Playing/testing my own mod for HOI3 German specific - new AAR

[Timotheus1]

Hello all.

I have developed a brand new mod for HOI3, tailored to a German specific playthrough.

The aim of the mod is to make everything more common sense and logical, so that a player looking at a specific tech, unit, industry tab and/or a political leader will think to himself "this makes sense!" as opposed to the current "WTF?".


Goals of the mod

1) The goal of the mod is to keep it simple, stupid (KISS), but change everything - and I mean EVERYTHING... so that it makes sense from a WW2 history nerd and common sense perspective.

2) Give the player hard choices at every tab/screen - no more "pick Hjalmar for the bonus" every game.

3) Redo OOB of all nations in game which matter (for example, all nations' divisions now have artillery attached to them at the start of the game, with the usual 4xINF, 1xART formula).



The mod is now done with the changes, but it is now in BETA state, as various techs costs and effects, unit costs, political leaders effects need to synergize well with each other to give the (German playing only) player a great experience.

Towards that (lofty) goal, I have changed everything, every tech, every unit, every combat mechanic.

I also aimed to give the player HARD CHOICES, so that there is no one best choice "no brainer" (for example, in vanilla always take Hjalmar Schacht for IC bonus).

This is the start of a brand new AAR from 1936 historical with a brand new mod (mine).

 

[Timotheus1]

Politics

First things first, the politics. Everything flows from the top down, and bad leadership will ruin everything else. We need to place the right people in the right places.

"Cadres decide everything" - J. V. Stalin


Again, the philosophy of the mod is to give choices to the player. Hjalmar is a good choice, but he does give a malus of 4% consumer goods. Meanwhile Thyssen gives a 10% bonus to peacetime consumer goods production....

https://imgur.com/ENcSg14


Intelligence, and there is a choice here also.
Do we go with the industrial specialist at a bonus 2% IC, or a research specialist at 1% IC bonus and supply consumption -10%?

https://imgur.com/aWnAofG


The crux of the matter, the laws of the country. If there's anything The Wire has taught me is that everything is systemic - cadres are well and good, but we need a good system to allow these people to flourish.

In game terms we want to synergize the ministers with the laws of the land.

Starting with Civil Laws:
Totalitarian systems seems best until we notice the daily dissent change hit of 10% (ouch).

https://imgur.com/1WRyQl0


Conscription Law:
This affects the industrial production capability of a nation as well as the military's readiness for war. Simply put, mobilization takes POPs from the industry, so each tier of mobilization should not be taken lightly...

https://imgur.com/BnjJifd

Economy laws:
These affect industrial capability, money, consumer goods and resources. A more laissez faire approach gives you money, while centralizing a country's economy will bring you bonuses in every other category but money.

Note the horrendous cost of total economic mobilization (65% malus money!).

https://imgur.com/6JFFlvO


Education:
Education costs money, but gives you a more highly educated populace (leadership bonus) but also indoctrinates it in your propaganda, making them more loyal to the regime/government (national unity changes and ruling party support).

To me, this makes much more REAL WORLD sense than whatever was there in vanilla.

https://imgur.com/piciXkH


Industrial Policy:
People not only like to eat, they also want to be entertained and have some luxury items. Taking care of their needs impacts your industrial capability (private capitalist factories produce consumer goods, they are not appearing out of thin air) but gearing up for a total war you want to have a more heavier industry emphasis... which makes people unhappy and forces you to allocate your now state controlled factories to produce the consumer goods (before produced by private sector) or face the consequences.

https://imgur.com/wbIdKeM


Training:
How well trained do you want your army to be?
You can churn out untrained units quickly, but training them to be world beaters will cost you time, money and supplies (makes sense, right?)

https://imgur.com/3z8quYl

 

[Timotheus1]

Military units and the philosophy of their modded design

I wanted ALL the units to be useful for the player and the AI. The worst designed area of the game was naval combat, where the clear winners were light cruisers and carriers with BB's and DD's being much less optimal choices.

I wanted to make ALL units matter and also to give HARD CHOICES...

