1. Intro
Hi folks,
While I'm not a heavy forum user, HoI is pretty much the only game I find myself playing these days. I have to say that I really enjoy it, but my play experience could be greater. I'm not completely aware wether or not this type of thread exists somewhere deep in forums, nor is this the right place to post this stuff.
My only wish is that developers of the game would read this so they know what's bugging and what's causing moments of joy to their humble customer in this awesome game.
I'm aware that building joyful graphical experience out of zeros and ones isn't a simple task, and maybe a lot of things that I'm about to propose are difficult to make or change at the current game engine, it'd be cool if you at least would consider improving your player's game experience.
2. The main issue.
Most of my games end up either when the war starts or when I've completed my near-objectives. (i.e. destroying soviets as Germany, or stabilising the front as USSR against the germans, or sinking the IJN as USA). I just lose interest to play any further.
The reason for this is pretty simple: I don't find HoI4's land warfare system that much interesting. There's just too much or too little information of what is going on for planning and conducting intresting land-ops in this game at the moment.
Pre-war build-up and tinkering with divisional templates are fun, but the combat just isn't.
I'll go on to detail what's bugging me and I'll share my thougts on how this could be improved. I also let you know what I find a succes in the game.
I'll divide land warfare into three levels: tactical, operational, and strategic levels.
6. Summary
In case you were lazy or grew tired of my limping English, or poorly written text, I've written this stuff in short here what I'd like to see improved in this game:
Tactical level: Make battles more intresting by developing the battlescreen to give more essential information at the first glance. Also consider adding more flavour to single battles.
Operational level: AI needs work, which I assume you are working on now. Good, but if you could add more tools to the player for planning more simple, yet more sophisticated battleplans.
Strategic level: More information over the enemy is needed to make planning of operations more intersting and thoughtful. Military intelligence is a must!
These are just my thoughts, I'm open for discussion and aware that there are limitations (in terms of technical, personel and economical limitations) to these proposes. This was just an open letter form your humble customer how to improve his gaming experience in this great game.
Hi folks,
While I'm not a heavy forum user, HoI is pretty much the only game I find myself playing these days. I have to say that I really enjoy it, but my play experience could be greater. I'm not completely aware wether or not this type of thread exists somewhere deep in forums, nor is this the right place to post this stuff.
My only wish is that developers of the game would read this so they know what's bugging and what's causing moments of joy to their humble customer in this awesome game.
I'm aware that building joyful graphical experience out of zeros and ones isn't a simple task, and maybe a lot of things that I'm about to propose are difficult to make or change at the current game engine, it'd be cool if you at least would consider improving your player's game experience.
2. The main issue.
Most of my games end up either when the war starts or when I've completed my near-objectives. (i.e. destroying soviets as Germany, or stabilising the front as USSR against the germans, or sinking the IJN as USA). I just lose interest to play any further.
The reason for this is pretty simple: I don't find HoI4's land warfare system that much interesting. There's just too much or too little information of what is going on for planning and conducting intresting land-ops in this game at the moment.
Pre-war build-up and tinkering with divisional templates are fun, but the combat just isn't.
I'll go on to detail what's bugging me and I'll share my thougts on how this could be improved. I also let you know what I find a succes in the game.
I'll divide land warfare into three levels: tactical, operational, and strategic levels.
3. Tactical level
What I call tactical level in this game answers to how single battles are fought, won, or lost.
Big problem at this level is that it's really hard to know, how are my units faring against the enemy.
Green, yellow or red indicator of battle and number just don't tell that much, so you need to look into the battle screen.
3.1 The Battle Screen
The basic battle screen looks right now like this:
And by god it's boring! I'll tell why:
3.1.1 Minor skirmish, breaking the enemy lines, the battle of Stalingrad, what's the diffirence?
So what the screen tells me is who are participating in fight and what's their current status. It also shows their attack and defence values, health and organisation.
All of these are nice to have as you are able to estimate how units will fare in battle.
But what's difficult is to estimate the size of battle and balance of forces. Sure you could compare the number of divisions or the combat width. But then given the fact that division in this game can range from single infantry battallion of 1000 men to 25 battallions and 5 support companies of 27000 men, there's little information what division count provides to battle.
Also combat width tells us only how big units in fight are, not the composition of troops. For instance a single tank division of 20 width can consist between 50 to 500 medium tanks
Consider adding bar (indicated red in the picture above) to show how many battalions of infantry, how many tanks and guns (in plain numbers) are participating the fight. Also a bar (indicated blue in the picture) of a same fashion for reserves to tell what kind of units are being rushed into the fight.
