Paradox Grand Strategy: From the Carnival of Lust to the Enlightened Times

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Koesj: Aug 3, 2003

ArchangeI posted:

I have fought and won Barbarrossa without using the AI. Liberal use of the pause button required, though.

Yeah that's entirely possible.

Not very much fun after a while but the initial breakthroughs can be pretty cool.

# ¿ Jan 3, 2013 01:19

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# ¿ Apr 20, 2024 01:19

Koesj: Aug 3, 2003

What?! Where's my mail Pdox :argh:

# ¿ Jan 22, 2013 03:41

Koesj: Aug 3, 2003

Has anyone still got a code left to PM to me? I played around with a friends' copy a bit like three expansions ago and would really like trying it again (since HoI3 has lost its appeal quite quickly) :shobon:

# ¿ Jan 23, 2013 03:06

Koesj: Aug 3, 2003

I was thinking about the looming specter of way too many provinces hanging over EvW but have come to the conclusion that I probably won't care. There's no real analogy for Barbarossa to be had post '45, so that particular borefest is well out of the way. Instead, I feel like it should be fun to fight and/or support a series of low- to medium intensity conflicts in smaller theaters *if they pull it off reasonably well*.

# ¿ Jan 30, 2013 06:10

Koesj: Aug 3, 2003

My first HoI3 run after a couple of months of not touching it was going nicely until it crashed and burned yesterday. I started a custom game as Italy to mess about with some of their peculiarities (comparatively little research and IC) and totally changed their starting forces with a heavy focus on carrier aviation and special forces. Cue 1940-42 where I do leapfrogging amphib ops all the way from Basra to Bristol.

Then I made the mistake of calling puppet Romania to arms in Barbarossa and they proceeded to get stomped, with AI Germany not knowing how to handle it. I was able to push the Sovs from the Danube to Kharkiv/Rostov with around ten corps' worth of (motorized) infantry, marines and mountaineers. When Hearts of Iron is good, it doesn't get much better than this, bottling up hundreds of thousands of Red Army troops and smashing the gently caress out of them.

Now the front has stabilized again and I'm looking at stuff to do: cleaning up the Middle east or invade the Caucasus or something. Good old Germany kept doing lovely things in my sector of the Eastern front though, like not holding the line and retreating northwards away from my forces. Cue me looking at their situation and stats in late '42/early '43....

Turns out that after reaching lake Ladoga and taking Leningrad they somehow hit a snag: they hadn't called the Finns to arms so the little strip of land from Viborg northeast was being blocked by a dogged Soviet resistance one province deep and wide. With ample room for maneuver further up north, what does the AI do? Transfer a total of around 300 brigades of troops as an expeditionary force to neutral Finland and fail to have them join the war.

Even reloading as the Finns and declaring on the SU doesn't fix the massive fuckup the AI has created for itself without doing half of Barbarossa as another country and seeing Italy's hard-fought accomplishments being squandered away :downs:

# ¿ Feb 6, 2013 11:24

Koesj: Aug 3, 2003

So my HoI3 custom game as Italy just ended on april 20th 1944. Why? Well, since I had to reload as Finland for a bit to get half of the OKH that was sent their way as an expeditionary force in play, the war with the Soviet Union apparently ended on their terms.

Yes, after an epic two year long slog through the Caucasus and leapfrogging from the Danube to the Don for my part, having the Germans poised to take Archangelsk and the Hungarians of all people marching into Moscow on the 19th of april... Finland retakes their cores and everything else reverts to how it was pre-Barbarossa :v:

# ¿ Feb 6, 2013 19:39

Koesj: Aug 3, 2003

BBJoey posted:

They're modelling the ammunition for each individual ship in your fleet.

Read the dev diary. As a sub-system of the game it sounds pretty awesome to me but I guess it doesn't bode well for its overall accessibility and design priorities.

e: One of the more interesting comments from one of the devs in that thread is that they're modelling everything up from a missile boat to be an individual ship. Can't wait to see what their land-based scale is going to be like.

Koesj fucked around with this message at 08:58 on Feb 22, 2013

# ¿ Feb 22, 2013 08:49

Koesj: Aug 3, 2003

SA_Avenger posted:

Huge flanders, is it a nationalist mod? lol

"Southern Netherlands"

It's regions. The provinces kinda scale to RL entities too in BE/NL. Capital locations though...

# ¿ Feb 22, 2013 09:00

Koesj: Aug 3, 2003

Conflicts like Vietnam or Afghanistan could be entirely handled by an interplay of suppression/attrition/dissent modifiers in EvW. Make it so that the occupying country has to invest in beefing up suppression at the cost of 'warfighting' capability for his divisions (or whatever unit scale) and use policies to influence local effects. More Balance of Power, less HoI3 'single militia brigade gets lazily crushed by your 1938 binary cavalry division'.

