I am rarely what you would consider "active" on theses forums. I read a lot, but it is rather unusual that I feel the urge to post something.
However, I want to take a minute to thank the developers of the game. Since the release of Waking the Tiger, I have played pretty much non-stop even though I actually have more important stuff to do. Before people cry fanboy, I am not saying that the game is perfect. However, it is a lot (and I mean a lot) of fun. I am no hardcore multiplayer meta-meme-metaphor kind of guy, I just want a challenge for my brain every now and then. And even though the AI is still far from super challenging, the game design gives me so much to think about. I start playing the game and after "a little while" I look at the time and recognise that 3 hours have passed. I love drawing battle plans, as soon as you have figured out how the battle planner works it's a thing of beauty. Again, is it perfect? No, I would like to define the specific provinces that are taken by the AI, it is a pain adjust the front to avoid overcompensating for holes etc. The breakthroughs and encirclements I still prefer to do by hand, but I wouldn't want it any other way anyways.
I have played this game since the early days of HoI 2 and it has come such a long way. While there are many things to fix (where is espionage?) and improve (naval warfare is confusing most of the time, attributed to a clunky UI spitting out too many messages and icons, but not revealing what really happens) I clearly see HoI on the right way. Equipment production is terrific, those days of adjusting sliders are gone and it is a joy to balance production adjustments, plan ahead, calculate the time your industry needs to adjust etc. It's also very nice that the strength of a division is not just an orange pillar anymore but is represented by stuff you can actually influence. The production system does not get the credit it deserves, but is a yuuuuuuuuge step forwards.
There were many concerns accompaying the development of HoI. I remember endless discussions about NATO counters, tanks (!), the map, not every province having a name (nobody needs that anymore....now it is just the big battle "close to Warshaw") etc, now people seem to complain mostly about balancing issues...isn't that nice? Not many people questioning design choices anymore but the knitty griddy of some easy changeable variables. I very much love the rivers running along state lines now. It's much easier than ever before to determine where those pesyk rivers flow.
I thought about doing a list of what I appreciate, because I think, sometimes those things don't get the credit they deserve. However, some of those things need to be overworked or looked at in my opinion as far as game design is concerned. I already touched on a lot of things, but here it goes:
Production
I don't think, there is much to change here. I really love it! The only thing that bugs me is that if try to take a look at your stockpile in the logistic screen it is not immediately clear what "level" the equipment has. Playing as Germany, I took over Czechoslovakia. Now I have Karabiner 98k and ZH-29. Does ZH-29 have the same attributes as my Karabines? In this case it's easy to say yes, but what if you invade Russia and want to find out how much of their latest infantry equipment you got? If you don't know the names of the equipment by heart, it's hard to do. Same goes with airplanes and all the other stuff.
One suggestion for improvement: there is a number showing the daily balance of equipment. Give me a monthly balance as well! I want to know how to adjust the production. I don't want too many factories pumping out rifles when they could produce tanks instead. The daily number fluctuates, a monthly estimate would give some kind of cornerstone for orientation.
Also: maybe add the ability to produce X of a certain kind. Hypothetically, as playing Germany, I want 2000 fighters. I should have the ability to set some kind of timer. Give me a notification when this limit as been achieved or automatically lower the factories allocated to producing fighters. It shouldn't be too hard to to.
Battle plan drawing
Coming from HoI 2 and 3, I wanted to manually control everything. At first, I rejected the Battle Planner, but I have come to appreciate it. I LOVE drawing plans and would like the to be more detailed if I wish so (which provinces do I want to avoid etc. I also don't like the AI to reshuffle my troops when I manually assigned them to a specific place. Human interference in the execution of the Battle Plan should have a higher impact...But I can imagine that this is hard to achieve. As soon as the front widens, the AI shuffles troops around, which is neat for huge armies, but it sucks when playing only with a few troops. Whenever I am playing smaller nations or the Spanish Civil war, I plan and delete the plan to manually move my 2-4 troops. Maybe there is a better way to tackle that. A button to tell troops to hold position?
Please make it possible to have a frontline going over more than one country if you choose to want so.
