Hearts of Iron IV

[acctingman]

Yea, so after spending a few hours glancing the Paradox forums I'm just not going to ask any specific questions. There seems to be more arguing and name calling than anything else. I've watched quite a few videos of the game and it looks really nice, but I'm a little gun shy right now. My gaming budget is tight these days  :-[

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[Silent Disapproval Robot]

What I feel is missing.

1)  Battle reports.  You don't get any information when a battle ends informing you of casualties suffered, etc.

2)  Weather reports.   They've added dynamic weather on a province by province basis but there's no easy way to get a general weather picture for a theatre front.

3)  Trade.  Seems really stripped down.  There doesn't seem to be any currency anymore nor any real way to handle exports so you don't have the option of favouring trade or embargoing countries.

4)  Espionage.  It's missing.  You can get a little bit of information regarding other nations by developing decryption tech but other than that, the map is complete FOW.

5)  Battle tabs.  There's no quick tab option to select various battles your units might be fighting in.  You have to manually scroll around the map in order to select them to see what's going on.  Makes it hard to shuttle reinforcements to needed sectors.

6)  Fuel and supplies seem to be missing from the air war aspect entirely.  Removes a lot of the granularity.

7)  Clickable mini-map.

8)  Better historical information on unit composition.  In HOI 3, you could click on an infantry division and it'd give you names of actual weapons for infantry, anti-tank, support, etc so you might see Garand M1, Bazooka, BAR.  Here, there's nothing.  Just weapons I, weapons II....  Also, there aren't enough discrete levels of tech to develop here.  In HOI 3, you might have 10 levels of a tech you could develop and you'd see gradual improvements.  Your Halifax night bomber might improve from Gee, to H2S, to Oboe target locations.  Here, there are only 4 levels if development so the jumps from level to level feel huge and the amount of resources it takes to upgrade your units can kill your production queue. 

9)  Missing historical vehicles.  There is an option to improve a base unit such as a Spitfire if you have enough experience but rather than getting real world unit improvements such as Spitfire MkI -->  MkII  ---> Mk Vb --> Mk IX.

10)  Diplomacy screens.  There should be one screen showing the alliances and which nations are in or gravitating towards each of the three main forces, Axis, Communists, Allies.   It's available on a country by country basis but not globally.

[sandman2575]

Well, just got to spend a few hours with it, and my initial impressions are overwhelmingly positive. I understand a lot of the reservations being expressed here and I certainly share some of them. But overall -- and it is a first impression, though one I will be amazed if I wind up revising significantly -- overall, this seems like a quantum leap beyond HOI3.

I can't agree with the opinion of some (esp. in Pdox forums) that HOI4 is somehow 'dumbed down.' I just don't see it. Streamlined yes, and very much in ways that are improvements.

The things that make me most giddy are the things I was most looking forward to:  the Battle planner, and the new production system. I LOVE that production is now based on actually building weapons and vehicles to *fill out* divisions, etc., rather than 'manufacturing' divisions themselves. And heaven be praised, production sliders are gone!!!!!  I also like that we're no longer just stockpiling resources, since that was always easy to game in HOI3 and by '39 I never faced resource shortages playing as the major powers.

I've only fiddled with the Battle plans so far, and I love their potential. The UI is a bit fussy and unintuitive, and will take some getting used to. But once I master this, I am never going to micro my units again. I basically tried to use the AI-army control in HOI3 to do exactly this -- create plans that the AI would then carry out, and ideally not have to move units myself. This never really worked in HOI3 but I'm hopeful the Battle Planner will be intricate enough to allow this.

I like the streamlined tech tree -- I always thought research in HOI3 was painfully dull and more a chore than something that added real interest to the game. And I like the more elaborate national focuses, which nicely guide your country's long-term strategy.

Love the division designer. Tempted to use the mod on the Steam Workshop that allows you to design whatever formations you want without having to use the 'army experience' mechanic, which seems a bit arbitrary and a-historical anyway.

Happy that espionage is gone -- at least, espionage as it existed in HOI3, which was essentially pointless. Like weather, something you could completely ignore and suffer no negative effects for it. Ideally, I'd love an interesting, robust intelligence/espionage element in HOI4 and hope that maybe expansions can provide that. But if the choice was more of the same of HOI3's espionage and nothing, I'll gladly take nothing.

Love the abstraction of the air forces. HOI3's handling of the airwar was mostly tedious micromanagement. Not sure yet how HOI4's system will play out in practice, but again, an example of good streamlining, in my view.

Again, not dismissing the concerns and criticisms that you guys are making here. Like I say, I agree with many of your points. But I honestly don't feel the slightest disappointment with HOI4, based on my first few hours with it. Just hugely excited to put in the time to learn the game better now.  !

[jomni]

Ok so HOI turned into a broad military war game rather than a "country simulator" (less trade, diplomacy, espionage, streamlined economics).

