Hearts of Iron IV

[Alcibiades]

@ Syt you asked above what happens to old equipment, it's used to fill deficiencies or shortages if your primary equipment runs out of supply.  Or you can always lend lease it to allies to help them.  There's a tab in the logistics tab that shows all of your stockpiles of equipment.

I play KR from time to time, but my favorite mod by far is Ultra Historical Mod - Realism Overhaul.  Makes the industry a lot more interesting and the AI is a lot more competitive than vanilla without cheating - which may not be what some here are looking for 

[Razgovory]

Hey, Alci!

[Alcibiades]

Hey, Alci!

[grumbler]

Once again, Paradox is fucking with save games.  They keep releasing these bitty mods that ruin save games, and using the beta feature when using mods doesn't work because the mods themselves get updated erratically to match the new game versions and so break saves themselves.

There really should be a "don't fuck with my current setup" setting that disables all updates until manually turned off, because this game is too big to play in one setting but too transitory to play over multiple sessions.

[Syt]

I was running an observer only game while watching a series yesterday, and noticed some weird things (I know, AI is supposedly not designed for this, but still ... ).

The Axis formed around Britain (went King's Party)/Germany/Hungary, with Japan joining later. US led the Commonwealth, mostly consisting of US, Canada, fascist South Africa, plus minors. Australia turned communist. Italy became democratic. France formed the Little Entente with Czechs and Romanians, but died after some back and forth against UK over the mainland and stayed out of everything after that.

For a long time there was a three-way war between the three blocks. The Comintern eventually managed to occupy Germany and German occupied Italy, and made peace. However, everyone reverted to pre-war borders, and there were no regime changes.   

Afterwards, some stupid little conflict sparked a new war between Axis and Comintern; this time the Axis won and dismantled the USSR. The Soviets (with four territories spread out across Russia and the Russian Federation - what's the AI's obsession with creating non-contiguous territories after war ... ???) went to war once more and were wiped out.

Afterwards, China collapsed and it and independent India got split between the Axis partners - UK, Germany, Japan, though Venezuela had a puppet in Inner Asia, and Nationalist Spain (which, together with Germany, now owned Australia which was never occupied ... ) had multiple enclaves in China, too. The USA, meanwhile, mostly stayed out of the fighting. They held parts of NW Africa, and had sent troops to China and Scandinavia, plus occupied hostile territories in the Americas. But other than that they stayed out of everything despite having a huge navy and army, being at war with the relevant parties, and having a bunch of nukes that they didn't use (same as Germany).

About 50% Africa decolonized quite nicely, though, which was kinda fun to watch, but for a few years there were two different Soviet Republics of the Nile (the survivor became a UK puppet, eventually).

Overall it was a fun and silly little alt-hist to watch unfold, though the post-war border gore is really hard to stomach, and I don't know why the USSR basically white peaced the Axis when they had them dead to rights (the German capital was on Sumatra for two or three years).

[Syt]

[grumbler]

I can't believe those motherfuckers broke my save again.

I'm giving up on Paradox games that are current-generation.  Fucking waste of money for anyone that can't play every day.

[Syt]

Can't you roll back to a previous version of the game on Steam?

[grumbler]

Can't you roll back to a previous version of the game on Steam?

No, because the mods are (slowly) changed to support the updated version of the game and crash retro versions.

[Syt]

Yeah, I was afraid of that. Don't know about HoI, but in CK3 some of the bigger mods have older patch versions still stashed somewhere (e.g. github) or may post/DM them if you ask them.

I made backups of Paradox mod folders in the past for cases like that. Then if the patch hits and your mods are updated, you can at least install them manually and continue your game on the old patch version (also a good idea if you tweak some of the mods yourself to your liking).

In an ideal world we would have versioning of mods on the Steam workshop but I'm not holding my breath for that.

[Syt]

I keep telling myself, "eventually, I will get into this."

More of an amusing note, though is the focus trees at this point. This is Germany and Japan:





Meanwhile, following various expansions etc. we have the Soviet Union, which is "slightly" bigger:



It wouldn't be so bad if other Germany, US, Japan would get upgrades as well.

Meanwhile we have this in Sweden, Poland, and Denmark:







I think there might be a slight imbalance in options there.

[Syt]

Ok, so Germany is getting a bigger focus tree after all.




However, what I noticed in recent screenshots is that they finally will (already have?) relocate the Kiel Canal to a more appropriate geographical spot - previously it was the Flensburg Canal, but now much better. (Still not perfect, but I'll take it )

Before:


After:


Full dev diary here - don't read if you like historical accuracy and/or plausibility.

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/developer-diary-alt-history-germany.1712660/

[Syt]

Despite a 24.99 price tag, new DLC seems well received so far:

Recent Reviews:
Mostly Positive (248)
All Reviews:
Very Positive (465)

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3152810/Hearts_of_Iron_IV_Expansion_Pass_1/

Fired up HoI4 yesterday to have a look around. And I had to when I saw that you can assign companies to production and research (good), but when I assigned Mauser to research infantry equipment I realized that those companies all have their own little level up/experience trees. I appreciate the granularity, but it's getting a bit silly between this and hand picking what motor goes into which tank etc.

[The Minsky Moment]

but when I assigned Mauser to research infantry equipment I realized that those companies all have their own little level up/experience trees. I appreciate the granularity, but it's getting a bit silly between this and hand picking what motor goes into which tank etc.

 

"Ok . . . I'll promote Peter Jones from Airframe Design Engineer at Grumman to Senior Airframe Design Engineer. Now I see the new GM plant has costs ticking up, let's bring in a new Controller for the plant.  And then . . . I'm sorry what's that?  Japanese troops invading San Diego?  Hold that thought for a bit, we have a serious crisis with the janitorial staff at Newport News."

[DGuller]

Based on the discussion on the Paradox forum, I got the impression that Paradox lost the thread with the game somewhere.  I really hated the paratrooper mechanic that worked on a state level, sounds like they now have an ICBM mechanic that works similarly.  If you drop on ICBM on the north-eastern end of Sudetenland, then the devastation would go around the ring to the south-eastern end of it, but spare Bohemia.    Seriously, I get that it's not supposed to be a simulator, but some suspension of disbelief would be nice.

Then you have Ratte, which appears to be not just a functional piece of equipment that exists, but actually a pretty OP equipment.  Okay, come on, devs should really go easy on that stuff, clearly they're predisposed to mental health issues from smoking it.