HOI4 Dev Diary - 1.5.2 Update #3 and Telemetry!

[mursolini]

I'm not really satisfied with the current level of difficulty. I will use Barbarossa to explain it.

In HOI3, Barbarossa was a daunting task on each side.

Spoiler

As a Soviet, your mission was to delay a maximum German push to grind their initial strength while retreating in an ordered fashion to not let your armies be encircled like what happened in real life. You had to delay them for several reason, first, to let their initial bonuses disappear (could be plan organization in hoi4), second, to give you time to overcome from purges, third, to give enough time to your industry to relocate away from frontline. My main issue with this gameplay was that in case of a disaster (like what happened in real life) production system wouldn't let you panic deploy half trained units to try to save the day (which HOI4 do).
On German side, it was even harder as you had to give terrible blow on a dismissive opponent, and try to inflict as much damage as possible to not let the Soviet recover. It was to deal blow after blow and keep momentum as your logistics became more and more overstretched, and as your own bonuses were leaving at the same rythm as Soviets malus. Even after encircling whole army in tense situation, you could congratulate yourself, but you were still far from your objective. Russia felt so big. Like holy hell, I just invaded the size of 2 France and I'm still two France away from Moscow. You were running against the clock and winter that would bog down your whole offensive until after the rasputitsa (that feel better modeled in HOI4). Giving a lot of time to the Soviets to recover. You had still a small period of time after spring and summer where you could try to break the neck of the red army as it wasn't completely ready. After that you still had an opportunity in a succesful defense, using all the land you conquered as a meat grinder, and small localized counter offensive raids to exploit weakness in Soviets line.
In HOI3 you had to plan your thrust from A to Z, you had to manage everything and it may be only me but I liked that, my only issue was airforce that was really a pain to manage (once again, something HOI4 solved). Logistics felt way more important (maybe it wasn't, but the big yellow and red stuff were way more noticeable than a jerrycan that don't tell much about anything. It may have been a clusterfuck, but it was a clusterfuck you had to deal with where in HOI4, logistics is never a problem, except when I realize that my offensive in Burma isn't that successful because I have 1,5m men in the middle of the jungle. Black ice was even better, but for each better thing it did, there was an issue (I still remember the battle of Gibraltar that costed 3M axis troops (before I loaded the save as british and made them retreat because no, not even in their wildest dream, the British could hold this rocks against half of the Wehrmacht and the whole Luftwaffe, while under blocus by the Regia Marina.

in HOI4, in normal difficulty, on both side, you've streamlined your production so well that you have an absolute edge on your opponent. You just quickly assign troops by stack of 24, trying to give them equivalent front width. You assign armoured formation on easy terrain, with thrust order, you don't even need infantry to exploit them. You draw some lines, wait for plan bonus to build up, declare war, look at your troops doing the works (not in an efficient way, but it's not like you need to be efficient, you'll win anyway, and it won't be a Pyrrhic victory. Half the way to Moscow/Stalingrad/Leningrad, it feel like it slow down, that there is less green arrow, your tanks aren't moving like hot steel in butter and you already feel bored, you want Barbarossa to finish quickly so you can draw more arrow (I won't talk about Seelöwe, that was the most depressing game of hearts of iron IV, even watching a let's play is more entertaining). Your line have become a complete mess so you reorganize. Good points for HOI4, it's easier to reorganize than HOI3 OOB. Just draw a few front, wait a few days, and tadaa! And when your troop are once again fully organized (you can use operational mana p) to make it faster for your armoured formations), you click and watch your troops doing the leg work. It's not like there is a mastermind plan or anything to follow, just big arrow that encompass Moscow/Leningrad/Stalingrad. Once this city are lost, it feel like you fight the remnant of the red army (even more with the new stability system, the Soviet just won't surrender and the Japanese won't exploit Soviet weakness, so Vladivostok give precious VP to the Soviets). On the soviet side, your industry is so powerful that you just crush the german, and they don't have 4 France to hide behind.

I just feel less invested. You sure feel that something happened in the central marsh of white russia, but you don't notice big differences between ukraine's plain and baltic forests. You don't notice logistics, you don't notice a lot of things because you're not invested in your operations. You don't keep track of where each division is, where you could take a few division to assign them to another front. You just take direct contol when you notice easy encirclement, and to end pocket faster.

The higher difficulty (let's say the highest) just make your opponent line so thick that attacking feel pointless (just loose equipement and manpower). And while would you do that when you can let this opponent break is own neck in pointless offensive and wait until there equipement mana is depleted.

