Hearts of Iron IV

[celedhring]

So, some bunch of crazies went and made a Clone Wars mod for HoI4 

[Solmyr]

Had a rather intense game of Hearts of Iron 4 yesterday. I was playing the Soviet Union, building up for an early war against Germany. Conquered Poland fast (1937 or so). I was finally ready and declared war on Germany in mid-1939, just as Germany was invading Belgium (but had no other western wars yet). I overrun Eastern Prussia and concentrate on the push towards Berlin. At this point, Germany holds Czechia and Slovakia is in the Axis, so I have to guard that border as well (it's really crappy to attack because of all the mountains). Italy is also in the Axis, but does little against me. Luckily, after a month or so France decided that enough and declared war on Germany, and soon after the UK joins in making this a big Allies and Comintern vs Axis world war. The Netherlands also join some time later due to UK pressure. Fortunately I don't have to watch Asia, since Japan is still bogged down in China, though clearly winning.

Anyway, my push into Germany is painfully slow because of material shortage and Germans having good entrenchment. However, France is pushing slowly in the west, advancing slightly across the Rhine and into occupied Belgium; they are not making huge gains either, and actually losing to the Italians down south. After months of pushing and trying to create good attacks from multiple directions, I start to break though the German lines. That is when fucking Hungary decides to join the Axis, and their units flood into my territory, with some Germans joining in as well. I scramble some armies to cut them off, but my defense there is stretching really thin, and the Hungarians manage to eventually occupy western Ukraine and eastern Poland (basically everything between Warsaw and Kiev, not including the cities themselves). They even cut my territory in half once they push north to the Lithuanian border. Fortunately, my armies in Germany are still supplied since I control Baltic ports from Memel to Danzig, so shipments can come from Leningrad. Anyway, in the west I manage to make a desperate push towards Berlin, and my tanks occupy the city. That's when the Germans start to crumble in the west; I execute some more encircling attacks and finally march to the borders of the Netherlands, Belgium and France. The Australians make a landing in Bremen and the UK takes out the Italians and occupies Rome, causing the Axis to surrender. I was lucky that Hungary did not count as a major, so their occupation did not affect the outcome!

After an intense peace conference Europe looks like this (November 1940):



And the factions:



Basically, I puppeted Germany and Hungary, making them communist, plus took some lands for myself (western Germany, Austria, and Moravia, though I may give them back for now and annex my puppets later). The Allies restored Czechoslovakia (which controls only Slovakia), Austria (controlling only Tirol), and Albania; created a free Transylvania and Slovenia. In Africa, Libya was made into a British colony, while former Italian colonies Eritrea and Somalia became independent. Italy itself was recreated as a republic. The only problem is that the Allies are quite strong now, with Italy, Austria, and Albania joining them (Norway joined as well because Germany stupidly decided to declare war on them while being at war with me and the Allies already). The Balkan countries are mostly unaligned so far, except for Bulgaria which joined the Axis very late in the war and did not have time to do much before German surrender, so now it's the only member of the Axis despite not even being fascist. The US is neutral for now, but I suspect once Japan is done with China, it will attack the US and make it join the Allies (if it does not decide to attack me instead). So dangerous times may be ahead for the Soviets. I'm thinking of trying to promote communism and stage coups in some countries to tip the balance a bit; I haven't tried this kind of gameplay yet, and my NKVD has many spies so it may be an interesting strategy.

[DGuller]

I've had my most challenging game as Germany yesterday.  I invaded Poland as usual, and as I was proceeding to occupy it, I noticed that I now had excess tungsten.  I was a little confused, since I didn't think Poland had much tungsten, but it turns out that I had extra tungsten because I was not longer producing any medium tanks.  It turns out that I forgot to guard the French border, and the Allies occupied all of western Germany and got to the outskirts of Berlin while I was busy with Poland.   

[grumbler]

I had an interesting game of HoI4, playing Kaiserreich with the "Avoid American Civil War" mod.  This makes the US ridiculously OP (which is why KR has a mandatory US civil war), but I wasn't interested in a competitive game so much as I was interested in a game where I was playing KR but free from all the scripted events, once the initial depression was overcome.

