War Effort - Operation Capital [1.12.8 OPEN BETA]

[BabyBuffalo]

...exciting things on the way for the Hearts of Iron Brand!

The Hearts of Iron.... Brand? Interesting. Does that mean we're getting more than just HOI4 DLC next year? It's too early for HOI5, sooo.... maybe a console port?

 

[GothiousRex]

- Italian Fiat 3000 and Fiat 3000B inter-war tanks will no longer be just hulls in the stockpile

Rapid fix!

 

[ItemDiversity]

Hello Devs, I have recently started trying to understand the modding process for AI for Hearts of Iron 4. I have two issues I would like to mention.

1) Recently since update 1.12.7, with what I would assume would be the change "AI now puts more weight on advisor competence rather than advisor cheapness, contrary to modern business practices," nearly all the AI prioritize assigning military advisors, even those that no longer give experience, over political advisors. Early game, I think this is usually disadvantageous, as most countries need to industrialize a bit. However, I cannot find anything in the code that would suggest a high value for ai_will_do when hiring these military captains/advisors -- in fact the values should be low. The only success I have had in AI prioritizing political advisors (or upgrading to War Economy early on) first is when I jack up the ai_will_do values over 100. But prior to 1.12.7, I had lower values such as 50, 25, etc., and the AI would still appoint the political advisors first. I would assume some back-end changes have been made that affect the AI logic, but I do not know if it was intentional to this extent. It is just unclear how the AI is using the ai_will_do values of the military advisors, which are low, and coming out with those as the dominant first picks. Now, the only way to get something like a Silent Workhorse or Captain of Industry early on is by a high value for ai_will_do, typically over 100.

2) I do not recall the specific update in which port supply was nerfed, but it was in the war effort patches. Since then, some AI (primarily Japan) will clog up their production lines building ports, unless you write a specific strategy that forces the AI to build civilian or military factories (but even in some cases they will still try to build ports). This issue for most is not a big deal, but for the Japanese, who starts with a bit of a slower industry, the AI wastes production output on these naval bases for seemingly no reason, in some cases even assigning 9 to be built on one tile, which takes a LONG time. My guess is the algorithm that governed this was not changed after the nerf to port supply, so the AI may be evaluating that it needs to build some to keep a healthy navy, but too early and too many are really handicapping its industry. (This is mostly Japanese AI issue -- the main one I have noticed so far. Italy has done it a few times, but usually not a whole lot).

 

[Herennius]

2) I do not recall the specific update in which port supply was nerfed, but it was in the war effort patches. Since then, some AI (primarily Japan) will clog up their production lines building ports, unless you write a specific strategy that forces the AI to build civilian or military factories (but even in some cases they will still try to build ports). This issue for most is not a big deal, but for the Japanese, who starts with a bit of a slower industry, the AI wastes production output on these naval bases for seemingly no reason, in some cases even assigning 9 to be built on one tile, which takes a LONG time. My guess is the algorithm that governed this was not changed after the nerf to port supply, so the AI may be evaluating that it needs to build some to keep a healthy navy, but too early and too many are really handicapping its industry. (This is mostly Japanese AI issue -- the main one I have noticed so far. Italy has done it a few times, but usually not a whole lot).

Welcome to the forums

Yes, that annoying issue with some AIs going overboard with port building has been encountered/reporte quite a few times, e.g. by @Gort11 earlier in this thread and the previous patch release threads.

Still thank you for bringing it up once more - as it reminded me that I want to turn this it into a bug report with screenshots&saves already a while ago. I did now, so everyone thinking that this should be fixed ASAP feel free to upvote:

HoI 4 - Japan / USA / UK AIs wasting their construction economy on spamming ports [v.1.12.8.31c5 (32be) (BETA)]

Description of issue Japan / USA AIs wasting their construction economy on spamming ports [v.1.12.8.31c5 (32be) (BETA)] What platform do you play on? Steam Game Version v.1.12.8.31c5 (32be) (BETA) Enabled DLC Together for Victory, Death or...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

 

[bERt0r]

- Plane Design: Torpedo Mountings now have 14 naval strike attack from 12, -12 agility from -15, and 6 targeting from 5
- Plane Design: Reduced the lower end of plane engine IC costs; earlier planes should be a little cheaper on the whole

Love to see NAV bombers getting a buff but the problem they face is that ships with high AA just shred them by the hundreds. Not sure if the wiki is still accurate but it says 1 point naval AA equals 1% of NAV bombers attacking that ship being shot down (if successful). The chance to shoot down NAV bombers is 27% - agility*0.1%. So even with 100 agility, the most you can lower that chance to 17%.

