HOI4 - Development Diary - 19th Of August 2016

[Stuckenschmidt]

Hello Paradox.

Nice progression going on there. But there is something small on my wishlist. I like to write AAR. And in CK2 and EU4, when I press F10 during play, the game saves a world map of the current map overlay. It would be really fine, if the same would work in HoI4.

 

[AToki]

Why it is not possible to transport paratroopers between airports?

 

[Fulmen]

So now subject nation can rebel and kick the colonial power out to form a new independence nation?

I'd be surprised if it's anything that special.

Looks to me that they're just bringing back some of the nation tags that existed in previous games.

I wish releasing countries would still result in puppets, though this would need a new counter now that dissent is gone in HoI4.

 

[VonTirpitz]

I've also noticed Port Strikes happening in bizarre areas well out of range also...French Naval Bombers attacking my fleet in Konigsberg for example even after Poland has been defeated - how on earth would they get range there? Has that been tweaked at all?

Yes, I also noticed this happening in 2 back to back games played at the Germans. The French would bomb my sub fleet in Danzig or my Surface fleet in Konigsberg, until bizarrely, I moved the 2 separate to Stettin, or sent them to Sea. Very dispiriting have spent 2-3 years building ships and then in the first week or 2 of the war to see a large part of it sunk in port.

How on earth can bombers manage to fly through all the air provinces between the French border and western Poland (when I have air superiority in all those provinces, except western Poland). Surely if they cant bomb western Germany because I have superiority, then they cant fly through it to another province and so on. Very Odd!

 

[Telenil]

Thank for this DD and the answers in the comments =)

 

[Wminus]

Guys the NAV fix is really bad! Come on, 30% air sup? That's lazy! And it's not just port-strikes, nav's are way too OP in general.

I suggest this:

1) Slash naval attack by 25% and slash port-strike efficiency by 50%. Do increase chance of critical hit though to compensate a bit.

2) Further, scale the naval damage so that damage1 = 0.2*damage0 + 0.8(airSuperiority)*damage0, where airSuperiority is the air superiority fraction (i.e. 50% air superiority => airSuperiority=0.5) and damge0 is damage that's currently dealt in patch 1.1. This way the total damage is linearly dependent on air superiority, which it should be.

3) Make it so that nav bombers can be intercepted efficiently please!! Like, let them look for the ships for an hour or two before they hit them, so that fighters can do some damage!!

Right now for two battleship you can buy like 1k Navs (assuming one dockyard <=> one mil factory), and a 1k Nav doomstack will just kill EVERYTHING they come across, port strike or nav strike. They are literally unstoppable at the moment.

 

[Nicolas-]

In a frontline battle plan, there needs to be a way to tell specific divisions to stand still and not move away from their provinces. Sometimes I need some divisions to stay in specific provinces at any cost, but the battleplan AI keeps moving them away, and it ruins my front.

The only remedy I found is to either remove the frontline all together (which is ridiculous), or remove said divisions from the frontline, and thus they won't recieve the benefits of the general that was assigned to the frontline (which is also ridiculous).

I think fixing this issue, will definitely help improve battleplan AI, even for Multiplayers.

And yeah, I agree that improving battleplan AI overall should have high priority than singleplayer AI. Singelplayer AI can simply be remedied by playing in MP. However flaws in the battleplan AI cannot be remedied by anything. And sometimes people lose wars in MP games just because their frontline is messed up.

I'd say most people do actually play and enjoy MP. That should be given a priority in my opinion.

 

[DKoW]

They could just add a feature to the army planning tools that works like the old HOI3 objective mechanic for AI controlled forces?

Essentially it could be used to tell the Army AI that the selected Province is of strategic value to the player and will always make sure to get the objective you've set out and hold it come what may until you decide it's no longer important.
Now you would still have to design a battle plan and way of advance, but the AI would essentially prioritise the selected objectives you've put in front of it.

