Game Released: 6. June 2016 What is this game? Hearts of Iron IV is the latest installment of Paradox Interactive’s Hearts of Iron series of grand strategy games, covering the rough time period surrounding World War 2 (1936-1948, though previous games have bumped the cap all the way up to 1964). Prior to Europa Universalis III, the Hearts of Iron series was Paradox’s best-selling product, allowing the player to take control of an country in the world during the conflict, from the great powers of the Allies and Axis, all the way down to tiny little Bhutan. The Hearts of Iron series (mainly HOI2) have been showcased in almost all of the major goon mega-LP’s that span the entire timeline of Paradox games. I thought Hearts of Iron 3 was a poo poo game? What’s different now? Hearts of Iron 3 is sortof a sad story. It was broken at launch in ways that are With Hearts of Iron 4, Paradox has spent several years in what has generally been a quite long development cycle to re-examine the holy cows of the Hearts of Iron series and to make sure they hit this nail on the head. A short bulleted summary of the major changes:
Aren’t Paradox games just one big DLC-fest? Yes and no. Paradox has a fairly unique continuous development cycle for all of their internally-developed titles, with games continuing to be supported with regular new content for years after their release. Crusader Kings 2 was released in like 2011 and is still getting regular expansions. Also unique to Paradox is the release of huge free patches with each expansion, providing all players with some of the content of the expansions for nothing. The DLC model is meant to be a la carte based on what the player wants in their game (“want to play Vikings in CK2? Buy The Old Gods,” etc.). The same is likely to be true for Hearts of Iron 4. Also there’s a bunch of cosmetic DLC that is purely optional. The music DLC’s tend to be very good though, and Andreas Waldetoft is probably one of the best composers that nobody has heard of in the business. Also, Paradox DLC and their games in general go on sale really often. What about multiplayer? In the past few years, Paradox has placed a much greater focus on their multiplayer development. Paradox multiplayer games now have pretty good netcode, and are known for being a lot of fun. There is currently a long-standing group of goons who play weekly Paradox multiplayer, MapGoons. It’s fun, there’s diplomacy and backstabbing, and shooting the poo poo with goons for 3 hours at a time while politicking and warring is pretty great. For HOI4, Paradox has also added the option of co-op country management. If it’s just you and a buddy, the both of you can control the same country, dividing the duties up between yourselves. This could potentially result in some hilarious Japan games where one player takes over the IJA and another the IJN, simulating the infamous real-world rivalry between army and navy in the Japanese Empire. That's also a pretty good way to onboard friends who are knew to the game. Expansions/DLC
Mods There are so, so many alt-history mods out there these days, some of which are really detailed and neat. Here just a few of the ones that seem to have stood the test of time.
Are there a lot of wehraboos in this community? Boy howdy. Useful links: Official HOI4 wiki All HOI4 dev diaries Official Paradox Twitch channel tl;dr should i buy this game Drone fucked around with this message at 12:14 on Dec 10, 2021 |
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# ¿ May 19, 2016 07:48 |
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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 23:14 |
Radio Free Kobold posted:Rules of Thumb for Hearts of Iron 4: Drone fucked around with this message at 09:02 on Mar 12, 2018 |
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# ¿ May 19, 2016 07:48 |
Didn't they say they were going to use the blacked-out portrait as the default for all countries, but those who aren't in Germany would get it "activated" by a DLC that everyone automatically gets at launch (except Germans)? Or was that just a silly rumor? We have reached the age of Hitler DLC. While I love all of the leader portraits their artists have done for this game, I really honestly think they should have done Hitler's up in a Looney Tunes caricature style instead of going for full-on glorious Nazi propaganda of blue-eyed, Iron Cross-wearing Hitler.
