Quill18- HoI4 impressions

[LodovicoAriosto]

I also wonder about the possibilities of carefully microed operations done with surgical precision at specific time and in just a few provinces. These were things which decided games in multiplayer in HoI3 or HoI2. Most games were won or lost during a couple of decisive complex operations, concentrated heavy blows of thoroughly orchestrated war machine, land, air and naval too. One Kaiserreich MP game ended with combined infra bombing, pinning down units with fake attacks and slowed by massively concentrated interdiction, shore bombardment, amph. invasion and paradrop - all of these done in a specific place following a ruse manoeuvre which forced them to withdraw a bit, unsuspecting the next and main stage of the operation, encircling the powerful core of the whole enemy army of 5-6 players. This allowed one side to destroy cca 50 armors and 100 inf at once and the whole game was finished. This required close cooperation of several players, everybody doing exactly what they agreed on at a specific time. If one had done something prematurely, it could have exposed the whole operation.

If you cannot pull off stuff like that using battleplanner, then the feature is completely worthless in multiplayer and very hard single player scenarios. And if you cannot do this kind of precision even manually or if the game lacks proper manual control interface (like stacks, oob etc.), then it could be a step not just before HoI3 but away from the franchise as it has worked so far. Which is not necessary bad though if there are other new things which would compensate.

 

[1alexey]

I think the penalty for not using BP is foolish. Historically, the best planners were the ones who were able to respond to changes the circumstances well, rather than stay to one plan even as it proved to be flawed. People didn't win battles because they happened to be marked on the map as part of a plan.

Further, if I want to use BP to actually make a group go through a specific attack path, either i need to make lots and lots of small groups so I can manage them all ( since otherwise the AI will control them all and screw up attacks as it always does), getting a huge number of clicks to be needed, or I need to draw lots of fronts, also racking up tons of clocks.

But if you micro every single division, you`re still making more clicks than when using battle planer.

 

[LostAlone]

The new game will have new synergies and strategies to discover. I cannot believe that no-one has even mentioned that up until now.

The new game will be *SHOCK* different from the old game, so that means that a lot of your old tactics won't be as effective, but there will be a whole new and interesting world of things to find and crush people with. If you just want to replay the same exact game with the same exact tactics over and over again then I don't know what to say to you. Without wanting to sound too childish - If you love HoI3 so much then can you just marry it? It just gets incredibly old to hear how ever change from HoI3 utterly wrecks the game in every conceivable way. We get it. You really really like HoI3. There's no need for twelve pages of harrumphing over a second hand story of how the automated combat system works because DIFFERENT AND WRONG! It's so wearing to wade through this whole thread and read over and over 'Ruined!', 'Will not buy!' and 'But I like everything terrible in HoI3!'.

It's doubly wearing since everything I've seen about HoI4 makes me like it more, exactly because it's different and easier to play and a lot of people feel the same way they just don't come and post about it. All I can do is hope that the devs don't listen to you guys and stick to designing the game to make it the best game, not just the best HoI3 clone.

 

[LodovicoAriosto]

nerfing manual control to promote inevitably inferior AI control would be unfair and ridiculous.

 

[ariansandstrom]

arrows arent aesthetics, they control axis of advance and such so are pretty important. What I said in the stream was that the system for modifying them wasnt stable enough for pdxcon so I couldnt show that yet (also the fact that its currently indicated by a pink cat icon)



I think I meant I needed someone able to handle 5 divisions when looking through the list of generals we have more than 5.



I am slightly disappointed that you haven't given it a try :/

The pushups was hilarious. But it is a good way of showing that they are in training. What I wonder is if you are able to split the arrows like in this Picture for example.

I mean the top arrow(18. Armee) was split bofore the other one was finished.

 

[Gamer_1745]

arrows arent aesthetics, they control axis of advance and such so are pretty important. What I said in the stream was that the system for modifying them wasnt stable enough for pdxcon so I couldnt show that yet (also the fact that its currently indicated by a pink cat icon)

It would have been OK if it was a pink panther. :laugh:

I think I meant I needed someone able to handle 5 divisions when looking through the list of generals we have more than 5.

I know pre-Alpha, Hausser & other Waffen SS generals should not be available as 'Corps' generals until after 1940. I am using 'Corps' as higher than divisional command.

Overall looking good except how do you show Counters doing press-ups?

I am slightly disappointed that you haven't given it a try :/

I thought the men doing push-ups looked comical! :laugh: I love what I understand of training (on map & off) and production!!! :wub: I am hopeful that the counter 'models' will be able to translate the command for models to do push-ups into a corner color that indicates training.

