Poland has not yet been lost, so don't make it too weak!

[Big Blue Blob]

Here is a little request for HOI4:

Buff Poland to its historical strength. It is just no fun to demolish it as Germany in HOI3, and it feels too weak when playing it. It would make for better games as both Germany and Poland, and overall make the game less silly.

And do the same for France, and every other gimped nation.

BBB

 

[Opanashc]

Considering, that most people cannot defeat Poland in historical timeframe, I would say it is NOT nerfed. However, the game is easily moddable - so if you disagree, buff Poland yourself.

 

[lemonsquid]

its not weakened for the players, its weakened for the AI

 

[safe-keeper]

Weakened minors are one of the issues that has been brought up a lot of times on these forums, and as far as I understand, they are going to be stronger in HOI4. In my opinion, every nation should be at its historical strength, with very few exceptions.

 

[Archam]

Weakened minors are one of the issues that has been brought up a lot of times on these forums, and as far as I understand, they are going to be stronger in HOI4. In my opinion, every nation should be at its historical strength, with very few exceptions.

France at historical strengh would never loose at historical speed, not even close. It would completely mess up WW2.

 

[sermaciej]

France at historical strengh would never loose at historical speed, not even close. It would completely mess up WW2.

Isn't that what doctrines are for? Germany will get Blitzkrieg bonus.

 

[Honza58]

I'll just leave the "Buff Czechoslovakia" here then, I guess... But make it so that Germany can use the captured Czechoslovak equipment to help its march towards Poland and France...

 

[sermaciej]

I'll just leave the "Buff Czechoslovakia" here then, I guess... But make it so that Germany can use the captured Czechoslovak equipment to help its march towards Poland and France...

Yeah, it would be cool, if they would make something about Cechoslovakia. It was France's ally, so if France would decide to protect them (and Poland and Hungary would decide to not partition it), WWII could have happened one year earlier.

 

[safe-keeper]

France at historical strengh would never loose at historical speed, not even close. It would completely mess up WW2.

I said with very few exceptions. I know France has been discussed to death here.

 

[Big Blue Blob]

I said with very few exceptions. I know France has been discussed to death here.

With NO exceptions.

France was not really as strong as Germany since it had useless old generals and bad doctrines while Germany had superb generals and modern doctrines, but that should be its weakness, not an artificially gimped IC/leadership/whatever. A player France should be able to turn things around from 1936.

Poland, Czechoslovakia, France, everyone should be at historical strength.

 

[rutger9]

With NO exceptions.

France was not really as strong as Germany since it had useless old generals and bad doctrines while Germany had superb generals and modern doctrines, but that should be its weakness, not an artificially gimped IC/leadership/whatever. A player France should be able to turn things around from 1936.

Poland, Czechoslovakia, France, everyone should be at historical strength.

I was not aware we were dealing with the arbitrator of what should and shouldn't be, anyways the point is quite correct if you ask me, the french wont send the majority of their army into Belgium allowing them to be pocketed
the french wont surrender after one pockets a massive part of their army.
the french wont surrender until you break through into Paris and their northern ports.

This means that the french get to play the war that they wanted, a defensive one, because they wont be forceful allowing for a German encirclement you will stumble upon a line of the french.

 

[1alexey]

With NO exceptions.

France was not really as strong as Germany since it had useless old generals and bad doctrines while Germany had superb generals and modern doctrines, but that should be its weakness, not an artificially gimped IC/leadership/whatever. A player France should be able to turn things around from 1936.

Poland, Czechoslovakia, France, everyone should be at historical strength.

If you mean, that player France playing at difficulty that is doesn`t give advantages or disadvantages to player or AI (normal in most PI games)
should be able to turn the tide and win, it is easily doable in HOI3, just invest in those land doctrines and with proper build plan, something like this:

is easily achievable, i think I`ve encircled around 15 German divisions so far, and will be in Berlin before 1941 will end.

 

[Axe99]

This topic's been a bit done to death, but for what it's worth:

There are two main issues:
- Players playing the countries from 1936 can play ahistorically and build them up 'better' than they were in 1939. Hopefully the experience system will make this a good deal harder in HoI4, but if this goes for every country, then it shouldn't unbalance an MP game (with possible exception of France, but then there's always a 1939 or 1940 start), and in an SP game if a player wants an alternate history, isn't that the point of the game?