3.1.2 Now how many coffins I was supposed to make?
Also problematic is the fact that you have little information on how have your units fared in this battle so far.
Only way is to look at division's strength and organisation bars, and boy do they tell little how your units perfomed yesterday (organisation dropped 1.3 points and strength fell by 5%)
It would be cool to see following:
I hover my mouse over division in fight at the battle screen and it'd tell me did my unit get beat or did it give some to enemy, lot easier and more interesting to follow the tides of war and fortunes of battle. This would also give the player actual information on how effective his/hers templates are. Right now the only thing that directly gives me data on how to improve divisional template is the attrition losses at the combat log screen (= do I need a maintenance company or not).
3.1.3 Learning from other paradox games
Though made for diffirent style of strategic gameplay there are notable examples how to make easy and understandable battle screens, for instance CKII's:
Here I see how big army is fighting the other and how are the armies constructed. What I also see is the losses, making it easier to anticipate the outcome of the battle (how many men are going to die). I think this screen is easy to look and understand at first glance how the battle is going.
3.2 Adding more content to battles
Right now battles are fairly simple: one side attack the other defends. Tactics in use affect the outcome of battle and add cool flavour to them (especially bridge battles). I find tactics in use provide more content ot battle and thus make them worthwhile to research in doctorines. Still more could be done to make single battle more intresting
Currently there are five phases of battle: Default, Close combat, Tactical withdrawal, Seize bridge, and Hold Bridge.
Adding more phases might make battles more varied and intresting. For example it'd be cool to see Prokhorovka style fast paced meeting engagement phase where losses are piling as fighting forces attempt to wrest the initiative from one other.
Another cool example would be to see preliminary bombardment phase like soviet breaktrough of finnish lines on the Karelian isthmus in 1944 where preparatory stage consisted basicly two days of massive bombardement while soviet infantry captured advantageous launch positions for their assault to break the finnish front line.
These improvements would make battles more intresting and enjoyable to follow.
What I call tactical level in this game answers to how single battles are fought, won, or lost.
Big problem at this level is that it's really hard to know, how are my units faring against the enemy.
Green, yellow or red indicator of battle and number just don't tell that much, so you need to look into the battle screen.
3.1 The Battle Screen
The basic battle screen looks right now like this:
And by god it's boring! I'll tell why:
3.1.1 Minor skirmish, breaking the enemy lines, the battle of Stalingrad, what's the diffirence?
So what the screen tells me is who are participating in fight and what's their current status. It also shows their attack and defence values, health and organisation.
All of these are nice to have as you are able to estimate how units will fare in battle.
But what's difficult is to estimate the size of battle and balance of forces. Sure you could compare the number of divisions or the combat width. But then given the fact that division in this game can range from single infantry battallion of 1000 men to 25 battallions and 5 support companies of 27000 men, there's little information what division count provides to battle.
Also combat width tells us only how big units in fight are, not the composition of troops. For instance a single tank division of 20 width can consist between 50 to 500 medium tanks
Consider adding bar (indicated red in the picture above) to show how many battalions of infantry, how many tanks and guns (in plain numbers) are participating the fight. Also a bar (indicated blue in the picture) of a same fashion for reserves to tell what kind of units are being rushed into the fight.
3.1.2 Now how many coffins I was supposed to make?
Also problematic is the fact that you have little information on how have your units fared in this battle so far.
Only way is to look at division's strength and organisation bars, and boy do they tell little how your units perfomed yesterday (organisation dropped 1.3 points and strength fell by 5%)
It would be cool to see following:
I hover my mouse over division in fight at the battle screen and it'd tell me did my unit get beat or did it give some to enemy, lot easier and more interesting to follow the tides of war and fortunes of battle. This would also give the player actual information on how effective his/hers templates are. Right now the only thing that directly gives me data on how to improve divisional template is the attrition losses at the combat log screen (= do I need a maintenance company or not).
3.1.3 Learning from other paradox games
Though made for diffirent style of strategic gameplay there are notable examples how to make easy and understandable battle screens, for instance CKII's:
Here I see how big army is fighting the other and how are the armies constructed. What I also see is the losses, making it easier to anticipate the outcome of the battle (how many men are going to die). I think this screen is easy to look and understand at first glance how the battle is going.
3.2 Adding more content to battles
Right now battles are fairly simple: one side attack the other defends. Tactics in use affect the outcome of battle and add cool flavour to them (especially bridge battles). I find tactics in use provide more content ot battle and thus make them worthwhile to research in doctorines. Still more could be done to make single battle more intresting
Currently there are five phases of battle: Default, Close combat, Tactical withdrawal, Seize bridge, and Hold Bridge.
