Pasted by Popular Demand
Things that were less enjoyable, or I would like to see changed:
1) There should be an option to suppress obsolute units in the build menus. Frankly, I cannot think of a reason why the suppression should not be automatic, but I am sure someone somewhere will want to build an antique for some reason.
2) Auto-promote leader function needs to maintain a better balance of skill relative to High level officers. There does not need to be more than one FM/Grand Adm sitting in the officer pool at any one time IMHO. Personally, I think a better way to do it would be to only promote a leader when they have enough XP to raise their skill level one. At that point they are then "auto-promoted" effectively keeping their skill level the same. This could occur all the way up to say, General. Promotions past that point should be done manually by the player.
3) I don't like the undocumented naval stacking penalty for large fleets. While it may be realistic, it is confusing. If a Grand Admiral is supposed to be able to control 30 flotillas without penatly, I think he should control 30 without penalty. Also, players are more likely to create large fleets for a number of reasons. One reason is that it gives the human fewer things to micro-manage, which allows more time to be spent in the "Action." Also naval disadvantaged nations like Germany versus the UK have to build uber fleets to be able to compete with the huge number of medium fleets their enemies deploy.
4) Ok leader death. (watches as everyone rolls their eyes) While this is realistic, I don't like it. Since the scenario is only 11 years, I think the quick fix is to just turn it off. Heck, since I play dictatorship nations my generals understand that they don't retire until the war is won! As Germany I was having a leader a week die. It was so pervasive I could not even get to know my leaders. Every week some new namless face located some where all over the world drops dead in his resort 100 miles from the front. The resulting micro-management is annoying, and disrupts my RPG-like enjoyment of building up leaders I admire like Irwin Rommel. Using historic death dates is also a fallacy in an alternate reality simulator. Germany has a very high rate of death at the end of the war historically because they were being mobbed, had insufficient supplies, and had lost the technology edge. In a game where the reverse is true, they would live much longer lives. (and perhaps the allied leaders shorter ones.) I would prefer to see a leader death rate in HOI2 of about 2 per year. Just enough that it is meaningful, but does not require constant clicking. Maybe leader death can be a checkbox in the options menu that allows players to turn it on or off. The more sophisticated approach would be to keep a mortality register for each leader. Each day spent in combat would increment it. Losing a battle would increment it still further, while being destoyed would increment it further still. A random percentage type check could be made every month to see if it falls within a leaders' accumulated mortality value. The higher the accumulated mortality, the greater the chance that leader would die. (but still only about 2/ year). There could be additional modifiers such as rank. A higher level officer is more protected than a junior, and would therefore live longer. There could also be simple global modifiers. Does your faction have a high score and is thus winning the war? Do you have superior technology? Are your supplies short or fat? Anyway, you get the idea...
5) I do not like the plane stack cap at 4. I think it would be best if it were around 8. That would allow for six TACS and 2 Escort fighters per stack. As the AI frequently employes stacks of 10 or so, you would then have a chance to survive an encounter with them. More small airwings = more micro-management= less time spent in the "action"
6) A left over bug from HOI1 is that there are sometimes fleets with no flotillas in them that do not disband. Example: TP flotilla fleet that is destoryed in port.
7) There is an auto-retreat bug crossing certain provinces like Istanbul to bursa/Izmit, and across Italy. This is not due to supply, distance, or intervening navies, and needs to be fixed.
8) There is a "Massive Mysterious Naval Loss Bug". It happened to me twice in the last game. The first when I massed all the starting German Fleets, and the second time when I had by far the largest (30 units) and most powerful fleet in the game. You get a message like your ships have lost a battle, but almost all of your ships sink, it shows no enemy losses, nor is there any engagement. Yes, my ships had high str, and org, and were in supply. One moment they are there, the next moment they simply vanished.
9) The winter effects on manpower loss need to be toned down. They are more deadly than bullets! It also makes it impossible for me to predict how much manpower I will have when queing production etc. Turning off the reinformcement slider in winter when you have fights in warmer climates all over the world is not the answer...
10) For ego and polite competitive purposes I would like there to be a statistics screen that shows all enemy units I have destroyed by country and in aggregate. It should be broken down by individual unit type, and should contain land, air, and naval losses. You know' a kill counter.
11) Ok maybe I am lazy or impatient, but I would like my air units to automatically rebase themselves when they are unprotected adjacent to enemy ground forces. When I have a dozen battles on air, land, and sea raging all over the globe, I simply cannot see the small blue dot buried somewhere that is about to be overrun. Perhaps this could be a checkbox option in the Options page? That would allow those who like to control every last detail to maintain their current play style.
12) I would like better descriptions of what each tech does in the tech description. I want to see what abbreviations mean. What the heck is the difference between a CAS and a CAG? I also want to know if it allows me to build a new armor division, or only a brigade. etc.
13) Missions are much less useful than they could be because they are assiged to regions that are not detailed anywhere in the game. I know some people have a keen understanding of obscure world geography that allows them to realize that conducting a combat patrol in the East Iberian Sud will take their navy to the square where the enemy navy is bombarding their troops, but I can't. The color coding does not help much as the same colors are often duplicated many times, and the difference between colors is so subtle I often cannot tell the difference. <g>
14) The diplomacy peace treaty is too difficult to manage. I have to remember a huge list of unusual province names that I then have to request as mine. I want a simply treaty option that says, in effect, "I will stop crushing you like a bug if you give me the provinces I currently hold." I don't want to have to find, spell, and type (click) in all those territories flung all over the world.
15) I launched ICBMS and nuked Washington DC, New York, Boston, and Detroit all in one attack. After such devastation I cannot imagine an isolationist nation would not return with an immediate offer of peace... Shouldn't such world changing occurences trigger some type of event?
16) I spent a lot of time influencing nations up to 200, only to find that they could not come to my alliance due to govt. type. I cannot keep track of all that, could it not be possible to display the country's govt. type in bright red, or some such, if they cannot anyway, anyhow, ally with you?
17) While Advanced light tanks and heavies may not have been deployed in division strength historically, in an alternate history simlualtor I would like to see the option to do so. Advanced Lt. tank divisions would be VERY useful on the eastern front. Just because Hitler did not have the vision to build them does not mean I do not.
18) I would like to see at least one upgrade for MP units in the game.
19) One of the big problems I had in HOI1 was trying to get escort ships./sub packs to travel along with my transports at the same speed (but due to stacking limits and ease of use be in separate fleets). I still cannot seem to get this done in HOI2. Whichever unit is faster runs ahead and leaves the TP's all alone at the mercy of enemy fleets. I would like some easy way to tell my warships to protect that convoy over there with the panzers, or die trying.
20) I want to see what brigades the enemy has attached to their units in the combat details screen.
21) I would like a mission type for ground units such as "auto advance". This would tell them to keep picking adjacent enemy provinces to invade as long as their str/org stays above a certain level. When I cross into Africa with 50 divisions in nice stacks, I would like to set them all to this mission, and not have to worry about them again until they have gobbled up all of Africa. Its really annoying micro-management to send single units all over the map trying to conquer empty or lightly held provinces.
22) I wish there was a way to see the total stock piles of my allies. That way I could open negotions from time to time to make sure they have adequate levels of everything.
23) I wish AI allies did a better job of supplying my units on their soil. (though it is better than HOI1)
