Multiplayer Balance?

[Cohen]

How Paradox plan to shape the game according to Multiplayer Balance?

HOI2 at parity of player skill was seeing an Axis loss 90% of the times by maximum '42.
Germany proficiency in combat was hardly mirrored, Allied units being on par with their german counterpart since '39 safe a meager org difference, Soviet Land doctrine being ultimately way superior than German one, having still production and manpower limits.
Players had no limits in ignoring history - like Allied player knowing Germany will go through Belgium and Holland, or the Soviet deploying straight below the Dnepr (when no nation would leave so much of its national territory exposed and undefended.)
Allies can unman colonies without issues, can focus where they want for the most, and so on.

Bugs or exploits of sort, like strategic redeployment from any place to avoid encirclement.
Disbanding units doomed to die.
All those kind of things which had to have been eventually "enforced" in the weak way of House Rules.
Having landing / loading limits to avoid quick landing and evacuation once the slower SR troops comes, just to land in another spot exploiting faster naval movement. - Eventually having units evacuating via sea receive a "downgrade", like the BEF who had the manpower salvaged but lost the heavy equipments, trucks, and most of its combat capability.

Etc etc ...

 

[Alex_brunius]

I belive the greatest flaws of multiplayer balance in HoI2 are the following issues working together:

# UK and FRA able to produce way to many land units during peacetime and use those to save france.

# UK, FRA and USA able to move huge amounts of men over the oceans much quicker and more easilly then reality.

# USA and UK able to use its full Industrial capacity at the moment of war entry.


Id also like to see the following:

# USSR more dependent on open sealanes to recieve lend lease help.

# Japan war in china result and the US oil embargo have more influense on US war entry time.



Edit: The thing im most hopeful to help out gamebalance in HoI3 is logistics. A Punishing logistics system will constraint and slow down any offensive or nation thats overstretched. Thats pretty much auto balance for you.

 

[Peekee]

It should be possible to do something that stop allies deploying too many troops to France before the war starts. Or possibly to any ally that is judged "not to be in danger" even during a war?

Number of troops in allied country ~ enemy border access * enemy troops * enemy belligerence.

I hope the tech situation will also help things. As UK will have most of its practical skills tide up in naval techs, should be a bit slower to spam build land and bombers.

I think for democracies there should be a much higher manpower penalty for peace. Thus UK could still build ships and possibly planes but would struggle more for manpower than IC if building lots if troops before the war.

 

[unmerged(41034)]

Im hoping thats what the threat level will dictate, even in MP. No uneven trading, like the SU sending xtra resources to the allies pre-war

 

[unmerged(135152)]

What I can't understand is people playing the 1936 scenario in MP. It is quite impossible to balance things so that someone who knows exactly what will happen and when, will be unable to act accordingly.

 

[unmerged(52507)]

Hindsight is the impossible challenge for the game engine to overcome

 

[Peekee]

What I can't understand is people playing the 1936 scenario in MP. It is quite impossible to balance things so that someone who knows exactly what will happen and when, will be unable to act accordingly.

This may be fixed in the new "events" system. I could be wrong but I think somethings the player gets to choose when they happen rather than being forced to accept an option at a set date.

 

[unmerged(135152)]

This may be fixed in the new "events" system. I could be wrong but I think somethings the player gets to choose when they happen rather than being forced to accept an option at a set date.

True this, but still you have some stuff that pretty much dictates that the allies have an unfair advantage:

1.No need for colonial troops for France (Not much point in keeping a garrison in Senegal)
2.The "surprise" attack through the Netherlands and Belgium (there really is no other way into France without naval supremacy, Switzerland would be suicide)
3.Doctrines (You just know that the Gerries have an unfair advantage in tanks on the Western front, hence you will fight them in the Greek mountains or whatnot)

The only advantage that the axis have is that they (usually) get to choose when and how the war starts. Consequently they can safely build IC up to that point, whereas the allies are left quessing.

In general I always understood that MP in pretty much any game means battle scenarios, where you have you have your starting chips and you make the best of them (Like operation Barbarossa or the 1939 scenario or whatnot). The 1936 scenario is like playing counterstrike "The real version" where you can't shoot the terrorists unless they do something suspicious (And the comparison holds in that the counter-terrorists would just follow them around 24/7).

