Great to see another stream, and thank to Jakob and PDS for showing it
. As others have said, I think we need to take a deep breath about the AI - many of us have clamoured for more information on a game that's clearly not finished (they'd be selling it to us if it was
), and now that we've got it, we're complaining that it's got bits that aren't finished? Seems a little unfair to me. And, as others have mentioned, the AI seems to be a little bugged as well - don't forget it seemed a
lot more active in the SCW in Johan/Jakob/Troy's game.
For those worrying about developing the AI last, you can waste a lot of time if you code the AI early, then add/remove features that break it - it makes a lot of sense to spend time and effort teaching the computer to play the game, when the features of the game are set, rather than still in flux.
The things that I took personally from the stream were:
- colour coding defensive battleplans to give an indication of force strength is a nice touch.
- We got a quick look at the minor nation national focuses, and they looked pretty good – we even got nuclear and rocket focuses down the end. Obviously didn’t include the more unique political stuff of the majors, but given they had to be generic, they look pretty good, and the range of political options available was promising.
- All in all, playing a minor country looks a decent bit more interesting in HoI4 than HoIs previous, which is a plus.
- Does 10 years for a heavy cruiser and no oil, 3 steel, one dockyard mean 1 year for a heavy cruiser with 10 dockyards? If so, then it would be possible to make (and therefore run) a decent navy with no oil at all for a nation with more dockyards. Obviously, we still need to wait and see how it turns out, but I’m still sceptical about the approach to oil in-game.
- Game seemed to run pretty good at speed 5 early, although the relatively limited AI may mean that's not indicative, as the AI will take some serious processing juice.
- The comments on the ease of Russia making a naval invasion around the Mannerheim line suggest it’ll be a good deal easier making naval invasions in-game than historically. This isn’t a new thing for HoI, so it's not a bad thing, per se, although I'd personally prefer naval invasions require a deeper strategic approach.
- It’s great that the bulk of the gap between majors and minors is now more industry than research, this is both more historically plausible and more fun.
- Japan only sent one division to Spain this time, that's an improvement, but they still seem to have something of an unusual fascination with the Iberian peninsula. Later in the stream, they joined the SCW on the Axis side - screw China and the Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere, Japan can into China
. I don't think this is a big worrhy, I suspect that Japan's position in the diplomatic game is a little tricky relative to the other nations, and there'll still be work done on it.
- The Spanish Civil war turning into a big broo-ha-ha (at least on paper!) was cool.
- Manual orders looked easy and intuitive. In fact, the combination of broad-brush battleplans and manual orders as required looks like it has a stack of potential.
