What needs changing in the game to make mediums playable

[delra]

Run for your lives, delra is alt+tab venting during a game as Romania.

In Eu3 my favourite type of campaign is taking over an ambitious medium or minor and take it down their desired route of expansion to make a glorious empire out of them. It gives Eu3 a unique kind of replay value as there always are countries left on the map which I haven't learned to play as so when I read something interesting about someone (Bukhara article -> Chagatai campaign), I launch my EU3 and just make a run as that country.

It makes my heart cry that I can't do it in HoI3 being limited and forced to play over and over again as handful of big major countries.

Medium powers that aren't playable right now include very interesting countries like Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Spain, Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Sweden, Turkey, Yugoslavia. And don't get me wrong, I played as every single one of them, conquered lots of land, built a lot of IC but never was happy with the result.

Why? Well, you can play as them and even go somewhere but their horrible research rate and lack of ability to expand this research rate via conquest or building universities makes it impossible to really go far as those countries. If you don't believe me, go unite whole South and Central America or the Balkans and notice you still are at 6-7 research slots while damned Mussolini's Italy sits at completely undeserved 16 since day one. The only mediums currently able to go somewhere are Chinese states, Nat. China and Guangxi Clique who have 8 and 10 research slots and Comm. China starting with cores on other two allowing for research boost from expansion.

Here's my list of ideas what to do to improve gameplay as medium powers:

1. Increase their base Leadership. All those mediums should be able to support at least 8-10 research slots at once at the beginning of the game. Just like Guangxi Clique or Nat. China currently do. Disproportion between majors and mediums is too high. Don't nerf mediums tech-wise so much, you still can nerf them in manpower and resources so majors can stomp all over them.

2. To make #1 not overpower Germany, reduce leadership from conquest for majors even further. But for heaven's sake, don't make it flat like it's now, make leadership rise very fast up to around 20, then growth should become considerably slower almost completely halting above 30 slots. This would prevent Germans from having 45 research slots but also allow more ambitious mediums to go up above a dozen of slots in the course of the game. Just make available leadership a logarithmic function of map leadership or something similar mathematically.

3. Allow built and licensed units to be upgraded from other countries. Purchasing rifles in the US for your infantry, getting better tanks from Soviets and better Destroyer ASWs from UK should be available to every country in the Allies provided they are capable of paying for it. Currently licenses which on their own are an excellent idea don't work very well cause purchased units won't ever get upgraded.

4. Allow promoting "no leader"s to randomly created 0-skill generals at cost of officer ratio (1000 officers to get one for example). This way countries having only handful of commanders but being very interested in the warfare could work out a general pool big enough to command their armies. Currently even some major powers run very low on commanders, Japan for example. Not to mention mediums and minors.

5. Do it in 1.4. Thanks. (just kidding;-p)

Share your ideas. Maybe a dev bumps into this thread while looking for screenshots of supply system being broken.

 

[joe_dracos]

I have one major beef with your whole argument....

you forgot Canada! (fourth largerst airforce, 3rd largest navy by 45... and we're talking hundreds of ships!)

The game defenately has had the meat and potatoes sucked right out of it.

Wouldn't want WWII to be challenging or anything by having compitent nations (other then the big 8).

 

[Spacebasterd]

First of all very good points, I had the same problems as the Netherlands (im Dutch so choice was simple) and Hungary. Germany was major fun in researching tech, but the Netherlands and Hungary were like I was getting nowhere.

1. Increase their base Leadership. All those mediums should be able to support at least 8-10 research slots at once at the beginning of the game. Just like Guangxi Clique or Nat. China currently do. Disproportion between majors and mediums is too high. Don't nerf mediums tech-wise so much, you still can nerf them in manpower and resources so majors can stomp all over them.

Is it not possible to link leadership to two points: 1) the amount of citizens of a country and 2) the level of participation in higher level education of the citizens (eg: how much of the childeren/youngsters are able to follow higher education levels). An idea would be to make an additional research option to improve the level of citizens in the education program.

2. To make #1 not overpower Germany, reduce leadership from conquest for majors even further. But for heaven's sake, don't make it flat like it's now, make leadership rise very fast up to around 20, then growth should become considerably slower almost completely halting above 30 slots. This would prevent Germans from having 45 research slots but also allow more ambitious mediums to go up above a dozen of slots in the course of the game. Just make available leadership a logarithmic function of map leadership or something similar mathematically.

