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Orange Devil posted:Which means the real problem in their model isn't their unit statistics or their combat mechanics or their map modelling or whatever. It's that they give players a 1936 start-date and the freedom to *radically* alter the economy and doctrinal focus of their chosen nation with hardly any real cost. So in real life even if you knew infantry + artillery is the way to go, you still have all these tank plants, might as well make tanks with them, too right? BadOptics posted:I think you make a really great point here. The game fundamentally allows the player to overwrite what was the material reality/reasons for some historical decisions. yeah OD I think you've got a great point there: FF has talked about how the air forces were trying to carve out their own little fiefdom within the military complex, and that that drove at least some of why there was such a big push for strategic bombing. A HOI player might not want to build a strategic bomber force for the US or UK... but then they don't have to deal with air force generals lobbying them to do so.
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Feb 13, 2024 15:07
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regarding blitzkrieg, there's a case yellow OCS game called The Blitzkrieg Legend: there is a book by the same name which goes on in length about how the events of 1940 were propagandized by the allies to attribute the loss of france to a new mode of warfare instead of the lucky instance that it turned out to be anyway, there's an urban myth that Dean Essig (designer of the OCS series) misunderstood what the title meant, and thought it referred to the legendary blitzkrieg of case yellow, instead of the concept of blitzkrieg itself being a legend (and therefore not something that actually, factually exists), and only found out later what the title actually meant i cant really confirm if the above actually happened but reading the designer notes (that knew what the title meant) and the developer notes (not Essig, but someone that apparently didn't like the book) is quite funny: 
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Feb 13, 2024 15:17
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gradenko_2000 posted:yeah OD I think you've got a great point there: FF has talked about how the air forces were trying to carve out their own little fiefdom within the military complex, and that that drove at least some of why there was such a big push for strategic bombing. A HOI player might not want to build a strategic bomber force for the US or UK... but then they don't have to deal with air force generals lobbying them to do so. Nor industrialists making money off of those plants controlling politicians who will ensure that those planes get bought. Generals only exist to be assigned commands (or linguish forever in a virtual lobby, they don't even disappear if their entire branch doesn't exist! You don't even need to pay them!), the only politicians that exist are the same but get assigned (by you, at will) to a scant few government posts to provide bonuses and industrialists and lobbyists don't exist at all. It's a game series ostensibly about the big Clash of Ideologies that it portrays WW2 as, but doesn't even attempt to model the inner workings of any of those ideologies. It's all just set dressing to push mans around the map. And then nerds get mad because the combination of mans to push around that you found to work best doesn't appeal to their sense of aesthetics because it doesn't have any vroom-vroom tanks in them and they love their tanks. It's a game series for loving babies is what I'm saying. Orange Devil has issued a correction as of 15:43 on Feb 13, 2024 |
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Feb 13, 2024 15:41
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Orange Devil posted:It's a game series for loving babies is what I'm saying. Just read Paradox Redditors complain about WitW and WitE 2.
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Feb 13, 2024 15:52
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gradenko_2000 posted:the El Alamein video that FF posted in the Modern History thread got me thinking about Hearts of Iron IIRC even if you wanted mobile units in HOI2 motorized infantry is way more efficient than armor divisions
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Feb 13, 2024 16:09
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I think a problem is Paradox has cultivated a fanbase that has ... interesting... ideas about history, and particularly alt history, that have bled into all of their games. The attention paid to Germanic/Norse Paganism "for some reason" in the last two Crusader Kings, for example. The attention paid to Byzantium in EU IV, would be another.
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Feb 13, 2024 16:19
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Yeah while I like Paradox stuff I bounced off HOI4 because it just felt like you were supposed to determine which mess of statistics had the best cost efficiency and then just try to copy paste it as much as possible
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Feb 13, 2024 16:22
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Frosted Flake posted:I think a problem is Paradox has cultivated a fanbase that has ... interesting... ideas about history, and particularly alt history, that have bled into all of their games. and tbf, the sheer wackiness of HOI4 is what gives the game its charm. Like as Spain you can literally form the WORLD REVOLUTION ANARCHIST COMMUNE STATE which is so fking out of this world you just gotta appreciate it
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Feb 13, 2024 16:25
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Frosted Flake posted:Just read Paradox Redditors complain about WitW and WitE 2. oh poo poo it's 40% off on Steam right now hmmmmmmm hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
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Feb 13, 2024 16:35
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Does wite2 still "simulate" the Soviet counterattack in winter 41 by just making all the Russians shoot twice as hard for six months
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Feb 13, 2024 16:38
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gradenko_2000 posted:oh poo poo it's 40% off on Steam right now Drama on the Danube 44 - 20 Aug 44 - 5 May 45 -- A complete look at the unusual and varied fighting across the Balkans in 1944-45. Starting with the conversion of Romania and Bulgaria into Soviet allies, the scenario also covers the desperate attempt of the German forces in Greece to escape north. Covers the transition of the Yugoslavian partisan war into being part of the front line, the Soviet advance through Hungary, the last major German offensive of the war near Budapest, and the fall of Vienna.  
