What are the 3 biggest problems with this game in your opinion?

[1alexey]

carefull a whine tread

1. The game is too pre-determined.
Gb allways atack Germany at 40. even if Ger is peacefull. Why?
The Ussr never does.Again, strange. US allways stays out untill too late.
There is no feel of "competition" and the picture is way too predictable.
Screw history. Make it a GAME not a history buck.
2.Relations within the fractions. The "leadership" struggle.
German-Italian "tensions" for Austria, "differences" within UK-US views, possible comie tensions.
3. As is the war is scripted to be Axis against Allies and Commitern.
The Allies-Commie war to say "save Finland or Poland" or secure what remains of Reich (to be a French buffer say) is impossible. But if say USSR kicks is in Poland 39-40th and Ger starts loosing wouldn`t GB back the Germans...
The competition should be between 3 ideologies, not flat 1 vs2.

 

[Oof]

1 Supply.
The adjusted supply system tries to cover all areas, if there are troops or not. This can cause loss of nat unity with unnessecary convouys for example. It would also be good to be able to determine your own land supply lines and the position of the depots and to be able to stockpile before an offensive.

2 Naval Units without ports
Naval units that have lost their port and cant reach another port, i.e. the Baltic after the German capture of all Russian ports. Russian naval units can go on forever with convoy raiding but they cant be supplied (fuel, manpower, etc.) If a port with naval units is taken either units should be automatically scuttled (disbanded) or in case of a surprise captured by the enemy.

3 Diplomacy
Its just to easy and unrealistic though a lot of improvement has been done.

 

[unmerged(157847)]

1. AI. Period. As mentioned above. As mentioned elsewhere. Notice a theme yet? Supply AI. Objectives for allies. The list goes on, but we all already knew that.

2. UI. As mentioned above. As mentioned elsewhere. Why click four times when two clicks in a better interface and/or drag/drop would suffice? Why promote carpal tunnel syndrome? Why is information I don't want in the way of information I do want? Why don't the production sliders do what I want them to do? Why is "auto-fill generals" the default!

3. Documentation. Yes, what has already been written is good; very good, in fact. But it is now out of date. And it is in three or more documents. Or found in the forums/FAQs. Or best found in the AARs. Combine them, update them, and simplify at least some of them.

4. (bonus) Game Balance. This can be done by modders -- if modders have enough tools/control over the situation, as mentioned elsewhere.

 

[DanSez]

1 - Supply. Not enough information or interaction on bottlenecks and remedies. It should have been fashioned to flow down the Chain of Command with Theatre Commands giving not only unit request but supply request levels as well.

2. Big Freakin Ahmen to my brother above on the Strat Bombers squashing the AA. All aspects of the Strat Bomber smells too "gamey" to me as I see Brit and sometime French units bombing the crap out of German cities in broad daylight in 1939.

3. I counter the "make it a game" motives of balance and such. I would like this, of any of the Paradox universe of games, to be as real as possible historical simulation. A. Nat China too weak - They WERE too weak. B. Russia rolling over - If Germany attacks earlier than late June 41 with ahistorcially strengthened OOB - the Russians WOULD have rolled over.

Now I do agree that the Russian defenses should be improved more along the line of them spamming stop gap units to slow down the German juggernaught, but that is a small point. It would be up to the Human Player to change the history of Russia, not play balance a bunch of special case numbnuts who run ahistorically powerful blitzkriegs across the Russian flats. And I do agree that the Japanese AI is dead/dumb, a sad effect of the inheritance of the Eurocentric/Landcentric force structures of other games built by the same developers.

*** So the best wish would be for a New Game Engine, based more on modern war and modern economics instead of the world exploration/economic models that preceeded it that would start with WW2 and continue thru the cold war and this century's regional conflicts. The preceeding engine is great for EU/Vicki/even WWI style conflicts but with the rise of naval and air power, the warfare changed forever. Others above noted/indicated a lack of (air/naval) commands and the design team just swept them under the Army Command just as it worked centuries before more or less (one could argue a bit about Nelson and parts of the Brit/French conflict, but that was mostly an exception over the broad swath of time covered by those games).

 

[jamhaw]

Ruling parties are often wrong, and ministers belong to the wrong party far too often.

