This is not a rant as there's no point in it or a list of suggestions as it's too late for that, I'm just curious whether there's anyone who shares similar views. Yeah, I know the sarcastic answer "obivously, you're the only one in the world who thought about that", but I wonder how many people are on the forum who share similar views, as I'm fairly certain that the majority doesn't share this view.
When I got Hearts of Iron 4 only the 1st DLC Together for Victory was out, it was patch 1.3. The idea of a World War II tabletop game hooked me immediately, I enjoy the way units worked, that it was not that complicated, all you had to do was make 20 width units: 7-2 for attack and 10 for defense. Or if you can afford manpower 40 width units: 14-4 for attack and 20 for defense. If you wanted speed you got vehicles, if you wanted power/damage you got tanks and for suppression in occupied territores that are still at war you got cavalry. You also had mountainers and marines that were more expensive but better than the average unit in mountains and beaches. And there was armor/piercing, if piercing is higher than armor then a unit takes normal damage, if armor is higher than piercing then a unit takes only 50% damage.
Apart from that you had factory building, fort building, trade with other nations, a somewhat limited option of diplomacy, unit recruitment and equipment stockpile. All quite easy to learn, but the star was the focus tree. The focus tree was like the general direction of your nation, it told you what you were about to do next. Before decisions came out, the focus tree was the big deal. I didn't like the fact that the research path was kind of limited, mostly by years, and you couldn't queue up reasearch so you won't have to open that section of the game again and again and again when every single research is completed. But I figured that these are things that will be solved with a patch.
I also enjoyed the immersion, the news, and spotted a few historical inaccuracies in the game, but again, I thought they will be solved within a few patches.
The the 2nd DLC Death or Dishonor came out and I was again very happy to see that. There were 4 new DLCs, some things were a bit off like Hungary being the one that restores Austria-Hungary and not Austria, but overall it was a good DLC, I liked the theme and the new addition with military attache.
Then the 3rd DLC Waking the Tiger came out and then the game started moving in a different direction, or the game always moved in that direction and I didn't notice. Instead of flavor and more options for each nation, the game started focusing on more and more game mechanics. Personally, I enjoy games like Crusader Kings 2 or Civilizations 6 because they are complex but not that complex. Hearts of Iron 4 used to be right there before the 3rd DLC but then it started moving more and more intro the extra micromanagement land.
It added a chain of command, not that it was unrealistic but it was an unecessary complication. One could have simply kept it the way it was, with Field Marshals having an unlimited number of units while gaining XP slower and general having a maximum of 24 while gaining XP faster. And no skill points called traits using command power, which is an unrealistic as the skill points you gain in an RPG game. Gaining traits as you gain experience in the field made sense, but gaining traits by spending command power in your skill tree not so much. It made an enjoyable mechanic unnecessary complicated and less enjoyable, while not making it more realistic overall.
It split the National Spirit in Stability and War Support. Again, an unnecessary split, making the game more complicated, not complex, while not making it more enjoyable. The difference is that a complex mechanism doesn't have many parts but those parts have many ways of intreacting with each other that is not easy to predict, like chess or poker, while a complicated mechanism has a lot of parts, like Twilight Imperium or Scythe (board games). Complex = many interdependencies, complicated = many inputs.
And the border wars, another failure in my opinion. It is such an artificial implementation of a minor war. Rather than actually adding game mechanics to make minor wars possible, the kind of wars between at maximum 6 nations and where if you win or lose then you don't get to completly annex or be completly annexed, they made this decision events of border wars that can be easily abused with artillery, proving that micromanagement became more important than tactics and strategy.
But the worst addition in my opinion were the decisions. The developers wanted something between events and focus trees so they created decisions. I again, think that this only further complicated the game. The focus trees created a delicate balance between sandbox and non-sandbox, Hearts of Iron 4 is at its core a sandbox game full of choices, the focus trees don't necessarly limit those choices but they give you suggestions and 9/10 times the players will take those suggestions. Maybe they will annex a nation or two at the start of the game, and then play based on a specific focus tree path. It was still room for flexibility. But the decisions made this process even more rigid and the game less sandboxy.
