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The Cheshire Cat
Jun 10, 2008

Fun Shoe
The other thing about tanks is their very high breakthrough stat, which makes them even hardier on the offense on top of their armour and hardness.

So far I've only clocked a couple hours in the game (I picked Brazil to start since I wanted to get a feel for the systems in a relatively calm sphere before jumping in as a major), but it seems like it's a LOT easier to pick up than HoI3 was. It's not really dumbed down, it's just presented a lot more intuitively. I also really like the battle planner, although I don't know how much I should trust the AI to make good choices when executing plans - is it smart enough to do things like use specialized companies (eg mountaineers) over generic divisions when they have relevant bonuses? Or should I separate those guys off and give them more specific orders to ensure they'll be in the right places?

Also, if I give a manual order to a unit, will they just forget the battle plan forever until I assign them back to the front, or will they resume what they were doing after arriving at the target location?

Also, where do I look to see what kind of naval presence my enemy has in a zone? I'm currently invading Argentina and I can't tell if it's worth convoy hunting along their coast since I have no idea how to check if they're actually using any convoys.

The Cheshire Cat fucked around with this message at 20:17 on Jun 9, 2016

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The Cheshire Cat
Jun 10, 2008

Fun Shoe

bewbies posted:

god I'd love to read a multiplayer LP thread. like have teams that play each faction or something. are there still factions?

There's MORE factions!

Specifically, you aren't tied down to choosing between Axis/Allies/Comintern. Those still exist, but you can also start your own faction.

The Cheshire Cat
Jun 10, 2008

Fun Shoe

Empress Theonora posted:

Is there any way to tell if my lend-lease is doing any good? I'm sending lots of outdated infantry equipment and artillery to the USSR (also at war with Germany but not in my faction) but I can't tell if they actually need it or if they're swimming in Infantry Equipment II and it's all just sitting in a warehouse somehow.

I would imagine they probably aren't using it - the point of lend-lease is more to send high-tech stuff that a nation can't build themselves yet to give them a leg-up, rather than as a dumping ground for all your obsolete gear.

The Cheshire Cat
Jun 10, 2008

Fun Shoe

Empress Theonora posted:

edit: I know that artillery or AT guns or whatever in tank divisions should always be support so they don't slow the division down, but it's fine to have artillery at AT as main units in infantry divisions, right? I mean I'm assuming it's fine, since it's seemed to work so far (e.g., I survived the initial German onslaught where they heavily outnumbered me before their troops were drawn away to fight in the east, I'm holding down my Alpine forts even though Italy isn't really doing anything else and can just throw away all its troops at me), but I want to make sure I'm playing efficiently.

Yeah you definitely want artillery/anti-tank in your main divisions with infantry. The amount a main division artillery adds to your attack power is significantly more than support company artillery.

For tank divisions you can use motorized rocket artillery in your main divisions as well to give them artillery support without slowing them down.

The Cheshire Cat
Jun 10, 2008

Fun Shoe

Arrhythmia posted:

aahahahhaa. the people's republic of china and the chinese people's republic not only both exist in my game, but they're both being lead by Mao. ahahahaha

How exactly did that happen? The civil war stalemated and then nationalist China flipped to communism on their own? I feel like they should just join with communist China if that happens.

The Cheshire Cat
Jun 10, 2008

Fun Shoe

Mister Bates posted:

This isn't a Paradox problem so much as it is a Steam Workshop problem, there are Nazis everywhere on there. Paradox games seem to have it particularly bad, though - Stellaris has this issue too.

It's kind of a Paradox problem, but mainly just because "take over the world" historical map games seem to appeal to Nazis (for some mysterious reason). It's not unique to HoI but it's not surprising that HoI would have it a bit worse than other games just because of the setting.

The Cheshire Cat
Jun 10, 2008

Fun Shoe

Krataar posted:

What does "Can create factions" mean?

Can I make a "bulgaria is king now" faction and everybody who joins it is with me. Bulgaria?

Exactly that, yes. You just have to ask another unaligned country to join you (there will be a "create faction" button on the diplomacy screen) and you can call it whatever you want.