 

[unmerged(88697)]

Player-controlled Small Countries

1) Start all small countries with some modest construction practical (2-3 pts) so the player-controlled nation can immediately begin to build factories. Nothing worse than a small country with insufficent Unity that then takes 5-6 years to generate enough IC capacity to launch a ship or aircraft.

2) Give small country neutrals more Casus belli to go to war with their neighbors. We need more in the way of border disputes or events so that player-controlled nations can go to war without having to wait a decade to reduce Neutrality.

3) Most small country's don't have the leadership necessary to walk and chew gum at the same time (am I right?). This is no fun for the human player at all. I suggest a new diplomatic action: Military & Scientific Advisors. At the cost of a $1/day the human-controlled small country should be able to get a boost of 2-3 points of leadership from a Major (and w/o depleting the Major's leadership either).

I won't rant here, but please review my latest post on the I.C.E. board (here) for my unabashed opinion on making this a better game.

 

[impspy]

1)Absolutely horrible representation of minors, in every aspect. From a lack of leadership, manpower, and technologies, to the inability to simulate minor conflicts.

2)All aspects of Allied cooperation. This not only includes the military aspects, such as allied objectives, coordinated invasions, etc, but supply and equipment. The minor nations in all the factions did not have to research their own tech and build their own equipment, because for the most part this was supplied by the larger countries that could afford it.

3)Lack of a 'sand-box' feel(such as alternate historical events, and differant outcomes depending on the situation), when the game is clearly a sand-box type game.

 

[Ulsterman]

Most of the aforementioned problems, as well as one other:

1) Surrender events. HoI3 offers endless ways of going ahistorical paths, so why are the surrender events written to reflect the real surrenders? And why are surrenders incomplete? Why can Germany exist at the same time as FRG/DDR?

 

[unmerged(185688)]

Espionage:
Increase Threat - This should be an Internal Spy mission(w/ ability to choose which foreign nation to target) linked to the Propanganda Press law. This would restrict it's use and limit the target nations threat increase to the country that initiated it. ie. If Germany is increasing Americas threat using internal Propaganda, This should make America look threatening to the German populace, not to any other country. With the current mission, if I choose to try something similiar, strange things can begin to happen due to the propagation of threat to neighboring countries.

Trade:
Fuel - No one ever wants to sell fuel!? Seriously, Venezuala, Uruguay, Colombia, Switzerland, Afghanistan, Sinkiang, Yunan, Liberia, Panama, Costa Rica, Cuba, Haiti, The D.R., Nicaragua, Guatamala, Mexico, Bolivia, Paraguay, Comm. China, El Salvador, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Honduras.....these countries have no use for fuel, and they could use the money they get to buy resources they Do Need. But no, instead they sit on a stockpile they will never use!?

Holland/England/France/New colonial Empires - absolutly refuse to sell excess resources they recieve from there colonies!? I've done some testing with this problem. If I give either of these countries a province production of a 150 metal, 100 rares and 100 oil at their Capital or any land linked province (core or not), they'll sell the excess no questions asked. But, if I put those same resources in one of their overseas colonies, forget it, never gonna happen!?

ai_trade.lua - could the following lines or something similiar be causing this problem? Does the AI think that all those resource convoys are actually trades!?
-- First figure out what we have in excess of
-- Negative numbers in the array means we have a surplus that is home produced (not traded for except for money)
local laSellerResources = {0,0,0,0,0,0,0}

Supply:
Will this ever get some TLC? Enough already with Germany and the Soviets. Fix the supply system, give us more feedback and more control!

 

[DerKomtur]

#1: message system
Either I have pop-ups that disturb me or I miss important events. Giving orders just during pause is not good in multiplayer.
#2: supply system
breaks in an intransparent way. could be better
Linked to supply system are the convoys. No real Battle of the Atlantic.
#3: minor-major relations
Non-major countries, e.g. Hungary going on a conquest spree before the outbreak of WWII, would have certainly tempted Ger / UK / Sov to intervene or whatever.
Too many people here seem to want stronger minors, I think that is wrong. Maybe a better armament trade is better.

 

[Ruskin]

As someone new to the game, I enjoy the challenge but find myself struggling with the following...

UI: Feels like I am working against the UI to do what I want instead of with it. Especially the OOB system.

Documentation: The text is helpful, but could be enhanced by the use of game pictures and screens to clearly illustrate what is going on. The AARs are terrific.

Supply: The intricacies of this system need to be more transparent.