I actually like the improvements done on fighting the war.  Will miss country mechanics.  Still worth a try.

[Silent Disapproval Robot]

Glad you're enjoying it.  The air war, fiddling with production sliders, and espionage were aspects that I really enjoyed in HOI III.  Testament to the amount of play that the game offered that we both enjoy the series based on completely different aspects of what the game offers.

I'm also finding the planner to be rather unintuitive.  All I want to do is have the French border manned with defensive works and enough troops to garrison each border province and have a series of reserves in centralized clusters behind the lines to be able to rush forward and fill in gaps but getting the planner to let me do that is proving to be a real headache.  I think I've got it figured out but it would have been fewer steps just to manually place all my units.

[Greybriar]

Yea, so after spending a few hours glancing the Paradox forums I'm just not going to ask any specific questions. There seems to be more arguing and name calling than anything else....

Tread carefully around the Paradox forums. It's relatively easy to get banned there. At least it used to be.

[ArizonaTank]

Still just getting into it...but so far I like the interface.  As a grognard wargamer who cut my teeth on old AH and SPI games, I quickly got over the fact that the interface dumps a lot of wargame convention.  IMHO it is the best Pdox interface yet.

[JudgeDredd]

SDR

Battle Tabs - I haven't had any time on it (been trying to play CAP2) but I was sure I saw a guy assigning reinforcements by selecting the unit and click or right clicking on the army tab at the bottom of the screen.

I watched a few videos of Quills and I'm sure I saw him do that. He was also being careful to name his armies so he could see at a glance (or was he naming is fronts? - I think it was his armies as he was tying those to fronts.

[Silent Disapproval Robot]

What I mean by battle tabs is like in HOI III.  You could bring up a list on the right hand side of the screen and it would put up a colour-coded icon with a percentile number in it giving you an overall idea of how each battle was progressing.  You could click on the icon and it'd take you right to the fight.  As far as I know, that's not an available option in HOI IV.  In order to find each fight, you have to either open up the entire army list and click on units from there or scroll across the map and find battles that way.  As I'm currently fighting in France, N. Africa, and Vietnam, it's a bit of a hassle hopping around from fight to fight.

[JudgeDredd]

I'm guessing here - but what about clicking the Theatres? On the right side of the screen?

Like I say, I have no time in it yet, but I'm trying to think back to a couple of videos I watched.

[Silent Disapproval Robot]

Yes, it's doable but I'd personally prefer to have that info readily available at one click from the main map.  I think I might be fighting the interface here but my natural inclination is to micro-manage my units and control them all myself.  When I resort to the battle planner, I often find myself getting pissed off at the stupid moves the AI makes, especially on the defensive.

[JudgeDredd]

ah - ok.

I guess there is always an element of interface change and good and bad opinions of those changes.

I sometimes think "Why did they take that away? It was very helpful" when I get a new version of an old favourite.

Personally, I specifically stayed away from loading HoI III in order to avoid any confusion between interfaces. It also helps me avoid the frustrations of knowing one game had a helpful feature that is now not there (or at least not evident).

[SirAndrewD]

I like the Air Force abstraction. 

Totally fine with the spy changes. 

The tech tree I feel is fine and better than HoI3 , but I still prefer the one from HoI2.

Interface is very very solid. 

I like the IDEA of the battle planner.

I do not like the loss of OOB's.  I understand the HQ/OOB thing in HoI3 was needlessly complicated, but I don't like that it is for all intents and purposes gone. 

I miss battle reports. 

I feel like, and I may change my opinion, that things have degenerated to drawing big stacks of doom around like HoI1 and HoI2.  I get that it's not really that bad, but that's the feel I get, and I just remember that impression from the early games and don't like it in this one. 

Hate the loss of counters. 

I don't know, I'm just not feeling it.  I hate that, I was deeply looking forward to this.  I did early closed Historicity Beta on HoI1 and worked on the WW1 mod for HoI2, so this series is very, very close to me.  I'm just not, for some reason, feeling this one.  I've stopped playing short of the Steam refund limit, and am mulling my options.

[Hofstadter]

Uuuuugh I wanna play this but I got a thesis to write in a week. Plus I wanna do videos but youtube is already oversaturated with em.

I booted up the game and OH MY GOD THERES AN ATTEMPT AT A TUTORIAL THATS NOT HALFASS

[salazarus]

I'm on the fence. Some things I like other I hate. I don't mind simpler economy and country managing. I also like how production works. I like the idea behind battle planer but I hate how It has been implemented. It doesn't feel intuitive and It's too complicated. I don't have enough control over combat and micromanaging doesn't feel right. It is also to chaotic and hard to follow. I like the air war. For me combat was the most important part of HoI and they dumbed down it too much.
I also hate the map it's too fancy, I want something simple and readable. I hate the loss of counter. When the war starts it is hard to follow the sprites. Often I don't know where exactly are my divisions and what are they doing.