National Foci
I needed a long time to like them. I get along with them now. However, I think the UI needs work here. I recognized that when trying some of the new warlords in China. It took me 10 minutes to go through all of the branches and even after that a lot of things were unclear. I don't know if it is feasible, but I think each country with a focus tree should get an explanation for how this tree is constructed. Maybe a short text introducing the branches or something, I don't know. Maybe two different screens, one with a historic tree (provide the player with a hint what the order if history foci was! just number them or highlight the first and next one etc!), one with alternate trees. Complex focus trees are just overwhelming right now.
I played Romania earlier. I don't know what the consequences of having Michael stage a coup are. I also didn't know that inviting motor companies would enable me to recruit specific tech teams. I also didn't know which foci would increase the number of recruitable people.
I am kinda scared to play Japan or the Sowjets with their focus trees. There needs to be a better way to present the player with info that tooltips. Maybe a page showing different scenarios. For Germany there could be a number of different scenarios: If you want to go to war as quickly as possible, maybe choose X and Y, because they give you X and Y. If you want to beef up your economy first, take A and B, because they provide A and B. If you want to get rid of Hitler, there are D and F you could do...Then a page showing the historical route with a short text. Maybe that is dumbing it down too much and is against the sandbox principle. However, it gives an orientation. And for a player who likes to play with one country, you try out different things anyway and get accustomed to the branches of the focus tree. It's really all about not overwhelming people.
The aforementioned needs to be highest priority in my opinion. Then I would really love to see interacting focus trees. A decision made in a focus tree in Germany should open up or rule out branches for other countries. I know, that seems highly complex. But it would take the focus tree thing to the next level. If Germany does not occupy Rhineland or does not ecxeed a certain number of military forces or doesn't do other inflammatory shit, the Brits may never rearm themselves. This is kind of represented in prerequisites with war support. But maybe, some decisions open up entirely new branches of the focus tree. However, the focus tree UI needs to be overworked before making the system more complex.
Espionage
Hopefully the next big thing. Encryption and Decription are part of the tech tree. C'mon, that's kinda lazy. I am sure you find a much better way to represent espionage in the game! I mean, you have this battle plan thinng, so why not make it possible to discover enemy battle plans? I know, this has been discussed during the development of the game and was kinda thrown out if I remember correctly. But now, not too far from HoI 4's second birthday, there needs to be a plan in place to implement espionage. Radar should not show me troops. Radar should only do, what it historically did. Give me another tool to see the strength of enemy troops. Give me recon aircraft, give me recon units (they are kinda in the game, but until today, I don't exactly know what recon attachements do except for "chosing better tactics"). Give me the ability to install a spy network that you need to supply the coup troops with equipment, to uncover enemy movement, to sabotage planes (limit their effectiveness), limit speed, make stategic deployment impossible, reduce stability and war support....the choices are so obvious, I am pretty sure you already have something in place or are working on something. Espionage so far is represented by abstract things (en- and decription, radar). We all know those are just placeholders. Seeing the enemy's attacking plans is especially juicy.
Maybe we shouldn't have just a spynetwork. Maybe there should be a possibility to infiltrate the army, navy, air force or civilians. The latter could organize strikes, limit war support, stability etc. The former could give you the obvious choices, including finding out where those submarines are (better detection etc). There is so much potential here.
Naval Warfare
I know, this is pretty high up your list. This is probably the most broken feature as of right now. It has a lot to do with the UI again. Nobody knows what is happening in naval battles. When playing with the United Kingdom, Germany just had their Scharnhorst Battleships in the Northsee (the rest I took care of). I found the ship on many occasions but as many times, I could not engage in a battle. Why? Well, you tell me. Or better: Your game tells me. Who takes part and why, Who got killed and why. The land battle screen is clunky and gives almost too much info, the naval battle screen is clunky and does not provide very much info at all.
Music
I need more. It's the first time, I have become tired of the music. Maybe that is a testament to how much I have been playing this game.
Ok, I am sure, there is more to come up with. But as I said in the beginning: I am totally loving this game. There are always things to improve, but Waking the Tiger was a yuuuge step forward. I feel that HoI is on the right track. It sure took some time, but I after seeing where this goes, I am more than willing to trust you to make the right decisions.