I would suggest linking gain in leadership through conquest to both 1) the penalty for conquest and 2) the percentage of support to political thinking in a country. Ofcourse there should be a penalty for the conquest, but I would think that when Germany conquers a country with relative more fascist support, more education to Germany would be available. This would make the spy game even more fun to make a population more in favour to you before you conquer it.

3. Allow built and licensed units to be upgraded from other countries. Purchasing rifles in the US for your infantry, getting better tanks from Soviets and better Destroyer ASWs from UK should be available to every country in the Allies provided they are capable of paying for it. Currently licenses which on their own are an excellent idea don't work very well cause purchased units won't ever get upgraded.

Agree

4. Allow promoting "no leader"s to randomly created 0-skill generals at cost of officer ratio (1000 officers to get one for example). This way countries having only handful of commanders but being very interested in the warfare could work out a general pool big enough to command their armies. Currently even some major powers run very low on commanders, Japan for example. Not to mention mediums and minors.

Yep agree and what I would really like is some sort of an event which mentions that after a certain amount of succesful battles a potiential general is available for promotion.

I hope this helps.

 

[Timoteo]

I think these are pretty nice ideas.

It's probably already challenging enough to start as a minor country with insufficient leaders, not much IC, pretty much no technology, etc. Why make it harder by erasing all potential leadership gains through conquest? That doesn't lead to more fun. It just leads to frustration.

If a major selling point of HoI3 is the ability to play any nation, then alternate history should be widened a bit.

 

[Federkiel]

Your ideas are good but i don't like them for vanilla because i assume major alternate history to belong into the mods section.

I think that there are numerous reasons for mediums/minors/micros to fare as they did in history. They simply did not have the infrastructure (universities, labor facilities), manpower in academics, not the traditions and basic research in the fields relevant to create major war machines, of course not the money to entertain huge research, not the money to purchase equipment and research facilities necessary to become major powers in a timeframe of a mere 12 years.

They would have never been able to cope their lacks via blunt expansion during a few years. Some nations did develop some tanks,planes and/or some weapons but these were mostly way behind in technology in comparison to the major powers who did invest more into research than a medium would have to sum up as their total domestic gross product.


In EU - a timeframe of centuries - such things certainly make sense, but in a ww2 game as HoI 3 claims to be one and once also may become one, this is a very long shot.


This being said, a mod to make mediums/minors/micros become behemoths might be interesting. But please not in vanilla which ought to get working at all first.

 

[delra]

Okay. Historical accuracy point may be true for some mediums but is completely untrue for others. Canadians (population of 10 million) had Armor in Italy in 1943, trained like 100k pilots for the UK, fortified whole New Founland and only UK and USA had more ships in the high seas. They even had Carriers.

So apparently if a small nation chose to be modern and strong for their size, they could do it in real history. Have you ever seen Canadians in HoI3 with such a contribution to war effort?

 

[TheDarkside]

Yeah that's one thing I miss about previous HoI, that you can expand research as you grow because you expand your IC. Thus, a growing power can increase their productivity as well as research even without ever annexing their neighbors. It should be possible to increase leadership somehow just like it is possible to increase IC, with some investment over time. Maybe via buildings like the interface for forts/radar/bases, maybe a new production slider which raises leadership over time, maybe another slider on the technology screen so you can invest some of the leadership you already have into educating new great minds who then increase your leadership (Education slider under Officers)

edit: but, then as I think about it more - it would make no difference because then if these minors can raise their leadership then the majors will be even more capable of raising their leadership with the same methods and thus you end up in the same situation if not worse...

 

[Federkiel]

Okay. Historical accuracy point may be true for some mediums but is completely untrue for others. Canadians (population of 10 million) had Armor in Italy in 1943, trained like 100k pilots for the UK, fortified whole New Founland and only UK and USA had more ships in the high seas. They even had Carriers.

So apparently if a small nation chose to be modern and strong for their size, they could do it in real history. Have you ever seen Canadians in HoI3 with such a contribution to war effort?

In the hands of a player, yes.

I see no reason why we should see AI Canada handle a D-Day alone.


BTW., Canadian tanks were USA designs, Canadian CVs (which they obtained after the war, IIRC) were UK designs and so on. Canadians might have done some modifications but they could not create all at once and on their own.


As i said, some weapon systems were developed by mediums (late war Australian tanks, Romanian IAR planes, early Czech light tanks etc.) but those nations were not able to go much further and entirely make up for own self sufficient economies and war machines. If they went on their own, they would have utterly failed as even some of the majors did...

Of course they would have declined faster, too.


