To have another game with Civilization-like graphics poorly optimized and devoid of any content like Victoria 3? I'd rather have another 10 years of Hearts of Iron 4.
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As others have said, I don't see a pressing need for HOI5. They need to invest more time and resources into Vicky and CK3 if anything.
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The second paragraph is not a question; it contains controversial opinions.
For example, I clicked "Respectfully disagree" because I was opposed to reworking Germany and Japan, since I have paid for DLC that do that already.
Events in the last 24 hours have altered my opinion on that question, since the facts have changed....
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I don't want hoi5 right now, i'd rather the Paradox devs work with Robert Ballard in finding the Ark of the Covenant that sunk to the bottom of the mediterranean sea in a german uboat- I want to know what the secret 11th commandment was! Moses lied to us!
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More likely another flopping experiment. Fantasy or so.
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Are you referring to tinto talks? It’s almost certainly eu5, Johan has even confirmed it starts in 1337 and listed the historical reasons why.
Of course it’s EU5. But I doubt that after that HoI5 will follow, more “experiments” are most likely to happen.
I believe a future HOI V should follow the path of the future UE V in starting a little earlier. I think a good date to start would be 1933.
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You might not want to hear it, but Hearts of Iron is overdue for a new engine. The Clausewitz engine feels increasingly limited these days, while the Jomini engine is clearly superior in almost every respect.
Even though the Hearts of Iron player base remains strong, it would still be a good idea to upgrade the series to a next-generation engine—especially considering that Paradox may be planning to bring Hearts of Iron to platforms beyond just PC.
Ultimately, it likely depends on Paradox's engine plans for the next five years. If they intend to stick with Jomini, we could see a new Hearts of Iron not long after the next Europa Universalis release, since there would be little reason to delay. However, if Paradox plans to move beyond Jomini and develop an even more advanced engine, it could take much longer. In that case, they would likely release a "filler" game to test the new engine before using it on such a major IP.
My main hope for the Hearts of Iron successor is that it will be more accessible. Paradox's philosophy has been to create games that are easy to start but deep enough to keep players engaged for thousands of hours. With Hearts of Iron IV, they succeeded in making a game that holds your interest for 1000+ hours—but they made learning it extremely difficult, often requiring players to watch dozens of hours of tutorials on video platforms. I hope the next installment strikes a better balance between accessibility and depth.
Even though the Hearts of Iron player base remains strong, it would still be a good idea to upgrade the series to a next-generation engine—especially considering that Paradox may be planning to bring Hearts of Iron to platforms beyond just PC.
Ultimately, it likely depends on Paradox's engine plans for the next five years. If they intend to stick with Jomini, we could see a new Hearts of Iron not long after the next Europa Universalis release, since there would be little reason to delay. However, if Paradox plans to move beyond Jomini and develop an even more advanced engine, it could take much longer. In that case, they would likely release a "filler" game to test the new engine before using it on such a major IP.
My main hope for the Hearts of Iron successor is that it will be more accessible. Paradox's philosophy has been to create games that are easy to start but deep enough to keep players engaged for thousands of hours. With Hearts of Iron IV, they succeeded in making a game that holds your interest for 1000+ hours—but they made learning it extremely difficult, often requiring players to watch dozens of hours of tutorials on video platforms. I hope the next installment strikes a better balance between accessibility and depth.
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Are you allready at year 2300 by now?Every time someone makes one of these threads we push back the sunset date for HoI 4 by 6 months
Asking for a friend…
Isn't that the point HoI4 reached few years ago?
Important question: was it before, or after this threat was created?
I doubt Paradox Studio would do fantasy grand strategy game, when another studio under umbrella of Paradox Interactive released and is actively developing Age of Wonders 4. Their target audience would be too similar, imho.
How exactly?
I heard this engine argument many times. I would like to know, how exactly changing engine would make my game better.
...well, I do agree that 10 hours to learn basics is not that much.
Uh, no. HoI4 as-released was probably the easiest to learn basics out of all Paradox games. There are literally colorful buttons, you have to click for game more or less play itself, and by the time you fail and you get total state extinction, you should already know more or less what you should google.
I do agree that modern gigantic national focus trees made game less casual-friendly, through.
Jomini isn't a separate engine; it is additional scripting capability added onto the Clausweitz engine; see it from the horse's mouth here: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...engine-and-hois-future.1733036/#post-30253535
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HoI4 had many experiments in game design, some worked better than others and starting from scratch would allow successes to be done better and the failures to be replaced.
HoI4 has become a strategy game with a branching narrative visual nove(focus trees) stapled to it and it's using more chapters(trees) as dlc bait.
Unfortunately branching narratives are a pain to maintain and the bigger they get the harder it is (focus tree compatibility).
Mission trees in EU4 are *a* superior version as it encourages you to do stuff instead of the being the stuff you do.
Another thing is CIC is a failure and really should be money at this point. It was a decent simplification at the start but after the global market came it's grown more complicated than cash
HoI4 has become a strategy game with a branching narrative visual nove(focus trees) stapled to it and it's using more chapters(trees) as dlc bait.
Unfortunately branching narratives are a pain to maintain and the bigger they get the harder it is (focus tree compatibility).
Mission trees in EU4 are *a* superior version as it encourages you to do stuff instead of the being the stuff you do.
Another thing is CIC is a failure and really should be money at this point. It was a decent simplification at the start but after the global market came it's grown more complicated than cash
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The thing is, HoI5 will be exactly the same big experiment in game design, because that is just consequence of modern Paradox style of game development.
No, they are not.