The Cheshire Cat
Jun 10, 2008

Fun Shoe

Baron Porkface posted:

Does anyone know the answer to this?

Your trade laws dictate how much of your produced resources is put up for export, but that doesn't guarantee that anyone will actually be importing it from you - you only gain civilian factories for the resources that are being used by other countries but always export a fixed amount. The rest are essentially just wasted.

Unrelated question: Is there a way to assign a ship to a fleet without having the fleet return to the port and merging the ship in with them? I know you can have ships automatically meet up with fleets if you specify it on the production screen as it's being built, but can I do the same thing after it's already been constructed?

The Cheshire Cat
Jun 10, 2008

Fun Shoe

Spiderfist Island posted:

High casualties shooting down a nation's National Unity value may be a good way of punishing countries for pointless meatgrinders. In the case of the USA and other faraway fighters who don't have to worry about their VPs getting taken, there could be a "sudden death" mechanic where if your NU goes below a value, then an event forcing you to either choose a White Peace with your enemies or suffer some nasty dissent/civil wars. Countries at war with nations an ocean away should have the tradeoff of having unthreatened industry but less national commitment to the war.

In a more complex political model, National Unity could also be used to determine in democracies if your current party still can win a given election. Churchill may have won the war, but there's a reason the UK voted in the Labor Party in 1945

Casualties affecting your national unity should probably depend on the ratio of casualties to overall manpower, though. After all, Russia sending people into the meatgrinder shouldn't tank their national unity considering that was what worked for them in real life.

The Cheshire Cat
Jun 10, 2008

Fun Shoe

Fuligin posted:

France has a focus tree that helps it transition into alternate governments, and a number of specific striking labor events that will shunt you rapidly into communism. I just wrapped up my French Commune run, which was super fun. Only annoying thing was that I took the path towards making my own faction (gently caress bolshevism) but I think any country that would qualify for joining (i.e, is communist and afraid of fascists) would be instantly stolen by the USSR before I could react.

Yeah I found this to be an issue when I started my own faction as Communist Brazil. Basically the only countries that joined me were ones that I created via coups (since I was also at war with their parent country so we'd immediately count as having a common enemy). Everyone else had a big -200 penalty "Would rather join the comintern", assuming they hadn't already been snatched up.

I wish there was a way to get nations to LEAVE factions - I feel like a successful coup or revolution should drop a nation out of a faction if it's in one.

The Cheshire Cat
Jun 10, 2008

Fun Shoe
Just had a fun game as France - stuck to mostly historical decisions (stayed democratic, allied with the UK, let Germany get away with poo poo until they invade Poland), but I managed to unfuck my government and military before said Polish invasion, so throughout the entire war I never gave up even a single province to Germany or Italy - I basically just let them suicide against the maginot line and the alps for about a year before pushing back - they were up to about half a million casualties each with me at about 70k. Italy didn't put much into the African campaign and Germany didn't help them out at all so I was able to mop up there pretty quickly which let me concentrate mostly on Europe (Japan joined late in the war but by that point I'd already been building tons of poo poo so I easily had an army to spare to send over to Indochina and eventually the British and India got involved which made retaking China fairly easy).

The US basically did gently caress all for most of the war until they eventually just randomly declared war on Japan which put them against the rest of the Axis by default. After that they still did gently caress all as far as I could tell. The USSR never joined at all, although it's now post-war (in 1943 - Japan was the last holdout and it seemed like they just kind of gave up after losing China, since they just kind of sat on their island and waited to be invaded) and they've decided to start justifying against Greece (who joined the allies during the war), so things may still get interesting. It seems like surviving as France isn't really as hard as you'd think it would be - my industry was still way behind when the war hit but that didn't really seem to matter too much and with both Germany and Italy concentrating almost entirely on Europe defending my colonial holdings was basically non-issue.

The Cheshire Cat fucked around with this message at 15:20 on Jun 12, 2016

The Cheshire Cat
Jun 10, 2008

Fun Shoe

karma_coma posted:

muted ambient or whatever during that poo poo jesus christ it was so drat annoying

This game is dying for good Cold War DLC .. really well done. At the end of my game (1947) Axis / Comintern controlled half the world with lots of commie pockets and Germany declared on USSR a few months after the main peace conference... tired of war at the point and not much more tech after 1945ish.