 

[PIT_AMERO]

Why there should be an artificial "balance" included in the game?
It's not fun nor historical.
Yes, the allied players know what will happen, but the same is true and for the other players.

 

[TheLand]

Edit: The thing im most hopeful to help out gamebalance in HoI3 is logistics. A Punishing logistics system will constraint and slow down any offensive or nation thats overstretched. Thats pretty much auto balance for you.

Yep. Indeed. Hopefully this will work out to remove the problems you identified from MP to some extent.

(I've never played MP in my life, but can see why the things you mentioned, e.g. the immense ease of moving troops by sea, would mess it up....)

 

[frigger]

If the Allies defend France with all the power they can muster(UK builds INF, colonial troops, nepalese cavalry) the German should react accordingly. He should say "thank you", and be happy about all the wasted british MP.

If the German(+ Italian, if theres so many humans, Italy's one of them) are not able to beat, even a propped up France/UK in '39/40 you can be glad the games over so fast and you dont waste time with failed barbarossa and such....

as for HoI3, well, same as HoI2, achieving "balance" is nigh impossible, and there will still be a need for modding and lots of houserules, dont worry....

 

[unmerged(136652)]

I belive the greatest flaws of multiplayer balance in HoI2 are the following issues working together:

# UK and FRA able to produce way to many land units during peacetime and use those to save france.

# UK, FRA and USA able to move huge amounts of men over the oceans much quicker and more easilly then reality.

# USA and UK able to use its full Industrial capacity at the moment of war entry.


Id also like to see the following:

# USSR more dependent on open sealanes to recieve lend lease help.

# Japan war in china result and the US oil embargo have more influense on US war entry time.



Edit: The thing im most hopeful to help out gamebalance in HoI3 is logistics. A Punishing logistics system will constraint and slow down any offensive or nation thats overstretched. Thats pretty much auto balance for you.

The thing is IRL France/UK DID have numerical parity with the Germans in 41. In HOI2 France is made ahistorically weaker with the worst tech teams for a major power (often times worse than local powers like Canada/Sweden/Romania/Hungary) and about 1/4th of German IC.

The reason why it's difficult to beat a FRA/UK player with just Germany (if you have a human Italy there's no excuse to not being able to beat FRA/UK unless you suck horribly) is because of hindsight. Of course if France knew IRL exactly where the Germans would strike they could have turned the war into another WW1 style stalemate.

The main problem with the western front in HOI2 is the limited number of provinces in the ardennes. You only needed to cover 5 provinces which is easily doable with the entire French Army and BEF. Germany had a hard time breaking through 50 divisions in each province. With the new frontage system and provinces, the Allies will no longer be able to just park 200 inf divisions across 5 provinces and German armor will actually be useful in the western front whereas in HOI2 panzers were only useful against Russia.

With a human Italy it didn't matter anyway though because human ITA/GER will ALWAYS beat a human UK/FRA and usually France falls in MP games. The main imbalances stem from USSR pulling all its forces back and the USA buildup pre-war (usually house games have a rule that USA cannot be played by a human until the fall of France, but even then thats not enough IMO)

 

[Chaingun]

The fundamental issue is that WW2 was inherently "unbalanced" and that Germany was "lucky" to fight on as long as it did, due to stupid strategic decisions of allies. Players are put in charge of making that kind of decisions; when they don't repeat history and play rationally Germany will lose a lot earlier as a consequence.

What can be done about it? Maybe a special MP mode/scenario can be made where 1) Germany's strengths are exaggerated as to make it at least have a small chance of winning the Barbarossa campaign, and/or 2) allies are forced to go with a lot of bad historical choices.

 

[Cohen]

UK (human) + France (AI) could have easily turned into a bloodshed west campaign for GER + ITA (both human). And yes in the latest house rules game online USA got a human once joining the war and not early.

Soviets also had their exploit - not hindered by the fact for example the pulling out of factories could be delayed in due time to make them decide if to save army or -a lot- of IC ... and usually army tends to be still the wiser choice.

