Have you seen a Axis player with a white flag? Nah Axis victory if anything. Will return with peace conditions.DarthMaur said:
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Strange. I though Axis were unable to break through SU defenses, and given time, Allies/Comintern would overcome the Axis...
I still think they have a shot at winning but a side that starts to wave desperately with a white flag is hardly in the position to set the peace terms right?DarthMaur said:
But it doesn't look that good for SU. They have lost a great number of divisions in Europa and also quite a few in China and the Axis have air superiority everywhere so I can't see any Commie/Allied gains in the near future.
DarthMaur said:
This didn't take into account the inability of the Sovjet leader.
Original plan was to hold out until early '45, and then have enough fighters to start a counter-offensive. Unfortunately I lost 80 divs, 40 due to a smart sealanding from MadViking and 40 due to the fact that troops always seem to march into encirclement rather then to freedom when retreating.
The loss of 80 divs would not really be a problem, by now I have 24 heavy and advanced heavy tanks that eat the German Mech Inf for breakfast. But having no chance of beating German airsuperiority within the next 2 years makes it kind of pointless.
Hmm. Well, still surrendering just like that... you should have called for a draw
Btw, troops retreat into the province they came from.
Btw, troops retreat into the province they came from.
yeah, lets hand this one to the axis. I think much of the blame for our defeat lays in my handling of the empire :/
I think this was my last HoI game.
The MP-games were great fun, especially the last one, but the HoI combat mechanics just don't fit together. Hard to explain what I mean. Patch 1.06 fixed the bugs, but the game is somehow missing an underlying real "stone, scissor, paper" principle. Building a variety of units should be beneficial, and not enforced by houserules. All the different parts don't really come together. It is too much patches added on workarounds added on rules that never really harmonised in the first place. Take for instance Risk's extremely simplistic rules. I play Risk since 25 years (every year at least once around Christmas with the same bunch of old friends) and there are still new strategies to discover. HoI has dozends of different units, but in every game I played so far it always came down to "build the uber-unit".
Please insert "in my opinion" where approbiate.
I don't want to spoil anyones fun with the game, just trying to explain why I am out of it. Have fun!
The MP-games were great fun, especially the last one, but the HoI combat mechanics just don't fit together. Hard to explain what I mean. Patch 1.06 fixed the bugs, but the game is somehow missing an underlying real "stone, scissor, paper" principle. Building a variety of units should be beneficial, and not enforced by houserules. All the different parts don't really come together. It is too much patches added on workarounds added on rules that never really harmonised in the first place. Take for instance Risk's extremely simplistic rules. I play Risk since 25 years (every year at least once around Christmas with the same bunch of old friends
) and there are still new strategies to discover. HoI has dozends of different units, but in every game I played so far it always came down to "build the uber-unit".Please insert "in my opinion" where approbiate.
I don't want to spoil anyones fun with the game, just trying to explain why I am out of it. Have fun!
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Well, I would like to play another game. But like I said in the chat yesterday, I think we should take either one of those two options I suggested. Otherwise the next game will just end up like this one.
And this game was only a battle of the air-killerstacks. It really kills the fun.
Want to attack something? Send in 2 fighter-killerstacks to sweep the area, then send in your bomber-killerstack to kill all the landunits, then send in your landunit to mop up.
Want to defend soemthing? Send in your own fighter killerstacks to protect your units from the enemy bombers.
Want to kill a fleet? Send in the nav-killerstacks. Want to find some submarines that are harassing your supply lines? Send in the nav-killerstacks.
This particular game was BS from day 1. That is why I wanted the houserules.
Now I hate to say "I told you so" but Isebrand, I really did do that.
And this game was only a battle of the air-killerstacks. It really kills the fun.
Want to attack something? Send in 2 fighter-killerstacks to sweep the area, then send in your bomber-killerstack to kill all the landunits, then send in your landunit to mop up.
Want to defend soemthing? Send in your own fighter killerstacks to protect your units from the enemy bombers.
