New research system has gotten better and worse at the same time..

[unmerged(3902)]

I'm not sure if that is absolutely correct. Someone should answer that question I had in my previous post. I thought the number of reseach teams were dependant on the total IC. (or base IC?) If that is the case, then USA (and Britain) could start by having a really low IC, somewhere around a swedish level, and then get more IC through events giving them all the five by 1940 or so.
<snip>

1936 campaign:
Germany 5 teams
USSR 5 teams
USA 5 teams
France 5 teams

Once you get into the minors like Nationalist China (3 teams), or Poland (2 teams), you finally see nations with lesser research capabilities, but there's still no tradeoff in place.

I, as nationlist china, cannot say "wow, I really need to do some more research than these three teams let me. I'd like to commit some of my IC's to reseach instead of production."

You're just a three team nation and there's nothing you can do about it.

Likewise, if it's 1943 and you've researched everything useful as the US, you can't redirect research energies into production.

The tradeoff simply isn't there.

 

[Tormodius]

Hmm, if that's the case I guess it's not as cool as I thought. Earlier I got the impression that these countries had max# team because of their high IC. At least that's what was said at first in the reviews, and thats what would have been natural IMO. But the manual just says it's dependant on what nation you play... So, not moddable then?

 

[unmerged(9145)]

some agreement here

Granted, HOI had too many techs and too many filler techs. No doubt about that. HOI 2, on the other hand, seems to have careened to the opposite extreme rather than going for a more reasonable middle ground.

I won't argue about the 'realism' of either situation since this is a game and any nit-picking over what some particular poster thinks is 'realistic' is a silly waste of time. You want realism? Go watch the History Channel and leave the gaming to those who want to have some fun.

And FUN is what I'm interested in - everything else be damned. That's why I purchased a game, eh? Why the bloody hell would I have bought the thing if it weren't to have fun? So the critical issue for me in this whole debate is this: is the new tech system more fun than the old?

The answer is an unequivocable "no". To put it succinctly, it bores the hell out of me. Worse, it gives every nation in the game that 'generic' feel, and that adds to the boredom. In HOI the major powers, at least, had a very different feel from one another, and a big part of that was due to the techs. In HOI 2 the major nations aren't very distinguishable, apart from their location on the map. Despite HOI's incredible and sometimes outrageous flaws, I spent a good deal of time playing it; this game, on the other hand, is about to make a trip to Goodwill. I just can't get excited over it, and I think much of that is due to the bland tech system.

Do I want a return to the HOI system? Nope, not at all. I'd like a middle-ground between the two systems, in the best of all worlds. HOI's tech tree with all the non-essential and filler techs removed, combined with the non-IC requirements of this game (although I don't, and never will agree with, the 'team' approach - it's just too artificial and another way nations are hard-limited from exploring radical options).

I don't think the game is more 'C&C-like' or RTS-like; those games have singular progressions in units, but the unit differences between sides are far more different than anything you'll see in either HOI. Rather I think the game is more Civ-like; as someone else pointed out a Civ tank is a Civ tank is a Civ tank, and here we have pretty much the same situation.

Perhaps HOI 3 will strike a happy balance between the two systems. I hope so.

Max

 

[unmerged(37680)]

And FUN is what I'm interested in - everything else be damned. That's why I purchased a game, eh? Why the bloody hell would I have bought the thing if it weren't to have fun?

That's my feeling exactly. Yes, for many people (myself included) it is fun to more or less simulate history. But it may also be wild fun to play totally ahistorically and to do something really weird. HoI allows you to do both. The most entertaining AARs I ever read were "Nukes for Nepal" and "Battleships for Bhutan" (by Steele?). A lot of people enjoyed reading them too yet nobody thought for a minute there was anything "historic" about them. Two of my own most entertaining games were as Tannu Tuva and Liberia - both wildly ahistorical. So, once again, the beauty of HoI is that you can play either historically or ahistorically. HoI2 greatly limits that by giving everybody the same bland units and, furthermore, forcing everybody on to the same research path. And removing all tradeoffs between research and production greatly reduces replayability. I mean, after playing France once in HoI2, will you ever want to play it again (provided that you managed to bring yourself to playing it in the first place)?! There's almost nothing you can do strategically different the second and especially the third time around - like dramatically changing the balance between quantity and quality in HoI, and geography does not really leave you with many strategic choices otherwise. Although I can't really blame Paradox for reducing replayability - I mean, if they release a perfect game which everybody will just want to play again and again for the rest of his life, how are they going to sell any new games later?

