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Hi, I am new to the forum, albeit a long time player of HOI4, so I am not sure if this is the right place to post some things I found in the latest patch (Oak v1.4.1). I just played a campaign with Japan and love how far the game has come, but in this campaign I encountered a very painful (for my Japanese Army) behaviour by the AI when it comes to guarding territory, especially Islands. I had deployed an Army of 30 Units under one Field Marshal to guard my Holdings in the Pacific. I deployed them and then left their orders unchanged for a long time, so they should have just dug in and defend the islands. But for Some reason the troops of this army never quite stood still. They always moved around between Islands und over time I lost most of the troops while they were transporting from one island to another. The US and UK had overpowerd my Navy and controlled the sea. They didn't manage to take a single Island that had troops on it (my Troops were strong and the fortifications built up) but as my troops where killed while transporting around over and over again I lost most of the Islands without a fight.
After I spotted this problem I saw that also other armies I had ordered to guard certain areas used sea transports more often that they should, since the sea was controlled by hostile navies and there would have been easy and direct paths via land.
Is this something other players have seen as well or was this maybe a onetime quirk in this campaign?
 
If you leave them with an active garrison order they may move around and get killed on the sea. I usually give my island garrisons no order at all to make sure they stay put. The developers have said that troops getting killed at sea is a priority to change.
 
If you leave them with an active garrison order they may move around and get killed on the sea. I usually give my island garrisons no order at all to make sure they stay put. The developers have said that troops getting killed at sea is a priority to change.

Thanks for the answer! Feeling kind of stupid now as turning off the garrison order is something I should have thought of myself :p
 
Never ever use garrison order. It's not rely functioning. I don't recommend defensive orders either. Well, to be honest: Order your troops manually. That works. ;-)
 
Never ever use garrison order. It's not rely functioning. I don't recommend defensive orders either. Well, to be honest: Order your troops manually. That works. ;-)

I think the garrison order is fine for guarding ports, but I've tried using it for tackling resistance and it just kept shuffling units around pointlessly, so I don't use it for that any more.
 
How do we put in suggestions for improvements with the game?

If you register your game, you'll get access to a suggestions sub-forum. That's probably the best place, unless you live in Stockholm and can bribe the devs with alcohol :).
 
Long time Hearts of Iron player, first time poster. Played HOI2 for a thousand hours, though that's an estimate because this was before steam and their dreadful clock. . Played HOI3 for less time, but still many hundreds of hours.

I played HOI4 back around Christmas and then put it down after only 20 hours or so. Too many issues at the time. Here are my thoughts on OAK now:

1. Massive improvement, good work.
2. Volunteer forces (nationalist Spain specifically) throw divisions at the Maginot line and other defended areas and take massive casualties. This is clearly a bug. They do this when they only have one division in the area. This is suicide. Worse, it will cause the German AI, for example, to join in the attacks on the Maginot line. This depletes Germany of tanks and men. It's all suicide and it hurts the game experience.
3. I defeated Germany and Italy using France by mid to late 1940, and the only reason I was successful was that both the Germans and the Italians murdered too many of their own men and lost too much equipment by being too aggressive. Being aggressive with movement is one thing, but attacking in the Alps or over a highly defended river in Belgium and taking 8 or 10 to 1 casualties is insane. I let them do this for six months and then counterattacked with my 80 percent planning bonus. Winning was way too easy. I loaded up Germany as they were collapsing and everything seemed to be in order. They were producing things that made sense and still had plenty of manpower. The suicide attacks had simply run them out of equipment. Either the AI needs to be told to build up more basic supplies (art, infantry equipment, main battle rifles) or, perhaps the better solution, the AI needs to tone down their aggressiveness against highly defensible areas, especially the Italians in the Alps. In reading about other players games, the Italians seems to make the same mistake in the Alps every time.
4. The Italians never used their air force in Southern France. It would have helped, as I had most of my air force up north. This seems like a bug but then again I guess they were also at war with Britain. I didn't load them up to see if they were using their planes.
5. I had a crash to desktop every ten minutes playing the French from 1939 onward, but then I played an entire Italian campaign through 1941 and never had a single crash. Not sure what to make of this.

Thanks for all the hard work. Hope this helps.

Edit: I forgot one thing--- during the peace after the end of the war, units of many nations were stranded and couldn't walk/drive back to their home country. If they were two countries in, they were stuck. Border country and they could return.
 
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