 

[unmerged(193864)]

1. Lack of information on opposing forces.
By this I mean the equiptment the enemy has. I totally understand that without conflict you may not know what type of tank(s) the enemy has, but, when it is 600m away shooting at you it may be possible to detect its capabilities. Another thing is the possibility to learn from captured enemy equiptment. The US barred the use of proximity fuses, except over water, to prevent the enemy reverse engineering the device. The slopped armour of the panther was a copy of the T34. The soviets first strategic bomber was a rebuilt/copy of a B29.

2. Lack of technological cooperation between allies, specifically The Allies.
I love the production licence idea, unfortuantly the A.I does not use it. The level of cooperation, particularly between Commonwealth countries is not reflected in game.

3. Partisans.
where are they? Where is the SOE causing trouble in France? Where are the soviets fighting behind the lines? There is no capacity for a country to assist in the creation of partisan units.

4. (I know you said 3 but) A.I generals
The A.I will not promote leaders. I had a look at how Japan was running in china - divisional leader skill 7, corp commander skill 5, no army commander, no army group commander, and you wonder why they are running dead. To add to this the units are scattered like Brown's cows, all out of radio range. Italy as A.I is another classic example. have a look at their OOB 3 HQ units for every division and no one in command. A significant portion of their manpower goes to the creation of useless units.

5. merchant fleet creation/transports
The A.I does not bother. UK and Italy are prime suspects. They rely on convoys to survive but die on the vine because their production queue is full of junk.

 

[No idea]

[Too many people here seem to want stronger minors, I think that is wrong. Maybe a better armament trade is better.

I think minors should get a bit more of everything (especially LS) just see how strong is Italy, for example, compared to the sum of many countries. It gets more LS (the 2 points for every country apart) than Spain, Sweden, Belgium and the Netherlands all joined. It gets (1936 start) far, far more MP (I think around double) than the above countries, even when population was similar. I also think the amount of LS and MP other countries get when conquering another should be tweaked down, to avoid Germany from getting too much of everything (especially, LS).

 

[Slyguy3129]

The entire PTO is still broken, in all aspects. The US doesn't do enough, Japan's fuel bug cripples it's navy plus Nat China needs to be reworked to put up a major fight.

The US needs to be reworked to be more aggressive once it ethers the war. Not enough invasion or support thereof to show the threat they imposed.

Naval Warfare is still bonkers. But we keep getting expansion like FTML that are not going to adress any of those issues.

 

[XHR]

1. UI - somewhat clumsy compared to HOI 2 and never really did it for me, including the messages which fail to transport the important information "at a glance" (e.g. the combat won/lost - Message... hate that one!)

2. AI fails to advance along my axis of attack, fails in keeping units (armies, korps, whatever) close together, AI renaming my stuff when it dynamically assigns units, the whole AI-controlled usage of the command chain just does not feel right (which is the main reason I stopped playing SF)

3. Inability of the AI to conduct proper land warfare with breakthroughs and stuff, like mentioned above

 

[Lord Ederon]

1. Defensiveness and toughness not working for years the game is out.
2. Broken features (like reserve mission for air/naval units) are not fixed thus being useless. They remain in the game just to confuse us.
3. Missing multiplayer hot-join feature.

That's short list I gathered off top of my head.

 

[unmerged(213805)]

1) Fix Japan. I want WORLD war. Most of us would have considered it a deal breaker if we knew this before we paid for the game.

2) Fix multiplayer. The main objective here is to allow session joins without a rehost.

3) Longtime bugs: Fix! Polish! Do not add on top.

 

[vonDuus]

1.The dialog boxes are centered on the screen, so that they pop up exactly where I am always working with my cursor. Which means I very often give an order (typically right/click somewhere in the center of the screen) in the exact moment when some dialog pops up, this causing a new (unwanted) dialog to show, asking me if I want to change the behavior of dialog boxes. Also, sometimes there are dozens of messages, that will have to be moved before any work can be done. In singleplayer it is easy, you just pause the game and check your messages. In multiplayer it is a real pain> Either you OK all messages without checking (can be very dangerous), or you manually remove the boxes to one corner of the screen (can be very time consuming) to finish what you are doing, and then go through the dialogs later. Solution> Move dialog boxes from center of screen to corner of screen.