To put it succinctly, it bores the hell out of me. Worse, it gives every nation in the game that 'generic' feel, and that adds to the boredom. In HOI the major powers, at least, had a very different feel from one another, and a big part of that was due to the techs. In HOI 2 the major nations aren't very distinguishable, apart from their location on the map.

Yeah, my point exactly. In HoI playing UK and US feels totally different - the UK intially is far ahead technologically and can afford to research much more in the beginning, but later actually has to cut back on research to free IC for production. The US has exactly the opposite dynamics because non-CG spending rises dramatically as War Entry increases, to the US starts research very slowly, then expands it greatly and keeps expanding it while also starting to produce more and more units. In HoI2 you just have somewhat different Anglo-Saxon names for provinces, research teams and leaders, and that's about it. Other than the war starting date, the game is not really very different for them - they both have to do amphibious landings to get into Europe and the US does them from British bases in UK and the Mediterranean, so the military strategy is basically the same.

 

[Gwalcmai]

The way the tradeoff is set up, I'd have to be a madman not to fund upgrades. I can upgrade a division for 12.5% of the cost of a new one, so our whole "quantity/quality" issue comes down to are 8 1941 divisions better than 7 1943 divisions, which is no choice at all.

The incremental upgrade cost is negligable compared to the cost to purcahse a new unit.

I see. The upgrades are too cheap, therefore the tech system sucks. Is that it?

The historical divisions *were not equal*."

No, they weren't. In HOI terms, you could say the allies were using improved medium tank divisions (with arty attachments, maybe), while the germans had improved medium armour divisions with heavy tank brigades. Should result in pretty much the same outcome as happened historically. Doesn't change the fact that an allied division would be a lot more evenly matched with a german division which had the Pz. IV as its best tank.

Playing the USA, reach improved medium tanks and then focus all you have in producing those, and also a massive navy, plenty of fighters and bombers, nuclear weapons, and also fund the war efforts of your allies. Or get Pershing-based divisions for your armoured forces and face the germans on an equal footing (or thereabouts).

 

[unmerged(3902)]

I see. The upgrades are too cheap, therefore the tech system sucks. Is that it?

You can express the problem two ways:

1) The tech system lets everyone research the same equipment at the same time, hence everyone deploys the same equipment, hence all nations have equal performing diviisions. This is a fault of the tech system.

2) The production system lets everyone build the most modern equipment at the same price as older stuff. Hence all nations will always field the most modern equipment, hence all nations will have equal performing divisions. This is a fault of the production system.

I'm utterly agnostic as to what words one uses to express the problem. The problem though, is national homegeneity. Every major fields the exact same forces all the time. There is no in-game mechanism which allows you to make any kind of quantity/quality decision.

No, they weren't. In HOI terms, you could say the allies were using improved medium tank divisions (with arty attachments, maybe), while the germans had improved medium armour divisions with heavy tank brigades. Should result in pretty much the same outcome as happened historically. Doesn't change the fact that an allied division would be a lot more evenly matched with a german division which had the Pz. IV as its best tank.

Playing the USA, reach improved medium tanks and then focus all you have in producing those, and also a massive navy, plenty of fighters and bombers, nuclear weapons, and also fund the war efforts of your allies. Or get Pershing-based divisions for your armoured forces and face the germans on an equal footing (or thereabouts).

As I said before, I don't accept a system whre I have to invoke a house rule to get the historical outcome.

Certainly, if I as a human play the US, I can make the conscious choice not to research advanced medium tanks. As the game stands right now though, there's absolutely no reason to do that other than because I want to be "historical". Right now, in order to get a quantity army, one has to delibrately play sub-optimally.

Question:
What *benefit* do I get out of not reseraching advanced medium tanks?
Answer:
None.

Hence it's not a true in game choice. It's a classic "cake or death" option with only one right answer.

