HOI4 Dev Diary - Czechoslovakia and AI Update #2

[Aries666]

Sadly, unless we find a way to give the AI a huge ammount more CPU without bogging the game down, we do not have a solution ready for this for 1.4, and very unlikely 1.4.1. We are aware of it, and are looking in to it, but the way things are set up there is just no good way of doing it. Even a good enough way seems to be super tricky.

This is a nice honest answer so I will be equally honest. There is precisely 0% chance of me buying further DLC for this game if things like the Italian AI is still going to march all its troops to Wilmhelmshaven, just to suicide them through the English channel.

Things like this completely distort the flow of the game and no number of added bells and whistles will change that fact.

 

[Antediluvian Monster]

Not sure about whole ship building, but Škoda was making guns for Yugoslavian navy . The funny part is that the ships for Yugoslavian navy were made in UK...and the armament was Czech...

Czech were also capable of making large amounts of armour steel. UK bought 10,000 tons off them before the war because they had too little domestic production capacity for their pace of naval construction. The flight decks in half of Britain's armoured carriers were of Czech origin.

 

[Khevenhuller]

Sadly, unless we find a way to give the AI a huge ammount more CPU without bogging the game down, we do not have a solution ready for this for 1.4, and very unlikely 1.4.1. We are aware of it, and are looking in to it, but the way things are set up there is just no good way of doing it. Even a good enough way seems to be super tricky.

I do not want you to feel that I am yet another person in the queue to bash you over the head on this. But you have to recognise that, no matter how many additional countries you create Focus Trees and nice artwork for, it's not going to provide a medium term future for the game. It will simply temporarily create a 'distraction bounce' but the core issues will still remain.

I'm a bit baffled why the suicide squad approach to convoying was not picked up in playtesting, as every player of the game has suffered from it and it does not take long for it to become apparent. If Germany is insistent on sending large numbers of troops to Rio del Oro via the Canaries to get sunk on the way or trapped there it does cripple the game. When this first happened I wondered 'Have the Germans that many troops to waste?' When the Red Army rolled into Berlin in mid-1942 I realised the answer was 'no'.

So playing anything other than Germany poses a problem, as the only way you can stop the Germans doing this is playing them. So the Italians do it instead. Rome falls by summer 1941. It also leads to the assumption that 50% of the people play Germany because they want to. An alternative analysis of that number is that they play Germany because they have to if they want any sort of game. I do not know how it splits, and not sure how you would ever know.

As customers, the internal staffing and resource issues at PDX should not really concern us: if i buy a garment with a manufacturing flaw I do not really want to hear that Doris at the factory lost her reading glasses down the toilet that day and things went a bit wrong. I just want a garment that is how it should be. It has now been 12 months since release, and there was a 12 month delay before that. The game needs to stand and succeed on it's own merits. At the moment it has some merits, but playability is not one of them.

K

 

[Axe99]

I do not want you to feel that I am yet another person in the queue to bash you over the head on this. But you have to recognise that, no matter how many additional countries you create Focus Trees and nice artwork for, it's not going to provide a medium term future for the game. It will simply temporarily create a 'distraction bounce' but the core issues will still remain.

I'm a bit baffled why the suicide squad approach to convoying was not picked up in playtesting, as every player of the game has suffered from it and it does not take long for it to become apparent. If Germany is insistent on sending large numbers of troops to Rio del Oro via the Canaries to get sunk on the way or trapped there it does cripple the game. When this first happened I wondered 'Have the Germans that many troops to waste?' When the Red Army rolled into Berlin in mid-1942 I realised the answer was 'no'.

So playing anything other than Germany poses a problem, as the only way you can stop the Germans doing this is playing them. So the Italians do it instead. Rome falls by summer 1941. It also leads to the assumption that 50% of the people play Germany because they want to. An alternative analysis of that number is that they play Germany because they have to if they want any sort of game. I do not know how it splits, and not sure how you would ever know.