A Battleship with full AA guns easily gets 40 AA so it will mow down scores of nav bombers. But maybe the increase in damage will help with at least dishing out more damage in return. I doubt that the agility change will have a big impact.

 

[marcelo r. r.]

Nationalist Spain is accepting accept embargo Italy

this make no sense,
the event that trigger embargo italy choice for various nations should be polished, to exclude nationalist spain.

 

[goodcigar]

While you're at it dev team. Please fix the German fortification line in the west, the Westwall/Siegfried Line. It does not go far north enough in the game. It should go up north further. Bugged me since 2016.

Siegfried Line - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[general_de_golle]

Devs, hope you had nice weekends and great Cristmas holidays.
Here is som feedback related to particularly to this beta and current game state.

##################################
# Major Bugfix
##################################
- Fix all events related to Soviet Paranoia (value was always 0)

Paranoia fix is great. Now I really can play as Trotskiy and create the Fourth International. However, there are some unclear and bugged moments moments:
1. I observed 5 games with historical focuses from 1936 till 1942-43. All times when happend random "Great Purge" and a designer was purged - it was Yakovlev air design company. I am so lucky, or it is hardcoded?
2. When USSR ends paranoia focuses, it has some debuffs, related to war academies and officers purged. AI never removes these debuffs, even while joining the war. But it restores air design company (seems like it is in the same cathegory of decisions), which it does not use. Maybe some changes to priorities?
3. If you play not as Stalin but as left or right opposition, you can not remove debuffs from purges after the civil war ends. And you will have this debuffs till the end of your party. This is quite gamebraking and this issue exists since NSB release!

##################################
# AI
##################################

- Soviet Union no longer desires to be best buddies with Romania despite being instructed to ignore them for a while
- Ai weights on hiring advisors now makes more sense. You should see a better split between political advisors & research bureaus, and the AI no longer saves all PP for hiring chiefs at the exclusion of all else. [This has a pretty radical effect on early AI build-up, thus there may be some imbalance in the early game in this open beta - feedback especially welcome]
- AI have a higher weight on Captain of Industry advisors pre-1939

Fix with relations between USSR and Romania is also good. Soveits performance from 1936 till the end of 1938 is much better than in 1.12.7. But after researching Excavation and Construction technologies and completeng related to Agitprop focuses Soviets AI start to spam useless agitprops like "Golden Idol of the Capitalism", "More Metals" when it does not need more metals and spams descisions to improve or excavate resourses while having a good surplus with them. Excavation descisions also use quite a lot of factories, so AI lacks them for construction.

As for AI weights: well, now at first AI tries to hire the most expensive chiefs, when advisors and only after that spends PP to something else. These leads to following situations:
1. AI ignores type of experience (army, navy, airforce) it needs more. Just hires the most expensive chief. Also, many times it hires Airforce chief and after that takes a command sprit, which reduses Airfirce command cost: -75%. And never uses the result of this split, never hires any other related to airforce advisors and never replaces this spirit. However, it can save up to 150 PP for one advisor if the priorities would be different.
2. AI prioritises chiefs to changing it`s economy law. This leads to situations when AI switches to more efficent economy after 1-2 years when it had first opportunity to do this.
3. AI should consider that it`s war support can be slightly reduced to avoid following situations: USSR reaches 50% war support, switches to War Economy, it drops to 49%, immideatly demibilises it, after a mounth reaches 50% one more time and once more switches to war economy. Just wasting 150 PP.

I never mentioned that majors AI tries to appoint Captain of Industry advisors. Even Germany with discounted Hjalmar Schacht does not appoint him. Looks like this point needs more investigation.

P.S. Can you also view this bug: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...the-soviet-volunteer-group-is-broken.1563987/ ? Looks like Soviet Descision "Dispatch the Soviet Volunteer Group" is broken for four reasons because of many related mechanics have changed.

 

[Jochen_Mongolia]

The Hearts of Iron.... Brand? Interesting. Does that mean we're getting more than just HOI4 DLC next year? It's too early for HOI5, sooo.... maybe a console port?

Can't wait for that announcement HOI brand 2023.

 

[Razgriz13]

That might be ignored but anyway:
Shouldn't armored aa/at/arty be buffed in some way that makes them relevant? Maybe adding armored support companies would help.

