Hearts of Iron IV - Now out!

Thanks for all the great impressions. Green Man still has this for 27% off. I think I'm going to cave in and buy.

EDIT: Well, I held out for about a minute. I'm in at $29.19. Thanks Green Man!

Balthezor wrote:

I'm awaiting Elysium's Let's Play videos.

They've started! Three videos so far.

Godzilla Blitz wrote:

Thanks for all the great impressions. Green Man still has this for 27% off. I think I'm going to cave in and buy.

EDIT: Well, I held out for about a minute. I'm in at $29.19. Thanks Green Man!

Yeah I was weak and did. No time and big back log but the pull was too great!

The overall feel for me is that the complexity is manageable, but in a way similar to CK2 and EUIV. It'll take time to learn the systems and you'll need to adjust your approach for each country.

The one thing that is obvious right away is that the previous micro-management of units in the series -- having to move hundreds of units on the map individually, and other similar tasks that ballooned into boredom or confusion as the game went on -- is gone. The system for handling armies is about as complex as CK or EU, once you get them deployed on the map. That is going to count for a lot, I think.

Robear wrote:

The system for handling armies is about as complex as CK or EU, once you get them deployed on the map. That is going to count for a lot, I think.

That's just fantastic news. My last HoI game (Soviet Union) bugged down pretty quickly once Germany invaded because all of the micro needed to manage that enormous front (especially that one, with an out-matched SU needing to pay very careful attention in a lot of areas to maintain the troops and keep them from being encircled during the long retreat, while maybe, just maybe, doing way, way better than historically).

If that system is much better that will go a long way towards making the game a lot more playable.

To form armies, drag- or click-select a group of divisions, then either right-click an existing army (bottom center of window display) or click the "New Army" button. If you want to look at a unit, select it and it's army display pops up on the left with it selected. You can then do what you want to there. If you have a multi-unit selection, like clicking a "4" unit on the map (4 divisions), you can then select one in the pick list on the left and it will immediately hop out separately on the map (ie, without selecting "split army" or anything like that). These are little interface improvements that go a long way.

All the army level commands hover above a selected army at the bottom of the screen. That makes it easy to start the process of setting defensive lines, offensives and such. If an army does not have an offensive plan (which is fine), its units are marked for easy identification.

You can do what I did above - set up an army, set it to defend a border, then select some of it's units and tell them (and only them) to defend another border. And any time you need to, you can take a stack and give it separate orders on the fly, without moving it out of the army.

At all times, you'll get a status report on the army-level plans and such by hovering over one of it's units. So if you've given it orders but it hasn't had time to plan for execution, you'll see the negatives for that.

It's a very elegant system, and for the first time in this series, it puts army and front management more "under the hood". At least that's what I see, and from the reviews, I'm not alone.

This is not to say that when playing a massive army in retreat, or the like, that you won't be doing some micromanagement. But being able to set the guiding boundaries for your units (new defensive positions, for example) is a great start, because it means you only have to intervene if you see problems.

Read a few reviews or watch some Let's Play videos to see what I mean.

So you really have to think about military production carefully. You need to use all your factories, which means that for each production line, you have to have the right trade agreements in place to ensure it can function efficiently. You also need enough factories to run multiple simultaneous production lines.

So for infantry divisions, you need weapons and supplies in production, and maybe artillery (not sure on that but I think so). And you need the raw materials for all those.

But say you built some infantry divisions, and you're now in the mood for tank divisions? Well, first, you need to wait until the latest infantry division is built (don't want to waste the resources put into it so far, most likely). Then, you can shut that down. Now, you need to add in oil (at least) to your resources, via trade or direct production. Then you need to produce light tanks and trucks, again affecting resource needs and production capacity. Then, you can recruit a tank division, once you have enough vehicles and supplies.

So you can't just push a button and say "Oh, I'll switch from infantry to armor right now" and have the game go off and do it. You need to think ahead. "I'm burning 3 factories to import 24 tungsten, but I've got a few thousand saved up and to make several divisions of tanks, I need more oil. I'll burn my reserves and open a new trade route for oil for a while." Then of course you have to monitor your stocks periodically to make sure you're not running out of something.

So... Build lots of factories. And make agreements for important resources with countries you don't think will be pissed off when the inevitable war happens (just imagine what that outbreak of hositilities is going to do to your supply web!).

Anyway, the production subsystem is very interesting. Oh, and of course, fit your production to your doctrine. I decided to go with a sub focus early on in my navy, so I'm switching from mass production of light cruisers to do a year or so of subs (gotta deal with the folks who think the Med is *their* pond). No sense in me studying sub ops and building battleships by the pair.

You want to know what happens when Tibet starts pouring manpower into modernization rather than monasteries in 1936?

