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[Hearts of Iron IV] Monarchist Germany vs Fascist Britain vs Socialist USA

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Posts

  • FiendishrabbitFiendishrabbit Registered User regular
    Fiatil wrote: »
    Well damn. I love almost all of the DLC changes, but the artillery nerf feels pretty dumb so far. It seems like there's no solid industrial middle ground between a bunch of guys with rifles and full on tank battalions now. I'm pretty grossly out industrializing my neighbors, but there's really not much point in it aside from having enough small arms to support your manpower base. It's a total manpower war until tanks -- having 3x as many factories is getting me basically nothing compared to my equal manpower but destitute neighbor. My small arms are easily covered, and cranking out artillery beyond support battalions is getting me pretty much nothing.

    I have a ton of planes relative to them of course, but my manpower losses are really high without artillery being much good at breaking through lines. I guess it's tank rush every time now!

    The artillery nerf was the stupidest thing ever.
    My armies in the german reich consisted basicly of:
    1. 40 width infantry (support: arty, field hosp,engineers,anti-tank and signal/recon/logistics depending on terrain,)
    2. 10 width inf (sup: engineers, arty) for coastal defense and anti-rebellion.
    3. 20 width motorised built pretty much like the 40 width infantry
    4. 20 width tank batallions (medium+mech for Europe, light+mot for africa)
    5. Special ops units for special duties like mountain combat and paratrooper drops.

    "The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
    -Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
  • FiatilFiatil Registered User regular
    edited March 2018
    Yeah, it's actively pushing me to having to use more cheesy strategies against the AI.

    You don't get Medium Tanks until like 41, so your only "heavy armor" option is....infantry with heavy tank destroyers! Light tanks + motorized are great, but worthless on small heavily defended fronts. I generally play minors, so there are a lot of those! Pure armored divisions are terrible too -- you need motorized/mechanized to add org, and there's no point in putting an incredibly slow heavy tank in a division with a bunch of fast motorized infantry. Mechanized infantry aren't really available until you're rolling out medium tanks, and it's still a waste to slow them down with heavy tanks.

    The minor progression made a lot of sense when artillery wasn't dumb. As your industry grows you go from infantry lacking equipment --> infantry that are fully supplied --> 7/2 divisions with artillery to reflect a burgeoning industrial power. If you have a bunch of heavy industry and artillery whereas your opponent has none, it just makes sense to have a sizeable advantage in kill ratios. Then you eventually get tanks and all of that stuff and can hang out with the Majors if you do it right.

    Now it's pretty much manpower manpower manpower. The thing in the game that you have no control over beyond upping your conscription. Non-core provinces give you virtually no manpower, and you're all but guaranteed to lose more gaining the territory than you will get from taking control of the state. The difference between two minors with the same manpower and 10 factories vs. 40 factories shouldn't just be planes.

    The two most obvious options early game are putting heavy tank destroyers in with infantry, a mechanic they won't change for some reason despite how silly it is, and when the front is more than 4 or 5 tiles wide, micro-ing in ways that the AI is completely incapable of doing. Playing a macro game and letting the battle planner do its thing always seemed to be the most even footing against the AI, but it's not particularly practical now without cheesy divisions.

    I'm playing Communist Turkey and conquering Iran no longer makes any strategic sense whatsoever. They have 20 factories which is normally really appealing, but the manpower loss to get them is lopsided with just infantry and planes. I'm better off saving my manpower and using the factories that I have until I can get full medium/mechanized divisions. Since sitting around until the war breaks out is boring, I am using heavy TD infantry divisions when I could avoid them before.

    Fiatil on
  • FiendishrabbitFiendishrabbit Registered User regular
    Fiatil wrote: »
    You don't get Medium Tanks until like 41

    '39. And if you're facing Iran then light tanks is totally the way to go (supported by Motorized in a 2-1 Ratio of tanks/mot). The breakthrough and hardness increase cuts down on casualties by...a lot.
    Turkey basically have three priorities.
    1. Take greece for resources. 2. Take Iraq 3. Take Iran. Between Iraq and Iran you've got your oil on. Iraq is easy and with the additional frontage Iran will be a pushover as well to a fast offensive.

