps) the game really needs two tiers of deserts. There's desert and then there's Central Sahara/Qattara Depression desert. The 'bad' desert doesn't need to be impassable necessarily, but it does need to be absolutely brutal on large forces, particularly those on foot or with heavy vehicles - and by brutal, I'm talking thousands of casualties, large amounts of equipment destroyed, ORG hammered and any unit emerging from the desert, short of a small cavalry force or LRDG-style unit (so a battalion or two at most) should be in such bad shape that whatever forces they face coming out of the desert should be able to destroy them in short order.

At the moment, desert plus extreme heat covers the challenges fighting in the fighty bits of North Africa pretty well, but it's far too easy to move large forces (a couple of divisions on foot is a huge force traversing the Sahara, and it's comfortably doable while keeping the forces in fighting shape) through the Sahara or the Qattara Depression. Tanks also move through the inland desert very quickly, given the almost complete lack of roads - many of these regions were completely impassable to heavy vehicles (The reason El Alamein worked out like it did was because the southern (inland) flank was effectively impassable for Rommel's forces).

I agree.

Another area where I think the terrain effects should be modified is fighting across certain edges between provinces. Mountain ranges are an obvious case in point. I was fighting as Japan in New Guinea in my most recent game and it was just ridiculously easy to land divisions in the north and march down and take the whole island. In reality there is an almost impassable mountain range running east/west across the whole island.

Fighting did take place across this divide, notably on the Kokoda Trail (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kokoda_Track_campaign). Perhaps one way to simulate this type of terrain is to have specific combat width modifiers for certain province edges. In the case of Kokoda you could have a CW of 10, say. Some other edges should have a CW of 0.

 

[Gamer_1745]

Maybe the Dev team should go and cross the Sahara desert on foot before realising division moving though the Sahara is not realistic at all? XD

Nice, but I would rather have them working on the game than dying in the Desert.

 

[Alex_brunius]

Nice, but I would rather have them working on the game than dying in the Desert.

They wouldn't be dying though, only losing all their equipment to attrition! Don't let the skull icon fool you, no manpower is lost!

 

[Broletariat90]

@podcat, will you guys address the issues that division spam is causing in the game with this next patch?

In my game with the beta hotfix, Germany has 83 divisions in October of 1936, which is ridiculous.

 

[Mannstien]

Maybe the Dev team should go and cross the Sahara desert on foot before realising division moving though the Sahara is not realistic at all? XD

Nah, give them a Sherman, a T-34, and a Panther to ride *cough bake* across it, but to make it interesting add Jawa's and Sand People that attack them and try to sell them as spare parts

 

[Mannstien]

@podcat, will you guys address the issues that division spam is causing in the game with this next patch?

In my game with the beta hotfix, Germany has 83 divisions in October of 1936, which is ridiculous.

I hate this and to be completely honest it's the first reason on my list as to why I don't like Vanilla, Majors are worse for it but Minors make it just flat out silly with the amount of divisions they try to give me as Exp. Forces when I saw for the first time Hungary wanting to send me 80+ divisions in 1940 I was like "NOPE". I know the AI and Division Tweaks mod had set division templates for the AI so that it would build decent divisions and curb the spam which was great but hardcoding it wasn't a long term solution. Some of the Overhaul mods like Expert AI, Vanilla +, and BICE help but Vanilla could really use toning down the Spam either by increasing the AI's ability to build larger divisions and I really would like to see a check put in place so that Minor's can't get some massive amount of Manpower through that generic focus tree if they controlled by the AI.

 

[Gamer_1745]

Nah, give them a Sherman, a T-34, and a Panther to ride *cough bake* across it, but to make it interesting add Jawa's and Sand People that attack them and try to sell them as spare parts

No give them a M3 Lee,

Bogie did it!

Great Movie: Link.

 

[Stug_Life]

Paradox, will you guys and gals be adding anymore cosmetics for unique infantry for different countries and different tank variations?

 

[Bambilambi]

I hate this and to be completely honest it's the first reason on my list as to why I don't like Vanilla, Majors are worse for it but Minors make it just flat out silly with the amount of divisions they try to give me as Exp. Forces when I saw for the first time Hungary wanting to send me 80+ divisions in 1940 I was like "NOPE". I know the AI and Division Tweaks mod had set division templates for the AI so that it would build decent divisions and curb the spam which was great but hardcoding it wasn't a long term solution. Some of the Overhaul mods like Expert AI, Vanilla +, and BICE help but Vanilla could really use toning down the Spam either by increasing the AI's ability to build larger divisions and I really would like to see a check put in place so that Minor's can't get some massive amount of Manpower through that generic focus tree if they controlled by the AI.

Wouldn't it be easy to just...
1. lower the manpower pool across the board
2. force the countries to have a certain % or amount of equipment available before they make as new unit.
Like, you always need 10% extra spending equipment so if you have 20 divisions that need 50000 equipment on the board and in training. then no more divisions will be trained until the country have at least 5000 spare equipment.

...to lower the division spam.
If i could mod i would really try out the second option

 

[PnGuin]

Better Terrain View - totally agree its clearer. Its just too ugly for me though (emotions are a bit split on it at the office). I'm kinda looking into having us do another pass over map to make it clearer atm. Hills are the biggest problem imo.

I understand opinions run pretty hot on this topic (and *cough* counters vs. sprites *cough*) but it's clear there are a significant number of players looking for a simplified / very clear terrain view. It would be great if the team in the office could agree to disagree and step up to support what the players are looking for.