As customers, the internal staffing and resource issues at PDX should not really concern us: if i buy a garment with a manufacturing flaw I do not really want to hear that Doris at the factory lost her reading glasses down the toilet that day and things went a bit wrong. I just want a garment that is how it should be. It has now been 12 months since release, and there was a 12 month delay before that. The game needs to stand and succeed on it's own merits. At the moment it has some merits, but playability is not one of them.

K

I don't think it's an issue with it not being recognised (it has been, well before this thread) or that the devs making focus trees will make people forget about it, but more that the land AI was seen as a bigger issue, and they can't do everything at once. It may well have been noted prior to the game's release, but put in the "we don't like it, but we can't delay forever and it works 'good enough'" (for both of us, the perfect WW2 GSG would probably take ten years in development, but from a business standpoint, it's important to release a game that works well enough and get cashflow happening so that the continued development can happen). Which segues nicely into the focus trees. It's a very, very hard sell to market an expansion on AI and bugfixes alone - humans like 'things', and focus trees are things that are easily quantifiable that can make up a DLC that take limited AI-related time while Steelvolt and his assistant(s?) work on AI issues. In effect, the reason we're getting multiple NF-focussed DLC is because the devs are focussing on fixing the base game before they get into deeper stuff - but they can't do this without cashflow.

In terms of "how it should be", it's worth keeping in mind that HoI3 also had convoy pathing issues and that no-one, anywhere has made a better WW2 GSG, which given the enduring popularity of the period as a setting for games of many types (noting that I don't think we'll ever see a "Rommel's Horse Adventures" or "Percy Hobart Kart Racing") underlines the difficulties of making one. We'd all love if it was a job that was feasible without these kind of bugs in a standard development cycle, but the history of the genre to this point suggests that this just isn't the case. All games are not equally easy to make, and something of the depth of HoI4 is one of the toughest asks out there, imo.

That said, I do think it is worth emphasising the significance of the issue, so that the whole convoy thing gets bumped up the order of bugfixes. Keep in mind that Steelvolt isn't (unless things have changed since we last heard) working on focus trees, artwork or music.

 

[holoween]

I do not want you to feel that I am yet another person in the queue to bash you over the head on this. But you have to recognise that, no matter how many additional countries you create Focus Trees and nice artwork for, it's not going to provide a medium term future for the game. It will simply temporarily create a 'distraction bounce' but the core issues will still remain.

I'm a bit baffled why the suicide squad approach to convoying was not picked up in playtesting, as every player of the game has suffered from it and it does not take long for it to become apparent. If Germany is insistent on sending large numbers of troops to Rio del Oro via the Canaries to get sunk on the way or trapped there it does cripple the game. When this first happened I wondered 'Have the Germans that many troops to waste?' When the Red Army rolled into Berlin in mid-1942 I realised the answer was 'no'.

So playing anything other than Germany poses a problem, as the only way you can stop the Germans doing this is playing them. So the Italians do it instead. Rome falls by summer 1941. It also leads to the assumption that 50% of the people play Germany because they want to. An alternative analysis of that number is that they play Germany because they have to if they want any sort of game. I do not know how it splits, and not sure how you would ever know.

As customers, the internal staffing and resource issues at PDX should not really concern us: if i buy a garment with a manufacturing flaw I do not really want to hear that Doris at the factory lost her reading glasses down the toilet that day and things went a bit wrong. I just want a garment that is how it should be. It has now been 12 months since release, and there was a 12 month delay before that. The game needs to stand and succeed on it's own merits. At the moment it has some merits, but playability is not one of them.

K

making sure the ai doesnt send divisions to unimportant areas is incredibly difficult.
and ive seen actual players loose the war in a mp game due to losing divisions in transit (15 40widh armour divisions in early 42 lost by the us in a single sub catch)

 

[Dalnar]

Czech were also capable of making large amounts of armour steel. UK bought 10,000 tons off them before the war because they had too little domestic production capacity for their pace of naval construction. The flight decks in half of Britain's armoured carriers were of Czech origin.

It's actually interesting that they bothered to transport the steel (most likely through Hamburg harbor) from Czechoslovakia instead just buying it in France or Benelux. But yes, compared to HOI Czechoslovakia had no small steel industry, mainly thanks to large deposits of coal, which unfortunately is not strategic resource in HOI4.

