Hearts of Iron 4

Soldato
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^^ Going to play this tomorrow. By 'play' I mean start the 10 hour induction course on Youtube.

From what I can gather from the Paradox forums and believe me these guys will know, HOI IV is much more noob friendly than III in particular. Many have complained it's too streamlined and lacks depth, maybe that will follow later.

If Paradox are smart they'll get new players on board (they're clearly aiming for a larger market than just their hardcore fan base of seasoned HOI, EU, Vicky and Crusader Kings players) - then add in that depth when noobs have wet their feet a bit.

Graphically people seem very impressed, less impressed with the UI. Knowing Paradox as I do, games are always WIP and really improve over time.

EU IV for example is fully matured and is a fantastic grand strategy game.

Hope you enjoy IV, the more you put in the more you will get out of it in my experience.
 
Man of Honour
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do you ever win? all the big countries have fallen. nuclear bombs are rubbish.

15 nuclear bombs on Russia and they just shrug.

how can you tell who is your enemy? doesn't appear to be a list?
 
Man of Honour
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I've spent 10 hours playing as Argentina. I've got a generic focus tree and generic equipment for the most part, but as my first run through that doesn't matter. I've learnt a lot in these 10 hours but there is still a lot to do.

Overall I can't really make my mind up about it, but I am left with a bitter taste :(.

HOI4 has been extremely 'cut down' in terms of difficulty. Now this isn't necessarily a bad thing, but they have dumbed down a lot of the features that I enjoyed so much in HOI3. They have done this to appeal to the masses, which I understand. If you've never played HOI3 then you might well enjoy this. But to me this is an unfortunate step as it detracts from what is otherwise a decent attempt at a grand strategy. It also makes the game feel less immersive and disjointed.

You can now select an entire army in one click, tell it where to go in another, and sit and watch the battle pan out. That's basically it. If you let a General command your force that is. You can still opt to manually control every division but due to the fact there is far less in the way of command structure this is extremely disappointing. You have no HQ units for example, just one General at the top of the tree. There doesn't appear to be any command and control other than that, and units out of c&c are merely units without a General. It just doesn't feel like it should. I was extremely disappointed with my very first battle against Paraguay. In fact I wondered if something was wrong as there were no sound effects during the combat phase. It turns out you need the 3d models enabled. So there goes the nato symbols :( That's another real annoying part for me. I loved the Nato symbols in HOI3. I could instantly id a division. Now the Nato symbols are tiny. More focus is on the 3d model (which of course PDX wants you buy as DLC).

There are loads of factors which make the game interesting. I love the production and recruitment aspects of the game even though it is over complicated. I love the factories idea. It's clever and realistic. I'm sure the air aspect will be an improvement too, with greater flexibility. I like the way you can create variants of technology based on your prerequisites. I so far like what I've seen in research and tech. Even with a generic tree it's still very good. With specialised DLCs this will open the game up in the future. The diplomacy aspect seems very good, in particular after a war. When I defeated Paraguay both sides agreed a peace treaty whereby Paraguay was annexed. You are awarded points for victories etc. The higher the number of victory points the more you can achieve. I also love the way every battle casualty is monitored and recorded. Weapons and aircraft/vehicles and ships must all be accounted for.

But the overall feeling is still one of disappointment. It needs a lot of work as it stands. A lot of stuff is missing. Spying is abstracted to the point it is non existant. Politics is now quasi-abstracted. HQ c&c has gone. All that OOB stuff has been changed. Combat feels less immersive. It just doesn't grab me like it should.

It's also extremely EUIV centric. So if you love EUIV you will probably like this. The mechanics are the same, and the ideas are similar. PDX will milk it for years with DLC. Mark my words. I can understand it as it is a successful business model, but it is also a little frustrating that we will probably have to wait another 12 months for something really worth while to appear which will solidify the game.
 
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Hopefully they'll add some of the things you say are missing, but I think the HQ stuff and OOB (whatever that is) is probably gone. Sounds like it they saw it as an unnecessary complexity and decided to strip it from the game.

And now there is no stacking penalty if you choose to have just one army? :confused:


EU IV for example is fully matured and is a fantastic grand strategy game.

It is. It's too good and I get peed off when my games about to end :)

Hope you enjoy IV, the more you put in the more you will get out of it in my experience.

Thanks, I think I will. Loaded it up and got a good feel for it. Plus if it's designed similarly to EUIV then that's a bonus.
 
Man of Honour
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I've been thinking about what I said yesterday and upon reflection I'm even more disappointed this morning :D

It has so much potential but at the minute it's missing too many key elements. Maybe, just maybe, under pressure, PDX will re implement some core features. Time will tell.

Edit: I see they have released a beta patch already! Paradox are very good at supporting their key titles. So that is one huge plus.
 
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Soldato
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I've been thinking about what I said yesterday and upon reflection I'm even more disappointed this morning :D

It has so much potential but at the minute it's missing too many key elements. Maybe, just maybe, under pressure, PDX will re implement some core features. Time will tell.

Edit: I see they have released a beta patch already! Paradox are very good at supporting their key titles. So that is one huge plus.


Not having played it admittedly, my impression is that I will be disappointed with it at the moment as someone with 500 hrs on III and who loved the OOB.

Paradoxians are really split between those who like the 'streamlined' IV and those who think they've basically just dumbed it down.

Glad I didn't buy it now. I'm pretty sure i 'd have been disappointed with it, sounds a bit 'point click invade' to me, and like you say there's standard features missing.

