HOI4 Dev Diary - Stability and War Support

[safe-keeper]

This game is slowly turning into a game I actually want to play all the way to 1948 . Looking good.

 

[Captured Joe]

As I already mentioned, civil factories can't work everywhere. For example, they do not work in licensing stuff.
1 factory can build endless amount of factories. So, giving that one factory in the exchange for the tank or plane is not worthy at all.
You usually paid with some final amount of something. Money (tied to gold), resources, mutual exchange of techs, whatever else.

Maybe that's why the AI never uses licencing either. It's completely useless (besides a little flavour) and needs an overhaul.

 

[pvt.conners]

I've seen licensing used extensively in multiplayer sessions I've played, so I wouldn't call it useless.
Especially when you have several players playing as the allies/axis. The Commonwealth especially benefits from this.

Of course I only play with a small group of people, so the current meta is most likely different.

 

[alssindi123]

Will War Support affect the following?

- Justify war time (and cost in PP).
- World tension limit and PP cost required for guarantees (the famous French "Why Die for Danzig?")
-Likelihood your allies respond to call to arms (based on their WS, and perhaps based on whether your war is offensive or defensive).

Hope it does.

 

[Bunnytob]

Kinda hoping you can choose which one to use, but...

 

[Achab]

Can we hope that country specific conscription restrictions will be reworked?

Otherwise after chewing through all the necessary focuses to allow you to rise the conscription laws you will be hammered down by this new War Support mechanic.

 

[CrazyZombie]

I've seen licensing used extensively in multiplayer sessions I've played, so I wouldn't call it useless.
Especially when you have several players playing as the allies/axis. The Commonwealth especially benefits from this.

Of course I only play with a small group of people, so the current meta is most likely different.

MP Licensing is completely different situation, where everyone can focus in one sphere and just exchange most advanced techs with others.

Still, I prefer playing in SP, where at least I'm not restricted by "Greatest Division Template Of All Times" and other well known features/exploits, which completely ruin immersion of the game.

 

[pvt.conners]

Yeah, that is why I play only with a small group of friends, we prefer to use more natural/historical division designs and don't use any exploits

 

[Hans Clausen]

EXCUSE ME, INSPECTOR HANS IS HERE.

I discovered something, the red phone - classic -
BUT THERE IS A NEW BUTTON.

And here's my theory.

The new button is for management of spies and the red phone is like XP for improve it.

Inspector out

 

[American Traveler]

Very cool, but please change the AI calculation which allows for 10 or 15 to 1 losses on offensive actions. No WW2 country saw that in real life on a campaign level. When Russia accepted heavier losses to push the Germans back, they weren't taking 10 to 1 losses, and they are had perfectly logical reasons for taking the 3 to 1 losses they saw. There is no logical reason for Italy to lose 1 million men in six or seven months of fighting in the Alps, where the French defenders lose less than 50,000, nor for Germany to lose 1 million men in the same time period in a similar manner somewhere else. This just didn't happen. Even when politicians got involved and intervened in military affairs, (Hitler 1942) this was still not done. Hitler ordered maniacal defense, not insane attacks over the course of six months. The closet example of anything like this in history is WW1, but even then campaigns that were particularly bloody for attackers were no where close to 10 to 15 to 1. In fact, the Somme and Verdun and the Marne were basically like 1.3 or 1.4 to 1.

10 to 1 would never have happened at a division level for any real period of time. Only at the squad level during a brief window.

This is game breaking. I cannot be the only person on here to notice this-- and in fact I have seen others mention this problem, or seen AARs basically win the game simply by "turtleing" until the AI is out of manpower. I suppose the reason this has not been fixed is because it involves dealing the with AI which is very tricky. Still, there must be a way to fix this. I know it can be fixed because this company has fixed this issue before. I have been playing Hearts of Iron for ten years, and in other iterations of the game, this game-breaking issue was not present. I believe in HoI 2 the AI was allowed better intel than human players and was very cagey about engaging in a one-sided battle. When a one-sided battle would begin, the AI would quickly call it off, seemingly simulating a probing action. How was this handled in previous iterations of this game?

Can you program the AI to look at the losses they are taking and pause the action? Along with this, perhaps change planning bonus and give much higher bonuses over a much shorter duration of time. So Italy attacks with 150% planning bonus, which basically runs down to 50% after three days of fighting, afterwards to decrease much slower, and then when the loses start hitting 3 or 4 to 1, Italy calls off the Assault. Perhaps code the AI to consider reinforcements the defenders could bring in within a certain geographic distance, which might tip the the odds of battle and thus the calculation against attack. Now that battles last so much longer in HoI 4, defenders can reinforce good defensive position almost at will. France can cycle defensive troops in-- they lose their entrenchment bonus, sure, but they are still fighting at over 100% efficiency, against Italian or German attackers at 15% efficiency.

Finally, perhaps the AI should be altered based on who it is fighting. If fighting other AI, maybe everything can remain the same. I have noticed the AI isn't as good at defending (France often leaves Maginot guarded by 1 division with no artillery, or no divisions at all. AI rarely cycles troops in defense as well as possible) than the average human player. Perhaps the AI attack or "mission success chance" calculation should be nerfed against human players. Maybe this isn't a long-term solution, but at least this would make my games playable past 1941.

