Why aren't there any railroads/highways in this game??? Can anybody explain?

[Louella]

I've been playing about with modding things recently, and... I think I've found a way to model railways through otherwise barren areas, and how to limit such things as giant 2000 capacity airfields on tiny Pacific islands.

It would work off the state category, so could model the Trans-Siberian Railway to some extent, but wouldn't really work too well in much of western Europe (where the rail density was much higher).

I need to test things a bit more though.

 

[schnupfi]

Have to agree with 1- General.

railroads were one of the most important factors in ww2 (especially eastern front, but not only) for mobility and supply. As you can see in war in the east or DC barbarossa it IS possible to implement it in a meaningful way.

Sure hoi4 is another scope, but I don't like this general "it's impossible to implement it in a meaningful way"attitude.

It surely is possible, but who am I to judge. Obviously the hoi4 community is fine with dumbing down a game and is super happy with "meaningful" national focus dlcs.

I realised quickly that the game moves in the wrong direction, but given to the responses to that topic.... obviously it caters the majority of the hoi4 gamers.just not for me...

 

[1 Star General]

I don't think the map has the scale to show different types of infrastructure.

Firstly, I do aknowledge the scaling issue (as I mentioned in the original post). Moreover, I'm also sensitive to map cluttering issue. Therefore I'm not proposing a detailed representation of of the transportation network, which would ruin the game and the map. I do however propose a few routes of continental importance. To give you a sense of the scale - for example, I mean 2 East-West axis in the Western Soviet Union, 1 axis in Siberia. By no means am I suggesting representing any of that in Sicily.

Were there some kinds of infrastruture that had huge strategic importance during WWII? definitely (thinking of the Burma road and the various rail ways) But they are reflected in game in a simple infrastructure number.

They are not reflected in infrastructure number, because they have no meaningful impact (mobility, not supply-wise) on the way you wage war in this game. Deatailed examples and explanations in previous posts. And the crucial importance of that aspect was on display in the key war zones of ww2, nowhere nearly as much as in the Soviet Union. So yes, Burma road or Trans-siberian rail are obvious examples. But one needs to just peek into any decent account of Barbarossa, for example, to see its all about roads, roads, rails, roads again.... or lack thereof.

 

[1 Star General]

I've been playing about with modding things recently, and... I think I've found a way to model railways through otherwise barren areas, and how to limit such things as giant 2000 capacity airfields on tiny Pacific islands.

It would work off the state category, so could model the Trans-Siberian Railway to some extent, but wouldn't really work too well in much of western Europe (where the rail density was much higher).

I need to test things a bit more though.

Sounds intriguing. Please DO let me know if you work this one out.
I know, the problem of modelling differences between Western Europe and Siberia is diffcult due to map scale. Therefore I myself was rather thinking on leaving the infra system as it is now, untouched, but adding a few continental scale links, mainly for strat redeployment purposes. So strat redeployment would be restricted only to these links. I'm curious of your thinking, share some more details when you find time, cheers.

 

[1 Star General]

Have to agree with 1- General.

railroads were one of the most important factors in ww2 (especially eastern front, but not only) for mobility and supply. As you can see in war in the east or DC barbarossa it IS possible to implement it in a meaningful way.

Sure hoi4 is another scope, but I don't like this general "it's impossible to implement it in a meaningful way"attitude.

It surely is possible, but who am I to judge. Obviously the hoi4 community is fine with dumbing down a game and is super happy with "meaningful" national focus dlcs.

I realised quickly that the game moves in the wrong direction, but given to the responses to that topic.... obviously it caters the majority of the hoi4 gamers.just not for me...

