Imo, this might be the real problem with Paradox games. They are too complex and fiddly to manage, so you have to rely on the community to bring up issues and suggest solutions. That’s why mods become so important, and why sometimes the mod devs become official devs.
The problem here is that blaming the community is like blaming the sun or the wind: the quality of a community depends on how you manage and validate it. Create a healthy relationship, and the quality of that community will grow. Stay in the ivory tower, without engaging, and that community becomes more and more spiteful and aggressive for the simple reason they feel that they aren’t being heard and just talking at a wall.
Over time devs grow disengaged, and then blame the community for not being useful and too contrarian. It’s the other way around.
I’m not sure this is a really valid criticism of Paradox with respect to HOI IV. Podcat and many other have engaged with the forums for many times. On the other hand, I think Archangel and Podcat are being overly defensive.
I spent an hour (mostly wasted) reading 18 of the 36 pages of feedback on the Poland 2 focus tree.
Here is my speculation as to what happened
Meka66 (who’s been with Paradox for 18 months or so) was given the task of developing a Poland focus. He probably went well overboard, for a country which has life expectancy of 4 years. As one of the options he gave a Poland an off board nuclear reactor, and lots of other bonus which probably aren’t historically accurate but I suppose make Poland more fun to play.
A number of people jumped on the reactor and other buffs and said they were stupid. At the same time a number of Polish folks complained about the historical accuracy of the Alt-History. The design was called stupid, ridiculous, the worst ever, and similar adjectives. However, at least in the first half of the thread I didn’t see any personal attacks on Meka66.
My guess is Meka went to his bosses and complained. His bosses are standing up for their employee and good for them. Now admittedly after being on the internet discussion for 40 years, my skin is asbestos when comes to internet flames wars.
However, IMO his design was overboard and the criticism was warranted, even if the criticism was hardly constructive. Now perhaps the the thread got much worse, but this was level 4 (out of 10) flame war, and Mekka should develop a tougher skin.
I remember when I first started playing Paradox games with EU2, the Paradox forums even then were a byword for trolls and flamewars. It has never changed except to get worse.
I guess it depends on your perspective. If QT3 has the most mature discussion thanks to our age, and large number of folks in the industry, than ya Paradox forums are pretty bad.
On the other hand, if you look at most MMPORG forums, or even worse Blizzard like Hearthstone, World of Warcraft, Starcraft, than Paradox forums look like a model of decorum. Nor is Bethesda any better.
Haven’t had time to go through it yet but this topic has been one that I’ve been interested in hearing about. Changes to stat stacking, the 20/40 division width meta that’s been around forever, and changes to damage calculations so 40 width divisions don’t concentrate damage quite so effectively.
I like the idea of changing the mechanics that favour large divisions, though it seems like they are wanting to go more complex than I had thought. Really at the root of it is this model of a division as being a single big cannon that fires once per hour at some other cannon. Just from the phrasing, it sounds like they want to layer things on top of that to mitigate some of the effects, rather than changing the basic system (e.g. require a division to split it’s fire between all the divisions that it is in contact with).
Excellent changes all around. Piercing was badly needed to be fixed. I like the changes to combat width, although I’m not sure they’ll have that big of impact for my style of play. I don’t move to 40 width until 1941 for the most part, I’d rather make my tanks better. I like increasing the visibility of reliability also
It’s going to take a while to build up a navy sufficient to get me to Japan, but they’re whipped. Who needs tanks and planes when you have near limitless infantry to throw at their lines!
Instead of throwing on everything as modules, you select your armament (e.g. choose 3 triple turrets configuration and then select gun size and tech level) and armour (choose belt thickness and then deck thickness) and similar for most of the “basic” characteristics of the ship on the bottom row. The top row is used in more normal fashion stuff bolted to the deck like AA or torpedoes.
The number of options in the dropdowns can be a bit annoying but at least it feels a bit more like I am designing an actual ship. It makes it feel closer to Rule the Waves on the design screen, but of course the in-game combat model is still HoI4, so vastly, vastly simplified.
Absolutely, 1936. If you just want to get in a fight than 1939 scenario, is ok, certainly as way of learning how combat works… But for most people much of the fun of the game is taking over your country in the depths of the depression and building up the war machine.
Fun thing, do a few runs until 39/warstart and see how much you can build. The industrial game is pretty good learning. I consider all 39 starts only for advanced players.
Also, avoid England and USA they are complicated. Germany is easier and plenty of good ahistorical fun.
Italy is also a good beginner country since it has a lot less units, and you get to conquer Ethiopia in the very beginning. My actual recommendation is you play one game as Italy and another as Germany and play through 1939, and then start over. In general, the AI is better at defense than attacking so can get burned playing Russia, or America if Germany fails to conquer France.
South American countries like Brazil and India (the Raj) can also be interesting starting countries.
Sea game looks more complicated than it is, you need patrol fleets with small ships and then set bigger ones to strike, this is to avoid fuel waste. Don’t use the auto fleet stuff, just lump ships in as you feel. Build destroyers with high sub detection and light cruisers with lots of spotter planes.
Fast cruisers with torps or slower with heavy guns.
They also walked back many of the questionable plans for Poland, so despite the whining by the Paradox staff about how harsh the forum was, I’m happy to see they listened to the legitimate criticism.
