Stupid question but.... why is this game so popular?

[insanebe]

First off i played this game at launch years ago and drifted away to other games (stellaris/CK3) because after playing as all the axis allied powers there wasn't much else to do, in my mind at least.

I recently checked SteamDB just to see what people were playing and was suprised to see Hearts of Iron 4 consitantly growing its player base.

So i have to ask what did i miss that makes this game so popular right now?



I

 

[General Tao]

How did North Korea survive its war with the US? Did they need to take the White House?

They did? Have you not seen the documentary Olympus Has Fallen?

Thankfully Gerard Butler took it back before the clock ticked over midnight and US capitulated. Still can't believe Obama let that happen on his watch.

 

[BurningEGO]

Oh gosh yes of course. The modding scene is incredible. You'll have to forgive me, I've never done anything but Vanilla HOI in ~2400 hours.

I have +4000 hours here, and I have only played Kaiserreich like once or twice, and not even for 1 hour.

Also, regarding Alt History, for example, Byzantine being formable, that is not an excuse for the amount of players. Because Byzantium is also formable in EU4 and other games.

Lack of choice in the genre plus being essentially the greatest electronic fidget spinner for WWII nerds with autism ever invented.

I have been saying that for a while. The moment Paradox starts getting real competition that shines where they (Paradox) fail to deliver, you will see a lot of people moving and abandoning these titles.

Specially true with the current DLC farm and DLC prices. They can only continue with this policy because they have been lucky all these years with pratically 0 competition.

The moment that another company starts doing historical accurate games like these, properly, it will be the end of Paradox. And I am sorry to those that think Paradox's games are historically accurate, but their games are far from historical, and they only sell their own view of things. OP Sweden for instance. Which explains why Sweden was only a Great Power for less than 100 years (right?). In many cases, they do not even speak about historical things, or are biased towards one side because of... audience. I remember when a lot of Spanish people complained during Golden Century dev diaries - Paradox decided to change things for Spain. But doing so created an unbalance - others that were stronger in real life actually got weaker in comparison to Spain. I protested and actually understand about history (real history with real facts, not my opinion or my own distorted view) but my comments were never given importance - just like in here (HOI4), when they decided to give a ton of extra resources to Sweden. Sweden, a tiny producer of tungsten, receiving a ton of tungsten that suddently migrated from Portuguese soil into Swedish lands! The usual stuff. (for those unaware a lot of those minerals in the northern provinces of Sweden belonged to Portugal but they decided to move some from Portuguese lands into Sweden in order to give Sweden some more importance in relation to Germany... the problem is, that Sweden was always a tiny producer of Tungsten in real life).

I am still perplexed how the amount of Chinese comments around recent dev diaries haven't made the devs change their mind at all. Because they clearly tend to bend the knee when the audience demands it.

 

[Tisifoni12]

Because it's the best Grand Strategy WWII game there is.; unfortunately . . .

It is continually re-worked, which brings some improvements, but there I think some problems with some of the basic mechanics that limit improvement.

 

[Cornutus]

just like in here (HOI4), when they decided to give a ton of extra resources to Sweden. Sweden, a tiny producer of tungsten, receiving a ton of tungsten that suddently migrated from Portuguese soil into Swedish lands! The usual stuff. (for those unaware a lot of those minerals in the northern provinces of Sweden belonged to Portugal but they decided to move some from Portuguese lands into Sweden in order to give Sweden some more importance in relation to Germany... the problem is, that Sweden was always a tiny producer of Tungsten in real life).

I believe a lot of problems come from in-game interface miscommunication.

Swedish tungsten represents not just tungsten but high-grade steel and some other "rare metals". But because it's called "tungsten" it gets misinterpreted as one specific resource. I recall in previous games, you had a resource called "rare metals" and everything was fine, why change it?

I am still perplexed how the amount of Chinese comments around recent dev diaries haven't made the devs change their mind at all. Because they clearly tend to bend the knee when the audience demands it.

China has never been an official market for HOI4 because supposedly the CCP wants China to be represented as a "single-state", without all the cliques and the nationalist-communist division, as such it could be assumed HOI4 does not have a big market there.

I don't quite understand why "Spain treatment" with the country splitting after the game start cannot be applied to China to get around the issue.


