i was wondering if the modifications on this were worth buying the game, as per needing a more realistic look at the way WW2 was fought and won by the allies... how realistic is the modeling of this era?
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I must admit that I've not played plain HoI, but, from what I've heard, AoD offers a much deeper and more realistic experience. Playing with the CORE modification (details on this forum, above) improves it still further. It's still a game though, so how much use it is as a historical simulation I couldn't say. I did show it to my father (a WWII historian) and he was moderately impressed, so perhaps it's not completely useless in that regard...
It's definitely worth it. I'd take a good look at both AoD and DH, as they have a somewhat different design approach and excel in different areas. Or just grab both, they're cheap.
They are definitely more than just mods. The devs have access to the source code and made good use of it so far.
If you are looking for a realistic model, both are far better than vanilla HoI. In HoI it is very possible (and arguably the strongest strategy) to pour all your manpower in infantry and all your IC in tactical bombers, and easily win the game. In AoD or DH, this will get your behind thoroughly kicked by anyone with a more balanced army (including the AI). Unless of course you are the Soviet Union and just drown them in 500+ divisions. That still works, even though its far from optimal.
If you're interested in historical correctness, CORE is also worth a look. It's not my thing since it sacrifices abstraction and elegance for insane amounts of detail, but if you like the detail, CORE might be your thing. It's definitely well made and researched.
They are definitely more than just mods. The devs have access to the source code and made good use of it so far.
If you are looking for a realistic model, both are far better than vanilla HoI. In HoI it is very possible (and arguably the strongest strategy) to pour all your manpower in infantry and all your IC in tactical bombers, and easily win the game. In AoD or DH, this will get your behind thoroughly kicked by anyone with a more balanced army (including the AI). Unless of course you are the Soviet Union and just drown them in 500+ divisions. That still works, even though its far from optimal.
If you're interested in historical correctness, CORE is also worth a look. It's not my thing since it sacrifices abstraction and elegance for insane amounts of detail, but if you like the detail, CORE might be your thing. It's definitely well made and researched.
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Crikey what's the differences again? It's been so long since I played DD.
1. Battles last much longer and inflict greater strength losses. Org takes longer to regain.
In HOI, battles would resolve themselves in a couple of hours. The retreating side would fully recover org by the time they reach the province they are retreating to, and you have to fight them all over again, unless you pull off an encirclement or overrun. In my first AoD game I remember playing as France and thinking I was doing fine because they'd only lost half their org in twelve hours of fighting. In HOI2 that would mean a successful defence, but in AoD such an org loss is a sign of being grossly overmatched. No problem, I thought, I'll stop them in the next province. Wrong. When they stop retreating they only have a sliver of org. Once you loose one battle you can find yourself being pushed back and back again in rapid succession.
2. Because fights last much longer, there is much more time to bring up reinforcements if under attack.
This can also make it very difficult to achieve a breakout if the enemy front line is well manned. You will need many axes of attack or massive use of airpower to keep the momentum going.
3. Stacking penalties are bigger and attacking from multiple fronts gets a bigger bonus.
In HOI2 you'd make a double envelopment with a single province wide lines of advance. Where possible you'd minimise the amount you have to defend by occupying a single large province that is bordered by 6 enemy ones, rather than three small ones only attackable on one side, on your way to the objective. Try to do that now in AoD, the enemy will break out extremely easily with massive bonuses on their counterattack. Try to maintain the salient by pumping in reinforcements and suffer a massively adverse kill:loss rate, or let them win and have your armoured spearhead cut off on the wrong side of enemy lines.
As a defender, it is preferable to hold many small provinces that are only exposed from a few directions. You don't need a massive force in each province, just a small cadre of infantry who will hold the line long enough for mobile forces on "reserves" mission (grouped in stacks every 3rd province in your line) to automatically rush to their aid.
4. Supplies has had a total overhaul.
Every unit has a cache of supplies and oil, the fuller it is the better they fight, but units don't immediately get an 80% penalty the very hour their supply line is cut. Estimated Supply Efficiency is now calculated on a per-unit basis, taking account of the infrastructure and partisan levels in each province between its present location and your capital.
5. AI now makes senseless attacks.
It was annoying in HOI2 how the AI would run an algorithm whether to attack or not, and would only do so if the odds calculated it would win. If reinforcements arrived, the attack would cancel instantly. Now the AI plays more like a (bad) human commander, throwing lives away with speculative attacks and counterattacks. It happened in real life so it's realistic.
