Your top five issues?

[unmerged(83998)]

1. The AI.

Production & deployment : the AI must be coded to better manage its manpower and keep a reasonable pool for mobilization & reinforcements. Furthermore, the AI should not group light armor with infantry for instance. The AI should make better use of its skilled leaders.
Fix the minor's production. The Philippines should not have ~30 militia divisions in '41.

Warfare : the AI should assess threat better. The AI should be coded to plan upcoming conflicts, especially when it will be the one to declare war. For instance Japan should be coded to prepare the invasion of China, and later on war against the allies.
The AI should be coded to have realistic objectives (Japan should not try to invade Finland for example).

Use of forces : the AI should learn to concentrate naval power more, and to use it effectively (i.e. Having large fleets protecting its transports during vital operations).
The AI should also make better use of airpower (especially INT or FTR to make it harder for the player to go berserk with air forces).
The AI must be coded to use armored divisions for spearheads tactics. It should at least try to do encirclements.

Research : if the AI spends a lot of research into air doctrines, the AI should build an airforce. If the AI builds no armor, the AI should not research armor doctrines. Etc.

Enemy power evaluation : the AI must be coded to assess enemy power better. For example the German army must not give up on assaulting a level 10 fort on the maginot line guarded by 1 garrison when it has 30 divisions ready for combat.

Theater AI : I do not use it because it sucks so bad. I do not mind if it's not fixed as I like to micro. But at least fix it for the computer.

2. Supply system

Change the supply system so that the AI can keep its troops in supply. Maybe add to the supply transfer capacity of ports. Japan should be able to land sufficient forces in the Shanghai area and route the Chinese army. It should not run out of supplies in 3 months and be pushed back to the sea.

For the player, make the supply system more realistic (maybe dependent on weather?). Do this for the player only, not the AI (as it won't be able to manage it). It should be hard for the German player to keep its troops in supply in Russia during winter (at the very least). Same goes for the Japanese player invading China.

3. Interface

Make it easier for the player to reorganize the army hierarchy. We should be able to select a unit in the organizer, and drag it to another corps/army/theater.

Make it possible to enter numbers in the production window instead of having to click for a 99 serial.
DEL should act as a shortcut to disband an division. This should work with multiple units selected.
Make windows resizable and keep the new size & position in memory.

Make it possible to define strength/org thresholds for air/naval missions in the interface.

4. Performance

It's ok for the game to be slower during wartime, but during peace it really is boring. Improve this.

5. Events, decisions, history

Fix the surrender events. All of them. Bitter peace, Germany, they are all screwed up.

Add more flavor events for countries so that peace time isn't as boring. Add ai events to boost ai performance in certain conflicts (ie Russian patriotism, Chinese resistance).

If China defeats Japan, add events so that it breaks its alliance and plunges into civil war. China should also start at war with the communists, and their should be events to end this war. Make the Chinese warlords weaker.

 

[DarkLight]

1. Allied cooperation. If the only way to ensure that is to reinstate "Assume Military Control", then so be it.

2. Neutrality. Minor countries are no longer fun to play. I don't want to conquer the world as Argentina, just do a little Latin warmongering. In DD/Arma the USA would accept some adventurism in South America until the agressor's belgerency rose to an unacceptable level. In HOI3 the USA has ironclad GOI's which are immediately respected.

3. Unlimited AI Naval Range. That says it all. It's a game killer.

4. Duplicate Techs. Small arms are small arms are small arms. If you research infantry small arms, then you should get an 80-90% investment in the cavalry and militia small arms techs. Same with the support weapons, light artillery and whatever the other one is. Actually, the investment should probably be 100% for militia.

5. Ledger. The Ledger must return to its link status...i.e. clicking on a unit name in the ledger takes you to the unit on the map.

 

[unmerged(84406)]

1) CTDs after several hours of play.

This wouldn't be so bad if the autosave interval could be reduced below monthly. It is also a problem that the default autosave is off - I had to reinstall recently and didn't notice the autosave was off untill I went to save the game.​

2) Surrender events - these appear to be completely broken. Vichy triggers after Italy has taken most of France but it gives control to Germany. Germany surrenders and gives German territory to the USSR even though the USSR is loosing the war with Germany and nowhere near Germany. Germany surrendering and giving territory to the USA even though no US unit has done anything more aggressive than moving adjacent to a German controlled unit.