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# ¿ May 19, 2016 15:00 |
ArchangeI posted:Yeah, but you see, the German version is geolocked and that's basically the holocaust all over again. People are literally unironically canceling preorders over it. For what it's worth, I live in Germany too and I'm nearly positive that you can play the German version in the English language. No Hitler portrait for us though. It's not like this is exactly a new thing for Paradox, and it is German law. In previous Hearts of Iron incarnations, the German versions even went so far as to completely rename Hitler (to Alois Hiller or something like that)
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# ¿ May 19, 2016 16:05 |
beer_war posted:A court today might very well decide differently, but the legal battle might take years, the outcome is uncertain, and sales of the game would be suspended until there is a final decision. Understandably, developers and publishers prefer to just remove the offending symbols. At the risk of a derail about German laws, this country's courts are notoriously conservative and backward about all things digital. Merkel famously claimed a couple years ago that the Internet was still "uncharted territory". I highly doubt that a court today would decide any differently, but you are completely right that the legal battle would take years. But anyone who is that butthurt about not having their glorious Hitler portrait present in their game without two seconds of modding really needs to reconsider their priorities in life.
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# ¿ May 20, 2016 07:51 |
Groogy posted:He uses tanks as well, but I think most people are referring to his minor game where he simply don't have the industry to even afford tanks. But if you mean to have a majority of tanks, then you can do it but get killed as your industry will not be capable of supplying that idiocy. It's more because the vast majority of people seem to incorrectly think that a "tank division" means literally everyone is in a tank, when in reality it means like eight thousand infantry/support/artillery/staff and a couple hundred tanks tops.
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# ¿ May 20, 2016 09:07 |
So is there value in multiplayer for giving all of your divisions really inappropriate icons just to gently caress with your opponents across the border? I also think we're reading a whole lot into what someone does during a one-hour demo stream with countries that change regularly. Has anyone thought that this is simply just Daniel's style? He's pretty much the only person we've ever seen playing HOI4 live. I mean, even in previous HOI games, you tend to develop a style that you fall back on. Even when playing countries that could afford nice tanks and mechanized stuff in HOI2/DH/HOI3, I still almost always fell back on pumping out infantry anyway. It's been a viable strategy for pretty much anyone since long before HOI4. Drone fucked around with this message at 09:16 on May 20, 2016 |
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# ¿ May 20, 2016 09:12 |
Oh and I'm particularly excited for the new naval system and am seriously hoping it does away with cruiser zerg fleets from HOI2. I really want to see some actual combined force fleets.
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# ¿ May 20, 2016 11:10 |
The day I misunderstood a point a dev was making about how my favorite warmachines arent the be-all, end-all of modern cinflict, Paradox took away my ability to feel human. Also yeah the dude who bought that red text is a pretty big idiot and probably could have given that :tenbux: to some charity for abused tanks.
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# ¿ May 20, 2016 14:51 |
Empress Theonora posted:God, a Between the Seas faction Poland game sounds fun as hell, except I know I'll never, ever be good enough at HoI to pull it off. I fully expect China to be one of the first, and also stuff for Canada/Australia, both Spains, and probably Sweden (because it's Paradox, even if Sweden didn't fight in the war) coming within 6 months.
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# ¿ May 20, 2016 16:23 |
So I found this fantastic radio site that lets you pick a country and a decade and it'll take you through a playlist of popular music from the era. No idea how completely accurate it is, but it's going to be pretty great for HOI4 background music: http://radiooooo.com/
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# ¿ May 20, 2016 17:53 |
"Civil War historian" on the Paradox forums tends to mean "owns some Confederate flag paraphernalia" and/or is someone who is 90% likely to refer to it as the War of Northern Aggression.
