2057

Had do you rescue a spy? I don’t have 3 spies yet just 2 as Germany. So i sent my orator spy to Romania to increase influence. He got caught and imprison. I have no idea how to get him back.

2058

It offered me the mission. I had to pull my second operative off of its infiltration and start the new operation. It did work. Apparently you get more operatives as you gain faction allies including conquered countries. I think you need to be spymaster though. The documentation isn’t great.

2059

How many total operatives did you have? I am a spymaster but probably won’t get a 3rd spy until Hungary, and Italy join me.

I should add, I had some weird bugs with 1.9.0 so I’m trying the Beta of 1.9.1. It unfortunately had some worse bugs, about 1/3 of the time my Spanish volunteers were getting a 90% debuff for an unplanned offensive. It makes it really hard to take provinces, when your armor units have soft attack of 15-20. One nice thing about the small wars in 36-38 is when you only have handful of units it is easy to watch them.

2060

I only had two. It was just early 37 I think. I had them both building networks. One in France and one in England. The lady operative got caught and I sent Skorzeny to go free her. It was like 30 days I think but it might have been 90. Lost the network in London. It did prompt me automatically to go and mount a rescue mission. I wonder if that has to do with Skorzeny’s commando trait?

I only sent 3 infantry to Spain but I got a bunch of army experience. LIke 47. I didn’t notice any debuffs and I was microing all the time. I would expect a hotfix update this week.

2061

Unplanned offensive debuff for volunteers is not a bug I think. States are locked with a 90% debuff for both sides until one side or the other gradually unlocks them. I think it’s one state unlocked every 90 or 100 days.

If volunteers ignored the debuff they would be even more ridiculously dominant.

2062

Ironically the debuff makes it easier in some senses to play a game of deep penetration since a pinning attack can basically last forever and even a weakly held surround is very hard to dislodge. So you squeeze through the cracks, if there are any.

2063

I need to pay more attention to numbers then. Where does the debuff show up? Soft attack? I didn’t see any icons on the units themselves. I did come in very late to the Spanish Civil War.

2064

As far as I can tell, it shows up as a -90% “weather” debuff to attack and defense stats. Actually maybe they fixed the tooltips in beta patch to properly identify unplanned offensive. The idea is to slow down the war. I think the flavour text says something like the terrain and lack of logistical preparation makes it hard to carry out offensives.

2065

Really, all these hours of playing and I knew knew that. I’m glad to know it is not a bug. I think maybe it just shows up more with the constantly changing civil war and/or changes to the Spanish Civil War.

It shows up on the tool tip as weather and -90% buff. But if you click on the province then there is an unplanned offensive icon and more detailed explanation. I’m happy to hear that I only need one spy to rescue, my other spy.

The jury is still out for me on this DLC. I must say number of factions in the SCW, is mind numbing, Cultist, Central Directory. It sounds like something out of the zombie Apocalypse movi

2066

You need a network in the country that captured them and then a mission to rescue them will show up.

2067

I may need to face the fact that I am not actually very good at this game. Playing Spanish Anarchists and kind of faced a brick wall of where to go once I unified Iberia. Waited for the Germans to attack the USSR, and spent 20k infantry equipment to trigger an anarchist uprising in Vichy France. Which got me 9 3-regiment divisions of untrained infantry. Where did the other 17300 units of infantry equipment go? I could train 20 more real infantry divisions with the equipment that was dumped in the hole there.

I can hold the line in the mountains, but I can’t make headway against the Germans for more than a few provinces before they just bury me in reinforcements. So far my mobile forces just aren’t strong enough to pull off an envelopment.

2068

I, too, suck at the game! To make myself feel better, I just tell me that I’m roleplaying historical incompetence of many of the top leaders.

