Hearts of Iron 4 announced

HOI4 was just announced today, here’s the teaser trailer (no gameplay or game info in trailer, just FYI). There’s little information available as of yet, but thought I would kick off a thread now that it has been officially announced. Let’s hope this one gets off to a better start than HOI3!

Woohoo!!! Yiippee!

I am definitely interested in this one. HoI3 was tragically flawed, but I have high hopes here!

I was going to say that I think HoI4 should be evolutionary, rather than revolutionary, since HoI3 was very ambitious but fell down in parts of the initial execution. Systems like supply and weather were simulated in a lot of detail,but often failed to come up with the right results, and it’s the gameplay effects that matter.

However, thinking about it some more, there are a number of pretty basic systems I hope they change. In terms of economics and combat, there are so many tweaks and modifiers layered over the basic mechanics, but I’m not sure the basic mechanics are right in the first place.

The bastards, how dare they, I had plans for next year, I was supposed to raise my child, build a future with wife and expand my economy…

NOW WHAT !!!

Throw away your time, let your wife raise the child, and slowly lose touch with all those that love you?

I am looking forward to spending many hours on complex, and intriguing but almost certainly fatally flawed game. Although, there is a glimmer of hope after EU4 that it will HoI4 will actually playable.

HoI3 was a disaster. I swore off paradox games after that pos.

That didn’t last though. CK2 and EU4 have given me lots of hope.

It took me 2 games of HOI3 to swear off it. I detest the very idea of “off map industry”. It means you can never “catch up” to Germany and other large nations, but more importantly that you can’t simply bomb them back to the stone age. To me that was such an important tactic, but it just wouldn’t work :(

I know what you mean about “catching up” to the large nations, but given the scope of the game (12-13 years or so?) I think it makes sense. Brazil is not going to leapfrog the US or the UK within a decade (as much as I’d like it to - I like empire building games :)).

What do you mean by “off map industry”? You build industrial infrastructure on the map, which is then vulnerable to bombing. Do you mean something more/other than that?

Excellent. Now I can stick to my original plan of skipping major Paradox releases. I started with CK2, I’ll skip EU4, and play HoI4, which I had my eye on since HoI2.

I love it when a backlog plan comes together.

There’s off-map industry in some of the scenarios, but I don’t think there’s any in the grand campaigns. Big countries like Germany, the USA and the USSR should definitely have all their industry represented in their provinces.

You certainly could bomb Germany ic back to nothing, if you had the right bombers, this isn’t a 4x game though, not any country can catch up…

Hoi 3 has some supply problems, but for the most the game in its current form is awesome.

From memory: I was playing Hungary and I just couldn’t build or research anything at any speed. So I invented in lots of industry. I remember having the same number, or very close to the same number, of physical industrial points on the map as Germany but they had like +300 units on me due to “off map industry”. This was in an early HOI3 version before any expansions, so this might have changed, but I definitely don’t remember it being ‘fair’ in this regard. Either way: Even if I’m remembering wrong, I didn’t like it. ;) I’d prefer it to be completely transparent in terms of industry.

And whilst I agree that not ever country should be able to boom, Hungary’s tech level was so painful. As was Spains. Once you’ve done your “local war”, i.e. in Spain it’s the revolution and in Hungary it’s munching up the balklands and Turkey, you’re basically “done”. There’s no possible way for you to ramp up production to take on Germany or the USSR. (Even if historically though countries ramped up production massively in the years before and during the war).

(Also, I was Germany’s loyal follower, yet they didn’t even want to lend me a single decent infantry or tank division :(. I think you could pay them to produce things, but once again they weren’t interested in helping.)

Countries ramped up production massively, but they didn’t increase their raw industrial potential by the same factor. Rather, they modestly increased raw potential, directed that potential to building armaments rather than consumer goods and got more skilled and efficient at building armaments. So the US has a lot of IC to start, but peaceful laws and other effects that keep it from using most of that IC for military production. As they get closer to war, they can use more and more of the potential, and get better practicals to build things more efficiently.

