The alt-history scenarios in this game are fantasy scenarios, where is the actual alt-history

[fuser312]

Napoleon in France and Byzantine Empire is simply not within the purview of any historical possibility at the time when this game exists, they all are nothing but just fantasy and can be easily replaced with Jon Snow teleporting himself to this world and becoming king of France, it won't change anything.

In the meantime, the actual alt-history the things that could have happened in ww2 is so underutilized and represented, the actual what-ifs. Like what if western allies went through operation pike? what if July 20 plot succeded. What if khalkin gol resulted in full-scale war? what if western allies and USSR formed an alliance against Germany? And so many other actually interesting ww2 what-ifs that are lacking in the game. Surely for a ww2 based games, these should be a focus on plausible alt-history scenarios than frankly fantasy scenarios like the Austria-Hungary empire.

 

[Ksyr]

Germany winning the war is pure fantasy by itself.

 

[Shaka of Carthage]

Like what if western allies went through operation pike? what if July 20 plot succeded. What if khalkin gol resulted in full-scale war? what if western allies and USSR formed an alliance against Germany? And so many other actually interesting ww2 what-ifs that are lacking in the game.

Maybe I'm mistaken, but alot of the "what ifs" you mentioned do exist. But I could be remembering what happens in various mods.

 

[GermanDave]

A lot had to do with formables. They pandered to what they perceived to be our expectations. The other constraint is the regidity of the focus trees is one problem leading to rail-roading. I see your concern OP and a sytsem that lets us go off the historical rails here and there and adapts as we go along would be really cool. A self-aware system could do this competently. I find the general lack of innovation in this area in the gaming industry quite disappointing. The costs are just to great and a lot of what is being pushed today is pretty gimmicky, the ai might be able to write a fairly coherent text or produce a really realistic cat picture but it doeasn't know what it's doing.
The best choice outside of a self-aware system is to give players really distinct choices that will necessarily seem absurd when compared to what actually happened.

Here is an example. I conquer Italy as the Soviets and puppet them, however the puppet has chosen the fascist path and still behaves like fascist Italy. The focus trees would need to accommodate for scenarios like that by being self-correcting.

 

[fuser312]

I understand what you are saying but still I mostly disagree. For example the same fascist Italy puppet of Communist USSR was not a problem in HOI2 or HOI3, may be I am wrong but in my mind it's clear that they are doing something wrong with this one.

The problem imo is when you look at other paradox grand strategy games like CK EU, the latest games build upon what was previously successful while HOI in its each iteration completely discarded things that were working perfectly and thus the problems that shouldn't exist at all still exist after 4 years like teleporting planes or ludicrous amounts of fielded divisions. They were not an issu in previous iteration, so why are they now.

 

[kettyo]

Some alt-history are plausible like Plan-Z, early Barbarossa, Kodoha Japan, etc.

Some of them are crazy fantasies like communist USA, Habsburg Empire, etc.

 

[valentin4]

Germany winning the war is pure fantasy by itself.

Germany conquering Paris in five weeks was pure fantasy to everyone in 1939.

 

[Rashie]

Germany winning the war is pure fantasy by itself.

While yeah, it is, this is also a game first and foremost, not an outright strict simulation of the 1940s. It being deliberately slanted in the favour of the Axis isn't necesarilly a bad thing for such a purpose.

 

[Kazakk]

Germany winning the war is pure fantasy by itself.

Here we have someone who clearly studied warfare way more than all of the Wehrmacht officials and has more experience in WW2-style warfare than even the most prestigeous Field Marshals in the Reich

 

[valentin4]

Germany winning the war is pure fantasy by itself.

-There were serious talks in the british cabinet in late may 1940 to open peace talks with Germany, if Halifax had pushed more he could have created such a situation

-Dunkirk ? obviously not decisive, but losing 200k experienced troops would have been a serious blow for the british and maybe they would have to thin out other theaters (mediterannean...) to protect the homeland

-a more competent Italy, and better german-italian cooperation. No invasion of Greece (you know the butterlfly effect about Barbarossa, etc...), earlier italian attack on Egypt etc...

