The Butterfly Effect: A British AAR

[TheButterflyComposer]

Maybe I am looking through rose tinted spectacles but there was something about HOI2 that lent itself better to those sorts of obscure details and meandering diversions in the AARs it spawned. You just don't seem to get them in HOI4 ones so much.

HOI4 is the big dumb sandbox to play in. I want to play a us game that's isn't boring? Set it so the place explodes into five civil wars and go. Want everyone in the world to be monarchist? Make it so. Want to just kill everyone as Germany and not think about the consequences? You can do that too.

 

[El Pip]

Maybe I am looking through rose tinted spectacles but there was something about HOI2 that lent itself better to those sorts of obscure details and meandering diversions in the AARs it spawned. You just don't seem to get them in HOI4 ones so much.

I think there is something in that, I'm just not sure what. HOI3 could have attracted obscure detail and meandering works as well, it just didn't.

I think the HOI4 focus system discourages this sort of thing, details are brushed under the carpet behind simple 'focuses'. Why bother looking into the reasons why/how a thing might happen, when the option is right there in the game? And in fairness I get the impression they were much more trying for grand strategy, the supreme ruler should not be bothered about every lowly divisional commander and the exact brigades in said division. Which is a rational design choice given the complaints about micromanaging that HOI3 attracted, but the higher the view the less chance of being interested in the details.

HOI4 is the big dumb sandbox to play in. I want to play a us game that's isn't boring? Set it so the place explodes into five civil wars and go. Want everyone in the world to be monarchist? Make it so. Want to just kill everyone as Germany and not think about the consequences? You can do that too.

I remain unsure about HOI4. I've got some steam credit and there is a HOI4 bundle on sale (base game and all DLC up to rule the waves) so I might take the plunge and get it while it's cheap(ish). Or I could get RimWorld for about the same money. Could go either way.

 

[TheButterflyComposer]

I remain unsure about HOI4. I've got some steam credit and there is a HOI4 bundle on sale (base game and all DLC up to rule the waves) so I might take the plunge and get it while it's cheap(ish). Or I could get RimWorld for about the same money. Could go either way.

I rather like it, which says something cos HOI is the dullest of the paradox series given that it covers one war and a lot of waiting and hoping, depending on who you are playing as. It seems much, much more designed for multiplayer and creative pieces like AARs, let's plays and modding (the modding scene is fantastically oversaturated with good things for some reason). I like playing Hungary repeatedly because the austria-hungary challenge is fun without messing with the AI too much. Playing an Axis member and going off-script is probably the most fun you can get out of single-player right now, unless you have the dlc and want to save the empire of your choice and make it the blobbiest blob that ever did blob. I really do need to get around to trying the Imperial Federation scenario at some point...

Man the Guns is the most recent DLC and basically lets you build and design ships across all aspects (gun turrets, armour etc) so whilst I have no interest whatsoever, there will eventually be an extensive HOI4 Man the Guns Naval AAR that sweeps the sub-forum.

 

[RobbieAB]

HOI4 is the big dumb sandbox to play in. I want to play a us game that's isn't boring? Set it so the place explodes into five civil wars and go. Want everyone in the world to be monarchist? Make it so. Want to just kill everyone as Germany and not think about the consequences? You can do that too.

Having read the forums, but not played the game, I must note, it seems like HoI4 suffers from an AI that is even worse than HoI2 in some basic ways.

As far as I can tell, from the forums, the division designer basically has a best design, and not much else. The game doesn't really reflect why that design didn't work so well in history, and in the process turns the entire thing into a "noob and AI" trap. If there is one correct design, scrap the feature and just provide the unit!

It seems even in HoI4 they still haven't managed to resolve the fundamental naval problems that plague HoI2 once carriers are involved. At least HoI2s solution had a vague historical verisimilitude, once you skipped CVL+zerg fleets!

HoI2 isn't perfect, but in many ways, most of the problems with it could have been fixed by simply improving the AI, IMO. The only glaring non-AI problem was naval balance being completely ruined by the addition of the CVL, IMO. The base gameplay and scope worked pretty well. Major problems with the AI included:

• Not being able to handle naval range and logistics. AIUI this has basically been solved by simply designing the issue out in HoI4.
• Not being able to counter certain abusive player strategies, e.g. Germany going all in on u-boats, England going all in on strat bombers, etc. This, honestly, shouldn't be difficult to fix as the strategies tend to be telegraphed, and easily countered in 1938. (Start spamming convoys, escorts, destroyers for the U-boats, start spamming AA, interceptors, and Infra for the Strats) Either of these are obvious if you ever get any intelligence reports on the other sides build up. You are looking for them, aren't you?