If you do a 'medium war mongers' mod though, you will certainly catch some interest from people who seek more alternate history or old grognards who wish to do something completely different after eating AI a hundred times for breakfast.

 

[unmerged(72352)]

Run for your lives, delra is alt+tab venting during a game as Romania.

This is funny, but unfortunately it also describes the felling you have when playing a minor or medium, like Romania. You can't do many things (especially pre-war) so it is boring to play as a minor. Of course some will say that is challenging and fun, but I fill it boring, much more boring then it was in HoI2.

...unite whole South and Central America or the Balkans and notice you still are at 6-7 research slots while damned Mussolini's Italy sits at completely undeserved 16 since day one.

True, and unfair.

1. Increase their base Leadership. All those mediums should be able to support at least 8-10 research slots at once at the beginning of the game.
2. ... But for heaven's sake, don't make it flat like it's now, make leadership rise very fast up to around 20, then growth should become considerably slower almost completely halting above 30 slots. This would prevent Germans from having 45 research slots but also allow more ambitious mediums to go up above a dozen of slots in the course of the game. Just make available leadership a logarithmic function of map leadership or something similar mathematically.

I like this and can be implemented easily, of course it will require a lot of balancing. But the game is not balanced at all at this moment.

And about that the game is not well balanced at this moment, here is something I wrote in an older thread.

Now something of my one. I see the countries divided in 3 groups. The majors have big leadership, that is normal. The medium (Brazil, Romania, Hungary, Poland) have small leadership. And the truly minor (Luxembourg, Nepal, El Salvador) have really small leadership.
The problem as I see it, is that the gap between a major and a medium is much higher then the gap between a medium and a minor. And I will give an example:
Taking the numbers from the HOI3 WIKI: Germany has 20.25, Hungary has 1.2, and Bhutan has 0.2. Those numbers seem realistic. Now lets do the math: Germany is almost 17 times more "intelligent" then Hungary, while Hungary is 6 times more "intelligent" then Bhutan. So this gap does seem realistic and balanced.
But the problem is that Bhutan with its 0.2 can't do anything, so to give them a chance to do something, the +2 leadership to all countries was added. This add had a good reason, as explained above, but it totally destroyed that realistic and balanced gap between the major, medium and minor.
Considering the +2 to all, lets rewrite the numbers: Germany 22.25, Hungary 3.2, Bhutan 2.2. And lets do the math again: Germany is now 7 times more "intelligent" then Hungary, and Hungary is now only 1.45 times more "intelligent" then Bhutan :wacko:. Now you can see that the gap between the majors and the medium is somewhat realistic, but the gap between the medium and minor is very unrealistic.
I know that leadership was discussed time and time again here, many people complained, many suggested improvements. I don't have the ability to come up with a better system, I am not that smart. But PI should definatly do something about how leadership works. It's hard to balance such a game, I am sure about that but at this point the game is imbalanced.
I am sure that PI will transform this already great game with a great potential into one of the best games ever (with future patches and expansions).

Just my 2 cents.

 

[joe_dracos]

Here's an idea... just give them more leadership in key provinces. Canada and Australia should be easily a match in leadership to Italy for instance. The UK really NEEDS these nations. They provide troops, aircraft and ships that are vital to the defence of all the UK territories. North Africa was fought by mostly Indian, Australian, New Zealander and South African troops.

"Canadian tanks were USA designs, Canadian CVs (which they obtained after the war, IIRC) were UK designs and so on. Canadians might have done some modifications but they could not create all at once and on their own."

okay, now your gettin in my territory

Canada may have used other countries designs but there is a reason for it. 1/4 of all vehicles and aircraft used by commonwealth forces were produced in Canada. The Canadian version of the Sherman tank had more in common with the British Firefly then the original Sherman tank (more armour, better gun for AT purposes, a deisel engine so it wouldn't burst into flame every time it was hit).

"As i said, some weapon systems were developed by mediums (late war Australian tanks, Romanian IAR planes, early Czech light tanks etc.) but those nations were not able to go much further and entirely make up for own self sufficient economies and war machines. If they went on their own, they would have utterly failed as even some of the majors did..."

There was no need to go out on there own. They were already building the arsenals for the alliance they were apart of... and I don't believe the Czechs had a choice who they got there tanks from after 38. Besides the Australian tank was a modification of British designs (and so was there fighter craft). All part of the benifits of being a member in the Commonwealth of Nations. Combined development and production.

