Italy or Soviets, which do you think is coming first?

  • We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
I agree, but I think that is already in the game. I am constantly having to build and repair infra and naval bases to keep my army moving. Invade China as Japan and tell me this isn't already built into the game. I try not to argue other people's game experiences, but I have to wonder how anyone hasn't experienced this or seen the myriad of posts on steam from players not knowing why they have yellow exclamation marks on their troops, or why they won't attack when ordered to.

I just don't think the leader of a nation who is commander of ALL armed forces etc. needs to turn into a supply officer, or whatever is involved in making supply "harder".

It's not about making supply harder, but about making engaging with the supplies system more meaningful. The only way to solve supplies issue at the moment is to either go on a ridiculous infrastructure building spree (which is also not a satisfying game experience), or to advance further so you get more of the supply area (and its vp), which just feels wrong as even if you capture some industry it would not be available for use immediately. Well, unless the supplies issue is due to your allies flooding the area with their useless troops in which case you're out of luck.
 
  • 2
Reactions:
In hoi2 there were supply "warehouses" (and other resources) scattered throughout your country. When I invaded the USA with Italy (in 37-38) I remember that the "trick" was to target US warehouses that practically passing from them to me, I suddenly had strong troops and they started to have heavy malus. In the end I puppet the USA and I won the game.
 
  • 1
Reactions:
to advance further so you get more of the supply area (and its vp), which just feels wrong as even if you capture some industry it would not be available for use immediately. Well, unless the supplies issue is due to your allies flooding the area with their useless troops in which case you're out of luck.
Not at all. Supply bottlenecks tend to be places where ships or trains unload into trucks and vagons, so capturing town leads to capture of places where it is easy to unload freight trains, spare tracks and housing for labor and so on. Also since unloading takes a load of time, a spare place to put a train to, is needed. So yeah, if you capture large city, supply situation vastly improves compared to pre-capture.

The rail track and ocean by themselves have almost limitless capacity, so if you are out of supply, it's either Las few(or many) miles to the front are too long for the trucks and vagons you have, or the ability to offload from ship/train is limited.
 
I just don't think the leader of a nation who is commander of ALL armed forces etc. needs to turn into a supply officer, or whatever is involved in making supply "harder".

I agree. I do not want to be a supply clerk, but with modern software there is a way to make logistics as important as it was in the war and keep it fun.

Logistics is one of the most important things a national leader, or any military leader, addresses. Mussolini is a very good example of a national leader who did not bother with logistics. Almost every shortcoming of the Italian military could be traced to lack of <fill in the blank>. That was Mussolini's first duty and he failed. He thought it wise to drop hundreds of thousands of troops into North Africa with no trucks and almost no supplies. The generals could not fix it, because it was way above their pay grade. They could only work with what they had and request more, requests that were never fulfilled.

Almost any staff officer can draw the arrows on the maps. The leaders make those arrows possible.
 
I think there will be a Soviet/Finland/Norway DLC and then an other one with Italy/Greece/Turkey.


I think Turkey is the only surefire guarantee for the next DLC. Paradox metrics indicate that it is the most popular minor without a dedicated focus tree and thematically speaking Turkey works as a companion for both Italy and USSR.
 
  • 1Like
Reactions:
I think it would be good if they did an Italy update because then they could do a full on upgrade for Greece or turkey and maybe even Iraq and Iran in a sort of Revival of the old empires kind of situation. The rise of a new Byzantine or Macedonian empire, Persia reunifying and taking back the middle east, that sort of thing
 
That was Mussolini's first duty and he failed. He thought it wise to drop hundreds of thousands of troops into North Africa with no trucks and almost no supplies

This is only partly true. The bigger issue for Italy was the lack of industrial capacity to produce anything at an industrial scale to meet the demands of modern warfare.
And Mussolini, for his faults... did attempt to fix the issue and to modernize the economy, but he entered the war anyways before his nation was ready. Thus causing a mass of mess, which was Italy in WW2.
 
  • 1
Reactions:
This is only partly true. The bigger issue for Italy was the lack of industrial capacity to produce anything at an industrial scale to meet the demands of modern warfare.
And Mussolini, for his faults... did attempt to fix the issue and to modernize the economy, but he entered the war anyways before his nation was ready. Thus causing a mass of mess, which was Italy in WW2.

Well, that is the point I was trying to make though. He had a serious problem, but he not only went to war anyway, he compounded it by deploying an army that was much larger than his nation's ability to supply with properer equipment and logistics.

That was on him. No general could fix that.

