It there much point in using armored cars?

[Petite]

did you play directly after release

Jap needs 3k SPW in China with 2 IK
ENG needs x SPW in 36 with 1 IK

Both are killed by engine because lost/day if someone use smal numbers of equip like the AI did

anyone forget attrition and reliability if you need under XXX units

 

[Talamare]

Armored Cars are basically too expensive for anything they are good at
Sure they are okay at Suppression, but still too production intensive for the marginal advantage they offer.

They could EASILY receive a 40 production cost reduction and still only be 'okay' in usefulness.

 

[Meglok]

To chime in on collab: testing conclusively showed that 2x collab on poland as Germany is always worth it in terms of factory count. Poland is a smaller Industrial power than China, so I say go for it.

Burning cic on espionage is dependent upon your nation. Japan, France, or Italy are so deficient in cic early on that diverting even 5 hurts. It may pay off later but for Japan manpower for garrisons is the least of your issues once you puppet China. Italy is pretty much a basket case no matter what you do now, and collab govs on colonial territories or Iraq aren't necessarily a priority.

Germany, Russia, USA, even GB have cic to spare, agents not so much. Germany should be slapping collab on Poland, France, and Russia at the very minimum.

 

[Black_Shade]

Burning cic on espionage is dependent upon your nation. Japan, France, or Italy are so deficient in cic early on that diverting even 5 hurts. It may pay off later but for Japan manpower for garrisons is the least of your issues once you puppet China. Italy is pretty much a basket case no matter what you do now, and collab govs on colonial territories or Iraq aren't necessarily a priority.

Germany, Russia, USA, even GB have cic to spare, agents not so much. Germany should be slapping collab on Poland, France, and Russia at the very minimum.

Japan should absolutely do it, because they need steel and doing it in China gives you collaboration in all of it's cores (including warlords), so you can take the southern GQ provinces and get another 80 steel for yourself without having to go through puppets.

Similarly, doing it on the DEI is also a good idea for the desperately needed oil. Malaysia as well for the massive resources, but those are less critical than the oil of the DEI.

 

[Zauberelefant]

Burning cic on espionage is dependent upon your nation. Japan, France, or Italy are so deficient in cic early on that diverting even 5 hurts. It may pay off later but for Japan manpower for garrisons is the least of your issues once you puppet China. Italy is pretty much a basket case no matter what you do now, and collab govs on colonial territories or Iraq aren't necessarily a priority.

Germany, Russia, USA, even GB have cic to spare, agents not so much. Germany should be slapping collab on Poland, France, and Russia at the very minimum.

It's not about manpower saving, but CIC and MIC Control. A collaboration government is the strongest choice here, yielding 75% of both CIC and MIC.

 

[ecpgieicg]

No, I got those losses because I was lazy and didn't micro the eastern front as well as I should have. 200,000 German losses versus 3 million Soviet losses is only a mediocre game for me against the AI on normal difficulty.

If I had put real effort into it, I could have trimmed those losses down to 150,000 or 100,000.

Due to logistics limitations on the eastern front, I could have easily put more IC into things like armored cars for garrison duty instead of having tanks, trucks, and infantry kits sitting the stockpile doing nothing or in divisions sitting idle in the west since they couldn't be used against the Soviets.

Only 3 mil losses on Soviet? Man, HOI4 puts no work in AI throughout expansions.

This is with using Black ICE. (It has Expert AI embedded.) Much more inline with historical reality.

 

[Zauberelefant]

Only 3 mil losses on Soviet? Man, HOI4 puts no work in AI throughout expansions.

This is with using Black ICE. (It has Expert AI embedded.) Much more inline with historical reality.
View attachment 594463

You have to announce irony on the web, you know?

 

[Secret Master]

Only 3 mil losses on Soviet? Man, HOI4 puts no work in AI throughout expansions.

You have to announce irony on the web, you know?

I'd rather meme it.

 

[ecpgieicg]

I'd rather meme it.

View attachment 594630

Nice.

And lel. I didn't even notice USSR had such favorable casualty ratio over Germany.

 

[seattle]

I'd go as far as to state that BICE, Total War and such mods are mostly more difficult for 2 reasons:

- logistics --> Germany can't sweep the Soviets in one thrust. Just like in history, logistics limited the advance considerably.