I'm not sure how well HoI would really model the politics of the Cold War - unless you mean just have it be a "hot" war expansion where it's a third world war in the Cold War era, which could be pretty cool (although there would have to be some mechanic that kept people from just nuking the hell out of each other since then it's just DEFCON).

Although thinking about it I kind of want to see Paradox make a dedicated Cold War game now - like some kind of cross between HoI with its modern warfare focus and Victoria's political focus. I think the thing with Hearts of Iron is that there just isn't a lot to do during peace time (which makes sense given that it is a war game) and a Cold War game would need that to be interesting.

(Also as mentioned above there would have to be some kind of limiting mechanic to prevent everyone from just building bigger and bigger armies. It makes sense that you don't have to care about economic upkeep in HoI since the game ends before you would have to care about that, but a longer time frame would lead to some pretty ridiculous armies).

The Cheshire Cat fucked around with this message at 04:23 on Jun 13, 2016

The Cheshire Cat
Jun 10, 2008

Fun Shoe
That's a lovely front line you have there Russia. Sure would be a shame if anything... happened... to it.

The Cheshire Cat
Jun 10, 2008

Fun Shoe

Gamerofthegame posted:

*division stuff*

One thing that I've found helpful is to set up your infantry divisions with signal companies. Because they're slower thank tanks/mechs, they're almost always going to arrive late to the fight if you give an order for everyone to attack at once, which means that they might end up just sitting in reserves never actually joining the fight, thereby making poor use of all that staying power. Signal companies pretty dramatically increase the reinforcement chance (I think the base is like 1% without one; with one you get something like 5% + 3% per extra level of tech), so what you get is your low staying power tank divisions coming in and delivering a heavy initial punch, then as they crumble away the infantry comes in to back them up and holds the ground as they plink away at the survivors of the initial assault.

*edit*

Krataar posted:

Ok last question. How do infantry, motorized, and mechanized correlate to each other? Slow, med, fast?

Mechanized are slower than motorized but more durable. Mechanized also gets more upgrades so they'll end up being a lot more effective in combat (but still slower than motorized).

The Cheshire Cat fucked around with this message at 20:20 on Jun 13, 2016

The Cheshire Cat
Jun 10, 2008

Fun Shoe

cock hero flux posted:

Why would you ever not take the first one and why would you ever take the second one considering how important Nation Unity is

Dependencies. The France one is only available if you go the "status quo" route (e.g. you're staying a democracy rather than going communist/fascist), and I don't know the UK tree but presumably taking the national unity decrease is a requirement for some better options farther down the tree.

*edit*

I agree that there should be more ways to influence national unity. Someone earlier in the thread mentioned the idea of taking casualties slowly eroding national unity which is a good idea. Major victories should also increase national unity (taking a major city for the first time could provide a one-time bonus, for example, with maybe a larger one given to the country that actually has the first troops in the city).

The Cheshire Cat fucked around with this message at 21:31 on Jun 13, 2016

The Cheshire Cat
Jun 10, 2008

Fun Shoe

Vengarr posted:

I wish there were a lot more National Focuses in general. Hopefully that's something modders will dig into.

I would be very surprised if this was something that didn't get addressed in basically every DLC pack they release. It seems like a really obvious thing to make regional packs that add unique national focus trees to minors.

The Cheshire Cat
Jun 10, 2008

Fun Shoe

Gamerofthegame posted:

I doubt it'll be proper DLC, simply because it's pretty easy to do. Kaiserreich is already nearly done as far as foci go. (Less so events.)

Well I figure they'll probably do them in groups. So like South America would be one DLC with trees for all of them. Either that or they'll just include more national focus trees as part of larger DLC expansions where it would make sense (like if there was a DLC focused on the war in the Pacific it would probably include trees for both Chinas).

The Cheshire Cat
Jun 10, 2008

Fun Shoe

Stairmaster posted:



I can't tell if this war is going really well or really bad.