2. Combats are placed on top in the unit browser, making it very hard to use, because if I point at a unit on the browser, chances are that a combat has begun in the same moment, making the whole unit list move downwards, with the consequence that I end up having selected another unit than the one I aimed for. Solution> Move combats from the top of the list to the bottom of the list.

3. I would really, really, really like if there was separate command chains for naval resp. air forces.

 

[Kovax]

The single biggest issue that I have is that balance is attempted by tweaking the "symptoms", not the causes. This goes for politics, economics, and combat.

In the political realm, the starting balance is just absurd. Countries which were bitter enemies and others that were on the best of terms all get the same generic 75 starting relations, aside from faction leaders and a few other Majors which get 0 instead. The initial conditions are so unrealistic that it's a wonder the developers are able to get anything that even remotely resembles the real event. The assignment of Threat then had to be twisted around to make the "right" things occur, but with odd "side effects". It goes a long way toward explaining why historically Allied countries sometimes make a bee-line for the Axis every time, or historical Axis supporters dive head-first into the Allied corner in every game. The Threat mechanics and scripted events are there to force the "symptoms" to occur historically, even though the underlying situation more closely resembles a fantasy novel.

The initial resource production makes no sense either, since nobody in their right mind would attempt to extract minerals at the absolute maximum possible rate when the market is already glutted and there's no national or even world demand for the material. The 99,999 unit stockpiles of production resources and massive oil gluts are a direct result of a poorly thought-out source design, and no amount of adjustment farther down the chain is going to balance the fact that nobody NEEDS to buy oil, so there's no point in fighting for resources.

The military situation is also heavily unbalanced, and the addition of compensating factors like "attack delay" are just ways to slow down the gigantic unstoppable steamroller that otherwise occurs as a result of the huge disparity between Major and Minor powers. Making the "smaller" developed nations not much better than the undeveloped countries in terms of Leadership and starting techs and practicals leaves them as not much of a challenge to a Major country. They then become even less so as the scenario progresses, where historically they remained only a few paces behind, so artificial bottlenecks and delays had to be added, and infrastructure and port sizes adjusted to create the "proper" result in spite of the inaccurate starting conditions.

If the initial starting situation were to be put into some condition resembling "reality", the game would probably work a lot more rationally, and tweaks and scripted events could then be used to handle the "exceptions" rather than trying to force the "normal".

 

[grunt11]

The single biggest issue that I have is that balance is attempted by tweaking the "symptoms", not the causes. This goes for politics, economics, and combat.

In the political realm, the starting balance is just absurd. Countries which were bitter enemies and others that were on the best of terms all get the same generic 75 starting relations, aside from faction leaders and a few other Majors which get 0 instead. The initial conditions are so unrealistic that it's a wonder the developers are able to get anything that even remotely resembles the real event. The assignment of Threat then had to be twisted around to make the "right" things occur, but with odd "side effects". It goes a long way toward explaining why historically Allied countries sometimes make a bee-line for the Axis every time, or historical Axis supporters dive head-first into the Allied corner in every game. The Threat mechanics and scripted events are there to force the "symptoms" to occur historically, even though the underlying situation more closely resembles a fantasy novel.

The initial resource production makes no sense either, since nobody in their right mind would attempt to extract minerals at the absolute maximum possible rate when the market is already glutted and there's no national or even world demand for the material. The 99,999 unit stockpiles of production resources and massive oil gluts are a direct result of a poorly thought-out source design, and no amount of adjustment farther down the chain is going to balance the fact that nobody NEEDS to buy oil, so there's no point in fighting for resources.

The military situation is also heavily unbalanced, and the addition of compensating factors like "attack delay" are just ways to slow down the gigantic unstoppable steamroller that otherwise occurs as a result of the huge disparity between Major and Minor powers. Making the "smaller" developed nations not much better than the undeveloped countries in terms of Leadership and starting techs and practicals leaves them as not much of a challenge to a Major country. They then become even less so as the scenario progresses, where historically they remained only a few paces behind, so artificial bottlenecks and delays had to be added, and infrastructure and port sizes adjusted to create the "proper" result in spite of the inaccurate starting conditions.

If the initial starting situation were to be put into some condition resembling "reality", the game would probably work a lot more rationally, and tweaks and scripted events could then be used to handle the "exceptions" rather than trying to force the "normal".

+ over 9000, there are several fundamental design decisions in HOI 3 that have caused many of the problems that persist with the game, but hopefully FtM will smooth some of those out...