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HerpicleOmnicron5
May 31, 2013

How did this smug dummkopf ever make general?


Alchenar posted:

What's a good Victoria 3 starting country? I always make the mistake of picking the US, winning the civil war and then having literally no challenges for the rest of the game because you can go afk with time set to max and USA capitalists will basically sort everything out for you.

Prussia and the Two Sicilies are consistently fun because of German and Italian unification. Japan's a great starter because it forces you to build the economy from scratch.

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Eiba
Jul 26, 2007


Japan is probably my favorite starter nation because you build your industry from the ground up in isolation so you really understand what you need and how industries and resources relate, but once you've done that, and once you figure out politics well enough to fix your laws, you are a Big Boy and can very easily do the Great Power thing in the mid to late game- which is perfect because you'll be entering that phase about the time you start needing rubber and oil. You basically get the full spectrum of all the game systems and enough slack that you don't need to be an expert to make use of them all.

Crazycryodude
Aug 15, 2015

Lets get our X tons of Duranium back!

....Is that still a valid thing to jingoistically blow out of proportion?


Yeah Japan is great, it was the first game I ever played and I keep going back to it every so often. Large population, all the basic resources you could reasonably need, diplomatically and geographically isolated enough that you really don't have to gently caress with world politics until you want to. If anything Japan has too much food and coal production compared to historically, so maybe it's a little easier than it should be, but that's another point in favor of it being a good starter nation IMO without being so brokenly easy that the game plays itself like LF USA/UK.

Valiantman
Jun 25, 2011

Ways to circumvent the Compact #6: Find a dreaming god and affect his dreams so that they become reality. Hey, it's not like it's you who's affecting the world. Blame the other guy for irresponsibly falling asleep.

Eiba posted:

Japan is probably my favorite starter nation because you build your industry from the ground up in isolation so you really understand what you need and how industries and resources relate, but once you've done that, and once you figure out politics well enough to fix your laws, you are a Big Boy and can very easily do the Great Power thing in the mid to late game- which is perfect because you'll be entering that phase about the time you start needing rubber and oil. You basically get the full spectrum of all the game systems and enough slack that you don't need to be an expert to make use of them all.

Granted, I don't even try to play optimally and I'm probably misunderstanding many things besides, but I've tried Japan three times and every time either the UK, the USA or both have conquered Kyushu sooner or later.

But yeah, still quite nice tutorial nation to everything that isn't trade and foreign policy.

Zig-Zag
Aug 29, 2007

Why don't we just start shooting tar heroin instead?
I feel like Japan is a good starting nation. You have most resources and not a lot of pre-built buildings so you are forced to learn the economics. You learn politics by having to contend with the shogun to pass better laws and your isolated so don't really havt to worry about other countries.

Fellblade
Apr 28, 2009
I've picked the game up again recently, had a really good Italy run where I unified the whole thing, including grabbing stuff off meg-Austria, which was nice.

Have since been trying Japan and Ottomans and the politics side of it is totally loving me. Both of them just have entrenched landholders that are near impossible to remove, and if you do, the government is so weak you can barely pass anything anyway.

Eiba
Jul 26, 2007


Valiantman posted:

Granted, I don't even try to play optimally and I'm probably misunderstanding many things besides, but I've tried Japan three times and every time either the UK, the USA or both have conquered Kyushu sooner or later.

But yeah, still quite nice tutorial nation to everything that isn't trade and foreign policy.
That's terrible luck. You should have the tools to create a strong enough army to repel them, but that shouldn't really happen all that often, and I imagine you wouldn't really know how to hold your own when you're new at the game.

I will say though taking Kyushu is an excellent move. Any country that can get away with it is set for a ton of raw resources. As much coal/lead/sulfur/dyes/silk as you could possibly want, with a near infinite supply of peasants to work it all. Especially if you manage it as a smaller nation it's a real game changer for your economy (it helps if you get a great power to back you up). I'm waiting on the next patch to play a colonial-focused Netherlands game, but it's going to be a historically plausible top priority for me when I do.

Fellblade posted:

I've picked the game up again recently, had a really good Italy run where I unified the whole thing, including grabbing stuff off meg-Austria, which was nice.