 

[Gwalcmai]

As I said before, I don't accept a system whre I have to invoke a house rule to get the historical outcome.

Certainly, if I as a human play the US, I can make the conscious choice not to research advanced medium tanks.

According to the texts above about the M26 and Patton, that's exactly what the americans did. Knowing full well the new tank design would perform better in combat, they decided not to produce it when they had finished designing it. So, they "played sub-optimally" because they felt it was good enough. With hindsight, you feel that was a pretty stupid decision, so you don't take it.

Now, you may be completely right in that the game has something like the problem of the first couple of versions of Victoria, in which there was too much of everything. So, if there was some more shortage of money, or techs were harder to research somehow, the decision to say "good enough" and move on to other tech branches would make more sense. It just seems that people are coming down on the tech system for something that sounds like more of a general game balance problem.

Of course, I don't have the game, so what do I know? (btw, as I don't, don't the lower models have some advantage in lower consumption of supplies and oil?)

 

[unmerged(3902)]

According to the texts above about the M26 and Patton, that's exactly what the americans did. Knowing full well the new tank design would perform better in combat, they decided not to produce it when they had finished designing it. So, they "played sub-optimally" because they felt it was good enough. With hindsight, you feel that was a pretty stupid decision, so you don't take it.
<snip>

I don't accept that the game can model what actually happened though because of the following:

1) Historically, the US did get something out of sticking with the sherman; it got to build a *lot* more Shermans than it would have been able to build pershings. In HOI 2 though, I get the same number of tanks, they're just bad tanks.

2) In HOI 2, once I research advanced medium tanks, all my fielded tank units start to auto-upgrade anyway. There's really no way to keep a down-tech force in the field even *were* there a benefit to doing so.

 

[The Witch-King]

This thread shows an interesting division in opinion between:

- Historically interested people playing either singleplayer or multiplayer and hoping for a reasonably realistic representation of Second World War strategy.

- "Gamer" types with more of an interest in competitive multiplayer, who are mainly focused on concepts such as balance and exploits.

Guess which one I am

 

[unmerged(10750)]

2) In HOI 2, once I research advanced medium tanks, all my fielded tank units start to auto-upgrade anyway. There's really no way to keep a down-tech force in the field even *were* there a benefit to doing so.

I personally think that upgrades should be more expensive than they are. Right now, upgrades cost 1/2 that of a new division, and take 1/2 the time. In other words, it's 1/4 the cost in IC/days to upgrade a division as it is to build a new one.

While I think it should be cheaper to upgrade than it would be to build a new division (troops that already know how to operate a Sherman are going to have an easier time with a Pershing than raw recruits are) but it shouldn't be 1/4 the cost. You still have to actually build and supply the new tanks.

 

[McNaughton]

The PROBLEM about some things about specialized HoI1 techs was that each nation was FORCED to act a particular way. Germany was forced to have a mobile force, as this is where all of their bonus' were. Poland was forced to have cavalry, as this was where their strengths were. Realistically, German tank forces were no better than foreign equvalents. Rarely did equvalents fight eachother though. Germany had an edge on theory, which they used very well. Eventually in the west they gained an edge on quality (more due to the fault of the Allies not to get sufficient replacement equipment for their aged vehicles, the Sherman was a 1942 tank still battling in 1944).

It is impossible to restrict upgrading equipment without messing something up. If we make it too tough, we will face so many complaints "It is better to build new units than to upgrade old ones!" meaing that upgrades are useless.

The fact is, to do what the Allies did, and use old material when newer better equipment was developed, will never be done because it is too difficult to model the reasons why it was, plus to this day there is a debate with tankers who are pissed that they were sent to war in obsolete equipment when the new weapons were not produced (they were developed but not built).

I am against forcing players to play specific ways. This, unfortunately, requires a more generic system of nations, with only slight differences. However, in HoI1 a lot of stuff was REALLY exaggerated, to the point of relying on Hollywood interpretations of WW2 to justify changes. The reality was, Poland's cavalry was no better than anyone elses, it just happened to be that very few nations used horse cavarly to this extend anymore (most mechanized theirs by WW2).