 

[benjay2]

Hi team - QoL questions for future updates...
- One of the great QoL improvements was the ability to move the Divisions designed up and down so you could prioritise them easily when you are working out build queues. Is it possible or considered to do the same thing with the build selection screen for planes, tanks, etc? I.E. shifting my favourite naval bomber to the top, and my most hated inter war scout plane to the bottom for example?
- We can see how many ships we have lost, and we can see our equipment losses by checking in theatre details - but the only place we can see plane losses is currently in the area we have active planes in, and then it is only as an abstract graph. Is it possible to show what planes have been lost over time, to accidents, attrition, and in the air, for example? That would be very interesting!
-Is it possible to add the modifiers information to plane wing details when looking at squadrons? at the moment we know we have x interwar tac bombers and y basic tac bombers in a squadron, but not what the actual ground attack stat works out to be, for example. I tend to only use one plane type squadrons for this reason, but it could be helpful.

Of course these are only nice to haves, but thought I would offer the suggestions if its easy, or you felt they could add value...Thank you for the thought!

 

[Colombiano1492]

Can y’all fix the flag for National Socialist Chile, can y’all bring back the old one with the yellow blue white and Red considering it’s the historical flag of the MNS of Chile… being the more historical flag for VPS Chile

 

[Lamartine]

Can y’all fix the flag for National Socialist Chile, can y’all bring back the old one with the yellow blue white and Red considering it’s the historical flag of the MNS of Chile… being the more historical flag for VPS Chile

Can this be modded? I've modded new flags for countries in many of my games

 

[Sunsteel]

Can this be modded? I've modded new flags for countries in many of my games

Yeah sure could, would take about 30 seconds

 

[Alexander 'The Grape']

Having played around with these changes a bunch with others in the MP community, these may need some additional changes to make them work.

The previous vanilla MP "Meta" Tank design was a Basic Medium tank chassis with the most advanced AT tech line gun, a 3 man turret, 2x small cannon, the most advanced radio and one module as a personal preference. Engine/Armor picks vary, but usually 8km/hr minimum to keep up with mech, and any armor for breakthrough only - riveted being the only real choice. If you want to boost armor, its far more effective to add a single heavy TD with maximum armor than to boost the armor of the division overall.

In the open beta, there are some positives. First off, Small Cannon being more expensive means that cheaper designs may compete against them on cost alone. Radios are now more of a niche option, and can give less crazy breakthrough values.

However, the tank meta is still likely to remain very static. Armor on your main tanks remains a joke, exacerbated by partial piercing. Heavy Tanks still struggle to compete stat-for-stat with Mediums with their best guns being almost immediately made obsolete by Improved Medium Cannons insane effficiency. Meanwhile Light Tanks and Amphibs are hit hard by the Extra Machine Guns nerf.

I would ask to have a look into armor now partial piercing is a thing, to reward more than one division with super-high armor values. Maybe buff armor values across the board (especially for Heavy Tanks) and make it an average rather than the current weighted towards the highest div.

I'd also consider making Light Tanks more cost effective. Currently, the only Lights worth using are Light TDs due to their 50/battalion rather than 60/battalion size, which makes no sense!

Also, please consider improving SPGs. Our community is currently theorycrafting counters to an oppressive dominance of Mass Mob right side stalling out every front with guerrila tactics, almost guaranteed reinforce rate, and massive recovery rate buffs. We're trying to make absurd GBP soft attack tanks and quickly concluded it was far better to classify a 70 SA tank with an improved howitzer as a tank, rather than an SPG due to the arbitrary increase in combat width. SPGs need more buffs to be worth using at 3 combat width

 

[Simon_9732495]

I miss the „duplicate airwing“ button that duplicates wing composition mission and area.

 

[Colombiano1492]

Can this be modded? I've modded new flags for countries in many of my games

See the thing is idk how to mod… and after years of playing Hoi4, I’ve learned that I really don’t like mods

 

[Limyx826]

I don't know it is me but when I am fighting in Africa near Congo as Italy and selected Balanced cohesion there are always some gaps due to division speed and distance. Only when I selected loose cohesion then the divisions move to the proper places.

For example, the blue army ends up in the north side of the frontline due to initial push. However, their frontline in the field marshal frontline is at the south but they are at the north that is too far away from their designated frontline, so they just chill at the north while leaving the south defenceless.

 

[Sunsteel]

See the thing is idk how to mod… and after years of playing Hoi4, I’ve learned that I really don’t like mods

Go back to 1.10 in betas, grab the Chile flags (there are three in gfx\flags), and revert to the current version then make a mod in the launcher and put those flags in

 

[HNeutro]

See the thing is idk how to mod… and after years of playing Hoi4, I’ve learned that I really don’t like mods

You should suscribe to a mod called "Realistic & Immersive Country Flags - Uncensored Edition" if you like accurate historical flags.