A glance at HoI3

[sbr]

I am not a big Steam fan, but I have bought a few really cheap games from them.  I would never buy a P'dox game from them; the cd-keys not working is very common.  There are also problems with getting the patches and mods to work, not good for a Paradox game to not be able to patch or mod it.

[Neil]

Or buying Paradox games anymore.

That was your first mistake:  Being an enabler.

[Ed Anger]

There's long been mandatory mods for the bitter peace event.

Paradox forum refuses my steam HOI3 cd-key, therefore, I am a filthy pirate-customer, so I don't bother with their forums.

Or buying Paradox games anymore.

Why on Earth did you use Steam? I steer clear of that clusterfuck; Gamersgate suits me just fine.

It was cheap.

[Ed Anger]

Or buying Paradox games anymore.

That was your first mistake:  Being an enabler.

I know. 

Next time, I'll just wait the year and buy Paradox games at Big Lots or Half Price Books for 6 bucks if I want it. If it bones me, it is only the cost of a meal at Chick-Fil-A.

[sbr]

1.4 Public Beta is out

http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?t=461442

[ulmont]

1.4 Public Beta is out

http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?t=461442

1) What does it theoretically fix?
2) At what price point is HoI3 worth buying? $15? $10?

[sbr]

1.4 Public Beta is out

http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?t=461442

1) What does it theoretically fix?
2) At what price point is HoI3 worth buying? $15? $10?

It has only been up for an hour, I have started dl'ing it but no further.

I am not sure how much it is worth at this point.  I have started about 4 games, all as Germany, and haven't gone further than about Sept. 10, '39.  I just can't get into it but I am not exactly sure why; hopefully there is a magical fix for me in here.

Change log

################################################## ##########
# Changes for 1.4 below.
################################################## ##########


-----------------------------------------------------------------------
- AI Improvements
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* Unit AI
- Improved attack cooperation between countries and different agents
- Fixed an issue with low _current_ infrastructure causing the AI to disregard many front provinces
- Fixed some prio issues that stupidly emptied a threatened front province of troops
- Fixed some problems with reserve usage along fronts that could cause all units to be pulled back (especially for unmobilized countries on DoW.)
- Fixed some superstack issues
- Fixed a serious superstacking issue with unlimited troops allowed to match and surpass enemy forces
- Better checks before allies send their whole army to help against some weak enemy
- Fixed a problem with invaders and overseas units incorrectly being marked as garrisons and locking up
- Fixed an issue where it would not return exp forces correctly
- Improved garrison code to better handle multiple areas within a theatre
- Fixed some problems with reserve usage along fronts that could cause all units to be pulled back (especially for unmobilized countries on DoW.)
- Fixed a bad bug that could cause all divisions to go to the same province
- Will reinforce coastal provinces under attack by invaders

* HQ AI
- Allies should now be able to operate properly within each other's territory
- Rebalanced inter-theatre unit reassignments
- Improved retrieval of armies from foreign areas

* Invasion AI
- Avoids target provinces with only a strait as a border (like the Channel Islands)
- Prioritizes provinces that border many others
- Will not reinforce beachheads if it will severely overstack. Instead, will attempt more landings nearby.
- Better at transporting HQs to the areas with their divisions
- Fixed a nasty problem with the transport AI completely locking up

* Air AI
- Fixed a bug with interceptors constantly being sent to enemy air bases
- Will divert TAC and CAG to bomb invasion fleets

* Misc
- Fixed several issues with DoW and preparations for DoW
- Fixed issue with too many starting techs in research queue for the AI
- Optimized mission selection for spies in countries without spies
- AI now avoids researching ahead of time more
- AI should no longer burn manpower when at war if it needs for reinforcement.
- Fixed an issue with theatres not always updating their borders when neighboring provinces changed controller






-----------------------------------------------------------------------
- Gamebalance Changes
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* Supply
- Landlocked areas without supply production will be attached to allied supply networks where possible.
- Being completely out of supply now reduces organisation daily.
- Air Transports can now ship less supplies.
- Rewrote supply logisitics definitions to properly handle connected areas between puppets and non-puppets.


* Partisans & Revolts
- Partisans are now slightly more common.
- Partisans is now increasing supply tax far more.
- Revolt risk now reduces resource, manpower and IC from that province.
- Improved police brigade is now a bit better at improving suppression.
- Police Brigades now costs a little less manpower to build.
- Suppression is now checked for up to 2 provinces away.
- Occupation policies now impact resource gain as well.
- Weaker occupation policies are no longer as good for getting manpower & leadership.
- Revoltrisk is now applied after nationalism is calculated, so impact on RR works.
- Nationalism is a bit more powerful now, but there is no longer a minimum revolt risk.