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Feb 13, 2024 16:40
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Typo posted:way way more people believe in those "interesting" ideas about history than "how armored warfare actually worked" because vast majority of people don't read history books The only HOI game I played was 2, and I still remember that the best start was communist Canada launching a surprise attack on the US in 1937 which really throws the game off the rails.
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Feb 13, 2024 16:47
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StashAugustine posted:Does wite2 still "simulate" the Soviet counterattack in winter 41 by just making all the Russians shoot twice as hard for six months I looked at the WITE 2 manual (available without getting the game) and it doesn't say anything about a special Soviet Combat Bonus the way WITE 1 had it
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Feb 13, 2024 17:12
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Mantis42 posted:As a tankie I don't deny famines. They exist and communism ended them.
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Feb 13, 2024 17:28
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StashAugustine posted:Yeah while I like Paradox stuff I bounced off HOI4 because it just felt like you were supposed to determine which mess of statistics had the best cost efficiency and then just try to copy paste it as much as possible i dislike that the ai makes "meta" divisions, i would much prefer varied "lore appropriate" divisions for the different countries i hate doing/looking up meta stuff myself and the ai doing it is annoying maybe theres a mod or option for that, i have not played it for over a year
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Feb 13, 2024 18:26
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Megamissen posted:i dislike that the ai makes "meta" divisions, i would much prefer varied "lore appropriate" divisions for the different countries Yeah, it would make way more sense for the AI to use historical OOBs and TOEs.
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Feb 13, 2024 19:29
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the original Kaiserreich was extremely fun but in retrospect was the worst thing to happen to Hearts of Iron, because its success and popularity got the devs thinking 'ah, ridiculous cartoonish everything-and-the-kitchen-sink alternate history is what the fans clearly want, let's just make the game entirely that', and now you have a WW2 game where WW2 itself is more or less an afterthought, and indeed might not even happen depending on how the RNG works out and it's not really integrated into the game mechanics at all, almost all of the internal politics and diplomacy and everything potentially interesting about the weird alien-space-bat alternate history is handled through the Focus Tree system, where you just click a button and wait for a cooldown and now Bhutan is governed by Leon Trotsky. the base game plays like an amateurish mod of itself
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Feb 13, 2024 20:17
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Kaiserreich grew out of a mod about a White victory in the Russian civil war Ancient history now, but something to keep in mind about the history of Paradox games
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Feb 13, 2024 20:26
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I would love to know the rationale for the focus tree system. Most other game systems are something like diegetic but how do you even explain the geist of a nation spending 30 day chunks radically transforming society, building factories out of nothing etc. ?
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Feb 13, 2024 20:26
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It's 75 day chunks, mods made it 30 days because people like to click the focus tree icons. It had nothing to do with history or physical reality other than what kind of stimulus response a human being experiences when clicking stuff.
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Feb 13, 2024 20:28
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IMO, Paradox games should not be judged as simulations in the way other grog games are. They're gateway drugs, deliberately broad but relatively shallow sandboxes that you eventually climb out of to go play Aurora or Decisive Campaigns or whatever.
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Feb 13, 2024 20:49
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Quote is not edit
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Feb 13, 2024 20:49
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The focus tree is a skinner box imo It's easily the worst game element in the entire series, and yes I remember the HoI 1 tech tree.
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Feb 13, 2024 20:50
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Focus trees are the whole entirety of the game otherwise you might as well just open up paint and click fill all with your favorite color.
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Feb 13, 2024 20:53
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Serious question, I've had some countershuffling moods lately but no game to take it out on, what does WitE2 have over Decisive Campaigns: Barbarossa?
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Feb 13, 2024 20:56
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The rest of the war, for one thing.
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Feb 13, 2024 20:57
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Mister Bates posted:because its success and popularity got the devs thinking 'ah, ridiculous cartoonish everything-and-the-kitchen-sink alternate history is what the fans clearly want
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Feb 13, 2024 20:57
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Frosted Flake posted:Just read Paradox Redditors complain about WitW and WitE 2. HOI4 is about posting your epic panzers to reddit and saying "rate my encirclement leddit  "Anyways, the game is highly moddable and has led to brain broken dummies meming random bureaucrats into epic ultrafashy types due to TNO, which is paradox's biggest contribution to political education.