- HoI3's game systems (particularly AI but also some of the land/air combat systems) weren't terribly good at modelling the blitzkriegs against France or Poland, and so they were underpowered to compensate for the systems not being up to scratch. Personally, I'd far prefer they improve the systems in the game (which looks to be what they're doing) and have historical force levels. If this isn't possible, then there's an argument for messing with starting OOBs, but only if this isn't possible, which hasn't been established yet. HoI4 isn't just a rebalanced HoI3, in many cases it's a whole new set of systems that all being well will make the game play far more historically, allowing for far more historical force levels.

 

[Snow Wolf]

I'll just leave the "Buff Czechoslovakia" here then, I guess... But make it so that Germany can use the captured Czechoslovak equipment to help its march towards Poland and France...

Wasn't the Czech army one of the most modern ones at that time? ... even if tiny.

 

[lemonsquid]

Wasn't the Czech army one of the most modern ones at that time? ... even if tiny.

id say yes considering how much germany took for its own use.

 

[Opanashc]

Wasn't the Czech army one of the most modern ones at that time? ... even if tiny.

28 divisions in 1938 - hardly tiny, Germans had just 51.

 

[1alexey]

28 divisions in 1938 - hardly tiny, Germans had just 51.

Depends on the time frame.

If we consider late 1939-early 1940, then, it is quite tiny, compared to French 110+ divisions or German 140+, or USSRs over 9000.

 

[Augustus93]

Buff Hungary!

 

[Big Blue Blob]

I was not aware we were dealing with the arbitrator of what should and shouldn't be, anyways the point is quite correct if you ask me, the french wont send the majority of their army into Belgium allowing them to be pocketed
the french wont surrender after one pockets a massive part of their army.
the french wont surrender until you break through into Paris and their northern ports.

This means that the french get to play the war that they wanted, a defensive one, because they wont be forceful allowing for a German encirclement you will stumble upon a line of the french.

The French did not surrender until after Paris has fallen.

Just program the French AI to be stupid and slow, it's not hard, they managed to do it with everyone in HOI3. Programming the German AI to be good is the hard bit.

I was not really seeing this from France's perspective, but from Germany's. Playing as Germany, it is trivially easy to do a world conquest, despite being on the losing side of the war. Why is it easier to play the losing side than the winning side? An Axis game should be a harder game, for players to attempt after they have won as the Allies.

Maybe the real problem is that all the AIs behave the same, regardless of doctrine. This should not be the case. France should be slow, disorganised and likely to advance into Belgium, Germany should use armoured encirclements and air power, as should the UK later on, and the USSR varies depending on whether it has been purged or not (defence in depth if not purged, floundering before regrouping if purged). Doing this for at least the major powers would strengthen Germany without gimping France, Poland, Czechoslovakia or anybody else.

This is not really about "buffs" or "nerfs", this is about reattaching the testicles of certain nations which had them snipped in HOI3.

 

[George Parr]

The French did not surrender until after Paris has fallen.

Just program the French AI to be stupid and slow, it's not hard, they managed to do it with everyone in HOI3. Programming the German AI to be good is the hard bit.

I was not really seeing this from France's perspective, but from Germany's. Playing as Germany, it is trivially easy to do a world conquest, despite being on the losing side of the war. Why is it easier to play the losing side than the winning side? An Axis game should be a harder game, for players to attempt after they have won as the Allies.

Who says that it is actually easier to play as the losing side than as the winning side?
Sure, you can conquer the world with Germany, you can conquer the world with pretty much every other nation in the game. People have done it with Lithuania, Albania and maybe even Luxembourg. Being able to win with Germany doesn't mean that it is easier than doing it with the USA, Soviet Union or Great Britain. If you are somewhat good at the game, none of the big nations are particularly hard to win with.


In the end, what needs to be done is what is the best for gameplay. If the developers can pull it off to have every nation with their historic military strength while ending up with a historical result pretty much every time, then yes, the historical setup would be great. If the AI can't pull it off though, changes need to be made. Having France or Poland at their historic strength is less important than having WW2 play out somewhat historically. You don't want to end up with players complaining because they spend a lot of effort in a US-game, only to have Germany fail beating France 50% of the time, thus making the whole game more or less irrelevant or broken.

Making a nation a bit weaker is a whole lot easier done than forcing the AI into behaving stupidly (as in, making a better AI act stupid).