 

[McNaughton]

You can express the problem two ways:

1) The tech system lets everyone research the same equipment at the same time, hence everyone deploys the same equipment, hence all nations have equal performing diviisions. This is a fault of the tech system.

2) The production system lets everyone build the most modern equipment at the same price as older stuff. Hence all nations will always field the most modern equipment, hence all nations will have equal performing divisions. This is a fault of the production system.

I'm utterly agnostic as to what words one uses to express the problem. The problem though, is national homegeneity. Every major fields the exact same forces all the time. There is no in-game mechanism which allows you to make any kind of quantity/quality decision.



As I said before, I don't accept a system whre I have to invoke a house rule to get the historical outcome.

Certainly, if I as a human play the US, I can make the conscious choice not to research advanced medium tanks. As the game stands right now though, there's absolutely no reason to do that other than because I want to be "historical". Right now, in order to get a quantity army, one has to delibrately play sub-optimally.

Question:
What *benefit* do I get out of not reseraching advanced medium tanks?
Answer:
None.

Hence it's not a true in game choice. It's a classic "cake or death" option with only one right answer.

There is no way to represent this. The reality is, the US made a major mistake not switching over to the M26, something that enraged tankers whey they found out that the M26 existed well before it was deployed. The fact is, using 1942 tanks in 1944 was a mistake, not a rational choice that should be represented in HoI2.

The reality is, this same problem existed in HoI1, even with extensive technology trees. The fact is, the US will, and has been, a technology powerhouse. How can they research and deploy the most advanced aircraft yet not the most advanced tanks? The reason was that it was a choice made by the US government, and players should not be forced to make this choice when the real trade off was actually zero gain (front line forces would not have suffered as significant exising Sherman stocpiles and a gradual switch to M26 production would have resulted in significant reserves of Shermans well into M26 deployment).

 

[unmerged(3902)]

Nations had specific advantages in HOI 1? Was Germany's Advanced Medium Tank 70 MM different from Russia's advanced Medium Tank 70 MM? Was Polish cavalry different from French cavalry?

If such bonuses existed, I managed to play, conservatively, 50 complete games of HOI 1 without every noticing that fact.

From my perspective, regardless of its historical veracity, the HOI 1 tech system allowed a player to do a large number of potentially different builds. Playing as germany (my most common nation), you could go:

Mass Mech artillary/fighters
Panzer/Infantry
Mass Tac Bombers (at least before they patch nerfed it)
Paratroopers/Bombers (for an early sealion before they nerfed paras)

And those are just the builds that worked. I never once felt constrained to a particular pattern in HOI 1.

However, even had I felt so constrained, in HOI 2 it's a moot issue because there *is* only one research pattern.

There's no two ways about it; HOI 2 removes the choices I liked in the previous game. I'll happily admit that not everyone liked the HOI 1 tech system, and that many people prefer the new HOI 2 one.

However, you're not going to convince me that the new system actually gives me more options than the old one, as it objectively does not.

 

[unmerged(3902)]

There is no way to represent this. The reality is, the US made a major mistake not switching over to the M26, something that enraged tankers whey they found out that the M26 existed well before it was deployed. The fact is, using 1942 tanks in 1944 was a mistake, not a rational choice that should be represented in HoI2.

The reality is, this same problem existed in HoI1, even with extensive technology trees. The fact is, the US will, and has been, a technology powerhouse. How can they research and deploy the most advanced aircraft yet not the most advanced tanks? The reason was that it was a choice made by the US government, and players should not be forced to make this choice when the real trade off was actually zero gain (front line forces would not have suffered as significant exising Sherman stocpiles and a gradual switch to M26 production would have resulted in significant reserves of Shermans well into M26 deployment).

That's the thing though; we're applying our own quality centric logic to WW II, and one has to remember that the quantity armies (the allies) actual won the thing, drowing the quality army (the germans) under a flood of inferior material. The nature of the war after 1942 was that of a desperate attempt by Germany to match superior allied numbers with a quality advantage.

Was sticking with the sherman *really* the wrong call? Would having half as many pershings in theatre have *really* been better? I personally suspect it would have, but it's not the slam dunk you portray it as.

