I've been relatively vocal with my opinions on HoI4 being "babby's first grand strategy game" in terms of how ridiculously easy and arcade-y it (still) is in comparison to other Paradox games and especially HoI3.
I have bashed it for the AI managed frontlines that at first seemed like taking most of the game away from you and later has made every one of us consider self mutilation with a cheese grater because you load up one save game or such and the AI decides it's time to move every single unit around the globe and you can say good bye to your barbarossa.
I have bashed HoI4 for having the (now the second, since they released CK3) worst user interface on earth with all the clutter that makes any "grand strategy" aspect impossible because you need to zoom in to a couple of provinces level of detail to make any sense out of the garbage on screen.
I have bashed it for not having a supply system (and the new one isn't really my cup of tea either) which should be the number one thing you're interested in when the game is about the series of largest logistics operations ever conducted in the world.
I have bashed (and zealously will continue to do so) HoI4 for teleporting airplanes and all sorts of incomprehensibly idiotic design decisions that make me stop bothering with the game for half a year at a time.
The examples go on and on.
However, I found myself in a situation where I have a ton of time to waste on something but I only have my years old laptop with me that will not run anything that's published after 2010 so I found myself playing the "good old" HoI3 that in my imagination was superior in pretty much every possible way. And the reason I'm posting here at the HoI4 forum is that I may have just found myself being a little too harsh on the "new game" and having a little too nostalgic views of the previous one.
Firstly the game has a ton of interesting mechanics that you need to just figure out by getting your arse whacked because the CPU knows how to handle that and the game never tells you how certain things work.
How many times have you lost a battle in HoI4 when you have 20 divisions against 2 and the enemy is attacking over a river with heavy tanks? Probably not too many. But guess what, you can actually achieve that in HoI3 with ease because the game has a concept of "stacking penalty" that is seemingly randomly given to the player if you have more units than the enemy. When the odds are 10:1 in your favor, you'll end up having -50% combat modifier just because why the heck not. It also works the other way around so if you attack the 2 units with your 20, you're going to have the same penalty there instead of some sort of an encirclement bonus that would make sense if 20 divisions can manouver their way around 2.
Stacking penalties are even more pronounced for air units, regardless of are they even same type or intended to be doing the same thing. If you have an air superiority mission that covers a province where you're trying to run CAS, your interceptors are for some reason drawn into the ground attack, and every plane in the attack gives another -10% penalty to your combat effectiveness. Given the nonexistent ground attack potential of the fighters, they'll efficiently bring your CAS attack power down to 50% or less if you have many of them joining up against your will.
The lack of information given to the player in comparison to HoI4 is incredible.
The enemy modifiers are never shown to you. If you play as any other nation but Germany, you'll find yourself with ~40 org per unit while the German steam roller is coming up against you sporting a comfy 60-70 org and you don't even know where's that coming from. You'll see your own modifiers if you find the right button next to a map called "strategic effects" but you don't even know what triggers some of them. Soviets have an effect called "surprise attack" that gives -20 org and some such, and there's not explanation whatsoever what would trigger that. My best guess is that it activates with a German attack and it's possible to circumvent by attacking them first.
There's "country flags" with certain effects, like Soviet officer purge, that gives certain effects but the decision popup doesn't even fit on the screen and you can't even see what it does. Better yet, the game doesn't tell anywhere if something would happen if you don't activate it.
I have air units with max 50 organisation. Grand. Now I deploy them and they have 0 org and for whatever reason they are gaining 0.03 per day. Epic, my airforce is going to be ready to fight in 1666 days and after 2 battles or one rebasing they're going to be useless again. And no, the game doesn't give you a single clue if there is something you should do in order to increase the organization gain so that any unit you deploy would be available before the game years runs out. And yet some of the units magically have maximum organization after a few weeks of waiting, so the speed did increase, but I never touched anything and to this day I have no idea what am I doing.
And the automatic frontlines and "stupidly simplified" order of battle...
It was a well circulating joke here in the forums (about a decade ago) that you'll get a PTSD for sorting out the Soviet Order of Battle (assigning units to different level HQs and stringing them together for maximum efficiency) in HoI3 and having now done it again recently, I have to agree it was quite an exercise and it took me almost a year in game time while having it rolling medium speed. I do like the idea of the multi level command system, but yet again, the game doesn't explain anywhere what's the use of the commander traits and how do the bonuses from those trickle down through the chain of command and you're never going to see those modifiers in "action" when you're looking at a battle or such.
And yeah, I don't enjoy the automatic battle plans and using them in HoI4, but just having a tool to send your divisions to the border starts making sense when you have 500 divisions and you need to micromanage every one of them. Some issues are never fixed and it doesn't matter which game you play because you're going to be pulling hair off your head when you see divisions retreating to provinces that are going to be overran the next day and doing similar stunts, but before you blame the frontline mechanic for being utterly useless and getting your divisions wiped, try defending against barbarossa in HoI3 and manage the Soviet defense when both enemy AI and your own AI are playing against you and doing exactly same things.
I don't intend this as a rant of "HoI3 sucks because I'm losing (unlike in HoI4)", but more like the first time I've had a chance to relatively objectively compare the two games, and perhaps as a little bit of a self reflection too to realize that not everything was better back in the days, even if we easily think so.