3) Convoys

The only problems I see in the supply system is all with convoys.
a) The game uses shortest sea route to determine the route to use, but in reality the route used was the shortest land distance.
b) You can't have a convoy to the same supply system - IIRC the Germans supplied Brest by sea.
c) Dual function - you can't have a convoy that carries supply and resources even in opposite directions.
​

4) Theatre redefinition has a silly idea of what size a theatre should be - in my current game as the US its suggestion was to have 2 theatres - one for Europe and West Africa - and a second for Japan, the Pacific, and North and South America.
I reckon it should have produced 2 for North America, 1 for South America, 1 for Africa, 1 For Europe, 1 For the Central Pacific, and 1 for Japan.
As a basic minimum any theatre it creates needs to be small enough that that it could all be in range of the theatre HQ in the right land province - and the HQ should be created there.
It may be that the ranges on theatre and group HQs is simply too small.

5) Sliders

I have the production slider on manual. However there are still problems.
a) When I click on need it occasionally adjusts to a value that is slightly out from the need, or displays the value in red showing it is insufficient - or still shows on the wasted IC alert tooltip as 0.00 wasted.
b) If I close and reopen the production window the values shown may not be the same as before. This is especially bad when the CG drops by 0.01 every time you close the window.
c) Sometimes when I make a change (usually clicking on need) and close and reopen the production window the change has been lost.
d) If I change the sliders, and then change the production queue then the change to the sliders is lost.
e) Oscillating digit - sometimes when all but 1 slider is locked the remaining value alternates between 2 values. Releasing one of the locks stops the problem.
f) I never use the automation settings as they all appear useless - they don't work the way I do and when selected they don't even appear to achieve what they are named as.
I suspect that the problems get worse as IC grows.
g) Sometimes clicking on the +/or - generates a click but no change in slider value.
h) Moving the leadership slider may change the value, but not the result produced - it may take two clicks on officers to get a change and the change may then be 0.3 officers. Every click needs to produce a change in effect - especially as the AI doesn't understand the discontinuities so will waste leadership for no benefit.
​

6) There is a horrible delay when opening the production screen before it responds to user input - several seconds. I don't see this problem in other screens (except the province view), and I suspect it is to do with having hundreds of items in the production queue. This is not the delay for the graphics to load as that is very short, and only applies to the first time you open the screen.

7) Alignment

To many countries appear to be aligning too early, and often the wrong countries (Portugal but not Romania).
I suspect part of the problem is that neutrality is reducing too quickly - in game it is about 11 per year whereas historically the US took a year between when it changed the draft laws from 1 year to two year - i.e. a drop of only 5. Also the US can easily be in a position to DoW the Axis by October 41 but in practice they were nowhere near that low a neutrality and in fact had only just managed to get the draft upped to 2 years.
However you would also need to change the requirements for draft and production laws so that a neutral but threatened country isn't hamstrung.
Of course it would be worse if the AI for aligned minors didn't go through cycles of spending all its diplomats starting influencing minors only to find at midnight it no longer has the diplomats required to maintain the influence - net result 9 wasted diplomats for no result.
​

8) Alliances

It was fundamental to the period that allies worked together - in particular the US and UK worked very closely together coordinating research, production and military spheres. As it stands at the moment Germany doesn't want Hungary and Romania in the Axis as they normally provide no benefit - certainly much less than annexing them.
There needs to be a way to produce units with German produced equipment and Hungarian equipment (as a licence will produce German designed equipment produced with Hungarian production and manpower).
Possibly a millitary Aid diplomatic action that is the reverse of license (i.e. it is requested by the gifting nation, and uses their IC but the target's manpower and is deployed by the target if it exists)
It may even be possible to get this mechanism to produce a better representation of the Indian army by creating a dummy India and having it place the units in India and make them an expeditionary force to the UK - instead of them just being names on UK units.
Also needs the minors to be more likely to give expeditionary forces to a major, and all GiE units should be automatically given as Exped. force to their host.
​

Oops! I appear to have overrun the 5 limit.

I consider 3, 4 and 5 as "must fix" items, and the others as more severs "game breakers".