There is some interesting Front, like since the extension, I see more and more Japan being able to invade large part of China and being bog down in the mountains. I had a lot of fun, playing as Manchukuo, trying to help Japan achieve victory. The last part of the war, in the mountain, with Japanese out of supply (I think it's more production problem than actual logistic, but whatever) felt really historical. A pointless fight in the mountains, where progression is slow, casualty are high, for nothing but to force an enemy in submission as there is nothing, no ressources, not a lot of industry. And in multiplayer, I guess it could be dangerous to try to finish off the Chinese as it would weaken you a lot for the final confrontation.

But Europe feel completely bleak. I didn't realized that because I was mostly playing minor. There is no challenge in playing a major.

All of this is SP. I don't do a lot of PVP (mostly because I have no one to play with, the group I was playing HOI3 don't enjoy HOI4 and have moved to obscure wargames instead

Hope this doesn't feel to offensive, I might have become bitter about that. I don't know if any of this is constructive at all. To end on a good note, HOI4 solved a lot of HOI3 issues (production for example). Maybe I'm not a good public for this game. Maybe HOI4 is looking for a wider audience that don't care about logistics, about micro and that kind of stuff. I bought the premium++ edition and I feel I'm slowly loosing my love for HOI. Maybe I'll join my friend to play there buggy wargames. Maybe that's what I'm looking for inside of me. But I thought HOI4 could be the game I was looking for. And it still feel far from it.

tl;dr: there is no challenge in (playing major in) HOI4, difficulty level don't add challenge, writing all of this made me sad

You experience with HOI3 is either with a mod (BICE probably) or you were really inexpirienced.

In HOI3 it was easy to start Barbarossa in November and be in Moscow by February.

Player Germany would easily outproduce SU, and as soon as SU starts falling, there is no way to recover.

There was no challenge in Hoi3 either.

 

[GPounda]

And type

You can already sort by type. . .

 

[Sparrow]

Took a quick look at the division designer.

Is there any way to have some of the later model medium tanks or modern tank share the heavy tank sprite for Italy?

I recall someone saying the game can't handle that many sprites however when I fire up EUIV it is all the sprite packs.

Please, I will pay for a sprite pack or dozen sprite packs.

Upgraded light tank sprite:

Medium-ish:

Heavy is fine. However maybe this or M47(more appropriate but maybe out of time frame) or something from WoT as modern?!?

T(h)anks!

 

[Ernst_Jünger]

Will 3d models be for Manchuria? For all the Chinese states they have, but Manchuria uses the standard ones.

 

[FarEast]

1.5.2 will release on Monday, Yaaaaaao! Thanks podcat!

 

[puppet on a string]

Will 3d models be for Manchuria? For all the Chinese states they have, but Manchuria uses the standard ones.

they get japanese icons/names, so probably should use their models too

 

[Yellow Owl]

See you next week. Assuming we are done with the patch then we'll be talking future roadmap.

Oh, I hope we'll see plans for Spanish and Finnish focus trees there! Or maybe Turkish?
I'm sure, Finland can make game much more diverse and "shake" northern Europe. And the Winter War 1939 is almost invisble at the game now. But actually this war had big influence to situation in Europe and significant influence (negative, of course) to opinion inside soviet society. So called "Finnish war", or just "finnish" - "финская" (you should not talk too long about things which are not recommended to talk about ) was long sadly remembering by thousands families in USSR

 

[Jactor]

I wonder how you haven't figured it out yet, that in strategy games that is the usual way. Creating several sets of AI 'brilliance' level would increase the workload tremendously, or in lazy case, it would just mean that AI wouldn't use certain features on lower difficulty levels. I prefer to have the same AI, but for PDX to work and improve on them with 100% effort dedicated to it, instead of spliting the workload into 'several' levels of difficulty.

Fact that paradox games are real-time games limits quite a lot how complex AI can be done. Turn based games can use more complex algorithms calculating what AI does but on realtime games this is not possible. Also in some game series where developers have build really good AI people stop playing those games and forums are filled with accusations that AI is playing irritating way when most of people constantly just lose to AI.

Only way to get really good AI to games is that in the future computers have separate AI prosessors or AI cards that people buy like they buy 3D cards now. Those AI prosessors could been designed to run really complex neural network calculations in real time but even then in is questionable if people want to play against AI that is better than average human players is? But am fairly sure that in future computers could have dedicated AI prosessors like now they have GPU and CPU's.