Also I would look at the bug reports that last for years without getting fixed, often for fairly small bugs. It's kind of hard to say that regarding HOI4 the knee is bent towards the audience, as if that were the case, those bugs would have been fixed ages ago.

 

[billcorr]

Swedish tungsten represents not just tungsten but high-grade steel and some other "rare metals

I don't know if the developers have ever publicly stated that "Swedish Tungsten is high grade steel or rare metals".

They might have.

But people might be confusing Hearts of Iron III (which had rare metals) and imposing their memories on HOI4.

 

[Cornutus]

I don't know if the developers have ever publicly stated that "Swedish Tungsten is high grade steel or rare metals".

They might have.

But people might be confusing Hearts of Iron III (which had rare metals) and imposing their memories on HOI4.

They explicitly stated it around the time they revised the resources.

Not going to look for the explicit post, but the tungsten issue was brought up, and the response from the devs was "it represented high-grade steel and other stuff that was rare".

 

[Leyland 211]

I recall in previous games, you had a resource called "rare metals" and everything was fine, why change it?

Rare *materials* in HOI3 was itself abstracted though, and included a lot of resources such as (presumably) rubber, which 4 made separate. I prefer a lot of things about 3 over 4, mainly in terms of the actual warfare, but resources, production and economy are areas I feel have been improved upon.

 

[Xerberous]

All it needed to do was to bleed the US dry and white peace them out. That's it. Without US sponsorship of the USSR and UK, the war would have ended in an instant.

How should they do so? In fact, the US never had to go all in, the military spendings in the USA (including all support for their allies) peaked at about 36% of the GDP compared with Germany with more than 62 % - and the German run-up started in 1937 while the US basically started in 1941. There was much room for the US to punch harder and harder, while Germany was fighting with everything they had.

And to be honest, Germany profited massively from - sorry to say this - luck and incompetence of its enemies. Without the Mechelen incident, there is a very realistic chance that the invasion of the Benelux and France would have failed already in 1940 and in the east, the Red Army performed a sad clowns party at least until the end of autumn 1941.

So no, without changes in the political boundary conditions, there was no plausible way for a German "victory".

P.S.
With your claims regarding stuff like the Ratte you have a valid point - it would be much better if they had locked these things away behind an "Enable crazy stuff button".

 

[Cornutus]

How should they do so? In fact, the US never had to go all in, the military spendings in the USA (including all support for their allies) peaked at about 36% of the GDP compared with Germany with more than 62 % - and the German run-up started in 1937 while the US basically started in 1941. There was much room for the US to punch harder and harder, while Germany was fighting with everything they had.

Two words: Korea & Vietnam.

I believe you are looking at everything from the perspective of "Victory whatever it takes" approach, where indeed the US is fighting a "life or death" war. That's not the case in WW2.

If Japan wins in the Pacific: the US loses the Philippines and a couple of islands. Not even Hawaii.

If Germany wins in Europe: the US doesn't lose anything.

North Korea held out and exists today: despite the US announcing rationing of strategic resources.

Vietnam outright defeated the US, even though the US surely could have devoted more resources to the War in Vietnam.

If Germany managed to stall US naval invasions, that would be victory for them.

And to be honest, Germany profited massively from - sorry to say this - luck and incompetence of its enemies. Without the Mechelen incident, there is a very realistic chance that the invasion of the Benelux and France would have failed already in 1940 and in the east, the Red Army performed a sad clowns party at least until the end of autumn 1941.

Completely agree.

So no, without changes in the political boundary conditions, there was no plausible way for a German "victory".

Well you could do things two ways: you could either allow for an "Endless stalemate" or alternatively indeed put a boundary that let's say "10 million dead" is the moment the US gets "make love not war" protests and withdraws.

Otherwise railroading things to "US will always win no matter what you do" is kind of lame and implausible.

 

[Secret Master]

I don't know if the developers have ever publicly stated that "Swedish Tungsten is high grade steel or rare metals".

They might have.

But people might be confusing Hearts of Iron III (which had rare metals) and imposing their memories on HOI4.

I swear one day I will find the post (podcat I think) that specifically mentioned Swedish “tungsten” as this in HOI4.