-Germany choosing the southern strategy, going for southern France, Spain, Gibraltar, North Africa and Middle East... Barbarossa is delayed. Creates a new situation

-What if there is no coup in Yugoslavia, and no italian invasion of Egypt ? no operation Marita and no operation n. 25. Allows for a stronger Barbarossa

-better germano-japanese cooperation : Hitler informs Japan of the date of Barbarossa, and Japan attacks Vladivostok (where most of the lend-lease came from, not other big port on the Pacific). The japanese actually did build up their forces in the border during the summer and had a plan to attack around september 15 if they see the Soviets enough weakened

- The Luftwaffe bombs the Baku oil fields in August 1942, crippling soviet's oil supply, instead of focusing on Stalingrad.

etc etc...

 

[kettyo]

-There were serious talks in the british cabinet in late may 1940 to open peace talks with Germany, if Halifax had pushed more he could have created such a situation

Can you please prove this?

I don't see any way how it could realistically be carried out.

 

[safe-keeper]

I agree, I wish the devs would have gone for realistic ahistorical paths instead of "communist America" and other laughable scenarios. Rather than giving every country a communist, democratic and facist path, they should've looked at what plausible options existed for that country, and what the people at the time were actually debating. This would probably have led to fewer alternate history paths, but they would have made much more sense.

 

[valentin4]

Can you please prove this?

I don't see any way how it could realistically be carried out.

1940 British war cabinet crisis - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

 

[kettyo]

1940 British war cabinet crisis - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

A lot of references in the end of page indeed.

I wonder pretty much under what conditions could it work.

I can't think about any which is acceptable for both Germany and Britain.

 

[--Yigito123--]

I understand what you are saying but still I mostly disagree. For example the same fascist Italy puppet of Communist USSR was not a problem in HOI2 or HOI3, may be I am wrong but in my mind it's clear that they are doing something wrong with this one.

You're right. "fascist Italy puppet of Communist USSR" wasn't a problem in HoI3. It was simply impossible for the Soviets to puppet Italy as the Yalta conference event meant that the war would end in the "historical" borders regardless of the performance of the Soviets or the Allies. You would have an Allies that didn't occupy a single Italian or German province get West Germany and Italy after the war because that's "what's historically happened". You would even get an American puppet West Germany when the US wasn't even in the war (Not sure if this happens in the latest HoI3 version). The player had no means of influencing any wars that had pre-coded endings, and ahistorical wars declared always ended with full annexation. The words "The Bitter Peace" still make me instinctively sigh and reach for the tilde key.

I never played it, but from what I have heard I have no reason to believe HoI2 was any better in this regard other than maybe more stone-set peace events the player still has no agency in regardless.

What is HoI4 doing wrong here compared to it's predecessors?

 

[KDEstroy]

-There were serious talks in the british cabinet in late may 1940 to open peace talks with Germany, if Halifax had pushed more he could have created such a situation

-Dunkirk ? obviously not decisive, but losing 200k experienced troops would have been a serious blow for the british and maybe they would have to thin out other theaters (mediterannean...) to protect the homeland

-a more competent Italy, and better german-italian cooperation. No invasion of Greece (you know the butterlfly effect about Barbarossa, etc...), earlier italian attack on Egypt etc...

-Germany choosing the southern strategy, going for southern France, Spain, Gibraltar, North Africa and Middle East... Barbarossa is delayed. Creates a new situation

-What if there is no coup in Yugoslavia, and no italian invasion of Egypt ? no operation Marita and no operation n. 25. Allows for a stronger Barbarossa

-better germano-japanese cooperation : Hitler informs Japan of the date of Barbarossa, and Japan attacks Vladivostok (where most of the lend-lease came from, not other big port on the Pacific). The japanese actually did build up their forces in the border during the summer and had a plan to attack around september 15 if they see the Soviets enough weakened

- The Luftwaffe bombs the Baku oil fields in August 1942, crippling soviet's oil supply, instead of focusing on Stalingrad.

etc etc...

