These Things Need to Be Addressed

[Tisifoni12]

@blahmaster6k
I meant 'techs' to develop theatre / army level logistical capacity, not support company level.

The Western Allies needed to develop the logistical capability for 'Overlord' building on experience (Torch, Sicily and Italy) and building capacity. Including the development of technologies; the Pluto Pipeline and Mulberry Harbours. There has been some development of this since HOI4 was created, but the AI (or AS Artificial Stupidity) still does logistically stupid things; like sending panzer divisions to West Africa and sending significant Axis forces to East Africa around the South African Cape.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I think democratic nations (particularly new world/UK) should probably have a bigger malus to taking casualties in general. As it turns out, your voter base doesn't like being sent to die overseas.

i would take this if in exchange democracies have their justification restrictions eased so they can play the game w/o relying on focuses.

heck, it's a more realistic tradeoff for democracies even...democracies started wars during and after this time period. we shouldn't need focus magic to bypass restrictions that don't make sense in the first place. meanwhile, more punitive casualties in such wars makes sense as a tradeoff for democracies instead.

 

[blahmaster6k]

@blahmaster6k
I meant 'techs' to develop theatre / army level logistical capacity, not support company level.

Well, if you think about it the truck and train techs also technically improve your logistics. Truck supply is better than horse supply, after all, and armored trains better protect your supplies from bombing than normal trains.

That being said, I don't see why a theater/army level logistics tech needs to exist when it would pretty much do the same thing as logistics companies. Just put logistics in your armies to use less supply.

 

[FindFloppies]

Running supplies by convoy is not a bad idea. I

Break the rails, and the game will run supplies by sea to fix the shortfall if it can. (If the rails were ever good enough for that load at the time, anyway...) Fix the rails that got broken/reduced or, in some cases, weren't up to the demand you're placing on them in the first place, and those 'extra' sea shipments will go away.

If you open 1936 France, you can see immediately that stuff near Le Havre is getting supplies from Brest. Build that rail like from level 1 to level 2, and that goes away.

 

[Joshua Happytree]

The Western Allies needed to develop the logistical capability ... Including the development of technologies; the Pluto Pipeline and Mulberry Harbours.

There are Mulberry Harbours in HoI4 and you do need to research and then produce them

 

[Tisifoni12]

There are Mulberry Harbours in HoI4 and you do need to research and then produce them

I know, Paradox added them to the game after I posted several times about ways of improving the naval invasions mechanics.

 

[Cornutus]

IMHO it's not just PDX profits but rather DLC minors truly make the game interesting and create stickiness. If not for those then what to do in HoI4? Play few runs for majors then put the game aside for a nostalgic playthrough two years from now?

How is it different for minors?

For majors, you at least have multiple ways of where to direct your main effort.

For minors, all you do is click on focuses every X days, build factories, snake into nearby weak neighbor capitals and see the map painted. If there was a working economy, I'd agree with you, but there isn't one. Same goes for the political struggle: it all comes down to "click focus and get your reward in X days".

 

[Joshua Happytree]

EVERY unit in EVERY colonial location is on the move.....away from the place it is supposed to be defending. They are on the way to either defend the home country in Europe or to stage to the East Coast of the US so that they can go promptly to Europe. Nonetheless, all those good colonial subjects don't take advantage of the colonial powers' absence to rise up and throw off the yoke of oppression.

1. Captain Obvious again in this thread yet... Why do you link colonial DIVs to quelling uprisings when you have garrisons in the game that do exactly this stuff? Keep them undersupplied and you'll have revolt just like you said.
2. As on map colonial DIVs are legitimate fighting DIVs and not garrisons why they should not travel to where the fighting is? If you keep them overseas thet will basically be a mere tax on production and manpower and won't change anything in the gameplay. Yes, this opens an angle on colonies being an easy target for naval invasions yet keeping ALL colonies defended against a determined invader will make this tax really awful, players will complain.

PS As per resistance / revolts, that may serve as an early source of Army XP and grinding generals for those who cannot or don't want to send volunteers to SCW and Sino-Japanese war yet have high resistance colonies. You stop supplies to the garrison, occupied state revolts and you "fight" these weak DIVs.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

How is it different for minors?

For majors, you at least have multiple ways of where to direct your main effort.