Adding more phases might make battles more varied and intresting. For example it'd be cool to see Prokhorovka style fast paced meeting engagement phase where losses are piling as fighting forces attempt to wrest the initiative from one other.
Another cool example would be to see preliminary bombardment phase like soviet breaktrough of finnish lines on the Karelian isthmus in 1944 where preparatory stage consisted basicly two days of massive bombardement while soviet infantry captured advantageous launch positions for their assault to break the finnish front line.
These improvements would make battles more intresting and enjoyable to follow.
4. Operational level
For me operational level means stuff like battleplans, command groups and amphibious invasions.
I also divide it into two sublevels: small scale and large scale operations.
Small scale operation in my idea is an operation that you conduct with a single command group no matter how big.
Large scale operation always consist of two or more command groups conducting operations together (like pincer movements)
Now this is the tricky part, since I still haven't got a clue how the game wants you to build fronts (is it one armygroup commanded by field marshal and supplemented with tank armies of 24 to conduct offensives, or should you divide front into sectors of different armies)
Much of this area revolves around battleplans and available commands you can give to command groups.
4.1 Front management
Lets face it, right now managing the fronts are pain. The AI is having trouble understanding how the player wants his fronts to be used. This might lead to panzer army of 24 spreading out on the whole eastern front after achieving it's offensive goals.
Another issue is the thinlyness of frontline order, if the AI tries to hold the line with just depth of 1 province breakthrough would mean that AI has to detach forces somewhere along the frontline leading to shuffling and wholespread chaos.
Now I understand that the AI will recieve extensive overhaul come the 1.4 "Oak", but I'll share some thoughts to consider what might help the AI and the player both to plan and conduct awesome operations.
Right now front can be done in couple of ways: By drawing frontline to neutral/enemy border and hoping that front stays nearly the same should major/minor offensives happen. The other way is to draw a fallback line where units will dig-in and wait for the enemy. The former is useful when preparing to conduct offensive operations, the latter when building defensive lines along rivers, coastlines, etc.
Howerver after the line is drawn there's little what player can do to it, the cpu makes it's own interpetation and makes plan how to conduct it's mission. Easy and simple right?
Maybe not:
Here you see a limited offensive (indicated bright green) I thought to make in order to capture ideal positions to capture of a city in front of the offensives objective line. For some apparent reason the AI thinks I want to capture also the coastal mountains (and propably bleed out my japanese army for nothing) indicated yellow.
4.1.1 Giving the AI tools to fight
If we look what kind of orders we have for the AI we'll find out that they are pretty straight forward. We draw the frontline and we expect the AI to hold it. We draw the offensive line and we expect the AI to capture the pointed terrain. As for no, we've had a little to say on how the AI conducts it offensives.
The breakthrough order just rushes units as fast as possible towards the target area. This has nothing to say how the AI will attack inside the given axis of advance, so tools to adjust this would be great.
4.1.2 Centers of gravity
It would be cool to see that you'd be given ability to place centers of gravity to your offensives and defenses (or schwerpunkt as the germans would call it). This could be done by giving option to select at from which provinces along the frontline the attack should start (this way you could avoid the first battle of your offensive to be river crossing assault into fortified and dug-in city). Another function for this would be that you could give the AI an important sector of your front line that it has to focus on more to keep (weakspots such as gaps on riverlines, or important places like cities, airfields, etc.)
4.1.3 Setting up parameters
Annoyed when AI spreads your units along the front when you'd want to keep them concentrated? Add funtion to be able to specify to single command group how wide front line is it allowed to have (in terms of provinces).
Another nice feature would be that you could give to front management AI is depth to the defence so you could give i.e. frontline/fallbackline order with depth of 2. That way the AI could try to make line where front is kept, but reserves incase of breakthrough in the line are stored behind the line istead along it like they now are.
4.2 More beef to offenses
Right now there are two ways to give the battle plan AI orders either the basic offense and the breakthrough. Both are basicly just headlong charges towars objective. Adding more ways of conducting offensive orders to this potential battleplan system would be great.
4.2.1 "The flank and roll command"
What I call flank and roll command would give AI following interpretation of offence:
Units conducting the offence would try to get to their target as fast as possible from their center of gravity that is on flank of the offensive area. After that units would try to capture the whole offensive line leaving enemy units pushed to the south corner that's threatening to come a pocket.
