Hearts of Iron 4 announced

These ones are the best!

Ahh, yes. Who can forget their distinct mating call? “All it would take to fix it is 2 l lines of code!”.

I played a bit with South Africa. They did a put a lot of time into developing an interesting focus tree. But when you start with 1 mil factory and 4 steel (and a boat load of Chromium) there is only so much you can do. The good news is the small country games go quickly.

My UK game hit 40 and the war is going pretty predictably German going through the Lowlands, Italy taking out Yugoslavia and Japan conquering 1/2 of China. Japan joined the Axis early and entered the war which brings war tension to over 100%.

I sort of hating having the US join the war so early, so maybe if I don’t invite them to join the ally they won’t declare war.

I haven’t seen much difference in the combat other than there aren’t a bunch of units in Africa. (Arguably Italy needed more in Libya). I also was disappointed the Japanese didn’t concentrate their fleet more. I had 5 old BBs in Singapore and my fleet meet a CV, BB, 4 CA, and reasonable size screen. I sunk most everything but the CV and the cost of a most of my screen and BB. I’ve seen the start of more aggressive invasions by Japan.

I think I remember when HoI3 came out and it had performance issues, there were all the guys complaining about its use of “LUA” for some sort of programming.

As an real world IT guy: who cares!

Having done a bunch of LUA work for DCS mods and missions, I would reverse your scare quotes: ‘…about its use of LUA for some sort of “programming”.’

People complain about the DLC, I decide now is the time to pick up the base game and its first DLC :) Might be nice to learn to play the game as Spain perhaps? It was certainly the way I did it with HoI 3, though in the end, that game beat me with its obtuse and confounding systems.

When I look at the development over time of Paradox games, it is a model where the base game becomes largely unrecognizable and simultaneously more engaging courtesy of their ongoing tweaking with the gameplay systems. I get the feeling it is only a vocal minority that express their dissatisfaction while I suspect a quiet majority (I know I’m quiet) vote with their wallet by buying the DLC. Paradox keep going with it, so from a business viewpoint, it must be successful. 541 hours in CK2, 292 hours in EUIV, and I have nothing bad to say about their DLC model or the way Paradox function. All the more power to them really, I hope they keep it up!

I cannot begin to describe how much of my job is spent refuting that single sentence :)

It looks to me like Paradox currently has three loves: Steam, DLC, and money. The first two loves generates more of its third love.

Justify DLC all you want. Condemn those who condemn DLC. But it all depends on the DLC as there’s good and bad. Some companies have gone overboard with DLC.

Every game developer is trying to make money.

I’m not entirely sure what your point is other than to try to subtly tell us we’re stupid for buying Paradox DLC, using Steam, and spending money?

At the end of the day most of Paradox’s base games are great by themselves, they get tons of support well after their release (including the option to roll back updates), and the DLC is all purely optional. CK2, EU4, and to a lesser extent HOI4 were all great out of the box and, without having to spending another dime, have been continually updated and expanded upon.

This is the kind of thing that makes the Internet suck. Ignorant drive-by “experts”.

Is there any way to completely get rid of the “toy soldiers” when you zoom in?

Options, Video, uncheck 3d units.

How would you say that HoI4 compares to HoI3 when it comes to “fun”? I know that means different things to different people… curious because 4 seems much less detailed. Which might be a good thing, because I could never get far into 3 past the Spanish Revolution because of the complexity. Thanks.

HOI4 is significantly more fun, IMO. It’s not less complex, it’s just not needlessly over-complicated and tedious.

Don’t get me wrong, I loved HOI3, but that game could be a micromanagement chore without much gain.

I agree - I couldn’t get into HOI 3 at all but I found HOI 4 to have just the right level of complexity w/o it being a total turn off.

I agree with this. I tried desperately to get into HoI 3 including trying to follow a 200 page PDF that explained step by step how to play the game. I finally gave up after page 120 or so. There was so much micromanagement and so little actual fun.

I have 112 hours of HoI 4 and I am still going strong. I have played as many different countries, winning some wars and losing others. I currently have an epic game as Turkey going on now.

And the thing is, all those knobs and dials and levers and buttons that had to be endlessly pushed added few if any interesting decisions for the player, it mostly created an enormous amount of busywork.

On the surface it might appear that HOI4 doesn’t have the complexity of HOI3, but I disagree. I find HOI4 provides more options and decisions for the player to mull over, you just don’t have to spend three hours reorganizing the Order of Battle and the like.

Again, I really enjoyed HOI3, but I have no desire to go back after playing HOI4.

That’s what threw me/concerned me - I realized that 4 did not have the “org chart” that 3 had so it seemed more ‘inaccurate’ or less grognard-ish. But if that doesn’t impact the fun, then I guess I’m OK with it.

Thanks.

If you end up giving HOI4 a spin, I think you’ll love the Equipment system. Best feature to be added in HOI4, in my opinion. It’s superb.