At this point, Hearts of Iron 4 was not as fun as it used to be, it simply became much more micromanagement than battles. By this I mean that tactics and strategy became less important than knowing what to micro and when. When 2 players know the proper micromanagement of the game then the battle will ultimately be decided by tactics and strategy, but the simple fact that now you have to know a lot of micromanagement about the game to understand how to play it properly in order to make tactics and strategy count, and the fact that now you have to keep a lot more things in check than you used to have to and as a consequence focus less on the battle itself, makes Hearts of Iron 4 less enjoyable than it used to be.
The special forces were limited in an artificial way. You simply have a limit cap. It was indeed unrealistic to have an army of 100% special forces but their limitation could have been made in a more organic way. Simply make them significantly more expensive and only better at mountain & beaches so that they won't be worth it otherwise. You still have a choice, but it's a bad choice, maybe there is some risky tactic that nobody thought of and could work with them in certain scenarios with certain countries, but as far as common sense is concerned, if they are worse than the normal unit in the cost/efficency ratio outside mountain or beach then the average player won't spam special forces in his army.
The only thing I enjoyed about the Waking the Tiger DLCs was Germany's Oppose Hitler path. Japan's focus tree was changed from bad to worse. Japan used to have the worst focus tree out of all major nations, and after the 3rd DLC, it still has worst focus tree out of all major nations. Because it's very inflexible, you have 4 choices: Democratic, communist, fascist and imperial. That's it. Every focus tree had more or less these 4 choices, but there was a degree of flexibility in them, there were many other focuses and alternative paths that you could have taken even if you went democratic, fascist, etc.
For example: As fascist Germany, you can either make the pact with USSR or not, you can make the Berlin-Moscow Axis or not, you can instead annex the Balkans. As democratic or imperial Germany you also have multiple choices and the industrial focus is completly separate. But with Japan, if you go fascist you will attack the democratic countries and China. If you go imperial you will attack USSR and instead sign a non-aggression pact with China. It's so narrow it might as well have been a scripted event. You don't have as much freedom to choose as Japan, you just have 4 scenarios and you have to pick one.
Then the 4th DLC came out Man the Guns. Again, making the naval battles more complicated, adding fuel which while realistic again makes the game more complicated. I enjoyed the new focus trees, but overall I feel like nothing has chanced and the favor of micromanagement and more game mechanics over flavor and more options for each nation only became more apparent.
One thing I disliked about the Man the Guns DLC is adding the Congress for USA. It's, like before, an unnecessary complcation. It can be easily exploited if you learn how from the internet and overall doesn't make the Hearts of Iron 4 experience more enjoyable. Maybe most people here do enjoy that kind of stuff, otherwise I can't explain how so many people like it whenever new mechanics are added, but personally I don't like to have to go back to that thing again just to keep that thing in check, when I could be focusing on battles or building a better economy.
The then 5th DLC came out, I don't have this last one but the free update is enough to make it dislike it. The ressistance mechanic was changed to be less realistic. Instead of actually having to train units and have those units on the map, now you make divisions outside of the map and automatically assign them to the occupied region. Now, when a region is already yours after a peace negociation, you still have to keep divisions there to make the region compliant, leading to even more micromanagement. I never looked over spy mechanics but now you can't see at what point a foreign nation's focus tree is towards completion anymore unless you have even more decryption, again making it more complicated.
I heard that when playing Hearts of Iron 3 as USSR, you had to pause for about 30 minutes to micromanage your whole nation, I can't tell whether that was true or not, but I think this is the direction that Hearts of Iron 4 is heading towards.
How I imagined Hearts of Iron 4 would develop? Before the 3rd DLC Walking the Tiger I imagined that the next DLCs will bring things like:
- More historical accuracy: The war with Iraq, Iran, the Ango-Soviet occupation, a proper Winter War and Continuation War with Finland.