Yes, I'm kinda surprised with how controversial it turnes out to be. I probably did a poor job at explaining myself properly in the first post, so I do get an instinctive opposition from all the people fearing the map cluttering and such. I do share these concerns, therefore I'm not proposing a detailed network connecting every town and VP, but a sparse continental scale network, mainly for strat deployment mechanics, with a few key nodes. Mea culpa. But, seriously.... Should it really be necessery to explain that tranportation network was the decisive detrminant of operational planning and war waging in WW2? Is it really controversial to find ablity to teleport units from the north of Siberia to the coast of Indian Ocean in roughly 10 days silly? Should it really be necessery to explain, that - NO, the the infra system DOES NOT at all represent the way the transportation network works, especially in warfare, therefore - NO, there are no RAILROADS in this game? I mean, it's just a game and it obviously has to be a bit dumbed down, but seriously? You've got some point there about the community. Cheers

 

[KV5_Radio_Operator]

Please do read the arguments made in the thread before commenting, you'd come out making a bit more sense.

cope

 

[FOARP]

You said it yourself - "war strategy game", but your examples of why we need to have visuals of infrastructure are all TACTICAL examples.
Smart players already do take enemy infrastructure into account, simply from a Supreme Commander, not a Regimental Commander.
In this game, you are attacking states and provinces with Armies, not towns and villages with Regiments.
To quote Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu “Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.”
Besides, look closely at the current map - they don't even have accurate rivers and coastlines, I'd hate to see the mess that railroads and highways would be.

I disagree that MAJOR individual roads/railways are not relevant at the level of abstraction played at in the HOI series.

To give some obvious historical examples: The Burma Road, the Coastal Highway in Libya and Algeria, the Trans-Siberian Railway, the Manchurian Railway, the Smolensk-Moscow highway, the Black-Sea Coast highway. Bridges also played a major role - Remagen, Arnhem. We are not talking about simply roads here, but major logistical arteries.

That these are important is already recognised in-game by e.g., events, options in the decision trees etc. as well as - in some cases - wafer-thin regions of the map provided solely for the purpose of simulating a high-infrastructure zone in an otherwise low-infrastructure area (e.g., in North Africa).

Many, many games at a similar level of abstraction (e.g., the Strategic Command series) DO have rail/road terrain on-map, so I do not understand why people are saying it is impossible or unnecessary at this level of abstraction to have them.

Where I differ possibly to 1-Star is I'm not sure this can easily be implemented into HOI4 as-is. I think maybe this is the kind of thing that HOI5 might have to deal with.

 

[1 Star General]

I can't believe so many forum simps disliked your post, it's one of the fundamental design flaws in terms of realism that hoi4 lacks. It also limits many mods development. Proper infrastructure/railroad system, which is in Gary Grigsbys war in the East for example, hoi3 aswell due to different state/province system and the way railroads worked in that. There is also the lack of ammunition, and fatigue being simulated, both things war in the east also has and i hope the next DLC named Barbarossa adds these.

It is my hope as well that something is going to be done about it in the SU DLC that's so often discussed in this forum and seems imminent. The vast expanses of Russia and decisive role the transportation network played there IRL make Barbarossa DLC the perfect occasion. I kinda expect there's gonna be the supply rework included (since logistics literally decided that campaign and the issue is on 'to do' list). I doubt they'll touch the mobility issue though, hence my posts try to show it deserves attention.

 

[Alexander Altdorf]

The answer is: they used to be there, at least a bit more. HOI3 had an infrastructure system modelled per province, instead of per state, and that modelled major infrastructure routes way better than now. Especially in areas with poor infrastructure mobility penalty was way more crippling than it is now: moving through the Pripet swamp or in the middle of africa was a slug even without resistance.
Unfurtunately, bad unit pathfinding and a complete detachment from the supply system that it was implemented meant that the system didn't work as it was intended. You would spend IC to improve the state of the supply communication lines, and they still would go straight into the Pripet with a big fuck-off y'all.

I think that, combined with the focus shift on states rather than provinces, is one of the reasons why they changed to be like it's now. It's one of the aspects that makes me think that HOI4 is not as a great successor as it could have been, but that's my personal taste. Sales are great, and sales are what shapes the decisions.