    Mountain troops is another thing worth investing in. So many mountains.

    "The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
    -Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
  • FiatilFiatil Registered User regular
    Whoops! I had just exited my game and meant to check if it was 39 or 41, as it felt a bit wrong when I was typing it.

    You're right that light tanks help, but it's just not as effective as using the '34 heavy tank destroyer with a bunch of infantry until the initial breakthrough with room to flank. I have maxed out mountaineer divisions, as those are now capped. I went for Bulgaria, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia as Greece starts out guaranteed by Romania with Death or Dishonour. Romania starts out with 20-45 divisions, and I wasn't really trying to touch that.

    To simplify it a bit -- with non-support artillery not really being worth their industrial cost anymore, I have no issues going with the cheesy heavy tank destroyer 40 width division strategy anymore. Having artillery be a sign of industrial might and being good at breaking down fortified positions always made sense from a gameplay and historical perspective to me, while the way that heavy TDs managed to shield 19 infantry divisions with the way armor is calculated made me agree with the general sentiment that it was kind of cheesy. I'm good with it for minor nations now.

  • FiendishrabbitFiendishrabbit Registered User regular
    "So we have 19000 men and they're perfectly well screened from the enemy armor by...20 tank destroyers"

    "The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
    -Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
  • FiatilFiatil Registered User regular
    Exactly! My perspective has always been "Why nerf artillery when you're doing it to weirdly indirectly nerf space marines (40 with TD)?" -- that still works fine! One TD giving a ton of guys magic plate mail is silly, but they keep nerfing the cool stuff that makes sense so screw it.

  • Cobalt60Cobalt60 regular Registered User regular
    7+2/14+4 is still a perfectly capable division. The AI still uses the 20 width. It's just not the single division that you make anymore.

    The only thing stopping you from still using line artillery is your need to min-max your divisions to beat an AI that is trivial to beat in the first place.

  • FiendishrabbitFiendishrabbit Registered User regular
    The only thing stopping me from using line artillery is my selfrespect, since it's a complete waste of industrial points. The additional soft attack does not make up for the losses in Org and Defense.

    "The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
    -Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
  • FiatilFiatil Registered User regular
    edited March 2018
    Lol yeah, let's not be a jerk here. They are capable, but it's a total waste. At best they're a very slight upgrade at a heavy price and are not worth the additional cost until you have too many factories to care anymore.

    Paradox is telling me to play the game this way. It's been out for 2 years and they are 100% aware of space marines but won't change the underlying mechanics, relying on lazy artillery nerfs to indirectly nerf it.

    If you had read my post you would see that I prefer playing the macro industrial game (which the AI totally can do) and letting the battle planner do its thing. If they nerfed the hell out of the space marine setup and restored artillery I would be very happy.

    You're literally calling "using the division designer" min maxing. Just take it out if I'm not allowed to use the super cheesy strategy of a mild amount of artillery backing up my infantry. They went the route of "sure you can do it, but the gains from artillery are incredibly marginal and not worth your time". That's not particularly fun.

    Artillery shouldn't be a role-playing mechanism.

    Fiatil on
  • chrisnlchrisnl Registered User regular
    Interestingly, in my recent game as Manchukuo (now Chinese Empire) I saw a German division that was 14 + 4. I was not expecting the AI to break out the 40 width divisions.

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  • Cobalt60Cobalt60 regular Registered User regular
    chrisnl wrote: »
    Interestingly, in my recent game as Manchukuo (now Chinese Empire) I saw a German division that was 14 + 4. I was not expecting the AI to break out the 40 width divisions.

    The AI also seems to like a 26 width 7+4 division.

  • chrisnlchrisnl Registered User regular
    Yes I have noticed the 7+4 popping up decently often as well. It's a really weird one to use I think.

    Speaking of things I haven't seen before, not only did the USA join the Allies in my Manchukuo -> Chinese Empire game, they completed the Pearl Harbor Gambit and they even have nuked Germany (I think Hamburg). I am kind of miffed at the UK kicking me out of the allies for generating too much world tension (apparently annexing 70% of the USSR and then justifying on Germany generated 100% world tension). This despite me killing about 5x as many Germans as the rest of the Allies put together and being the driving force behind the impending victory, as they were not making any progress against the Axis before I stepped in, and now Germany is out of manpower (even on Scraping the Barrel) and about to capitulate. Also why didn't the USA nuke Italy instead of Germany? Italy is in far better shape than Germany who is pretty much done.