In this scenario, there is no way for the US to join a faction.  All factions are created by events in KR, and none of the US-joins-a-faction events apply in the absence of the civil war.  I played into 1943 before realizing that the US could not even declare war because the world tension was constantly going down over time, after the second Weltkrieg kicked off.  Going back and replaying from the start of 1939, I discovered that there is one month (only) where the world tension is 75 and the US can start to justify a war (that's the month the Entente declares war on the International, and WT goes to exactly 75 before it starts to count down by 1 point per month).  So, I decided to make war on the Syndicalists, because they were kicking ass.

By the time the second Weltkrieg had broken out in my game, the International consisted of France and Britain, of course, plus Italy, Russia, Spain, and the Netherlands.  Imperial Germany was getting squished from both sides.

What impressed me about the design of KR in my game was that it allowed the player to create lots of breakaway countries if they so desired (and I did, because paining the map wasn't my objective).  For instance, I, as the US, conquered just northwest Italy and the game allowed me to create the nation of Piedmont-Sardinia.  Similarly, I was able to create Scotland, Illyria, and a few others.  That was the kind of thing I was looking to see.

The mod designers broke my save by the time the game was into 1945, but that was okay by me.  There really wasn't any point to going any further.

But the bottom line is that i was even more impressed with the designers of KR after this run than before.  They really thought out some of the less-likely scenarios and acounted for them.

[Threviel]

I've been playing a bit lately. Anyone have any tips for good mods?

[Berkut]

I just took this up. I think I enjoy preparing for war more than the war.

Played as the US a couple times, and once war with Japan breaks out, I have no idea how to handle the navies.

Played as Germany, and again, once war broke out, trying to manage the army/army'group/division along with plans, directives, start lines, offensive lines, and all that was...very confusing. I conquered Poland, but didn't feel like I was doing anything really to do so.

Did some reading on strategy, and was totally turned off by the uber optimization that is apparently the "right" way to play the game - IE, if you are going to build a destroyed escort, it should be a early war hull with a single depth charge on it and nothing else. IE, you are playing to the mechanics of the game only (a sub apparently will break off if it is contacted by a escort with a weapon capable of attacking it, so why bother with guns and AA and a decent engine?).

Your infantry divisions would be exactly 20 "width" (apparently width is super important, but barely mentioned in the manual?), and be composed of nothing but infantry. Your armor should be nothing but armor. etc., etc.

Is that kind of optimization really for MP only?

[DGuller]

Having armor units be armor-only is not correct, you won't have any hitpoints and will suffer horrendous materiel losses.  You need some mobile or mech infantry with it.  As for the larger question, min-maxing is not necessary in SP, because you can spot AI some advantages, but it would still help.

[Berkut]

Sorry, yes, it said you should have armor and motorized/mech. But no TDs, no SP artillery (maybe just a support company), not actual "other stuff".

Do you just not even bother researching that stuff at all?

[DGuller]

Sorry, yes, it said you should have armor and motorized/mech. But no TDs, no SP artillery (maybe just a support company), not actual "other stuff".

Do you just not even bother researching that stuff at all?

I don't know if it's meta or not, but I do carry motorized artillery and AA, and then replace them with SP variants if I can afford it.  My typical template is 12 tanks, 4 mobile infantry, 2 mobile artillery, and 2 mobile AA.  Early in the game, it helps fill out the 40 width template, since producing enough tanks for enough armor divisions is no small feat.  Maybe 15-5 works better in MP, where the opposing player is more competent at anti-tank warfare.

[Berkut]

What options do you use DG when starting a new game?


Like, do you always do the historical AI focuses and such?

[DGuller]

What options do you use DG when starting a new game?


Like, do you always do the historical AI focuses and such?

Default all the way.  Normal difficulty, historical focuses.  In my opinion, the game turns into a clusterfuck if you turn off historical focuses, especially with all the DLCs that introduce a bunch of nonsense focus trees for a lot of nations.

[The Brain]

What options do you use DG when starting a new game?


Like, do you always do the historical AI focuses and such?

Default all the way.  Normal difficulty, historical focuses.  In my opinion, the game turns into a clusterfuck if you turn off historical focuses, especially with all the DLCs that introduce a bunch of nonsense focus trees for a lot of nations.

