Hearts of Iron IV

[Ian C]

Great...so what you're saying is that in a game that I sucked in when the AI was brain dead, I'm REALLY going to suck at now?

Any feedback on how the PTO is playing out?

PTO - not tried it yet...

But yes, it's tougher.

Playing as the UK, here's the bloody mess that is currently Africa.

[Jarhead0331]

What mods are you using. For instance, I presume the Swastika is a mod?

[Ian C]

Yes, historical swastika mod, colored buttons mod and that's it. Nothing to affect gameplay.

[SirAndrewD]

Great...so what you're saying is that in a game that I sucked in when the AI was brain dead, I'm REALLY going to suck at now?

Any feedback on how the PTO is playing out?

The AI can hold a front much better than before.  It will also now agressively attack more often rather than constantly concentrating on redeploying its units.  I've yet to see the AI completely abandon a front for an insignificant theater. 

The good of this is that fronts now matter, and last longer.  I saw in three test games the Spanish Civil War last well over a year.  Twice the Republcans won, something I almost never saw before. 

The bad in this is that AI on AI wars have become insanely bloody.  In three games Germany lost more than six million ment in the first four months of their invasion of the Soviet Union.  Russian losses were around 3-4 million. 

Soft attack has also been nerfed across the board, so armor/artillery spam doesn't quite easily win you the war the way it did.  You've got to spend lives to take hard ground or be smart about getting around it.  Sadly, while the AI is much improved, the improvement has made it love grinding, hopeless frontal assaults.  It's an improvement, but it's one that still needs a bit of tweaking. 

As for the PTO, no, I've never seen it heavily prusied post 1.5.  The Japanese do poke at American holdings, but not too agressively.  They're too tied down fighting India and sometimes Russia (Communist China has a bad habit of joining the Comintern and refusing the united front) for that to really draw them out.  It's better than vanilla, but there wasn't a noticable improvement over 1.4.

Also, the naval system is way too broken for any real Pacific War to function.  Naval bombers, while not the issue they were pre-1.4 are still OP.  Carriers and Battleships still obliterate all other vessels while being almost untouchable themselves.  Looking around at other countries, most non-player navies have ceased to exist from atrittion not long after the opening of hostilities. 

The next patch needs to totally overhaul the naval side of things.

[glen55]

Great...so what you're saying is that in a game that I sucked in when the AI was brain dead, I'm REALLY going to suck at now?

Any feedback on how the PTO is playing out?

The AI can hold a front much better than before.  It will also now agressively attack more often rather than constantly concentrating on redeploying its units.  I've yet to see the AI completely abandon a front for an insignificant theater. 

The good of this is that fronts now matter, and last longer.  I saw in three test games the Spanish Civil War last well over a year.  Twice the Republcans won, something I almost never saw before. 

The bad in this is that AI on AI wars have become insanely bloody.  In three games Germany lost more than six million ment in the first four months of their invasion of the Soviet Union.  Russian losses were around 3-4 million. 

Soft attack has also been nerfed across the board, so armor/artillery spam doesn't quite easily win you the war the way it did.  You've got to spend lives to take hard ground or be smart about getting around it.  Sadly, while the AI is much improved, the improvement has made it love grinding, hopeless frontal assaults.  It's an improvement, but it's one that still needs a bit of tweaking. 

As for the PTO, no, I've never seen it heavily prusied post 1.5.  The Japanese do poke at American holdings, but not too agressively.  They're too tied down fighting India and sometimes Russia (Communist China has a bad habit of joining the Comintern and refusing the united front) for that to really draw them out.  It's better than vanilla, but there wasn't a noticable improvement over 1.4.

Also, the naval system is way too broken for any real Pacific War to function.  Naval bombers, while not the issue they were pre-1.4 are still OP.  Carriers and Battleships still obliterate all other vessels while being almost untouchable themselves.  Looking around at other countries, most non-player navies have ceased to exist from atrittion not long after the opening of hostilities. 

The next patch needs to totally overhaul the naval side of things.

In my first game the Japanese came at me rather aggressively from a naval perspective as soon as the war started. Maybe it was because I had fortified and built up air at Midway/Wake/Johnston I./Noumea, and if I had laid back in the historical manner perhaps they would've picked available fruit in the historical manner. It was good to see them playing aggressively because my history is that they just don't.

It was also good to see that by September '42, Germany had put Moscow in the rear-view mirror and Japan had completely taken out the British Raj, since those countries have tended to underperform.