# ¿ Feb 22, 2013 11:09

Koesj: Aug 3, 2003

Wolfgang Pauli posted:

Was there ever any doubt? These are the guys who rejected Macau out of hand because it was small and not of significant military importance. I think nuanced political machination might be beyond their systems programming capabilities.

They're breaking Sid Meier's cardinal rule: if it's really fun to program but not that fun to play, kill it.

But is that fun to play? If the Vietnam War is nothing more than a series of province modifiers in your Cold War game then you should probably pack up your game design and work on something else. The biggest problem grand strategy games have ever had is finding the right interface between simulation and interactivity. We've already killed off railroaded historical events (except in MotE), now we need to kill off behind the scenes simulation that could just as easily be represented by gameplay mechanics.

Pray tell, what's a fun way to play out the Vietnam war? Or any counter-insurgency for that matter? Jagged Alliance style? Because right now that's the only way I can see a 'cool' COIN campaign working, and it's not exactly grand strategy.

e:typo

Koesj fucked around with this message at 22:37 on Feb 22, 2013

# ¿ Feb 22, 2013 22:25

Koesj: Aug 3, 2003

A Buttery Pastry posted:

That said, I too get the feeling that there's too much focus on the military side, and too little on diplomacy, economy and espionage, all parts that should have about equal weight. That said, the focus on warfare in early DDs might be a way to hook the HOI market, which is not inconsequential. (Or at least I'm going to tell myself until further DDs shatter my hopes and dreams.)

We really don't know yet, although there's much to extrapolate from the screenshots and even the choice of which area to focus the first in-depth dev diary on I guess.

Wolfgang Pauli: again, how should COIN be handled? I don't see any option except for province modifiers within HoI3's system right now. You could splice in a cool minigame-like insurgency panel or something, but how would it function?

# ¿ Feb 23, 2013 01:58

Koesj: Aug 3, 2003

Wolfgang Pauli posted:

Okay I can see how that could work. As long as it's not the silly rebel hunting that's present in the other games it should be better anyway.

i poo poo trains posted:

With EvW increasingly looking like a Hot War expansion for HoI3, it's making me wonder how they're going to handle worldwide nuclear war. Is it going to be just a gameover screen? Will their be some scripted events automatically ending the war? Or will the war continue, fought by moribund, supply-starved armies over mounds of ash until a victor finally emerges? EvW might fail as a tense diplomatic simulator but if it becomes a dystopian Mad Max wargame I might pick it up for $5.

Up until the early sixties you might actually be able to 'win' a nuclear war :shobon:

# ¿ Feb 23, 2013 03:08

Koesj: Aug 3, 2003

Velius posted:

On a lark, and because you never actually build things like mechanized infantry in any HOI game, I built up and researched for a while. Until 1952, to be specific.

If you don't roll with mech to get your division's hardness up in TFH I don't know how you're getting that combined arms bonus for heavy forces.

e: VVV yes I can read, hence the HoI3 exception at least.

Koesj fucked around with this message at 19:45 on Feb 25, 2013

# ¿ Feb 25, 2013 19:30

Koesj: Aug 3, 2003

Velius posted:

Did hoi3 ever end up actually fun?

I don't know how bad it was since I got it just before TFH (the last expansion) came out but I'm pretty content with it.

# ¿ Feb 25, 2013 21:37

Koesj: Aug 3, 2003

Gort posted:

Hardness and combined arms have nothing to do with each other as of TFH... I like this mechanic, because it makes a differentiated force that requires a lot of seperate lines of research the most efficient fighting force by a good long way.

Yeah I know, I just didn't express myself really well :shobon:

What I meant to say is that if you want to do a high-hardness combined arms division, mechanized infantry as its basis is the way to go. Since almost every unit you put out there, bar militia or special forces, will probably have some kind of CA bonus, the onus for optimizing them shifts towards hardening them up.

Indeed, it's a fun way to mess with your force composition, and it's why I don't have much of a problem with the new ship system for EvW. Building up an optimized unit out of different blocks and putting it inside a custom command structure just really appeals to the inner grognard: I 'own' the guys poised to dish out the damage in what's nearly a proper wargame environment.

This is also the reason why I don't have much problems with HoI3 and why EvW is starting to look really cool to me. They're either way past or falling far short of the comprehensive 'grand' approach of the other PDS games, and instead of it feeling like a bad thing, I can rationalize it as focusing on the sharper ends of business within their highly stratified periods of time. Instead of being able to play a benign Japan, or an enlightened Soviet Union, I get to play Military-Industrial Complex - the game.

# ¿ Feb 27, 2013 05:16

Koesj: Aug 3, 2003

Wolfgang Pauli posted:

More time for development is always a good thing.

