Hearts of Iron IV

[acctingman]

I tried liking this game, but I struggled. I'd like to blame the AI, but it was more me and my lack of patience to learn the game 

Nice to know that I'll never spend another dime on HoI4 (I might re-visit this game someday down the road)

Just bought JTCS and while the games are different (and the Tiller game is a graphics dinosaur) it's 10x more enjoyable for me AND it was $40 cheaper!  O0

I know my post adds nothing to the conversation here OR the state of HoI4....I just felt I needed to be heard!! 

[glen55]

snip --->

Off the top of their heads, can anyone recall why the Royal Navy or any allied naval force specifically didn't venture past Denmark and enter the Baltic in large groups during the war?
As far as I recall, it was the threat of the Luftwaffe and mined regions.

UPDATE: Beta hotfix is out which fixes the air bug, but not the huge naval suicide battles.

I'm no expert, but I think that's right. Constricted waters, mines, spotting by coastal patrols and land-based radar (which served double duty protecting northern Germany from air attack), coastal air strips to which many planes could be quickly transferred. Sounds like a nightmare to me. Every mile you sail up into that crap is another mile you have to sail back to get out of it.

[Millipede]

snip --->

Off the top of their heads, can anyone recall why the Royal Navy or any allied naval force specifically didn't venture past Denmark and enter the Baltic in large groups during the war?
As far as I recall, it was the threat of the Luftwaffe and mined regions.

UPDATE: Beta hotfix is out which fixes the air bug, but not the huge naval suicide battles.

I'm no expert, but I think that's right. Constricted waters, mines, spotting by coastal patrols and land-based radar (which served double duty protecting northern Germany from air attack), coastal air strips to which many planes could be quickly transferred. Sounds like a nightmare to me. Every mile you sail up into that crap is another mile you have to sail back to get out of it.

Why would the Allies have sent any navy units into the Baltic? What would have been the objective? I can't think of a thing that would have been worth the risk to even a PT boat although I may be missing something. Anybody have any thoughts?

[sandman2575]

I may well be wrong, but I thought part of the German rationale for invading Norway (after occupying Denmark) was to prevent British naval access to the Baltic - or simply to further hamper Royal Navy activity in the North Sea?  (Also to seize Norway's deposits of heavy water for use in nuclear reactor, though I suspect that was very much an ancillary consideration.)

Perhaps there was some fear that the British could use an Allied Norway as a staging ground / air base for an eventual landing in Northern Germany, which could have been a dagger pointed very close indeed to Berlin. Though I'd be surprised if that consideration was very high on Hitler and Co.'s list of strategic worries, given the immense difficulty in pulling something like that off.

Perhaps it's not much more than "take Norway, hamper British access in North Sea / Baltic, and hence limit their strategic options."

[Millipede]

Okay, invading Norway was a consideration and for that, access to the Skagerrak would be helpful but that's a long way from the Baltic. In order to get to the Baltic from the North Sea, it's necessary to go east through the Skagerrak, turn south through the Kattegat, thread your way through the 80 bazzilion Danish islands and turn east again into the Baltic. I just don't think there was anything to justify such an effort.

I meant this from the Allied perspective. Access to the Baltic and Norway completely understandable from the German point of view.

[bobarossa]

Invasion of Norway was to secure their supply of Swedish iron which couldn't go through Baltic during winter (ports frozen solid in northern Sweden).  Sweden shipped it to Narvik by railway and it went by ship from there.  Of course, I don't think HOI in any iteration takes the importance of swedish iron into account.  I always seem to have a several year supply of everything by the time war breaks out (HOI3).

[sandman2575]

Invasion of Norway was to secure their supply of Swedish iron which couldn't go through Baltic during winter (ports frozen solid in northern Sweden).

Makes sense. Thanks for the clarification.

[fabius]

As there is no stock-piling of materials in HoI4 Sweden to my Germany is primarily liberating their Tungsten to avoid harsh production penalties.