Without further ado, here is the starting naval tab for Germany:

NAVY


https://imgur.com/3sNNlOG

As you can see, the BB is the king of sea attack. It is a beast.... but check out its anti air and IC cost.... Hmmmm.

All the ship classes have a purpose now.

BB is surface naval damage dealer.

Battlecruiser, a BB-lite if you will, is the best convoy raider.

A heavy cruiser is an all rounder.

A light cruiser is an anti-air specialist.

A destroyer is a great sub hunter, and also has great surface and air detection.

We all know what we use carriers for.




LAND

Same philosophy with land units. Everything is useful and synergizes into a complete system.

https://imgur.com/wDYytKO

Note how expensive armor is in IC.

One thing to notice immediately is that (almost) ALL UNITS HAVE WIDTH. There are no support units - these are brigades.

The only exception to this are the artillery units - AAA and arty with 0 width.

Engineers, military police - they fight.


AIR

Again, every unit is useful here.

https://imgur.com/ftzvsQj

Two engine bombers are kings of dealing soft damage, while CAS (stukas, typhoons, etc) deal with enemy tanks and AFV's - hard armor targets.

Carrier CAG is a jack of all trades as it includes light aircraft which are fighters and fighter-bombers in their group as well as naval bomers.

Land based Naval Bombers are convoy hunters and I have added the mission "convoy hunting" to their orders in-game.

This all makes common sense, right? Finally all units are useful.

Note: I have totally changed the combat mechanics for ALL combat in the mod, and the way those changes impact airplane combat is that planes do not lose ORG as quickly as in vanilla or BICE (planes should fly sortied continously, not once every month ! ).

 

[Timotheus1]

UNIT ROLES

Each unit has a specific role. I already have highlighted the air and naval units, it is time to delve into the land units a bit.

Engineers:

https://imgur.com/fyG5lKD

Armor:

https://imgur.com/VWylk3x

Armored Car:

https://imgur.com/FwKYfdG

Rangers:

https://imgur.com/0YfKGcg


Infantry is the jack of all trades - it hold ground, it attacks, it does everything... mediocre.

Armor is your breakthrough unit.

Tank destroyer and anti tank arty are your anti armor specialists - with research you will get big piercing and good hard attack stats.

Armored car recce brigade is used for scouting - and gives movement bonuses.

Rangers is a special light infantry unit. Each nation had elite ranger/jager units and so I gave rangers to ALL the nations. They are limited quantity (depending on the size of your armed forces) and are best used in rough terrain such as marshes, swamps etc.

Military Police are your occupation units - they can fight (of course they have width!) but they specialize in anti partisan and occupation duties (hence the high suppression stat on them).

Garrison are super slow infantry units - but they ARE infantry. They also have higher suppression than normal inf (because they get familiar with their area that they stay in for a long time).


It is up to the player to synergize all these stats and bonuses and make the specialized (or one-size-fits-all ?) divisions that they want to accomplish their country's tasks.

 

[Timotheus1]

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[Timotheus1]

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[Oof]

Just had a quick look and noticed a couple of things:
- TD has the same width as ARM but only uses about 2/3 of the MP ARM does, which makes sense since it's a Bgd an not a Reg. A width of 1.5 or 1 would make more sense.
- ARM has no bonus on plains. I would give them a attrition, combat and movement bonus.
- AC does get a bonus on plains for attriotion and movement but not for combat. I would add a bonus for combat as well.

In general and theory the changes seem to make sense. The question is though if these changes unbalance the game, i.e. the AI can't deal with it, or improve it? Do you have a download available for testing?

 

[kilen2015]

very intresting and impressive investment (in time to mod), i will follow, congrat !
if u search players when ready to test, count me in (y)
++

 

[serutan]

Just out of curiosity, why is it Germany only? The things you talk about would seemingly be applicable to any country, especially
once you got everything balanced out.

 

[Timotheus1]

Man, real life and playing Wargame Red Dragon has really cut my time

I should just dump the mod on a server for y'all to take a gander - what's the best file dumping website thats free?