Yeah, Duke Nukem Forever turned out great.

# ¿ Mar 1, 2013 18:44

Koesj: Aug 3, 2003

Imma point out that since TFH you can research landing craft and assault ships to do just that in HoI3 :v:

# ¿ Mar 19, 2013 20:27

Koesj: Aug 3, 2003

DrProsek posted:

For first timers, I feel both HoI2 and 3 are nigh impenetrable in terms of finding out what you need to build, what you should research, how to balance your research vs construction vs officers vs espionage, etc. I've even tried just playing as any country and losing a bunch to slowly learn what to do but I can never figure out what it is that caused me to lose; did I not build enough? Behind on research? Espionage more? Or was this just doomed to fail?

Personally I feel that the custom gamemode can really help with getting to grips with those kinds of tradeoffs, just do multiple starts as a minor nation in 1940 or so and look at how for example your research decisions play out.

quote:

I still have no idea if I at what point I need to stop building up IC or when I need to research infantry tech or if I need bombers or tanks or cavalry or what, but at least I navigate the menus to a game over screen easier .

Build up your IC if you've got production to spare and if the game's ending is still far enough away to be able to recoup the costs (and take your resource income into account: divide energy by 2, metal by one and rare resources by .5, whichever number is the lowest should be your max 'available' IC). Infantry is the backbone of your military 95% of the time so research their hardware and doctrines first while providing ample officers to raise their effectiveness. Things like bombers and espionage are nice to have, but not absolutely essential. Tanks are for breakthroughs and a general force multiplier if you're fighting a big war (Eastern Front, later years) and cavalry is a cheap anti-rebel/low tech roving force.

# ¿ Mar 19, 2013 22:10

Koesj: Aug 3, 2003

DrProsek posted:

Oh, that helps a lot! My only remaining question is how long on average does it take to recoup the costs; is there a rule of thumb or it just always dependent on the context (what nation you're playing, how far Germany has pushed, which faction you're in, etc)?

Five years baseline. Industry costs 5IC per day, takes a year to complete, and adds 1IC to your pool. If your construction practical is <5 then the recoup time increases by 10% with every increment of -1 (the scale is more logarithmic in reverse). Economic law plays a big role of course, modifying your base IC to an available IC in a -50% to +50% range. Then there's the incidental politician who might add or subtract from your IC.

If you want to hoard Industrial Capacity it's best to start soon, either in the form of an immediate buildup beginning in '36 or by tagging Construction Practical during a custom game's Technology setup (step 2 if you start one) and adding more Industry to your provinces during Deployment (step 3)

# ¿ Mar 20, 2013 15:24

Koesj: Aug 3, 2003

For me it was the other way around, I got hooked on Pdox games after I started studying history. And after specializing in post-WWII economic and social stuff, I really want to see East & West working properly :shobon:

# ¿ Mar 24, 2013 04:00

Koesj: Aug 3, 2003

Raskolnikov38 posted:

Have you added transports to whatever command hierarchy you want to do the invasion with? Also in my experience getting England far along on surrender progress will usually trigger the soviets to invade so be ready for that.

There always was a hard coded immediate Soviet DoW if you took London (I think) as Germany but I haven't done it in TFH yet :shobon:

# ¿ Mar 25, 2013 19:59

Koesj: Aug 3, 2003

Gort posted:

In the end I just used a custom game, deleted the entire Wehrmacht and built it the way I wanted in the first place.

A substantial number of those units have the highest starting experience in the whole game...

# ¿ Feb 3, 2014 03:51

Koesj: Aug 3, 2003

Disclaimer: I am so, so sorry.

Gort posted:

Your assumptions were accurate - I broke all the infantry into 1-brigade divisions and was adding built anti-tank, artillery and engineer brigades to that to get a 20% combined arms bonus.

I suppose that does waste the 8 speed engineers have, but I would have thought it worth it for general combat power.

Finally, what is a good structure for general German infantry divisions? Just the 3 infantry brigades they start with?

Your method of building 'line' or standard infantry divisions based on only one infantry brigade (or 1xINF rather, I'll use abbreviations from here on) is... not a great idea.

This is a straight up 4xINF division:

A possible alternative, the 2xINF/AT/ART division:

Here's what you did - INF/AT/ART/ENG:

And these are their production times on 1/1/1936 based on Germany starting practicals, and a custom game start putting equipment and doctrine at similar tech levels:

And what does all this mean? I'll break it down; immediate advice is bolded, game concepts are italicized.