Contrast with the issues in HoI4 (based on the forums):

• Division designer is a near trap. AI isn't very good at it.
• Naval combat has a "submarine minelayer" as a winning strategy, along with "Fleet in being" without scouting to avoid actually engaging an enemy to project naval control.
• Carrier effectiveness depending on which ocean you are fighting in, with the Pacific being worse than the Atlantic! Carriers as a 200 mile range gun seem almost sensible and sane!
• General obsession with fantasy alt-history. Honestly, from reading the stuff about the focuses, etc, I find myself wondering why WWII! If you change the players on the stage that dramatically, WWII wouldn't happen in any recognizable form.

 

[El Pip]

I rather like it, which says something cos HOI is the dullest of the paradox series given that it covers one war and a lot of waiting and hoping, depending on who you are playing as. It seems much, much more designed for multiplayer and creative pieces like AARs, let's plays and modding (the modding scene is fantastically oversaturated with good things for some reason).

Seldom have I read such a damning (if unintended) condemnation of a game. It does appear to be the HOI game for people who don't like HOI, which is probably quite a large market tbh but a bit unfortunate as I do like the previous games and can definitely identify far duller Paradox games (the entire EU series for starters). However it has convinced me I would not like it, so thanks for the review.

Having read the forums, but not played the game, I must note, it seems like HoI4 suffers from an AI that is even worse than HoI2 in some basic ways.

As far as I can tell, from the forums, the division designer basically has a best design, and not much else. The game doesn't really reflect why that design didn't work so well in history, and in the process turns the entire thing into a "noob and AI" trap. If there is one correct design, scrap the feature and just provide the unit!

It seems even in HoI4 they still haven't managed to resolve the fundamental naval problems that plague HoI2 once carriers are involved. At least HoI2s solution had a vague historical verisimilitude, once you skipped CVL+zerg fleets!

HoI2 isn't perfect, but in many ways, most of the problems with it could have been fixed by simply improving the AI, IMO. The only glaring non-AI problem was naval balance being completely ruined by the addition of the CVL, IMO. The base gameplay and scope worked pretty well. Major problems with the AI included:

• Not being able to handle naval range and logistics. AIUI this has basically been solved by simply designing the issue out in HoI4.
• Not being able to counter certain abusive player strategies, e.g. Germany going all in on u-boats, England going all in on strat bombers, etc. This, honestly, shouldn't be difficult to fix as the strategies tend to be telegraphed, and easily countered in 1938. (Start spamming convoys, escorts, destroyers for the U-boats, start spamming AA, interceptors, and Infra for the Strats) Either of these are obvious if you ever get any intelligence reports on the other sides build up. You are looking for them, aren't you?

Contrast with the issues in HoI4 (based on the forums):

• Division designer is a near trap. AI isn't very good at it.
• Naval combat has a "submarine minelayer" as a winning strategy, along with "Fleet in being" without scouting to avoid actually engaging an enemy to project naval control.
• Carrier effectiveness depending on which ocean you are fighting in, with the Pacific being worse than the Atlantic! Carriers as a 200 mile range gun seem almost sensible and sane!
• General obsession with fantasy alt-history. Honestly, from reading the stuff about the focuses, etc, I find myself wondering why WWII! If you change the players on the stage that dramatically, WWII wouldn't happen in any recognizable form.

Though this runs it a close second as a damning crictique. Most of this I was aware of, but the division designer issues I was not and that does look nasty. It all adds up to reasons enough to avoid it this time, I have no doubt it will be on sale again (and cheaper) and it might even get a bit better if they add enough DLC.

 

[TheButterflyComposer]

The HOI series seems to be the most marmite ones out of everything they make, given how specific the subject matter is. In the newest version, it seems to be that they are trying to have the same emergent gameplay and complete althistory possibilities as ckii...but its a world war 2 game about ww2. If you change everything about the set up then have the axis suicidally start a fight anyway, it just seems silly. I think that for the game to get better at this point it would need to rapidly expand to cover most of the 20th Century to make sense. Have the player usually start in 1901 or something, and alt history from there. Then have timestamps for ww2 and ww1 and any other war popular enough for people to ask for.

Pdox isn't really about simulators of wars anymore, yet that's what hoi fundamentally is...which rubs against what they actually made. 4th one isn't a bad game, it just wants to be super world building alt history...but starts 4 years before ww2, a war it has to have in it.

 

[Le Jones]

Offering my farthing's worth, caveat emptor Pippy. As has been covered it has some great ideas - navies are brilliant, yes there are glitches (@RobbieAB sums them up well, although Fleet in Being is actually reasonably plausible and I'd use the Home Fleet in the Bismarck saga as an example, where other assets did the scouting and then the battlefleet sailed).

So Naval and Air combat work well. Espionage is done reasonably well with the new La Resistance DLC (as we've seen in *shameless plug* my AAR it reads across reasonably for the AAR writer). Factions are more flexible than in HOI3 (my favourite, so far, of the series, marred by an inflexible faction system).