I agree about your view of the bigger view, but that bigger view is what we were discussing above and is in the realm of Mussolini and the player in the game.
 
If 1.11 isn't Soviet Union I think I might join the rioters in the streets. 1.10 is Collie, so perhaps something to do with Operation Collie in the Pacific. Minor Pacific naval update?
 
  • 2
Reactions:
What makes it interesting is that the the truth goes against everything we grew up culturally "knowing" AKA "Hitler made a boo boo."

It's more like, Hitler was running out of oil because the UK refused a white peace so he *HAD* to invade the Soviet Union to take their oil. The population of occupied Europe was also starving so he desperately needed the incredible farmland of the southern Soviet Union. When he attacked in 1941 it was the last moment he would have enough fuel to launch such an attack. It was now or never.

And as it turned out it was the perfect time to attack the Soviets who were in full military restructuring. Hardly any anti tank guns were issued, whole tank divisions with no trucks for supplies OR to transport supporting infantry ect.

It's also fascinating because it can be argued that Hitler lost because a man named Franz Halder hated taking orders from Hitler who was nothing more than a corporal in ww1. Franz managed to successfully divert the intent of the attack from the Russian food and oil supply to the north where Moscow sits, believing for some ludicrous reason the Soviets would surrender if Moscow fell, completely ignoring like 400 years of Russian defensive strategy that subsidized and built up the east so that they could retreat from even Moscow and continue resisting until invaders exhausted themselves. So as it turns out the Germans didn't even reach Moscow and in 1942 they had so few resources left they couldn't even get the oil.

The icing on the cake is Franz Halder survived the war, was largely responsible for Germany's loss in it and was given the meritorious civilian service award by the US Government for writing down a bunch of lies about how superior Germans are and how inferior Russians are in reference to how the eastern front war was fought. If we acted on that information and fought the soviets in 1940s we would have lost BADLY lol.
I might remember wrong but wasnt Hitler himself who pushed for attacking Moscow and splitting the german advance in 3 fronts? And Halder was actually a competent general who knew Germany did not stand a chance against the allies?
The axis (germans and romanians divisions I think) actually reached Moscow and Zhukov later admitted he wasnt so sure he would have been able to hold the city. An interesting anecdote: Stalin decided to held the military parade for the russian revolution's anniversary even if the enemy was so near, the new russian divisions marched through the city and then they continued straight to the front.
In lazy retrospective, there was no way the axis would have managed to win the battle.
 
  • 2
Reactions:
I might remember wrong but wasnt Hitler himself who pushed for attacking Moscow and splitting the german advance in 3 fronts? And Halder was actually a competent general who knew Germany did not stand a chance against the allies?

Some of this stuff is shrouded in mystery to this day,due to conflicting reports, among other things..., However, from what I personally have read, it was that the German Military staff had a strong desire to win by capturing Moscow, while Hitler insisted on Stalingrad in order to humiliate Stalin, as well as to gain control over the strategic region on Volga.

infact Halder is somewhat untrustworthy narrator, as he was pushing for the clean army narrative, and insisted that everything bad the Army did was always Hitler, and never German general staff's fault. And everything good was always Army on its own. (somewhat hyperbole, but it gets the point across).
 
  • 3
  • 1
Reactions:
Well I wouldn't have made assumptions based on stats from 2016 but thanks regardless.

I do agree Turkey fits both Italy and USSR so they can't go wrong by including her in the next update.

Oh, your post made me realize I linked the same dev diary twice. I updated my post. The first dev diary is from a year ago.
 
  • 1
Reactions:
A lot of the smaller nations with trees feel almost broken at times, I really wish they would just do a quality pass on all the trees. Some sort of QOL changes.
 
  • 1Like
Reactions:
This brings me to my question: What is wrong with land combat right now? It seems pretty straightforward - get troops, create frontlines, draw arrows to the enemy capital, go. If something goes wrong, that's because you have no organization, are short on supplies, or are fighting in hills, swamps, jungles, or mountains. The main problems I see are the unintuitive UI and the fact that allies can flood your lines with troops and ruin your organization, which can lead to your defeat or at least prevent you from making any progress. If someone could explain what needs to be improved beyond those things, I would appreciate it.
Things that are broken or need lot of improvement:
  • Combat width
  • Unit templates (due to combat width)
  • Broken Air superiority mechanics
  • rudimentary logistics
  • Weather not important enough
  • lack of a MTG-style Tank designer
There are multiple threads for each of these things explaining them these in greater detail.
 
  • 2Like
  • 1
Reactions: