Remove speed 1 and add a new speed faster than 4 but slower than 5 instead? speed 4.5?

[Zeprion]

In Crusader Kings, I mostly play on speed 2 or 3. In Hearts of Iron 4, when singleplayer I play speed 5 while at peace and speed 4/5 while at war. In multiplayer, we play speed 4 while at peace and speed 3 while at war. If there are only a handful of people, we play at speed 5 during peace.

My point is that speed 1 and speed 2 are almost never being used. Some players may enjoy taking it slowly, slowly watch each battle and so on. But that only justifies one of the speeds, either keeping speed 1 or speed 2. There's no point having 2 speeds that nobody uses.

But there is point in having a speed 4.5 as many players feel that speed 5 is too fast but speed 4 is too slow for certain situations, not only but especially when speed 5 is too laggy but we still want something fast for the pre-war stages of the game.

As I understand speed 5 is the fastest speed possible, as fast as the game can process it, so there's no faster than speed 5. But how about a speed 4.5? A speed faster then speed 4 but slower than speed 5. The speeds 4,3 and 2 become speed 3,2 and 1 while the new speed 4.5 becomes speed 4 and speed 5 keeps its title.

According to the game's files, these are the speed numbers from 5 to 1: 2.0, 0.5, 0.2, 0.1, 0.0; So speed 5 is actually 4 times as fast as speed 4. That's a huge gap. If we add a speed 4.5 and remove speed 2 or speed 1 then the new numbers would be: 2.0, 1.0, 0.5, 0.2, 0.1. or 2.0, 1.0, 0.5, 0.2, 0.0 depending on whether you want to keep the current speed 2 or speed 1. I think this is a better pool of speed to choose from than going from 2.0 straight to 0.5.

If speed 4.5 is added as the new speed 4 and every other speed drops 1 level, speed 5 will only be twice as fast as speed 4, speed 4 will be twice as fast as speed 3, speed 3 will be 2.5 as fast as speed 2 and speed 2 will be twice as fast as speed 1. As Thanos said: perfectly (almost) balanced, as all things should be.

What do you think? Should we remove speed 1 or speed 2 and add a new speed faster than 4 but slower than 5 instead? a speed 4.5?

And while we're at it, is it possible to disable the automatic reduction on speed while in multiplayer games? At least as long as the speed is not 5.
Or at least have the option to automatically restore it to the previous setting once everything is good? Speed 4, lag comes, speed 2, lag is out, the game automatically restores speed 4.
Sometimes the speed drops to speed 2 or 3 and it's annoying to have to click on that button to restore the speed every single time.

 

[Znail]

I never use speed 4, but I do use the others, so that one would be the one I don't need.

 

[Kazakk]

Even on big battles like a barbarossa against a massively buffed AI in BICE mod on hardest difficulty, I never go below 2 speed. I don't think anyone uses 1 speed.

 

[bitmode]

According to the game's files, these are the speed numbers from 5 to 1: 2.0, 0.5, 0.2, 0.1, 0.0; So speed 5 is actually 4 times as fast as speed 4.

You misread those numbers. Those are timings, i.e. speed 1 targets 2 seconds per game hour, speed 2 targets 0.5 seconds per game hours etc. There is no ratio between speed 4 and 5 because it would be a division by zero (that's why the comment after the numbers says "with last one 0 for unbound").

Even on big battles like a barbarossa against a massively buffed AI in BICE mod on hardest difficulty, I never go below 2 speed. I don't think anyone uses 1 speed.

I mostly play on speeds 1 and 2 and virtually never on 5. I don't think there is much point on speculating what "every" player is doing. And remember that one of the reasons the game speeds were made moddable was people asking for a speed slower than 1. Yes.

I suspect one design goal on the upper end may have been to make speed 5 noticeably faster than 4 on typical PCs, at least at the beginning of the game. Before the optimizations that were made throughout patches, I can imagine that the game did not run much faster than 10 game hours per second even when unlocked.
As it is now, the steps between the slower speeds are relatively large and then become smaller at the higher speeds (x4, x2.5, x2, x2). Maybe the increases should stay at about 3x:

• 2
• 0.5
• 0.15
• 0.05
• 0

That way speed 4 would be twice as fast as it is now and speed 3 in the middle between current speeds 3 and 4.

 

[Louella]

The majority of your post just looks like change for change's sake, without much in the way of reasoning, other than personal preferences behind it.


I don't know about multiplayer game speed and synchronising between players clients, so have no opinion on that.

 

[Zeprion]

I mostly play on speeds 1 and 2 and virtually never on 5. I don't think there is much point on speculating what "every" player is doing. And remember that one of the reasons the game speeds were made moddable was people asking for a speed slower than 1. Yes.

I'm only speculating from my personal experience in multiplayer games. I never said "every" but there is a significant amount of players who want that, mainly those who play hoi4 competitive multiplayer.

Yes, the real life mod, it takes 1 real life hour to advance a real life in game. But it wasn't made as a serious mod. Nobody would actually want to play a game for 9 real life years.

Why are you always playing on speed 1 or 2? Even before the war starts? How much does a regular hoi4 game, say 1936 - 1943, take for you?

 

[bitmode]

I never said "every"

That was a reply to Kazakk.

Yes, the real life mod

I believe it was a multiplayer group wanting to play at half of speed 1. I'll keep looking for the quote.

 

[bitmode]

Why are you always playing on speed 1 or 2?

Mostly 1 & 2. I do you use 3 & 4 when everything is chugging along.

Even before the war starts?

Yes. I play without historical AI focus (but only go hugely alt-history myself if the circumstances require it) and don't have a strategy figured out before I start. And I am generally not a twitchy RTS clicker like @Da9L .
Much of the early game for me is keeping track of what the other countries are doing, designing my templates, organizing the fleet and such.
I also don't play very often so I don't know many of the reworked focus trees and optimal paths/builds.
E.g. the other day during my France game I had to dig through the game files to learn how the Political Violence spirit works and ways to deal with it (nice user interface, PDS!).

When I'm satisfied with everything, I do increase the speed intermittently. But most of the time I'm not satisfied.

How much does a regular hoi4 game, say 1936 - 1943, take for you?

For reference, this would be 8.5 hours when playing continuously on speed 2 (0.5 s * 24 * 365 * 7 years / 3600) and 34 hours on speed 1. I'm somewhere at 16 or 20 hours but with ahistorical AI the late-game is unpredictable.

 

[Donkey Kong]

Never seen a demand for this. In fact, never seen anyyne ask for this.

I highly doubt there will be a change in speed this late in the game's lifespan.

 

[Znail]

I'm only speculating from my personal experience in multiplayer games. I never said "every" but there is a significant amount of players who want that, mainly those who play hoi4 competitive multiplayer.

Yes, the real life mod, it takes 1 real life hour to advance a real life in game. But it wasn't made as a serious mod. Nobody would actually want to play a game for 9 real life years.

Why are you always playing on speed 1 or 2? Even before the war starts? How much does a regular hoi4 game, say 1936 - 1943, take for you?

Competitive multiplayer, that's a very small minority wich means it would be silly to make any change aimed at that group that negatively impact others.

As mentioned so is it possible to change the speeds with a mod and it makes sense for the minority to be required to use that for special requests.

 

[KubiG37]

I agree that speed 1 is perhaps the most useless one.
But why change something so ... irrelevant, mundane, now? And how do you know what speed people use? Not everyone wants to play their game at the fastest possible speed trying to melt the mouse and keyboard hunting some APM meta.

Personally:
5 - when bored and nothing to do in 1936 or playing observer
4 - still nothing happening but AIs do something
3 - standard speed
2 - when intensive combat micromanagement is needed, or I just want to enjoy the game without constantly having to check something
1 - never used it

 

[Zeprion]

Mostly 1 & 2. I do you use 3 & 4 when everything is chugging along.

Yes. I play without historical AI focus (but only go hugely alt-history myself if the circumstances require it) and don't have a strategy figured out before I start. And I am generally not a twitchy RTS clicker like @Da9L .
Much of the early game for me is keeping track of what the other countries are doing, designing my templates, organizing the fleet and such.
I also don't play very often so I don't know many of the reworked focus trees and optimal paths/builds.
E.g. the other day during my France game I had to dig through the game files to learn how the Political Violence spirit works and ways to deal with it (nice user interface, PDS!).

When I'm satisfied with everything, I do increase the speed intermittently. But most of the time I'm not satisfied.

For reference, this would be 8.5 hours when playing continuously on speed 2 (0.5 s * 24 * 365 * 7 years / 3600) and 34 hours on speed 1. I'm somewhere at 16 or 20 hours but with ahistorical AI the late-game is unpredictable.

I see, you like to understand everything by yourself before you get started. I'm more of a trial & error guy or learn from others depending on my mood. When I play a new country, I like to test it out myself without knowing anything about it. When I want to learn how to play that country, usually for multiplayer battles, I look online for online guides with that country. There's a significant difference between a guide and an online guide, as a player is generally a lot better than the AI which makes the game challenging which makes it interesting. That's quite a lot of time for a game, at least compared to my gameplay style. Don't you get bored? Do you play for the fights or to admire the world/war situation?

Competitive multiplayer, that's a very small minority wich means it would be silly to make any change aimed at that group that negatively impact others.

As mentioned so is it possible to change the speeds with a mod and it makes sense for the minority to be required to use that for special requests.

I intuitively assumed that most Hearts of Iron 4 players are playing multiplayer, since it's a lot more competitive-based that CK2 or EU4. But I don't exactly know whether that's the case so I could be wrong. But why would it negatively impact others? The people who want to play on lower speeds can still do it, while the people who want to play on a speed faster than 4 but slower than 5 can do it now. I see no negative impact to others.

I agree that speed 1 is perhaps the most useless one. But why change something so ... irrelevant, mundane, now? And how do you know what speed people use? Not everyone wants to play their game at the fastest possible speed trying to melt the mouse and keyboard hunting some APM meta.

Personally:
5 - when bored and nothing to do in 1936 or playing observer
4 - still nothing happening but AIs do something
3 - standard speed
2 - when intensive combat micromanagement is needed, or I just want to enjoy the game without constantly having to check something
1 - never used it

Because I played many games with people online and they used those speeds. The fastest speed possible is 5, I'm suggesting a 4.5 speed. Something lower than the fastest speed possible but still higher than the current second fastest speed possible. If speed 5 won't melt the mouse and keyboard hunting some APM meta, neither will speed 4.5.

It's similar to me, which is why I suggest this change.
5 - When I want to skip time faster, mostly in singleplayer pre-war.
4 - 1st standard speed. Used pre-war in multiplayer and mostly in singleplayer when at war.
3 - 2nd standard speed. Used when at war in multiplayer and occasionally in singleplayer when at war.
2 - I almost never used it. When I want to do intensitve micromanagement in singleplayer, I just pause the game.
1 - I never used it.

If a speed is almost never used, why not replace it with something more useful? My computer can run speed 5, but that may not be the case for everyone. Multiplayer can definetly not constantly run speed 5, but players would still want something relatively fast during peace time, wouldn't a speed faster than 4 be useful in this case?

 

[Secret Master]

There's no point having 2 speeds that nobody uses.

We use it in our MP group during some parts of Barbarossa.

Of course, why remove any speed when you can just add speeds? In fact, I think there are mods that add faster speeds.

And while we're at it, is it possible to disable the automatic reduction on speed while in multiplayer games?

Why would you want that? Isn't the entire point of the automatic slow down so that the host can sync easier with everyone and stay synced?