Considering they have about 40 encircled divisions there currently failing at attacking your two, I'd say you're probably doing alright.

The Cheshire Cat
Jun 10, 2008

Fun Shoe

Stairmaster posted:



What is even going on anymore this game.

Yeah I had this happen in my Italy game too. The crazy thing is that democratic Russia then formed their own faction and got Poland to join, and now in Poland vs. the USSR Poland is winning wtf is going on

The Cheshire Cat
Jun 10, 2008

Fun Shoe

Main Paineframe posted:

War exhaustion doesn't really sound like a sensible mechanic for a game based around WWII, which featured incredible numbers of lives wasted in ill-advised invasions even after it became clear that victory was impossible. There really isn't much basis for it here.

I think just having national unity decrease due to losses would be a fine way of handling "war weariness". Since national unity only affects the point at which a nation capitulates, it wouldn't really hurt you if you were taking those losses in offensive campaigns (since the enemy still needs to occupy SOME territory before you capitulate), but it would make you more vulnerable to sudden invasions pushing your nation over the edge.

Tahirovic posted:

Is there any reason to not make my airwings in 200 increments? Is having 4x 100 better than having 2x 200 or 1x 400?
recently I've started to make bigger wings as my production allows to reduce the micro. Also gently caress the default mode not being "go repair".

Yes - air wings operate as a single unit, meaning that one wing of say, 400 CAS can only provide air support to a single battle at a time while 4x100 wings can support 4 different battles. Additionally, the entire wing operates at once so if all your fighters are in one wing, your air superiority will be very spikey since you'll lose it all as soon as they have to land to repair/rest. If you have multiple wings, they can operate in waves so you always have some planes in the air.

It is a pain to micro though, so hopefully they make the interface a bit easier to use eventually.

The Cheshire Cat fucked around with this message at 17:13 on Jun 14, 2016

The Cheshire Cat
Jun 10, 2008

Fun Shoe

cock hero flux posted:

Even on the hardest difficulty the AI is dumb as gently caress sometimes.



Japan suicided its entire military into naval invasions of Shanghai. They have like 20 divisions left, most of which are trapped in a pocket in Shanghai after trying yet another naval invasion.

I'm just waiting until I can research transports so I can land a division and take a sightseeing tour of the completely undefended home islands.

I think difficulty options just gives the AI statistical bonuses (or the player, on easy). It doesn't make them any smarter.

It's kind of tricky to judge the optimal level of AI intelligence for a game like this - you don't want them always playing optimally because that will be too hard for new players, and also unrealistic (even smart people make mistakes). At the same time, with some experience it's fairly easy to game the AI as it is because of specific bad decisions they will always make (spamming tons of tiny, understrength divisions is a common one).

From the sounds of things the AI is pretty open to modders though, so we'll probably see AI mods come out that will allow more experienced players to give themselves a greater challenge, while allowing Paradox to keep the default, kind of dumb AI in the base game for new players to learn the basics against.

The Cheshire Cat
Jun 10, 2008

Fun Shoe

JerikTelorian posted:

I think I'd like to see the addition of "retrofit kits" for the variant vehicles. You could dedicate a production line to making retrofit kits, which would then upgrade vehicles that you already have in service. Aircraft like the P-38 were very regularly upgraded/retrofitted over their service life and this would give an alternate way to upgrade old vehicles so you don't have stocks of Mk0 fighters lying around.

I don't know if I'd really want this for upgrading to the next tech tier (it would kind of invalidate the whole point of the manufacturing system where new tech is supposed to take a while to roll out), but it would be cool to be able to retrofit things to variants you've designed. Especially if you could do it for ships, since it takes so long to build most of them that I usually don't even bother with variants; I just wait until I can research the next tier and build that.

The Cheshire Cat
Jun 10, 2008

Fun Shoe

Charles Get-Out posted:

A lot of the intervenors for civil wars seem to be funky at the moment. A couple of other people have had similar issues where nations losing horribly just will not accept help.

It helps to just send volunteers and use like 3 light tank divisions to overrun the entire Republican Spanish army. Although if you're already in a war you don't have that option.