There were other posts about chromium in the same vein. Since hoi4 doesn’t have different qualities of iron and coal, this was a compromise.

If I had more time, I’d also talk about how the trade system simulates this kind of thing with oil and how it makes sense for the west and Stalin to trade oil back and forth.

 

[Joshua Happytree]

I swear one day I will find the post (podcat I think) that specifically mentioned Swedish “tungsten” as this in HOI4.

Especially since Sweden produced very little tungsten during WWII Mere 0.52% of total world production in 1936-1945. It was iron ore, high quality iron ore IRL.

Client Challenge

@billcorr Thanks for the table! I was not searching the forum actually, your post tops the whole of Google for "wwii sweden tungsten production"!

 

[BurningEGO]

I swear one day I will find the post (podcat I think) that specifically mentioned Swedish “tungsten” as this in HOI4.

There were other posts about chromium in the same vein. Since hoi4 doesn’t have different qualities of iron and coal, this was a compromise.

If I had more time, I’d also talk about how the trade system simulates this kind of thing with oil and how it makes sense for the west and Stalin to trade oil back and forth.

Yes I believe I also saw something about Chromium. But I was specifically speaking about Tungsten.

It would also make a lot more sense for Chromium to be reserved as a "rare minerals" mix, than Tungsten.

Chromium has countless uses in the military industry.

Tungsten, is largely, just for armor piercing ammunition.

Still it makes little sense for me to migrate resources from Portugal into Sweden out of thin air. If you want to increase Swedish resources, that is one thing. But migrating some from 1 country into another, is another completely different topic.

Plus it probably causes Portuguese sell orders to be even smaller than before. I mean, Portugal was one of the few countries that the Reich paid in GOLD for resources (most trades the Reich did were barter based due to insuficient money). Tungsten was that important for Germany. And Portugal one of the few places where they could get it from and in large quantities (another place was Spain, where Germany got rights to a few mines due to assistance provided during Spanish Civil War, but most of these mines either were not being used or had to be made from scratch, so that is why production was so low on Spain for most of the time but skyrocketed all of a sudden). But right now, it seems largely irrelevant since there is no reason to import from Portugal and not from Sweden, specially since you probably already own a direct land connection to Sweden anyway.

 

[Caeric]

I guess all rarer metals production like nickel, molybdenum, cobalt, titanium etc. all get folded into either tungsten or chromium depending on their applications.

 

[klopkr]

I'll say that I mostly play so I can click the little guys to make satisfying encirclement and movements on the map and then get to see myself own the whole thing. That and making silly historical what ifs.

Microing in HoI4 is like super satisfying chess.

Personally I don't really care for all the extra stuff I have to do to get to it.

 

[one4crisis]

You want you Motherland(or you dream Motherland）stronger than it in the history,right?

 

[GermanDave]

Cries in the Command and Conquer series.

C&C Generals Zero Hour was such a moddable game

True. I remeber how comfy the weather effects were as I played an obscure mod called 'CnC-Europe' that added the Eu as a faction. However, crashes were a recurring problem. I have severe doubts that PDX will ever let us play as Al Qaeda or let alone make an RTS title post 1945. I wouldn't mind a more aggressive exploration of the asymmetry problem in general though pre 1945 if need be.

RIP that barrel of explosives on wheels in the comically censored German version. Those were the days.

 

[pro.gamer.69]

1. The vast majority of HOI4 players on MP servers were high school and university student-age, usually from second/third tier university programs (liberal arts, sometimes economics, few STEM or law/business/med school). Very rarely would you see someone in their 30-40s with a career, a family or even a girlfriend (quite common to say that "I abandoned HOI4 after I got a gf").

what multiplayer games is this not true of?

 

[Cornutus]

what multiplayer games is this not true of?

War in the East from Gary Grigsby I heard was different.

 

[Drakken]

War in the East from Gary Grigsby I heard was different.

It's not a live-twitch multiplayer game, but a server-based PBEM system. Much more easier for us old folks who have a career and kids.

Even then, I play WITE in single-player against the AI.

 

[Supermercado99]

It's digital crack for me. Once I start playing I could go for hours trying to get the next focus, win the next battle etc... It's how I imagine the people who sink thousands of dollars into lootboxes in games feel.