You are foregoing a substantial amount of soft attack, large amounts of defensiveness and toughness, and a horrendous amount of strength and width with your boondoggle division compared to a bog-standard 4xINF one. Combined Arms provides not nearly enough added combat bonus to compensate for these losses.
Especially the width and strength issue will mess you up because of the interplay between the game's frontage and stacking penalty mechanics. Frontage means that when attacking from a single province, 10 'line' brigades (INF/MOT/MECH or (L/H)ARM) can fight next to each other, and 5 more of those brigades can engage in combat with every added province you are attacking from (the 'Encirclement' and 'Tactical Withdrawal' leader tactics can influence frontage as well btw). Those 'support' brigades (AT, ART, ENG) you added, seemingly to get an extra 5% Combined Arms bonus out of each (for a total of 15% rather than 20 mind you), don't provide any fighting strength at the front outside of a stat raise for your 'line' brigade(s).
Because these infantry divisions occupy only an infinitesimal 1 frontage each, the divisional stacking penalty will kick in as soon as you've hit the (3+1) maximum number of divisions attacking (or defending!) from the first province (add 3 more possible divisions per extra province you'd be attacking from). Since, as the HoI 3 Strategy Guide states:

"The penalty is a percentage based on the number of excess divisions in combat. Thus, going one division over the stacking limit isn�t a big deal. But trying to use ten divisions with one width in a single province attack will seriously hamper the combat efficiency of all divisions involved."

And were you to build divisions with 4 width rather than one (like the first one I posted above), you'd still be able to have a third enter combat at a total of 12 frontage, rather than have it languish in the back as a reserve and contributing nothing, because:

"Divisions will continue to enter combat until width exceeds frontage."

Imagine you trying to attack or defend against an enemy stack of three 4xINF divisions, who can bring 12 frontage worth of 'line' brigades to bear, with your very narrow forces. Either the stacking penalty will eat you up, or you'll never match even a moderately out-teched or shittily led force in both firepower and staying power.
Among other things, IC opportunity cost is going to be very problematic with your divisions since they are twice as expensive as 4xINF ones for example, and build a bit slower to boot. The only saving grace here is that they consume little over half of the latter's manpower, but I can turn this advantage on its head just as easily by pointing out that the same amount of frontage costs you twice as much manpower and _four_ times the officers!
When comparing terrain penalties, adding support brigades actually decreases your combat abilities in a lot of situations compared to straight up infantry divisions, to the point where the Combined Arms bonus is substantially negated. This doesn't mean that support brigades are useless, but it's something to keep in mind, especially when they can mess with the terrain bonuses that mountain infantry or marines provide.
Yes, engineers are an exception to the rule in that they are useful when attacking over rivers, and are good on the defensive. But, as stated, engineers are wasted on regular infantry forces because of their speed (you can add them to MOT infantry and (L)ARM for good effect though!), and believe it or not a straight up Marine division is actually better when having to break a defensive line behind a river most of the times. Also, there are a number of support brigades I'd rather add than ENG since they're pretty expensive and niche-y. Also,
because of the engineers, your infantry divisions are now consuming fuel. Don't do this, especially when you're playing Germany and fuel is at a premium

Some pointers on building divisions:

I posted the 2xINF/AT/ART as a more suitable option for maximizing the Combined Arms bonus with 4x brigade infantry divisions, but I still wouldn't go for them myself. They lack defensiveness and toughness, which means that more enemy shots will hit them when defending or attacking.
The extra soft attack provided by artillery is very nice in general, but the brigade itself has gotten more expensive after the last DLC, and I'm not sure whether they're that cost-effective anymore.
AT can be very important if you're on the defensive and facing lots of armor (when playing France for example), and their piercing stat will count for the whole division, but at the same tech-year as (L)ARM armor, infantry anti-tank weapons will actually pierce just fine.
Like I said, sacrificing frontage for stat boosts will cut your general firepower and staying power. Before you can add a fifth brigade to your infantry divisions it's probably a better idea to spread ART and AT over corps rather than divisions. Three 3xINF/ART and two 3xINF/AT divisions make for a fine fighting force, and as soon as you research superior firepower you can just add the missing fifth brigade to them.
IIRC there were people on the Pdox forums saying that Heavy Armor is a fantastic option to strengthen your infantry but ungh their fuel consumption, cost, etc.
Mobile forces are way better suited for trying to maximize the Combined Arms bonus IMO. They're very strong against enemy infantry divisions already and the extra 10/15% will get you an ever greater overmatch.
Armored cars (AC's) are a very cheap and effective way to do this. In general, you'll want to up the soft attack (SA) rating of your divisions, since the bulk of the units in this game will still be damaged by SA because of the 50% divisional 'hardness' threshold/armor rating for hard attack to kick in. AC's do just that while at the same time making most brigade combinations 'harder' themselves! Oh and a speed bonus in open terrain, aka the place where you'll want to use your MOT+LARM or MECH+ARM divisions anyway.

Again, I'm so, so sorry, and not even that great of an HoI3 players :shobon:

quote:

I'm intrigued - why does reorganising the structure of your army "eat supplies and manpower"? I had everyone in Berlin for the reorganisation.