 

[FOARP]

The answer is: they used to be there, at least a bit more. HOI3 had an infrastructure system modelled per province, instead of per state, and that modelled major infrastructure routes way better than now. Especially in areas with poor infrastructure mobility penalty was way more crippling than it is now: moving through the Pripet swamp or in the middle of africa was a slug even without resistance.
Unfurtunately, bad unit pathfinding and a complete detachment from the supply system that it was implemented meant that the system didn't work as it was intended. You would spend IC to improve the state of the supply communication lines, and they still would go straight into the Pripet with a big fuck-off y'all.

I think that, combined with the focus shift on states rather than provinces, is one of the reasons why they changed to be like it's now. It's one of the aspects that makes me think that HOI4 is not as a great successor as it could have been, but that's my personal taste. Sales are great, and sales are what shapes the decisions.

In HOI3 there were ten levels which was ridiculous - it created a huge problem in terms of soft-coding since every province on the map had to have a value between 1 and 10 selected for it. Seeing where the infra was also required going to a separate UI as it wasn't obvious on the map. It did have the advantage that the infra was tied to a specific province, though, so you knew that by taking that province you could cut the infra, but then the map was in most places covered with medium/low-level infra so the times you would do this were limited because the only way of cutting off supply in most parts of the map was to completely surround the enemy.

HOI4 simplified this by abstracting infra to region level but I'm not sure this was the best solution - it certainly greatly reduced the micro involved but it also took out the ability to identify a key logistical route and cut it. There is no "Remagen Bridge"-type moment.

HOI could instead model it as a province attribute but simply as a "Has_Road=yes"/"Has_Rail=yes" attribute, with rail and road simply painted onto the map along major logistical routes. You could then see the logistical routes in the UI, in a similar way to the way that you already see rivers in the UI and know they are there. Road could carry supplies, whilst rail carries supplies and also does strategic movement. Carrying capacity could be controlled by having a stockpile of lorries and rolling-stock (with a base-line of horses/carts). Logistics bombing could take the form of destroying lorries/rolling stock to reduce supply. Supply available could be calculated simply on the basis of distance from the nearest road/railway.

 

[kettyo]

That you can strat redeploy ANYWHERE, ANYTIME

 

[1 Star General]

In HOI3 there were ten levels which was ridiculous - it created a huge problem in terms of soft-coding since every province on the map had to have a value between 1 and 10 selected for it. Seeing where the infra was also required going to a separate UI as it wasn't obvious on the map. It did have the advantage that the infra was tied to a specific province, though, so you knew that by taking that province you could cut the infra, but then the map was in most places covered with medium/low-level infra so the times you would do this were limited because the only way of cutting off supply in most parts of the map was to completely surround the enemy.

HOI4 simplified this by abstracting infra to region level but I'm not sure this was the best solution - it certainly greatly reduced the micro involved but it also took out the ability to identify a key logistical route and cut it. There is no "Remagen Bridge"-type moment.

HOI could instead model it as a province attribute but simply as a "Has_Road=yes"/"Has_Rail=yes" attribute, with rail and road simply painted onto the map along major logistical routes. You could then see the logistical routes in the UI, in a similar way to the way that you already see rivers in the UI and know they are there. Road could carry supplies, whilst rail carries supplies and also does strategic movement. Carrying capacity could be controlled by having a stockpile of lorries and rolling-stock (with a base-line of horses/carts). Logistics bombing could take the form of destroying lorries/rolling stock to reduce supply. Supply available could be calculated simply on the basis of distance from the nearest road/railway.

These are all good ideas. Sparse rail for strat deployment would really make this game better and lead to more 'realistic' gameplay. Supply system definitely needs a deeper rework though. There's lots of ideas floated on this forum. Lots of ppl postulate supply dumps, division of long and short distance supply role between rail and road... I'm on the fence, haven't decided myself what would I like to see, but I'm definitely on the side of caution when it comes to complicating the system too much. But when it comes to mobility, current game mechanics is simply a joke. It really ought to be changed.

 

[Dlin369]

I hope they add rail-ways with the Barbarossa patch, but I don't know how they could do it while keeping logistics accessible to most players.