For minors, all you do is click on focuses every X days, build factories, snake into nearby weak neighbor factories and see the map painted. If there was a working economy, I'd agree with you, but there isn't one. Same goes for the political struggle: it all comes down to "click focus and get your reward in X days".

ai is bad enough that minors can do outcome-deciding things in ww2 by '40 or sooner. but yeah, most focus trees can be boiled into "industry", "boosts for army/air/navy research", "pick ideology", and maybe "have some war goals". sometimes ideology gives civil war, sometimes not. but generally speaking, that's 90% of most trees by necessity, for majors and minors alike.

occasionally you can get some forts or permanent military modifiers. doesn't move the needle much for me, but it's technically something else lol. focuses depend a great deal on their writing and how plausible they are for country in question.

 

[Joshua Happytree]

For minors, all you do is click on focuses every X days, build factories, snake into nearby weak neighbor factories and see the map painted ... Same goes for the political struggle: it all comes down to "click focus and get your reward in X days".

Well you just described ALL of HoI4 gameplay -- be those minors or majors, do you not?

you at least have multiple ways of where to direct your main effort.

IMHO if you want to be efficient then majors are rather railroaded. If you forbid early wars to make the gameplay interesting like most (if not all) MP house rules do then what are those multiple strategies say for Soviet Union? It has just one -- fight Germany because it'll come after it. Same with Germany -- UK and/or Soviet Union will inevitably declare due to focuses / WT generated.

If there was a working economy, I'd agree with you, but there isn't one.

You have a natural limitation to that -- the effort you need to sink into research of the game to be efficient and the number of clicks you do while playing. People already complain, IMHO adding full fledged economy will "break the neck". Economy -- that's Vic3, they have simplistic combat exactly for that.

 

[Cornutus]

Well you just described ALL HoI4 gameplay -- be those minors or majors, do you not?

Majors have more freedom. If you completely remove focus trees from Germany or UK: you still will have something to play with.

Most minors are completely centered around focus trees, because that's the only thing that gives them industrial capacity.

IMHO if you want to be efficient then majors are rather railroaded. If you forbid early wars to make the gameplay interesting like most (if not all) MP house rules do then what are those multiple strategies say for Soviet Union? It has just one -- fight Germany because it'll come after it. Same with Germany -- UK and/or Soviet Union will inevitably declare due to focuses / WT generated.

Well then, maybe the problem is in the MP house rules and even more specifically, the ultimate root cause of them?

If you lack starting stockpiles of equipment, if only tanks are viable for breaking enemy defensive lines, if you have a stupid "World Tension" mechanic implementation (if Japan justifies on USSR this suddenly impacts the French ability to mobilize their economy) and you don't have a working mobilizational mechanic: who's fault is it, Holmes?

House rules are replacements for the nonexistent built-in protections against dumpster fires that should be there. Half of them are unreasonable, but the other half is, which makes you accept them as a concept.

Nobody would care of USSR taking the Baltics, if it wouldn't give the allies a serious buff (for no apparent reason).

 

[vermicious knid]

I think democratic nations (particularly new world/UK) should probably have a bigger malus to taking casualties in general. As it turns out, your voter base doesn't like being sent to die overseas.

This. A hard limit to casualties like the OP suggests feels terribly game-y, but there should be repercussions to massive casualties. I've made it to the late game many times where the US has suffered millions of casualties and is still happily chugging along with high stability and war support.

In the real world even one million US casualties in an overseas war would be a HUGE deal. Riots, mutinies, general strikes, ORG and morale losses, desertion, etc... should all start happening as an in-game response to that sort of catastrophe.

Massive allied casualties should also trigger negotiated peace events. Don't force a peace on a human allied player, but give them a choice of making terms or suffering from an escalation of domestic unrest

 

[Joshua Happytree]

If you completely remove focus trees from Germany or UK: you still will have something to play with. Most minors are completely centered around focus trees, because that's the only thing that gives them industrial capacity.

1. Yes, you are right but why would you want to remove focus trees? It'll make the game obvious and dull IMHO.
2. Sure, minors need mana to be competitive against majors at some point of time. But that makes minors gameplay different from majors. Why is it bad?

the problem is in the MP house rules and even more specifically, the ultimate root cause of them?