6. Casualty display after the fight. Nice to see how many enemy you killed.
7. The game has been optimised and runs considerably faster than HOI2.
Despite the more sophisticated supplies system, unnecessary calculations been removed from the engine. It's particularly noticeable late war, because countries no longer build armies of infinite size. Even in peacetime units suffer attrition (due to men reaching retirement age and having to be replaced), there comes a point where a country's manpower growth is now gobbled up by replacing the retirees from their existing army, and their forces can grow no larger. Military salaries also place an IC limit to how big countries like China can grow their army.
8. You now have the option to make more than one slider move per year, if you don't mind working off a bit of dissent. Democratic Germany? Democratic Soviet Union? Communist Britain? Can all be done without cheats now.
9. National ideas offer further customisation of your nation.
10. Much more sophisticated auto control of production sliders makes it easier to set priorities.
"Consumer Goods" spending is further subdivided into Civil Expenses (reduces dissent), Espionage, Research (affects speed of ALL tech teams) & Military Salaries (Org regen of units).
You can spend zero IC on Consumer Goods provided you spend enough money per day on Civil expenses to prevent dissent growth. ICs into consumer goods just generates money, if you have enough stockpiled, or make huge amounts of money selling surplus raw materials, you might not need to put any IC there. Unused Manpower also generates money. This is how China gets by with so little IC - their unused MP pool generates enough cash to pay civil expense, military salaries and research.
11. Production queue has a tooling up period, so waiting till 1940 when assembly line tech is done then doing a massive parallel build of units just before the war is no longer viable. You can however put some production lines on double or triple shifts if the need is pressing, albeit at great cost.
12. You have more research teams, but research takes longer. Rushing certain techs ahead of time is harder.
13. Strategic bombing has been made more effective and close air support less effective compared with HOI.
14. Espionage has been given an autopilot. By default, all your espionage budget goes on counter intelligence, so you don't have to keep clicking "send spy" and "eliminate spies".
15. Trade screen much improved. You can set quotas for how much surplus/deficit you want in each resource, and the AI will get it, though it in wartime it might route convoys to hazardous places. Going manual, you can click the resource you're after, and you get a list of countries which have a surplus in that resource so you can try to trade with them.
16. The trade lottery is gone. When a deal is offered, the odds of acceptance are either 100% or 0%. No point reloading multiple times to get that killer bargain deal with only 20% chance of acceptance.
17. You can trade units, blueprints and provinces with allies, provided they not national ones. You can sell (but not buy) units to non-allies in exchange for resources. You can right click on a province on the map and trade it to a military ally without going into diplomacy screen. For example, when invading soviet union, you can right click one of the provinces you're occupying and immediately hand it to Finland or Romania.
18. Lastly, province repair. When a province is damaged as a result of bombing, changing hands in combat, or combat damage to land forts, the province no longer repairs for free. You have to pay for it with the province repair slider. This is why Strategic bombing is so much more effective now. It also puts a brake on world domination campaigns.
If you don't spend much IC on repair, your front line troops will have damaged provinces between them and your capitol, and have poor supply efficiency. If you do repair as fast as possible then at times of rapid advance, expect to have no spare IC left over for new builds or upgrades.
1. Battles last much longer and inflict greater strength losses. Org takes longer to regain.
In HOI, battles would resolve themselves in a couple of hours. The retreating side would fully recover org by the time they reach the province they are retreating to, and you have to fight them all over again, unless you pull off an encirclement or overrun. In my first AoD game I remember playing as France and thinking I was doing fine because they'd only lost half their org in twelve hours of fighting. In HOI2 that would mean a successful defence, but in AoD such an org loss is a sign of being grossly overmatched. No problem, I thought, I'll stop them in the next province. Wrong. When they stop retreating they only have a sliver of org. Once you loose one battle you can find yourself being pushed back and back again in rapid succession.
2. Because fights last much longer, there is much more time to bring up reinforcements if under attack.
This can also make it very difficult to achieve a breakout if the enemy front line is well manned. You will need many axes of attack or massive use of airpower to keep the momentum going.
3. Stacking penalties are bigger and attacking from multiple fronts gets a bigger bonus.
In HOI2 you'd make a double envelopment with a single province wide lines of advance. Where possible you'd minimise the amount you have to defend by occupying a single large province that is bordered by 6 enemy ones, rather than three small ones only attackable on one side, on your way to the objective. Try to do that now in AoD, the enemy will break out extremely easily with massive bonuses on their counterattack. Try to maintain the salient by pumping in reinforcements and suffer a massively adverse kill:loss rate, or let them win and have your armoured spearhead cut off on the wrong side of enemy lines.