The attrition of equipment (training & movement, not combat) is is lost or can it be repaired?

 

[fabius]

arrows arent aesthetics, they control axis of advance and such so are pretty important. What I said in the stream was that the system for modifying them wasnt stable enough for pdxcon so I couldnt show that yet (also the fact that its currently indicated by a pink cat icon)

Thank you for clarifying Podcat. I think there are some things that could help sell the Battle Planner, (on top of it being less micro and Group Commanders giving bonuses)

Player Decisions to set things like loss tolerances for specific group attacks. If we are letting the AI do more and having a commanders overview, I want to be able to tell the AI to stop pause an attack in a province if losses reach 75%; but able to have specific orders for key battle Group set differently. Similarly prioritise for supply and replacements.

I'm pretty sure you wont reveal much until actual dev diary of an almost final version- but can you hint whether there will be more depth to the Battle Planner? For example, group of 10 Divisions- set 2 of them to be the Group's reserve- that the AI holds back until needed.

Oh, and the more I see and think about the more I think the new system could be the making of the game. Yes WW2 have Corps/Army structure- but also those structures were fluid and units reassigned for specific battle plans.... much like it looks like the game will have.

 

[Dark Jakkaru]

Remember folks, most of the complex maths in HOI 3 are still there when Podcat was asked the question about complexity. How they interact will be different as playing to beat Poland without considering any strategic setup with regards to the Royal Navy, trade, or France of course going to be easy for a 1 hour demo. The demo is just that; so you can get a feel of how the basics of everything plays. Even when I steam rolled Poland in HOI 3, most of my strategic direction was dealing with Britain/France, then tangling the USSR in a historical direction. Boy was my strategic army stretched trying to concentrate on Poland and defending against France in HOI 3 but really doable. How France plays in HOI IV is going to be interesting as the AI isn't going to give you the luxury of lighting manning the line when they can waltz into Frankfurt and have the capability to do so. So far, HOI IV isn't going to give freebie events to players any longer to get to a certain point in the game.

 

[Dark Jakkaru]

I think we can lay the whole "OOB issue" to rest, as it appears that Paradox has decided to go in a different direction with HoI 4. There has never been anything to even remotely suggest that there will be a "higher command echelon" (although there have been people wishing for it, or any kind of an OOB feature). At least as far as i can remember.

What do you mean? True, there isn't a fixed structure that I can see with the HOI IV demo. BUT, I would bet they will put in some Political Points way to promote lower tier commanders to command larger sized units if there are bonuses you want from those commanders. So, it isn't a matter of keeping your commanders as ducks in a row with a nice tree with commanders lumped under that or fixed like that to any stretch of the imagination. It is about how large of a division cluster you want to push onto an objective and how large of a command you want to dedicate to that task rather than fighting to rearrange a chain of command to do that exact same thing.

So you don't necessarily have to micromanage who Fedor von Bock of Army Group Center has under him commanding his Armies if his Army Group's goal is Smolensk prior to making the final lunge at Moscow. But, you do if you want to task a separate Army to another objective without necessarily having to alter the Army Group's Strategic Objective if you want to send Guderian's Army to encircle Soviet forces in the Kiev area as a Tactical Objective. I think the new way has the right intentions with that and on the fly you don't need a conference in the Wolf's lair to restructure an OOB every time you want to change just a small part of the plan. Maybe the devs can demo something like the above historical scenario from Smolensk to Kiev or find another way to illustrate how much real command power you now have to make the AI work with your plans.

EDIT: There might be a more finer reason why you would want to have higher ranked Commanders over a two-star 10 Division Commander explained in a future DD. I believe from the demo the intent was to make it the relationship more pronounced with regards to committing divisions to a goal and then decided which command structure you want to use to achieve that goal with and not necessarily all about how the Chain of Command looks. Goals, after all, are set by the player and how they wish to relate that with the specific # of Divisions, and their Divisional makeup, tasked to do that is entirely up to the player. So, overall the relationship is more intuitive to me the way they setup the new "OOB" (Order of Battle) which you can change much easier on the go.

 

[gregor_mendel]

So for HoI4 am I just going to have a couple of super stacks on the border with Poland and a super stack on the border with France? Did the combat system seriously just devolve to Vicky 2 levels? Where the heck is the OOB?