Why is it a problem? It makes the game more interesting by allowing time to build industry and military and prevents an early snowballing. Once you get a steamroller you'd loose an interest in the game as there's no more challenge.

if you have a stupid "World Tension" mechanic implementation (if Japan justifies on USSR this suddenly impacts the French ability to mobilize their economy)

Why is it stupid? You'd want France to mobilize its serious industrial might on 1-Jan-1936, team up with Britain and crush Germany in 3-6 months to wipe out half of the fun from the game?

House rules are replacements for the nonexistent built-in protections against dumpster fires that should be there.

So what do you suggest? Making house rules as built in hard limits to the game? You say WT is bad and that's only semi-hard limitation

PS Sorry, my post is full of "whys" but IMHO many decisions that seem "obvious" at first sight may have profound implications for the gameplay and not necessaryly good ones. It's just a game, a way to spend time and have fun for millions of players. It's not a WWII strategic simulator.

 

[vermicious knid]

i would take this if in exchange democracies have their justification restrictions eased so they can play the game w/o relying on focuses.

heck, it's a more realistic tradeoff for democracies even...democracies started wars during and after this time period. we shouldn't need focus magic to bypass restrictions that don't make sense in the first place. meanwhile, more punitive casualties in such wars makes sense as a tradeoff for democracies instead.

Yeah, this game was a weirdly sunny view of actual democracies. Most of the "good guys" were still colonial powers doing horrible, horrible things on a daily basis. Conducting wars against minor nations for whatever reason was certainly in their repertoire.

 

[Cornutus]

1. Yes, you are right but why would you want to remove focus trees? It'll make the game obvious and dull IMHO.

I don't propose focus trees get removed. I'm simply pointing out that for minors, the whole game rotates around focus trees and nothing else.

Not around industry, not around research, not around resources or planning. It becomes unplausible at a certain point, because one feature is massively out of overall game balance.

I love Kaiserreich and really respect their work: but the key is, they try to make unlikely outcomes physically possible and try to avoid resorting to "mana magic" for the shits & giggles. That's a key principle Paradox fails to understand in their work, instead doing a cheap knockoff version and calling it a "new minor focus tree".

That's why Kaiserreich realism is a lot higher than vanilla realism even though it's a fantasy world.

1. Sure, minors need mana to be competitive against majors at some point of time. But that makes minors gameplay different from majors. Why is it bad?

Because it's unreasonable. It's Hearts of Iron not a Harry Potter franchise or recent Star Wars releases where a random noob with a magic stick is powerful enough to beat the headmaster of the trade.

Why is it a problem? It makes the game more interesting by allowing time to build industry and military and prevents an early snowballing. Once you get a steamroller you'd loose an interest in the game as there's no more challenge.

It's a problem because it limits the decisions you make for no apparent reason.

The MP house rules actually encourage snowballing: a lot of strategies focus on making an optimal build for a war happening in 3-4 years time. If you know nobody will attack you during that time, you have a lot of flexibility.

Why is it stupid? You'd want France to mobilize its serious industrial might on 1-Jan-1936, team up with Britain and crush Germany in 3-6 months to wipe out half of the fun from the game?

It's stupid because France shouldn't get affected by stuff happening on the other end of the globe, where they have virtually no interests. A war in Asia is not something that would convince the French public to trade butter in their croissants for more guns.

In real-life France was preparing for war even before 1936 as they designed new weapons (just check French tank designs: Renault R35, Hotchkiss H35, Somua S35, Renault AMC35, Panhard AMD35 have an index of "1935" as their model year, which kinda says something), they nationalized their aircraft industry before the war, they extended their fortifications (the Maginot line in reality covered just 3 provinces in HOI4), but they were a long stretch away from total mobilization.

France as an unstable and relatively democratic country did a lot as is in real life, but starting a preventive war with Germany did not have much support, and even when Germany attacked Poland, there was a reasonable pacifist question of "Why go through WW1 again die for some eastern foreign s**thole Danzig" from the French public to their warmongering politicians like Daladier. For warmongers to make a case, they needed proof that Germany threatens France itself, which didn't fully happen until Belgium was attacked.