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# ¿ May 20, 2016 18:04 |
Groogy you need to reinstate the hedgehog, I find it really hard to distinguish your posts now
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# ¿ May 20, 2016 18:46 |
Gamerofthegame posted:There was a not WW1 (I think it was WW1) book setting where the central/axis powers were all mechanized industrial stuff and had mech-tanks while the entente/allies all had animals like giant flying whales or bears and stuff. It also had the coolest political map ever. I thought it was just a map that someone put together as an art piece? Was there actually fiction behind this? Edit: also why is Italy neutral in this version of WW1 Drone fucked around with this message at 19:35 on May 20, 2016 |
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# ¿ May 20, 2016 19:32 |
Mortabis posted:You know, whenever I hear this it's always "I had a friend who called it that." I've never met any of these supposed friends in all my time in the South, and neither have my parents. And every time it's always been in a derogatory manner, like, "what kind of fool would call it the war of northern aggression?" My point wasn't that Southerners call it that. My point was that people who post on the Paradox forums about the Civil War are more likely to be the types that call it that. Also to have an unusually large collection of Nazi daggers, and maybe a Reichsfahne hanging from their wall.
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# ¿ May 21, 2016 19:30 |
Definitely Darkest Hour. And it has the virtue of being where the Kaiserreich mod lives, which is almost better than the vanilla game itself.
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# ¿ May 22, 2016 16:56 |
I'm waffling between UK, France, and Italy.
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# ¿ May 22, 2016 20:26 |
Gort posted:The war in the Pacific will be a good test for whether HoI4 is a decent game or not. I love Darkest Hour, but when it comes to naval combat the AI is atrocious, the combat modelling is terrible and carrying out island-hopping campaigns is a slog. And yet, Darkest Hour is a good game despite it.
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# ¿ May 23, 2016 19:00 |
There is such a thing as a happy medium. Which is what we seem to be getting in HOI4.
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# ¿ May 23, 2016 20:15 |
Airfoil posted:Lots of people care about the difference between a Sherman and a Tiger. Many fewer people care about StuG III vs StuG IV. The problem arises when the latter REALLY care about that difference, and REALLY REALLY care that you don't care how dare you hurt my tank
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# ¿ May 23, 2016 20:19 |
Phi230 posted:1. You can't fireball dresden because Paradox won't show bad things that happen in war No, its because it's illegal and frankly insensitive to depict it in Paradox's second-biggest market. Jesus dude.
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# ¿ May 23, 2016 20:45 |
Frosted Flake posted:Yes. It's a Paradox game. Who do you think buys Matrix/Slitherine/Paradox/Battlefront games? I don't really think it's possible to compare Paradox to Slitherine or Battlefront anymore post-CK2
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# ¿ May 23, 2016 20:58 |
I'm sad Nationalist China doesn't have a focus tree yet.
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# ¿ May 24, 2016 12:28 |
So is the Rocket Launcher cosmetic DLC (god that sentence felt ridiculous to type) just gonna be like... a Katyusha?
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# ¿ May 25, 2016 16:18 |
Some of those achievements are... strange.
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# ¿ May 27, 2016 13:35 |
waitwhatno posted:Is this going to be a good game or a bad game? There will be launch bugs that will largely be ironed out a couple weeks after release, but it will be the end of the world regardless.
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# ¿ May 30, 2016 16:36 |
It would make sense if the Republican side got some kind of event that would choose one side over the other (as in every other HOI) game, but I wouldn't be terribly surprised if they just oversimplified it by making the Republican side automatically belong to the communist camp. A bit disappointed but not surprised. It looks like the Wiki restructuring wiped out all of the country guides too. Before almost all of them were just placeholder text with the opening paragraphs copied from the previous HOI wikis, so I'm looking forward to those getting filled once the game is released and people play around with various countries.
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# ¿ May 31, 2016 07:14 |
If you aren't already sold on it, there is literally no reason why you should buy it at release instead of waiting to see what the reviews say in the days after release. I mean, this applies to basically every game out there, and Paradox games are no different. That being said, HOI4 is looking to be good and by virtue of having much, much more time in the oven, will probably not be as rocky at launch as Stellaris was.
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# ¿ Jun 1, 2016 14:50 |
Alternate theory: Daniel has generally dominated most games he's played on stream, and they wanted to show what happens when you make all the wrong decisions for once. I haven't actually watched the stream yet to be able to say if that looks like the case, but I'll check it out after work.
