Hearts of Iron 4 announced

They should have announced this when closer to release & when they had at least a couple of screenshots to show, imo.

From the articles, it seems like they had a fair bit to show the journalists. They just haven’t let us see anything yet. Maybe they need to double-check the location of Stalingrad.

Screenshot! Per the dev diary, this is a screenshot “showing what the armored tech tree looks like for Germany”. I assume this means that different nations have their own techs now? Interesting.

Armored technology is based around chassis that you unlock. Each of the chassis has 4 subtechs, each of which unlocks a variant. So, for example, once you have unlocked the Panzer III tank you can research the tank destroyer variant, StuG III. The StuG III was a Panzer III chassis with the turret removed and a larger fixed gun placed in its stead. Variants like this can be switched to production lines from the original chassis without much of penalty, so once the Panzer IV becomes your main tank and the Panzer III no longer measures up, it’s a perfect time to convert to producing StuGs on those Panzer III lines. Most nations developed their vehicles like this during the war, and we wanted to include this flavor. Historically, the StuG III ended up being the most produced armored vehicle in Germany during the war.

There will also be ways to create more custom equipment variants with abilities unlocked by experience over the course of the war. This is also something we will go into more detail on in the future.

I’d never heard of the E-50 line until now.

I’m sure it’s hypothetical and will fire frickin’ laser beams!!!

It looks like the World of Tanks tree.

Very nice screenshot. The E-50 series was supposed to get more tanks out into the field faster, cheaper, and be more reliable as they were standardized designs. One of Germany’s greatest problems in the war was its tanks breaking down and the enormous amount of over-engineering that went into them. Not sure if an E-tank would have been better squared off vs. a properly functional King Tiger.

Actually, the idea was to produce an entire range of tanks all using standartized parts, with the main goal to cut back on the man hours required to manufacture them (but yes, also to make maintenance easier) - a T-34 merely required 3000 man hours to complete while the german (improved) counter to that very tank, the Panther, required a whopping 55000 man hours.
The initiative was started too late for anything to come out of it - especially considering the deteriorating war situation for germany - however, even in better circumstances, it seems somewhat unlikely that they could have ever succeeded, considering the earlier debacle with the Einheits-PKW, a similar initiative concerning the manufacture of army trucks.
Then again, Albert Speer had a pretty firm grip on the german war industry by that time, so who knows.
[/HEAD TEACHER MODE]


rezaf

What they said.

I like the new map (WIP) that you can see in the background:

Map

Another map

Apparently, as you zoom out it will consolidate unit icons so you can quickly get an idea of force strength in the region, as opposed to previous mechanisms where units would just disappear the further you zoomed out. Zoom in closer and you can see individual divisions, etc. I hope that’s something that gets backported to other Paradox games.

Bless them for putting so much work into their maps.

I also like how these games help me notice where the major European mountain ranges are located.

This game is gonna be awesome. I hope a fully realized scalable interface is in this game. Me going blind from my strategy games at default high resolutions.

Given the game won’t be out for a while…

What HoI game would be recommended for a HoI newb? HoI3, AoD or DH? Mods?

I’m keen to buy one and have read elsewhere differing opinions. I know getting into Paradox games means complexity but I’m looking at the game with the least micromanagement complexity (I like things impacting on other things, I don’t like having to mentally track heaps of different things going on) and also with the greatest sandbox experience.

Any recommendations before I ask the same question on Paradox (thus saving me having too, whats my password again?) would be appreciated :)

HoI3 is out for the greatest sandbox experience, IMO—it’s much easier to do something like take over half of Europe with Italy in Darkest Hour or Arsenal of Democracy, in part because of the greater timescale, and in part because of the potential for tech transfers as opposed to license-building. Of the two, I’ve only played Arsenal of Democracy, so that’s where my recommendation goes.

The HOI4 map is looking yummy.

Nighttime, cities light up (WIP)

Fog of War

Oh, and the October dev diary was the first one on Naval combat, which sounds vastly improved over previous HOI games.

Hearts of Iron is the one Paradox series I never could get into - too much micromanagement, for one thing. Nevertheless I always get swept up in the hype and purchase them anyway.

I hope to do better this time.

Well, it seems the developers agree on the micromanagement part. One of the primary design goals is doing away with the tedious micromanagement stuff. Aircraft are a good example, no more micromanagement nightmare.

Isn’t that what they said about HoI 3?

I always thought HOI3 had the opposite goal, but I admit I don’t really remember specific dev diary entries or interviews (you can see an archive of all their dev diaries here if you want to contrast and compare).

What I personally recall heading up to HOI3’s release was detail, detail, detail! Detailed weather, detailed logistics, details OOB and a division builder down to the brigade level, etc. The caveat of all that was the ability or delegate areas of the game you didn’t care about to the AI, but the game’s design from top to bottom seemed to be very micro-focused to me.