As a defender, it is preferable to hold many small provinces that are only exposed from a few directions. You don't need a massive force in each province, just a small cadre of infantry who will hold the line long enough for mobile forces on "reserves" mission (grouped in stacks every 3rd province in your line) to automatically rush to their aid.
4. Supplies has had a total overhaul.
Every unit has a cache of supplies and oil, the fuller it is the better they fight, but units don't immediately get an 80% penalty the very hour their supply line is cut. Estimated Supply Efficiency is now calculated on a per-unit basis, taking account of the infrastructure and partisan levels in each province between its present location and your capital.
5. AI now makes senseless attacks.
It was annoying in HOI2 how the AI would run an algorithm whether to attack or not, and would only do so if the odds calculated it would win. If reinforcements arrived, the attack would cancel instantly. Now the AI plays more like a (bad) human commander, throwing lives away with speculative attacks and counterattacks. It happened in real life so it's realistic.
6. Casualty display after the fight. Nice to see how many enemy you killed.
7. The game has been optimised and runs considerably faster than HOI2.
Despite the more sophisticated supplies system, unnecessary calculations been removed from the engine. It's particularly noticeable late war, because countries no longer build armies of infinite size. Even in peacetime units suffer attrition (due to men reaching retirement age and having to be replaced), there comes a point where a country's manpower growth is now gobbled up by replacing the retirees from their existing army, and their forces can grow no larger. Military salaries also place an IC limit to how big countries like China can grow their army.
8. You now have the option to make more than one slider move per year, if you don't mind working off a bit of dissent. Democratic Germany? Democratic Soviet Union? Communist Britain? Can all be done without cheats now.
9. National ideas offer further customisation of your nation.
10. Much more sophisticated auto control of production sliders makes it easier to set priorities.
"Consumer Goods" spending is further subdivided into Civil Expenses (reduces dissent), Espionage, Research (affects speed of ALL tech teams) & Military Salaries (Org regen of units).
You can spend zero IC on Consumer Goods provided you spend enough money per day on Civil expenses to prevent dissent growth. ICs into consumer goods just generates money, if you have enough stockpiled, or make huge amounts of money selling surplus raw materials, you might not need to put any IC there. Unused Manpower also generates money. This is how China gets by with so little IC - their unused MP pool generates enough cash to pay civil expense, military salaries and research.
11. Production queue has a tooling up period, so waiting till 1940 when assembly line tech is done then doing a massive parallel build of units just before the war is no longer viable. You can however put some production lines on double or triple shifts if the need is pressing, albeit at great cost.
12. You have more research teams, but research takes longer. Rushing certain techs ahead of time is harder.
13. Strategic bombing has been made more effective and close air support less effective compared with HOI.
14. Espionage has been given an autopilot. By default, all your espionage budget goes on counter intelligence, so you don't have to keep clicking "send spy" and "eliminate spies".
15. Trade screen much improved. You can set quotas for how much surplus/deficit you want in each resource, and the AI will get it, though it in wartime it might route convoys to hazardous places. Going manual, you can click the resource you're after, and you get a list of countries which have a surplus in that resource so you can try to trade with them.
16. The trade lottery is gone. When a deal is offered, the odds of acceptance are either 100% or 0%. No point reloading multiple times to get that killer bargain deal with only 20% chance of acceptance.
17. You can trade units, blueprints and provinces with allies, provided they not national ones. You can sell (but not buy) units to non-allies in exchange for resources. You can right click on a province on the map and trade it to a military ally without going into diplomacy screen. For example, when invading soviet union, you can right click one of the provinces you're occupying and immediately hand it to Finland or Romania.
18. Lastly, province repair. When a province is damaged as a result of bombing, changing hands in combat, or combat damage to land forts, the province no longer repairs for free. You have to pay for it with the province repair slider. This is why Strategic bombing is so much more effective now. It also puts a brake on world domination campaigns.
If you don't spend much IC on repair, your front line troops will have damaged provinces between them and your capitol, and have poor supply efficiency. If you do repair as fast as possible then at times of rapid advance, expect to have no spare IC left over for new builds or upgrades.
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Excellent discussion of the superiority of AoD.
But think you meant to write: "AI now makes sensible attacks." Well, it still maybe makes some senseless attacks too, but basically it is a lot smarter AI as regards what it can achieve.
I think in your AAR you're discovering all about Germany's "sensible attacks". With the AI switch set to aggressive, it attacks constantly even with loosing odds, in the hope of pinning divisions/drawing off reserves, degrading a land fort so that subsequent assaults can succeed, or of running its opponent out of manpower. Thus , destroying themselves better than you ever could.