* Technology
- Updated starting techs for: Australia, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Netherlands, Hungary, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Nationalist Spain, Republican Spain, Sweden, Turkey & Yugoslavia.
- Fuel and Supply consumption increases from technology gains are now percentage instead of absolute.
- Increased fuel-usage by about 15% for all units.
- Fixed research progress, could start do diverge, making it impossible to finish.
- Research efficiency techs now work properly.

* Diplomacy
- Increased the proximity impact on alignment.
- Revanschism is now scaled by victory percentage of a faction, where higher is making the countries less likely to care about it, and lower makes them far more likely to pushed away.
- Reduced threat caused by combat and construction significantly.
- There's no longer possible to revoke an embargo against a country you're at war with.
- It is now possible to declare war on a country you're guaranteeing.

* Land
- Engineers are now much better at defending in all rough terrain.
- Engineers now gives nice bonuses to defending.
- Tweaked stats of several support brigades, strenghening some and weakening others.
- Decreased strength damage from combat by 20%.
- Paratroopers now requires more officers, and have a slightly worse base hard attack.
- Its no longer possible to extend the radio range of a HQ by stacking some tank brigades with a big radio strength together with it.
- Suppression can no longer propagate over water.
- AA Carriage Sights now increases soft attack slightly as well for AA brigades.
- Bergsjaegers now gets more benefits from mountain warfare equipment.
- Damage to org on divisions are no longer scaled by strength of the brigade, but evenly.

* Air
- Air units that are based in hostile territory will now try to rebase in their daily update and be destroyed if they fail.
- Stationary AA is now slightly more powerful.
- Severly reduced the effect of strategic bombing.
- Close Air Support and Tactical bombing is now twice as good.
- AA on landunits is now a fair bit better.
- All types of AA can now fire occasionally even if modified value is <1%, (using same algoritm as normal combat now.)
- Air combat is now slightly bloodier.
- Added a few more restrictions to how nuke missions can be assigned.

* Navy
- A fleet containing carriers will no longer attempt to close with an enemy fleet, but a faster enemy may force a closing.
- Units on naval patrol now avoids stronger fleets if on defensive or passive stance.
- Severly decreased the cost of building cags, but lengthened the time to be similar to carrier builds.
- Fixed problem with navies not being able to escape hostile ports into certain provinces (gibraltar, panama...).
- Effective visibility can never be below 1 when detect checks are made now.
- Fixed an exploit with navy and air ranges.

* Submarines
- Worse positioning for submarines
- "Fleet_auxiliary_submarine_doctrine" and "trade_interdiction_submarine_doctrine" change boni and get them raised.
- Higher org and morale by submarine_crew_training.
- Increase in positioning by Acoustic torpedo tech.
- Better Sea attack on Submarines.
- Upgradable AA on Submarines.
- IC cost slightly reduced on Submarines.
- Visibility dependent on Hull tech.
- Hull tech don't increase Sea defence.
- Hull tech got higher difficulty.
- Included a "Sea_defence" boni in "Sonar" tech.
- "Sonar" tech got increased difficulty.
- Smallwarship_asw increased difficulty.
- Light Cruisers got slightly worse Sub_attack by Smallwarship_asw.
- Increase of difficulty of submarine_technology.
- Slight decrease in Convoy Raiding on submarines.
- Effect of Seawolf trait increased 100%.


* Strategic Warfare
- Damage done to convoys now impact National Unity hits.
- Tweaked up the NU impact from attacking convoys severly.
- Strength damage to convoy raiders is now far less, and its mostly org losses inflicted from escorts.
- Decreased impact from ASW on sub warfare.
- Supporting parties through spies is now more potent.

* Production
- Rocket Tests and Nuclear Reactors now give far more practical when built.
- Escorts and convoys are now a fair bit more expensive to build.
- Reserves cost modifier is now applied correctly as a percentage of cost.
- Building ships now properly draws manpower at construciton for entire series.

* Weather
- Winters can now be much colder.
- Cold winters now slow down movement much more, with same threshold as landcombat impact.
- Severly increased the penalty for offensive combat in extreme cold.

* Manpower & Leadership
- Service by Requirement now gives far more manpower.
- Soviet Union now gets more manpower from their decisions.
- Increased manpower in Soviet Union by about 25%.
- Added leadership to Holland, Belgium, Canada, Australia, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Czechoslovakia & Hungary.

* Leaders & Ministers
- Doubled xp gain from leaders.
- Leader auto-assignment now handles river crossing trait correctly.
- Pigheaded isolationist now impact suspeptibility instead of neutrality.



-----------------------------------------------------------------------
- Interface Improvements
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
- Added a tooltip for port throughput in supply mapmode.
- Colorized and tweaked the tooltips for supply mapmode.
- Improved coloration in revoltrisk mapmode.

- Research alert now checks the year for the next tech, not the current tech.
- Range checks are now applied properly in the order interface.
- Fixed chat output after selecting units.

