And what exactly is the best way to hack the neutrality feature? I mean, rather than letting world+dog randomly fight everyone, I just want to be able to start wars myself…
~
noneutrality
Every so often that happens to me. It passes after a short while but it is irritating, makes the game less enjoyable, and lengthens it.
Just got through playing a game as the Soviets from 1936 until it crashed in late 1941.
Good:
- Soviets are actually playable, and something of a challenge to take them from a politically weak position early in the game (especially if you don’t take the crutch of using the great purge, which wipes out most of your officers)
- I didn’t see really any unplayable lag spikes (though I did save and reload a few times).
- The war went fairly historically at first - Germany started it in early 1939, had triggered the French collapse in late 1939 without too much help from Italy. Japan held its own vs. China and eventually annexed Communist China.
Meh:
- Intelligence seems wonky still. Even at 10 spies all running on Counterespionage, my research was often slowed up to 25%, and of course that prevented me from reducing neutrality or raising national unity.
- The AI is fairly weird. Denmark managed to hold out over a year (far longer than France), I guess due to Germany having a hard time forcing themselves into Copenhagen. Sweden eventually joined the Allies, and once Denmark finally fell, Germany stripped the Eastern Front in early 1941 to, um, invade Sweden, I guess. Well, I guess it’s time to see how well these armies I’ve been building do!
Bah:
- AI didn’t put up any challenge at all once I actually did invade. I took Poland in a month, Berlin in two, and Germany surrendered in four. The game eventually crashed after I forced an Italian surrender (the Axis still fought on from its base in… uh… Addis Ababa, the only Axis member being a puppeted Ethiopia) and had invaded still-neutral Hungary and Romania while waiting for some transports to build so I could go romp off into Africa.
- I ran into a pretty irritating quirk when I hit Belgium and the Netherlands. Since they were still fighting on as Allies, I could not enter their territory since I didn’t have transit rights and they refused to give them. So my units would penetrate one province in to chase German units and then withdraw. Eventually when Germany surrendered they reverted to their own control.
- Amphibious invasion AI is still a bit weird. The UK did manage to invade France briefly (in Normandy) in 1940, but it was turned back.
- There are no events for post-war resolution whatsoever. None. When Germany surrendered, I got the standard puppet-or-annex. Puppeting gave Germany all its territory, including in France, that it held to that point. Annexing and releasing gave Germany its 1939 borders and leaders (von Ribbentrop and Himmler apparently having no problem serving in a Communist government). Same for Italy. France remained in Soviet hands.
The lack of resolution for the ending of the war is almost a game killer for me. I know eventually a modder will fix this, but it’s pretty lazy to, you know, not code any event handling the end of the war the game is based on. I know Paradox’s new design philosophy is to shrug their shoulders and say “hey, it’s not historical”, but with a scale like this it’s even more a silly copout than it was for EU3.
Edit: hmm, it may actually be a bug. It looks like there’s a German surrender event that forms the FGR/GDR similar to HOI2, but it’s dependent on the USA being in the war for some reason - probably because it’s hard coded to turn over territory to the US. It also does the HOI2-style East/West Germany split without looking at who owns what, and doesn’t do much else.
Hm, strange, while I find the intelligence system extremely annoying, my 10 CI guys were doing a good job of protecting my researchers at least through '38. Possibly there is some bad AI that causes the entire world to only send tech-disruption spies at a successful USSR later on, though.
My friend and I are gearing up our co-op session of Hoi, I guess Germany - Italy is the best one for 2 players.
Question is if there is any point if the AI just mucks about, had hoped to play it soon tho.
Getting 6 people for a session is too hard atm, but boy do I miss my old 6 player HOI 1 fights.
Tactically the AI may be the best computer wargamer that I have ever seen. Several times the AI has seen me setting up a flanking maneuver and evaded me before i could complete it. It also is extremely good at avoiding being surrounded. It sees my troops heading to surround it and it backs out. It can be brilliant.
On the flip side it can also be a doofus. As England I defeated both Italy and Germany by January 1942. Strategically it is horrible, leaving absolutely no reserves, and sometimes not resposding at all to my attacks just so that it can defend the Soviet border. I was capturing all of France with a handful of divisions and the AI was keeping 50 divisions on the Soviet border, just in case.
Playing as Greece for learning, v1.2, now late 1943.
Get the event in 1939 for Italy to declare war, take Albania from them easily. Played whack-a-mole with Italian re-invasions twice (including once when they took Athens & Tirana with simultaneous attacks, which was cool) But once Italy joined Axis, they have been diverted from our little private war
I invaded Bulgaria, won & then took on Rumania, but Turkey has jumped in so in a two front war. Yugoslavia & Hungary are still neutral - a buffer to Germany.