It is, in fact, precisely the sort of scenario I'd *love* to play out in a game like HOI. To engage in a bit of what-ifing and see if a more quality focussed US build would have worked better, or worse, than the historical quantity build we opted for.

In HOI 1, I could do that if I wanted to. I could build cheaper tanks with poor guns in great numbers and see how it worked and then build the best possible tanks and upgrade them aggressively in another game and compare the two.

In HOI 2 though, I can't.

 

[unmerged(37680)]

There's no two ways about it; HOI 2 removes the choices I liked in the previous game. I'll happily admit that not everyone liked the HOI 1 tech system, and that many people prefer the new HOI 2 one.

However, you're not going to convince me that the new system actually gives me more options than the old one, as it objectively does not.

Yes, and one of the axioms of economic science is that you can never be worse off from having more options. Conversely, you are never better off with fewere options. I think a lot of complaints about HoI1 tech system could be alleviated in one of the patches - not even in a new game - with slightly tweaked interface. Namely, by allowing you to click on any tech to add it to the queue - with all its prerequisites if necessary, i.e. just by setting an end goal and letting the computer to figure out all prerequisites and research them in the right order (well, you could not research them in the wrong order anyway ). So those not wishing to be burdened by figuring out all the prerequisites could just make a few clicks in the beginning, set several end goals for research and happily go back to whatever important stuff they were doing while waiting for the war to start. That alone would probably reduce complaints by more than half, and a little better interface could do even more - e.g. you can just click on a mech inf to put Mechanized HQ and all its prerequisites into the queue or you can further customize it by clicking buttons to increase its SA or HA or GD and putting respective techs in the queue as well. I myself really like HoI tech system, but think that the tech screen sucks big time (as a testament to that I have lots of hand drawn diagrams on paper that I had to make to use the tech system efficiently), is rather inconvenient and confusing (so I do understand when people complain) and could be vastly improved. Unfortunately, instead of improving the interface, they gutted the system.

 

[unmerged(9145)]

Damn noob, I think you hit the nail squarely on the head. If this simple change in the UI had been implemented you'd've eliminated my biggest complaint about the old HOI tech system right off. Let the computer figure out what's need to get goal X - AND show me all the techs it's going to research, and in what order, to get there. Superior to both HOI and HOI 2, so far as I'm concerned.

Tech is one of the things that made HOI fun to play, despite the fact that so many other things in the game were broken (apparently beyond patching). More options, more things you could try, even bizarre "what-if" runs just to see what would happen. I miss that in HOI 2 - it would at least make up for the fact that Paradox just seems to have replaced a slew of HOI 1 problems with new ones, rather than fixing the old game.

Max

 

[unmerged(11874)]

The FACT is that the HoI1 R&D system was false, fake, and wrong. It was fixed in HoI2 to make it 'more' realistic (still not perfect). HoI1 was backward, and keeping it would just perpetuating backwardness.

So's commanding every division personally in a way Hitler couldn't dream of and exercising a control over the economy Stalin would've (and did) kill for. If the game wasn't "false, fake, and wrong" it might be kinda boring.

Yes, exactly true. French tanks in 1940 were primarily armed with 47mm Guns, German tanks in 1940 were armed primarily with 37mm Guns. In action, German Armoured Divisions were significantly more effective and powerful than French Armoured Divisions. This was because of a better tactical use and deployment of their divisions. Germans also were able to defeat heavy Soviet Armour in 1941-42 with these 37mm and 50mm Guns vs. super-heavy armour and 75mm Guns. It is obvious that tank guns =/= better units.

If tank guns don't matter, why did Heniz Guderian throw a conniption fit when the Waffenamt overruled his desire for 50mm guns on the Panzer III? Obviously it didn't matter because "doctrinal superiority" is all that matters. T-34s are better tanks than Panzer IIIs and Panzer IVs and scared the shit out of most Germans--scared them enough to try to copy and improve upon the T-34 with the Panther, just like Char-B's scared them enough to continue development on the Tiger. What made the Panzer III and IVs superior in use 1941-1942 wasn't mere doctrinal superiority, but the fact they had radios which allowed the better doctrinal use, and when the Russians figured out how to use tanks effectively around 1942-43 their T-34s owned the crappy panzers heavily. Is an M4 Sherman the same as a T-34? Is the Spitfire the same plane as the Me 109? Is the agile A6M3 Zero the same plane as the Me 210? What's the British advanced strat bomber? Is it the same as a B-29 Superfortress?!