Want to kill a fleet? Send in the nav-killerstacks. Want to find some submarines that are harassing your supply lines? Send in the nav-killerstacks.
This particular game was BS from day 1. That is why I wanted the houserules.
Now I hate to say "I told you so" but Isebrand, I really did do that.
The airstacks just make obvious what the problem is:
Assume you limit air-stacks. Right, next killer stack is mech inf. Or whatever. The game is designed in a way that the best strategy is to build only all purpose uber-units. You don't really have cost effective counters that could balance it. It is a design flaw, and killer airstacks are just one sign of it.
A design I would like would look like this:
A unit beats another units hands down, but is effectively countered by some other unit, that in turn is countered by another unit etc. As it is now, you can only counter a unit with the same or a better unit. And if a unit is "better", that means it will be better aginst all other units.
In addition some units should be better for attacking, others better for defending.
A simple implementation would look like this: Anti-tank units kill tanks, tanks kill infantry, infantry kills anti-tank units. Having such a simple principle in the game would force people to build all kind of units.
Assume you limit air-stacks. Right, next killer stack is mech inf. Or whatever. The game is designed in a way that the best strategy is to build only all purpose uber-units. You don't really have cost effective counters that could balance it. It is a design flaw, and killer airstacks are just one sign of it.
A design I would like would look like this:
A unit beats another units hands down, but is effectively countered by some other unit, that in turn is countered by another unit etc. As it is now, you can only counter a unit with the same or a better unit. And if a unit is "better", that means it will be better aginst all other units.
In addition some units should be better for attacking, others better for defending.
A simple implementation would look like this: Anti-tank units kill tanks, tanks kill infantry, infantry kills anti-tank units. Having such a simple principle in the game would force people to build all kind of units.
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Isebrand said:
you can beat mecs with tanks , with better mecs or with AT or Arty infantry (if you have enough of them)...
you can beat infantry with most anything , except if they are in mountains, then your mecs and tanks are useless
you can beat tanks with better tanks or with well entrenched AT infantry (which are as you say precisely better at defending than attacking) or you can bomb them to bring org down....
generally, on the ground you can fight quality with quantity and so close the tech gap (this is not possible in the air, but thats realistic aint it, 500 me 109s wont shoot down an F-15
)as you wrote, large stacks on inf with AA will inflict more losses on bombers than they take and so on.....
So I am not sure why you should feel so negatively about the game... cheer up, lots of possibilities in HOI ..... and HOI 2 is coming up
Hortlund said:
Something along the lines of Panzer General 1 would already be fine for me. It has the best implementation of the "stone, scissor, paper" principle I have seen so far.
Besides - I am rather bad at chess.
I tend to charge down the fields with my pawns and once they are mowed down the officiers jump in, ready for a glorious fight. Somehow this approach doesn't get me very far.
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WOW! The Axis won! To be honest, I didn't realy expect this outcome. The reasons were simple: manpower. My manpower as Germany was (as is often the case) ridiculously low. At the lowest point I had 1 manpower left (yes, one). Fortunately for me, in 1944 I got the Mass Combat minister (Guderian as chief of staff), who together with the Man of the People minister gave me over 70 MP per month, while still having around 1100 IC and being able to spend around 700 on making units. But still, with large Soviet attacks on the east front plus the MP cost of reenforcing my huge airforce usually cost me around 70 MP per month. So basically, the only new stuff I could afford to build was more aircraft (I wanted to make more mech or some inf-AT, but that was a no-no).
The low MP was also partly due to heavier losses then expected during the campaign in France. Remember, a 39 scenario, so my land tech (especially tanks) wasn't realy good. Also, during the Battle for London (which is urban terrain) I took rather hefty MP losses.