The last poster has most of the reason by saying the Allies made lots of wrong decision - but it was also true the quality of German units was by far superior to the Allied ones (units and officers - eventually mirrored into the leadership in HOI3) combined with a fluid chain of command (more indipendence to force commanders and less to wait for orders from above - what also turned Germany into, awaiting for the Fuhrer orders to move divisions and so).

Simply germany units should be one on one by far superior in stats terms - and slowly being dragged down in terms of manpower and ultimately outgunned in proper timing.

 

[Reichsmarshall]

We've gotten around some of the balance issues with the '36 scenario with house rules to limit some of the unbalancing options. It's not ideal obviously, but it does make for competetive campaign games. Exact player skill balance is nearly impossible anyway. Some people I would say are equivalent skill level, but are better in different areas than others.
Also, you can balance the game a bit by not allowing anyone to play as France and by stacking the teams a little experience-wise and having the more experienced players take the Axis, and least experienced player take the US.

Abyss does seem to make a better MP game though.

 

[Alsadius]

This is just another rehash of one of the classic HoI forum debates - is this a WW2 game or a WW2 sim? If it's a sim, you want it being realistic, and you want the Axis to not have a hope in hell of long-run victory. If it's a game, you want balance, and you want Germany to conquer the world half the time assuming equal-skill players across the board. The two are simply not compatible - you can try to balance the two goals, and generally they have, but you can't attain both.

Ultimately, the problem with '36 in multiplayer is that HoI doesn't have a detailed enough economic and political sim to properly model that era. Historically, it was years 7-10 of the Great Depression, where the world economy was shattered and showing no signs of growth, where the populations of the world were pissed off and considering some very stupid solutions to their problems(fascism, communism, etc.), and where most governments were at the end of their rope fiscally. In HoI, you spam factories, and use it as a three-year runway to get ready for the gargantuan war that you bought the game to play. There's no budget limits, there's no problems keeping your people happy, there's not even a budget to balance - there's just stockpiling and teching up.

If Vicky had a detailed enough military engine(which obviously it doesn't), I'd say playing a game of Vicky to '39 and then transferring the file would be the best way of dealing with the problem. As it is, you basically have to either accept unrealistic foreknowledge, create absurd house rules that don't make any sense within the game mechanics(e.g., limits on the amount democracies can build), or start in 1939. Of the three, I'd have to say that the last one makes the most sense overall, but if you insist on a GC multiplayer, you're going to be playing a game, and not a sim. It's simply unavoidable, until such time as HoI has a political/economic model as detailed as Vicky's. It'd be nice if it was better than that, but it's not.

 

[Crimson]

The best solution would probably be to drastically increase the amount of consumer goods needed for democracies (by like 300-400%) during peacetimes in order to counter a massive build-up of industries and military units.

 

[Lazy_Boy]

Well hopefully the new game engine will have many more ways to restrict unrealistic buildup. Allies should have very little manpower or IC available for military use pre-war.

By far the biggest problem imo is how easy it is to put hundreds of thousands of men onto a beach from a thousand miles away and supply them no problem. Hopefully this will be solved if ports act like a supply choke-point based on their size.

There also needs to be 2 different kinds of transports. Transoceanic and landing craft. Transoceanic are essentially HOI2 transports and can only move units from one port to another. Landing craft are required to assault an enemy beach. Short range and very expensive.

Both of those together should make things much harder for the Allies. Forces US to island hop in the Pacific, and dooms any invasion of France to failure without massive preparation.

 

[Nilmerf]

This will partially be fixed by laws. I assume there will be a system whereby manpower growth is very minimal for democracies in peace time, only to be drastically raised once war is declared.

 

[PIT_AMERO]

I prefer a "free market" solution of the problem.
If you want to stop a democracy from building huge army in a peace time, don't put some artificial penalties in the game.
Just provide the player with the choice- to use my resources for a big army or to use them for the economy and research.
And if you are a democracy and there is no immediate threat, then there should be a popular support for less military spending and more for the economy.

I think that the dev. team is thinking in the same way- you have "leadership resources" and if you want to field a big army, then you should sacrifice the diplomacy, intel and/or research spheres.