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

[Easy1]

I've only played this game for a few hours since I quite early understood that AOD is a better game. That is my number one main problem with HOI3 - AOD and Darkest Hour are simply better games.

1. The interface (the map is better in DH and AOD with its map mod. It looks better, is more correct and more functional. The user interface is cleaner and indeed more functional. The flags looks terrible in HOI3

2. The AI It's better and more refined in Arma and AOD. Simply acts more realistic AND historical. There are so many obvious problems with the AI in HOI3 that I want waste my time elaborate

3. Unfinished features (several of the new features that came along HOI3 are unfinished) and other ill represented aspects (like minor countries, IC, Manpower etc.)

 

[Oobro]

Supplies would be my main concern. It is virtually impossible to have a good suppliemanagement. When I start Barbarossa, I never know if I'm going to make it due to supplies.

Also the AI could be better in my opinion. Especially when it comes to recover from severe blows. When an enemy has fallen, in HOI3, it will never stand up.

 

[Pugmak]

1) the UI clickfest and the lack of organizational tools within the UI. Sure, there's that sidebar gizmo that lists your oob, and the oob widget, but it could have been done so much better, so much more useful/useable. I really don't understand why divisions can't be administered in areas such as upgrades, priority, reinforcements, etc through the HQs. Having to manage a large army division by division just annoys me to no end.

The lack of an ability to lay out your attack or defense strategy on a map overlay also tends to annoy me.

The UI is still far too rudimentary and adds unnecessarily to the fatigue factor that is part of playing this game.

2). The inability for a player to manage his own supply dump locations. This was one of the bigger decisions a senior general had to consider in extended war fronts.

3). The AI still needs lots of work. This is not meant to slam the designer/coder(s) of the AI. The AI for this game has to be hugely complex and no real way to predict all the big needs, let along the overwhelming jillions of minor needs. A system where known solid players, especially solid multi player players, could upload their saved games so that their decisions could be dissected for use in scripting some "if then" or "else do" type loops for the AI would probably help in this area.

 

[208]

There is no reason as a "repressive" regime to make your party popular

There is, actually, but it's neither obvious nor especially compelling. Some of the random political events (scandals etc) which give you temporary dissent/leadership penalties/etc can only fire if the ruling party's organization is below a certain threshold. The fact that you need to read the event files to learn this fact is a problem.

 

[unmerged(172072)]

1. The supply system is still "broken" IMO. What probably sounded great on paper just hasn't worked out ingame yet. In many situations it works like a charm but there are still too many WTF?! moments. For example: a fleet being supplied from a fully supplied base is out of supply. Things like this are pretty rare. More common and game breaking is this: Controlling a large empire in Asia/India and having your supply line tracing back to over 200 nodes away!! I have ports, large ports, and I'm sending supply to these ports but all troops outside of these ports are tracing their supply back to Rangoon in my Japanese game. The supply line runs through my puppets and through some of the worst infrastructure in the game and reaches all the way up to the far eastern reaches of the Soviet Union. The supply tax alone has totally broken my economy let alone my offensive. Solution would be to allow the player to designate primary supply depots in provinces that can meet certain standards of infrastructure and/or port size.

2. The convoy options could use some love. It can be infuriating to have to micro-manage all of one's convoys because the ai is very inefficient in it's duties. Allowing the player to increase escort size and to prioritize most important to least important convoy routes would be of great help and allow us players to keep allowing the ai to control the convoys but at least with some guidelines.

3. Alliance ai is still iffy. Alliance members that do not share a border with the enemy do almost nothing. It seems that some countries are more helpful than others. Italy and Siam tend to help out a lot but puppets in general normally do not.

Summary: In general the game just needs some more "tweaking" but its the current Supply System that can really ruin and break the game. Yes, the new arcade mode is nice but I really enjoy the supply system when it's working. When it's working it's awesome and adds that needed element of realism and immersion and when it doesn't I want to...well...let's keep the violence ingame. It's been a couple of years now and I can't believe this is still a game breaker...shame on you Paradox. Shame on you.

 

[Traks]

1. OOB editor. I want click button and AI would create proper structure - 5 units in corps, add generals (if available), 5 corps into army etc. I don't expect 100% efficiency, but even 50% efficiency would be much better than awfully long manual army reorganisation.
2. Allied objectives and minors helping majors out. I don't want "assume military control" but rather AI giving you expeditionary forces with option to refuse them. AI should weight how much he will/wants to give you as exp forces.
3. Getting rid of some useless techs (militia and fighter/bomber focus, some other) and instead add other techs, if possible.

