Hearts of Iron 4 announced

It’s really been an ongoing kind of silent improvement in the tactical AI. I noticed it a fair bit in my KR game as the Commune of France. I had some “volunteer” motorized-transitioning-armor divisions in the American civil war, and I was impressed by how quick it would respond to my movements, especially trying to get out of impending pockets. There are still situations where it does too much shuffling to cover the line (rather than attacking to close the gap) and the frontlines can still turn into a mess, but it’s much better than it was.

KR is interesting. I’d played a CoF game a while ago, and lost interest because it was build up, watch the socialists win in America, defeated Germany then ennui. This time I was just trying to farm some experience in the US civil war and the socialists were well on their way to victory before Canada invaded. I thought I had turned that around when I capitulated New England and destroyed most of the Canadian army in Ohio. But I forgot that Canada would also bring all of the Entente into the war. I capitulated the southern US faction but with troops from all the Entente countries the imbalance was too big and the CSA folded.

Probably I should have tried to declare war on the Entente so I could bring in more troops, but I didn’t realise how bad the situation was until it was too late. Now a year later I’m at war with the Entente anyway over freaking Sardinia and trying to think how I can bring back the socialists in the USA before New England can build too many factories. A war with Germany is probably going to happen pretty soon as well. Overall it seems pretty dire, which is a fun situation. Interesting how no two games of KR play the same.

KR has made playing small/medium sized countries so entertaining as well. I’ve really enjoyed playing a couple games as Egypt. I’ve started poking around in South America since they added so much content there this patch and it also looks to be interesting. Playing the remnants of France in Algeria is a lot of fun too.

While I know it’s a lot of work for the modders, Paradox’s post-release support model really combines well with mods. The base AI keeps getting better, there continue to be additional features and improvements that mods can leverage, and I know there are a lot of patch notes targeted specifically at limitations the mod community has raised.

Playing KR has been a terrific way to fill the time while I wait for Man the Guns.

Interesting thread on air combat resolution from a guy who decompiled the executable. I love that we can find out what the actual rules are here (and where they might fall short).

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/air-warfare-combat-resolution.1114605/

In the next update you will be able to tell convoys and fleets to avoid certain seazones. Strangely this doesn’t apply to naval invasion routing…

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/hoi4-dev-diary-naval-access.1114924/

And on the forum someone asks the million dollar question about every “fix” they have to air and naval issues:

Will the AI be able to use the restricting seazone feature effectively?

Hmmmm…

When extremely abstract naval warfare with awkwardly not-abstract elements slams into highly detailed land warfare.

Mines!

I was hoping it would be ammunition! Mines were important in the war, but I am starting to wonder about just how many things a user has to keep track of. Now we are researching and designing minelayers and minesweepers and thinking about which areas are mined. At least the devs are going to do something about the increasing number of techs and the non-increasing ability to get research done.

I played out my Commune of France game in KR until the point where I was capturing territory to get within range of America, but I kind of lost interest there. Started a game as the Union of Britain and it seems likely to remain interesting longer. Partly this is because the CoF decided to declare war on Germany the day after the Entente declared war on them. So just trying to keep mainland France from falling keeps me pretty busy so far (Spain and Portugal are in the Entente).

Britain does have landpower heft or as many factory slots as the CoF. I don’t really have a strong enough armoured force or the right geography to take out Germany in a lightning strike. I do have substantial resources but not enough to win the war against the rest of the world by myself. At least not quickly. I like picking a nation where the fight is going to stay interesting for a good while.

I think they jumped the Shark on this…what…on the release of HOI IV? I never play anymore. It’s just a chrome-addled 4X hiding in strategic WWII clothes at this point. If they would solve basic Air/Naval/Strategic Warfare issues instead of releasing new munchkin candy, I’d return, but all the promises of DLC “fixes” are just more “sugar rush” micro-detail…promises promises… I think I am done for good.

If I ever get the RTS WW2 itch again it’ll be Darkest Hour. I think Paradox has become for me the developer where I’ll be coming back for EU and Vicky titles…and that is it. And Stellaris every once in a while.

I have such a different take, @Navaronegun! I enjoy HOI4 more than the previous entries in the series and I enjoy it more now than at release. Guess it’s true you can’t please everyone. :)

It sounds like we can visually see and know what areas are mined, so I think it opens up some decisions without overwhelming with stuff to mentally keep track of. I find that once you have a lot of coastline, it can be a real pain in the ass to deal with the prospect of naval invasions pretty much everywhere. If I lack naval dominance but can successfully mine a few areas to wall off some invasion routes, I could see myself getting some real use out of this.

The naval game as it is right now is lacking in player interaction and decision making, in my opinion. You assemble a fleet, put them on a mission, then… that’s basically it. I think I’ll enjoy having some more choices of what ships to build and what to do with my navy beyond spamming the FOTM ship class. Well, potentially anyway, the devil’s always in the details.

I hear you. They made a conscious decision, IMO, to make a left turn at Albuquerque and go full 4X style, post HOI III. That’s OK, and it sells. But in this humble grognard’s opionion, any vestiges of it being a historical strategic wargame were left behind at that point.

Hey, I had fun playing my alternative universe bad guy South Africa who defeated the other bad guys in a later Third World War to become a major power. And where super-Battleships roam the earth and rule the seas. But after a while, I wanted to play a historical strategic wargame on World War II again. :)

Good point. I hadn’t thought about the potential to remove headaches.

I have to say that mines were not in my top 10 or even 20 things to add to the game. While mines were in important in WWII, I fear it is one more system that the human player can abuse in the pre-war period that AI won’t be able to deal with.

That’s one of the reasons why they only exist in war time, and go away soon after.
It’s probably not something that took a lot of effort and just fit the DLC.

One thing about the naval model that popped up in the current game. People tell you on the forum to build only Bbs since other stuff will tend to melt super quickly and the carrier bug makes using carriers tricky.

Except that I lost all my escorts in the apocalyptic naval battle and a few other actions. Suddenly my battleship fleet can’t actually find the enemy even in a zone as small as the channel. I figured with 90 percent of the world’s remaining battleships and a bazillion aircraft in the channel it would be safe to transfer an army across. I lost 24 divisions to a handful of enemy destroyers and my “grand fleet” never even showed up.

Holy crap, the new mechanics/focus tree for the USA:

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/hoi-4-dev-diary-america-rework.1116768/

Sounds great. A nice side addition to the naval focus of MTG.

Is it just me, or did they remove the ‘Show Dev Responses’ link to filter out the noise of non-PDS staff?

The civil war in KR can be a lot of fun, so I’m hoping it makes for an interesting playthrough.

It wasn’t just you. The layout is also slightly different, so it was probably a software update.

If I remember correctly, I think they are summarizing all the dev responses somewhere now. I saw a tweet about something like that earlier, but I can’t remember the details.