4.2.2"Breakthroug and roll"
Similiar to flank and roll, however now the center of gravity is at the center and units will start spreading into two directions:
4.2.3 "Pincer movement"
The AI would use two centers of gravity to start offence these lines of advence would try to join together and thus trap enemy units between them:
Planning and conducting operations is serious buisnes that requires thought and care. Improvements mentioned above aren't supposed to make things easier. Instead they'd give player more flexibility and ways to make offensive and defensive operations.
Right now you can make large operation (two or more command groups) to make more complex battleplans. Increasing variety how to use a single command group with simple, easy to implement and conduct orders would give ton of possibilities to large scale operations.
For me operational level means stuff like battleplans, command groups and amphibious invasions.
I also divide it into two sublevels: small scale and large scale operations.
Small scale operation in my idea is an operation that you conduct with a single command group no matter how big.
Large scale operation always consist of two or more command groups conducting operations together (like pincer movements)
Now this is the tricky part, since I still haven't got a clue how the game wants you to build fronts (is it one armygroup commanded by field marshal and supplemented with tank armies of 24 to conduct offensives, or should you divide front into sectors of different armies)
Much of this area revolves around battleplans and available commands you can give to command groups.
4.1 Front management
Lets face it, right now managing the fronts are pain. The AI is having trouble understanding how the player wants his fronts to be used. This might lead to panzer army of 24 spreading out on the whole eastern front after achieving it's offensive goals.
Another issue is the thinlyness of frontline order, if the AI tries to hold the line with just depth of 1 province breakthrough would mean that AI has to detach forces somewhere along the frontline leading to shuffling and wholespread chaos.
Now I understand that the AI will recieve extensive overhaul come the 1.4 "Oak", but I'll share some thoughts to consider what might help the AI and the player both to plan and conduct awesome operations.
Right now front can be done in couple of ways: By drawing frontline to neutral/enemy border and hoping that front stays nearly the same should major/minor offensives happen. The other way is to draw a fallback line where units will dig-in and wait for the enemy. The former is useful when preparing to conduct offensive operations, the latter when building defensive lines along rivers, coastlines, etc.
Howerver after the line is drawn there's little what player can do to it, the cpu makes it's own interpetation and makes plan how to conduct it's mission. Easy and simple right?
Maybe not:
Here you see a limited offensive (indicated bright green) I thought to make in order to capture ideal positions to capture of a city in front of the offensives objective line. For some apparent reason the AI thinks I want to capture also the coastal mountains (and propably bleed out my japanese army for nothing) indicated yellow.
4.1.1 Giving the AI tools to fight
If we look what kind of orders we have for the AI we'll find out that they are pretty straight forward. We draw the frontline and we expect the AI to hold it. We draw the offensive line and we expect the AI to capture the pointed terrain. As for no, we've had a little to say on how the AI conducts it offensives.
The breakthrough order just rushes units as fast as possible towards the target area. This has nothing to say how the AI will attack inside the given axis of advance, so tools to adjust this would be great.
4.1.2 Centers of gravity
It would be cool to see that you'd be given ability to place centers of gravity to your offensives and defenses (or schwerpunkt as the germans would call it). This could be done by giving option to select at from which provinces along the frontline the attack should start (this way you could avoid the first battle of your offensive to be river crossing assault into fortified and dug-in city). Another function for this would be that you could give the AI an important sector of your front line that it has to focus on more to keep (weakspots such as gaps on riverlines, or important places like cities, airfields, etc.)
4.1.3 Setting up parameters
Annoyed when AI spreads your units along the front when you'd want to keep them concentrated? Add funtion to be able to specify to single command group how wide front line is it allowed to have (in terms of provinces).
Another nice feature would be that you could give to front management AI is depth to the defence so you could give i.e. frontline/fallbackline order with depth of 2. That way the AI could try to make line where front is kept, but reserves incase of breakthrough in the line are stored behind the line istead along it like they now are.
4.2 More beef to offenses
Right now there are two ways to give the battle plan AI orders either the basic offense and the breakthrough. Both are basicly just headlong charges towars objective. Adding more ways of conducting offensive orders to this potential battleplan system would be great.
4.2.1 "The flank and roll command"
What I call flank and roll command would give AI following interpretation of offence:
Units conducting the offence would try to get to their target as fast as possible from their center of gravity that is on flank of the offensive area. After that units would try to capture the whole offensive line leaving enemy units pushed to the south corner that's threatening to come a pocket.