- Better Peace Treaties: Peace treaties for minor wars were you only lose 1 or 2 territories depending on size, the ability to make peace before you have completly capitulated while losing territory but losing less.
- Actual trade with money: Yes, the governments could print more money and make war bonds as far as the internal economy is concerned, but as far as foreign nations are concerned that only made their currency less valueable.
- More alternative paths in the focus tree: Italy fighting Germany (being both fascists =/= being friends), Italy turning democratic, etc. This one the DLCs did pretty well.
- More historical accuracy as far as the details are concerned: Japan not being able to attack USSR if USA doesn't care about the Pacific War due to the non-aggresion pact in the focus, have deserts in Turkey, Hungary having cores on Transylvania and Ukraine in Southern Bessarabia, using of outdated 1930 population censuses instead of the 1935 population censuses.
- More flavor such as: unique infantry, vehicle units and voices for each new DLC nation, unique portraits for every nation, more generals for every nation, more news. I like the fact that the developers added allies, axis radios and will add famous speeches.
- Increase the size of tanks and vehicles compared to infantry on the map and make the colored bottons available from the options.
Is anyone else feeling like the game has lost it's enjoyment by adding more and more game mechanics rather than focusing on and improving the ones it already had?
Do you enjoy when new things such as a chain of command are added? Do you feel like such additions simply make the game more strategically challenging and more real-life like?
Personally, I don't find it more strategically challenging and more real-life like. It just changes the game from one where you need better tactics to one where you need more knowledge. You can easily learn how to best set up your chain of command, your factories, your research, your divisions, your navy, your airplanes from the internet, every strategy game has that, it's called build order, and after the build order was done in the early stages of the game, came the fighting where you actually had to have good strategy to win. But Hearts of Iron 4 has reached such a point where 90% of the game is only the build order, in other words, 90% of the game is knowledge about the game and there's little room left for skill.
It has become the norm in Hearts of Iron 4 to win the game because you can out-micromanage your opponents, rather than out-flank them or out-smart them in any other way. In multiplayer games, it seems that the player who can micromanage the best is usually the winner, and because it has ended up having so many game mechanics, if you know the build order in some game detail that the other player doesn't know about and simply ignores, you won simply by the virtue of having better knowledge about the game. Every game has an amount of required knowledge and micromanagement to play on a competent level, and from then on your on thinking makes the difference, but in Hearts of Iron 4 there are so many game mechanics and micromanagement that it makes up most of the game.
There is one thing to have tactical knowledge such as "it's better to farm the forest then the lane then back the forest" in a moba or "a rook is better on an open line" in chess, that you can figure out yourself if you think about it and from then on your own thinking can make the difference, than stats knowledge "this unit needs that template, that general, need to be placed in that position, that general needs that upgrade at that time, I only need to use this much fuel and for that, and I also need that research for it with that kind of plane support for maximum efficency" in Hearts of Iron 4. If one player doesn't know all the details of the build order, and with Hearts of Iron 4 there are many details, he already starts with a disadvantage, only if both player know all this huge amount of knowledge, because Hearts of Iron 4 has so many inputs, therefore complicated, they can play on equal grounds.
Of course, Hearts of Iron 4 doesn't have to be a competitive game, it was never made with esports in mind like Starcraft where there are a huge amount of tactics, but what I'm saying is that this extra micromanagement and new game mechanics which each DLC don't make it more strategically challenging and more like real-life, instead, you simply need to have more knowledge about the game, a better build order, to win the game. You need more knowledge to win rather than better tactics. It's useless to out-flank them or out-smart your enemies if their units have way better stats simply because they knew something about the game that you didn't know, and this, in my opinion, doesn't make it a realistic World War II simulator, but simply a game where you need to learn a lot in order to win.
Sorry for the long post, looking back, I understand if it's too long to read.