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  • FiendishrabbitFiendishrabbit Registered User regular
    China is pretty crazy once you get rolling.
    I have half a million men in training, and more manpower than the rest of the world combined.

    "The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
    -Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
  • chrisnlchrisnl Registered User regular
    Yeah China gets pretty nuts, though I don't know if I could beat the Allies if they turned on me right now. I'd be completely cut off from rubber, though I could probably take Indochina pretty quickly. Most likely I'll just call it a game once the war against the Axis is over since it's getting pretty late in the timeline.

    steam_sig.png
  • JusticeforPlutoJusticeforPluto Registered User regular
    Just had a democratic Germany run end due to bug. Spent 5 hours playing it, only to have it ruined due to changing my laws not giving me more manpower.

    It was a pretty crazy game though. My democratic Anti-Communist alliance. Curbstomped France and Italy, who then joined the Allies. Belgium took like, all of French Africa. Then me and my Allies some how got dragged into a war against the Allies...on the side of the Soviets?

    Hans, did we just become Baddies again?

    Also, I got to see Japan go Communist. Or would of had the civil war not statemented. And not like you would of thought either. They couldn't eliminate the last pocket on the Home Islands!

  • FiendishrabbitFiendishrabbit Registered User regular
    edited May 2018
    Just had a democratic Germany run end due to bug. Spent 5 hours playing it, only to have it ruined due to changing my laws not giving me more manpower.

    It was a pretty crazy game though. My democratic Anti-Communist alliance. Curbstomped France and Italy, who then joined the Allies. Belgium took like, all of French Africa. Then me and my Allies some how got dragged into a war against the Allies...on the side of the Soviets?

    Hans, did we just become Baddies again?

    Also, I got to see Japan go Communist. Or would of had the civil war not statemented. And not like you would of thought either. They couldn't eliminate the last pocket on the Home Islands!

    You are aware that since the last major patch or so (well, not that long ago) Manpower changes are not instant? They slowly tick up (in something like 0.10% increments) once you've changed your manpower limit.

    Fiendishrabbit on
    "The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
    -Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
  • Cobalt60Cobalt60 regular Registered User regular
    Just had a democratic Germany run end due to bug. Spent 5 hours playing it, only to have it ruined due to changing my laws not giving me more manpower.

    It was a pretty crazy game though. My democratic Anti-Communist alliance. Curbstomped France and Italy, who then joined the Allies. Belgium took like, all of French Africa. Then me and my Allies some how got dragged into a war against the Allies...on the side of the Soviets?

    Hans, did we just become Baddies again?

    Also, I got to see Japan go Communist. Or would of had the civil war not statemented. And not like you would of thought either. They couldn't eliminate the last pocket on the Home Islands!

    You are aware that since the last major patch or so (well, not that long ago) Manpower changes are not instant? They slowly tick up (in something like 0.10% increments) once you've changed your manpower limit.

    It has a baseline value which is then modified by your war support.

  • JusticeforPlutoJusticeforPluto Registered User regular
    :?
    :(
    :x

  • JusticeforPlutoJusticeforPluto Registered User regular
  • FiatilFiatil Registered User regular
    Hooray naval expansion. I also just noticed their "5 year plan" roadmap (which is apparently not supposed to actually take 5 years), and there's some really good stuff in there.

    This one in particular look really promising, as it is one of the biggest issue with Paradox games:
    • More player control over rules. HOI is played in many different ways and say competitive MP and single player rulesets often clash

  • JusticeforPlutoJusticeforPluto Registered User regular
    I wonder what, if any, focus trees come with it. Maybe a rework for USA and UK (Biggest navel players without a recent one, and they did mention the "First American Civil War"

  • FiatilFiatil Registered User regular
    Sounds like USA and UK at least, from the announcement blurb:

    "Man the Guns also introduces new options for the democratic nations, including new paths for the United States and other great free nations. Explore alternate histories or fully mobilize the arsenal of democracy."