- oil --> unlike vanilla you don't have an unlimited supply via Iran/Iraq as Germany. Fuel will limit your mobile forces to realistic numbers

In other words, vanilla could be fixed in one afternoon:
- Middle Eastern oil fields are "owned" by UK (little flag on the oil fields).
- Increase logistic costs or reduce Russian infrastructure. Just bloody steal from Total War mod if PDS can't solve it themselves.

 

[Secret Master]

- Middle Eastern oil fields are "owned" by UK (little flag on the oil fields).
- Increase logistic costs or reduce Russian infrastructure. Just bloody steal from Total War mod if PDS can't solve it themselves.

We did similar things in our MP mod. It helped, but didn't achieve the kind of balance we wanted on its own.

But...

...You know what really hurts Germany? Increased attrition through lower base reliability on most vehicles (including trucks). Lower base reliability, coupled with worse supply situations, coupled with some modification to how certain terrain/weather cause attrition, and you end up with seasonal offensives and panzer divisions that actually have to take a break to replace losses and resupply.

 

[ecpgieicg]

We did similar things in our MP mod. It helped, but didn't achieve the kind of balance we wanted on its own.

But...

...You know what really hurts Germany? Increased attrition through lower base reliability on most vehicles (including trucks). Lower base reliability, coupled with worse supply situations, coupled with some modification to how certain terrain/weather cause attrition, and you end up with seasonal offensives and panzer divisions that actually have to take a break to replace losses and resupply.

If we focus on SP experience, there are various ways to add immersions to German playthrough -- and the various mods already apply their own solutions.

Whether lower reliability makes it more difficult, I don't know. Reliability can be overcome by tech and by production. Germany is strong in HOI4 because it is able to invade territories with a lot of factories. Production isn't a real problem. Tech isn't either since we try to make Germany more ahead with military, engineering, and construction research as it was the case in real history. At best you scare the player a little and make him/her postpone their aggression for better preparation. That's good enough in my eyes. But not really making Germany a challenge in the sense that only precise strategy and flawless execution can win the game.

Meanwhile in MP, USSR doesn't really need extra buff. (The bigger problem with most MP games is USSR isn't even manned....)

EDIT:

On a second thought, even as Japan and Italy I invade the same places and get the production capacity as a result. Before Allies intervene, Netherland is annexed. Belgium is annexed. etc. USSR does not dare to attack until much later.

And I've tried waiting around and not expanding initially. The games haven't become more difficult either. At least with BICE, USSR will attack Germany if it deems Germany too weak. Another good thing I find in BICE is that -- I've tried it twice now -- USSR attacked me as Germany precisely when I commit forces on the main island of UK.

Not sure how you ever make the game truly difficult for the Axis power in SP. Logistics is a good start. Next, better diplomacy mechanics and diplomacy AI?
Perhaps people expect democracies to lean back and be reactive in HOI4. People get the impression that Allies were not proactive in re-armament before. As if "Peace in Our Time" was not accompanied by battleship construction. That is not true. As time passes, with more progress in re-armament, there was no indication whatsoever that the democracies wouldn't be more proactive in intervention.

I think the resource situation can be made more realistic and more balanced after having actual resource production and accrued quantities. Right now, you can't balance when resource consumption on the same equipment varies due to production time. The resource places and resource costs on production are pretty random.

 

[Secret Master]

Whether lower reliability makes it more difficult, I don't know. Reliability can be overcome by tech and by production.

Lower base reliability in tanks and trucks is more or less a "tax" on production, tech, land XP, and possibility support companies. All of these are things Germany has in abundance.

We see a lot more use of MAINT in our games to offset the reliability, tying up a support company slot that might otherwise be used on something else. We also see more tank designs being skewed towards reliability than armor or firepower.

But what's important to note is that it's not just low reliability. When combined with higher/more sources of attrition and some of the tweaks me made to supply, it forces German players to expend their vast resources to overcome obstacles instead of sweep the Soviets easily.

 

[ecpgieicg]

Lower base reliability in tanks and trucks is more or less a "tax" on production, tech, land XP, and possibility support companies. All of these are things Germany has in abundance.

