I don’t recall pre-Barbarossa invasions happening that often, but it’s been a while. The exception would be the UK sometimes invading around Keil while I am neck-deep in France, though that almost makes sense if I let them do it.
I completely agree and sadly it seems like this patch won’t really address the issue.
One of things I’d love to see the HOI IV team do in new patch/expansion is allow the player to help the AI during the game.
So for example if the AI is shipping German troops through the English channel rather than through the Central med to Africa. Trigger an event like this.
American Bund arranges for German sight seeing tour of Africa. American flag ocean liners can carry German troops to Italian ports in Libya and Ethopia without being attacked by the allies. The UK player would get an achievement if he won the game allowing this help.
Similar things could be done for Russia. AFAIK the AI doesn’t do much in terms of providing lend lease to Russia, but allow the Germany player to have an event where the “US gives massive Aid to the Soviets”. The German player would get an achievement.
I personally don’t care that much about achievements but I would like the opportunity to dynamically make the game more challenging.
I hadn’t thought about it, but it might actually be better to have the global rule that troop transports can’t be targeted unless they are part of a naval invasion. It seems crazy, but it would bring the rules of the game into alignment with how the AI plays the game. Maybe just AI-controlled troop transports.
The Kaiserriech mod for HOI4 is really good, though still a bit hampered by the underlying AI.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=809903394
It’s an alternate history where Germany decided not to pursue unrestricted submarine warfare in WW1, the US stayed out and Germany was ultimately victorious. The UK home islands and France were swept up in communist revolutions and Whites won the Russia civil war.
There is a lot of potential for conflict in the alternate history as of 1936, as it sets up a lot of potential civil wars and larger ideological conflicts. For instance, the USA suffered a great depression starting in 1925, due in part to lack of payment from the Entente. It is still in the depths of the depression in 1936, and there is a lot of extreme rhetoric going in to the 1936 election.
It’s the 1-year anniversary today and they put up a dev diary discussing it (along with a free cosmetic DLC). The normal weekly dev diary is coming out tomorrow, but they did post some graphs that I thought were interesting.
Playerbase Growth:
Active players by month:
That’s pretty impressive, really, and I think it’s the result of Paradox’ development model (despite the flak it gets here on Qt3). It’s good news for the game, as it likely means continued support and development for the game (AI work!).
Plus they apparently hired a second AI dev for the game. So hopefully we can see faster progress on some of the issues.
Really? That’s fantastic news. This is a game that really could use more than one AI dev. The real-time tactical requirements are very high.
I fear SteelVolt will be moved off HOI IV. I’m not convinced that having a 2nd AI person will make that much of difference. You really need to understand the whole picture.
Still it’s gratifying to see the number of players remains high.
I swear I read him mention that on the forum, but I can’t find it now. So I might just be losing my grip on reality…
Edit: found it: HOI4 Dev Diary - Czechoslovakia and AI Update #2 | Page 2 | Paradox Interactive Forums
New DD:
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/hoi4-dev-diary-bits-bobs.1027774/
It also contains some details on AI fixes. Reading them you get a sense of how a good plan for an AI can go wrong (e.g. queuing up techs in advance can leave you making terrible choices if the circumstances change along the way).
Yeah, that’s an example of how important continued development/iteration is on an AI. It’s unfortunate that so many studios treat AI as an afterthought or something you quickly bang out at the end of the project and then forget about.
They posted the change log for 1.4/Oak: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/hoi4-dev-diary-1-4-oak-changlog-sneak-peek.1028635/
It contains 83 lines items for AI. Reading through them, I get the sense of a lot of small bugs contributing to terrible behavior. No fix for bad war declarations or routing troops through hostile sea zones.
Lots of changes to air UI, and a few bug fixes and balance changes that should be pretty consequential.
– Fixed bug that could cause units to take a naval path to nearby provinces they could just walk too.
Yeah, that’s an annoying one that can happen to the player. But it’s usually just short hops. I was referring to the lack of AI ability to judge the level of danger when transporting troops over water. The canonical example is Italy sending divisions to Ethiopia through the English Channel. Reducing the priority of African fronts should reduce that, but again, it’s just kind of nibbling around the edges.
Edit: To be clear, the AI improvements in this patch sound very welcome. It’s clear the Steel Volt has done quite a lot of work on it. I’m just a bit frustrated that some of the large issues that seem like they should be easy to fix (at least in a hacky way) are still going to be around.
Ok, I get that. In their defense, maybe hacky fixes are just going to break again and again over the lifetime of added features, and also mess up mods. It depends on the exact hack, of course.
I don’t think I’m very qualified to argue one way or the other on how they should balance their priorities, although judging from how harsh costumers are being, maybe a few temporary hacks are warranted (and from patch comments, they do use them).
So Death or Dishonor and the 1.4 Oak patch came out yesterday. I only got a bit of time to play last night, and I played Canada, so I don’t have direct experience with the new front AI. Indirectly though, I haven’t seen AI Germany do anything terribly stupid. Poland got into an alliance with the Czechs and the Romanians, so Germany ended up fighting and annexing the three of those in a separate war. Then Germany declared on Luxembourg, which immediately joined the Allies, so WW2 is officially the German-Luxembourg war.
Playing as Canada is interesting. There is quite a lot going on in the focus tree (with TFV expansion). When I first played Canada at launch, I sent an army to fight in France in 1939 and ended up liberating France with a number of armored divisions when I invaded later on in 1942. In this game, the pre-war buildup is much slower, and I don’t feel that my infantry divisions are ready for serious fighting. I also have a terrible manpower problem that will take some time to resolve. Overall the custom focuses and conditions limit Canada a lot more at the start, but offer the chance for greatly expanded industry, research and resources once I get everything going.
I’m playing as Germany (per normal). China is putting up a pretty darn good fight (Max help for China). Tactical AI seems a better. War in Europe is about to start so we will see.
Prior to this patch I’ve experienced perhaps two CTDs while playing. In the last six hours, I’ve had four - always in combat. :(
That’s awful! So far I’ve avoided CTDs in HoI4 entirely, except for one time with a mod I think.
Playing as Canada at launch, I could single-handedly liberate France by 1942. Now I can’t even seem to save Norway. Though I have some heavy tank divisions just about to finish training…
Edit: Just to be clear, I consider not being able to save Norway a good thing!