HoI isn’t EU, and it plays out over a much smaller period. If Hungary conquered the Balkans and Turkey in the space of a few years, then A: major powers would have slapped it down hard, and B: there’s no way they could make efficient use of all that captured territory and population. The HoI terms, the local partisan level would just suppress gains from everything. You can gear up for war, but it’s not realistic to turn a small country into an industrial superpower overnight.

The offmap industry has to be tied to particular scenarios, a campaign doesn’t have that. I’ve played dozens of campaigns and this is the first I’ve ever heard of it.

For the last complaint about the faction leaders not helping out, this was a major complaint of mine in vanilla as well. Thankfully it was addressed and as a minor like Hungary, you can get blueprints for advanced German tanks and aircraft without issue. In one of the expansions they further tweaked it so that units built with those blueprints also had the doctrines of the advanced nation, which made a big difference in effectiveness.

One of the greatest challenges I had coming from EU3 was understanding that HOI3 is a wargame, not an empire building game. While you get some of the resources, industrial capacity, and research from conquered territory, it’s only a fraction. A minor will always be a minor, although you can still get more powerful as the game progresses. This bothered me at first until I realized that this is a team game. It’s not about conquering all of Europe as Hungary and painting it all your color, it’s about helping the Axis win WW2. Once I made that mental shift, and once they fixed the AI so that majors would provide allies with advanced blueprints, it became a much more enjoyable experience that rivaled EU for my favorite Paradox franchise.

Exactly, and it can be great fun playing as a minor as long as you understand this, you can still bring Hungary way beyond its normal status, and maybe even make a difference. I’ve always found the east front as Italy one of the more rougher moments, when you truly understand you don’t really have anything to offer, but you gotta do something.

It’s been years since I played so I don’t even remember that there were scenarios. I just remember playing “the game” :)

This bothered me at first until I realized that this is a team game. It’s not about conquering all of Europe as Hungary and painting it all your color, it’s about helping the Axis win WW2. Once I made that mental shift, and once they fixed the AI so that majors would provide allies with advanced blueprints, it became a much more enjoyable experience that rivaled EU for my favorite Paradox franchise.

I was definitely trying to be Team Evil, but this was all on vanilla so I would just get stream rolled by USSR without the slightest bit of help from Germany, which greatly annoyed me as I was basically Germany’s “southern flank” at that point. (I put it on fast forward and Germany eventually reclaimed my territory, but I think that was incidental and they were simply fighting the commies).

Given that I’ve picked up a few of the expansions in sales over the years, purely out of a completionist sense, I might try and replay the game. It might not be as horrible as I remember :)

Of course what they should do is raise the detail level back to a higher level of abstraction so their AI can actually handle it and so the historical development paths are easier to model. But somehow I’m not expecting that. Someone should look at what elements were charming and fun in HoI2 and what elements were tedious and stupid in HoI3.

I’m wondering if you were interpreting IC bonuses (from tech, ministers, politics and what-not) as off-map industry. A country like Germany might have 100 IC on the map if you total up their factories, but after they add on industrial research and all the political choices that add percentage bonuses to that figure, their total displayed might have been a much higher number. In that case, you’d find that if Germany had, say, a 100% IC bonus, bombing 1 point of on-map IC would have translated into an effective loss of 2 IC from Germany’s total. Those bonuses can get quite substantial once enough industrial tech is researched and a full-war economy gets implemented.

Also, after doing a bit of research, it looks like most countries do have a very small amount (5) of off-map IC, which allows them to continue basic production as a government-in-exile.

I daresay hoi 3 is a far superior game to hoi 2, but the latter is easier to get in to, and I think also can give more ahistorical results. Hoi 3 is a beast, however it does include a fair amount of powerful AI tools that helps.