Both Canada and Australia were major participants in the war. Italy WAS a Canadian battle. The Canadians broke most of the major german hardpoints and continued fighting there until being pulled out for the battles in Holland. It was Canadian troops that the 2nd SS division was put up against in Normandy...... the battle of the atlantic was fought predominately by Canadian ships (over half the north atlantic and most of the American coastal convoys). And the bulk of these ships were built IN canada. The only ships built in the UK for canada were the carriers 2 light cruisers (new designs) and 4 destroyers. The rest of these examples were transfers from other navies (see lend lease act).

and I could go on.

 

[Federkiel]

Here's an idea... just give them more leadership in key provinces. Canada and Australia should be easily a match in leadership to Italy for instance. The UK really NEEDS these nations. They provide troops, aircraft and ships that are vital to the defence of all the UK territories. North Africa was fought by mostly Indian, Australian, New Zealander and South African troops.

"Canadian tanks were USA designs, Canadian CVs (which they obtained after the war, IIRC) were UK designs and so on. Canadians might have done some modifications but they could not create all at once and on their own."

okay, now your gettin in my territory

Canada may have used other countries designs but there is a reason for it. 1/4 of all vehicles and aircraft used by commonwealth forces were produced in Canada. The Canadian version of the Sherman tank had more in common with the British Firefly then the original Sherman tank (more armour, better gun for AT purposes, a deisel engine so it wouldn't burst into flame every time it was hit).

"As i said, some weapon systems were developed by mediums (late war Australian tanks, Romanian IAR planes, early Czech light tanks etc.) but those nations were not able to go much further and entirely make up for own self sufficient economies and war machines. If they went on their own, they would have utterly failed as even some of the majors did..."

There was no need to go out on there own. They were already building the arsenals for the alliance they were apart of... and I don't believe the Czechs had a choice who they got there tanks from after 38. Besides the Australian tank was a modification of British designs (and so was there fighter craft). All part of the benifits of being a member in the Commonwealth of Nations. Combined development and production.

Both Canada and Australia were major participants in the war. Italy WAS a Canadian battle. The Canadians broke most of the major german hardpoints and continued fighting there until being pulled out for the battles in Holland. It was Canadian troops that the 2nd SS division was put up against in Normandy...... the battle of the atlantic was fought predominately by Canadian ships (over half the north atlantic and most of the American coastal convoys). And the bulk of these ships were built IN canada. The only ships built in the UK for canada were the carriers 2 light cruisers (new designs) and 4 destroyers. The rest of these examples were transfers from other navies (see lend lease act).

and I could go on.

Well, AFAIK we are talking about leadership and technology here, not IC...


ICs never are a problem and doing a front alone as Canada is pretty much possible in the game as it is....

Since the Canadians didn't do anything entirely alone i guess that it remains correct that AI Canada shouldn't do so, too.

The player is free to do different and no change is necessary in any way in vanilla.


If you want to play the 'United Arsenal of Canada' - mod the game to fit your personal needs.

 

[delra]

On the other side of that argument there's Brazil who mustered 25k troops instead of promised 100k and sent them to Italy without weapons and proper training.

My point being, there should be a a possibility to modernize and pull off a full Canada if player wants to do so. But there also should be a good chance a country isn't willing to participate as much and pulls a Brazil instead.

 

[Xamand]

This is my single biggest issue atm with HOI3 as I mostly play medium nations.

I have just finished a game myself with Romania and its frustrating that even after becoming the biggest nation on the planet with the highest IC that Italy can still out tech me, especially considering that they have had many years to also gain a massive lead. So I conquered them and forced them into exile which is a much better result than annexing them
As with HOI2 and EU3 my preference is to play the minor or medium nations to give more of a challenge. So far I have also gone on conquering sprees with Brazil, Poland, Hungary and NatChi but each of those games has left me feeling slightly unfulfilled due to an inferiority complex due to leadership as well as having issues with rapidly running out of generals though I solve this by nicking the leaders from some of the countries I have annexed.
I have just started another test game with Hungary (the last one was with 1.2) as I am tempted to write an AAR with them but I suspect leadership will annoy me again

What I really don't understand is that the changes to occupation policies when you annex a nation were made in 1.3 to stop Germany gaining loads of extra leadership.
The problem with this is that the nations that Germany actually annexes are few, generally half of Czechoslovakia and Austria. As it also gets cores on a good chunk of this, they still get most of the leadership anyway. The only exception here is northern France but this could be dealt with differently anyway. As many have pointed out, the Vichy event doesn't make a great deal of sense, northern France would be better staying as occupied territory rather than annexed which would solve the later problems when/if the Allies manage to re-conquer it.
The rest of Germany's conquests also tend to be occupied territory or GIE as their enemies (Poland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Yugoslavia and USSR) are normally members of factions or don't surrender. Currently Germany's leadership snowballs due to this anyway.