It also helps to secure the Northern Flank. Their government tends to lean towards democracy so I knock them out and have a wider route to support Finland directly.

[FarAway Sooner]

Not sure whether this is modeled in the game, but in WW II, almost all of Germany's tungsten came from Sweden and Portugal. 

The Portuguese played a tricky if little-known game of diplomatic cat-and-mouse with Germany, England, and the US around granting the Allies permission to use the Azore Islands for basing anti-submarine aircraft.  The British had been long-time allies of the Portuguese.  The Allies in general (and the British in specific) did NOT want Germany moving into Liberia (with or without Franco's permission), as that would hand the Axis Gibraltar, so they actually encouraged Portugal to keep shipping tungsten to Germany.

On the other hand, the usefulness of long-range aircraft to protect convoys and sink U-boats was hugely important.  With the establishment of airbases in Canada, Greenland, and Iceland, the Allies had secured a direct route through the North Atlantic that enjoyed good protection from U-boats by mid/late 1942.  However, the Allies had a lot of reasons for also wanting to pass convoys through the central Atlantic (Operation Torch, significant shipping passing through the Caribbean, better weather, etc.) and there was no air cover there.  A huge fraction of Allied shipping losses after mid-1942 happened in the "Black Hole" of air coverage in the mid-Atlantic.

The US started to and then stopped an invasion of the Azores on 3 or 4 different occasions.  The British got permission to base bombers there in late 1943, after interminable negotiations, but the Americans had to work under all sorts of crazy conditions until it became ABSOLUTELY clear that Germany was not intending to invade the Iberian peninsula, which basically didn't happen until after D-Day. 

If you're interested in the full details, I heartily recommend Operation Alacrity, by Norman Herz.

Might be more than you wanted to know about Swedish mining, but WW II is full of fascinating tangents and the Azores air bases had literally never come up in the 200+ books on WW II that I've probably read...

[OJsDad]

Was there ever a chance that the allies could have invaded the northwest coast of Germany or was it too heavily defended.

[IronX]

This is a really good question because it's often possible to do in games. I've not read anything on why it wasn't actually planned. It could be force strength as you suggest, or that the long supply line would have made it impossible (or a combination of both).

[Ian C]

Well, since playing as Germany is a bit broken with the AI UK Royal Navy getting all 'all-or-nothing' in the Baltic, I thought I'd give the UK a shot.

At least I can control the Royal Navy and have a more realistic game can't I?

No. No I can't.

Because the entire Italian submarine fleet plus sixteen German U-Boats attempt to break out of the Mediterranean through Gibraltar, and suicide themselves under my relatively small patrol and a crapload of French DD's. What-ho. Toodle pip, spiffing what.
The Naval AI is too aggressive, Sub detection is too effective, ASW effectiveness is too good and Submarine evasion/stealth is not good enough.
This game needs some serious tweaking with reference to historical accuracy.

[sandman2575]

The Naval AI is too aggressive, Sub detection is too effective, ASW effectiveness is too good and Submarine evasion/stealth is not good enough.

Agree 100%.  Subs are way underpowered. (On the other side of the coin, they also seem way too easy to build quickly. Devote 15 shipyards to sub production and you are pumping out several subs *per month*.)  Also, cruisers and battleships shouldn't have ASW capabilities, to state the bleedingly obvious...

This game needs some serious tweaking with reference to historical accuracy.

Yes. Yes it does.

[Jarhead0331]

1.3 update out. Juicy AI improvements...

