Hello everyone, longtime lurker and very infrequent poster here, so I apologize if formatting and etiquette are a tad awkward.
I read the forums a lot, and while I have not played HoI4 since the summer at the latest, the game seems somewhat...bloated to me. I think the game may be a bit overambitious in such a way that both the development and maintenance is a nightmare (looking at you, MtG thread), and yet the deterministic nature of the game makes the goal of the player to streamline many features into non-existence. Experimenting and role-play can be fun, but often the "optimal" focus paths, constructions, armed forces compositions, templates, and designs are found, and with enough experience either you knowingly and strongly kneecap yourself as a player or effectively don't play large portions of the game. Furthermore, the AI is also a struggling mess, in part due to sheer size of things the AI must deal with, and on top of that, how "forgiving" vs "optimal" vs "historical" vs "plausible/flexible" should the AI act?
These questions are not easy and I don't think have strong answers, but I have been inspired a lot by eagerly watching Vic3's development. My first reaction to the war system was the same reaction as many: what? No way. However, as time has continued and I've read many eager discussions, I think the developers have had a eureka moment. In Vic2, many times my gameplay loop goes literacy -> soldiers -> craftsmen, with plenty of room for modifications based on needs and conditions, but always I simply research and numbers my way into an edge on the AI, exploit their horrible tactical sense to win absurd wars, and then shake my head about infamy, until eventually POP and money numbers go up. For HoI, it is even more streamlined, where on historical I have an idea of a roughly optimal way to achieve my goals, abuse tactical AI once more, then enemy casualty number goes up and I get a capitulation (or more often, the war is basically won but I don't want to slog through the Allies to get a terrible peace conference). In ahistorical, everything usually becomes trivial anyway. In essence, most of my gameplay focus is on rote management and trivial tactics. Most of my runs are taking historical "losers" and saving them, as the game is balanced against me so I actually have to try with the setup and tactics.
I am sure Vic3 will be eventually simplified, but the deep dependency of everything on POPs and economy means that as things seem right now, goals must be accomplished through mastery of the whole simulation, not by focuses, rinse and repeat encirclements, or unbalanced features. For those not caught up, for example, to upgrade your army in Vic3, you must research the military technology, but also must pay to actually use the upgrades, which requires having a strong economy and government laws which allow the construction and financing of whatever military you need, and those aspects of the game are also very deep simulations. I am broadly oversimplifying but my excitement for the depth of Vic3 is immense right now.
What do you guys want? It's hard for me to reopen HoI4. I haven't even bought NSB, but I know I will be confronted with features that I will ultimately try to sideline, then be back at the same tactical chess where 72 infantry and 4 very good tanks with a healthy number of planes and subs can take on the world. With MtG, I wanted to build brilliant navies that had to fight to rule the seas, but now why bother when I can get everything with NAV and subs? With NSB, it looks like tanks designs will be similarly dumbed down. And I have never even thought about most of the political system, population system, construction beyond civs -> mils -> whatever you need situationally, air in depth, and much more. If I am going to play HoI, why?
There are a few exciting and contradictory aspects related to WWII that I think a HoI game tries to balance. There is the political and diplomatic simulation, a non-thought in historical and an illogical mess in non-historical. There is the engineering and production simulation, which is naturally prone to optimisation but I believe could be way more exciting and variable if the designer systems were nurtured from the start instead of having to fit over an already full game years later. There is the tactical simulation, which is often where 90% of player attention goes once war breaks out, but sadly is also the most repetitive and hardest to program good AI to respond to.
What do you guys think HoI should be about? Because it can't be about everything. The developers are trying their hardest and it feels like the HoI everyone wants would be a wunderwaffe of a game, where the AI responds the world in a historical-plausible-optimal manner with random variation so the player doesn't know for certain what to expect, while players can try various options which must be simultaneously balanced between historical effectiveness, multiplayer balance, and sandbox-ability. I hope you will consider what you are looking for in this series and have an engaging discussion as to why. I will attach my own desires as a spoiler, since this is already long and I don't want to over-centre myself.
I read the forums a lot, and while I have not played HoI4 since the summer at the latest, the game seems somewhat...bloated to me. I think the game may be a bit overambitious in such a way that both the development and maintenance is a nightmare (looking at you, MtG thread), and yet the deterministic nature of the game makes the goal of the player to streamline many features into non-existence. Experimenting and role-play can be fun, but often the "optimal" focus paths, constructions, armed forces compositions, templates, and designs are found, and with enough experience either you knowingly and strongly kneecap yourself as a player or effectively don't play large portions of the game. Furthermore, the AI is also a struggling mess, in part due to sheer size of things the AI must deal with, and on top of that, how "forgiving" vs "optimal" vs "historical" vs "plausible/flexible" should the AI act?