 

[aquilarossa]

Podcat said in another thread that they are taking note of this stuff and want to use the info provided for the expansion, so keep it constructive and avoid the PI bashing

 

[Lord Solar]

1. Supply. I crush the Red Army. I move forwards. I do *everything* possible from research to leaders to building infra but 90 percent of my relatively small force of which only a fraction actually moves is OOS for half a year. Everyone likes a historical feel to the game, and supply should be an issue but being unable to take undefended, surrounded Stalingrad for several months is just plainly tedious.

2. AI-controlled nations. I start as Japan, build up stockpiles, occupy China, build a credible fleet, set up a sensible OOB. Hey, why isn't Germany getting anywhere in Russia? Oha, they've got 12 BC and 6 BB in the build queue...single brigades at the front...no leaders...only HQ's defending France...the whole country is a complete mess. And I mean an absolute, chaotic mess that takes me half a year to clear up. So I go back to play Japan...which has no fleet except for a few transports...single brigades at the front...no officers commanding their armies and AG's...corps with no divisions...

3. Those two are what really irk me. Ressources, minor nations, whole navies sinking in one battle are all issues but much further down.

 

[joeenochs]

1. Seelion is too easy.

2. Seelion is too easy.

3. Seelion is too easy.

 

[Spruce]

1. In the latest patch = UK throws way too much divisions in the battle during the invasion of West Europe. Ok, for Germany it's much more of a challenge, but that means that you (as Germany) are not ready for Barbarossa - this is also logic because the Britisch home Isles are poorly defended. In my game I found about 1 ARM division (was a polish one), 2 MOT, a few INF (3-4) and some garrison and MP defending the home Isles.

2. The events are too soft. This means, that they hardly have any impact on game situation.

3. Real intelligence is lacking. F.e. the whole intelligence war on the D-day landings is not in scope. You can change your location were to invade at the last second. So preparation phase, intelligence, detection and subterfuge are not there. That's a pitty, because here is a big potential.

 

[civlibprof]

1. The supply system, more player control--I think combining it with the HQ units would be an optimal.
2. The surrender events need to be more focused on what happaned in the game than from historical outcomes.
3. Experience gain for leaders uneven would be nice to promote some 5 skill land genreals once and a while. it's easier to promoite a 1 skill to 6 than a 5 to a 6. On the other hand naval experience gain is too easy.
4. More variety in the tech tree, Land doctrines too many focus on HQ, more need to focus on fighting troops, more variety in air techs, radio techs need to be included to increase radio distances or allow it to be effected by encription/decription.

 

[ROMMEL_HSQ]

I just started playing 1 day ago, and just finished Poland as Germany....so my problems are probably very minor, but anyway:

#1 Make it possible to remove all assigned generals from a theater/armygroup/etc at one click.
#2 Make it so that navy and air units are at the end of the OOB, and the land formations always take the top.
#3 Add a new statistic page for Divisions. Sometimes I want to check how many Pz Divisions I have quickly.

 

[bill2505]

the fact that you cant leave an alliance like the allies
. in order to take a small province from uk you have to annex the whole allies

 

[comsubpac]

the fact that you cant leave an alliance like the allies
. in order to take a small province from uk you have to annex the whole allies

if you occupy or annex something doesn't really matter...
being able to leave a faction would be a little problematic in a WW2 game.

 

[grunt11]

if you occupy or annex something doesn't really matter...
being able to leave a faction would be a little problematic in a WW2 game.

Why? It happened in WW1, I don't see why things should be any different here. Just because none of the majors left a faction in history doesn't mean there was no chance of it happening no matter what (though some minors like Romania switched sides when the Soviets came calling). If a country tries to leave a faction there should definately be serious consequences, but saying that is shouldn't happen because it's a WW2 game doesn't make sense, especially in a sandbox game like HOI 3. I'm not saying that it should be a priority or anything, just that the ability to leave a faction is realistic in the way that it could've happened had a country had enough motivation to do so (like Romania did for example). ICE even has an event that allows France to leave the Alliance if the UK refuses to send the BEF when the war starts, just an example.

 

[unmerged(172072)]

the fact that you cant leave an alliance like the allies
. in order to take a small province from uk you have to annex the whole allies

I think your asking for a little too much sandbox. You have to remember that this is a WWII game first and foremost.

The examples of France & Romania are valid points that can be covered by events. I have no problem with plausable events being used. But when you want to allow total freedom in the coming and goings of alliance members the game will begin to lose that WWII feel. What you want can maybe be covered in a mod but not in HOI3 please.

 

[jackda]

The 3 biggest problems to solve

1/ The weather is still almost uneffective: the combat (attack value) malus in winter are unrealistically low (even modded).


2/ Some annoying supply problems remain: for example if Japan captures Rangoon or Germany Liverpool, the huge amount of supply/fuel stuck there will remain in those places even if the main stockpile (Tokyo or Berlin) is empty.
Troops can be out of supply/fuel even if those depots are full (no possibility to bring back those stockpiles to the capitals).


