How could the Finnish Russian war be turned more historical?

[Spelaren]

As of now it ends as soon as it starts when it reality it was a slog and led to a peace afterwards with a lot of territory losses but yeah. Finns do not even have troops to cover the border, or even their planes.

 

[Meglok]

The Finnish front will be addressed whenever PDS does a Russian DLC. That is about all we know.

 

[Dlin369]

My guess is there will be some national focuses (akin to the current Great Purge debuffs or the Sino-Japanese debuffs) and regional modifiers (similar to nationalist spain) that will help slow down the war to make it drag along more.

More ambitiously they'd probably have to model some of the supply considerations armies face when traveling in comparatively poor terrain/infrastructure regions - possibly reworking supply/defensive warfare. The Soviet DLC (with is likely coming either 2 updates from now with the mysteriously named Barbarossa update or the one after that) is probably going to be large in scope though if they are trying to reduce development time like they said in the last dev diary, then it may be pared back a bit compared to expectations.

We do know that supply and defensive warfare are on the team's planned list of features to be reworked, as is the Soviet union focus tree rework, Scandenavia, and more recently added was weather. For proof see https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/hoi4-dev-diary-1-9-1-patch-roadmap-update.1370573/

Whether or not it is feasible to include some or all of those in a Soviet Union rework remains to be seen

 

[mursolini]

As of now it ends as soon as it starts when it reality it was a slog and led to a peace afterwards with a lot of territory losses but yeah. Finns do not even have troops to cover the border, or even their planes.

It depends on whom is playing, AI or player. Player can actually "win" the war, by holding out till Barbarossa is in full swing.
AI is simply bad at defending.

 

[--Yigito123--]

It depends on whom is playing, AI or player. Player can actually "win" the war, by holding out till Barbarossa is in full swing.
AI is simply bad at defending.

AI may be bad at defending, but the player can only hold out until Barbarossa because the AI is also bad at attacking.

 

[mursolini]

AI may be bad at defending, but the player can only hold out until Barbarossa because the AI is also bad at attacking.

Not exactly. Finland has pretty narrow and bad terrain for attacking, and after completing ideological fanaticism NF, like +50% combat modifier on top of top-notch generals and Soviets facing terrain modifiers. Then, after some fighting, it will destroy already poor infra, and SU will be out of supply and be bogged down.

Obviously, AI being bad is a factor, but the deck is also stacked against Soviets in many ways.

 

[Spelaren]

Not exactly. Finland has pretty narrow and bad terrain for attacking, and after completing ideological fanaticism NF, like +50% combat modifier on top of top-notch generals and Soviets facing terrain modifiers. Then, after some fighting, it will destroy already poor infra, and SU will be out of supply and be bogged down.

Obviously, AI being bad is a factor, but the deck is also stacked against Soviets in many ways.

That requires going fascist though.

 

[Searry]

Finland should have half of the border at immovable infrastructure.

 

[mursolini]

That requires going fascist though.

Or communist, but that is pointless.

 

[Natethegreat]

god this game has been out since 2016 and the darn continuation war still does not exist in this game. An entire front of ww2 just has zero recognition. Hopefully they will do it justice.

 

[cursorhiker]

Large parts of the Finnish border should really be entirely impassable. This was the case in HoI3, but this would require infrastructure to be built on a per province basis rather than on a state one.

 

[Day Break]

How about give Finns guerrilla tactics by default and increased weight towards it? Could be done by corresponding trait on generals, guerilla fighter, that increes entrenchment speed. This also incentives its use for other nations that take it from the end of mass assault tree.
Motti Tactics all the way.

 

[Johannes Paulus]

I just played Finland from - 36 onwards.

During the Winter war, the Soviets did not concentrate their efforts at the Karelian Istmus but rather spread their forces over the whole border (smart but not historically accurate) and rapidly ate Finland, so I replayed and built a defensive line along the lakes to the Coast, to shorten my front and basically giving up half the country.

The breakthrough came close to the Baltic Sea. Losses were pretty close to the real war in the end.

I believe advancing through Northern Finland in wintertime must have been seriously a logistic nightmare, but the advanced was very rapid.

 

[Ivankovsky]

The problem with representing this war "more historically" is that its depending, more than anything, in who is commanding the Soviet army and how the are commanding it.

I mean, why would a USSR player do the more costly historical plan of attacking trough various points of whole country, when a concentrated attack trough the south is more than enough to easily win the war?

I'm not sure how I would go to solve this, maybe apply LaR spanish civil war mechanic in Finland? And to give incentive to the USSR player, if they succeed in attacking Finland the "historical" way, they receive doctrine bonus or something? While still leaving the option to simply carry on an operation in the south for a less costly victory.
I'm not sure however, if simply adding flat negative modifiers in the winter war would be appreciated by most players....

But then again, this mostly matters is you are playing as Finland against Soviet AI, in which case the Soviet AI can be programed to focus in the historical spots, in theory...

 

[Fulmen]

I mean, why would a USSR player do the more costly historical plan of attacking trough various points of whole country, when a concentrated attack trough the south is more than enough to easily win the war?

Actually the majority of Russian forces were concentrated in the south on the Karelian Isthmus, with as many as 1.2 million Red Army soldiers there 13.3.1940. They still didn't manage to achieve a breakthrough of the Finnish Rear Line, so I don't think you're correct in your assessment of it being a matter of "easily winning the war".

EDIT (to avoid double-posting):

god this game has been out since 2016 and the darn continuation war still does not exist in this game. An entire front of ww2 just has zero recognition. Hopefully they will do it justice.

Yep, it's sad. Every HoI in the past had it in some form, out of the box. Granted, it was poorly represented, but at least Finland was a part of the Eastern Front, which was better than nothing. Evidently we won't get even that in HoI4 until they release additional paid content that reworks the country.

Large parts of the Finnish border should really be entirely impassable. This was the case in HoI3, but this would require infrastructure to be built on a per province basis rather than on a state one.

While HoI3's infrastructure was indeed far more realistic in this regard, you can have impassable borders in the game, though they do mess with the battleplanner.