In defence, AI France is just as boneheaded. If it looses a hill, mountain, forest, or land fort after a long hard fought battle, it immediately tries to recapture the province as soon as german divisions arrive, exhausting and loosing the dug-in bonus of units in adjacent positions. It continues the counterattack though outnumbered, even though it is crossing a river, and the terrain it is trying to recapture gives advantages to the defender. A human player would cut his losses and work on reforming the line at the next terrain feature while scorching earth, and is sensible enough to withdraw units from other provinces too if this retreat makes their position untenable.
At a tactical level then, the AI is worse, but more "human" and is no longer obviously cheating by having a perfect view of the forces on both sides as well as full access to the game mechanics.
On a strategic level yes, AI has improved. Just watch Italy go in 1.08.......
i have the complete of HOI2 and now what there is of HOI3... i also have anthology which all are listed in the games i have lol, they are under my nickname... DH??? im lost on what that is... i apologize but i cant remember a DH at this time. i am looking for both historical and plusible... hints why i would like to see what games are really in that section of genre... pride of nations with its multiple actions and such fits, and if i remember right empire total war does to a degree, not as much as paradoxian games though lol.
EU3 was getting close to this genre and cant wait to see what happens with EU4... but East vs West looks like it is right on the money and the way that its promoted, it will be a whole lot better than HOI or Victoria have ever been...
Edit: as of 1808 phoenix az time, i have purchased DH and AoD... with that said, thank you all for the help of deciding on these purchases... and i hope to be able to have more assistance when it comes to other games...
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Excellent summary, Tomnoddy - it would deserve to be stickied as a quick reference for potential AoD customers!
Good Lord! I'm in absolute awe of you, noddy. That should be stickied as a model answer to this particular faq.
It is an excellent answer. I'm pretty sure that a lot of work was done to improve the balancing and AI as well.
About CORE: it is much more detailed, but I don't think it encumbers the game at all. It feels just like playing AoD; the level of micro-management, etc., hasn't increased or anything. There's a little bit of a learning curve around what they've done with the tech trees and the idea of the different levels of industrial development with which a nation starts, but otherwise you can jump straight in. There are more technologies, tech teams, units, leaders, etc., but I think the main thing is the vast amount of work that's gone into balancing the game and working on the AI.
About CORE: it is much more detailed, but I don't think it encumbers the game at all. It feels just like playing AoD; the level of micro-management, etc., hasn't increased or anything. There's a little bit of a learning curve around what they've done with the tech trees and the idea of the different levels of industrial development with which a nation starts, but otherwise you can jump straight in. There are more technologies, tech teams, units, leaders, etc., but I think the main thing is the vast amount of work that's gone into balancing the game and working on the AI.
i have noticed with AoD there was some issues with manpower with the USA already, after a few games... the american people worked alot more than is modeled, but if all nations are just as low in MP than i dont have an issue... the way the tech is great, something i would add though is the ablility to have more techs... if that was possible that is... just thinking outloud here, DH is expremely shocking to me, im like wow to it... to add what they both offer would be a great thing, especially the starting point of 1914 to 1964... that would be wonderful with all the techs and the techteams that were at that time... i would love to see a game that can totally represent 1836-present day, that would be a dream. a better set of games would be 1725-present, with all the tech, techteam, industry, political, social ideals, diplmatic, espionage, etc of the time... like being able to play the colonies to create the USA and keep goin from there, with the colonization and everything... but that i know is a "pipe-dream" but i know that the system for EU4, HOI3 FTM, and Vicky HoD would be able to model it very accurately... since they have done it so well with the Europa engine, im sure the new engine can do it twenty to hundred times better.... just saying... idea out there...