I don't think it matters much if you're starting a custom game :shrug:

Koesj fucked around with this message at 04:44 on Feb 4, 2014

# ¿ Feb 4, 2014 04:05

Koesj: Aug 3, 2003

gradenko_2000 posted:

Are you saying here that, setting aside ARM divisions for encirclements/maneuver warfare, it's still a very effective approach to just spam 4xINF divisions?

SickZip posted:

Pretty much this. Personally I'd rather go for 3xINF/ART than 2xINF/2xART since the latter's cheapness in manpower could easily be offset by the increased losses from lower toughness and defensiveness.

Imma quote wholesale from the guide here until Paradox comes to my house and murders me (this poo poo should have been public btw):

quote:

While the mechanics of division combat are a little opaque, what basically happens is this: during each hour of combat, divisions use hard attack and soft attack to try and �hit� the target. Divisions use either toughness (when on the attack) or defensiveness (when being attacked) to avoid getting �hit.� Every time a division receives a soft or hard attack, it �spends� a toughness/ defensiveness point. While it still has points left, shots have an 80% chance to miss. Once those points are exhausted, shots have a 60% chance to miss. Each �shot� fired at a target �hits� either the soft or hard part of a division. For example, if firing at a division with 50% softness, each �shot� has a 50% chance of either using hard attack or soft attack. If a division has already used up all its hard or soft attacks, then it does no damage if it hits the wrong part of the division.

What this means is that even with five times the toughness or defensiveness of an enemy�s soft or hard attack, your division might still take damage. Conversely, even if the enemy has little or no defensiveness or toughness, it may still escape from harm. But because defensiveness and toughness are not an absolute defense against enemy fire, most players tend to favor additional firepower if forced to choose between the two.

Also note that if a division runs out of either hard or soft attack, the remaining �shots� might not be able to hurt a division with exceptionally high or low softness . For example, a division with a softness of 100% will take no damage from any remaining hard attacks. This is an absolute defense, compared to toughness and defensiveness.

Looks like I misremembered with the hard/soft thing!

Either way, your later war (after superior firepower's fifth brigade per division) industrialized army might very well be based on 3xINF/2xART, since it gives you such large amounts of soft attack while upping your frontage before penalties to 12 - the highest number possible. I also agree that AT is (way) more specialized and in their usefulness wholly substituted by CAS planes (air attacks can murder armor). Again, engineers can work out to lift your mobile units over rivers quicker (although marines have a bigger bonus in general) and give them nice combat bonuses in urban terrain - important since the number of urban provinces was upped in TFH. Or use them if you want to directly attack the Maginot line or something. Also, though most of my playing time was in FTM where 2xGAR/AT was actually a viable build for port protection, AA is indeed loving terrible. Use planes.

As for special forces: if you play as Italy against Yugoslavia/Greece mountain troops can be really useful. Want to do anything in the Caucasus? Again, MNT. Marines work super great in Jungle terrain and of course for island-hopping. The point where it all falls apart is keeping up with the separate doctrine techs for both org and morale, and having enough officers around. So yeah flood Japan with Marines as the US or something.

The real spamming in HoI3 occurs when you go all-in with Militia as Nat. China :getin:

# ¿ Feb 4, 2014 07:50

Koesj: Aug 3, 2003

Gort posted:

Okay, so 3 INF and 1-2 ART depending on whether you have superior firepower yet or not. Right.

How about for tank divisions? What's good for those?

I was massively mistaken about infantry being able to pierce even LARM at comparative tech levels. You apparently want to stay ahead in infantry AT weapons to be able to do that. Also there are of course higher frontages possible than 12 in you go with full up 5 'line' brigade divisions!

At the same time you can exploit this against enemy forces just as easily. You could for example go LARM/MOT/2xAC for cheap, super-speedy, and generally very useful roving irritants, while providing mobile fire support and some hardening with a cheapish MOT/MOT/TD/TD or something - although tank destroyers are pretty research heavy if you want to keep them fully up-to-date IIRC.

In general the AI has enough problems with breakthrough forces as it is, so it doesn't matter that much what kind of exotic stuff you come up with, if you didn't go all-in on self-propelled AA and Rocket Artillery at least! MECH is very expensive, as is S-P Artillery to a lesser degree, and I like to stick armored cars on everything myself. Hell, against a two-bit power on a fourth rate front you can make 2xCAV/AC/AC work!

Some suggestions which I in large part cribbed from the Pdox forums: ARM/MOT/TD/SPART gives you a heavy division with a good CA bonus and much hardness (probably overkill early on), with ARM/MOT/MOT/SPART as its 'wider' alternative. Substitute medium for light armor and you get an exploitation division, which like I said would be even faster (and cheaper) with armored cars.

Finally, the Barbarossa start has Germany sporting only 21 medium armor, 10 AC, 7 S-P ART, 1 ENG, and 1 TD brigade(s), but 66 MOT/Waffen SS ones (12 of the latter), and a whopping 451 INF.

:regd08:

# ¿ Feb 4, 2014 12:05

Koesj: Aug 3, 2003

Germany in HoI3 has dozens of infantry divisions lying around to guard the 1939 Polish border against enemy incursions, and you can get by with having only one of them in most provinces.

For your invasion, you could just stack 10 or so mobile divisions into the gap southwest of Warsaw, stretch them out, and cut Poland in two.

# ¿ Sep 19, 2014 13:30

Koesj: Aug 3, 2003

Decrepus posted:

In HoI3 is it possible to edit ship names? I was just trying to name some battleships but was only changing the unit name, and when merging units, was lost. I want to name this 1st BB "Yamato" just for the hell of it, and will not lay down a SHBB for obvious reasons to get the name.

You can't and it's not even moddable AFAIK.

quote:

e: Also I have played this game on and off for years and should know this, but will a single division always fit into combat without combat-reinforcement? So it would always benefit me to build a square division over a triangle division except for supply throughput constraints?

I don't see why a single division shouldn't always engage in some form of combat, at least as far as I have seen.

It's not even possible to build a division with more than 10 width (5 pre-spearhead doctrine (L/H-)Armoured Brigades in one Division, for whatever good that'd do) and Encirclement/Tactical Withdrawal will only impact new forces coming in.

Pentomic divisions 4 Lyfe. Also, add combat brigades to HQs and watch your leaders' experience go up up up.

e:

Charlz Guybon posted:

Is there a good Let's Play for Victoria II: Heart of Darkness, I haven't played this in a good three years (before House Divided) and I've forgot how complicated it was. I need to figure out how to manage the economy.

Kersch's HoD LP? I've started just now in order to get to grips with my fancy new Vicky II steam install :ohdear:

# ¿ Sep 30, 2014 16:54

Koesj: Aug 3, 2003

GrossMurpel posted:

Is there a writeup and calculation of this somewhere? It seems really good advice if it's true but I never heard of that.
But I also suck at HoI3 tech (coming from DH/KR, I started researching 6 things at once as Germany and was quite pleased with myself until I noticed 3 years later that everyone else had like 20 researches going at once ), so what do I know?

The HoI3 Wiki has a Reference Page but it's nothing like a guide, and the Germany Strategy Guide hasn't got anything approaching a comprehensive Research strategy either.

However:

quote:

What do the theory technologies do?

Theory techs do two things in Their Finest Hour. They generate additional theory in whatever the relevant category is (as if you had researched a regular tech in that category), and they reduce the rate of decay of theoretical knowledge in that field. In many cases, theories are not necessary to research because you are generating plenty of theory by researching actual technologies in the field. However, there are times when you want to either generate additional theory quickly to compensate for a poor starting position, or you want to cut the decay of theoretical knowledge to save on research costs later. Newer players can usually skip most of these technologies, except for the ones that impact supply. Theory techs mostly benefit experienced players attempting to do something creative with specialized units, like generating jet engine theory or nuclear theory.

Pitruzzello, Jason (2013-06-26). The Communist Campaign in Karelia: A Hearts of Iron III Strategy Guide (Kindle Locations 2172-2179). Paradox Interactive. Kindle Edition.

Six simultaneous techs is a truly minuscule amount of research when playing Germany. On 1-1-36 you've got 29.68 Leadership points to play with and (1) you don't really need any spies outside an extra five in doing domestic counterespionage, which takes a day to achieve, (2) a steady trickle of <1 points in Diplomacy will give you enough Influence to autotrade away, and (3) you start off with 140% officers and are able to keep up with the requirements pretty easily.

I'm investing 30 points in Research and 8.3 in officers on 26-5-39 in a custom game right now. At which point your research options might start looking like this:

etc.

# ¿ Oct 8, 2014 17:48

Koesj: Aug 3, 2003

Engineers are only worth their cost if you're attacking forts across rivers or something, and even then a Marine division might work better.

3INF+ART, 2INF+ART+AT, LARM+MOT+AC+AC, and ARM+MOT+SPART+AC are all good basic divisions if you want to keep things relatively simple.

e:

GrossMurpel posted:

Also: That loving 29.99 rounding

I put it on 29.99 because of the icon insisting I could do more research while investing exactly 30 points :v:

# ¿ Oct 8, 2014 19:04

Koesj: Aug 3, 2003

Slime Bro Helpdesk posted:

I thought armored cars were lovely? Is it for the combined arms bonus?