The above scenario was actually identified before hand by the German high command, meaning that the focus of research and unit building would be on low-MP items like submarines and air. The only non-sub, non-air units I built (besides a few TP) were mech-A (think i made a total of 60). Never any infantry or mountain divs or similar. I did also go very high-tech in these fields. For example, I have used my advanced interceptors (range 1000 km, can thus rebase 3000 km in one single move) for almost 2 years. With the full air doc and the missle tech (air-to-air missiles give a huge bonus) they had 16 in air attack with 105 org.
Despite this overwhelming air power, I struggled to keep the Russians at bay. Besides the well-planned action near Crimea, I never actually succeded in crossing the Dniepr river, which should be considered a very weak Barbarossa. The Russians, on the other hand, managed to gain ground (although briefly) into both Königsberg and Romania.
As mentioned before I managed to encircle and destroy large Soviet forces during three separate combat phases (Middle-east, Romania and Crimea), totally some 100 Soviet divisions (including 18 or 24 tank divs and the entire Soviet motorized infantry corps). My mechs in China also helped to encirlce and kill 10 Soviet divisions. In all around 120 Soviet divisions were killed.
As Germany I did not make any bigger mistakes on land (besides attacking once at end of April, while still frozen = HUGE MP losses). I did however loose around 10-15 infantry divisions that were completely wiped out during combat against numerically superior Soviet forces.
In the air however, I managed to loose a LOT of aircraft. I lost one stack of basic interceptors that were standing on an unguarded beach (bad idea!), and also 24 or 30 naval bombers total, all of them vs the USA. I did however manage to completely destroy well over 100 enemy air divisions.
In all, this was one of my most enjoyable MP HoI games ever, mainly due to the competent Soviet player and my two excellent allies (Juv and Aldo). It was also my longest campaign so far, mid 1944, and still not decided.
To be honest, if the game had continued I think the Axis would have won, since we now had regained China, destroyed a large number of Soviet divisions, and the fact that in 3 months I would have completed the first part of my advanced strategic bomber program (range: 1500 km). This could easily target the backbone of the Soviet industry, were there is no AA and no fighters, so basically I could have bombed the Soviets helplessly for 4 months at least. Plus we got Sweden into the Axis! It was only a matter of time until the proud Swedish Army would be parading in the Red Square....
The low MP was also partly due to heavier losses then expected during the campaign in France. Remember, a 39 scenario, so my land tech (especially tanks) wasn't realy good. Also, during the Battle for London (which is urban terrain) I took rather hefty MP losses.
The above scenario was actually identified before hand by the German high command, meaning that the focus of research and unit building would be on low-MP items like submarines and air. The only non-sub, non-air units I built (besides a few TP) were mech-A (think i made a total of 60). Never any infantry or mountain divs or similar. I did also go very high-tech in these fields. For example, I have used my advanced interceptors (range 1000 km, can thus rebase 3000 km in one single move) for almost 2 years. With the full air doc and the missle tech (air-to-air missiles give a huge bonus) they had 16 in air attack with 105 org.
Despite this overwhelming air power, I struggled to keep the Russians at bay. Besides the well-planned action near Crimea, I never actually succeded in crossing the Dniepr river, which should be considered a very weak Barbarossa. The Russians, on the other hand, managed to gain ground (although briefly) into both Königsberg and Romania.
As mentioned before I managed to encircle and destroy large Soviet forces during three separate combat phases (Middle-east, Romania and Crimea), totally some 100 Soviet divisions (including 18 or 24 tank divs and the entire Soviet motorized infantry corps). My mechs in China also helped to encirlce and kill 10 Soviet divisions. In all around 120 Soviet divisions were killed.
As Germany I did not make any bigger mistakes on land (besides attacking once at end of April, while still frozen = HUGE MP losses). I did however loose around 10-15 infantry divisions that were completely wiped out during combat against numerically superior Soviet forces.
In the air however, I managed to loose a LOT of aircraft. I lost one stack of basic interceptors that were standing on an unguarded beach (bad idea!), and also 24 or 30 naval bombers total, all of them vs the USA. I did however manage to completely destroy well over 100 enemy air divisions.