1. Chamberlain did not support Halifax's proposal for peace, and eventually supported Churchill instead. Anyway, both Churchill and Cabinet wanted to fight on so there was no chance of negotiating peace.
2. The 200k troops had to literally abandon all of their guns, weapons, and heavy equipment at Dunkirk. And yet the Axis was not able to exploit their advantage. It was logistically impossible for the Nazis to annihilate the British at Dunkirk, troops were totally exhausted and low on supplies. It was a miracle they managed to encircle the Allies in the first place.
3. Mussolini wasn't super popular in the government, in hindsight it was a terrible mistake to appoint loyal yet incompetent generals. But at the time, it was the only politically feasible option, from Mussolini's point of view. In any case, Mussolini wanted to demonstrate that Italy was not reliant on Germany, so greater Italo-German cooperation simply is not possible. It is exactly what Mussolini didn't want.
4. Vichy France held North Africa, which was strategically irrelevant in 1941. The Axis couldn't have won the North African campaign due to British naval superiority. They wouldn't have been able to protect their supply transports from Allied naval and air attacks.
5. "What if there was no coup" is such a ridiculous premise, joining the Axis was deeply unpopular among Yugoslavian military. Prince Paul signed the Tripartite pact anyway, of course there was going to be a coup.
6. Japan actually committing to a major invasion of the Soviet Union is completely nonsensical. It totally goes against the "Southern Plan", Japan's entire strategy for the war. Anyway, Japan was under a fuel embargo by the Allies at the time, any invasion of Siberia would have failed due to logistical difficulties and lack of fuel.
7. US would've lend-leased more fuel to the USSR. Also, the Germans planned to take the Baku oil fields intact. If they destroyed the oil fields, but won Stalingrad, it wouldn't have mattered in the long run because Germany would still run out of fuel.

 

[valentin4]

A lot of references in the end of page indeed.

I wonder pretty much under what conditions could it work.

I can't think about any which is acceptable for both Germany and Britain.

Basically, Britain recognizes Germany 's overlorship on central Europe. Germany get elssas lothringen back and maybe some of her ex African colonies, and some war reparations from France

 

[kimidf]

Napoleon in France and Byzantine Empire is simply not within the purview of any historical possibility at the time when this game exists, they all are nothing but just fantasy and can be easily replaced with Jon Snow teleporting himself to this world and becoming king of France, it won't change anything.

In the meantime, the actual alt-history the things that could have happened in ww2 is so underutilized and represented, the actual what-ifs. Like what if western allies went through operation pike? what if July 20 plot succeded. What if khalkin gol resulted in full-scale war? what if western allies and USSR formed an alliance against Germany? And so many other actually interesting ww2 what-ifs that are lacking in the game. Surely for a ww2 based games, these should be a focus on plausible alt-history scenarios than frankly fantasy scenarios like the Austria-Hungary empire.

Any kind of monarchical restoration is totally implausible for France in the initial date of the game, not even the majority of the conservative and right-wing sectors of the Gallic country wanted to return to a monarchical system before they preferred an authoritarian model of the fascist edge.

and looking for this alternative paths too fanciful, efforts were lost in other parts of the tree like the historic road

 

[Ivankovsky]

I'm afraid it's obviously too late to change this in HoI4.
I also wished for a more plausible Hearts of Iron but that is the fantasy right now, maybe we get that in HoI5 if Paradox perceives that's what the players want out of the game.


As for formables...
I'm not totally against the idea, for example:
To form the Roman Empire you need to conquer pretty much all of Europe as Italy, that itself is fuking ridiculos, if you manage to do it, its YOU who broke the game, and the game at that point is only pattin you in the back, rollin with it and rewarding you with a cool shinny new country.

Now formables like the Aus-Hun Empire are worse imo, because the focus tree is pretty much playing the reformation of said implausible empire with a straight face, and its way to easy to do lacking any penalties even.


I say let the player be the one to break plausability, only then roll with it

 

[Simon Marques]

Germany winning the war is pure fantasy by itself.

Europe today would be speaking German if the leader of Nazi Germany did not have a self-centered mentality. Hitler was too much involved in the strategies drawn up by his generals. A corporal thinking he's a general couldn't result in a good thing.

Although it was a good thing for the world that he was a self-centered.