Hearts of Iron IV, a (very) grand strategy with issues

[sarahtasher]

Hearts of Iron IV is at the essence the ultimate grand strategy game about WW2-you command a whole nation. While it's of course possible to play Afghanistan, it goes without saying that most people play it for a certain conflict between 1939 and 1945. And that conflict is very short if you play Luxembourg.

Hearts of Iron have a an increasingly complex gameplay, and with some clamour from the fans, features were cut down from III to IV (presumably to be added later on as DLCs...) Personally, I'm not sure it's always a ''dumbing down''-one feature of III was a very detailed OOB, in which divisions were assembled in corps who made armies who made armies groups who made theatres...It was a neat when commanding middle sized army, and a core when organizing the Red Army mid-game hundreds of divisions with a commander for each one.

The game currently is very playable (a rarity for a Paradox at release), very stable, if a ressource hog at late game. It's considerably easy and straightfoward as a Paradox game goes. The air war system is by far the best compared to the three first games.

The biggest flaw of the game ATM remains the AI, who is noticably worse than the previous iterations.

That the AI react poorly to invasions, encirclements or forget to guard at all their rear areas (ah, invading Japan with 2 Canadian divisions in 1941...) is business as usual. The biggest problem is linked to a great feature, the division builder.

Simply said, the building blocks of your armies, divisions, can be completely customized. It's awesome for an human player, who can indulge to kan-colle level fantasies about armor, light armor, self propelled guns, tanks destroyers....and it's terrible for the AI, who keep spamming dozens of divisions that would have been outgunnned by Italian division binaria. Not only those divisions fold like wet paper when attacked by Human players, but by late game they completely flood the map, which make even decent computers struggle to handle the action and the said action almost unreadable.

TLDR : fun, but the AI pose no challenge whatsoever. In HOI I, II, III a good player (read : one reading strategy guides and microing could for instance handle Germany as France) In HOIV, German AI struggle to beat French AI, and French Player is easily at Berlin by september 1941...

[May90]

One thing I've always disliked in Paradox games (Europa Universalis 3/4, Victoria 2) was combat system. Moving large stacks around and playing chess with the opponent's army trying to get around your stacks and capture provinces before you could recapture them was no fun at all...

Is HoI IV combat similar?

[Treeskee]

I Love a lot of their games, but I'm holding out for a Crusader Kings 3. I've had so much fun with 2 that I can't wait for another installment... Until then I will survive off the flood of DLC I suppose. xD

[ArMeD_SuRvIvOr]

Having played a lot of HoI3, the air war system is too basic and simplistic and WAY TOO BLOODY. It surely needs to be much more micro-friendly, and attrition lessened.

Naval invasions are too easy.

AI is shit.

No logistics.

Dumbed down research.

No SPIONAGE!!!!!

Basic diplomacy.



However, it is much more noob friendly, easy to understand and much more streamlined. Just needs those things fixed.

[Puupi]

My biggest gripe (although I like the game a lot) with the game is that if you join a faction, you are in a total war until the opposing faction has completely capitulated - you can't hold a peace conference with individual nations. That's why my favorite strategy is to play as a co-belligerent and slowly conquer the whole world.

I had a game where I played as Turkey - became the fascist Neo-Ottoman Empire. I first conquered all of middle east and Sinai, then joined the war against USSR(Comintern) as a co-belligerent of the Axis. After Comintern capitulated, I was out of the war and owned half of USSR, half of Asia, whole Middle east - and I was out of war as I never joined the war against Allies. Then I created a new faction myself and slowly politically influenced all South American (+ a few countries from Europe and Asia) countries to become fascist and join my faction. Then I attacked the Axis, and they capitulated against me and the Allies. By that point I was controlling half of Europe, most of Asia and the Middle East.

I kind of ended my game there, I tried a short campaign against the Allies, but it was pretty much impossible as they are so big of a faction and my origin country has so few core states so I didn't have big enough manpower to tackle them by myself.

[sarahtasher]

The latest patch made the game a tad boring for Soviet Union and United States, as the German AI struggle now to beat Belgium/Netherlands (that is, after flinging all it's force against the Maginot Line and raking millions of casualties) let alone France. If I wait as the SU or the USA to join the war, there is usuallly almost nothing left to do in Europe.

Especially as the German strategic AI is even more agressive than the IRL one. They will invade Switzerland to invade France, they invade Yugoslavia when the Red Army is on the outskirts of Berli.

[Sassafrass]

It's disappointing to hear the game is having these problems, especially with the AI. I expected some issues but I didn't think they would butcher the AI.

I'm glad I didn't buy the game. Guess I'll stick to modded HoI 3 until 4 is as fun to play.

[sarahtasher]

The game is not unplayable, but as I said, the AI keep using suboptimal divisions models and tend to send them into dubious places. Cue to having German and Italian divisions deep in Malaysia or in Tchad.

As for suboptimal divisions, let's summarize. In game, most provinces allow for an ''combat width'' on both sides of 80, with an extra 40 from each direction the attack is coming from.

Some people use smaller divisions, but I prefer for my part using almost exclusively fairly ''40 width'' divisions, if only because the numbers are roughly similar to WWII actual divisions. To give an example, typically, an infantry/armored battalion take 2 width, an artillery 3, AT or AA 2. A bog standard fast unit I use with Americans and Soviet is a mechanized cavalry made of...

7 LARM (Light Armor)
7 MOT (Motorized Infantry-truck born infantry
2 SPART (Self Propelled Artillery)
3 TD (Tank Destroyers)

To this, you can add support battalions, who do not take width (hospital, maintenance, recon company, artillery/AT/AA/rocket...)

Well, the AI, even powerful majors, keep spamming units with one or two support battalion and maybe 4-5 combat battalions. What the Axis AI think is an HARM division (heavy armor), down to the Tiger graphic, is typically less well armed than for instance a French (not exactly a nation with ample weapon production) infantry divisions wielded by the player. That LARM division that I listed ? Two of them can attack a pack of 11-12 Axis divisions outsides of mountains and urban areas and be excepted to win easily with very limited losses.

[PACOX]

Love this game but I am terrible at it so I stick to Stellaris.

I almost got taken out by Mexico as the US in a Mexican civil war because I couldn't maneuver my troops (I think it ended up being due to a bug that was patched though because I had another army that refused to do a naval invasion no matter what even though I could do it absolutely fine with other armies...)