Basically the title, but context in which I came with question is very important in my opinion. I will try to give it in terms of some promises, that game gives and a certain problem, that it encounters along the way of fulfilling those promises.
Promises:
1) Actual application of strategy; long duration of each individual game and complexity of the mechanics should in theory provide rich opportunity for theory crafting, team-play, replayability, etc., etc., everyone, who likes the game, knows what I'm talking about.
2) Historical setting with alt-history possibility, which should be as substantial as the default one.
Problems:
1) AI is absolutely abhorrent. it can't play the game it is supposed to play.
There is no real reason to mention any other problems, because it immediately negates both promises at once. You can't play real grand-strategy with AI, because it is incapable of doing so and you can't play real alt-history with AI, because game becomes a clown-fiesta almost immediately, losing all notion of believability. Even worse, problems with AI leak into all aspects of the game, because Paradox still needs to make the game enjoyable and fun, and in order to so, they need to make compromises with, essentially, a dysfunctional system.
All of this came to my attention, because recently, after a year of not playing HOI 4, having played 150 hours of SP previously and getting tired of interacting with AI, I decided to give the game a chance and prepare myself for MP in the summer, thinking, that it could improve the general experience. But upon reading some threads on this forum and reddit it seems, that MP is power-gaming absolute as it was a year ago.
My theory is that reason for this is a rigid historical setting, allowing for efficient optimization, converging to a near optimal strategy. Paradox wanted to honestly represent the time period at the same time creating mechanics, that would organically lead to all signature things of the said time period: blitzkrieg, deep battle, the way in which war in the Pacific was fought, ect., but in the end, historical accuracy came into conflict with the actual gameplay.
So is it possible, that by dropping the WW2 setting, game could be made in such a way, that it would accomplish at least the promise 1) by using the received freedom to resolve the problem with the AI? The core can still be the same, but you no longer need to account for thousand alt-history possibilities and instead focus on the fundamental army/navy/air interactions and how to make them in such a way, that current AI technology used in Paradox can actually be competent at a game created. Maybe this would additionally resolve MP problems, because with agents, that are competent at playing SP version of the game, balance problems of SP and MP are closer to each other. Maybe this could free endless man-hours, that are now spent on checking whether new dozen of country focuses are consistent with hundred of the old ones and instead those man-hours can be spent on polishing the basic interactions, which, is, apparently, still a problem, 2.5 years after release.
What do you guys think?
Also I'm sorry for any strange sentences above, I'm a bit tired right now, english is not my primary language, etc, ect., but I couldn't go to sleep without asking this question. If something seems unclear, just ask, I will try my best to amend the situation.
Promises:
1) Actual application of strategy; long duration of each individual game and complexity of the mechanics should in theory provide rich opportunity for theory crafting, team-play, replayability, etc., etc., everyone, who likes the game, knows what I'm talking about.
2) Historical setting with alt-history possibility, which should be as substantial as the default one.
Problems:
1) AI is absolutely abhorrent. it can't play the game it is supposed to play.
There is no real reason to mention any other problems, because it immediately negates both promises at once. You can't play real grand-strategy with AI, because it is incapable of doing so and you can't play real alt-history with AI, because game becomes a clown-fiesta almost immediately, losing all notion of believability. Even worse, problems with AI leak into all aspects of the game, because Paradox still needs to make the game enjoyable and fun, and in order to so, they need to make compromises with, essentially, a dysfunctional system.
All of this came to my attention, because recently, after a year of not playing HOI 4, having played 150 hours of SP previously and getting tired of interacting with AI, I decided to give the game a chance and prepare myself for MP in the summer, thinking, that it could improve the general experience. But upon reading some threads on this forum and reddit it seems, that MP is power-gaming absolute as it was a year ago.
My theory is that reason for this is a rigid historical setting, allowing for efficient optimization, converging to a near optimal strategy. Paradox wanted to honestly represent the time period at the same time creating mechanics, that would organically lead to all signature things of the said time period: blitzkrieg, deep battle, the way in which war in the Pacific was fought, ect., but in the end, historical accuracy came into conflict with the actual gameplay.
So is it possible, that by dropping the WW2 setting, game could be made in such a way, that it would accomplish at least the promise 1) by using the received freedom to resolve the problem with the AI? The core can still be the same, but you no longer need to account for thousand alt-history possibilities and instead focus on the fundamental army/navy/air interactions and how to make them in such a way, that current AI technology used in Paradox can actually be competent at a game created. Maybe this would additionally resolve MP problems, because with agents, that are competent at playing SP version of the game, balance problems of SP and MP are closer to each other. Maybe this could free endless man-hours, that are now spent on checking whether new dozen of country focuses are consistent with hundred of the old ones and instead those man-hours can be spent on polishing the basic interactions, which, is, apparently, still a problem, 2.5 years after release.
What do you guys think?
Also I'm sorry for any strange sentences above, I'm a bit tired right now, english is not my primary language, etc, ect., but I couldn't go to sleep without asking this question. If something seems unclear, just ask, I will try my best to amend the situation.