################################################################
###########            Patch 1.3.3 "Torch"           ###########
################################################################


##################################
# AI
##################################
- Italy AI should now be better at picking proper units to fight in Ethiopia.
- AI is now inclined to ignore non-dangerous fronts while at war.
- Battle plan AI should no longer "forget" units assigned to attack order.
- Made AI better at dynamically evaluating level of preparation to attack based on expected enemy strength.
- AI should no longer be able to give units ridiculously long retreat or move orders while they are in combat.
- The AI should now be a lot better at handling a surrounded enemy capital.
- AI is less spammy with call to arms and join war requests.
- Battle plan AI unit distribution should now be more stable (though even further improvements would be good).
- AI will no longer declare wars on countries that control no territory, even if they technically exist in a limbo while their faction have not lost a war.
- The AI should now be managing its theaters better.
- AI will now start considering buildup of military constructions after a while, even if peaceful and not directly threatened.
- Naval AI will now attempt to use strike fleets to aid in coastal land combats if they are not on a mission to aid in a naval combat.
- Some minor AI optimizations.
- AI occupation policy is now scriptable, though no scripts for this has been added.
- Repaired a mistake in AI diplo for offering someone to join their faction. Threat from wrong side was used when looking at acceptance.
- Made sure AI considers org when performing naval invasions.
- Eat your vegetables before you get dessert: AI will no longer be declaring wars or justifying claims while in a losing war.
- The AI can now build any scripted building that is a part of an established building category.
- Made sure AI can not send parts of equipment. Half a ship is not particularly useful.
- Fixed a serious issue where AI would never counter resistance with area defense orders, completely ignoring conquered territory.
- AI is now less nervous about neighbors fighting a common enemy and not losing.
- Purged unit_base, as it did nothing apart from making scripting harder. unit_ratio is now the end all an be all of unit production in the scripting, and setting it to anything but a positive value will make the AI NOT build it.
- AI will now remove deployment lines for types it has reached its wanted number for.
- Improved the code behind AI template design, so the scripting should make more sense now.
- Minor tweaks to terrain prio when drawing fallback line which should make the go for mountains more.
- Battle plan AI is now capable of finding more complex paths to front position.
- Some balancing to construction AI focused on improving military industry production.
- Made AI better at calculating supply use when deciding how many divisions it can field.
- Made sure AI is not blocked from researching, even if only crap is left. Script can still set AI desire to 0 to block it.
- Improved naval AI region evaluation and made it better at reacting more efficiently to changing situations.
- AI now considers reinforcement priority for volunteer theater.
- Improved deployment AI to manage lines better and improved calculation of desired number of divisions.
- Added ai_strategy type 'support' that can be used to manipulate a countries desire to send lend lease to another country.
- Added will_lead_to_war_with when Germany demands Sudetenland. Makes AI prepare for a possible war.
- Improvements for air AI airwings picking and distribution
- Now air AI considers AA while prioritizing strategic bombing and defense operations
- AI should no longer be so happy on naval construction over military when it had also alot of civilian industry (hello USA)
- AI can now reprioritize production lines in a few cases to deal with resource lack
- AI us now makes use of more civilian factories when needed for trade
- fixed a case where AI would get sidetracked when designing divisions of specific country type and instead attempt to make generic ones