These questions are not easy and I don't think have strong answers, but I have been inspired a lot by eagerly watching Vic3's development. My first reaction to the war system was the same reaction as many: what? No way. However, as time has continued and I've read many eager discussions, I think the developers have had a eureka moment. In Vic2, many times my gameplay loop goes literacy -> soldiers -> craftsmen, with plenty of room for modifications based on needs and conditions, but always I simply research and numbers my way into an edge on the AI, exploit their horrible tactical sense to win absurd wars, and then shake my head about infamy, until eventually POP and money numbers go up. For HoI, it is even more streamlined, where on historical I have an idea of a roughly optimal way to achieve my goals, abuse tactical AI once more, then enemy casualty number goes up and I get a capitulation (or more often, the war is basically won but I don't want to slog through the Allies to get a terrible peace conference). In ahistorical, everything usually becomes trivial anyway. In essence, most of my gameplay focus is on rote management and trivial tactics. Most of my runs are taking historical "losers" and saving them, as the game is balanced against me so I actually have to try with the setup and tactics.
I am sure Vic3 will be eventually simplified, but the deep dependency of everything on POPs and economy means that as things seem right now, goals must be accomplished through mastery of the whole simulation, not by focuses, rinse and repeat encirclements, or unbalanced features. For those not caught up, for example, to upgrade your army in Vic3, you must research the military technology, but also must pay to actually use the upgrades, which requires having a strong economy and government laws which allow the construction and financing of whatever military you need, and those aspects of the game are also very deep simulations. I am broadly oversimplifying but my excitement for the depth of Vic3 is immense right now.
What do you guys want? It's hard for me to reopen HoI4. I haven't even bought NSB, but I know I will be confronted with features that I will ultimately try to sideline, then be back at the same tactical chess where 72 infantry and 4 very good tanks with a healthy number of planes and subs can take on the world. With MtG, I wanted to build brilliant navies that had to fight to rule the seas, but now why bother when I can get everything with NAV and subs? With NSB, it looks like tanks designs will be similarly dumbed down. And I have never even thought about most of the political system, population system, construction beyond civs -> mils -> whatever you need situationally, air in depth, and much more. If I am going to play HoI, why?
There are a few exciting and contradictory aspects related to WWII that I think a HoI game tries to balance. There is the political and diplomatic simulation, a non-thought in historical and an illogical mess in non-historical. There is the engineering and production simulation, which is naturally prone to optimisation but I believe could be way more exciting and variable if the designer systems were nurtured from the start instead of having to fit over an already full game years later. There is the tactical simulation, which is often where 90% of player attention goes once war breaks out, but sadly is also the most repetitive and hardest to program good AI to respond to.
What do you guys think HoI should be about? Because it can't be about everything. The developers are trying their hardest and it feels like the HoI everyone wants would be a wunderwaffe of a game, where the AI responds the world in a historical-plausible-optimal manner with random variation so the player doesn't know for certain what to expect, while players can try various options which must be simultaneously balanced between historical effectiveness, multiplayer balance, and sandbox-ability. I hope you will consider what you are looking for in this series and have an engaging discussion as to why. I will attach my own desires as a spoiler, since this is already long and I don't want to over-centre myself.
Call me a Vic3 simp, but I think HoI needs to strongly simplify its tactical system. No units to click on the map, but instead assign them to frontlines à la a very developed battleplanner system, with objectives given to generals with certain resources. This opens up so much room for corps, variable division sizes, more impact of weather, simplified and thus more intuitive supply, & much else suggested on this forum that featured in the actual WWII but would overwhelm our unit-based system. Air needs to be way more auto-managed for both QoL and to end whack-a-mole, while opening more room for balance to get historical plane production + effort whilst behind. Navies just need more love, I think MtG is in a decent direction but would work better with some developer effort and other parts of the simulation more deeply interacting with it.
This can shift way more focus into design and production and order of battle. I personally want a design system that is historical looking forward, meaning that the player has to work with the same ambiguity and flexibility that nations did. So, perhaps effectiveness of different things is randomised within a reasonable range, or it takes significant effort to reach optimal designs, somewhat like what EXP tries to do in HoI4. The goal is that player strategy should be thought of in broad strokes, and there is good reason to try a variety of things to cover all bases.