I love industrial production. You can spaf out tons of Gladiators and Matildas in '36 knowing that even when you've upgraded your own forces to Hurricanes you have a strategic reserve that can be shipped out to the Middle East or given to allies who lack resources. That is markedly different to HOI2 and 3 where the equipment side of it was abstract.

So that's the good...

Land combat is awful, truly bad. The game almost forces you to rely on battleplans - in effect you create a plan and let the AI (chuckes ruefully) fight the good fight for you. There is a place in hell for the HOI4 approach to land combat.

And then I would add the focuses. It forces countries to do things that are mad, utterly mad in the circumstances but because the AI has decided that for that game, Focus 'x' is the default, it plunges down it. It is truly bad.

So by all means buy it, but be prepared to gnash your teeth in frustration.

 

[El Pip]

Gods damnit @Le Jones . I had just made a decision and then you go and tempt me back in by saying the air, naval and industrial bits (i.e. the important bits) are quite good. The land combat does sound quite poor, but it is the least important area.

I'm aware I'm over-thinking this, but that self-knowledge is not helping make the decision.

 

[TheButterflyComposer]

Gods damnit @Le Jones . I had just made a decision and then you go and tempt me back in by saying the air, naval and industrial bits (i.e. the important bits) are quite good. The land combat does sound quite poor, but it is the least important area.

I'm aware I'm over-thinking this, but that self-knowledge is not helping make the decision.

Just so. Its a sandbox. Everything that's actually interesting is good, its just the land combat is boring/crap. Industry, equipment and design are the best bits. Tech tree is a little wonky and focuses are for comedy more than anything else.

You can force the AI to be completely historical, play 1939 and just change your chosen nations industry and equipment around if you want, then I bet the combat is simulated decently enough.

I'm not good enough to play GB at 1936 yet but I'm sure it'll be fun. Can design and build my own pride of the Fleet, and a fleet to go with it I suppose.

 

[Le Jones]

 

[Cromwell]

Gods damnit @Le Jones . I had just made a decision and then you go and tempt me back in by saying the air, naval and industrial bits (i.e. the important bits) are quite good. The land combat does sound quite poor, but it is the least important area.

I'm aware I'm over-thinking this, but that self-knowledge is not helping make the decision.

Le Jones makes a good point the industry is definitely a good point, it's by far the best industrial production simulator I have ever came across (as has been said already that's not necessarily the most glowing recommendation for what is supposed to be a wargame). I really think you would get a kick out of the ship designer too.

 

[caffran]

No, Pippy dont listen to them, its a trap!!

HoI4 is NOT a WW2 game. its a sandbox game SET in the WW2 era. you will never see the war as it was, even when set to historical focus.
Yes, the industry is awesome, makes a lot of sense (except training and deploying divisions) and i wish to christ there was a way to shoehorn that into HoI3 somehow, but the combat is utter garbage. the build up to war is really enjoyable, but once a war starts, i rarely last 4 or 5 months before i have to shut it off due to the AI doing something utterly stupid.

TBH i've given up on it. other than a few mods (war of the worlds, zombie apocalypse and a coupe of 40K ones) i refuse to touch it.

Obviously, just my opinion, feel free to ignore, but from the level of detail in Butterfly, and the fact you love HoI2, i'll take a stab and say you will hate it.

 

[RobbieAB]

Offering my farthing's worth, caveat emptor Pippy. As has been covered it has some great ideas - navies are brilliant, yes there are glitches (@RobbieAB sums them up well, although Fleet in Being is actually reasonably plausible and I'd use the Home Fleet in the Bismarck saga as an example, where other assets did the scouting and then the battlefleet sailed).

Which is fine, assuming there are scouts, so you can draw the fleet out to engage it if you want to try and wrestle control of the seas from it. The problem is, AIUI, the fleet projects naval power even without scouts, so in a situation where it would never sortie, and can't be engaged, it prevents enemy naval operations. That is beyond stupid, IMO. The idea is good, the execution is miserable.

The forums for HoI4 have killed my interest in the game. The dev diaries describing what they are doing with the game have me going "Eh, this is supposed to be a WWII GSG, not a fantasy democratic germany facist france communist england mess". The game no longer has the magic and charm that attracted me to HoI2. CK2 is closer, even EU4 is closer, to the basic charm of "150 (not very, AI...) rational actors all playing by the same simple rules from a vaguely historical start point". My suspicion is that HoI4 mostly works because the AI doesn't actually play the game properly, and doesn't actually even try to approach human competence in the metagame, meaning the ridiculously abusive strategies the game allows aren't a massive problem as the AI doesn't use them. I don't think balancing a game by making the AI not abuse the mechanics really compensates for having mechanics that lead to the abusive options in the first place.