However, I want to take a minute to thank the developers of the game. Since the release of Waking the Tiger, I have played pretty much non-stop even though I actually have more important stuff to do. Before people cry fanboy, I am not saying that the game is perfect. However, it is a lot (and I mean a lot) of fun. I am no hardcore multiplayer meta-meme-metaphor kind of guy, I just want a challenge for my brain every now and then. And even though the AI is still far from super challenging, the game design gives me so much to think about. I start playing the game and after "a little while" I look at the time and recognise that 3 hours have passed. I love drawing battle plans, as soon as you have figured out how the battle planner works it's a thing of beauty. Again, is it perfect? No, I would like to define the specific provinces that are taken by the AI, it is a pain adjust the front to avoid overcompensating for holes etc. The breakthroughs and encirclements I still prefer to do by hand, but I wouldn't want it any other way anyways.
I have played this game since the early days of HoI 2 and it has come such a long way. While there are many things to fix (where is espionage?) and improve (naval warfare is confusing most of the time, attributed to a clunky UI spitting out too many messages and icons, but not revealing what really happens) I clearly see HoI on the right way. Equipment production is terrific, those days of adjusting sliders are gone and it is a joy to balance production adjustments, plan ahead, calculate the time your industry needs to adjust etc. It's also very nice that the strength of a division is not just an orange pillar anymore but is represented by stuff you can actually influence. The production system does not get the credit it deserves, but is a yuuuuuuuuge step forwards.
There were many concerns accompaying the development of HoI. I remember endless discussions about NATO counters, tanks (!), the map, not every province having a name (nobody needs that anymore....now it is just the big battle "close to Warshaw") etc, now people seem to complain mostly about balancing issues...isn't that nice? Not many people questioning design choices anymore but the knitty griddy of some easy changeable variables. I very much love the rivers running along state lines now. It's much easier than ever before to determine where those pesyk rivers flow.
I thought about doing a list of what I appreciate, because I think, sometimes those things don't get the credit they deserve. However, some of those things need to be overworked or looked at in my opinion as far as game design is concerned. I already touched on a lot of things, but here it goes:
Production
I don't think, there is much to change here. I really love it! The only thing that bugs me is that if try to take a look at your stockpile in the logistic screen it is not immediately clear what "level" the equipment has. Playing as Germany, I took over Czechoslovakia. Now I have Karabiner 98k and ZH-29. Does ZH-29 have the same attributes as my Karabines? In this case it's easy to say yes, but what if you invade Russia and want to find out how much of their latest infantry equipment you got? If you don't know the names of the equipment by heart, it's hard to do. Same goes with airplanes and all the other stuff.
One suggestion for improvement: there is a number showing the daily balance of equipment. Give me a monthly balance as well! I want to know how to adjust the production. I don't want too many factories pumping out rifles when they could produce tanks instead. The daily number fluctuates, a monthly estimate would give some kind of cornerstone for orientation.
Also: maybe add the ability to produce X of a certain kind. Hypothetically, as playing Germany, I want 2000 fighters. I should have the ability to set some kind of timer. Give me a notification when this limit as been achieved or automatically lower the factories allocated to producing fighters. It shouldn't be too hard to to.
Battle plan drawing
Coming from HoI 2 and 3, I wanted to manually control everything. At first, I rejected the Battle Planner, but I have come to appreciate it. I LOVE drawing plans and would like the to be more detailed if I wish so (which provinces do I want to avoid etc. I also don't like the AI to reshuffle my troops when I manually assigned them to a specific place. Human interference in the execution of the Battle Plan should have a higher impact...But I can imagine that this is hard to achieve. As soon as the front widens, the AI shuffles troops around, which is neat for huge armies, but it sucks when playing only with a few troops. Whenever I am playing smaller nations or the Spanish Civil war, I plan and delete the plan to manually move my 2-4 troops. Maybe there is a better way to tackle that. A button to tell troops to hold position?
Please make it possible to have a frontline going over more than one country if you choose to want so.