Thanks for your support - beta patch is downloaded and I'll start my first run through on it tonight.

 

[Mannstien]

Wouldn't it be easy to just...
1. lower the manpower pool across the board
2. force the countries to have a certain % or amount of equipment available before they make as new unit.
Like, you always need 10% extra spending equipment so if you have 20 divisions that need 50000 equipment on the board and in training. then no more divisions will be trained until the country have at least 5000 spare equipment.

...to lower the division spam.
If i could mod i would really try out the second option

Sounds good to me, anything to keep 1.5 Trillion divisions in game by 1940, slightly exaggerated but yes those both sound like decent propsals.

 

[Uberbrandon]

@podcat, will you guys address the issues that division spam is causing in the game with this next patch?

In my game with the beta hotfix, Germany has 83 divisions in October of 1936, which is ridiculous.

+1! Because of my very limited available playing time, I'm holding off on even playing the game until this is fixed.

 

[Broletariat90]

@podcat, its August of 1938, Germany has 154 divisions.... Really what is this. Is this why the AI is better? Because they couldn't do anything without spamming? If that's the case I'm worried.

 

[Felius]

The need to remove the Sahara from the playing field is purely due to the AI's inability to avoid using it. It's a constant drain on the Allies and Italy's equipment and manpower in an uninteresting way.

The game just works better all around when No Man's Land or another "get rid of the Sahara" mod is turned on. The Africa/Mediterranean theatre is more interesting and focused. The Allies and Italy don't waste as many resources in a pointless standoff in the middle of Africa.

This. It doesn't help that it's also an issue (if a smaller one) for the player, at least unless they want to micromanage the war in Africa instead of using automated systems there.

 

[Lawsford_Soren]

Why not just auto-code the AI to always avoid attacking/walking through provinces with a certain amount of attrition or higher?

Like, if per say the dangerous amount is 60, so

AI_MOVEMENT {Attrition => 60} = 0

 

[marmota]

Wouldn't it be easy to just...
1. lower the manpower pool across the board
2. force the countries to have a certain % or amount of equipment available before they make as new unit.
Like, you always need 10% extra spending equipment so if you have 20 divisions that need 50000 equipment on the board and in training. then no more divisions will be trained until the country have at least 5000 spare equipment.

...to lower the division spam.
If i could mod i would really try out the second option

There are file like these: "START_TRAINING_EQUIPMENT_LEVEL = 0.9, -- ai will not start to train if equipment drops below this level"
STOP_TRAINING_EQUIPMENT_LEVEL = 0.8
PRODUCTION_EQUIPMENT_SURPLUS_FACTOR = 0.25, -- Base value for how much of currently used equipment the AI will at least strive to have in stock

I had good results when i modded expertai mod to suit even more my tastes. AI needs bigger divisions and more stockpile. My last game as Soviets the ai Germany fielded manpower and produced panzers was par with history, so i think manpower and ic is ok. They had 300 divisions at most and barbarossa was hard 3 year fight. Without tweaks they can have 500 units and it easier game then because those are weak divisions and stockpiles are red. War can be over after 6 months.

Minors need nerf if you want realistic results. I made tweaks that country like Portugal have 20 divisions and 30 factories by 1944 instead of 100 division and 90 factories.

 

[Broletariat90]

I'll share a screenshot of the German AI plan for Operation White... It's goofy.

58 divisions in army II................

Update: It's August and Germany has 173 divisions.

 

[Broletariat90]

I'll share a screenshot of the German AI plan for Operation White... It's goofy.

58 divisions in army II................

Update: It's August and Germany has 173 divisions.

How could someone disagree with this?

 

[Dalwin]

Wouldn't it be easy to just...
1. lower the manpower pool across the board
2. force the countries to have a certain % or amount of equipment available before they make as new unit.
Like, you always need 10% extra spending equipment so if you have 20 divisions that need 50000 equipment on the board and in training. then no more divisions will be trained until the country have at least 5000 spare equipment.

...to lower the division spam.
If i could mod i would really try out the second option

I think better than a straight reduction of manpower would be restricting the ability to go to harsher conscription laws. For a look at how that might work and some of the other things that political points could be used for, take a look at the Kaiser Reich Mod. It is not really WWII but it is fun and introduces a few good concepts to the design.

 

[Bambilambi]

There are file like these: "START_TRAINING_EQUIPMENT_LEVEL = 0.9, -- ai will not start to train if equipment drops below this level"
STOP_TRAINING_EQUIPMENT_LEVEL = 0.8
PRODUCTION_EQUIPMENT_SURPLUS_FACTOR = 0.25, -- Base value for how much of currently used equipment the AI will at least strive to have in stock

I had good results when i modded expertai mod to suit even more my tastes. AI needs bigger divisions and more stockpile. My last game as Soviets the ai Germany fielded manpower and produced panzers was par with history, so i think manpower and ic is ok. They had 300 divisions at most and barbarossa was hard 3 year fight. Without tweaks they can have 500 units and it easier game then because those are weak divisions and stockpiles are red. War can be over after 6 months.

Minors need nerf if you want realistic results. I made tweaks that country like Portugal have 20 divisions and 30 factories by 1944 instead of 100 division and 90 factories.

cool could you perhaps give me som info regarding what these numbers mean more exactly if you know it, or a page where i can find it? I have been looking a bit at the modding forums but its hard to find everything