The Grand Pensionary of the Neo-Ottoman Republic frowns on your shenanigans.

[grumbler]

Sorry, yes, it said you should have armor and motorized/mech. But no TDs, no SP artillery (maybe just a support company), not actual "other stuff".

Do you just not even bother researching that stuff at all?

The game can certainly be played as a "ignore realism and focus on what's best in purely game terms," but that's both unfun and much more difficult (because you have to remember all the ahistorical 'rules' you need to follow).  Just play the game like a regular Paradox game and do what seems fun.   The opponent AI isn't good enough to make you pay a heavy price for being historical (in part because that's what the AI does).

My standard configurations were 7 infantry and 2 artillery, plus recon and engineer units, for an infantry brigade, and double that plus hospital and attached AT for an infantry division.  Make brigades in the early game and combine them into divisions when you have enough units and want stronger ones (say, 1941 or so).  Divisions fight better than 2 brigades because they have more HP and cohesion.  Pure infantry units have more cohesion but don't have much firepower.

For armor, i start, again, with brigades (5 tank, 2 mobile infantry, 2 towed artillery) and combine them into divisions in 1941 or so, same as the infantry.  I always attach recon, engineer, and maintenance units to armor, adding a comms or supply attachment and a hospital when they go to divisions. Road to 56 is a better historical game than base HOI4.

When you've played enough HOI4 to satisfy your semi-historical itch, switch to Kaiserreich.  It will remove predictability and historical hindsight, so it will extend the fun beyond the base game. Once you switch, though, you will never want to go back to base HOI4, so enjoy the base game as long as you can if you want to keep HOI4 fun as long as possible.

[Berkut]

Has anyone ahd and hopefully solved the weirdness where you setup a task force to auto fill, and it just adds then removes then adds then removes over and over again a single ship?

I setup a CV TF with 2CVs, 2BB, 2CA, 4CL, and 20 DDs. It fills it up from reserve nicely, but then 1 of the 2 CVs just togglers back and forth between in and out of the TF.

[Agelastus]

12 tanks? For light tanks that's 720 tanks per division, for mediums 600, for heavies 480.

I prefer roleplaying something closer to actual division sizes in battalion numbers*, although that does make the divisions feel a little small, manpower wise, as the game doesn't seem to model the "tail" that keeps a division in the field very well.

16 width gives you 5 divisions in the frontline, which can be useful for rapid exploitation into multiple provinces. I only tend to use it when playing a low manpower country to give myself sufficient numbers of divisions for the frontline though.

20 width divisions used to be the standard IIRC, giving you four to the frontline. I tend to use this format in most games.

I've experimented with 26 width divisions (which only waste 2 width with 3 divisions in the frontline) that give you a bit more freedom for variety in how you set them up - useful if you like having a lot of artillery battalions in divisions but need to keep the organisation up. Infantry, Motorised infantry and Mechanized infantry benefit far more from organisation gains as you advance down a land doctrine path compared to tanks.

Recon and engineer are certainly your essential support companies. I always used to use hospital companies as the third choice but it depends on your play-style and country (for example, playing Democratic Britain I would use hospital companies in divisions due to manpower concerns; for Non-aligned or Fascist Britain there's no need for this thanks to the "Imperial Conscription" focus and the fact that you should have reconquered India.)

As for AI control of fronts? Give them a plan and set them off but don't rely on the bonuses planning gives you; it is far more effective to take direct control of some of the units to manage encirclements but manually doing this instantly kills your planning bonus for those units.

But then, I don't understand some of the advice I see online for single player anyway; the advice I've seen for Britain versus America, for example, seems to be to smash your way down the East Coast...which seems silly to me given the terrain. Better to concentrate Motorised and Armoured divisions west of the Great Lakes to attack across the Great Plains to maximize your chances of encircling American divisions, then either swing east once you are past Chicago to trap the American forces defending the north-east or go straight south to cut the country in half.

Berkut, you should do whatever you feel suits how you want to play the game or that you feel works.

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*and tank numbers - remember, I'm British and we spent all of WWII trying to get the ratio of tanks to infantry in divisions right. One could argue we weren't even quite there in 1945...