Have since been trying Japan and Ottomans and the politics side of it is totally loving me. Both of them just have entrenched landholders that are near impossible to remove, and if you do, the government is so weak you can barely pass anything anyway.
Yeah, the politics feels like smashing your head against a brick wall. But if you just keep industrializing and keep trying that brick wall will eventually give way. And once you've gone through that you know what can be done with the political system, even when it feels like you're stuck with a lovely entrenched establishment.

Kurgarra Queen
Jun 11, 2008

GIVE ME MORE
SUPER BOWL
WINS

Eiba posted:

That's terrible luck. You should have the tools to create a strong enough army to repel them, but that shouldn't really happen all that often, and I imagine you wouldn't really know how to hold your own when you're new at the game.

I will say though taking Kyushu is an excellent move. Any country that can get away with it is set for a ton of raw resources. As much coal/lead/sulfur/dyes/silk as you could possibly want, with a near infinite supply of peasants to work it all. Especially if you manage it as a smaller nation it's a real game changer for your economy (it helps if you get a great power to back you up). I'm waiting on the next patch to play a colonial-focused Netherlands game, but it's going to be a historically plausible top priority for me when I do.

Yeah, the politics feels like smashing your head against a brick wall. But if you just keep industrializing and keep trying that brick wall will eventually give way. And once you've gone through that you know what can be done with the political system, even when it feels like you're stuck with a lovely entrenched establishment.
Yeah, you just kind of have to chip away at them, bit by bit. And also be willing to pass laws that might be sub-optimal: like, if you have a Pacifist-led Landowners, you can ram through National Militia. Probably you would rather have Professional Army, yeah, but getting off Peasant Levies is important enough to settle. Same with Agrarianism: yeah, it kinda blows, but it blows way less than Traditionalism and the Rural Folk will support it by default so it’s often easier to pass reliably than Interventionism.

And lastly? It can be a headache later, but Religious Schools are usually easy to get and the Devout are (usually) considerably less poo poo than the Landowners, especially if you already have Racial Segregation or Cultural Exclusion. And they can even get Abolitionist leaders!

Arbite
Nov 4, 2009





Zig-Zag posted:

I feel like Japan is a good starting nation. You have most resources and not a lot of pre-built buildings so you are forced to learn the economics. You learn politics by having to contend with the shogun to pass better laws and your isolated so don't really havt to worry about other countries.

Russia still gobble north Hokkaido early?

Hellioning
Jun 27, 2008

Arbite posted:

Russia still gobble north Hokkaido early?

Pretty sure they gave Japan a claim on it, so no.

Gort
Aug 18, 2003

Good day what ho cup of tea

Fellblade posted:

I've picked the game up again recently, had a really good Italy run where I unified the whole thing, including grabbing stuff off meg-Austria, which was nice.

Have since been trying Japan and Ottomans and the politics side of it is totally loving me. Both of them just have entrenched landholders that are near impossible to remove, and if you do, the government is so weak you can barely pass anything anyway.

The main thing with the landowners faction is to reduce their political power however you can, but take things slow so you don't start a revolution over it - revolution should really be seen as a political fail state (except for the more scripted ones like the American Civil War where you can get African American as an accepted culture as a reward). Day one this means firing any generals or admirals they have, and looking for any laws that you can change to lower their power that they don't hate. After that it's generally just a case of letting their hatred of your last change dissipate a bit before you impose another one - I know it's annoying to research a much better set of laws and be unable to implement them.

As your country industrialises, their power should drop quickly anyway.

YF-23
Feb 17, 2011

My god, it's full of cat!


If you can get a movement for Homesteading going to replace the more regressive land reform laws it will kneecap the landowners and give you a very powerful Rural Folk, in my experience. Whether you can do it without a revolution depends on how appeased the landowners are otherwise. If you start with Slave Trade I think switching to Legacy Slavery is also relatively painless if an insufficient in itself measure.

Vizuyos
Jun 17, 2020

Thank U for reading

If you hated it...
FUCK U and never come back

Gort posted:

The main thing with the landowners faction is to reduce their political power however you can, but take things slow so you don't start a revolution over it - revolution should really be seen as a political fail state (except for the more scripted ones like the American Civil War where you can get African American as an accepted culture as a reward). Day one this means firing any generals or admirals they have, and looking for any laws that you can change to lower their power that they don't hate. After that it's generally just a case of letting their hatred of your last change dissipate a bit before you impose another one - I know it's annoying to research a much better set of laws and be unable to implement them.

