I tried to dip back into this again today and was quickly overwhelmed. I’ve put a couple dozen hours in since release but never quite clicked - although that didn’t happen with EU4 until nearly 50 hours (and a few years of percolating). So maybe this time.
But mostly watching some videos for now to try to get up to speed. There are some 1.0 mechanics I still don’t know well, never mind the new ones. But the game mechanics and theme do have a very deep allure.
I can’t help much with the new naval stuff yet but if you’re stuck/confused on anything specific in the rest of the game feel free to ask away in this thread.
There’s no return to port key that I’m aware of, but Control+Click the Repair Now button will send your ships back to port, and stay there, even if they don’t need to be repaired.
Unfortunately the base game is included and is not removed from the Mobilization Pack if you already own it. It’s a good deal for those who don’t though.
Edit: That issue appears to have been corrected for Paradox titles. Thank you for the heads-up.
I was travelling for work for the launch, but at least I’m only a day behind!
Although my Germany game is still a few months from war, I’m quite enjoying the fuel changes so far. Fuel seems to they create restrictions in how you train and deploy your forces and how you allocate production in order to maintain a stockpile. A hallmark of my Germany games is that I always strive to build a huge fleet, so the fuel restrictions there are definitely tough, but survivable.
The one comment I’d make regarding oil/fuel is that the technologies pretty rapidly increase efficiency. So it looks grim in 1936, but it scales pretty quickly.
I can’t believe I missed the ability to import oil. Guess who isn’t making any construction progress for July and August, 1936? This guy!
Nice. Anything that lets me send them back is a godsend regardless of how I have to do it.
It wasn’t for me…I bought one piece of dlc and wasn’t charged for anything else.
You can duplicate a design and then make minor tweaks, for less than 30 XP. Although that doesn’t work for new hulls. Just exercising the US fleet to regular status got 180 XP, Japan’s fleet is smaller but should be able to get 100xp easy
Naval experience seems to be a function of the fleet size, with smaller fleets getting more experience. I fired up Mexico who starts with 6 DD and Coastal Defense ship, I was easily apply to get over 200 Naval XP simply by training my initial fleet and 1/2 dozen other ships, I built. Enough to not only to design all the ships I needed but use some to speed up torpedo research and Naval doctrine research.
The Mexico tree is quite interesting, unfortunately about 6 months or so before I was planning on attack of Central America. Almost all of the Central America countries, plus Venezuela joined the pact of Rome.
The game has some wild alliances now without historical focus on.
I stand corrected. Previously if the bundle was not designated COMPLETE YOUR COLLECTION! on bundles by Paradox, even if you owned the base game and/or DLC you would still be charged for them. I just now noticed there is a popup when you mouseover the word BUNDLE in the offer’s heading, it explains that you will not be charged for items you already own. I am thankful for that change!
Thank you for bringing this to my attention; I learned something today.
After playing this some more, I’m actually pretty disappointed in the DLC. In many ways I think fuel caused a lot of busy work without my guess a lot of value.
First the bugs.
Not surprising there a lot in the Paradox forums. But some of them are so obvious they are almost unforgivable. For example the US starts with both Marines and Motorized researched which gives you a template, but the template are missing for both and even researching Marine II doesn’t give you the template. You’d think that a lot of playtesters would be trying out the new US focus tree.
Next quality of life issue.
Frankly it never made a lot of sense that units would train forever (past regular status), burning up equipment and not gaining individual experience or overall experience. But it wasn’t a big deal to check one or two training armies every once in a while to deploy the trained units to other front line armies. Although, I’ve forget many times. But now that air wings and fleets have to be trained, and fuel is critical for many countries, it is royal pain in the butt to have constantly be checking, every fleet and air wing to see if they’ve finished training. Hopefully, they can fix it easily
But overall I really question if adding fuel, didn’t just add complexity for the sake of realism, I don’t think it makes the game more fun, challenging, or even that much better of simulation.
Don’t get me wrong there are some good things about the DLC. The focus trees, for Mexico and UK are very interesting, and the mechanism of trying to get vote in Congress is both challenging and fun.
I like the ship designer and I haven’t experience large naval combats yet but I imagine they are improved.