I have bashed it for the AI managed frontlines that at first seemed like taking most of the game away from you and later has made every one of us consider self mutilation with a cheese grater because you load up one save game or such and the AI decides it's time to move every single unit around the globe and you can say good bye to your barbarossa.
I have bashed HoI4 for having the (now the second, since they released CK3) worst user interface on earth with all the clutter that makes any "grand strategy" aspect impossible because you need to zoom in to a couple of provinces level of detail to make any sense out of the garbage on screen.
I have bashed it for not having a supply system (and the new one isn't really my cup of tea either) which should be the number one thing you're interested in when the game is about the series of largest logistics operations ever conducted in the world.
I have bashed (and zealously will continue to do so) HoI4 for teleporting airplanes and all sorts of incomprehensibly idiotic design decisions that make me stop bothering with the game for half a year at a time.
The examples go on and on.
However, I found myself in a situation where I have a ton of time to waste on something but I only have my years old laptop with me that will not run anything that's published after 2010 so I found myself playing the "good old" HoI3 that in my imagination was superior in pretty much every possible way. And the reason I'm posting here at the HoI4 forum is that I may have just found myself being a little too harsh on the "new game" and having a little too nostalgic views of the previous one.
Firstly the game has a ton of interesting mechanics that you need to just figure out by getting your arse whacked because the CPU knows how to handle that and the game never tells you how certain things work.
How many times have you lost a battle in HoI4 when you have 20 divisions against 2 and the enemy is attacking over a river with heavy tanks? Probably not too many. But guess what, you can actually achieve that in HoI3 with ease because the game has a concept of "stacking penalty" that is seemingly randomly given to the player if you have more units than the enemy. When the odds are 10:1 in your favor, you'll end up having -50% combat modifier just because why the heck not. It also works the other way around so if you attack the 2 units with your 20, you're going to have the same penalty there instead of some sort of an encirclement bonus that would make sense if 20 divisions can manouver their way around 2.
Stacking penalties are even more pronounced for air units, regardless of are they even same type or intended to be doing the same thing. If you have an air superiority mission that covers a province where you're trying to run CAS, your interceptors are for some reason drawn into the ground attack, and every plane in the attack gives another -10% penalty to your combat effectiveness. Given the nonexistent ground attack potential of the fighters, they'll efficiently bring your CAS attack power down to 50% or less if you have many of them joining up against your will.
The lack of information given to the player in comparison to HoI4 is incredible.
The enemy modifiers are never shown to you. If you play as any other nation but Germany, you'll find yourself with ~40 org per unit while the German steam roller is coming up against you sporting a comfy 60-70 org and you don't even know where's that coming from. You'll see your own modifiers if you find the right button next to a map called "strategic effects" but you don't even know what triggers some of them. Soviets have an effect called "surprise attack" that gives -20 org and some such, and there's not explanation whatsoever what would trigger that. My best guess is that it activates with a German attack and it's possible to circumvent by attacking them first.
There's "country flags" with certain effects, like Soviet officer purge, that gives certain effects but the decision popup doesn't even fit on the screen and you can't even see what it does. Better yet, the game doesn't tell anywhere if something would happen if you don't activate it.
I have air units with max 50 organisation. Grand. Now I deploy them and they have 0 org and for whatever reason they are gaining 0.03 per day. Epic, my airforce is going to be ready to fight in 1666 days and after 2 battles or one rebasing they're going to be useless again. And no, the game doesn't give you a single clue if there is something you should do in order to increase the organization gain so that any unit you deploy would be available before the game years runs out. And yet some of the units magically have maximum organization after a few weeks of waiting, so the speed did increase, but I never touched anything and to this day I have no idea what am I doing.
And the automatic frontlines and "stupidly simplified" order of battle...
It was a well circulating joke here in the forums (about a decade ago) that you'll get a PTSD for sorting out the Soviet Order of Battle (assigning units to different level HQs and stringing them together for maximum efficiency) in HoI3 and having now done it again recently, I have to agree it was quite an exercise and it took me almost a year in game time while having it rolling medium speed. I do like the idea of the multi level command system, but yet again, the game doesn't explain anywhere what's the use of the commander traits and how do the bonuses from those trickle down through the chain of command and you're never going to see those modifiers in "action" when you're looking at a battle or such.
And yeah, I don't enjoy the automatic battle plans and using them in HoI4, but just having a tool to send your divisions to the border starts making sense when you have 500 divisions and you need to micromanage every one of them. Some issues are never fixed and it doesn't matter which game you play because you're going to be pulling hair off your head when you see divisions retreating to provinces that are going to be overran the next day and doing similar stunts, but before you blame the frontline mechanic for being utterly useless and getting your divisions wiped, try defending against barbarossa in HoI3 and manage the Soviet defense when both enemy AI and your own AI are playing against you and doing exactly same things.
I don't intend this as a rant of "HoI3 sucks because I'm losing (unlike in HoI4)", but more like the first time I've had a chance to relatively objectively compare the two games, and perhaps as a little bit of a self reflection too to realize that not everything was better back in the days, even if we easily think so.
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