Speed bonus on plains (doubles if you include two), some hardness and soft attack, cheap, CA bonus, they're pretty useful.

# ¿ Oct 8, 2014 19:29

Koesj: Aug 3, 2003

Slime Bro Helpdesk posted:

Another thing I noticed and forgot to ask about : as the war kicked off I offered lend-lease to France/England since I wasn't really building anything and figured I'd like to see how that worked. That seemed to chew through my resource stockpiles pretty quickly- do the using nations get to use my resources too? If so/ bigger question- if I request/secure a lend/lease from another nation do I get to tap in to their resources?

"The nation giving out the LL pays the resource cost for the IC given, the receiver gets bonus IC added to their total which does not cost them resources to run." (per the TFH Developer Diary)

Slime Bro Helpdesk posted:

Once the Germans started moving, I felt like I was powerless to win a fight with them. I could keep them from beating me when they attacked me while dug in on the maginot line, but every other time I got crushed- definitely when trying to attack their positions. Watching the battles, it just felt like my Organization drained out at a much higher rate than them. they were around 70 and would maybe drop to 50, while I'd go from 50 to nothing in no time flat. Is this some effect from their Blitzkrieg decision? Or is there some critical tech or planning I didn't consider? I think I did a reasonable job setting up my OoB and assigning commanders and getting officers to 140%. I feel on easy difficulty I should at least be going toe-to-toe with them?

quote:

On the Germans- I didn't have any real problem on defense, but offensively I felt like I had no chance. Even when Germany took Luxembourg- they had maybe a full division there from what I could tell and my 2 divisions got creamed, organization-wise at least. They had maybe 2 days to dig in?

Not only do they have better ORG and the massive benefits from the Blitzkrieg decision (+20% Combat Movement Speed, ORG Regain Rate, and Soft Attack), those German divisions probably have better leaders and experience while possibly enjoying better tech and air support.

Better tech works towards the Attack, Defensiveness, and Toughness ratings of your units, the basic building blocks of how combat is resolved:

"during each hour of combat, divisions use hard attack and soft attack to try and 'hit' the target. Divisions use either toughness (when on the attack) or defensiveness (when being attacked) to avoid getting 'hit'. Every time a division receives a soft or hard attack, it 'spends' a toughness/ defensiveness point. While it still has points left, shots have an 80% chance to miss. Once those points are exhausted, shots have a 60% chance to miss. Each 'shot' fired at a target 'hits' either the soft or hard part of a division. For example, if firing at a division with 50% softness, each 'shot' has a 50% chance of either using hard attack or soft attack. If a division has already used up all its hard or soft attacks, then it does no damage if it hits the wrong part of the division."

"Example 1: A German infantry division (3 infantry brigades) is attacking a Polish militia division (3 militia brigades). The battle takes place in clear weather, on plains terrain, and there are no leader bonuses for either side. Firing Phase:

Both divisions target each other.
Both divisions are 100% soft, so softness values are used.
The German infantry division has a total soft attack of 6, while the the Polish militia division has a soft attack of 2. Both have 100% effectiveness because no modifiers (weather, terrain, leaders) are present. Thus, the Germans fire 6 shots in a round, while the Polish fire 2 shots.
The Polish militia division has a defensiveness of 13 while the Germany Infantry division has a toughness of 9. Practically, this means that both sides will never exceed the defensive points of the other side, thus all shots fired will have an 80% chance to miss.

Result: In each round, the German Infantry will hit at least 1 shot, while the Polish militia will hit 0 shots. Averaged out over time, the Germans will hit with 6 shots in five hours (1.2 shots/hour), while the Polish will hit with 2 shots in five hours (0.4 shots/hour).

Continuing the German vs. Polish example from above. These numbers are based on averages:

The Germans have hit with 29 shots in the first day of battle (from their average of 1.2 shots per hour), while the Polish have hit with 10 shots (from their average of 0.4 shots per hour).
The Germans have inflicted a total of 65 Polish casualties, while the Polish have killed 23 German soldiers.
The Germans have caused an organization loss of 6, while the Polish have caused a loss of 2."

Yes this is really opaque.

What kind of modifiers do you get when you hover over a division in the battle window? If not at night (-50%), your attack and defend modifiers should be somewhere above 100% in good terrain and when not crossing rivers or trying to take on big forts. Experience, leader skill, and tactics will add to this percentage in a sometimes very big way, and the number points of (soft/hard) attack you're firing at an enemy each round, gets multiplied by the modifier.

e:

Slime Bro Helpdesk posted:

Thanks for all that- but where can I tell that AT has penalties to offense? I thought I needed/wanted them to help with the hardness of German armor versus my infantry. Are TDs penalized less on offense?

Hover over the 'Terrain' icon in the division builder and you'll see the attack, defense, and movement modifiers of all possible combinations of forces you can imagine. Normal Infantry has a 60% malus on river attack, while Marines are only penalized by 20%, etc.