Basically it would be like the Garrison command, only instead of having to choose between Garrison and Battle plan and I would say it should be usable in both, so if you are garrisoning, you can tell the AI to prioritise the ports, instead of everything but them.

It's an Idea at least.

 

[bERt0r]

Just stop the redeploying alltogether. It is good enough to distribute the units evenly across the frontline ONCE, that is when I draw the line/assing troops to it. This would save a ton of calculation workload imho and boost performance.

 

[happyman40]

Just stop the redeploying alltogether. It is good enough to distribute the units evenly across the frontline ONCE, that is when I draw the line/assing troops to it. This would save a ton of calculation workload imho and boost performance.

So what should the AI do when enemy creates a breakthrough?

 

[bERt0r]

So what should the AI do when enemy creates a breakthrough?

Player's job. I would at least like to have an option to turn it off.

A simple strg + click would make the AI reevaluate the line and fix it (as much as it does now).

 

[Wellington]

Why is the new AI designed to include 1 infantry battalion in a battalion of 4 light tanks and 5 motorized? Isn't the infantry gonna slow down the other vehicle battalions

Exactly my thoughts. The devs should work on their examples

 

[DanTTT]

Any word on fixing the air combat issues where multiple small wings get a massive advantage over one big one?

How is that an issue? Smaller wings should be better, since it allows for better organization.

 

[Sanny]

How is that an issue? Smaller wings should be better, since it allows for better organization.

The issue is that the smaller the airwing is, the more air experience it gets allowing for faster generation of Aces, which is a bit of an exploit. You could make an Airwing as small as 5 and it would be better than a Airwing of 20. I believe smaller airwings have a higher kill/loss ratio.

 

[Hypercynder]

New countries ? that good !

and what are the other countries ?

 

[Wellington]

The issue is that the smaller the airwing is, the more air experience it gets allowing for faster generation of Aces, which is a bit of an exploit. You could make an Airwing as small as 5 and it would be better than a Airwing of 20. I believe smaller airwings have a higher kill/loss ratio.

I guess in real life higher numbers of fighters in a wing/squadrons makes more kills, but of course fewer kills per pilot. Don't know if aces is a good idea or not but would they not also get shot down much quicker when their wing/squadron is smaller? Hence no exploit really. And if the assumption about both higher kill and loss ratio in smaller squadrons is correct, isn't this working just the way it should?

 

[potski]

Right now for two battleship you can buy like 1k Navs (assuming one dockyard <=> one mil factory), and a 1k Nav doomstack will just kill EVERYTHING they come across, port strike or nav strike. They are literally unstoppable at the moment.

Doomstacks won't be possible because of the combat width. Less ships in port means less bombers that can engage/cause damage.

And they will be stoppable by properly defending your ports with air cover.

 

[tom_jones]

Why is the new AI designed to include 1 infantry battalion in a battalion of 4 light tanks and 5 motorized? Isn't the infantry gonna slow down the other vehicle battalions?

This isn't exactly new, this configuration was in the game files for a long while now. Mind you, the AI doesn't do this typically, it far prefers to ignore the suggestion and just stick more and more tanks in the template.

My uneducated guess, based on vague memory of what devs said in the past, is that single infantry battalion there is a fix for nations which have unlocked light tanks, but not the motorized. This helps the AI to create at least some HP padding for their tanks, where otherwise would be none. If the AI has access to both the motorized and regular infantry it'll choose to stick motorized battalions instead, due to extra weight attached to speed attribute (or it would in theory, if in practice it didn't prefer MOAR TANKS pretty much exclusively)

 

[Grapo]

Where to put this code

 

[Soranya]

How is that an issue? Smaller wings should be better, since it allows for better organization.

It is b.c. its micro Hell - and unituitive - the decisions of actual Inflight WIngsizes should not be made on the Top Level (aka the Player) but on the Tactical Level (aka the Simulation)