In the allies, and they are at war with Rumania, but not with Turkey. Which is annoying, as the Turks are tough.
Western front was very quiet, until Netherlands joined Allies. All hell then broke loose, with the French now deep in Germany, Italians making headway in France. Danes & Swedes are making a good showing in recreating 30 Years War (Danes invaded Germany with support from Swedish AF)
USA/ USSR on the sidelines. Japan & Allies fighting in Pacific.
Surprised by how long the phoney war lasted (2 years or so) which seemed to give time for the French to build up to parity with the Germans.
Older product competing with the newer.
Actually, with some good features ported back to HoI2, that’s the better game I’d play. Hoi3 is too deeply flawed.
Well that is certainly an odd decision.
Yeah, what the hell? Not that I’m complaining.
This looks like the game I was hoping HoI3 was going to be. No word on pricing, but I’d probably pay full price for HoI2 with a better AI and some mechanics tweaks. Interestingly, these guys were working on the project for six months before they heard that PI was releasing HoI3. It’s likely HoI3 lifted stuff from them rather than the reverse.
So apparently the new model for buying a PI games is not to get it at release, or after a month when the major stuff is patched, or after six months when most of the stuff is patched, but after two years when the hard core fans/modders license the engine and made the game the way it should have been in the first place.
Wait, this isn’t a Paradox developed add-on? I’m confused, as that article implied that it is being developed by PI.
Published by PI , actually produced by a team of fans. This is likely another one of the projects that got the go-ahead when Paradox offered up the source code for their Europa engine (and the games it was built on) to teams that had promising products in exchange for publishing rights. For the Glory, the EU2 update, is the same sort of arrangement.
As a moderator posted on the Paradox forums: “It sounds just like the “For the Glory” franchise - a fan-made redux of the old game engine. In this case for the HoI series.”
I am concerned. Is Paradox so cash strapped that it is relying on its fans’ work for new releases? Is it just getting greedy? Or is it re-releasing its old games with new fan made mods to appease its existing fans who aren’t too particular about new content?
It’s basically the same thing they are doing with the recently announced EU2 expansion, allowing a fan team to make something that Paradox (presumably) profits from.
That said, I doubt the interest in this is all that much greater then it is for the EU2 expansion. Sure, there is a core group that prefers the older game, but even with the improvements offered with this HOI2 add-on, it’s still a game that lacks the features and graphics of a modern title. Even with all of HOI3’s current issues, several of the things it adds would be hard to give up now, at least IMHO.
Yeah, another source-license product.
I’m one of those odd guys that prefer the old EU engine because the new one’s 3D graphics plain suck and I think 2D is better suited to these kind of games anyway.
However, I’m kinda underwhelmed by what I read about FtG so far, it’s like one of the less ambitious enhancements for CivIV that came along when the source became moddable, but it comes with a $20-$30 price tag.
Maybe (probably) I would have paid that kind of money for Fall from Heaven, but every single other major mod out there would be vastly overpriced in that range, like the underwhelming CivIV:Col was overpriced and underdeveloped.
With a new map, enhanced sprites, some ambitious new features - maybe a lot more building opportunities in provinces ala Crusader Kings or National Ideas ala EU3 AND minor enhancements, I’d be excited.
Ah well, I guess it’s somewhat early to judge…
rezaf
While I still haven’t put any time into 1.2 (hopefully tomorrow), it’s interesting reading the official board. As expected, 1.2 clearly didn’t fix all of the major issues people were having, and the backlash has begun. Unfortunately, the mods are taking their usual approach, locking threads all over the place, though they’ve left one open for now. And apparently Johan has gone on vacation, and thus there is no word on what the plans are going forward.
I’m not sure this release has been any worse then past Paradox titles, but presumably the popularity of the HOI series has ratcheted up the intensity of those that are upset.
For me the only worthy new feature of HoI3 is the order of battle. Everything else is missable, especially the interface (don’t like the map and the counters style). And I’d gladly do without broken or bad features like the weather or the neutrality idea.
The problem is that HoI3 has features that could easily be ported to HoI2 and make it the better game. For example the new mechanic about stacking that takes into consideration the border width. I’d really love that feature ported back into HoI2.
I’m definitely not pleased with the way Paradox handled HoI3. Launched broken, and flawed even in design. Now they have to patch another couple of games before they can focus back on HoI3, have already other projects going on and will likely announce an expansion soon. HoI3 is far, far away from its potential and will likely stay deeply flawed for years.
Fear not HRose, the expansions Mussolini’s Ambition, Empire of the Rising Sun and Pax Americana will gradually fix the most glaring issues…
rezaf