I've recently got back into playing HoI and the new patches have done a lot to improve things I must say but there as still a couple of things that I think need work...
1. Starting Manpower pools: they are far too large. Three months worth of manpower would be reasonable as a starting pool. Also the democracies (British commonweath, USA, France) should have their monthly manpower substantially reduced pre declaration of war with germany. Maintaining a peace time army was infact quite hard for them. This will hopefully keep the otherwise absurd number of pre-war divisions in check...sorry but seeing germany with 200+ divisions in 39 is a bit hard to handle...worse is seeing Canada with 29 or whatever. The reason there was that delay between the conquest of poland and the blitz in france was both sides needed time to activate their reserve divisions and mobilize their forces. This might also serve to keep the commonwealth forces in line (not to mention the minor axis nations). Manpower should be a substantial problem for everyone in the game as it was historically...even the soviet union exhausted their manpower pool by 43-44.
2. The Field Marshal Effect: there is no reason why a field marshal should double command capacity and it leads to absurdities. 24 divisions in a single combat operation (coupled with the absurd numbers of divisions pre-war...) is a bit much. I see little or no reason to have this doubling effect and it leads to un-fun combat as all that you do is gather an unstopable monster group and attack with them. Worse case let it double command capacity up to 12 but no more beyond that; 12 divisions in a single province is a LOT historically.
3. Invasions and Marines: both England and the USA should start with Marine technology as historically both had them. But naval invasions are made too easy. Pre-Dieppe the only major invasion that had been launched by anyone was Galipoli. Neither the japanese nor the germans actually "invaded" anyone they just landed troops from transports in small boats or captured the dock and sailed in. The technology developed for overlord took years to put together, it was not a few simple technologies and then anyone can invade. A good change would be for a naval invasion to deactivate all artillary techs (as the artillary took a long time to come ashore). The key thing about invasions is that they required battleships and air support historically and very few people could use tanks in them. Probably not much can be done at this point but it would be nice to see marines show up as valuable units.
4. Fix the problem with a stack in combat so you can figure out which unit you have at the top of the stack so you can withdraw a unit from combat without being forced to end the entire battle. Unless there is something I am missing the list does not correspond to the order and I can't figure out which unit is at the top of the stack. And I would like to be able to withdraw units that are baddly hurt!
Anyway the 1.06c version is considerably improved and I should write up a couple of the games I have underway...both the italian and english ones are getting quite interesting.
1. Starting Manpower pools: they are far too large. Three months worth of manpower would be reasonable as a starting pool. Also the democracies (British commonweath, USA, France) should have their monthly manpower substantially reduced pre declaration of war with germany. Maintaining a peace time army was infact quite hard for them. This will hopefully keep the otherwise absurd number of pre-war divisions in check...sorry but seeing germany with 200+ divisions in 39 is a bit hard to handle...worse is seeing Canada with 29 or whatever. The reason there was that delay between the conquest of poland and the blitz in france was both sides needed time to activate their reserve divisions and mobilize their forces. This might also serve to keep the commonwealth forces in line (not to mention the minor axis nations). Manpower should be a substantial problem for everyone in the game as it was historically...even the soviet union exhausted their manpower pool by 43-44.
2. The Field Marshal Effect: there is no reason why a field marshal should double command capacity and it leads to absurdities. 24 divisions in a single combat operation (coupled with the absurd numbers of divisions pre-war...) is a bit much. I see little or no reason to have this doubling effect and it leads to un-fun combat as all that you do is gather an unstopable monster group and attack with them. Worse case let it double command capacity up to 12 but no more beyond that; 12 divisions in a single province is a LOT historically.
3. Invasions and Marines: both England and the USA should start with Marine technology as historically both had them. But naval invasions are made too easy. Pre-Dieppe the only major invasion that had been launched by anyone was Galipoli. Neither the japanese nor the germans actually "invaded" anyone they just landed troops from transports in small boats or captured the dock and sailed in. The technology developed for overlord took years to put together, it was not a few simple technologies and then anyone can invade. A good change would be for a naval invasion to deactivate all artillary techs (as the artillary took a long time to come ashore). The key thing about invasions is that they required battleships and air support historically and very few people could use tanks in them. Probably not much can be done at this point but it would be nice to see marines show up as valuable units.
4. Fix the problem with a stack in combat so you can figure out which unit you have at the top of the stack so you can withdraw a unit from combat without being forced to end the entire battle. Unless there is something I am missing the list does not correspond to the order and I can't figure out which unit is at the top of the stack. And I would like to be able to withdraw units that are baddly hurt!
Anyway the 1.06c version is considerably improved and I should write up a couple of the games I have underway...both the italian and english ones are getting quite interesting.