Thank you for your time.

 

[man0lo]

As I already mentioned, civil factories can't work everywhere. For example, they do not work in licensing stuff.
1 factory can build endless amount of factories. So, giving that one factory in the exchange for the tank or plane is not worthy at all.
You usually paid with some final amount of something. Money (tied to gold), resources, mutual exchange of techs, whatever else.

Civilian factories represent money in the game.I think this is right cuz as I said after the abandonment of the rule of "Gold Standard"....The productivity;manufacturing;construction etc of each State started to be counted as factors of wealth...
Civilian factories do exactly this job in the game... They build products;infrastructure and many kinds of building...so they reflect money.

1 factory can build endless amount of factories

Yes of course! Money can make endless amount of money if u use it correctly...This doesnt mean that money hasnt value after a point.
A country has the motivation to exchange its resources,techs,licenses etc for Civilian factories in order to increase its production capabilities ..aka money!

This is how I explain in my mind the usage of Civ factories in the game as money.

PS: I dont know much about how licences work in the game since I got the expansions lately.

 

[him_15]

So is there any hint from the Dev that what the next diary is about?

 

[Dan1109]

Hints are on Tuesday normally

 

[HaikuEU]

Very cool, but please change the AI calculation which allows for 10 or 15 to 1 losses on offensive actions. No WW2 country saw that in real life on a campaign level.

Can't agree more. But I think the problem is within the battle engine itself rather than with the AI:

Instead of the AI (commander) to check the battle loss ratio, it should be implemented at the division level: It should "break" when facing heavy casualites and then lose any offensive capabilites until reinforced. This would also put the AI and the player on the same foot here.

Troops morale and fatigue are vastly underestimated in the game. I'm afraid it's a design choice to appeal to a larger audience that want to move and attack unimpeded with their army.

 

[alssindi123]

I hope we see a mechanic where you spend PP to amplify or dampen the effects of increases/decreases in War Support (propaganda basically). Right now PP seems to be an early game thing only, and the player never has to worry about it medium/long run.

 

[Nibbalover1859]

i really hope that wont be another DLC

 

[Nibbalover1859]

more dynamic politics would be cool

 

[Nodfor]

Currently a major problem in the game is the air meta - the air war is so important that you see strange strategies in MP by players that are completely unrealistic and unhistorical - like Italy and the UK producing only planes and nothing else. By having strat bombing give nationwide penalties to the strat bombed nations, you reinforce the air meta even more.

Often in MP games, a player from one side will make (or receive by lend lease) several strat bombers and strat bomb the enemy side by changing targeted air regions constantly, forcing enemy players to waste their time chasing his strats bombers all the time. This results in the game feeling more like an arcade game, instead of grand strategy. If you proceed with these changes, this tactic will be used more often, making the game feel arcade even more, at least until most MP servers decide to ban strat bombing completely in their rulesets.

 

[Wraith11B]

To be fair, that's almost exactly what happened in the actual war... the air forces didn't just constantly pound one target. The difference is that the interception could occur more often in the actual flight than can happen in the game.

 

[billcorr]

Currently a major problem in the game is the air meta - the air war is so important that you see strange strategies in MP by players that are completely unrealistic and unhistorical - like Italy and the UK producing only planes and nothing else. By having strat bombing give nationwide penalties to the strat bombed nations, you reinforce the air meta even more.

Often in MP games, a player from one side will make (or receive by lend lease) several strat bombers and strat bomb the enemy side by changing targeted air regions constantly, forcing enemy players to waste their time chasing his strats bombers all the time. This results in the game feeling more like an arcade game, instead of grand strategy. If you proceed with these changes, this tactic will be used more often, making the game feel arcade even more, at least until most MP servers decide to ban strat bombing completely in their rulesets.

Congrats on Post #1!

Good point about the air war mechanics producing strange machinations by players in multiplayer games.

Here is a description of the airwar in a game played yesterday, 9/24/2017. In the game, the Axis suffered a 11:1 loss ratio against the sole player of Allied airwar.

The air war went more or less as expected, I expected we would lose it, hard, even though Germany had 6 full lines on fully upgraded 1940 fighters and one line on fully upgraded 1940 CAS, as the Axis cannot have one air controller, while the Allies can and due to the air bug, that pretty much makes it impossible, unless you screw over Germanys land and focus on all air with Germany. However I did not expect the 11 to 1 kill ratio we experienced, the kill ratio shouldn't have been that bad, as we had the best possible fighters and even though we did not have the agility bonus from Operational Integ and had 5% less air superiority mission efficiency, an 11 to 1 ratio was just weird.

This is because Axis was suffering from the air bug with planes split between Hungary, Germany, and Italy,

The bottom line is: @Nodfor raises a good point that the airwar mechanics leads to some strange gyrations by players in MP games. The reflections on a MP game played on 9/25/2017 illustrate what players do in MP games to overcome the limitations of the game design.