 

[Dark Jakkaru]

So for HoI4 am I just going to have a couple of super stacks on the border with Poland and a super stack on the border with France? Did the combat system seriously just devolve to Vicky 2 levels? Where the heck is the OOB?

With the new Supply System, I don't think you would want to over stack a province as there should still be the same penalties from HOI 3 carried over unless stated otherwise. I didn't even do that in HOI 3 and most of them micro-management was to ensure I cut the enemy off but my troops were in position to be resupplied and be able to fight.

 

[Denkt]

So for HoI4 am I just going to have a couple of super stacks on the border with Poland and a super stack on the border with France? Did the combat system seriously just devolve to Vicky 2 levels? Where the heck is the OOB?

What have OOB to do with how land combat work, frontage in some form is probably still in the game.

 

[Modestus]

I am slightly disappointed that you haven't given it a try :/

There you go....

 

[Lech Kaczynski]

So for HoI4 am I just going to have a couple of super stacks on the border with Poland and a super stack on the border with France? Did the combat system seriously just devolve to Vicky 2 levels? Where the heck is the OOB?

I'm going to try to this one more time.

This is exactly what I see, a digression of the combat system to a simpler format. yes, more easy to manage. But this is supposed to be a game about WW2, not like.... Yes, interesting things to do in this period and shape it, but overall it's about the war. The game could start in any year really, they have said it is a "grand strategy game" aka tank building simulator. Which is cool, very good look at ww2, but it doesn't really apply in my opinion to the war. Everything about this says the war is a second thought, its not a tactical game its a "grand strategy game" ok, explain then how this is in Victoria 1936-1945, because lack of OOB and other things.

Why not start this game at ww1? for example.... I guess I don't see the logic here, I enjoy the production system, troop training. I don't know why it cannot start at any year.

 

[Holy.Death]

I see different obstacle here: shifting divisions between commanders.

It can become a micro-management heavy without groupings of some sort. For example: I want all tanks and motorized units to be separated from my infantry units, but attached to same commander. That way if I decide that von Paulus does not need tanks to defend city and a river I can give the whole group to someone else (or corps, if I want him to keep some). It's a question of being able to quickly and efficiently shift troops around. I do hope it'll be taken into consideration.

 

[Gamer_1745]

I know HoI3's OOB got lots of complaints, but I think for many reasons as HOI IV's lack of an OOB becomes known will for different reasons be an event bigger issue. This last video chat seems to have let many others know it is gone and now they are speaking up.

 

[Stenner]

My friend and I are really into games, and he doesn't know about HOI, or doesn't like it.

But I tried to explain the differences to him about not having an OOB, he being a complete novice.

And I said, "it's like this, in 3 you had this army and they could all be different colors. The colors didn't matter, but each color went into their own bag when you organized them. Now they're all the same color, the colors still don't matter but there is only 1 bag to sort them in so you don't have to go looking around everywhere. The armies themselves seem like they haven't changed, the game is actually better than 3 from what we've seen thus far".

And then he explained to me in a very callous way, that this is casualization and that it's going to cause a rift with players.

I tried to explain that nothing has changed, and that the core mechanics are still there it's just an organization difference.

Then he posed to me, "So it's easier to do something in this game than the last game?" and I said "Yes.", and he said "So "less smart" players will be able to do things that historically only the "top" players will be able to do?", and I said "Theoretically".

"Yea, that's making the game casual, now the "best" players won't look as smart as everyone else and if part of their enjoyment was based upon being better than everyone else, they won't enjoy this game as much as the old one."

And I didn't want to listen to him for a long time, but then I remember back to reading about people arduously organizing all the units in 3 and making killer AAR's, and how much work went into it, and I can't help but think that maybe this /is/ a tiny part of the issue.

 

[Gamer_1745]

For me it is many reasons. Some are like you say are smart game play others are historical. You can't have the Afrika Korps without a corps structure in the game or Panzer Armee Afrika without an army structure.

 

[Centurion1973]

Whatttttt... my heart just sank with hearing that there may be a limit to 5 groups. That'd be absurd and truly dumbed down.

Based on what Podcat said, you will be able to get more generals by spending political points a.k.a. "Fuhrer mana".

 

[Jadelith]

So for HoI4 am I just going to have a couple of super stacks on the border with Poland and a super stack on the border with France? Did the combat system seriously just devolve to Vicky 2 levels? Where the heck is the OOB?

Please tell me how having an OOB stops you from making super stacks. Or not having an OOB forces you to have deathstacks. Or how not having an OOB is related to the combat system in any way whatsoever.