We see a lot more use of MAINT in our games to offset the reliability, tying up a support company slot that might otherwise be used on something else. We also see more tank designs being skewed towards reliability than armor or firepower.

But what's important to note is that it's not just low reliability. When combined with higher/more sources of attrition and some of the tweaks me made to supply, it forces German players to expend their vast resources to overcome obstacles instead of sweep the Soviets easily.

I understand.

I guess difficulty may not be the best word when you dig into the details. The game does not have to be difficult in that it requires precise strategy, execution and it threatens a loss on the player. It is the immersion and challenge that vanilla HOI4 lacks as soon as the player gets a basic grasp of the game. Supply is one of the problems.

 

[Secret Master]

I guess difficulty may not be the best word when you dig into the details. The game does not have to be difficult in that it requires precise strategy, execution and it threatens a loss on the player. It is the immersion and challenge that vanilla HOI4 lacks as soon as the player gets a basic grasp of the game. Supply is one of the problems.

You are certainly on to something.

I will add something I consider to be of considerable importance in PDX game design in general. (I will wax philosophical for a few moments.)

Once you know the game mechanics of, say, HOI4, well enough, it's pretty smooth sailing in terms of winning. But time and again I see players struggling to learn the mechanics of a game like HOI4. (On another day, I'd post a series of links from people begging for help on the forum with their invasions of France.) When Podcat revealed that the most commonly used difficulty setting was civilian, I realized that a substantial number of players, new ones in particular, don't learn the mechanics that quickly. And in some cases, they never really learn them at all.

This creates a weird situation for the Devs. On the one hand, I'd personally love to see more complicated and punishing mechanics related to supply, attrition, and weather. Hell, I'd love a mechanic for ammunition production. But even if we assume perfect interface and perfect tutorials (that ain't gonna happen in any game ever), I question whether the mechanics I'd like to see would increase or decrease sales.

That's the real question, isn't it? Johan said (many years ago when EU3 was in development) that if he could make the company millions of dollars designing a game about pink ponies, he'd be interested. The Devs gotta earn, and I'm not their only customer. (Although I wonder what kind of game I could get PDX to design if I was Bill Gates and just gave them enough money to cover the entire development cycle of a AAA game to make a game just for me.)

And yes, you can make these mechanics rules you can toggle, but that creates an added burden on testing and quality control and AI, because you now have 50 more game states to test.

 

[seattle]

You are certainly on to something.

I will add something I consider to be of considerable importance in PDX game design in general. (I will wax philosophical for a few moments.)

Once you know the game mechanics of, say, HOI4, well enough, it's pretty smooth sailing in terms of winning. But time and again I see players struggling to learn the mechanics of a game like HOI4. (On another day, I'd post a series of links from people begging for help on the forum with their invasions of France.) When Podcat revealed that the most commonly used difficulty setting was civilian, I realized that a substantial number of players, new ones in particular, don't learn the mechanics that quickly. And in some cases, they never really learn them at all.

This creates a weird situation for the Devs. On the one hand, I'd personally love to see more complicated and punishing mechanics related to supply, attrition, and weather. Hell, I'd love a mechanic for ammunition production. But even if we assume perfect interface and perfect tutorials (that ain't gonna happen in any game ever), I question whether the mechanics I'd like to see would increase or decrease sales.

That's the real question, isn't it? Johan said (many years ago when EU3 was in development) that if he could make the company millions of dollars designing a game about pink ponies, he'd be interested. The Devs gotta earn, and I'm not their only customer. (Although I wonder what kind of game I could get PDX to design if I was Bill Gates and just gave them enough money to cover the entire development cycle of a AAA game to make a game just for me.)

And yes, you can make these mechanics rules you can toggle, but that creates an added burden on testing and quality control and AI, because you now have 50 more game states to test.

Let's assume that sales wouldn't be affected in either direction.

Why would you benefit from added complexity like ammunitions production?

It's already there in the form of major mods like BICE or its streamlined cousin Total War or the even less complex Hearts of Oak, all of which are vastly more complex than vanilla to different degrees.