To complement this, I think while a historical mode should be a thing, much love should go to a deep political and diplomatic simulation. This probably means less silly alt-history from the actual HoI devs, so apologies to the fans of that, but I want there to be semi-historical games where the outbreak of WWII and its circumstances falls in a narrow, but ambiguous, range, and everyone is trying to out-chess each other for a favourable position. The devs already try this a little with the war support and world tension systems, but I think there is so much more potential, even just ripping diplomatic plays from Vic3. The Axis need to grow as much as possible to satisfy internal demands while delaying Allied interest, then when the Allies begin mobilizing, pull trigger as quickly as possible. The Allies need to build up war support and mobilize, but with demobilization and maintenance mechanics that harshly punish an over-eager warmonger. The Comintern and many a player want to ride this line to gain the most for themselves, trying to build up and conquer as much as possible without overdoing it and becoming a target of the Allies, or being too timid and falling under Axis or Allied control. Italy, Japan, and the US, as well as the many minors, can always sway from one direction to another. I think there could be enough depth here to practically be a game on its own.
In essence, I want a WWII going forward. I want the strategic decisions to complement themselves. I want to think of how I setup garrisons and frontlines and objectives based on when and whether Italy will join, what production I think I can achieve, what mobilization I can afford, whether tanks are effective infantry supports or their own operational units, whether Germany will invade Poland in the fall and buildup over the winter or invade in the summer and rapidly swing around to France. I want to be considering all of these interlocking, large-strokes decisions, and then I want to be wrong, and have to recalculate all over again. I never get to do this in HoI4, except maybe if I was in multiplayer with a mod that is practically a rework and a byzantine rule set. I am more than willing to give up political pivot-on-a-dime alternative history and unit micro to accomplish this vision. WWII strategy in my head is not clicking tanks and waiting for enough points for the optimal template I have 3 years ahead of time to carry me through the rest of the game, it is not Germany declares September of 1939 every single time or the Byzantine empire decided to revive itself out of nowhere. WWII strategy is knowing something is coming and having to be prepared for everything. Anyway, share your thoughts please!
This can shift way more focus into design and production and order of battle. I personally want a design system that is historical looking forward, meaning that the player has to work with the same ambiguity and flexibility that nations did. So, perhaps effectiveness of different things is randomised within a reasonable range, or it takes significant effort to reach optimal designs, somewhat like what EXP tries to do in HoI4. The goal is that player strategy should be thought of in broad strokes, and there is good reason to try a variety of things to cover all bases.
To complement this, I think while a historical mode should be a thing, much love should go to a deep political and diplomatic simulation. This probably means less silly alt-history from the actual HoI devs, so apologies to the fans of that, but I want there to be semi-historical games where the outbreak of WWII and its circumstances falls in a narrow, but ambiguous, range, and everyone is trying to out-chess each other for a favourable position. The devs already try this a little with the war support and world tension systems, but I think there is so much more potential, even just ripping diplomatic plays from Vic3. The Axis need to grow as much as possible to satisfy internal demands while delaying Allied interest, then when the Allies begin mobilizing, pull trigger as quickly as possible. The Allies need to build up war support and mobilize, but with demobilization and maintenance mechanics that harshly punish an over-eager warmonger. The Comintern and many a player want to ride this line to gain the most for themselves, trying to build up and conquer as much as possible without overdoing it and becoming a target of the Allies, or being too timid and falling under Axis or Allied control. Italy, Japan, and the US, as well as the many minors, can always sway from one direction to another. I think there could be enough depth here to practically be a game on its own.
In essence, I want a WWII going forward. I want the strategic decisions to complement themselves. I want to think of how I setup garrisons and frontlines and objectives based on when and whether Italy will join, what production I think I can achieve, what mobilization I can afford, whether tanks are effective infantry supports or their own operational units, whether Germany will invade Poland in the fall and buildup over the winter or invade in the summer and rapidly swing around to France. I want to be considering all of these interlocking, large-strokes decisions, and then I want to be wrong, and have to recalculate all over again. I never get to do this in HoI4, except maybe if I was in multiplayer with a mod that is practically a rework and a byzantine rule set. I am more than willing to give up political pivot-on-a-dime alternative history and unit micro to accomplish this vision. WWII strategy in my head is not clicking tanks and waiting for enough points for the optimal template I have 3 years ahead of time to carry me through the rest of the game, it is not Germany declares September of 1939 every single time or the Byzantine empire decided to revive itself out of nowhere. WWII strategy is knowing something is coming and having to be prepared for everything. Anyway, share your thoughts please!
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