My biggest concern: Supply.

[JerkyJerry]

Fine, fine, I guess everyone is all for supply being a major obstacle. I guess I'm just too used to HoI2.

Welcome to the dark side!!!!

 

[CptWilly]

Welcome to the dark side!!!!

Good... Let the logistics flow through you!

 

[Bridger15]

I'm watching through the Single Player Japan vods, and I am extremely worried about supply. Basically, Daniel is a player who knows what he is doing - and there is absolutely nothing he can do about the crippling supply issues in China, that I can see. In the dev diary on supply, they identified one of the goals of the new system as "It must be possible to see exactly what the bottleneck in your supplies are and give the player possible actions to fix this that are clear". But what I'm seeing here is no way to fix the bottleneck other than "retreat and give up provinces until you're back in supply".

There are plenty of ways to fix the bottleneck. The bottleneck is the port he's receiving supplies from and the infrastructure of the manchurian provinces (IIRC). If he spent some resources improving that port before going to war, and improving the infrastructure in the provinces he owns, he'd have a much easier time until he made it into more of china, where the infrastructure would be weak again. However, building up that port/infrastructure is time consuming, and that's where your strategic decision making comes in. How much is enough?

Personally, i thought he had *way* too easy a time of crushing china and he didn't have *enough* supply problems compared to history (not that everything needs to be exactly like history, but it shouldn't be wildly inaccurate either).

 

[Sloeberjong]

Yes, I understand that Japan encountered this problem IRL - but this game is specifically not about IRL. You don't play Japan vs. AI to not conquer China. You don't play Germany to lose to the Soviet Union. The whole point of the game is that with superior leadership you can fix the problems that they ran into in real life and conquer more than they actually did, but there's no superior leadership that gets around supply bogging you down for years in China - meanwhile, Germany still gets to expand unrealistically fast if they want, surrounded by small countries that don't have supply issues.

Then where are my rainbow unicorn riding manga samurai girls? Maybe not historical, but I don't play Japan to not crush China with those awesome units of no supply requirements (they obviously work on magical dust that they draw from sunshine)

Seriously though, there is an historical (real life) basis that defines the gameplay and that means that supply causes problems for players. It's one of the many "puzzles" to solve. I get that it shouldn't be too hard for the base game to keep it fun. It pretty obviously wasn't that hard since Daniel conquered China in about a year after starting the war with no preperation in '36. Logistics are one of the main problems in Grand Strategy and it shouldn't be too easy. I love playing Japan and having a tough China is awesome, it's the only real land battle you'll play. US and UK are mostly naval warfare so quite different. Having to take smart routes and using divisions with low supply requirement are what make the fight in China interesting.

But then, that's just my opinion and you're entitled to yours. I can only say that I hope it'll be challenging enough for me and not too tough for you

 

[phantomrider]

In some way I find this "problem" very entertaining. You really can't have large armies survive (much less attack or even fight) in some areas of the world without totally increasing the infrastructure of the area. China of the 1930's and 1940's was one such place. Similarly, in other lines in this forum people are talking about Japan quickly knocking out the US by invading the west coast of the US and then driving light tanks across to the east coast against an unprepared US. While the US was unprepared, Japan did not have the logistic capability to support even a miniscule army in North America. Similarly, people are complaining that Brazil and Mexico (New Zealand and the Aussies) were doing more invasions of Europe than the western allies (US and UK) in HOI3 which also was a logistic impossibility for them. (It took Brazil 2 years to train one division that the US transported for them to Italy where it served well from 1944 til the end of the war). Mexico deployed 1 fight squadron (20 -30 airplanes) to the Pacific late in WWII. (Both navies were much more involved in convoy and anti submarine warfare. Let's not even go to the Russian front. So to say that supply/logistics is limiting choices in HOI4 is a sign that maybe the game will do better at simulating combat in that era and as players we won't have to worry about the AI or other players doing "impossible" things in the game (Like New Zealand invading German at Koenigsburg in 1939 which happen to me in my first HOI3 game).
That said without playing the game it is hard to guess how "right" the designers have supply in HOI4.

 

[modogrinder]

Then where are my rainbow unicorn riding manga samurai girls? Maybe not historical, but I don't play Japan to not crush China with those awesome units of no supply requirements (they obviously work on magical dust that they draw from sunshine)

Seriously though, there is an historical (real life) basis that defines the gameplay and that means that supply causes problems for players. It's one of the many "puzzles" to solve. I get that it shouldn't be too hard for the base game to keep it fun. It pretty obviously wasn't that hard since Daniel conquered China in about a year after starting the war with no preperation in '36. Logistics are one of the main problems in Grand Strategy and it shouldn't be too easy. I love playing Japan and having a tough China is awesome, it's the only real land battle you'll play. US and UK are mostly naval warfare so quite different. Having to take smart routes and using divisions with low supply requirement are what make the fight in China interesting.

But then, that's just my opinion and you're entitled to yours. I can only say that I hope it'll be challenging enough for me and not too tough for you

To the contrary I'm not looking for an easy ride; my post has nothing to do with difficulty or wanting an "easier" time invading China. In fact, it was specifically about the fact that an (the most, even) experienced player was the one having serious trouble with supply; I'm all for there being a gap in the performance of inexperienced and experiences players in terms of logistics.