- Added a tooltip to the mobilisation button, detailing approximately how much manpower is needed to mobilise.
- Added tooltips to the deployment interface, so that is easier to see details of military units there.
- Improved the tooltip for national unit value, to show the monthly change in detail.

- Improved tooltip for money gain.
- If you have trade automation or full diplomatic automation on, you will no longer see messages about trade.
- Improved tooltips for resources in the production screen.
- Fixed a few precision errors with the production and leadership slider values.
- Fixed resetting sliders in production view.
- Fixed production sliders going below zero.

- Each message about techlevel now shows exactly what that level will give you.
- Upgrading doctrines on a unit will no longer change the model name.



-----------------------------------------------------------------------
- User Modding
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
- Added a modifier called 'local_resources'.
- Added new date trigger, to make year and month triggers more readable.
- Added a "load_oob = filename" effect. Use filename as a localisation tag for information. File to load must be in the units catalog, and will be ADDED to the current OOB.
- Exported alot functions for handling flags and variables in the .lua script.
- Added alot of calculation functions for units and other things to the .lua script.
- Full details of all new .lua function at ( http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/...7&postcount=27 )


-----------------------------------------------------------------------
- Performace and Stability
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

* Optimisations
- Moved some optimizations from HTTT to HOI3.
- Alot of optimisations done, with focus on supply calculation, event engine and the AI.
- Optimized ai calculate odds. Large battles should not "freeze" the game anymore.
- Optimized space usage of flag file, and made it a power of 2, fixing compability issues with some ATI cards.
- Severe optimisation of framerate to make the game feel more responsive.

* Map
- Map shader precision fix. ATI miscolored provinces bug solved.
- Solved border ati graphics problem.
- Underlying map-code have been rewritten, reducing the memory footprint significantly.
- Making a new map by modders will no longer take hours to compress, but merely minutes.
- The maprendering is now much quicker and should work better with lesser cards.
- Zhele(sp?) is no longer at two places on the map.
- Fixed a few duplicated seazones.


* Stability
- Fixed "Creating Rivers" crashbug.
- Fixed crash related to broken owner areas and the theatre ai.
- fixed crash in german diplomacy ai
- Fixed crash when France surrenders.
- Fixed crash when Denmark surrenders.
- Fixed Crash when Manchuku surrenders.
- Fixed crashbug related to unit shattering.
- Fixed infinite loop in textbuffer.

* Savegames
- Fixed another corruption of savegames.
- Radarstation status is now properly loaded when a game is reloaded multiple times.
- Bonus organisation is now properly loaded from savegames and no longer lost.
- Automatic deployment check box now set correctly when loading a save game.



-----------------------------------------------------------------------
- Database Changes
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

* Events & Decisions
- Fixed Danzig or War when Poland is part of the Axis
- Added a few random events with some positive effects.
- Added an event for Vichy to dissapear.
- There is now a decision to create Mengkukuo

* Scenario Setup
- Improved the fortress at Sevastopol.
- Revised a few italian generals ranks to fit the starting OOB's better.
- Removed an erroneous army in the 1936 OOB for France.
- Fixed location of french airforce in 38 and 39 OOB's.
- Revised a few french generals ranks to fit the starting OOB's better.
- Fixed a few broken units in the Japanese 1941 OOB.
- Added the missing picture of the Hungarian leader Nemerey.
- Added the missing picture for Italian general Appiotti.
- Plenty more head of states are now pigheaded isolationists.
- Kwantung theatre is now working properly in all scenarios.

[frunk]

I've gotten my money's worth out of it, but up through 1.3:
It's only a good game playing as Germany
It takes some modding to even get that

There's a lot of promising changes in 1.4, which I plan to try out this weekend.

[sbr]

Right now my biggest problem is the Attack Delay.  Having to wait 48-72 hours between attacks in Poland is absurd and I just don't care enough about the rest of the game to put any effort into modding, or even looking for a mod to fix it.

[frunk]

I tend to manage at a high level, giving commands to armies (or later on army groups) and letting them carry them out.  Then I don't care about the attack delay except in that I try to reduce it to make my offensives more effective.

[Razgovory]

I don't see any fix for the "game sucks" problem.

[Tamas]

- Rewrote supply logisitics definitions to properly handle connected areas between puppets and non-puppets.

This is important because this stuff ruined a reasonably fun (albeit very silly) UK game I had.

However, there is still no cancellation of unlimited naval range so whatever.

[dps]

2) At what price point is HoI3 worth buying? $15? $10?

When they pay you $5.

[Razgovory]

 

[sbr]

1.4 Beat RC 7 is out.  It looks like Lothos, the HOI2 AI guru was involved in this latest version of the patch.  That is promising.

http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showpost.php?p=10885451&postcount=9  - 

You modified them for RC7?

Yes mainly

ai_production_minister.lua

So all feedback is welcomed! Major changes to how Major powers build units in the que. Will now do serial runs and parallel runs and will also build full divisions. Also changes to building convoys and escorts.