actually i havent due to the way that the creators show each era... CK2 yes is fun in its own right but honestly if you look at it in a historical aspect there is some things lagging like when you start the grand compaign as william of normandy, your manpower is sigificantly lower than that of sweden or england... EU3 there is alot to be desired with and if you dont allow the english colonies to revolt, you end up with great britain in HOD with all the territories in north america... then HOI3 your pretty much able to steam roll germany and russia into submission and puppet them... ive played them all separate and have found faults in each modeling this era... some are close but some are also lagging... CK2 needs to be alot more historical in some aspects while allowing for others to be plusible, EU3 definally doesnt show the way that the colonial system was... Vickys economic model needs alot of work done to it, and HOI3 FTM or AoD needs allot done in themselves, but each is a good game. just not good at modeling what actually happened or what could have happened... there was alot from Ricky that was taken out with Vicky and just added back kinda with this new patch IE colonial races, HOI3 i like the multiple techs at same time and AoD paying for them, but that should only be the ones that are contracted to the country, as there was alot of inventions done by private inventors, also another thing is vicky takes into account the smaller factories and artists that were in the country while HOI3 doesnt... nor does HOI/AoD have the economic level that vicky or Ricky had... yes it needs to be automized like in vicky but Ricky had much more slots to add materials to, which would help with money and such by separating the precious metals, and etc. then making HOI having the same economic model with much more added would be even better... with each game there is good and bad i will say that, but like in CK2 you can do plots, why not have spies and etc... EU3 is more about colonization than vicky but vicky does a much better job of it... etc... there needs to be a game that can do a huge span of time, with everything in it, that truly shows what could have been and what has been... both within plusible outcomes. also have major events that really happened to create nations or destroy them... boston tea party, stamp tax, etc... and destroy would be like the assassination of arch duke ferdinane(sp) with the austria-hungry turning into multple states... then have the central powers, be able to change into the axis... also have the rebel types be accurate per country, and the geopolitics have a factor in game too... the seward icebox would not have happened if the USA had not sent the embassary with the gold... etc there was alot that happened during that time that could be made into decisions, mutiple choice decisions and etc... just like treaties were not just one side gets all, there were reparations for land taken such as when the US got the philipines from spain and cuba, the US paid over 1.5 mil to spain for the lands of the citizens of spain that were taken... the list goes on
with the europa engine i know it can be done, so why cant something of this feat be done with this engine?
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i would love to learn how to use C++, lua, etc to make a new engine and do such a game... but my disablity prevents me from doing alot, but that just maybe my path to recovery is to create a brand new engine that can do all this... just trying to say i would be more than willing to put the time and effort it would take into making a Grand Strategy that is truly huge in complexity and also in timeframe... also it would be easy to make less complicated if needed for new players... a actual play through for tortiaral(sp) and etc would be the things i would love to add to said game, and the ability to do actual combat manuevers... through GPL if remember right... just having the ability to change a course of battle by creating a battle plan and seeing the situation and being able to command your units accordingly... also another thing i forgot to mention in the other post was the time it took for news to reach the other side of globe, manilla was surrendered immediatly when the USN and Marines came into habor and took up fighting positions...
I'm sorry to say but I highly doubt any such game would be made in the near future. It would require a colossal amount of effort, with (perhaps) a relativelly small target market. I have seen many others enjoying playing through CK2 to AoD, maybe if you tried it you could enjoy it too.
well i for one am trying to figure out the lua and C++ system of coding and also trying my hand at making .ANI... so hopefully that wont be an issue for when i finally get the hang of it all.
Should you ever try to get that project started, count me in. That idea/dream is wandering around in my head for quite some time, too. And while we're at it why not go the whole hog and start at or slightly before the beginning of the bronze age (like CIV). Wouldn't need much more new content than starting medieval, but make the game truly universal and maybe increase the audience. For a language, I'd go with C++ and handle the graphics with Allegro (and some immediate mode OpenGL where convenient). I know how to use these already, and they compile fine on Linux, too. Never used LUA - and I fear that including script languages might send performance to hell (I hope I'm wrong there, though).
i'll add a few points:
- AI is better in picking its leaders (no more will a commando leader lead inf or tank corps [-5% for commando leaders leading non-commando units], or panzer leader lead militias)
- AI changes ministers without events (means if the AI is short on resources it will take the resource industrialist
- ability to sort leaders by trait (roughly, but faster then in eg DH - at least if you know them)
- auto - trade
- advanced sliders (play any other HoI2-expansions and you'll know what i mean: reduced micro a lot)
- bigger pockets produce supplies if everything is in (coal, IC, metal, etc)
- aging factor for MP
compared to Arma its pure gold for leaders / ministers modding as you can tell before what AI will do with the code you add.
- AI is better in picking its leaders (no more will a commando leader lead inf or tank corps [-5% for commando leaders leading non-commando units], or panzer leader lead militias)
- AI changes ministers without events (means if the AI is short on resources it will take the resource industrialist
- ability to sort leaders by trait (roughly, but faster then in eg DH - at least if you know them)
- auto - trade
- advanced sliders (play any other HoI2-expansions and you'll know what i mean: reduced micro a lot)
- bigger pockets produce supplies if everything is in (coal, IC, metal, etc)
- aging factor for MP
compared to Arma its pure gold for leaders / ministers modding as you can tell before what AI will do with the code you add.
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