What can I do to make Hoi4 feel more grognardy
I have NATO icons enabled
I have NATO icons enabled
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I've always felt a little sorry for the devs that did all the 3D modeling and animation. I have it turned on, despite nearly five decades of familiarity with wargames using NATO(ish) symbols and cardboard counters.
Quite simply, I'm rarely zoomed into the map close enough even to see all the nifty animations. 90% of the time, I'm looking at counters, even if they're not NATO symbology. There's a global war to fight, so I'm always moving around to the next thing to check, evaluate, choose, and act upon. There's probably some information in those animations. I suspect, for example, that which planes are getting shot down is influenced by current combat results or air superiority level or something. But it's not worth sitting there and watching for five minutes to puzzle out. Other than experiments, I don't seem to have time to watch a battle play out to see which tactics get chosen every hour, or watch a naval combat blow-by-blow (even if I happen to learn about it in time!)
The one bit of information that I've found to be much more accessible in the graphics is the retreat direction from a province. Very clear when you're zoomed in tight; very hard to read on the zoomed-out counter display. But, as with the naval battles, I'm not often watching just one battle so I can immediately hop in and redirect exploitation forces to overrun that retreat. There's lots of important battles to keep tabs on.
Love the looks, especially the map and sunlight on the ocean, but I haven't learned to appreciate whatever utility is built into that detailed level.
Quite simply, I'm rarely zoomed into the map close enough even to see all the nifty animations. 90% of the time, I'm looking at counters, even if they're not NATO symbology. There's a global war to fight, so I'm always moving around to the next thing to check, evaluate, choose, and act upon. There's probably some information in those animations. I suspect, for example, that which planes are getting shot down is influenced by current combat results or air superiority level or something. But it's not worth sitting there and watching for five minutes to puzzle out. Other than experiments, I don't seem to have time to watch a battle play out to see which tactics get chosen every hour, or watch a naval combat blow-by-blow (even if I happen to learn about it in time!)
The one bit of information that I've found to be much more accessible in the graphics is the retreat direction from a province. Very clear when you're zoomed in tight; very hard to read on the zoomed-out counter display. But, as with the naval battles, I'm not often watching just one battle so I can immediately hop in and redirect exploitation forces to overrun that retreat. There's lots of important battles to keep tabs on.
Love the looks, especially the map and sunlight on the ocean, but I haven't learned to appreciate whatever utility is built into that detailed level.
well I'm not quite at the point where I want the games looking like an old tabletop wargame from the 70's or whatever
I still appreciate HOI4's eye candy lol
I've heard two versions, they're mostly based on WWII US Army or Wehrmacht symbology or a mix of two. I don't have an exhaustive knowledge of symbology of those times but they're not current NATO. And some are completely fictious, such units have never been denoted by these symbols.
Wait… do you mean there are “pre” NATO symbols? Tell me more.
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There's mods and house rules you can utilize to make it a bit more grognard:y.
For example, I myself often play with mods that limit the command ability of my generals and field marshals to 12 and 3 respectively, meaning rather than lumping all my units on a front under the same general/FM I'm forced to set up more complex and detailed orders of battle, and also need to make use of more generals/Field Marshals than the vanilla game ever requires you to. And while it's not a mod, I also limit myself via house rule that generals and field marshals are only allowed to command units in the same general area, so if I'm playing as Germany that means 1 field marshal for the western front, and 1 or 2 for Poland. Then when the units and generals assigned to Poland are done, they get reassigned to the western front FM and, if needed, a new Army group is created. Then another chain of command gets set up for Norway and finland, another for the Balkans, another for North Africa, and so on.
Makes the game a lot more fiddly, but also a lot more enjoyable (for me at least) since I don't have to deal with the weirdness of Rommel commanding every German tank division on the globe.
There's also various mods that change up how the division designer works, that let you design tanks and planes far more in-depth, that force you to use resources to power your factories, that change up how the naval game works, and so on, so while you'll never reach the levels of HOI3, there's plenty of grognarding to be had.
And that's not even mentioning Black Ice
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There's a joint doc on common symbology. That's what's normally meant by "NATO symbols". But it's rather recent thing, NATO existed for decades with countries using their own systems. If I'm not mistaken SOME symbology existed since 19th century but the earliest maps I've read were WWI. But NATO symbology is good for NATO where interoperability in the key, in-game it's less informative. Here you may have breakthrough inf divs, hold-the-line inf divs, specialized inf divs used for low supply areas etc. and you can use different symbols for them. IRL you'd use the same but at least you scribble div number above so if you know div's TOE (and who's been reinforced with what) you can deduce div capabilities. Luckily hundreds of other people don't need to read your in-game maps so you can use weird symbols that yet be instantly recognizable and more informative to you personally.
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I use a mod that replaces the sprites and rectangular labels with square 'icons' like earlier versions of HOI had and like old paper and card hexgrid wargames used
Je suis un Grognard . . .
Je suis un Grognard . . .
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I remember someone writing that he would mount Operation Barbarossa with the historical Order of Battle
Probably also Poland, France
C'est tres Grognard
Probably also Poland, France
C'est tres Grognard
NATO symbols, per se, didn't exist until after WW II, of course. 1949, to be exact. Before then, most major nations had some sort of symbology for military maps, dating back a couple of centuries (at least). The NATO set was heavily influenced by the US system in use at the time, but it's not the only source for the NATO system. You can find a scanned US Army field manual from 1941 (FM 21-30) here. For comparison, here's the 1943-45 symbols used by the German army. (Also, notably for grognards, in the Avalon Hill monster game of the Normandy invasion, "The Longest Day", in contrast to AH's usual practice of NATO symbols.) For an older example, here's a scan of a period map in the US National Archives depicting Civil War units on the Manassas / Bull Run battlefield. You'll find the diagonal slash on the cavalry blocks familiar, though the infantry are just empty squares, while the artillery is not entirely unlike the German WW II symbol.Wait… do you mean there are “pre” NATO symbols? Tell me more.
The US publishes the "Joint Military Symbology" standard as MIL-STD-2525A. You can also find it referenced as NATO standard APP-6A. There's a lot more to it than what you usually see called "NATO symbols" in wargames. The core designs -- crossed bandoliers for infantry, oval for a tank track, etc -- and the size codes (XX, III, etc) are usually the same, but there's a whole lot of detail in the full NATO set that usually gets left out of games.
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Thank you for posting that. There is something that I've wanted to ask here for a long time - considered making a bug report - about the in-game "NATO-style" AA and AT symbols. I know they don't match the modern symbology, but was uncertain if PDS actually has them correct for WWII-era. It appears that for AA at least, the answer is yes. I still don't know where they got the AT symbol from.
At least the 3D modelling and animation is slightly more relevant here than HoI 3
The 3d sprites annoy me; it's a division, not a single tank, or a single soldier . . .