I still haven’t had to deal much with a navy with Mexico, but a nice tutorial came up from one of the devs.
I think they didn’t show much of system since they kept polishing it, but it had the consequence of leaving everyone in the dark (who usually reads DDs as partially a tutorial) about how it worked.
Details on the 1.6.1 patch here. It’s available via the beta branch now.
I’m glad they’re retooling the task force UI, that thing was kind of a clunker to figure out how to use. This should also help one of @ShivaX’s complaints.
EDIT: They also linked the Man the Guns tutorial videos here:
Getting ready to settle down into my first real game of this tonight. Fascist USA I’m thinking.
Anyone here been tinkering around? Anything major I should keep in mind? I skimmed all the change logs but I kind of have the sense that I’ll have to experiment a bunch with the Navy changes.
Probably the biggest thing I’ve noticed with MtG is that due to the increased # of naval techs, even major nations aren’t able to go as wide in research as they could previously. You’re really going to need to decide what to focus on.
As the US, you probably won’t need to worry about oil, but keep an eye on it nonetheless. Fighting really chews through your reserves.
The US is really interesting country to play. I quit my game for several reason but will start again after the next patch or two.
The new patch out next week probably is going to nerf the US, which is probably fine. I’m sure they’ll still have plenty of oil even though fuel production will be cut dramatically while the Great Depression is on. Several other exploits are being nixed.
The US is missing the initial Marine and Motorized template. So that will cost the US some extra army XP unless it gets patched.
One of the big choices is passing Lend Lease or the Neutrality act. Lend Lease lets you get into the action earlier at big cost to the economy. In hindsight I think the Neutrality act is much better and lets you get a 6th research slot early.
If you stick with FDR, infrastructure is really worth building. Eventhough the US has ton of resource by 1942/43, you’ll have to switch from Free Market to export focused. Its worth delaying that switch as long as possible, which you can do but increase infrastructure in states with a lot of resources.
Yeah I need to restart my US game. I severely underestimated the loss of screens when battling the Japanese Navy in the new naval system, so I need to rethink my shipbuilding strategy. I like that I’m suffering continual losses, even in battles I ultimately win. It felt much more like a grind instead of a quick stack wipe.
I also agree on FDR and infrastructure. I crank that stuff, especially up in the Midwest. The region can get a ton of steel going, especially if you spend political points in the decisions to expand the industry up that way. I think Minnesota alone was producing over 300 steel by 1941.
Exactly the change that needed to be made. It wasn’t realistic for anyone other than the US to bother to research new designs since you couldn’t use them half the time. The reality is that there isn’t much Naval Combat in the world and almost no one can afford the fuel to train long enough to hit 50+ XP for a new ship design. Once war starts you need that fuel (and the fleets) for actual things and then you probably can’t afford to build the new ships anyway.
The US basically has infinite fuel. If it ever even slightly becomes a concern a couple of refineries will probably put you back to full with just the first “oil to fuel %” tech.
This DLC is fricking awesome, what a great gamble by paradox, and it paid off. Welcome to a harder, more rewarding Hoi 4, and the shipbuilding, its just awesome…MINELAYING SUBS guys :)
You know what I like so far about the new naval system and designer? Thus far, it seems to have avoided the “this class of ship is the best for the IC, spam it” that usually happens. It’s plagued HOI, it’s plagued Stellaris. But with the addition of fuel, you don’t have a simple answer to “what is better, a battleship or spamming light cruisers”? Because it’s not just a straight numbers game about one stack engaging another stack, you have to factor in fuel consumption. That makes a destroyer a lot better for patrolling around but a battleship valuable when the fleets start exchanging blows. I’m building different ships because they serve different purposes aside from which one is mathematically superior in a straight up fight.
Maybe that changes as gamers continue to hammer on the system, but every previous balance attempt has immediately resulted in “spam cruisers” or “spam capital ships” becoming the new meta the day of the patch. That hasn’t happened so far here, from what I have seen.
How micro intensive is it having to do amphibious warfare? ie. taking the US to invade Europe or NW Africa?
Some games are pain when you have to have to coordinate transports and men etc.