My feeling from reading the HoI4 forums, and the Stellaris forums, is that Paradox in their recent iterations are not actually fixing the obvious problems. The Stellaris forum (and specifically dev responses on the forum where they acknowledge a problem but refuse to implement a quick and easy fix because it doesn't suit their vision of the game!) have pretty much killed my interest in that game as well.

 

[Killerduck]

I haven't played HoI 3 or 4 but I can give my opinion about Stellaris - pretty bland game wrapped in a shiny package.

EDIT: Also, Le Jones's post made me a bit intrigued about HoI 4, as industry and preparation for war are by far the most interesting to me (actually fighting a war is always somewhat of a chore for me).

 

[TheButterflyComposer]

I haven't played HoI 3 or 4 but I can give my opinion about Stellaris - pretty bland game wrapped in a shiny package.

EDIT: Also, Le Jones's post made me a bit intrigued about HoI 4, as industry and preparation for war are by far the most interesting to me (actually fighting a war is always somewhat of a chore for me).

I think the game is perfectly alright if you are a secondary industrial power like Italy or Hungary. You prep your industry and tech, have a short-ish war with some maneuvering and fun air/sea stuff, it ends and you have to control the new land and update your stuff for the next war.

Having to fight a long war or prep for a really long time (so everyone else except maybe russia) is really dull at the moment. Bit of a problem for a war game but italy and Hungary are genuinely good. Russia too, I invaded Poland immediatly and then modernised my forces in preparation for the inevitable German war. Not finished a game with anyone else but I expect japan is also good, if you learn and like the naval combat and specialised industry and tech for that...

 

[El Pip]

The decision was reached and I decided not to go for HOI4, partly because it does seem a bit curates egg and partly because I have CK2 staring at me basically unplayed, so I shouldn't really be buying another game until I've at least tried that game.

Thank you all for you valuable input, I suspect I shall probably end up with HOI4 at some point, but not now. This does at least leave more time for writing so is probably a net positive for this AAR.

In somewhat related news, the news feed algorithms noticed my current interest in HOI4 and spat out this news story for my attention;

https://www.cbr.com/hearts-of-iron-iv-producer-being-deported-employers-error/

And I must admit my first thought on reading the headline in the URL was "Surely HOI4 can't be so awful they are deporting the producer as punishment?" Of course that isn't the case, it's just your bog standard Swedish incompetence and governmental inertia, but would it perhaps be a fairer world if the headline were literally true?

 

[TheButterflyComposer]

because I have CK2 staring at me basically unplayed, so I shouldn't really be buying another game until I've at least tried that game.

I would certainly recommend that one first. Its more finished, even in a base state, and a lot more fun and varied. Takes a few hours to get to grips with things, though fortunately there just so happens to be several tutorial AARs on the forums, all of them good.

Best bet is probably starting as an Irish count Because you have basically nothing to do except learn game mechanics, no one will bother you and its very easy to take over the whole of island and run it yourself without too many vassals. Aside from that, expect to die often and 'lose' the game on your first go, because everyone underestimates how many children they need to breed to survive.

The article did get spat on my news feed too but I dont tend to read the news unless the topic is completely ridiculous or unimportant. In this case it's either bone idleness on the former employer's part or gross incompetence.

BTW this was a fairly constructive 2 page diversion. That's not supposed to happen here

 

[Cromwell]

It's all part of Pip's master plan to distract up from spamming him for updates/ requesting the most bizarre and obscure subjects for updates imaginable! The fiendish devil!

 

[Sir Charles Dewitt]

It's all part of Pip's master plan to distract up from spamming him for updates/ requesting the most bizarre and obscure subjects for updates imaginable! The fiendish devil!

It's working too... I keep glancing at CKII in my library.

 

[El Pip]

It's all part of Pip's master plan to distract up from spamming him for updates/ requesting the most bizarre and obscure subjects for updates imaginable! The fiendish devil!

It's working too... I keep glancing at CKII in my library.

You may think that, I couldn't possibly comment.

On a point related to the actual update - I had not hitherto appreciated quite how famous and well connected Amelia Earhart was prior to her mysterious crash/disappearance, which occurred pretty much around the same time as the next chapter.

I mention this because it is unlikely she will be appearing. Her round the world flight only seemed to happen because she convinced FDR (via Eleanor) to get the WPA to build her several airstrips across the South Pacific. In Butterfly there is no FDR and no WPA. I'm also fairly sure President Smith (then Garner) would be less interested in subsidising Earhart's round the world flight, if only due to being more distracted by domestic problems. So I think she has to bite the bullet and take the less direct (but possible) route via existing air strips and so probably doesn't have her OTL accident, which was fairly contrived as it was so unlikely to reoccur.

Don't let anyone ever say this AAR is relentlessly anti-American, for I have just saved America's "Queen of the Air" from her OTL early death, which must be worth a few star spangled brownie points?