[EDIT] Added:
P.S. - I realised there is another issue with supply - units that are completely out of supply survive forever - I have 30 brigades (German, Slovakian, Brazilian, and others) trapped and completely isolated in one province of France - but I can't shift them because they are in a level 10 fort. Possibly units being attacked need to consume their full supply - making the province value negative, and when it gets too low the unit has a change of being eliminated, and/or takes a bigger modifier.
P.P.S - RE: bluepoo's comment that ships/planes need their own command structure.
Another problem with the current system is that junior and senior naval officers don't get experience when they should - this is because there are no sub-parts of the task force and so no commodore in command of the screen, or half the carriers, and no combination of task forces to form fleets and so no admiral in command of the fleet.
[EDIT2]
P.P.P.S.
Fix the annoying resume when I mean pause bug.
I often pause the game and have many messages set to popup and pause. If a press the pause button at the same time as a popup pauses the game. my pressing the pause button is treated as a resume - and often when I react and press pause another message has paused so again it is treated as a resume - and so on and so on.....
Have separate pause and resume buttons and shortcuts, or ignore a user pause within a short time of actually pausing.

 

[Danielefc]

Great initiative!

1. Lack of historical realism and AI in general - yes this is a very vague point. But it has been summed up neatly by many others here.

2. The attack delay - most campaigns are reduced to WW1-type slugging.

3. The removal of tech flavour names. Has for me made the technology part of the game completely dull and "uninvolving". (Should they return - it would be nice if they where correct this time around - no homing torpedoes in 1938and the likes )

4. Alliance co-operation - its simply nonexistant. It is impossible to co-ordinate invasions ala Overlord or Barbarossa. The current expeditionary force system doesn't work for single player

5. There is no feature to "remove all" leaders.... its kinda dull to press "no leader" button 43627462387 million times when starting up a late scenario....

Thats my main(!) issues.

Cheers

PS. If needed I'd be Very happy to make a list of techs with their correct names and dates to match the game for free (as I am sure many others would )

 

[general_nabo]

1- unlimit air and naval units range
2- limit the units of naval and air bases.

 

[unmerged(76897)]

I have only one issue: AI!
I haven't played longer than 1941 as Germany because Barbarossa is to much micromanagement for me, and with a retarded AI in charge of the operation I am soon locked down in a stalemate. I can do better if I do it myself, but I don't want to because of the micromanagement. Playing a small country or a small campaign (fall gelb\weiss) is cool though.

 

[FrreeeBird]

1. Invincible strategic bombers/worthless interceptors: Huge game balance issue, the RAF kills my industrial production as Germany despite a radar belt, tech'd up planes and doctrines, etc.

2. Lack of events/lack of choices with existing events. Self explanatory.

3. Lack of historical flavor in the tech tree

4. Leaders gain leadership slowly, don't gain new traits, too many old guard generals

5. Carrier warfare is still a farce.

6. Subs are worthless and convoys are incredibly cheap, making the battle of the atlantic a non-starter.

 

[Disclaimer]

I have HoI III, but currently I am not playing it. Here what I think is missing:

1. More realistic diplomacy & politics (at least as an option). No Switzerland joining any faction if not attacked, no US ditching neutrality too fast, no communist Japan or fascist Britain and so on.

2. More control over allied forces and complete control over your puppet regime forces (give back the military control option).

3. No stupid AI invasions (Japan in Norway...) and connected to this no unlimited naval range for the AI.

Thanks for asking!

 

[walgaam]

1. Double click units/leaders/provinces in statistics screen and go to that unit/leader/province from statistics screen.
2. Scroll through provinces using a hotkey. (On HOI2 - I belive it was "." - for scroll forwards and "," - for svoll backwards.
3. A land battles statistics screen, I am sure there are more than just this one needed, seemed like HOI2 had more. (havn't played in a while)
4. Production interface - Show model being produced, when current unit will be completed in serial run, and when serial run run will be completely finnished.
5. Leaders bio, In HOI2 there was a button that you would click to see all of the battles and promotions that officer had participated in or recieved.

 

[unmerged(28377)]

1. Military control
2. Diplomatic : giving province
3. Make invasion more less easy without port (less supply)
4. Possibility to create land supply line, depot ...
5. Light Land div air transport (not airborne assault)

Thanks

 

[Tayran]

Bring back the tag country command in the console as it was in EU3.

Its very frustrating that you cannot change country midgame.

 

[unmerged(59454)]

1.
post-1936 scenarios still seem unfinished. For instance since 1.3 all units in the 1944 scenario are at 100% strenght. They are also not much fun to play, because you have to manually rearange almost all leaders. For Germany like half the eastern front divisions don't have commanders, while the best ones are commanding some rear-guard units in the beginning.
Besides that, they are still buggy, e.g. when you release the Baltic countries as Germany in the 1944 scenario you are automatically at war with them, although they are your puppets

2.
AI hardly builds divisions but only brigades which it puts together later.
Very annoying issue to me, cause you always have to figure out, of what the "1st Inf Brigade" is actually made of.