- added "ai_priority" on battalion types that get calculated by template, ai uses these rather than the visual representation to manage its divisions
- AI is now able to send old equipment as lend lease not just its newest
- AI can now cancel lend leases it can no longer afford or with nations it no longer make sense
- made AI more careful with its stockpile and who to lend lease to
- improved logic for AI's lend leasing
- fixed issue where a big difference in scoring of combat width could make AI refuse to upgrade its divisions
- USA should now lend lease soviets when they are in trouble if they have sufficient spare stockpile
- "support" ai strategy now lets nations lend lease away some of their stockpile buffer too
- fixed a case where AI would fail to deploy its main invasion protect fleet completely if some of the areas were out of range
- fixed AI invadability evaluation sometimes failing on naval path checking
- fixed a case where AI would try to split off fleets when it was not valid
- fixed a case where AI would spam invalid naval moves
- added equipment_stockpile ai strategy that lets you affect how much stockpile ai feels it needs
- all nations with many divisions will now attempt to accumulate bigger stockpiles for safety
- Fixed several cases where overflow of calcualted priorities could make AI do the opposite of what it wanted to do
- Now air ai calls recalculation of air priorities on joining a war
- fixed an issue where air AI would fail to assign mission if the only acceptable one was interception
- fixed a case where Japan would ASK to join germanys wars despite doing badly with china
- nations with restrictive modifiers for joining factions (japan) now super careful about accepting calls to arms to majors (soviet) when still at war with major neighbors (china)
- ai should now no longer get stuck on super large trades and better fulfill its needs (basically skipped the full-trade logic)
- AI now looks for trades in priority order of biggest lack
- AI now prefers trade with closer nations if naval transport required
- AI now likes trading with nations with neutral foreign policy more as they are stable
- lend lease now automatically cancels when war ends for the receiver
- AI is now MUCH better at looking at the equipment cost for switching more templates than just one at a time
- AI cares about infrastructure way more when placing consctruction
- AI should no longer go as happy on naval construction over military (was counting ratio also using civilian so got disproportional large naval part)
- AI us now allowed to trade using more civilian factories
- Ai should now be much better at going for medium tank divisions. Fixed issues with width being off as well as wrong template being used when evaluatign fitness for changing out lines
- rebalanced ai priorities for medium vs light armor so that ai doesnt get stuck thinking its making light when it isnt
- fixed a case where AI was looking at the wrong type when deciding about template upgrades and could get stuck on motorized
- AI should now show greater interest in researching excavation tech.
- Tweaked templates a bit for majors to avoid getting trapped in subpar targets
- Allied AI will no longer guarantee Finland if Soviet justifies war on their claims, while Germany is the biggest threat.
- fixed an issue where some scripted ai strategies would not work after updates (it was order dependant)
- added an AI sanity check to the War with the USSR focus for Germany
- Reduced AI research randomness and improved info in AI research log message
- Made sure AI considers convoy count and possible delivery route before sending lend lease
- AI will now leave potentially hostile nations alone for guarantees until they have generated some actual threat giving you 1-2 smaller wars before you are sucked into the ww2 vortex (makes some minors a lot more playable)
- rebalanced ai priorities for medium vs light armor so that ai doesnt get stuck thinking its making light when it isnt
- fixed a case where AI was looking at the wrong type when deciding about template upgrades and could get stuck on motorized
- Improved AI trade law logic selection
- AI now has a can_upgrade_in_field trigger on templates to give it hints on when to stop producing light tanks and switch over to medium for stuff