 

[Louella]

Sounds intriguing. Please DO let me know if you work this one out.
I know, the problem of modelling differences between Western Europe and Siberia is diffcult due to map scale. Therefore I myself was rather thinking on leaving the infra system as it is now, untouched, but adding a few continental scale links, mainly for strat redeployment purposes. So strat redeployment would be restricted only to these links. I'm curious of your thinking, share some more details when you find time, cheers.

Okay, so what I found out by accident (I was fiddling with rocket sites to see if I could also make aircraft to be based there), was that you can add things like "air_base = yes" and "infrastructure = yes", to other buildings (i.e. the rocket site that I was fiddling with).

This had the result of increasing the state's airbase capacity or infrastructure, and could increase it above the normal maximum level 10. (By making rocket sites have "air_base = yes" and "infrastructure = yes", the state I was fiddling with could base 2400 aircraft and had 12 infrastructure)

So this gave me an idea.

States of category "wasteland" or "tiny island", normally have 0 building slots, so can't build factories etc, that use the "shared slots".

So, lets say I dropped the max level of an air base to 1, making it so that a state could only have 200 aircraft based in it. But then had a building that used the shared slots, that also had the "air_base = yes" property. Constructing that building would then increase the effective airbase level, allowing more than 200 planes to be based in that state.

So... because tiny islands have no building slots, they couldn't increase their airbase level, and would be limited to 200 planes. States with lots of building slots, could increase their airbase level, and base more than 200 planes there.

And for "wasteland" type states, you'd do the same for infrastructure. If max infrastructure level was 1, but you could build buildings to increase it, then if you have "wasteland" states covering a large area, but have a different category of state making a line between the wasteland states, then you could increase the infrastructure in that state, which would make it effectively a pretty abstract model of a railway like the Trans-Siberian Railway through otherwise uninhabited areas.

So it's not possible to build max-level infrastructure through a wasteland, or to strategically redeploy armies arbitrarily, they'd have to go through the infrastructure chokepoints, which would then represent to some extent the importance of key infrastructure like the Trans-Siberian.


I've not yet really tested how this kind of thing would work ingame - I suspect there'd be a few unintended consequences to things like strategic bombing targeting, or damage from fighting in a state.

 

[Shaka of Carthage]

States of category "wasteland" or "tiny island", normally have 0 building slots, ... So, lets say I dropped the max level of an air base to 1, ... also had the "air_base = yes" property.

I can see the potential this has for airbases.

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

In the real war railroads was extremely important for strategic movement of supplies and troops and also limited how both troops, supplies, spare parts and even air forces could move and operate.

HoI have never been a very "realistic" game from this perspective at all. Even if some tries have been made to incorporate strategic movement restriction it never really worked.

In the real world even air forces was often moved by railway from one front to the other as one example... you certainly had to move the ground support element on the railroads.

Infrastructure in the game is a very abstracted value and include both road and railroad but in reality it is more like local roads and does not really model railroads very well.

In the real world securing rail hubs and keeping the railway safe was extremely important.

In the real world there was a huge limit on how you could move troops around different theatres and how you needed to store up local supply of food, fuel and ammunition for large offensives.

HoI have never really been able to model any of this other than in a really abstracted manner. Older HoI probably did this slightly better. HoI 3 did it better although the system was a bit convoluted and had some serious flaws. The system in HoI IV is extremely abstracted and does not really give justice to how things worked in reality. The game allow you to use forces in areas your should not be able to an you certainly can move forces around in a manner that was not really possible in the real world. This is true for both ground forces and more importantly air forces that truly can be teleported around in a very unrealistic manner.

HoI is not a hard core WW2 game... there a much better games for that. HoI is covering the entire war and it probably is very difficult to give justice to all theatres in terms of the special circumstances they suffered from. Would you really be able to play a game that spans the entire world with as much detail to special circumstance such as say War in the Pacific Admirals edition for example... that would by very fun but a VERY niche game. HoI is suppose to be more of a mainstream game with simpler game mechanics.