Point being, the secret of success is that PDS delivers a great and extremely moddable framework and the users can pick and choose any mod that suits their fancy.

I agree with you that they have to model the weather to play a significant role and not leave it to mods.
But that's because weather doesn't make the game more complicated. Players would have to make more sensible decisions like digging in for winter instead of rushing the panzers towards the Urals...
That wouldn't scare away casual players unlike more complex production chains.

 

[Secret Master]

Let's assume that sales wouldn't be affected in either direction.

A very odd assumption in this context, but I'm game. Let's dance.

Why would you benefit from added complexity like ammunitions production?

I'm a big fan of the production side of the game. I don't like the weird items BlackIce has people produce, but it's not because I don't want a more complicated production chain, but because I don't think adding things like uniforms adds anything to the game. But having read things like Tooze's Wages of Destruction, having to produce ammunition (and a supply system that integrates this properly) would make the game more fun, more immersive, and more strategic if the production of ammunition required certain scarce resources for some items. (I'm thinking tungsten for AT guns and TDs.)

(For those wondering, the old HOI3 "supply" isn't really what I want, since supplies were 100% fungible and tradeable, resulting in weird things like every Soviet game, the Red Army was firing Japanese bullets and the soldiers were eating Japanese rations thanks to Japan buying Soviet oil for years on end.)

I also think adding ammunition would create a more effective "cap" to operation lengths and to army sizes (than most suggestions on the forum) in the sense that even if Germany has enough rifles and Panthers to put 85 million men into divisions, ammunition production/limitations would ensure that even if you somehow magically had the supply lines to put those 85 million against the Soviets, you couldn't constantly attack for six months regardless of weather or other considerations.

Point being, the secret of success is that PDS delivers a great and extremely moddable framework and the users can pick and choose any mod that suits their fancy.

Well, I don't disagree with that. But the kind of things I envision with ammunition production are not something I think mods up are to. And, being someone who plays MP with mod(s) that are specifically tailored to the MP experience I want, I know that even mods have limitations (in terms of testing and design ability) that the Devs do not have.

Kudos to the folks who work on our MP mod, but they ain't gettin' paid for that work, and the result is that it takes months sometimes to get changes we want implemented and tested. Just in time for a new patch or DLC to come out, ruining everything again.

That wouldn't scare away casual players unlike more complex production chains.

Hmm, I would have thought weather and attrition would scare away players before production chains. Again, I might be biased by the forum threads I see every month from players who can't defeat France on low difficulty.

 

[FindFloppies]

Can this be circumvented by setting garrison priority to low in the Recruit & Deploy tab?

That's a bad idea. You do that, and you'll have garrisons short of equipment, and not suppressing properly, which escalates losses, and causes resistance to rise.

Don't take this path.

 

[FindFloppies]

It was a previous patch when the mechanics were bit different. I also didn't have 90% compliance upon capitulation due to spamming collaboration government my first game (I only ran collaboration once on France). And I put civilian oversight in place to speed up compliance gain, when a better occupation law could have cut resistance down.

I generally run Local Police Force till 40% compliance, then Civilian Oversight after that, unless I have let resistance get way out of hand, and have to play catch up a bit. Even then, I try not to run higher settings any longer than I have to.

 

[Harin]

...create a more effective "cap" to operation lengths and to army sizes...

These are two areas vanilla could really stand to fix, in my opinion. Vanilla lets us produce many more divisions than the nations had in the war and then lets us put them on attack without pause until the war is over. Their is little sense of unit and time scarcity in vanilla, something the leaders in WW2 dealt with constantly.

In vanilla there are no deadlines, because you can keep attacking until the AI is dead. If there were operational lengths, as you mentioned, then time would matter much more. If you cannot knock out the enemy before your operation runs out of supplies or seasonal weather ends it for you, then the enemy gets time to rebuild and bring in new tech. This would simulate the ebb and flow of the war much better than vanilla does now. Time mattered. Risks were taken for that very reason.

The lack of unit scarcity in the game also takes some of that risk taking out of the game. If you want to invade the USSR, then how do you protect all those western beaches? In vanilla, you just spam divisions to hold the ports and still have enough divisions to defeat the USSR quickly.

This abundance did not exist in the war.