They drop two nukes on Japan in 1947 and end the whole goddamn war for the Allies, that's what!

Great game. I usually play a minor for the first few games to get a handle on the mechanics. Think I'll try keeping Czech on the map next game.

Clearly you're better at these games than I am, Trashi.

Robear wrote:

Clearly you're better at these games than I am, Trashi. :-)

Quite the opposite. I need to start small with two research options and three production lines so I don't get overwhelmed!

Post-war is starting to get sketchy. All the various Chinese factions are cancelling their non-aggression pacts with me. Seems ominous...good thing I still have some nukes in my pocket.

Man, my resolve on not picking this up is really wavering after watching the first GWJ Plays video for the game.

My fear is that it's just over my head (I still struggle with CK2/EU4), but it seems like a lot of the fiddly micromanaging has be streamlined since HoI3.

Hmmm...I can still wait through some balancing passes as I've got Stellaris in current rotation. But maybe HoI4 isn't the no-go material I initially thought.

I'm playing my usual learning game as Brazil. They have definitely removed a lot of the fiddly micro stuff on the production and research sides of things. One of the things that finally killed HOI3 for me was managing divisions, making sure they were upgraded, and had the companies in them I wanted. Now, Brazil does not have a lot of divisions to manage (which is one of the reasons I like playing them in a learning game) but so far I have been able to stay on top of them very easily. I can see how this will scale pretty nicely as I play a larger country next time.

Research, trade, national foci, construction, recruitment, etc. all have had most the crud taken out letting you make meaningful choices about your country and its military.

In my game so far, in early 1939, the Spanish Civil War still rages, the Japanese are making large inroads into China, and Germany has just gobbled up Czechoslovakia. World tension is still only at 31% though, so war seems pretty far off for now. The Brazilians are focusing on staying out of foreign wars and building up infrastructure. We are mainly focused on infantry, mountain troops and submarines, finally branching out into fighters specializing in close air support. I have been buttering up Argentina hoping that maybe we could team up in case things go south in S. America, but while things are cordial, they will not even agree to a non-aggression pact much less an alliance. All the other countries are very far away so I don't worry about them too much.

How are everyone's games going? I've only just started my first proper run, as the UK on Veteran difficulty. My plan is to build a force that can win the Battle of France - a motorised/armoured army that can blunt any sweep around the Maginot Line, supported by lots of fighters, close air support aircraft, and tactical bombers. I've never been able to pull it off in over 10 years of playing HOI - wish me luck!

A new hotfix beta patch is out:

Stability & Performance
- Fixed several rare CTDs.
- Late-game performance optimizations.
- Large peace conference resolutions are now faster and also properly indicate that they are active to non-participants.
- Added GUI scaling option for people with very small or very high resolutin displays (experimental).
- Added a max framerate limiting system (defaults to 75fps) to help people with the combination of bad cooling, great graphics cards and very high screen refresh. If you are one of these with heat issues I would love to hear if this solved it (changing max_fram_rate in settings can let you remove its effect by making it higher, or go lower if you still have issues)

Gameplay
- Fixed an issue with deploying troops during spanish civil war when continuing savegames.
- Can now zoom in and out using PgUp and PgDown buttons on keyboard.
- Stopped an exploit where player could redirect a naval transfer into an invasion without preparation.
- Fixed a case where fleets who found themselves outside base range would be instantly deleted.
- Fixed some highlighting issues in tutorial.

Content
- Added 8 new unique nation leader portraits.
- Improved some VP/state names in China.
- Improved a lot of alternate ideology nation names and party/leader names.
- France can now send volunteers to Spain if they choose the Support Nationalists focus.
- Fixed many localization issues, both in english and other languages.

So, how do you decide how many divisions you need at any given point in the game?

I'm still farting around with the Italy tutorial campaign. Nothing serious...just messing about. I'm probably going to start my first real campaign this weekend. I think that I'm going to try it out with France.

I'm trying to resist picking this up, but the Anglophile in me really wants to keep a stiff upper lip and guide the UK through the dark days.

UMOarsman wrote:

I'm trying to resist picking this up, but the Anglophile in me really wants to keep a stiff upper lip and guide the UK through the dark days.

The UK has an actual bonus in-game called "British Stoicism".

PeterS wrote:
UMOarsman wrote:

I'm trying to resist picking this up, but the Anglophile in me really wants to keep a stiff upper lip and guide the UK through the dark days.

The UK has an actual bonus in-game called "British Stoicism". :D

Probably also means that moving troops around by train takes twice as long as it should, and that if all tea-producing areas fall to the Axis, then surrender is instantaneous.

