Wow awesome. Is it too early to ask how balance feels?
First impressions: how the $@#!@ do I add an army to be under a field marshal? They really need a short tutorial on how new UI features work when updates hit, I can’t find a button anywhere.
Half of the tooltips don’t work either. I am not sure if it’s related to the fact that I am playing it borderless windowed.
EDIT: OK, after much trial and error, to do this you click on an army and then right click on the portrait of the field marshal. Very intuitive, but how was I supposed to know this!?
I’ve only taken screenshots and havn’t actually played it. :)
Yeah, it would have been nice if they said, first create an army and then assign that army to a field marshal. Maybe it’s in the manual…
I had a great time today playing as Nationalist China. I really like all the changes I noticed, from new sounds (?), music, warlord countries, etc. etc. there are too many things to mention.
I had historical AI focuses ON so Japan declared war with me right after I puppeted the warlords. It actually took me a bit by surprise as I was focusing on fighting to puppet the last warlord. I had alot of divisions near Beijing, yet they were poorly equipped. I managed to hold on to Beijing and the provinces around it, but it required alot of shuffling of divisions to ensure the key provinces were always reinforced.
The western part of the front went very badly, however. The Japs were pushing west, and stupidly I had antagonised the communist Chinese instead of bringing them into a united war, so they were neutral. The Japs then opened a big pocket and pushed between communist China and Beijing, and my poor little armies (that were starting to get trickles of artillery and engineers but very slowly) were unable to close it. I had kept Beijing but I was starting to wonder if it was the beginning of the end.
Then Communist China declared war on me, at the worst possible time. I laughed and assumed that the war would be over, but I kept playing a couple more months as communist china started to march throughout the countryside and I could offer no resistance. They took a couple of big cities from me. I was about to quit the game and restart, but something kept me going. Maybe it was the fact I still held Beijing.
I managed to take some forces and spearhead my way into the Communist China capital. This was almost enough to capitulate them, but I also had to take back two cities of mine they had conquered. I managed to capitulate them without giving up on the Japanese, who had now crossed that river south of Beijing (forget the name), and closed off a good portion of my forces that were still patriotically defending beijing. My first priority was to reopen supply lines to half my forces. Managed that, then tried for a long time to close the massive pocket the Japs had opened and start retaking the western mountains. I eventually closed a few pockets and wiped out a good amount of divisions, but I was still too weak to actually push. A few more months and failed attempts by the Japs to naval invade and so on, and I started to push back. Eventually got them to swear off the continent and release Korea.
All in all, it is probably the second best time I have had in HoI to date (my fav being winning the Spanish Civil War as the republicans in modded HoI 3).
EDIT: Meanwhile WW2 was raging in Europe and followed history very closely. Germany rolled over France and Denmark and Norway. So there is one anecdotal piece of data that the German AI is doing a good job.
Super cool. My biggest gripe with the game was the poor 0ay of Japan. I ow it’s a tall order to program AI to do island hopping campaigns and manage a two front war. Did you happen to see hw they fared against the US?
Is this a thing?
It is 1940, and they just got expelled from the continent, so they aren’t at war with the US yet. Given the amount of divisions I wiped I doubt they’ll do very well against them! To be fair, I thought I was going to lose that war at least twice, so I am happy with the AI thus far. Will be more interesting to see how they go when the player character is in Europe.
Seems both achievements for Nationalist China are bugged at the moment, I meet the conditions for both but they don’t fire. Sigh.
So I played Germany, Regular with 75% help for the allies except for China 50% help
I’m through 37. The SCW was slower and tougher than expected (I thought I had sent volunteer planes but didn’t).
The German focus tree isn’t changed that much but it is improved. There are so many systems and how they interact with each other is complex. It makes trying to min-max stuff much more difficult. In the past the political minister for most countries were the guys to get extra political power, the bonus to civ factories/infrastructure, and the guy that gives bonus to military factories. In this game I actually went with Goebells fairly early because he improves Fascist popularity, which effects stability, which in turn impact production and other bonus, like political points. Is it the best? who knows.
There isn’t a lot to do with your command point before wars starts but I can big demand for them once the war starts. The offensive buff is pretty significant especially now that planning bonus is limited to ~30%. On the other hand I can see that there will be more micromanagement both for spending command points for buffs and also picking traits for your leaders.
The Spanish Civil War was slightly more difficult than past games, and China so far seems to be putting up a good fight. I have sent 6 divisions 3 to Japan and 3 to Manchuria.
I have all the DLC except “Death or Dishonor”.
Will the game work OK AI-wise without it? Am I missing anything important by not having that?