 

[Ernst_Jünger]

they get japanese icons/names, so probably should use their models too

The uniform should be a bit different, right?

 

[paranoidsteve]

20 width divisions have around 10.000 men. Historical divisions were around this size, true. If the game devs intended for this to be used, they should've made them optimal.

Be very careful what you wish for or the devs might just make only historical division templates useable...and personally I would like that to be an option.

 

[Demosthenest]

Be very careful what you wish for or the devs might just make only historical division templates useable...and personally I would like that to be an option.

I'd love that. No trouble at all.

 

[PeterX7]

@podcat any update on the Vojvodina border issue? I had started playing Yugoslavia and Hungary recently (been busy with China in WtT) and because of the update I cant have the historical borders anymore for roleplaying

 

[swagmeister]

I think for lower difficulties a nice feature would be for the allies to be less likely to guarantee every single nation an axis or Comintern nation has a claim on forcing world war. Would be nice for more casuals games to allow to expand and allow tension rise up a little bit slower. Perhaps add reduced tension gain as well.

 

[fabius]

I play on regular with the Expert AI mod, and I think something missing from the discussion thus far about the degree of challenge is that many of the significant problems are not about "AI" per se, but sub-optimal parameters assigned by the devs. I encourage anyone who doesn't find the base game challenging (or is simply curious) to read through the defines and AI strategy files. You'll find that suicide attacks, weird templates, production shortfalls, illogical construction priorities, lack of tanks/planes/ships, and odd focus choices are greatly facilitated by design choices, not because the CPU is incapable of making the necessary calculations. While some of these decisions are probably enacted for historical/flavor reasons and I'm fine with that, let's not pretend that the base game is designed to do everything possible to challenge the player and the existing difficulty settings are the only alternative.

I'm fully willing to accept that once one reaches a certain degree of knowledge about the game playing around with sliders and player debuffs is necessary to feel challenged, but I think the game can be improved much more before that's necessary, without touching the "AI" itself.

There's a lot to be said for this ^
And you don't need to read through the defines; just try EAI.

You can already sort by type. . .

Eh, I can't see where/how in an Army division list?

 

[swagmeister]

Ye and what are those numbers being based and judged on? The quantity of the type of game, the frequency of the game, the concentration of players? Overall the data being presented is not representing the reality in the sense the impact and or objectives of people playing those modes. Which it even addresses. As it shows people switch between methods of play, which again for all we know are competitive multiplayer people testing out strategies with each other.

Again Competitive multiplayer appears small, simply at how the data is presenting it. Sure every 1 game of 25 ppl there are 20 games of 2-3 people. However think the amount of effort/demand it takes to get a group of 25 together compared to 2-3 people. Got to have an established means of communicating, community, scheduling, fair rules, to get the right people to fullfill roles/make it balanced fun and worth it to come back. As opposed of gettin bill and joe together to do the unholy alliance. I ain't dismissing methods of play but you really aren't gonna convince me that paradox wouldn't achieve more by cultivating that form of play as opposed to the 2-3 player games. As the team community games simply amplify the feelings 2-3 player games offer (with some negatives mind you) to come back and play more.

However, fundamentally i think we can agree that the only way for paradox properly judge that themselves is to roll up there sleeves and spend a couple weekends over a span of months to get a gauge of what hard numbers can't tell you.

Teamspeak and now discord have been around for a long time just for this sort of thing. I do agree that getting 25 people together is extremely challenging though from my first hand experience raid leading in world of Warcraft.

 

[Wolfius]

I kinda hate the fact that you normally start with light tanks.
Look at the Darkest Hour Mod where you start with basic Tanks, after that you can decide which one you will pick in the future.

 

[Misaka_Complex]

No update so that you don't have to fight the Allies for the remaining 2 out of the 3 achievements that required world conquests for the 3 separate Chinas?

 

[Timmysoboy]

I play easiest dificulty 90% of the time. I've done up to veteran, so it's not as much an issue of confidence. I'm just playing to have fun and mess around, so the low difficulties make the game more casual for me. Competitive gaming is just stressful to me.

 

[mertvoe exo]

I play at a low level of complexity because AI's intelligence does not change, and the speed of the game increases. + I do not want to play one game for 5 or more hours.

 

[Meister]

Can Leaders pass skill level 9 up to 10 now? I havent seen it in the list.

Edit: well ive seen now that SunTzu reborn Achievment is unlocking at lvl9.
Guess that means no lvl10 generals at all !?