As your country industrialises, their power should drop quickly anyway.

Revolution isn't necessarily a fail-state. Once you've reduced their influence enough that the whole nation doesn't side with them, letting them rebel can be a decent way of finishing them off. The factions involved in a failed revolution get an enormous penalty to clout which slowly diminishes to zero over a few years, giving you an opportunity to pass a couple of laws without any interference at all from them. So once you've weakened them a fair bit already, letting them kick off a revolution you know you can win can be a quicker way of getting rid of the remaining laws propping up their political power.

Dirk the Average
Feb 7, 2012

"This may have been a mistake."
Also note that a revolution won't actually fire until it hits 100. Its maximum value is soft-capped at how critical the movement is (events can push you over 100 though!), so just having a movement start poo poo at 60% isn't necessarily the biggest issue in the world, though you will get radicals.

Kurgarra Queen
Jun 11, 2008

GIVE ME MORE
SUPER BOWL
WINS

Vizuyos posted:

Revolution isn't necessarily a fail-state. Once you've reduced their influence enough that the whole nation doesn't side with them, letting them rebel can be a decent way of finishing them off. The factions involved in a failed revolution get an enormous penalty to clout which slowly diminishes to zero over a few years, giving you an opportunity to pass a couple of laws without any interference at all from them. So once you've weakened them a fair bit already, letting them kick off a revolution you know you can win can be a quicker way of getting rid of the remaining laws propping up their political power.
It can even be a fast-track, if you have a bunch of good IG leaders and a powerful ally to call in to do the dirty work. Of course, if you're small and/or safe, you can just do the thing where you concentrate your military in your capital state.

Literally my best Spain game was crushing the Landowners and Devout in a revolution I only won because I was in Russia's market. I purchased Spanish freedom and liberty with Russian blood, it was great! Thanks Bear Daddy!
And then the Springtime of Nations JE essentially deleted the radicals!:allears:

Agean90
Jun 28, 2008


For a game that's Japan, but challenge mode the great lake states in Africa have a similar dynamic but with more difficulty. Bonus points if you don't pick buganda so you can start colonizing some fairly substantial lands in East Africa once you get the tech for it. Really wanna give it another play now that I can get foreign investment

EwokEntourage
Jun 10, 2008

BREYER: Actually, Antonin, you got it backwards. See, a power bottom is actually generating all the dissents by doing most of the work.

SCALIA: Stephen, I've heard that speed has something to do with it.

BREYER: Speed has everything to do with it.
You can also get allies to come in and stop the rebels for you. Or if your a subject of a great power, you can let them pop off and the great power stomp them then enjoy liberalizing. (subject to however they have modified this)

Alchenar
Apr 9, 2008

Zig-Zag posted:

I feel like Japan is a good starting nation. You have most resources and not a lot of pre-built buildings so you are forced to learn the economics. You learn politics by having to contend with the shogun to pass better laws and your isolated so don't really havt to worry about other countries.

Just want to say thanks for this recommendation. 1 hour with Japan yesterday was better than 10 with the US for the learning the game. You were exactly right, starting from scratch you have to learn economics, you have to fix the glaring bureaucracy issues, being an autocracy forces engagement with the political system in a way that you don't with democracies.

The pivotal point for me was losing a war against France demanding that I open my markets and then realising that that was a good thing. Was still in the CK/EU/HOI mindset of not wanting things to go against my ruling party, but Vicky is absolutely not about that. I managed to bankrupt myself thinking it would be a good idea to prime pump the construction sector and created a 1k deficit in timber in the market, but that again is a lesson learned (when as the US you can just mash button to constantly build whatever you want with no consequences).

CuddleCryptid
Jan 11, 2013

Things could be going better

This is probably a weird question but does non historical focus in HOI4 tend to still trend towards the same result, or is there a lot more randomness involved in it?

I'm essentially asking if it's possible to make WWII without the Allies/Axis. I like the game mechanically but I feel constrained by midgame by sixteen layers of predetermined protection guarantees and alliances where if I attack anyone then the entire world blows up. Which, yes, I understand is the point. I just like the political maneuvering and limited wars better than "you attacked Poland and now you went from zero battles to your entire navy is engaged at all times". But I feel like the focus trees are set up in a way that will trend towards the same results regardless a lot of times.

TheMcD
May 4, 2013

Monaca / Subject N 2024
---------
Despair will never let you down.
Malice will never disappoint you.