So what do you suggest? Making house rules as built in hard limits to the game? You say WT is bad and that's only semi-hard limitation

Tension should be like in EUIV: country specific. Japan attacks USSR? Ok, not something a Parisien cares about. Poland takes Lithuania? Also not really a concern.

Germany taking Czechoslovakia or Austria? Ok, that's a problem, that's close and we got investments there. +5% war support to France.

Turkey attacking Iraq? Also concerning, given we have interests in Syria and we're next on the line.

 

[billcorr]

I think this was solved better in previous iterations, where standing armied actually cost supply which limited further production

Right.

Having to pay for an Army does serve as a way to govern (control) the size of the armed forces.

IIRC, there are several games that use that technique.

 

[Joshua Happytree]

Because it's unreasonable. It's Hearts of Iron not a Harry Potter franchise or recent Star Wars releases where a random noob with a magic stick is powerful enough to beat the headmaster of the trade.

Well, unfortunately it is And:

1. Judging by growing popularity on Steam the devs have been making right development decisions. HoI4 is THE MOST popular GSG game after CIV which has been and will be forever. That's a remarkable feat considering how complex and thus difficult to dive into for newbies the game is.
2. I don't do MP yet I play SP with the strictest MP house rules. I do believe if minors are made unplayable then the game will be rather dull. Me, personally, I'd have stopped playing HoI4 many years ago, majors are too easy and too boring.
3. Still can't say I don't share your sentiment. AAT mana -- international market and MIOs -- was too much for me and I have neither AAT nor TOA. IMHO what the game really lacks is THE very basis of it -- credible combat model. IMHO minors had enough mana pre-AAT and to me it's beating the dead horse. Rearranging the mana sources introduces nothing new into strategy so I'm happy with my pre-AAT HoI4 so far. But sales dollars talk so that's my personal taste And I very much suspect credible combat model simply cannot be implemented with Clausewitz and the team has already pushed the engine beyond reasonable. Yet again I don't think HoI4 should be WWII simulator close to RL the way it was lest the game will invariably end the way WWII did.

It's a problem because it limits the decisions you make for no apparent reason.

If you don't like MP house rules you just don't play there and you're fine. Should the stops be an intergral part of the game you won't have any choice.

The MP house rules actually encourage snowballing: a lot of strategies focus on making an optimal build for a war happening in 3-4 years time.

Min-maxing is not snowballing, snowballing is when you are so strong that you're beyond reach of your competition. No early wars rule actually stop people from abusing initial weaknesses built in for a super-duper easy SP play and give people time to get rolling.

It's stupid because France shouldn't get affected by stuff happening on the other end of the globe, where they have virtually no interests. A war in Asia is not something that would convince the French public to trade butter in their croissants for more guns.

HoI4 is not a WWII simulator, if something makes gameplay more diverse and interesting it should be implemented no matter how plasible it was in WWII times.

just check French tank designs

1. I know the history In HoI4 what matters is not what France IRL did but can a much stronger France prevent Germany from developing into military powerhouse. Devs said many times the in-game Great War they design the game for is Allies vs Germany vs Soviet Union.
2. Actually you somewhat contradict yourself on this point RL France fell easily so HoI4 DO depict RL outcome and making France stronger IS ahistorical

Tension should be like in EUIV: country specific

1. Haven't tried EUIV yet though I own the full pack, something to the tune of $500 or even more (don't really remember) so I may start playing some day
2. In HoI4 the WT is basically an early show stopper for democratic countries. At least USA with it's industrial might would have steamrolled everyone in no time and it would make the game totally predictable.

 

[Lamartine]

Still can't say I don't share your sentiment. AAT mana -- international market and MIOs -- was too much for me

Are international markets and MIOs mana? Maybe in the Radical Anarchist sense of mana? But if that's true then hoi4 is a game where division manas fight using soft attack mana to capture province mana.

What makes an ingame ressource mana?

Seeing as quite a few people are opposed to mana in any new paradox games, i feel compelled to ask what makes a ressource become mana? And what in that definition makes it inherently bad and not just a bad implementation? Or to take the...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

 

[Joshua Happytree]

Are international markets and MIOs mana

Well then focus trees are not mana as well After all you spend 1PP p/day to do a focus

 

[Lamartine]

True, though you can bank ten days of unspent focus so maybe they're neutral purist mana not rebel purist mana