On the other side of the ledger, Japan was aggressive, alright, but they came at me without finesse while I was hanging out in the vicinity of all that land-based air I had built up instead of hanging back and waiting to force a more favorable battle when I tried to extend into a new region. Even worse, once I had grabbed the initiative with a couple of big, early victories--and yeah, big battles are still way too "to the death"--they threw ships at me 1 or 2 at a time instead of gathering up a real force to try to waylay me in a favorable spot, just like the AI has always done.

[SirAndrewD]

I think the naval results are partly luck depending on when and where opposing fleets run into each other.  In a couple of the runs I did the Japanese navy was wrecked by the British down to a pair of carriers, while at the same time reducing the Royal Navy to one carrier, two battleships and a handful of pickets.

In another the Japanese ended up with by far the largest navy in the world by 1942. 

[HoodedHorseJoe]

To be honest, I think I'd pay good money for either a more abstract naval system or simply an "AI take-over" system. The Air war is tolerable for me right now but I still can't bring myself to care for the micro-heavy naval stuff. I'm a gropo, I just want to take armies and conquer things, I don't really care what the navy does.

[Ian C]

For me, if they nail the Naval issues and also Sub Detection, and make air units intercept-able over contiguous land regions I'll be very happy.

[Ian C]

I think the naval results are partly luck depending on when and where opposing fleets run into each other.  In a couple of the runs I did the Japanese navy was wrecked by the British down to a pair of carriers, while at the same time reducing the Royal Navy to one carrier, two battleships and a handful of pickets.

In another the Japanese ended up with by far the largest navy in the world by 1942.

I'll admit I know next to nothing about naval warfare. I take it that typically in WW2 that small patrols of light vessels patrolled regions and that larger heavier forces were used for specific operations?
The grand slugfests we are seeing in HOI 4 were uncommon?

[glen55]

I think the naval results are partly luck depending on when and where opposing fleets run into each other.  In a couple of the runs I did the Japanese navy was wrecked by the British down to a pair of carriers, while at the same time reducing the Royal Navy to one carrier, two battleships and a handful of pickets.

In another the Japanese ended up with by far the largest navy in the world by 1942.

I'll admit I know next to nothing about naval warfare. I take it that typically in WW2 that small patrols of light vessels patrolled regions and that larger heavier forces were used for specific operations?
The grand slugfests we are seeing in HOI 4 were uncommon?

Pretty close to that. Light vessels spread out in an anti-sub/search network over controlled/semi-controlled waters, although air did most of the searching.

The US had a big lead in signal intelligence over Japan and enabled the US to deploy battlegroups based on larger vessels pretty much to oppose or support Japanese operations, as opposed to searching with battlegroups. Japan wanted to do the same but their efforts were more stabs in the dark.

Japan made much more of an effort to use subs operationally and primarily targeted combatants. The US got a much bigger bang for the buck by spreading its subs out in anti-shipping patrols. By 1943 or so, the subs were really hamstringing Japan's operations everywhere that wasn't the home islands.

Grand slugfests happened, but nearly as promptly as they do in HOI 4. I keep itching to play the Japanes, but all that invading this and that, plus conducting a large-scale campaign of attrition against China, just seems tiresome, like playing Britain seems. So I haven't tried it from their angle, but when I'm the Americans and I throw the bulk of my fleet out into a contested spot, they are going to draw the Kido Butai sooner rather than later, and I haven't really seen exceptions to that.

[SirAndrewD]

Just an fyi, I found this vid to be very good at explaining the new command and control system.  Not using the CnC system correctly can really bork any attempt to create a functional offensive line.

[Ian C]

Just a heads-up: I like the new Army insignia but these are pretty helpful:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1331463215
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1336683861
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1331463070

[Huw the Poo]

This is on sale at Fanatical at the moment.  Is it worth picking up now?  It seems that on the various forums there are always people claiming it's broken, for example apparently the AI can't handle supply at all.

So, honest opinions: what's the state of the game?

[jamus34]

I can't speak for anyone else but I am enjoying it. I am by no means a die hard grog and i understand some of the stuff the game does is unrealistic.

But on the same token I realize it is a game. It is not real life and additionally pdox games are made in a way that they "set the stage" but everything after that is adlibbed.

I know some people don't like that, but I am fine with it and HoI4 has become on of my most played Steam games.

[SirAndrewD]

The core game is good.  The game with all the DLC's becomes very good.  It still has a horrible naval system, but the AI has improved significantly from release. 

It's honestly been worth it since the second major patch.  It's just been getting more worth it since then.  I'd imagine anyone purchasing it fresh today will have a higher opinion of it than many that have played since release, as you won't get tainted by the early teething troubles we had to endure.