4.2.2"Breakthroug and roll"
Similiar to flank and roll, however now the center of gravity is at the center and units will start spreading into two directions:
4.2.3 "Pincer movement"
The AI would use two centers of gravity to start offence these lines of advence would try to join together and thus trap enemy units between them:
Planning and conducting operations is serious buisnes that requires thought and care. Improvements mentioned above aren't supposed to make things easier. Instead they'd give player more flexibility and ways to make offensive and defensive operations.
Right now you can make large operation (two or more command groups) to make more complex battleplans. Increasing variety how to use a single command group with simple, easy to implement and conduct orders would give ton of possibilities to large scale operations.
5. Strategic level
What I refer to as strategic level consist of fronts (eastern front, african theatre, Pacific area of operations, et.), nations fighting each other, opening of new fronts with grand amphibious invasions, etc.
Now the strategic level AI has had the most feedback from players i think (Germany declaring war to litteraly whole world in just 6 months after begining of hostilies, or Commonwealth nations inability to defend themselves, such as Raj and Australia who would send their troops to fight in Europe while leaving their home undefended.)
I won't adress AI issues on strategic level, the problem is most likely recognised allready. However what I must adress is lack of important core feature in this game.
5.1 Military intelligence
Want to open western front while Germany is occupied with russians? Important factors must be reconsidered: The structure of Wehrmacht at the planned landing area, the condition of Luftwaffe, and what about the presence of Kriegsmarine capital ships? Right now you have no clue what so ever what your enemy has as the game is completely lacking military inteligence.
Currently the game gives overall intel of other countries. However if you were German player trying to bomb Brittain to smitherines, wouldn't you be interested of knowing how many modern fighters does your enemy have?
Same goes for navies. It means little if the enemy has 22-26 ships mainly escorts or subs. But then it would be huge diffirence should the enemy have 6 BBs, 6 CVs and 14 escorts. Currently it's impossible to estimate your enemy in terms of army, airforce, or fleet composition.
Maybe add this feature soon? MIniser of intelligence to affect what you can see from your enemy and what enemy can see from you.
It would help to know that enemy airforce consist of around 1200 planes out of which 500 are fighters out of which 350 are tier II planes and 150 are tier I
Given to the fact that WW2 nations had knew pretty much what they were fighting against in terms of ships, planes and tanks it would make sense to add more detailed intel on the enemy.
What I refer to as strategic level consist of fronts (eastern front, african theatre, Pacific area of operations, et.), nations fighting each other, opening of new fronts with grand amphibious invasions, etc.
Now the strategic level AI has had the most feedback from players i think (Germany declaring war to litteraly whole world in just 6 months after begining of hostilies, or Commonwealth nations inability to defend themselves, such as Raj and Australia who would send their troops to fight in Europe while leaving their home undefended.)
I won't adress AI issues on strategic level, the problem is most likely recognised allready. However what I must adress is lack of important core feature in this game.
5.1 Military intelligence
Want to open western front while Germany is occupied with russians? Important factors must be reconsidered: The structure of Wehrmacht at the planned landing area, the condition of Luftwaffe, and what about the presence of Kriegsmarine capital ships? Right now you have no clue what so ever what your enemy has as the game is completely lacking military inteligence.
Currently the game gives overall intel of other countries. However if you were German player trying to bomb Brittain to smitherines, wouldn't you be interested of knowing how many modern fighters does your enemy have?
Same goes for navies. It means little if the enemy has 22-26 ships mainly escorts or subs. But then it would be huge diffirence should the enemy have 6 BBs, 6 CVs and 14 escorts. Currently it's impossible to estimate your enemy in terms of army, airforce, or fleet composition.
Maybe add this feature soon? MIniser of intelligence to affect what you can see from your enemy and what enemy can see from you.
It would help to know that enemy airforce consist of around 1200 planes out of which 500 are fighters out of which 350 are tier II planes and 150 are tier I
Given to the fact that WW2 nations had knew pretty much what they were fighting against in terms of ships, planes and tanks it would make sense to add more detailed intel on the enemy.
6. Summary
In case you were lazy or grew tired of my limping English, or poorly written text, I've written this stuff in short here what I'd like to see improved in this game:
Tactical level: Make battles more intresting by developing the battlescreen to give more essential information at the first glance. Also consider adding more flavour to single battles.
Operational level: AI needs work, which I assume you are working on now. Good, but if you could add more tools to the player for planning more simple, yet more sophisticated battleplans.
Strategic level: More information over the enemy is needed to make planning of operations more intersting and thoughtful. Military intelligence is a must!
These are just my thoughts, I'm open for discussion and aware that there are limitations (in terms of technical, personel and economical limitations) to these proposes. This was just an open letter form your humble customer how to improve his gaming experience in this great game.