Realistically speaking, things will tend towards alliances forming, wars being declared, leading to countries joining alliances, more wars being declared...

For instance, Germany can go three ways. They can go historical and build the Axis, go monarchist and build the Central Powers, or go democratic and build the Central European Alliance.

Things are going to trend towards bigger alliances fighting bigger wars until one alliance stands tall, and world tension is never going to go down again. The game is fundamentally about The Big One, and if you avoid the historical Big One, the game will create one through other ways.

CuddleCryptid
Jan 11, 2013

Things could be going better

TheMcD posted:

Realistically speaking, things will tend towards alliances forming, wars being declared, leading to countries joining alliances, more wars being declared...

For instance, Germany can go three ways. They can go historical and build the Axis, go monarchist and build the Central Powers, or go democratic and build the Central European Alliance.

Things are going to trend towards bigger alliances fighting bigger wars until one alliance stands tall, and world tension is never going to go down again. The game is fundamentally about The Big One, and if you avoid the historical Big One, the game will create one through other ways.

Sure, I just meant that I want to have more control over where those alliances form and not have nations guaranteeing the independence of other nations for the sake of historical accuracy. I just didn't know if the AI was smart enough to go "hmm yeah we don't have historical on but it would probably be a bad idea if Russia took Sweden".

I might just switch over to Victoria, I found that I actually like the buildup part of HOI a good amount so maybe I should just do the Economy Game instead lmao

Gort
Aug 18, 2003

Good day what ho cup of tea

CuddleCryptid posted:

This is probably a weird question but does non historical focus in HOI4 tend to still trend towards the same result, or is there a lot more randomness involved in it?

I'm essentially asking if it's possible to make WWII without the Allies/Axis. I like the game mechanically but I feel constrained by midgame by sixteen layers of predetermined protection guarantees and alliances where if I attack anyone then the entire world blows up. Which, yes, I understand is the point. I just like the political maneuvering and limited wars better than "you attacked Poland and now you went from zero battles to your entire navy is engaged at all times". But I feel like the focus trees are set up in a way that will trend towards the same results regardless a lot of times.

Hearts of Iron is really at its best when there's one big war between comparably powerful alliances - randomness tends to give you lopsided results where one side is much weaker than the other and the resulting war is a stomp.

Generally if you want to play out an actual interesting World War in HoI4, you go into the game settings and set the major country AIs to follow certain ideologies. What happens if the whole world is democratic except for the USA and USSR who go communist?

Turning the "historical AI focuses" setting off and leaving it at that just tends to disappoint.

gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

HELL SERPENT
Lipstick Apathy

CuddleCryptid posted:

Sure, I just meant that I want to have more control over where those alliances form and not have nations guaranteeing the independence of other nations for the sake of historical accuracy. I just didn't know if the AI was smart enough to go "hmm yeah we don't have historical on but it would probably be a bad idea if Russia took Sweden".

I might just switch over to Victoria, I found that I actually like the buildup part of HOI a good amount so maybe I should just do the Economy Game instead lmao

this might not be exactly what you're looking for, but in the advanced difficulty settings, you can dictate which focus path each major power will pursue, which should give you some level of control over the size and ideology and the specific nation-make-up of any one of the dueling blocs

CuddleCryptid
Jan 11, 2013

Things could be going better

Thanks all, I'll give it a shot. I don't really mind large wars so much as I dislike multiple fronts. Maybe I'm just stupid but I get extremely overwhelmed trying to piece together what is happening when being attacked in every direction at once, what is important to prioritize, all those things. My navy is focusing on sinking Finnish convoys, is Finland even really involved in this war, oh god oh gently caress. Divide and conquer doesn't work super well when you are the one being divided.

I might just go back and give the Soviet Union another go, I lost it when Germany invaded and I got my poo poo pushed all the way in, but I found out later on that I needed to be building 40 width divisions instead of 20 for offensives and I was just constantly getting thrown back as a result.

Gort
Aug 18, 2003

Good day what ho cup of tea

CuddleCryptid posted:

I might just go back and give the Soviet Union another go, I lost it when Germany invaded and I got my poo poo pushed all the way in, but I found out later on that I needed to be building 40 width divisions instead of 20 for offensives and I was just constantly getting thrown back as a result.

Nah, that hasn't been true for a while.