Also, tanks do not make up 100% of a division, you have tanks, infantry and artillery. You can kill a Panther tank with a 30mm Gun, it all depends on how crafty you are at using your 30mm Gun. Bigger guns, better armour does not equate a better division, especially when the differences between models was so little (30mm-50mm Guns had similar performance so why have different models?).

So your contention is, taking this to its logical conclusion, that a 37mm PAK gun is the same as 88mm flak. It all depends on how it's used. Ok.

HoI2 represents this actually difference better through the much improved doctirne system. Germany's tanks will be more effective because of quality of tactical use, while France and Russia will not. Tank quality means squat if they are used badly.

I will buy this. Doctrines are very important. France's armor doctrine sucked badly and thus they lost despite having, in some cases, superior equipment.

HoI2's tech system is neat. Using it is really fun and it looks just beautiful. I like the research teams a lot. But the blandness of its results and the isolation of its different paths is unsettling. Infantry '41... I liked it better when submachine guns were introduced, a superior personal anti-tank weapon, and so on...

Someone mentioned how radar doesn't affect ships. Surface and air radar on ships was pretty important!

I'd like to take a moment to say I LOVE the upgrade system, though. No fuss, no muss. Upgrades + research teams + more varied techs would equal awesome.

 

[unmerged(37680)]

Damn noob, I think you hit the nail squarely on the head. If this simple change in the UI had been implemented you'd've eliminated my biggest complaint about the old HOI tech system right off. Let the computer figure out what's need to get goal X - AND show me all the techs it's going to research, and in what order, to get there. Superior to both HOI and HOI 2, so far as I'm concerned.

I could even provide more detailed suggestions on the tech interface (and I think I actually did when I used to hang around here in back in 2003), but now it's all really moot. What really ticks me off is that they clearly are not goig to patch HoI1 any more. Even though it would greatly benefit (at least for those who play in short sessions) from a small change finally introduced in HoI2 where commander experience is saved accurately rather than rounded down (= lost) in save files, and that's something that you can not really mod yourself (well, other than tracking commanders' experience on paper and correcting it in save files once in a while ).

 

[McNaughton]

Exact proof that people don't read other people's posts!

So's commanding every division personally in a way Hitler couldn't dream of and exercising a control over the economy Stalin would've (and did) kill for. If the game wasn't "false, fake, and wrong" it might be kinda boring.

This has nothing to do with technology.

If tank guns don't matter, why did Heniz Guderian throw a conniption fit when the Waffenamt overruled his desire for 50mm guns on the Panzer III? Obviously it didn't matter because "doctrinal superiority" is all that matters. T-34s are better tanks than Panzer IIIs and Panzer IVs and scared the shit out of most Germans--scared them enough to try to copy and improve upon the T-34 with the Panther, just like Char-B's scared them enough to continue development on the Tiger. What made the Panzer III and IVs superior in use 1941-1942 wasn't mere doctrinal superiority, but the fact they had radios which allowed the better doctrinal use, and when the Russians figured out how to use tanks effectively around 1942-43 their T-34s owned the crappy panzers heavily. Is an M4 Sherman the same as a T-34? Is the Spitfire the same plane as the Me 109? Is the agile A6M3 Zero the same plane as the Me 210? What's the British advanced strat bomber? Is it the same as a B-29 Superfortress?!

You TOTALLY missed my point. Each era of armoured development produced tank equivalents from one nation to another. Take tanks used in 1939-1940. They were all VERY similar in strategic performance. A PzKpfw.III performed very similarly to the Cruiser IV, so much so that there should be no difference in cost and battlefield strength. Gun strength, between 37mm and 47mm of this era did not result in the tanks with 47mm guns having any sort of major edge over tanks armed with 37mm guns. German tanks with 37mm Guns were still able to kill French tanks armed with 47mm Guns (and did so in greater numbers).