AT and Artillery get the same penalties between them in bad terrain (eg. -25% instead of -20% in forests, and an added -5% to movement speed - when added to 3INF mind you), but ART is generally much more useful for fighting the enemy since they add sweet weet soft attack; the thing that'll hit >85% of enemy forces out there.

Koesj fucked around with this message at 16:14 on Oct 9, 2014

# ¿ Oct 9, 2014 16:06

Koesj: Aug 3, 2003

Slime Bro Helpdesk posted:

Started playing around with HoI3 divisions to see what terrain effects they suffer...it seems like almost everything suffers some moderate to major attack penalty (30-60% on average) for just about everything aside from open plains?

I did notice Mountain Infantry seem to generally get less penalties than infantry in a number of cases (not just mountain) so I guess they're a nice thing to have in any sort of rough environment?

Yeah you'll incur attacking penalties with almost all units in any kind of tough(er) terrain.

Special Forces are p. nice but take a gander at their attack values, especially hard, not very good. Also, they take 30% more officers, an extra two doctrine techs to be researched, and around double the IC cost compared to regular infantry - yikes!

# ¿ Oct 10, 2014 16:32

Koesj: Aug 3, 2003

^^^ Germany is now a government in exile in the next Axis leader, probably Japan?

The end game-state in HoI3 is pretty messy. You can by all intents and purposes win the war but still fall short of decisive victory because *someone* forgot to setup the requirements at the start

Also wrong war goals, game crashing on puppet release, alliance leader loving things up, etc.

# ¿ Oct 27, 2014 10:41

Koesj: Aug 3, 2003

HoI 3 just doesn't have an end-game state. Last week I had problems with my USSR AI armies not wanting to continue fighting from the territory of an automatically liberated and puppeted Poland, so westward operations had to be done from the Balkans. Oh and after the war ended I released Germany and they immediately triggered Danzig or War :downs:

# ¿ Nov 13, 2014 14:37

Koesj: Aug 3, 2003

Slime Bro Helpdesk posted:

Realizing another problem in my war with Russia- they have billion VP provinces. I can probably take Leningrad and Moscow this year, maybe even Stalingrad- but if that isn't enough then I'm in trouble.

It won't be if you haven't been lowering their NU constantly. How is Vladivostok doing? That's another 10 VP right there. I've done multiple Barbarossas and there's always been this massively anticlimactic trudge past Moscow and into the Caucasus.

Invading the US has the same problem: switch on the AI, put objective markers on VP provinces, set game to highest speed, check victory progress in the diplomatic screen periodically, do some math, wait, etc.

# ¿ Nov 15, 2014 23:24

Koesj: Aug 3, 2003

The Soviets have 181 VPs and a national unity of 77% at the start of Barbarossa = ~141 VPs needed to take them down, and If you succeed in nabbing Leningrad/Moscow/Stalingrad only 20 or so points should remain. Astrakhan and (parts of) the Caucasus will get you halfway, the 6 or so VP provinces 'immediately' east of Moscow and Stalingrad do the same, and there's always landings to be had in Murmansk and Archangelsk for laughs.

# ¿ Nov 16, 2014 01:46

Koesj: Aug 3, 2003

Slime Bro Helpdesk posted:

So HoI 3 specific question- you can't upgrade your ships ever, right? I believe someone said you could upgrade them in a friendly port in 2, but I'm not seeing any little wrench button to do that. It makes sense I guess, but just want to be sure I'm not missing anything.

You can upgrade AA, Radar, ASW for DDs and CLs, and also Sub torpedoes IIRC. Can't remember if you have to be in port.

# ¿ Nov 17, 2014 04:16

Koesj: Aug 3, 2003

There's a separate oil icon visible in the video, together with what I guess is aluminium, rubber, cone thing, steel, and ballbearings/marbles.

e: Wait it's oil, aluminum (nnnooo), rubber, tungsten, steel, and chromium. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCeEy1IFyX4&t=455s

Koesj fucked around with this message at 18:08 on Nov 20, 2014

# ¿ Nov 20, 2014 18:06

Koesj: Aug 3, 2003

DrSunshine posted:

"Toywar: A Hearts of Iron 4 Game". Strategic resources: Marbles, rubber bands, double A batteries, and tape. Build dinosaur battalions to help support your plastic army men regiments!

The great LEGO-Playmobil war of 1940.

# ¿ Nov 21, 2014 02:05

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# ¿ Apr 20, 2024 01:19

Koesj: Aug 3, 2003

All I've ever heard is to avoid the supreme ruler series like the plague.

# ¿ Nov 29, 2014 08:07

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Paradox Grand Strategy: From the Carnival of Lust to the Enlightened Times

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