Minor countries unplayable?

[GAGA Extrem]

Minors unplayable? - Nah, I have had great games with Hungary and Romania. But you have to adept your strategy - focus on single unit, avoid unnecessary techs, produce via licences, etc...

But I agree they could use a little boost. A flat +2 leadership to all countries would improve the options for minors. They have a though time using diplomacy if it drains all their tech resources.

 

[unmerged(162341)]

Since i just "graduated" playing HOI II Armageddon for 3 months,its seems that its possible in this old game to achieve anbelievable things with say Romania and become a superpower.

Is this highly anlikely(for me actualy impossible) developement still possible for minors in HOI III?

 

[Shabz]

It is much harder. It happens that minors are virtually boring at best (strong minors), unplayable by player at worst (medium and small minors). Which is as it should be, as Germany, US, USSR Japan, and UK could crush any small country... Well, France and Italy too. After a fashion.

 

[Onedreamer]

I strongly disagree. Playing a minor in HoI3 is MUCH easier than in HoI2. For example you don't have the permanent research handicap of HoI2 that was due to your research teams being of low level. In HoI3 there is no such thing so you are only limited in the number of techs you can research at any given time, but this limit was also in place in HoI2. Of course it is true that the majors start with more tech experience and will accumulate more with time, but this is counterweighted by even more specialization options. Offensive war maneuvers are also easier to achieve IMO. The only thing that's maybe harder to manage is production, but since you can design divisions as you want, you have some flexibility in this, plus there are production licenses.

 

[RickN]

Czechs were huge in military industry, especially small arms, but also AC and ARM. In Pz-38(t) identification (t) stands for "Czech" (even it's not that obvious).

P.S. That's actually a good idea to decline Munich agreement and see if Czechs can put up a fight with Germans.

Unless changed in 1.3, every Munich option hits the Czechs with 25 dissent -- more that 100% of the IC can offset. So, the Czech dissent grows and grows and the country is basically destroyed whether Germany attacks of not.

Since they don't have IC to mobilize, they are a pushover for the German army when the attack finally happens. (The attack is fun to watch. Each time I've done it, the German army appears in the province at the Polish-German-Czech border junction, then oozes amoebae-like around the entire border. Like watching the Blob with Teutonic accents.)

 

[jaava]

In my opinion, many of the minor countries have too small leadership. However that didin't bother me that much in my last (very short) game with finland. The problem already mentioned in the first post made playing impossible. Finland has too small army to defend entire russian border but still ic is far too small to even produce supplies for starting units. Can't build new units at all.

 

[unmerged(172501)]

I would like the devs to make another pass at the minors and check the starting techs. In my opinion, there is room for adjusting some upward (nothing crazy, but perhaps giving you 1918 techs for some, and 1932 for others.

My biggest problem as Turkey has been neutrality+low threat in Bulgaria. I can't get a spy in there to save my life.

 

[unmerged(57661)]

90 neutrality with 55 national unity kills much of the fun

 

[unmerged(172501)]

90 neutrality with 55 national unity kills much of the fun

Indeed, I am getting some good ideas from a Turkey AAR, but it's slow going with both my neutrality and his threat. Got unity to 60. Also, I seem to have a lot of bad luck with the random events of late, had 3 in a row (1 per month).

 

[unmerged(57661)]

I suggest opening \Program Files\Paradox Interactive\Hearts of Iron III\history\countries\turkey and changing the neutrality to 75 and national unity to 70. That is more historical.

 

[unmerged(129069)]

In my opinion, many of the minor countries have too small leadership. However that didin't bother me that much in my last (very short) game with finland. The problem already mentioned in the first post made playing impossible. Finland has too small army to defend entire russian border but still ic is far too small to even produce supplies for starting units. Can't build new units at all.

My first (real, not just a test of couple of game-months) game with Finland went pretty well.. But that was due to the stupider-than-anything AI. I dismissed all my divisions except for a couple of garrisons (if there were any garrisons... it was a long time ago) and HQs. I made 1 or 2 IC, which was a mistake, but didn't really matter. I started to build militia in huge quantities, in may-june 1939 I mobilized for war, because I knew that SU would attack at any time (I had a couple of test-games with fastest speed, and SU DoWd finland in summer, always). In early July SU declared war, so my men started to dig in. After a week or so I started to wonder why SU forces did not try to attack, so I attacked myself. Turns out that SU hadn't mobilized before war, so it was pretty much an overrun until they began to get organized, which stopped my advance (which already had killed about 120k of my men, and endless divisions of SU forces due to encirclement), I asked for peace, and SU accepted. I got a couple of provinces from it, but they were only of strategic value, since they all had zero (0) manpower and resources (it's strange that theres a whole province there, where no men will grow and theres absolutely nothing of worth, since trees can't be used as energy, export or anything.)