Personally I like HoI3 over HoI4 as I feel HoI4 is too mainstream in most of its game mechanics, but that is a personal preference.

 

[FOARP]

In the real war railroads was extremely important for strategic movement of supplies and troops and also limited how both troops, supplies, spare parts and even air forces could move and operate.

HoI have never been a very "realistic" game from this perspective at all. Even if some tries have been made to incorporate strategic movement restriction it never really worked.

In the real world even air forces was often moved by railway from one front to the other as one example... you certainly had to move the ground support element on the railroads.

Infrastructure in the game is a very abstracted value and include both road and railroad but in reality it is more like local roads and does not really model railroads very well.

In the real world securing rail hubs and keeping the railway safe was extremely important.

In the real world there was a huge limit on how you could move troops around different theatres and how you needed to store up local supply of food, fuel and ammunition for large offensives.

HoI have never really been able to model any of this other than in a really abstracted manner. Older HoI probably did this slightly better. HoI 3 did it better although the system was a bit convoluted and had some serious flaws. The system in HoI IV is extremely abstracted and does not really give justice to how things worked in reality. The game allow you to use forces in areas your should not be able to an you certainly can move forces around in a manner that was not really possible in the real world. This is true for both ground forces and more importantly air forces that truly can be teleported around in a very unrealistic manner.

HoI is not a hard core WW2 game... there a much better games for that. HoI is covering the entire war and it probably is very difficult to give justice to all theatres in terms of the special circumstances they suffered from. Would you really be able to play a game that spans the entire world with as much detail to special circumstance such as say War in the Pacific Admirals edition for example... that would by very fun but a VERY niche game. HoI is suppose to be more of a mainstream game with simpler game mechanics.

Personally I like HoI3 over HoI4 as I feel HoI4 is too mainstream in most of its game mechanics, but that is a personal preference.

HOI2 is worth a mention here - it was simpler than HOI3 and sometimes not transparent, but it did simulate logistical carrying-capacity (TC points).

HOI3 was supposed to be very good on logistics, but the way it was simulated (basically everywhere on the map had a pool of supplies which could lead to your entire logistical net crashing randomly) ended up just causing a lot of headaches without increasing realism. You never found yourself being able to say "OK, so Stalingrad is surrounded but my guys there can probably hold out for X days because they have Y supplies" because you didn't actually know how many supplies Stalingrad had - this is a pity because that was the entire point of the system!

HOI3 had a lot of "clever on paper but bad in reality" mechanics like that. People we're still discovery bugged mechanics even when HOI4 was being developed already released (the one that amazed me was aircraft not using fuel under certain conditions at all - only detected getting on eight nine years after HOI3 was released EDIT: here's bug report).

HOI2 was actually closer to the "mainstream" "simpler" game-format than either HOI4 or HOI3, and in my view a better game for that simplicity.

My favoured solution is basically "TC points" (i.e., lorries and rolling-stock built by civilian IC) plus a single-level road/rail network (maybe with roads upgradable to autobahn). Supply efficiency would simply be a function of how far your units are from the nearest road/railhead, so in the USSR, with its sparser road/rail net, supply problems would simply emerge organically. I think this would actually be simpler than the existing system in HOI4 and definitely simpler than that in HOI3. This is what the Americans would call a "Beer and pretzels" solution as it takes the multi-level infrastructure and supply-efficiency right out of the game - you can simply judge by eye-ball where the roads/rails are and where your units are.

 

[Shaka of Carthage]

My favoured solution is basically "TC points" (i.e., lorries and rolling-stock built by civilian IC) plus a single-level road/rail network (maybe with roads upgradable to autobahn). Supply efficiency would simply be a function of how far your units are from the nearest road/railhead,

In the existing system, you can accomplish this by simply allowing supply to be transported thru only if your infrastructure is above a certain level. TC points are already being generated, for free and with no stockpile limit. Supply efficiency can be represented by adjusting certain define values.

It will be interesting to see what new mechanic they come up with in Barbarossa.