3.
Weather system still seems unperfect. You hardly have any snow or mud in Russia before December for instance.

Those may not be gamebreaking issues, besides strange AI behaviour and balancing matters those are the most annoying to me.

 

[wolf1455]

Oh I forgot..

Its very anoying to scroll every time I chech a Division with 5 brigades.

And when hovering over a stack to just see brigades, not even be able to see what country it is.

 

[unmerged(150330)]

1. Fix major bugs in 1.3
   
   • Reserve division spam
   • Germany fighting limited wars, rest of Axis not joining the war
   • Soviet moving most troops to eastern border if Japan attacks, giving a free ride for Germany
2. Implement reserve army
   • So building reserve divisions isn't huge amount cheaper and faster than building professional units, as is now
   • No bonuses to reinforcing when mobilizing making the problem up there worse
   • When reserve divisions are such a large part of the game it takes a lot away from the game to have these "cheap partly built troops that are really cheap to reinforce to full strength" as reserve divisions are now
   • If not possible, then at least provide an indicator for how much manpower needed to "mobilize" army to make the current system that much less problematic
3. Fix unlimited naval range
   • PM me what are the issues and I will promise to spend at least 2 hours thinking of algorithms/ways to fix it
4. Improve diplomacy issues
   • Like Italy always joining the axis at latest in 1937. I reported a long time ago that when playing as Italy Germany makes repeating offers to join Axis day after another, which might cause this.
5. Spend time balancing the game
   • Manpower for one
   • But basically all aspects

Thank you.

 

[cliffordhud]

Most have been mentioned. For me a biggie is control/coordination of allies. Allies are almost useless right now. This is crippling. US and UK should cooperate very closely for example. Same for Germany and Italy. Well you get the picture.

Completely agree. I would go a bit further - I think there should be an option to play the commonwealth as a single entity - reflecting how they actually worked together.

On a more general point - and perhaps not too helpful - I am actually having trouble "enjoying" the way the game plays. For me I do wonder if PI have just gone too far with some of the detail.

Spies/Espionage - far too much work - and frankly (for me) all irrelevant to playing a strategic war game - so can we have an "off" button.

Naval warfare seems more than a little broken - the AI/Game system does not seem to be able to recreate how real naval warfare actually happened - it is almost like the designers/programmers have not actually read any naval history books - or ever spoken to a real naval veteran.

This all seems very negative - it is not meant to be - the game has massive potential - but at the moment it is just a bit too disappointing

 

[AlanC9]

Spies/Espionage - far too much work - and frankly (for me) all irrelevant to playing a strategic war game - so can we have an "off" button.

You mean like the one that turns it over to AI control?

I don't think anyone's mentioned poor AI-AI coordination when they have adjacent fronts. For instance, when German DOWs Belgium the French AI doesn't react until the German troops actually reach the French border. And when AI Britain liberates part of Belgium, it immediately has to give up those fronts to the Belgium AI, either by giving its troops to Belgium as expeditionary forces or by retreating to occupied France.

I don't have a big problem with the expeditionary force mechanism, unlike some folks, but adjacent friendly AI-controlled fronts should be merged into a single front.

 

[sensor]

Map scrolling with your mouse like in many RTS games. It would be a small but useful addition.

 

[AlanC9]

Bring back the tag country command in the console as it was in EU3.

Its very frustrating that you cannot change country midgame.

Without saving and reloading, you mean?

 

[unmerged(183141)]

1. Playing as minor nation could use some love too. Like slight increase in leadership, ability to purchase at least few units from a faction it belongs. (happened IRL btw)

2. Some ministers show as "no ministertype" so there's no bonuses too?

3. something broken in alliances, example: attacking Sweden who is Allied to Denmark results in unending war if Germany conquers the danes driving them GIE, i cannot negotiate peace with them even if the country is liberated.

4. Overall AI don't respond in any way to help/ make new strategies for it's faction members if the leader is controlled by AI

5. Diplomacy: giving / demanding provinces is a must. More options for diplomacy.

 

[King Turtle]

1. A way to easily find a nation's capital. I can't tell which province is the capital when there are units in the province. They cover the dot. And for large nations with islands in the pacific, it takes a lot of scrolling to find their capital.

2. Diplomacy, giving and taking provinces.

Those are the top 2 for me.