National Foci
I needed a long time to like them. I get along with them now. However, I think the UI needs work here. I recognized that when trying some of the new warlords in China. It took me 10 minutes to go through all of the branches and even after that a lot of things were unclear. I don't know if it is feasible, but I think each country with a focus tree should get an explanation for how this tree is constructed. Maybe a short text introducing the branches or something, I don't know. Maybe two different screens, one with a historic tree (provide the player with a hint what the order if history foci was! just number them or highlight the first and next one etc!), one with alternate trees. Complex focus trees are just overwhelming right now.
I played Romania earlier. I don't know what the consequences of having Michael stage a coup are. I also didn't know that inviting motor companies would enable me to recruit specific tech teams. I also didn't know which foci would increase the number of recruitable people.
I am kinda scared to play Japan or the Sowjets with their focus trees. There needs to be a better way to present the player with info that tooltips. Maybe a page showing different scenarios. For Germany there could be a number of different scenarios: If you want to go to war as quickly as possible, maybe choose X and Y, because they give you X and Y. If you want to beef up your economy first, take A and B, because they provide A and B. If you want to get rid of Hitler, there are D and F you could do...Then a page showing the historical route with a short text. Maybe that is dumbing it down too much and is against the sandbox principle. However, it gives an orientation. And for a player who likes to play with one country, you try out different things anyway and get accustomed to the branches of the focus tree. It's really all about not overwhelming people.
The aforementioned needs to be highest priority in my opinion. Then I would really love to see interacting focus trees. A decision made in a focus tree in Germany should open up or rule out branches for other countries. I know, that seems highly complex. But it would take the focus tree thing to the next level. If Germany does not occupy Rhineland or does not ecxeed a certain number of military forces or doesn't do other inflammatory shit, the Brits may never rearm themselves. This is kind of represented in prerequisites with war support. But maybe, some decisions open up entirely new branches of the focus tree. However, the focus tree UI needs to be overworked before making the system more complex.
Espionage
Hopefully the next big thing. Encryption and Decription are part of the tech tree. C'mon, that's kinda lazy. I am sure you find a much better way to represent espionage in the game! I mean, you have this battle plan thinng, so why not make it possible to discover enemy battle plans? I know, this has been discussed during the development of the game and was kinda thrown out if I remember correctly. But now, not too far from HoI 4's second birthday, there needs to be a plan in place to implement espionage. Radar should not show me troops. Radar should only do, what it historically did. Give me another tool to see the strength of enemy troops. Give me recon aircraft, give me recon units (they are kinda in the game, but until today, I don't exactly know what recon attachements do except for "chosing better tactics"). Give me the ability to install a spy network that you need to supply the coup troops with equipment, to uncover enemy movement, to sabotage planes (limit their effectiveness), limit speed, make stategic deployment impossible, reduce stability and war support....the choices are so obvious, I am pretty sure you already have something in place or are working on something. Espionage so far is represented by abstract things (en- and decription, radar). We all know those are just placeholders. Seeing the enemy's attacking plans is especially juicy.
Maybe we shouldn't have just a spynetwork. Maybe there should be a possibility to infiltrate the army, navy, air force or civilians. The latter could organize strikes, limit war support, stability etc. The former could give you the obvious choices, including finding out where those submarines are (better detection etc). There is so much potential here.
Naval Warfare
I know, this is pretty high up your list. This is probably the most broken feature as of right now. It has a lot to do with the UI again. Nobody knows what is happening in naval battles. When playing with the United Kingdom, Germany just had their Scharnhorst Battleships in the Northsee (the rest I took care of). I found the ship on many occasions but as many times, I could not engage in a battle. Why? Well, you tell me. Or better: Your game tells me. Who takes part and why, Who got killed and why. The land battle screen is clunky and gives almost too much info, the naval battle screen is clunky and does not provide very much info at all.
Music
I need more. It's the first time, I have become tired of the music. Maybe that is a testament to how much I have been playing this game.
Ok, I am sure, there is more to come up with. But as I said in the beginning: I am totally loving this game. There are always things to improve, but Waking the Tiger was a yuuuge step forward. I feel that HoI is on the right track. It sure took some time, but I after seeing where this goes, I am more than willing to trust you to make the right decisions.
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