(unless you have deep simulation of finances) Money doesn't matter, production does. If you don't have money to pay your workers, but you have butter, you give them butter. They wanted to buy it either way. And if you don't have dollars to buy tanks from USA, then sell them toasters and you will have dollars.
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Ok, but starting from scratch allows you take make the entire game work around versions of systems that work and remove/rework ones that don't.
Focus trees should not be a "click and wait" feature. They should be a set of objectives you meet to get content feedback. More content means focuses have to keep being made shorter in order to access the content in a reasonable time frame. However if they were more like EU4 where they are a set of objectives to achieve then the time between focuses doesn't matter.
You can then outsource more content to actual gameplay.
Civilian factories *was* a decent abstraction but now the arms market has introduced the ability to trade CIC it's become more verbose than just trading currency/gold reserves. A new player would instantly understand what currency means but explaining CIC is more effort for no reason
And then you end in the same situation, where new systems are added on top of each other, some of them working, some not.
And that only in optimistic variant where good systems are actually kept and bad systems are actually removed. I played Crusader Kings 3 shortly after release and I would say it was more fifty-fifty
How do you want outsource Wehrmacht opposing Hitler to gameplay? Or expanding SS recruitment? Or Ribentrop-Molotow pact? Or allowing autonomy of military schools? Or demanding Anshluss/Sudetenland/Danzig?
National focuses, as much as they failed, have their role. And their role is to simulate all these little forces of history that put the world into the story HoI wants to tell.
That is just moving complexity around. Ok, so we buy tanks for cash. Where we get cash from?
Yeah, creating a new game allows for more innovation and some might not land. That's called progress.
You can change government by actually creating a government system more complex than a pie chart, expand SS recruitment by having a system of 'special' forces, the R-M pact can occur as a result of having an actual diplomacy system, demanding territory can happen by having units next to the country you wish to threaten. The tree can be used to trigger scripted content, and the systems can allow things to happen organically. Or do you think all of the above should only be allowed to happen where a content designer decided to add an explicit case?
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The UI is just so much more intuitive now, and a major reason for that is the addition of interactive tooltips starting with Imperator. The menus are also much cleaner. In Hearts of Iron IV, the screen is basically cluttered 100% of the time—with menus, submenus, sub-submenus, and icons stacked on top of each other.
Look, I’m really trying hard not to get myself cancelled here... but if a game requires you to watch tutorials on a third-party platform just to understand how to play, that’s going to alienate a lot of potential players. I get that this might not be a concern for veteran players, but from a business perspective, it's definitely something to consider.
And of course, a newer tech base makes the game more compatible overall. It’s easier to port to other platforms, easier for even inexperienced modders to create content, and easier for developers to implement new mechanics.
A better engine doesn’t automatically improve everything for everyone, but it does improve a lot of things for a lot of people—and ideally, it comes without any major downsides (except, of course, that they’ll probably try to sell you all the DLCs again).
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That's called 'changing things around'. Progress happens only when world after changes is better than before changes.
How many such systems?
Agreeing to such demands is suboptimal choice. The only thing victim gets is time, but aggressor gets the same amount of time, and then more resources to exploit, to create bigger army, to bully more countries into giving him more territory. On the other hand, allowing such coercion give strongest nation ability to increase its power without any cost at all.
Such awful mechanics is acceptable in HoI4 only because HoI4 has very strong narrative aspect, i.e. it is telling very concrete story which happens to include countries actually giving their land through coercion.
That's mirage. Everyone imagine such system, but noone ever implemented it. Of course, system that doesn't exist can allow any expected outcome. It can be also perfectly balanced to drift towards historical outcomes at exactly expected ratio. Its only problem is that it doesn't exist.
But lets imagine such system. We want Wehrmacht putsch to be doable in first year of game (for balance reasons), and such putsch to happen organically, without content designer intervention. For that, we need either some kind of 'Wehrmacht putsch progress bar', or some prince-like character doing his own machinations independently of player (probably to increase wehrmacht putsch progress bar). But wait. For such character to exist, and for such bar to be in well-balanced position, for possible actions to be available, some content designer actually has to make design decision to include them.
In context of Hearts of Iron: actually yes, I stand in position that most political machinations and ideological projects should be build on national focus trees (or other content designer design decisions), not on 'universal' system. Universal systems tend to move in unexpected directions, and I happen to like both historical HoI4, and absolute political &&&&&&&&&&& randomized focuses are (through I like them separated).
I will go even further: I consider each workhour spend on chasing mirage of universal complex system to be wasted time, that could be spent better on ironing out problems with national focus system.
I don't think UI depends on engine that much. More specifically, in good architecture presentation should be mostly independent from deep code like world rendering, input handling, asset management, or even gameplay framework like handling scripts. Granted, I never saw Clausewitz internals. In other words, it should be possible to add interactive tooltips without touching deep code..
Overall, I heard engine argument many times, but I don't think I ever saw deep technical reasoning why newer one is better. My position may sound unfair: probably the only people who have any knowledge about Clausewitz and are not under NDA are few people who made HoI2 spinoff two decades ago. But game engine is realm of deep technical knowledge.
I don't want to cancel you, and sorry I sounded that way. I agree with you that games, even grand strategies, should be made easy to get a grasp of (through I want to note these are grand strategy games, and they should have some level of complexity, that player have to understand to win the game on difficulty higher than Easy). Where we disagree is that I consider HoI4 easy to learn to casual level. I actually found it easier to learn than Imperator: Rome. I:R overwhelmed me, while in HoI4 I knew from the start what I want to achieve, and game threw some colorful icons telling me what should I do to keep relatively competitive (in relation to easymode AI, but still).
I do agree that UX could be much better. My personal dream is for game to save course of the battle, tick-by-tick, and allow me to replay them in-game.
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