In all, this was one of my most enjoyable MP HoI games ever, mainly due to the competent Soviet player and my two excellent allies (Juv and Aldo). It was also my longest campaign so far, mid 1944, and still not decided.
To be honest, if the game had continued I think the Axis would have won, since we now had regained China, destroyed a large number of Soviet divisions, and the fact that in 3 months I would have completed the first part of my advanced strategic bomber program (range: 1500 km). This could easily target the backbone of the Soviet industry, were there is no AA and no fighters, so basically I could have bombed the Soviets helplessly for 4 months at least. Plus we got Sweden into the Axis! It was only a matter of time until the proud Swedish Army would be parading in the Red Square....
Btw, concerning the game mechanics of HoI and other games:
The game with the best unit/counter-unit system I have found so far is Rise of Nations (if you haven't played it I suggest you at least try it). For example, tanks can be easily countered with AT-infantry or attack helicopters, infantry can be countered with tanks or machine guns, helicopters can be countered with mobile AA-vehicles or fighters, etc etc. Only building one or a few units is pure suicide.
Another major weakness in HoI is the lack of a dedicated research or production system. I can take 3 full years and spend all my industry on research in basically all fields, and then switch to making only tanks for 1 year, and then switch it all again to making subs for example. In the real world this wouldn't be even remotely possible. Having specific limits on how much you can spend on research (like having a specific tank research lab, where you can only do one or two projetcs at a time), specific factories (either for planes, land vehicles or ships) or similar systems would bring about a more balanced military. Also, it would be nice to have some sort of feed-back into the research progress based on actual military encounters. If you research tanks during 3 years of peace, the same research while at war (and actually using your tanks) would be much faster. Oh well, lets hope they deal with the problem in some smart way for HoI 2.
The game with the best unit/counter-unit system I have found so far is Rise of Nations (if you haven't played it I suggest you at least try it). For example, tanks can be easily countered with AT-infantry or attack helicopters, infantry can be countered with tanks or machine guns, helicopters can be countered with mobile AA-vehicles or fighters, etc etc. Only building one or a few units is pure suicide.
Another major weakness in HoI is the lack of a dedicated research or production system. I can take 3 full years and spend all my industry on research in basically all fields, and then switch to making only tanks for 1 year, and then switch it all again to making subs for example. In the real world this wouldn't be even remotely possible. Having specific limits on how much you can spend on research (like having a specific tank research lab, where you can only do one or two projetcs at a time), specific factories (either for planes, land vehicles or ships) or similar systems would bring about a more balanced military. Also, it would be nice to have some sort of feed-back into the research progress based on actual military encounters. If you research tanks during 3 years of peace, the same research while at war (and actually using your tanks) would be much faster. Oh well, lets hope they deal with the problem in some smart way for HoI 2.
I must agree with that this campaign was one of the most enjoyable I have played and I really liked playing Japan dispite my initial disbelief. Also Isebrand is a great player and I am sorry to see him leave the HoI-playing.
Anyway it is time to start a new DEG game?
Anyway it is time to start a new DEG game?
It will take a year before that is ready (after initial patching and all)!Isebrand said:Let's hope for HoI 2.
Nice way to play chess, i must sayIsebrand said:Something along the lines of Panzer General 1 would already be fine for me. It has the best implementation of the "stone, scissor, paper" principle I have seen so far.
Besides - I am rather bad at chess.
Seriously, r-p-s is not particularly realistic approach...
DarthMaur said:
r-p-s?
Anyway, I don't really care much about realism. Actually not at all.
A game for me should be fun, allow for glorious charges down the battlefield and famous last stands without too much micromanagment involved and should have troops involved that can be renamed and gain experience. For me HoI is only delivering on the first point (leaders gaining experience doesn't count). That's why I sticked with it for quite a while, but now I am looking for something different.
As RTS games are concerned, Sudden Strike Map N in MP was actually the best RTS experience I had. I played that in MP for nearly 2 years, probably over a thousand games on map N.