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# ¿ Jun 1, 2016 15:14 |
Edit: derp.
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# ¿ Jun 1, 2016 15:21 |
Oh boy I can't wait to watch Aruba take comments of his HOI4 gameplay way to personally and then have more Reddit drama around it. I have no idea how he is as popular as he is. I've watched a ton of his streams and he's never come across as anyone who legitimately enjoys streaming or gives a drat about the games he's playing or, especially, the audience.
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# ¿ Jun 1, 2016 20:25 |
I started with Shen back when he was fairly new, but he kinda grates on me now too. The only one that I can really watch anymore is Quill, who I didn't like at first but has since grown on me. He is probably the spergiest of the bunch but also comes across as a genuine guy who enjoys his audience and his games.
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# ¿ Jun 1, 2016 20:45 |
Man the soundtrack is good. Edit: are you able to assume control of other nation's armies in single-player if you are allied with them? In Darkest Hour, whenever I played as the UK a key part of my strategy involved taking direct control of the armies of Canada/Australia/NZ/South Africa to use in my OOB. If I remember right you could do it with any nation that was in your alliance as long as you had more IC than them. Drone fucked around with this message at 07:54 on Jun 2, 2016 |
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# ¿ Jun 2, 2016 07:43 |
Meantime over on the Quill18 stream, he's his cheerful self. Arumba needs to take a page from Shen's book and just ignore that chat 95% of the time. All it does is create a negative feedback loop where chat says something, Arumba gets pissed off, chat gets pissed off at Arumba getting pissed off, Arumba gets more pissed off and then has a meltdown. That National Focus to puppet China seems broken as gently caress though. I didn't tune in when he took it, but he had the whole country puppeted minus Guanxi and Communists by mid-1936, peacefully.
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# ¿ Jun 2, 2016 16:22 |
I want it so bad, guys.
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# ¿ Jun 2, 2016 17:23 |
Ghost of Mussolini posted:Does anyone have a link to Arumbas vid? is it on twitch? I can't find it on youtube and I'd like to see someone fail to take Danzig as Germany. https://www.twitch.tv/arumba07 It's pretty clear he is jumping into this totally blind and didn't even play the tutorial, and is now bitching that people say he's doing poorly
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# ¿ Jun 2, 2016 17:51 |
Fuligin posted:What the hell happened in Quill's stream to spawn Russia? He's playing with Historical turned off, and there was an event that somehow triggered with an officer's rebellion in the USSR. I highly doubt anything will come of it.
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# ¿ Jun 2, 2016 17:55 |
Goetta posted:That is pretty cool Yep. Other cool things: France decided to go down the Little Entente route and allied Czechoslovakia. When the Treaty of Munich event fired, the UK decided for appeasement, but France said "no gently caress you", and so Germany went to war with France and Czechoslovakia. It's now snowballed into a proper WW2 though after Germany declared war on Luxembourg.
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# ¿ Jun 2, 2016 17:59 |
GaussianCopula posted:Yeah I noticed that later too. His stream isn't live, did he stop naturally or ragequit because of his own failings to understand how games work?
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# ¿ Jun 2, 2016 19:04 |
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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 23:14 |
Star posted:Here's another timelapse Is that with historic AI? It doesn't say unfortunately. But it looks like Nationalist Spain won the civil war and then joined the war on the Axis side (though I thought HOI4 switched the colors of Nat and Rep Spain around, so that the Nationalists are now orange and Republicans are now yellow?). The UK seems super invasion-happy with landings in both northern Italy and Spain. I can't for the life of me figure out why land keeps changing hands between Germany and Vichy France. What the hell is that red snaking up through the Balkans starting at around 0:45 with the Greek annexation of Bulgaria? The one thing I'm noticing is that the AI looks like it has a hard time sealing the deal. There are several times throughout the timelapse where it looks like Germany was flat-out broken, only then to surge back.
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# ¿ Jun 3, 2016 09:18 |