##################################
# UI
##################################
- Battleplans are now hidden during the peace conference to not obstruct the view.
- Players lagging behind message in multiplayer, is now replaced with an alert (tooltip shows who and how much).
- Added alert about having unassigned divisions.
- Added loading progress bars.
- When selecting a division(s), the list of all divisions automatically scrolls to show it.
- It is possible to hide ALL map counters except your units. Hotkey 'M'.
- All the message popups that doesn't require the player choice (yes/no/etc), automatically hides after timeout, to not fill the screen with hundreds of windows. Useful when running the "hands-off" observing game.
- Building constructions and conversions now can be added at the top of the queue by holding ctrl and click.
- Made save game name text field longer.
- Added stockpiling amount to production screen. Changed text to icons.
- Added tooltip to US "Destroyers for Bases" focus to make it clear who gains certain territories
- Fixed a tooltip for the Australian focus "A Deal with Japan" to account for different options of territories transferred
- Fixed legibility issues in event news.199
- Fixed a tooltip issue in the SAF focus tree
- Added dockyard output modifier icon in the production screen
- Fixed wrong division flags in the combat screen
- Missiles now count as bombers in the region air screen
- Fixed issue when multiple army groups was not shown in the volunteer theater groups
- Multiple fixes for trade influence issues with not matching numbers
- Tooltip in the research screen does not show ahead of time penalty if player has 100% ahead of time penalty reduction bonus
- Minor fix for army group leader tooltip, to match numbers when penalty for too many units applied
- Arrows now gets hidden while editing the orders
- Now top bar tooltip for factories also shows damaged ones
- Missiles are not shown in logistics screen anymore
- Fixes for fear trade modifiers being applied in wrong direction
- Now clicking on not existing country in the managing occupied areas screen you won't go to diplomacy screen
- Fixed the bug when plan evaluation numbers was not matching
- Fixed the bug when capital icons were not correctly shown
- Fix for the tooltip on return territory
- Added clarification on non-progressing training by reason of lacking equipment and manpower
- Now Pass button gets disabled in the peace conference if no actions left to take
- Combat log screen now will be shown on top of other screens
- Now load game button disable at the same time as continue button
- Clarified tooltip for opening multiple info windows in the tech and focus tree screens
- Political cost now is hidden when the law is taken
- Fix for the switch to next autonomy level glow (now it is actually hidden)
- Fixed warscore not being calculated properly while war without majors on one side
- Now invalid leader picking screens disappear as army group gets deleted
- Disabled icons while in deployment mode
- Fix for the rules not being updated on savegame load
- If national focus not changing tooltip doesn't show weekly change anymore
- Fixed factory conversion button flickering while non-paused gameplay
- Fixed the bug when techtree was broken after switching country
- Added ability to toggle fog of war map effect on/off
- Tooltips existing lend leases for equipment now show type as well as national flavor name when these differ
- Releasing nations with a lot of states no longer massively overflows popup window
- Multiple rows of division types now possible to be shown in army overview
- Tweaked gradient borders for strategic areas so there is no weird gap between areas (more visible with mods)
- Air wing reinforce limit window now has the +50/+100 buttons jump to closest multiple to avoid clicks for neat sizes, steps are also +5/+10 for carrier parked wings
- Can now increase/decrease queued up ship production faster with ctrl/shift click (ctrl=10 at a time, shift=100 at a time)
- Indian National Army focus now has correct effect description
- Fixed overlap of text in options with certain languages
- Changed shortcut for closing a bunch of production items as ctrl+click it's easy to miss-click with other shift+click nearby
- Fixed centering of trade scrollbar
- Achievement entry header now highlighted in orange
- Achievement window now movable
- Resistance tick indicator now doesn't show VP stuff in states where there can't be resistance
- Clicking rightmost side of savegame edit box no longer deselects editing
- Spelling fix of Trotskyist
- Added tooltip to icons displaying used combat width in the combat window .
- Added tooltip to research button explaining the 30 days grace period.
- Added province tooltip if there is an air base or rocket site present.
- Added state name when hovering over a naval base.
- Renamed "Small arms research time" to "Weapons and Equipment Research Time"
- Explained conditional effect of why we fight focus in tooltip
- Entrenchment tooltip only shows days left when unit is not fully entrenched.
- Fixed rounding issue in resource mapmode
- Made separate production tooltip for naval items, reflecting they don't retain efficiency.
- Added war requirement to lend lease tooltip.
- Armies view: Improved consistency across the different tooltips. Added penalty to the groupview in the bottom of the screen. Moved penalty explanation to delayed.
- Added delayed tooltip to production line filter explaining Shift+click mechanic.
- Removed "Support" header from division icon tooltip when it has no support.
- Changed production line tooltip to no longer lie about total output and resource efficiency to the player.
- Maximum amount of slots is always stated. Factor modifiers not shown if slots < 0. Wasteland is now displayed in same way as other categories.
- Changed "Trade Bonus" modifier to "Overlord trade cost" and made it a negative modifier.
- Added "Stop" button to continuous focus detail screen.
- Added bypass button for focus if they have are mutually exclusive with another, automatically locking players in a branch.
- Moved the disband button, manpower and equipment numbers around for unit details view
- A bunch of tooltips readability improved. Various changes, typo fixed, decimal points changed, etc.
- added ability to toggle fog of war on/off
- Changed efficiency tooltip growth to show daily values instead of weekly

...and more that couldn't fit here on Steam. Please go here to read full patch log![forum.paradoxplaza.com]

[sandman2575]

Good stuff. Though I kvetch about the state of HOI4, it still tops my Steam library in terms of most hours played. And I have no doubt Pdox is 100% dedicated to improving it.