  • JusticeforPlutoJusticeforPluto Registered User regular
    I didn't see their announcement blurb

  • Edith UpwardsEdith Upwards Registered User regular
    edited May 2018
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    PDXCon presentation.

    Edith Upwards on
  • JusticeforPlutoJusticeforPluto Registered User regular
    Man, I downloaded the transfer states mod and created a bunch of super nation's out of the new formable nation's. I want to see how the ai would handle it. Lessons learned:

    Germany will still destroy all of Europe even with a United Netherlands and Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth around.

    The Democratic Ottoman flag is hilarious

    Playing as a united China right off the bat is very unfair but very fun.

  • JusticeforPlutoJusticeforPluto Registered User regular
    Oh man, my Soviet Game did not go well. Idk what happened, but my attrition rates were terrible. I had huge losses in motorized, self propelled rocket Arty and even rifles. Not sure what I did wrong. Probably should never of stopped building military factories, but I felt confident and wanted to make sure my infrastructure was up to the task of supporting my army.

  • Cobalt60Cobalt60 regular Registered User regular
    TIL that you can create a division with a single MP support company and shit out 1000's of 0 width divisions a year of which an infinite number can participate in a single combat.

    (Stacking penalties may apply)

  • GundiGundi Serious Bismuth Registered User regular
    edited July 2018
    god everything about this game continues to be so busted and work in the most annoying ways

    I was playing as Qing china and just... ugh, I cannot even begin to explain all the incidents of bugs or horribly thought out game mechanics. Like let's see...

    first in my war against china they got taken over three goddamn times...
    Japan went the route where they focus on the soviet union and join the axis...
    japan justified, randomly, on Xibei San Ma despite the fact they had no foci for it, I'd kicked them off of mainland Asia, and Xibei San Ma is landlocked
    Because Japan was in the axis, Xibei joined the allies... and then a few months later when I was about to win my war they took over nationalist China
    boom i'm at war with the entire allies, and oh also, every time china got took over my war contribution got reset so even if I went through the absolute goddamn tedium of beating all the allies (because the axis will never do it) I'd have to share goddamn china with the axis and then have to fight them

    this game is just, so bad unless you play multiplayer

    Gundi on
  • President RexPresident Rex Registered User regular
    As an incredibly popular game that hasn't had a post in this thread since July, the Man the Guns expansion just came out. Apparently there's better boat management? Or worse boat management. Either way there's new boats.

  • skyknytskyknyt Registered User, ClubPA regular
    The boat business is really confusing right now. You set up basically spotter fleets? and then your main fleet sallies forth when the spotter fleets lock down an enemy fleet. Your fleet can still only operate in a limited area, and each area it covers needs at least one spotter fleet.

    Unfortunately, the naval UI makes this a very difficult proposition to get to right now.

    Tycho wrote:
    [skyknyt's writing] is like come kind of code that, when comprehended, unfolds into madness in the mind of the reader.
    PSN: skyknyt, Steam: skyknyt, Blizz: skyknyt#1160
  • skyknytskyknyt Registered User, ClubPA regular
    Also I am not a fan of the senate and house mechanics for the US right now. The new focus tree in general kind of sucks for alternate history play already, and adding more seemingly arbitrary limits to it doesn't help.

    Tycho wrote:
    [skyknyt's writing] is like come kind of code that, when comprehended, unfolds into madness in the mind of the reader.
    PSN: skyknyt, Steam: skyknyt, Blizz: skyknyt#1160
  • GundiGundi Serious Bismuth Registered User regular
    edited March 2019
    This game continues to be baffingly bad. A widespread complaint I'm seeing is that the allied naval AI seems to be seriously borked as Britain/US allow the Axis/Japan to simply invade everything.

    edit: Also I super don't appreciate some of the alternative history paths they've added. Some of them seem in shockingly poor taste.

    Gundi on
  • FiatilFiatil Registered User regular
    I love this game, but am 90% sure without doing any research at all that the new DLC will be a buggy mess for at least a month. It has way too many new mechanics not to be for a Paradox DLC, and a month is probably optimistic.