2069

I refuse to cheese and it makes me suck. Spamming AA in Inf divisions is not realistic. So it’s not my fault. :)

Last night was a perfect example. I finish off Poland in August of 39 and think hey, I’ll try to knock out France before December. No Sitzkrieg for me. I get Around The Maginot Line done, all set up on the fronts and if I had just pushed solely through Belgium I probably might have done it. But I declared war on Lux and Nederlands and tried to sweep them too. Couldn’t get Air Superiority despite 1000 Me-109’s the othe side had 2k combined. My armor thrust stalled in the Ardenenes and Belgium. France moved in with a massive amount of colonial forces and UK units too. I bogged down in Belgium and witnessed WW I all over again.

I also refuse to do battle lines that are just one big long line stacked one upon the other. Each army should get a front but if you do that you get some weird behavior sometimes.

It also doesn’t help that I suck .

2070

My brother! I’m 100% with you there. I’m not interested in cheesing either mechanics or AI or anything like that. I find that to be boring.

2071

Sometimes? I can guarantee every time I do any kind of armor push there will be divisions running around like rabid chickens.

My problem with the anarchists is that it is set up for potentially massive expansion (in terms of being able to integrate new territories) but I don’t see how to do that without massive cheese tactics. Maybe I need to find someone in the world in 1939 who is not guaranteed by a major power and naval invade them :)

2072

That’s my excuse every time my battle line gets wonky! I also suck at this game, and I learned the hard way not to play the US when you suck. Failing to protect the free world sure stings.

And now I’m thinking about what I could have done differently, and how I want to start a new game and get stuck in another quagmire. I enjoy trying to puzzle my way out of sitzkriegs in this game.

2073

Yeah, I play this so little that every game after a patch is a horrible loss - the manpower loses to resistance on my Iberian Union game were horrible for ages before I noticed. And it’s not particularly user-friendly, how am I suppose to figure out that a filled cavalry/armored car division + mp is the way to go to fight resistance?
I need to go back to reading PDX forums.

2074

You taught me I could hold my own at this game, you rock at this!

2075

I’m putting my HOI IV activity on hold for several weeks. There are still some bugs in the 1.9 and the beta.
If you are playing Germany Yugoslavia will never submit, (I couldn’t get Czech to submit either last game). More importantly, Japan seems to be completely passive and doesn’t attack China.

However, it is worse if you aren’t playing Germany. Germany has a really hard time dealing with resistance and obtaining compliance. Not using armor cars in Garrison units and basically losing a shit ton of equipment and manpower to the resistance.

Chrondite (ExpertAI author) is working on these issues, but it is going to be at least a week or so, before the ExpertAI Mod is compatible.

Still I’m afraid my best HOI IV days are behind me. I’ve got almost 2,000 hours in the game (a lot of it on pause as I’m doing other stuff, but still a ton of hours). I’ve played all the majors and few of the minors.

I think the first few DLC were the best, but I think both Man the Guns, and the Le Resistance have added complexity that at least for me simply slows down the game without adding a ton of benefits.

Take something as simple as tracking the experience of aircrews. Is it realistic yes, but it does it make a big difference in the game? Not really. First, other than units that have experience in China or Spain it is really hard to get an air unit above regular, and virtually impossible to maintain veteran status during the real war.

The beta patch as added some QOL feature that making training aircrews with old planes relatively easy. You can now specify that a unit will only use old planes (or only brand new planes). You also have the trained until regular command. So you can train 200 guys on Interwar fighters, wait until
they gain regular status, then change the unit to reinforce with newer planes, change the priority to medium, and within a day or two, your pilots have 200 newer planes. You can create a new air group with 200 old interwar fighters and repeat the cyle, until all of you have regular pilots for all of your new planes.

This saves you on fuel, since old planes burn less than new planes, and ensure that your training accident involve your early fighters or bombers. This is also extremely realistic in that all the major power did precisely this for training new pilots. But it is also a lot of micromanagement. It is a lot faster just creating a new air unit, by clicking on create unit and move 200 ME-107 or B17 into the new unit and assume all the pilots are trained to the regular level.

2076

Oh boy. I’m playing Germany after a restart and with the beta. I’m just about to demand Slovenia and them do the Fate of Yugoslavia. So is the problem that even after you take required victory locations, they won’t throw in the towel? Poland went down just fine for me.