I'm 23 hours in and I just finished my Italy campaign I started on release day. I really enjoyed it, first expanding then doing everything I could to hold of invasion after invasion from the US and UK. I'm impressed with how the AI tried to invade me, sometimes in several areas with 5-10 divisions each, other times in one big invasion with 50+ divisions. Several of their invasions had me thinking my time was up but I was able to cut off their supplies and let my rear area troops finish them off.

I've attached an image of my final world map on Jan 1949. My next game will be either Japan or France.

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/ZA9rmIU.jpg)

Wow, Japan almost made it to the Baltic lol.

Robear wrote:

Wow, Japan almost made it to the Baltic lol.

They didn't advance that far, that's just what they got in the peace conference. Germany and Italy actually pushed the front line to about where the "J" is in Japan.

PeterS wrote:
UMOarsman wrote:

I'm trying to resist picking this up, but the Anglophile in me really wants to keep a stiff upper lip and guide the UK through the dark days.

The UK has an actual bonus in-game called "British Stoicism". :D

I'm not going to lie, this may or may not have put me over the edge in buying HOI4...

Looks like it was a fun game, jarmenia! I love the surprisingly expansive US holdings in Korea and Manchuria. Any idea what happened there?

I bought the game and I am playing Italy on Recruit.

My troops cannot storm over the Ethiopians like Quill18. Makes me wonder if the press preview difficulty was turned down.

I have an interesting UI issue. When I Type in an army name, I get tremendous keyboard lag.

Overall, it is an interesting game, it feels more complex than EU4, but much more approachable than HOI2 which I bounced off of.

I look forward to playing it some more.

Well, I couldn't get out of 1938 as Czech. I held off the Nazis for ~three months with 30 divisions but they were too much.

The UK guaranteed my independence so I thought I might have a chance after I didn't cede the Sudetenland after Munich. The Germans invaded shortly afterward and true to their word, the UK answered my call to arms and joined the war and proceeded to do...nothing.

They did get the whole Commonwealth+France into the war (who promptly hunkered down behind the Maginot line and didn't set one boot on Reich soil.

When they captured Praha in December 1938 I had bled the Nazis for about 70K casualties. I had a similar amount and not one casualty from any of my allies.

Back to the drawing board.

Gunner wrote:

Looks like it was a fun game, jarmenia! I love the surprisingly expansive US holdings in Korea and Manchuria. Any idea what happened there?

That's Japanese territory at the beginning of the game. The US took it a few months before I took this screen shot. I'm not sure where they launched their invasion from though.

Greg wrote:

I bought the game and I am playing Italy on Recruit.

My troops cannot storm over the Ethiopians like Quill18. Makes me wonder if the press preview difficulty was turned down.

I have an interesting UI issue. When I Type in an army name, I get tremendous keyboard lag.

Overall, it is an interesting game, it feels more complex than EU4, but much more approachable than HOI2 which I bounced off of.

I look forward to playing it some more.

Hmm, I didn't have much of an issue. Try to avoid having them fight in the mountains and instead come down the east coast. Fighting in mountains is very painful. Also, don't forget to use air support.

And don't forget to let 25 days go by after deciding on your plan, to allow for staff planning. If you get bogged down in the mountains, don't be afraid to redirect a few divisions to scamper for the capitol; if they can get there, the war will be over instantly.

I believe you can shorten the front before attacking, per the tips someone posted above. That would help concentrate your forces. But I've been able to run through the plains with 4 divisions and take Addis Ababa while the rest of the Ethiopians were up in the mountains holding off the other 11 or so.

Just remember, it's not an RTS.

I broke down and bought the Marshall edition, I've played the tutorial and am about to start a Soviet game.

jarmenia wrote:
Greg wrote:

I bought the game and I am playing Italy on Recruit.

My troops cannot storm over the Ethiopians like Quill18. Makes me wonder if the press preview difficulty was turned down.

Hmm, I didn't have much of an issue. Try to avoid having them fight in the mountains and instead come down the east coast. Fighting in mountains is very painful. Also, don't forget to use air support.

I had the same experience here. The left two, mountainous provinces were long, long battles that lasted the entire duration of the war as a stalemate, my air support making up for their defense, but not able to break through their defense. This was fine for me, around 50% of their Army was in those mountains and I wanted to pin them there.

The Eastern province fell easily and I could wrap around and pocket the mountains. In retrospect at that point I should have stopped the attacks, forcing them to attempt to break out and lose their Mountain defense bonuses, but I just kept up the attack.

Meanwhile my southern forces took advantage of most of their army being pinned in the North and made their way up. After the North-Eastern group finished making the North pocket they widened their hole and attacked the Capital from the North while my southern group attacked from the South. They finished the War before the North Western group finished wiping out the pocket.