The Cheshire Cat
Jun 10, 2008

Fun Shoe
One random thing that bugs me about the map in the game - why is there such a dearth of resources in Africa and the middle east? I mean granted Africa's richness is more in resources that don't necessarily have military application, like diamonds, precious metals, and lumber, but the middle east has like, no oil. Was it just not tapped at this point in history? It just seems weird to me that places that people have fought over for centuries because of their resource-richness are so devoid of value in HoI4.

The Cheshire Cat
Jun 10, 2008

Fun Shoe

Disinterested posted:

You can get out of those holes but it takes slightly longer than you have before war with Germany. However, it's really straightforward to just wait Germany out behind a line of fortifications and slowly attrite them until you can start pushing back

Yeah, you don't really NEED any of those things because the maginot line is more than capable of holding Germany back indefinitely with what you already start with. Build some forts on the border to Switzerland and take the free fort national focuses for the rest and they won't even be able to go around it.

The Cheshire Cat
Jun 10, 2008

Fun Shoe

Bold Robot posted:

Are support brigades worth the org loss? I put engineers on everything and artillery or AT here and there but I'm not convinced it's actually better than just having higher org. The org loss isn't too bad per brigade but it starts to add up.

It's situational. A lot of people seem to be putting support artillery into infantry divisions, but I feel like this is a waste when you already have towed artillery with them. Same with AT and AA.

I feel that you should consider what the division is going to be for and tailor your supports for that: engineers are going to be vital on defensive divisions because of the huge entrenchment bonuses, and useful for marines and mountaineers because they stack the terrain bonuses, but they'll be kind of useless on tank divisions who will mainly be doing offensive pushes across flat ground. Meanwhile, support artillery and AT/AA are redundant with infantry as mentioned above, but very useful for paratroopers who can't take towed equipment of any kind. Likewise they're a cheaper alternative to SP artillery for tank or motor divisions who want to hold on to their mobility. Recon companies are pretty useful all around although I generally feel they're more offensive than defensive in nature (tactical advantage isn't as important if you've got entrenchment and defender terrain bonuses).

Logistics companies will be useful for anyone in low infrastructure theatres like Africa or Siberia, but kind of useless elsewhere. I'm not really sure how important maintenance companies are - they basically counter attrition but if you aren't taking significant attrition I don't know if reliability matters. Signal companies get your divisions to plan faster and reinforce faster, so useful on offensive infantry who might be coming in to back up tank/motor offenses. MPs you can just slap on cavalry and garrison them in high resistance states - honestly the cavalry alone is probably sufficient but it's not like it really costs much more to stick MPs with them just in case.

The Cheshire Cat fucked around with this message at 20:18 on Jun 15, 2016

The Cheshire Cat
Jun 10, 2008

Fun Shoe

mackintosh posted:

I really wish there was a way to dump old equipment. I know I can lend lease it away, but I often have so much of it stockpiled, it would take forever to get rid of it. Seriously, why is there no way to just delete it and be done with it.

Why would you want to? Your units will always use the most current equipment available so it's not like they'll be grabbing lovely WW1 era weapons when you've got a bunch of modern stuff available. And if you don't have modern stuff available, using old stuff is better than no equipment at all.

ArchangeI posted:

The other is the lack of an international arms trade, which would go very, very well with the equipment system. By comparison the volunteers system has pretty much two major historical precedents (Spanish Civil war and the American Volunteer Group in China), while countries were buying and selling arms left right and center before and during the war. But that is such an obvious expansion feature that I'm not too worried about it.

Yeah I wish you could request lend lease instead of just offering it. The US has tons of industrial capacity but rarely seems to offer materiel help to anyone.

The Cheshire Cat fucked around with this message at 21:35 on Jun 15, 2016

The Cheshire Cat
Jun 10, 2008

Fun Shoe
If I'm trying to reform the Roman Empire (i.e. "Italy First!") like a huge nerd, how do I get Hitler to stop snapping up all the fascist nations into the Axis before I can get them to join my faction? Like, he always brings Spain into the Axis before it's even possible for me to take the "befriend Spain" focus (since a requirement of that is that France either no longer exists or has gone Fascist). I don't mind if I'm going to have to declare war against the Axis after dealing with the Allies (since I was kind of planning on doing that anyway) but I'd prefer to do it with at least Spain on my side so I can lock down the Mediterranean.