The 10000 tons of steel for UK was from Vitkovice, a region that in-game has no steel resource Maybe then it would make sense to the players why Poland was so keen on getting Zolzie back...

 

[Nikers]

Crap Czechoslovakia got even better Focus tree Than Poland i wish Lithuania had Poland-Lithuanian Commonwealth Focus and greater Lithuania that would change so much btw Can't wait to play Death or Dishonor as my Friend Hungary

 

[permanently_afk]

I'm kinda crushed by this. Not angry, just really really sad.


DD is great though. Cant wait for roles

Problem is, a CPU only has so many cycles to go around. Resource prioritisation, the bane of all programmers.

 

[Scanian_Warrior]

This is a nice honest answer so I will be equally honest. There is precisely 0% chance of me buying further DLC for this game if things like the Italian AI is still going to march all its troops to Wilmhelmshaven, just to suicide them through the English channel.

Things like this completely distort the flow of the game and no number of added bells and whistles will change that fact.

This is exactly my reasoning as well. Well said.

 

[Bambilambi]

This is a nice honest answer so I will be equally honest. There is precisely 0% chance of me buying further DLC for this game if things like the Italian AI is still going to march all its troops to Wilmhelmshaven, just to suicide them through the English channel.

Things like this completely distort the flow of the game and no number of added bells and whistles will change that fact.

+1,

 

[EvolutionWar]

Release plz now!

 

[Seazer]

I'm sure ıt will be DLC. FOR 44 TRY. Thanks(!) Paradox.

 

[ummd]

I do not want you to feel that I am yet another person in the queue to bash you over the head on this. But you have to recognise that, no matter how many additional countries you create Focus Trees and nice artwork for, it's not going to provide a medium term future for the game. It will simply temporarily create a 'distraction bounce' but the core issues will still remain.

I'm a bit baffled why the suicide squad approach to convoying was not picked up in playtesting, as every player of the game has suffered from it and it does not take long for it to become apparent. If Germany is insistent on sending large numbers of troops to Rio del Oro via the Canaries to get sunk on the way or trapped there it does cripple the game. When this first happened I wondered 'Have the Germans that many troops to waste?' When the Red Army rolled into Berlin in mid-1942 I realised the answer was 'no'.

So playing anything other than Germany poses a problem, as the only way you can stop the Germans doing this is playing them. So the Italians do it instead. Rome falls by summer 1941. It also leads to the assumption that 50% of the people play Germany because they want to. An alternative analysis of that number is that they play Germany because they have to if they want any sort of game. I do not know how it splits, and not sure how you would ever know.

As customers, the internal staffing and resource issues at PDX should not really concern us: if i buy a garment with a manufacturing flaw I do not really want to hear that Doris at the factory lost her reading glasses down the toilet that day and things went a bit wrong. I just want a garment that is how it should be. It has now been 12 months since release, and there was a 12 month delay before that. The game needs to stand and succeed on it's own merits. At the moment it has some merits, but playability is not one of them.

K

There are so many good points here.

To note just one: In previous HoI games I rarely played Germany. In HoI4, I HAVE to play Germany else the game just becomes infuriatingly pointless sometime in 1940...

 

[Dracolithfiend]

This is a nice honest answer so I will be equally honest. There is precisely 0% chance of me buying further DLC for this game if things like the Italian AI is still going to march all its troops to Wilmhelmshaven, just to suicide them through the English channel.

Things like this completely distort the flow of the game and no number of added bells and whistles will change that fact.

+1 as well. There are many severe game breaking bugs that have not been addressed over the last year but this is probably the worst. Thank you for addressing troop shuffling but there is far more to work on.

 

[Winterwolf00]

So does 'Trust in the West mean trying to join the Allies or the French led Entente?

 

[Adamgerd]

So does 'Trust in the West mean trying to join the Allies or the French led Entente?

Neither. I don;'t really recommend it. All it means is you get increased relations with the west, but you don't actually join the allies and due to WT you need to hope that you get lots of WT before the Munich agreement