RIP Romania ;_; At least Hungary did not get the whole of Transylvania, just innacurate parts. But Bulgaria got Bucharest, so much for historical accuracy.
Japan does something really interesting in this game, even if it lost most of its developed land. You will see!
Category: Hearts of Iron IV
Hearts of Iron IV – 45th Development Diary
Time for another diary! Today I’ll be talking about one of the biggest changes in Hearts of Iron IV compared to the previous titles: Battle Plans.
Design Goals
When I started looking at what direction to take HOI4 for unit control and provinces I first looked at HOI2 and HOI3 to see what worked well and what didn’t.
HOI2
+ Fewer provinces making full manual control always possible
– Few provinces leads to a lot less cool encirclements and removes a lot of interesting tactical gameplay
HOI3
+ Lots of provinces allowing encirclements and interesting gameplay
+ HOI3 had a purely cosmetic battle plan drawing system, and still people used it – because drawing plans feels natural in a strategic wargame like this and it feels right to see and makes showing things to others in say AARs easier.
– Lots of provinces means manual control everywhere can be overwhelming, difficult to manage in multiplayer and annoying in areas where you “don’t care so much”.
– You could hand over control to HQ units run by AI for you and give them objectives. The problem was that effectively you had very little control, and features that play themselves are generally not a good idea. Giving up control also isn’t something most players like to do.
For HOI4 we decided we wanted to attempt the best of both. Keep the high province count, always allow manual control override, enough tools to automate parts that didn’t matter and control and feedback when managing lots of units at the same time so you would not be surprised by the system doing things you didn’t tell it. The system is specifically not allowed to be clever, that is the player’s job, so if you tell it to suicide into the maginot line it will say it thinks it’s too risky, but do it anyway.
The battle plan system in HOI4 lets you draw plans on the map which are followed by assigned divisions, but at any point you can go in and reassign things or issue manual overrides. The player’s role is then basically to draw up high level plans and to watch for opportunities and situations to take advantage of (such as small encirclements, or prioritizing fighting a certain enemy, or cutting off someone’s retreat). Generally the strategic situation will change over time, so while you may have prepared a longer plan expect that you will need to improvise and adapt parts as you go or break off a group to manage some emergency, or particularly stubborn enemy section.
Continue reading “Hearts of Iron IV – 45th Development Diary”
HoI IV Q&A
Gathered from the forums. Please excuse the grammar mistakes (if there are still any left). The questions were originally put in the Twitch chat.
Can you share technologies?
– No, but you can build and give equipment to others.
Are there stances/dispositions for Convoy Raiding Submarines to dictate when they take too much damage and return home?
– Yes
I wanna ask if we can win war with GBR through starvation?
– Not really, no. But you can make it easier to defeat them by starving them.
Will it be easy to make mods for this game to add variety?
– The game will follow the same model as our previous games.
Is it possible to go fascist as America?
– Yes
Any plans for a leader designer or ‘make your own leader’ tool?
– Not at this time. Maybe some day.
Can you create puppet states like nazi france for example?
– You can release countries that exist in the game as puppets. But you can’t create new ones. There are events for certain sitauations like Vichy France for example.
Continue reading “HoI IV Q&A”
Hearts of Iron IV – "World War Wednesday" Part 8 – What happened to the Soviet Union?
More like: What happened to Japan? Go podcat!
Hearts of Iron IV – 44th Development Diary
Hello everyone! This weeks topic will be the side effects of war: Occupation and Resistance.
Resistance
The main goal of modeling local resistance in HOI4 is to remove whack-a-mole of rebels running around and to model the strategic problems with occupying large chunks of enemy territory.
Each occupied state you control has a resistance value indicating the strength of the resistance there. It will slowly grow over time. To reduce or halt growth you need to station troops in the area (preferably special divisions with military police support battalions which are very effective for this) or lower your occupation policy for the nation in question.
As the resistance grows in an area it has several effects:
- available supply is reduced creating bottlenecks
- your enemies get increased intel and will be able to see more of what is going on
- factories will suffer from sabotage and will need to be repaired
- troops will take more attrition
So it’s important to station troops to combat this, but of course that ties up valuable divisions you might want to use to fight the enemy. You can also appoint ministers with the Prince of Terror trait which will help to combat resistance growth in your occupied areas.
Occupation policies
You can set occupation policies for each nation you occupy. They range from Gentlest to Harshest, where harshest has the most aggressive resistance growth but lets you exploit the most
Gentlest:
– least factories
– local resources
– least resources
+ most manpower
+ less resistance growth
Harshest:
+ most resources
+ most factory output
+ most resources
– no manpower
– fastest resistance growth
Continue reading “Hearts of Iron IV – 44th Development Diary”
Hearts of Iron IV – "World War Wednesday" Part 7
In this game the UK and US make several invasions on Axis soil, but not all of them succeed. Also the number of fronts increased dramatically. And…
>1942
>Romania still bigger than IRL
>Neutrality intensifies
Hearts of Iron IV – 43rd Development Diary
This week we will be going over all the diplomatic and otherwise options you have for affecting other nations. Diplomacy ties into a lot of stuff so expect links to previous diaries for all the nitty gritty! Lets go through all the diplomatic actions available…
Factions
One of the goals for HOI4 was to break free factions from ideologies and let players create their own. Ideology of creator will still matter for the factions special rules and bonuses and who will want to join it (for example being part of a fascist led faction let you declare war on anyone as long as you are already in war).
To create a faction a nation who doesn’t start with one needs to take a national focus giving them the ability to do so. Some focuses also sets up factions directly (like France ability to create the Little Entente with the Czechs). Even minors can make factions if they unlock the right focuses. If you make your own you are free to name it and will be its leader. Nations can leave factions in a few situation: Being Couped, leaving on their own (only works if they haven’t joined a war together) or some special focus and events. This means that in general, once you have joined a faction you are an ally that can be trusted.
Continue reading “Hearts of Iron IV – 43rd Development Diary”