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Feb 13, 2024 20:59
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at least with expert AI and some custom tweeks, you can at least make hoi4 challenging again. the german AI was finally able to breach the dniper-dvinia line when i give them a 10,000% breakthrough bonus so they didn't bleed themselves white against it
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Feb 13, 2024 21:07
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Frosted Flake posted:The rest of the war, for one thing. When I invade Russia, I win before Christmas 
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Feb 13, 2024 21:08
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The Focus trees of HOI4 are basically a visual novel or a choose-your-own-adventure book. HOI4's genre is strategy/VN and it turns out that's a surprisingly popular genre combination.
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Feb 13, 2024 21:20
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The first army general for Warno is out and they also did some balancing all around. The patchlog is extensively long. Managed to gently caress myself once already in the campaign as defending side. Will have to see more tomorrow to get a better grasp.
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Feb 13, 2024 21:26
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BearsBearsBears posted:The Focus trees of HOI4 are basically a visual novel or a choose-your-own-adventure book. HOI4's genre is strategy/VN and it turns out that's a surprisingly popular genre combination. Being able to just run on vibes does explain a lot why HOI4 is more popular than Victoria 3 going off of steam charts and the relative thread activity of the Vic 3 thread vs Hoi 4 threads (SA and offsite ime).
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Feb 13, 2024 21:29
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Vicky 3 isn't great but I will give it credit for at least trying to do something sensible. Same with the EU and CK series. All are a lot better than the HoI series and it's sad that the latter is the popular one.
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Feb 13, 2024 21:42
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Danann posted:Being able to just run on vibes does explain a lot why HOI4 is more popular than Victoria 3 going off of steam charts and the relative thread activity of the Vic 3 thread vs Hoi 4 threads (SA and offsite ime). theres far more mods for HOI4 than there are for vicky 3. Vicky 3 being a more groggy game also suffers from performance issues.
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Feb 13, 2024 22:00
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Orange Devil posted:Vicky 3 isn't great but I will give it credit for at least trying to do something sensible. Same with the EU and CK series. All are a lot better than the HoI series and it's sad that the latter is the popular one. CK isn't even really trying to be a strategy game it's more like medieval Sims with strategy as a minigame
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Feb 13, 2024 22:10
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hoi needs the hoi3 map but with some mechanism to limit the amount of divisions per tile so you can have large armies without the ridiculous situation where 80 divisions are fighting over a province with a combat width that will never allow more than 8 divisions in combat at a time
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Feb 13, 2024 22:14
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As an aside, I am playing modded medieval 2 again and am coming up against issues keeping my allies in the fight. Loads of juggling troops, concentrating higher quality soldiers near places that can retrain them, bringing up garrison troops to the frontier so I can keep the enemy unbalanced. Gondor and Rohan hosed up bad so now I had to intervene with the elves that live in the forest, all the while I can barely hold the eastern bank of the anduin river against the orcs in mirkwood. My campaign is a mirror image of the ukraine war ala NAFO. I kill 10 orcs for each elves but there's always more. At some point they will frustrate me strategically and I will be forced to give up my bridgehead over the Its kinda awesome that the best LOTR game is a mod for an 18 year old pop-history strategy game.
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Feb 13, 2024 22:17
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Tankbuster posted:As an aside, I am playing modded medieval 2 again and am coming up against issues keeping my allies in the fight. Loads of juggling troops, concentrating higher quality soldiers near places that can retrain them, bringing up garrison troops to the frontier so I can keep the enemy unbalanced. Gondor and Rohan hosed up bad so now I had to intervene with the elves that live in the forest, all the while I can barely hold the eastern bank of the anduin river against the orcs in mirkwood. My campaign is a mirror image of the ukraine war ala NAFO. I kill 10 orcs for each elves but there's always more. the second best lotr video game is a mod for an almost 14 year old sandbox rpg the actual best lotr game in general is the board game War of the Ring though
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Feb 13, 2024 22:31
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Typo posted:CK isn't even really trying to be a strategy game it's more like medieval Sims with strategy as a minigame CK3 somehow still doesn't have any antipope mechanics for Catholicism. Not to mention Catholicism and Orthodoxy start off already split in 867. If you really try you can do the "Mend the Great Schism" decision before the actual schism happens historically. Orthodoxy has a singular head of faith since there's no game support for autocephaly. The game came out in 2020 and CK2 had these mechanics. I'm still playing that garbage but I've been using the princes of darkness mod. If we're going to ignore history than I want to fight the vampire pope as a werewolf.
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Feb 13, 2024 23:39
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