It would be better if occupation gave the harshest penalties and annexation gave you the added leadership or even the choice of policies as occupation currently does. This would give rampaging mediums the chance to gain leadership as they are much more likely to pick on other unaligned nations hence getting the chance to increase their leadership.

 

[Jazumir]

nm

 

[Jazumir]

...
The problem with this is that the nations that Germany actually annexes are few, generally half of Czechoslovakia and Austria. As it also gets cores on a good chunk of this, they still get most of the leadership anyway. The only exception here is northern France but this could be dealt with differently anyway. As many have pointed out, the Vichy event doesn't make a great deal of sense, northern France would be better staying as occupied territory rather than annexed which would solve the later problems when/if the Allies manage to re-conquer it.
The rest of Germany's conquests also tend to be occupied territory or GIE as their enemies (Poland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Yugoslavia and USSR) are normally members of factions or don't surrender. Currently Germany's leadership snowballs due to this anyway.

It would be better if occupation gave the harshest penalties and annexation gave you the added leadership or even the choice of policies as occupation currently does. This would give rampaging mediums the chance to gain leadership as they are much more likely to pick on other unaligned nations hence getting the chance to increase their leadership.

This. If that is fixed, and problems remain, we can talk again about adding some LS to mediums, IMHO.

 

[unmerged(72352)]

...Currently Germany's leadership snowballs due to this anyway.

Yes, that is why delra's second idea (in the first post of this thread) is very good. Read it again.

This. If that is fixed, and problems remain, we can talk again about adding some LS to mediums, IMHO.

If PI takes delra's idea into considerations, we can add LS to mediums, for a more balanced, enjoyably game.

 

[delra]

To recap, I suggested available leadership to be logarithmic function of the map leadership or something in similar mathematic shape. For example l=10xln(L)-C where C would be a flat value to nerf leadership to something considered realistic by developers. So for Poland's 3.7 map leadership and nerf of 5 it would be something around 8 research slots.

 

[Alex_brunius]

2. To make #1 not overpower Germany, reduce leadership from conquest for majors even further. But for heaven's sake, don't make it flat like it's now, make leadership rise very fast up to around 20, then growth should become considerably slower almost completely halting above 30 slots. This would prevent Germans from having 45 research slots but also allow more ambitious mediums to go up above a dozen of slots in the course of the game. Just make available leadership a logarithmic function of map leadership or something similar mathematically.

Id rather see this implemented in all the sliders themself.

So that you have to pay more and more leadership each time you seek to double your research (or intel/officers/diplo). Thus nations with large amounts of leadership will be much better off to invest it into other fields instead of dumping everything into research once officers are at 200%.

 

[Xamand]

Yes, that is why delra's second idea (in the first post of this thread) is very good. Read it again.

I did and its a good idea which I would support. However, I'm not sure how easy it would be to implement though. If it can be, then great

To those that say it is unhistorical for mediums to gain much "leadership" I say too things.
Firstly, HOI3 is not supposed to be a historical game. Like EU3, it is a sandbox, this time loosely based but not tied to the WW2 timeline. The idea being tha you, as the played, can either play the war fairly historically or maybe try something different.
Secondly, a medium nation is currently able to go very unhistorical with regards to IC as it currently is, why just limit them with leadership?

 

[Jazumir]

Yeah, i just dont know, if i like the idea, that a base LS can be 1 effective LS for country A (small), while it means a lot less for country B (big). It´s another thing, if the difference is caused by occupation or such, cause the modifier applies equally for all nations and is just defined by the status of the province (not its controlling nation). It would make a big difference, wether, say, yugoslavia be taken by the germans or the italians then - and being allied, they might wanna give it to italy, for its LS will be worth more in its hands than in germany´s... this kind of stuff. Plus, it would be kind of hard (without a calculator) to estiminate the LS-gain by conquest beforehand: ´Is it worth it to annex country X, or should i make it a puppet?´ - ´Well, how much LS would it gain you?´ - ´Hmm, whats 10xln(2)-34 ?´...

EDIT: this was replying to delra´s most recent post.

Alex: Now this is an entirely different story and sounds a lot better to me, as it does not only tackle the snowball-effect, but also the twitchy-administration-issue.