    And basically every time they add new focus trees they wind up being weaker than existing options with the existing trees. The flavor is always really cool, but don't make me pay for a DLC that basically nerfs a nation I want to play. What skyknyt said isn't making me super optimistic for this go around of alt-history trees.

  • FiatilFiatil Registered User regular
    On a completely unrelated note, it's super depressing how many craaaazy alt-right and neo-nazi people this game attracts. You only have to go a few comments deep on the subreddit to find wacky bullshit I've been fortunate to avoid in other avenues, and a depressingly high % of the people that have added me on steam because of my mod for this are overt neo-nazis.

  • Anarchy Rules!Anarchy Rules! Registered User regular
    I really want to love HoI4, but I just can't seem to get into it. So many of my games seem to devolve into invading somewhere then waiting for my enemy tries to drown me in bodies, then once their manpower or supplies are used I can just walkover them.

    Some of the mods were more fun, particularly Kaiserreich. More things to do/less predictable

  • FiendishrabbitFiendishrabbit Registered User regular
    I really want to love HoI4, but I just can't seem to get into it. So many of my games seem to devolve into invading somewhere then waiting for my enemy tries to drown me in bodies, then once their manpower or supplies are used I can just walkover them.

    Some of the mods were more fun, particularly Kaiserreich. More things to do/less predictable

    That happens if you let the AI control the frontlines. If you have fast armor you can crush small nations by driving a wedge towards their capital, and for larger you can create a pocket, then cut it off and eliminate their units in that pocket. Now they'll have thinner lines and you can create an even bigger pocket and then drive their lines back pretty rapidly. You just need to find a point where you have hills or open plains for a few hexes, far enough that you can punch through and outpace their defensive line.

    "The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
    -Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
  • GundiGundi Serious Bismuth Registered User regular
    I really want to love HoI4, but I just can't seem to get into it. So many of my games seem to devolve into invading somewhere then waiting for my enemy tries to drown me in bodies, then once their manpower or supplies are used I can just walkover them.

    Some of the mods were more fun, particularly Kaiserreich. More things to do/less predictable
    See that's because HOI IV is bad. Like, pretty bad.

  • Cobalt60Cobalt60 regular Registered User regular
    We get it Gundi.

  • FiatilFiatil Registered User regular
    edited December 2019
    Guhh the new Paradox launcher they tacked on in the last patch is so bad. It completely broke all of my mods (and not in your typical version update way -- that's just a text file you have to update), and caused me to have to reinstall to be able to get a single one to work. It seems to have hard broken some more out of date mods that were working fine before, and I can't get my own locally made mods to work at all. They just crash the game now.....hooray! That's not even getting into how bad the launcher itself is -- I can deal with some dumb jank if you don't arbitrarily break all of my mods.

    It also seems to be causing HoI 4 to not actually exit when I cleanly close the game. It hangs in steam, has no visible process to end, and makes me restart steam to close it and open another game. This makes troubleshooting which mods are causing crashes awesome.

    Fiatil on
  • SmurphSmurph Registered User regular
    Trying this game out again for the first time in a long time. Playing as Japan, getting lots of conflicting tips from reddit and the paradox forums. To beat China, I'm either supposed to build only infantry and artillery and go toe to toe with them because my divisions will just be better, or I'm supposed to have armor and mobile divisions to punch through and overrun. I'm also seeing advice like "your starting army should be plenty to take on China" or "Build/train infantry nonstop like your life depends on it" or "dismiss your entire army when you start the game and delete all but one division template because they are all useless" or "have half your MIL building tanks and trucks"

    So far I've built 1 24 division army of 40 width infantry/arty mix, 1 24 division army of 20 width infantry w/ support arty, and one partial army of just random leftovers. Plan is to hold the mountains with the 20w, push the line with the 40w, and do naval invasions with the leftovers. I ended up moving my tanks and mobile divisions to the 40w army. Problem is I only seem to be able to push the line a tiny bit before it stiffens up. I can sit there and they will throw 600k manpower into my lines to die, but eventually they stop and I still can't win offensive battles even with the 40w army. I've looked done all the Marco Polo bridge stuff to avoid the attack penalties too (which btw is the dumbest design ever. "Press these buttons every month for 5 months or you lose the game!" what fun)

    What do you guys do to beat china as Japan?

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