3/ AI is not able to defend coasts and to use its fleets, that is particularly true for UK and Japan.
UK is unable to defend against Seelowe, and Japan is too passive (can't reach the NEI's valuable ressources), USA reach too easily Iwo Jima and Japanese's main islands).


Most of the other problems can be solved by modding, and most of them are.

 

[bill2505]

i hate when someone use this excuse .this is not a ww2 game at least purely but is a game that start from 1936 and stop 1946. even if you are right that this is aww 2 game i find your answer wrong . ok because this game is set in ww2 means that someoneshould be able leave an alliance

 

[nestorius]

1. USSR - Germany conflict is too stacked in Germany's favour leading to a boring and quick steamroller.

2. The game is too predetermined, I do want to fight WW2 but I would like the war to turn out differently at times, in fact spectacularly differently. Why cant conflict erupt in South America? or why cant the UK support Czechoslovakia? Why wont the USSR go on a conquest spree, with the world going against it? Why cant Poland not be supported by the allies and WW2 being just between the Axis and Comintern? I think these kind of things are really missing in the game, though the best way to probably do it for all you history purists would be to have a Historic and Dynamic mode.

3. It should be possible to command a military unit personally while it is still under the theatre command structure thereby getting the bonus and being able to take command.

 

[PaxImperator]

In the interests of readability I'll list all of my three points in three separate ways: one word, one sentence, and specific examples. By all means skip the last category if you're not a games developer. Also, please consider this post as containing areas of improvement rather than an extended whinge.

#1 Interface
In general, the user interface could be much more userfriendly.

Examples:

Reorganising an order of battle remains a chore because leaders and units are hard to track down even with the ledger, and the leader list lacks sorting options. Prioritising an army for upgrades takes dozens of mouse clicks rather than the two it could take if HQ units had a 'prioritise all subordinate units' button. If I want to select a number of units at the same time to change their leaders then I can, but if I want to change their unit names then I can't and instead have to select them one by one. If I want to load multiple paratrooper divisions onto transport planes then I have to select each of them one by one. When loading any unit onto a transport plane or ship/fleet, I cannot specify which of the eligible transports I want it to be on.

The production queue is hard to use for big countries because you can only see a fraction of it at any given time. If I want to buy a production license from someone, there is no way to do a side-by-side comparison of what's on offer, not even a dialogue box to tell me that a different friendly country can sell me a better unit.

The research queue is hard to use for big countries too because you can only see a fraction of it at any given time. If I want to research toward a certain technology that has a number of prerequisites I still have to meet, I cannot double-click it to start researching them all but I have to read the tooltip and manually find and double-click each of the prerequisites.

To find out about mud in-game, I have to click dozens of provinces one at a time, take a reading, memorise it, and then try to visualise the results on the map. At least I don't have to do this with frozen ground. If I want to keep track of how the Battle of the Atlantic is going then I have to get out a pen and paper because the naval mapmode, although great, only tracks some of the data and only for 7 days, and has to be crossreferenced with the cumbersome and uninformative 'Ships Sunk' list. Which does not display ships sunk by planes. If I want to build infrastructure across an area I cannot click and drag a selection box but have to shift-click every province individually, risking that I lose my current selection with the next miss-click. While doing this I cannot be sure which provinces I have already selected because the highlight effect is not obvious enough. I have to guess why my units are out of supply because the game doesn't tell me plainly.

To find out what my neutrality is, I cannot refer to the top bar but have to open the diplomacy or politics screen and look hard for a small number. Every time I open the intelligence screen I have to mouse over the red exclamation mark to find out whether the active foreign spies in my country are an ally's or an enemy's. If I want to find out how many spies I generate per day, I usually have to check the technology screen because the top bar and its tooltip do not show enough figures after the full stop.

#2 Allied Cooperation
Every AI ally is fighting for himself with little regard to the rest of his alliance.

Examples:
I can tell my allies what to do via Allied Objectives, but the only way to find out whether they will is to wait and see. When I give an ally an Allied Objective near a certain city, he usually interprets it as if I want him to fight anywhere on the frontline that I share with that city's owner. If an ally is planning an amphibious invasion, he will not ask me for help and will not even let me know about it before his troops have hit the beaches (at which point I'll know about it only if I'm paying attention to that part of the map). The earliest I know about an ally's plans to start a war is when I get the mobilisation pop-up and guess his intentions correctly, or when war is declared. I have never yet seen an AI country give another AI country expeditionary forces back once it no longer needs them, like a liberated Norway with a hundred American brigades when Germany is still fighting on the mainland.

#3 Minor/Medium/Major Country Balance
Minors and mediums need a boost vis à vis majors.

Minors and mediums are left biting the dust especially in terms of technological research. The AI's inability to use production licenses or research very selectively does not help either.