I NEVER said that a M4 Sherman = Panther, I said that the M4 Sherman was a Tech Level 3 Medium Tank, and the Panther was a Tech Level 4 Medium Tank so OF COURSE they would be different (Panther being better). Look at the models, the M4 Sherman is level 3, the Panther is level 4.

Why I am totally pissed with people here is that they state (for whatever reason) that the Allies should have weaker tanks at tech level 4 than Germans, even though historically the Allies were using tech level 3 tanks at that time (Shermans and Cromwells). However, Germany's PzKpfw.IV (their tech level 3 tank) was not different in strategic performance to the Allied tech level 3 tanks (Sherman and Cromwell), so why do we have to create a tech tree to represent this?

So your contention is, taking this to its logical conclusion, that a 37mm PAK gun is the same as 88mm flak. It all depends on how it's used. Ok.

Yet again, I don't know where the heck you are getting this from? I never said that a 37mm = an 88mm, unless for some reason you believe that tanks in 1939 were armed with 88mm guns... I said, that tank guns of particular eras were equal. Eras CANNOT be matched by years of use, as the Allies used older equipment much latter than the Axis (unless you really count the fact that the German armoured force was PzKpfw.IV and not Panthers).

1939 Tanks were armed with similar weapons, so why should a gun that performed just the same as another gun (37mm to 47mm guns had very similar performance) have an artificial rating of improvement? The 47mm gun was not visibly better than the 37mm gun, so why would we make it so in the game?

In 1944, there was very little difference between the 17 Pounder and the 88mm, so why should we create a tech tree to show this difference that never existed?

HoI2's tech system is neat. Using it is really fun and it looks just beautiful. I like the research teams a lot. But the blandness of its results and the isolation of its different paths is unsettling. Infantry '41... I liked it better when submachine guns were introduced, a superior personal anti-tank weapon, and so on...

When you really look at things, the HoI1 tree was broken. Adding an improved Submachine Gun would do absolutely nothing to the fighting power of a division, especially since only a few hundred would be deployed. In HoI1, an improved SMG gave you a +1 SA value, even though the improved SMG was no better than the basic SMG it replaced! Why was this value in there? I don't know! It spoiled players, who gained a false belief that this would actually affect stuff.

The other major gripe I had about the tech tree was that there really was NO variety. There were some choices made (even the artificial ones) that resulted in 1 good choice, and 20 bad ones. Only a twit would choose the bad one (or a n00b), and then learn eventually never to do that again. Taking out the individual SMGs that EVERYONE ALWAYS researched.

There is no way to represent history accurately. The British didn't get a staple SMG until 1942, while Germany did in 1938. How can this be modeled? How can the Allies (who have high industry and research) be 'forced' to use a type 3 tank while the Germans (who have less industry and research) would be able to upgrade and build their type 4 tanks with 'ease'?

These things simply cannot be modelled, and a simpler, more abstract tech tree will result in a more accurate representation.

Sure, it is no longer a major focus of the game, but, HoI was NEVER intended to be an R&D simulation, but rather a combat simulation. Streamlining R&D enabled more focus being on the major part of the game system, that being to fight WW2. It was annoying to start, search, and plan your tech paths in HoI1. It is so much easier in HoI2, and JUST as easy to mod.

 

[unmerged(12303)]

yes a M4 Sherman is level 3 as is the Germany's PzKpfw.IV - no question on that. Minor differeces were there but they did match in general.

Now the problem is that with HOI2 is that USA will have the same tanks at the same time than germany - which is not exactly true as the Germans were already at the next stage when the usa dumped their tanks both in Sicily and in France.

By doing this and by the fact that 9 german tanks will lose against 12 russian tanks (2 doctrines behind) they practically created a game in which Germany in mp cannot win. Again the removal of small techs causes this flaw to come out due to lack of this remedy... - true superficial but to extent it worked for HOI1.

Their race to "simplify" the game went just too far. Removing all the minior differences, the ability for germany to have better unit stats than russia, but less army in general in HOI1 makes HOI2 and its tech tree in the current state a pointless game to play...

The fact that if one could research more minor techs to put up the stats of the tanks would increase the chances of germany vs russia. Also if we could make the build "discover tech" of the usa IV tanks 1 year later would also give the germans a breather so they would stand a chance..

F