Vengarr posted:

I haven't found a good way to automate "tanks in front, infantry fill gaps" so I just micro it. It's not particularly irksome since your spearheads are generally pretty small.

You aren't really supposed to - their goal for the battle planner was to let it handle the bulk of the line where nothing really needs to be done other than "make sure troops are here", and then leave it up to the player to handle more technical maneuvers. They didn't want the battle planner to just play the game for you, and they didn't want players getting frustrated by the battle planner AI trying too hard to pull off fancy breakthroughs and such because they knew that inevitably it would do things the player didn't want, and it's a lot less frustrating to just have to micromanage a couple of divisions than it is to constantly fight against your own battle plan AI.

The Cheshire Cat fucked around with this message at 04:49 on Jun 16, 2016

The Cheshire Cat
Jun 10, 2008

Fun Shoe
One of the issues I've noticed with the air mechanics is that installation-based AA is basically useless. In my Italy game I had about 1000 bombers constantly doing port strikes in the Italy area. I had about 15 AA guns built in that zone, and 100% radar coverage and they shot down maybe 20 planes over a month. I dropped about 150 fighters in that zone and within a DAY they had shot down 800 planes.

The Cheshire Cat
Jun 10, 2008

Fun Shoe

Hitlers Gay Secret posted:

Noooo, and I just came up with "Neo-Nu Babylonian Empire" to replace it. :downs:

My only issue is if that prevents Iran and Iraq from warring each other because they are both fascist.

Fascists can go to war with each other just fine; it's only democracies that are restricted. Being the same ideology might make them both join the same faction started by another fascist state, though. Events/national focuses could be used to make them more likely to hate each other.

If you can't decide, remember the neutral ideology exists as well - it's used in the base game to cover a pretty wide range of government types, including authoritarian/totalitarians that just didn't have a stake in either the Axis or the Comintern.

The Cheshire Cat
Jun 10, 2008

Fun Shoe

MC2552John posted:

How does Vichy France spawning work? I was Italy as the New Rome (or whatever) faction and both Germany and I went to war with France around the same time, Germany by invading Poland and me by invading Romania. We basically split France into a top and bottom half, France capitulates, and then all my French territory becomes Vichy France, and Germany even gets some too.

Also how does the Befriend Romania focus for Italy work? Every other Befriend focus for a country (Yugoslavia, Spain, Turkey) let me invite them to my faction, but the Romanians just refuse. Basically is there a way to make Romania stop being a bitch and join my faction?



I had everything that made up Vichy France, then like a day after France capitulated the Axis get it? Is there a way to make that not happen?

I got to keep Corsica and Savoy, so I got that going for me. Also the air base in Rhone had my planes and I didn't get them back, so that was cool too.

Vichy France is actually just the name the game gives to a fascist government France, so whatever happened to them is just based on the demands Germany made on France during the peace conference.

I'm not really sure how the game handles multiple peace conferences for multiple distinct wars against the same nations. It sounds like basically Germany's peace conference went first and thus you didn't get to make any demands at all.

The Cheshire Cat
Jun 10, 2008

Fun Shoe

gradenko_2000 posted:

If anything the air wing creation interface is annoying as all hell because you have to assign planes down to the individual plane.

The short answer would be to add +5, +10, +100 increment buttons to the air wing sizer window.

The long answer would be to come up with prepackaged air wings the way land divisions are also prepackaged to begin with.

You uh... you can do that. Ctrl+click for +10, shift+click for +100.

The Cheshire Cat
Jun 10, 2008

Fun Shoe

Yvonmukluk posted:

I think I'm too dumb to play this game.