When Germany failed completely with its invasion of anything beyond denmark and poland (DoWd sweden and norway, for some reason did NOT advance to either of them, no matter how long I waited) I decided to quit the game and wait until 1.3.

Atleast Finland is semi-playable... I don't know about the other minors. I played Brazil in 1.1, but it was pretty crappy, since threat took so long to build up (and now will take even longer!)

 

[unmerged(155335)]

I kind of disagree with the op, this game isnt about being able to pick up ANY country and play smack a mole on all your neighbours... Besides, there tons of minors to have fun with and that are plyable within their limitations of being MINOR nations:

Finland
Poland
Yugoslavia
Rep.Spain
Sweden
Argentina
Australia
Turkey
Romania

These are the countries I´ve actually played, totally playable all of them, if you´r not being able to find a way to enter war before 41 somethings wrong, most of them enter the conflict naturally.

 

[KungMarkatta]

I strongly disagree. Playing a minor in HoI3 is MUCH easier than in HoI2. For example you don't have the permanent research handicap of HoI2 that was due to your research teams being of low level. In HoI3 there is no such thing so you are only limited in the number of techs you can research at any given time, but this limit was also in place in HoI2. Of course it is true that the majors start with more tech experience and will accumulate more with time, but this is counterweighted by even more specialization options. Offensive war maneuvers are also easier to achieve IMO. The only thing that's maybe harder to manage is production, but since you can design divisions as you want, you have some flexibility in this, plus there are production licenses.

But that IS the exact same thing. Being able to spend 15 LS on techs gives you a much faster researchspeed. Add to that all the experience you get from building troops and fighting - ALL those things make the researchspeed much faster for each tech when you play a major power.

In HOI2 majors had better techteams AND more slots.
In HOI3 majors have better practical and theoretical XP AND more slots.

I agree that the low leadership is somewhat realistic as it is now (well maybe not Portugal having 3,5 vs Sweden 3,1 or Estonia having 2,4 vs Belgiums 3...

Right now the LS for minors have no logic and is not fun imo.

 

[TreeBurst]

Playing Turkey from 36, it took me 5 years to raise Bulgarian threat/lower my neutrality to declare war. It's now late 43 and I also have Romania, Vichy France and the stubborn Swiss. Those forts are killer.

 

[The Andy-Man]

Well, the polish produced some brilliant pilots for the RAF, and they couldn't really be expected to win a two front war against Germany and the USSR.

As for Czechoslovakia, aren't they supposed to have had one of the best Armies in Europe AND a great defensive position pre-Munich agreement?

 

[KungMarkatta]

Well, the polish produced some brilliant pilots for the RAF, and they couldn't really be expected to win a two front war against Germany and the USSR.

As for Czechoslovakia, aren't they supposed to have had one of the best Armies in Europe AND a great defensive position pre-Munich agreement?

Nah Manchukuo would outrun the Czechs in tech. They have 4,1 and the Czechs 3,1

 

[LaDoncella]

Nah Manchukuo would outrun the Czechs in tech. They have 4,1 and the Czechs 3,1

 

[gamer42_au]

IMO, leadership in HOI3 represents the capacity of the nation to apply educated, able people to various issues.
Broadly, this would seem to correlate to the size of the educated population. Having a large peasant population (eg China) would have little effect on your ability to conduct 20th century research, diplomacy or espionage. Having a large well educated population would.

Accordingly, minors such as Sweden or the Baltic nations with well educated populations should have higher leadership relative to their total population than nations with poor literacy, etc (which at the time would have included most African, Middle Eastern and Asian nations, etc). Using this approach Italy should be underweight compared to the rest of Europe, since its literacy rate was relatively low in the 1930s. Not sure about Spain.

 

[Evil4Zerggin]

Nah Manchukuo would outrun the Czechs in tech. They have 4,1 and the Czechs 3,1

That's nothing, Guangxi Clique has 2 base + 5.4 provincial = 7.4 leadership; that's more than Poland

 

[heteaho]

Research should not be tied into leadership. Thats the main problem right there.

There should be a technological leadership apart from the manpower leadership. That way you could have huge differences in the second one from country to country and more reasonable ones in the first.


I don't see this being fixed outside of modders though.