 

[Zeprion]

We use it in our MP group during some parts of Barbarossa.

Of course, why remove any speed when you can just add speeds? In fact, I think there are mods that add faster speeds.

Consistency, all Paradox games seem to have 5 standard speeds. So you use speed 2 sometimes, but what about speed 1? If a speed is very unpopular, why not keep it for the mods and replace it with a more useful speed in the base game?

Why would you want that? Isn't the entire point of the automatic slow down so that the host can sync easier with everyone and stay synced?

So that the host won't have to spam that button every once in a while. Or at least have the option to automatically restore the previous speed once everything is in sync.

 

[bitmode]

I intuitively assumed that most Hearts of Iron 4 players are playing multiplayer, since it's a lot more competitive-based that CK2 or EU4.

It is a bit dated by now, but here is a quote from 2 years ago:

Multiplayer games sit at 11% (daily unique players)

and in turn, of those 11% a large chunk are (were) non-competitive games (2 or 3 players in the same faction, against AI) according to telemetry about multiplayer. The percentage may have shifted by now but competitive multiplayer should still be in the minority.

If I'm not mistaken, the list of multiplayer lobbies should represent the total number of people in multiplayer games. And I don't remember ever seeing multiple thousand players there, while hoi4's daily concurrent player peak is still over 30.000.

 

[bitmode]

That's quite a lot of time for a game, at least compared to my gameplay style. Don't you get bored? Do you play for the fights or to admire the world/war situation?

Before I'm getting bored I'm much more likely to get annoyed by the pile of bugs this game is. Low speeds really develop the full aroma of those. I do speed the game up when there is nothing to be done in the current situation. But especially during a war a lot of things need to align for this to happen, e.g.:

• my tanks (which I always micromanage) are recharging their planning bonus or take some other predictable action for multiple days
• no non-convoy naval combat is happening (I always monitor battles on speed 1 because they are wonky af)
• the air war is in a steady state
• building and training queues are in order according to current needs
• same for production lines/stockpiles
• no PP, CP, XP to spend

If you've already figured out a strategy beforehand, much of this is probably closer to admiring/monitoring the situation rather than direct fighting. I'm also not such a high-skilled player that victory against the AI is a foregone conclusion given all the stuff that can go down with historical focus off.

I imagine in competitive multiplayer there are longer stretches of time where no openings present themselves because the strategies on both sides are somewhat attuned to one another.

 

[Znail]

Consistency, all Paradox games seem to have 5 standard speeds. So you use speed 2 sometimes, but what about speed 1? If a speed is very unpopular, why not keep it for the mods and replace it with a more useful speed in the base game?

So that the host won't have to spam that button every once in a while. Or at least have the option to automatically restore the previous speed once everything is in sync.

But speed 1 isn't very unpopular. That 4.5 speed on the other hand seems totally worthless to me. Speed 5 fills the role of when you just want to pass time. When would you want to use speed 4.5 outside multiplayer? And as mentioned, multiplayer is the minority not the other way around.

 

[elektrizikekswerk]

I never use 5.
I very rarely use 4.
I use 3 as the default option.
I use 2 when there's much to do.
I very rarely use 1.
I pause very, very often, so my actual game progresses at somewhere between 1 and 2. Like @bitmode I need the better part of an actual day of play time to finish one campaign.

 

[Uriah]

I have almost 1000 hours on HOI4 and have never used anything above 3, and that rarely. About half the time on 2, the rest on 1. I tend to think when things are going slowly. Maybe I am just slow. Or maybe I have more time. Who knows? People play the way they like.

Luckily there is absolutely nil chance of 1 being removed simply because some players don't use it.

It makes as much sense as me demanding that speed 5 be removed and a speed 0.5 be introduced. Now there's an idea .....

 

[Dlin369]

I use 1 when I need to heavily micro in unfavorable situations -> the biggest one I can think of is in Kaiserreich for the initial LKMT uprising in Fujian.