Like you i'm hoping they add depth.
 
Man of Honour
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Gawd, it's worse than I thought. It's awful actually and I'm half tempted to ask for a refund. I posted on the pdx forum to gain some insight. A lot of the things I loved, and things that I deemed essential like the OOB, the event box etc etc will not be reappearing apparently. Someone even suggested that they are aiming for tablet users in future releases by streamlining some of the more complicated options. Now it's a point and click fest. I mean you can't even see where the battles are taking place unless you either click on a general and have a huge endless box appear with all your theatre divisions, or you scroll the map. In HOI3 there was a small opaque box with everything listed in the top right. It was simply brilliant. All my info at a glance.

Apparently air battles are completely abstracted now and with no counters for the aircraft it's actually impossible to see them. You have to go with the 3d models.

Spying has gone completely. Or rather, 'abstracted'. That word is being used a LOT in this game.

They will definitely add depth, but with the key features not returning I'm not so sure it will ever be as good as a heavily modded HOI3. It's the end of an era.
 
Soldato
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Gawd, it's worse than I thought. It's awful actually and I'm half tempted to ask for a refund. I posted on the pdx forum to gain some insight. A lot of the things I loved, and things that I deemed essential like the OOB, the event box etc etc will not be reappearing apparently. Someone even suggested that they are aiming for tablet users in future releases by streamlining some of the more complicated options. Now it's a point and click fest. I mean you can't even see where the battles are taking place unless you either click on a general and have a huge endless box appear with all your theatre divisions, or you scroll the map. In HOI3 there was a small opaque box with everything listed in the top right. It was simply brilliant. All my info at a glance.

Apparently air battles are completely abstracted now and with no counters for the aircraft it's actually impossible to see them. You have to go with the 3d models.

Spying has gone completely. Or rather, 'abstracted'. That word is being used a LOT in this game.

They will definitely add depth, but with the key features not returning I'm not so sure it will ever be as good as a heavily modded HOI3. It's the end of an era.


It's as I feared.

'Abstracted' Oh the joys of spin.

I'm glad I listened to my gut instinct when I found out they were doing away with a proper OOB when it was first announced, and then didn't buy on release.
 
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I was playing as Great Britain and an event popped up saying Rudolph Hess has been shot down and killed the coast of England.

Well, historically, that didn't happened. He crash landed in Scotland and spend the rest of his days in prison.

Why the deviation?

Edit. Just checked and he didn't crash land he parachuted out over Scotland.
 
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Soldato
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That is pretty standard for HOI games, i.e. a slight chance to deviate from history. The others I know of are the Hindenburg not blowing up and Amelia Earhart making it successfully around the world.

Personally I am steering well clear of HOI4, certainly after seeing how the hardcore HOI youtuber Alexlifeson1985 seems to be finding it being far too casual.
 
Associate
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Apparently on release HOI3 was an unplayable mess and didn't really get fixed until after a couple of expansions. I think it's a bit unfair to compare a newly released game to a fully mature previous title plus all the mods that were available. HOI4 is a great start and I expect it will only get better down the line.
 
Man of Honour
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Do you know what? I take back most of what I said.

I've now spent 52 hours in the game and I am beginning to understand it. The problem is, for me at least, you have to 'un-learn' HOI3. That's the only way to really get ahead in 4. 4 is very EUIV centric, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it is completely and in some places overwhelmingly different to its predecessor.

Don't get me wrong there are still major flaws, and the lack of a battle 'monitor' the likes of which are included in 3 is a downer. But as has been said, this is very, very early days for HOI4 and it will definitely improve. It does offer so much potential. So I go back on my major critiscm. I just didn't understand what was in front of me. It takes a lot of time to digest. But it's worth it.

Something I am absolutely loving at the moment is the new air mechanic. Now I actually understand what the hell I am doing, it works wonders. I am playing as Argentina and have created about a dozen 'wings' of 100 fighters, 2 squadrons of tactical bombers and about 250 CAS. These fighters consist of early pre-war and interwar and now, some mid war models. The production line is upgrading the old models to the new ones, but this takes time. But I love the fact you can create these wings and leave them to it if you wish. This was a major hassle in 3. You had to constantly follow the air battle and it didn't feel at all realistic. Now it's far superior and I can see my fighter bombers dropping their loads on the front line enemy, without any instruction from me. It is 'abstracted' to a degree but it works so much better than before. I'm actually really enjoying getting air superiority and watching my tacticals drop bombs on the enemy.
 
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Man of Honour
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From what I've seen on YouTube they're saying it's just as indepth. But what they've done is just male it more accessible and easier to get to grips with.
 
Man of Honour
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From what I've seen on YouTube they're saying it's just as indepth. But what they've done is just male it more accessible and easier to get to grips with.

For sure. It can be a click-fest. Several clicks and you can set your divisions to invade automatically. I guess people like this. But for me, I like the micro-management and I dislike the AI. It's logical but it isn't that clever, if you follow. A lot of work is needed to re-balance and address certain aspects of the game. There are a huge amount of flaws and bugs. I won't be playing a major nation until the second patch is out, and maybe a DLC. It needs to mature significantly. As it stands playing a minor is extremely good fun, especially a country like Poland which has already had the DLC treatment.
 
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I played quite a bit of HOI2 but didn't get into HOI3 as I didn't really have the time for it.

Well I purchased HOI4 and selected Germany, just as I was about to commence my war mongering I noticed that a load of my research had reset to zero. Very frustrating.
 
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