Why does war have to be so complicated? :saddowns:

It's simpler than it looks at first glance. It's helpful to start off as a minor somewhere and just play out a few small conquests of your neighbours to get a general feel for how armies work. The advantage of starting as a minor is that you generally build up your entire army and economy from scratch, so it's a lot less intimidating than say, jumping in as Germany who are technically easier to play if you know what you're doing, but very intimidating to load up first thing and suddenly see like 40 military factories and 30 divisions and navies and air wings all over the place and not having any idea what to do with any of them. Once you get a feel for each individual system it's a lot easier to start as a major and immediately know what you want to do with all their starting stuff.

The Cheshire Cat
Jun 10, 2008

Fun Shoe

Luigi Thirty posted:

I think France banning communism and then joining Comintern instead of the Allies is the most :paradox: thing I've seen yet.

Yeah they don't seem to weigh their choices in events based on what national focus branch they're pursuing. I had them ban communism literally the same time they were working on the "Support the Left" focus (i.e. the one you take when you want France to go communist).

The Cheshire Cat
Jun 10, 2008

Fun Shoe

uXs posted:

Can I change factories into naval thingies? I want to build me some ships.

No. Naval dockyards have to be built specifically. You can only convert between military and civilian factories.

The Cheshire Cat
Jun 10, 2008

Fun Shoe

Diogines posted:

Can anyone explain how combat width works? Apparently 7 infantry and 2 artillery is a good standard division design, but how should I split that between multiple columns?

Doesn't matter. Width is based purely on the brigades themselves - arrangement makes no difference.

The only thing about division layout that matters is that you can't mix brigade types WITHIN a column - eg you can't have both tanks and infantry in one column, you have to have two. For the optimal widths though, 5 columns is often much more than you will need to mix and match so even that isn't really a concern.

The Cheshire Cat
Jun 10, 2008

Fun Shoe

verbal enema posted:

Bought this before work. Bout to go home and mash it out. I have several hundred hours of CK2 and like 70-80 in EU4.

Anything radically different about this? I'm looking forward to figuring this out and getting mad at tiny pixel men

It's quite a bit different from both of those just in terms of scale - you're going to be dealing with dozens of divisions at a MINIMUM, hundreds is more likely as a major power, which is why control is done mostly with battle plans rather than giving direct "go here" orders. Also, expect to fight for every inch of territory - unlike EU4 or CK2 armies in HoI4 don't tend to come out of battle completely crippled and unable to pose any kind of threat - they only really start significantly losing strength if they run out of supplies (either because there just aren't any more for their home nation to send them, or because they've been cut off/encircled). In most cases when they lose a battle they just fall back a province and regroup. So don't expect the fights to play out the same way as other Paradox titles where you get one big decisive battle that essentially settles the war right there.

In terms of complexity, if you're capable of handling CK2/EU4 and all their expansions then you won't have any trouble figuring HoI4 out. It's actually quite a bit more streamlined than either of those games thanks to the very narrow focus, so there's less of that initial "holy poo poo what do all these screens do" feeling that other Paradox games tend to have.

The Cheshire Cat fucked around with this message at 04:46 on Jun 25, 2016

The Cheshire Cat
Jun 10, 2008

Fun Shoe
What is actually bad about super heavy tanks in game, anyway? I've never really used them so I haven't taken too close a look at the stats - is it just that modern tanks are basically "the same, but better", or do SH have other weaknesses besides being slow? Do they at least have tougher armour than modern, making them unpierceable?

The Cheshire Cat
Jun 10, 2008

Fun Shoe

Decrepus posted:

Are the Infantry Anti-Tank upgrades worth it? Just eye-balling it (and not really understanding how armor works) wouldnt a 1942 division have 20 piercing which would fail against even a 1941 light tank?

RaffyTaffy posted:

What kind of armor numbers do mechanized have?

I think this is more what it's for. Also the AI loves to keep using old light tanks so you'll probably find you get piercing even against tank divisions.

*edit* also also, division armour is based on an average right? So the armour numbers for a light tank division usually won't be as high as the basic tank stats indicate, since there's probably some motorized/mechanized mixed in there.

The Cheshire Cat fucked around with this message at 19:17 on Jun 28, 2016

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The Cheshire Cat
Jun 10, 2008

Fun Shoe
I think if you mouse over the % bar it says how many VPs they currently control but I might be confusing it with HoI3.

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