Usually the problem newer players have is that they don't focus hard enough on military factories and end up with a tiny military as a result.

CuddleCryptid
Jan 11, 2013

Things could be going better

Gort posted:

Nah, that hasn't been true for a while.

Usually the problem newer players have is that they don't focus hard enough on military factories and end up with a tiny military as a result.

Really? God dammit, I've been looking at recent posts all over the web and they have been pushing "40 for concentrated offense, 20 for broad defense" all over. What is the actual ideal design?

A lot of my trouble just comes from offenses being an absolute shitshow. I was stalling out with armored divisions pushing into Belgium as Germany just because so many debuffs were stacked on to my stats that three infantry divisions were holding back the entire blitzkrieg. I thought I was supposed to fill divisions to counteract it but I guess not?

soviet elsa
Feb 22, 2024
lover of cats and snow
Honestly one of my big HoI complaints is ahistorical not making a Big One. Sometimes you get lame one-off stomps. But customizing in the game rules removes the fun of an ideal ahistorical mode. Not to mention the AI just can’t handle some trees. For example a fash Canada can blitz the USA. AI fash Canada will never even turn fascist, let alone threaten a U.S. player.

Gort
Aug 18, 2003

Good day what ho cup of tea

CuddleCryptid posted:

Really? God dammit, I've been looking at recent posts all over the web and they have been pushing "40 for concentrated offense, 20 for broad defense" all over. What is the actual ideal design?

A lot of my trouble just comes from offenses being an absolute shitshow. I was stalling out with armored divisions pushing into Belgium as Germany just because so many debuffs were stacked on to my stats that three infantry divisions were holding back the entire blitzkrieg. I thought I was supposed to fill divisions to counteract it but I guess not?

So, division width affects how many divisions can be involved in a fight in given terrain. You generally want to nicely fill the width a given bit of terrain gives you. Exceeding the width of the terrain results in either your divisions getting penalties due to "exceeding combat width" if you exceed the width by just a bit, or most of your divisions being "in reserve" and unable to fight since there's no width available for them.

If you're playing Germany, you're mostly going to fight in plains, forest and hills terrain, but the occasional marsh and urban area will show up too. Each terrain has a base amount of combat width for any combat that takes place there, and then an extra amount that gets added on for each additional direction the attack is coming from. You're unlikely to exceed three directions for most attacks, though encirclements may have more.

Plains gets 70 width, plus 35 for each additional direction, so 75 width for an attack coming from one direction, 110 for two, and 145 for three.
Forest gets 60 width, plus 30 for each additional direction, so 60/90/120.
Hills is the same as plains.
Marsh is 50 plus 25, so 50/75/100.
Urban is 80 plus 40, so 80/120/160.

So you're looking for a division width that fits as nicely as possible into as many of those numbers as possible. 40 is okayish in plains and hills, and perfect in urban, but pretty bad in forests and marshes. To fit better into the width most combats take, you want something smaller. I've seen suggestions in the 20-27 range, and they seem sensible.

Really big divisions have some quirks - it's cheaper to give them any kind of support unit that gives a percentile modifier, like say, engineers or flame tanks, since you only need a fixed number of engineers or flame tanks per division, so larger divisions use fewer in total. However, it's the opposite for support units that give straight stats, like support artillery, support rocket artillery, or support AA guns.

All that stuff said, if the AI's beating you, it's not going to be division width that's dragging you down. Give us some screenshots of attacks that are failing and we can probably tell you why it's happening - the game has a lot of pitfalls for players to fall into.

-----

Here are a couple of division templates that I use for basically every country with an industrial base. I only play versus the AI, so that informs some of my choices like no AT guns and emphasising soft attack on the tanks.

Infantry division

10 infantry battalions
Support artillery, support AA guns, support engineers. Add support rocket artillery when you get it.

This unit is for defending only, really. It can take ground, but it requires a really weakened enemy to do it. Ideally it should spend all its time just sitting there on the front line, blocking the enemy. It's cheap and should be organised into armies of 24 divisions under a general with a good defense stat, in an army group under a field marshal with a good defense stat.

Tank division

5 medium tank battalions
5 infantry battalions
Support artillery, support AA guns, support engineers. Add support rocket artillery and support medium flame tanks when you get them.

This unit is your efficient attacker. The medium tanks should be using whatever gun you have with the highest soft attack (close support gun early, then howitzers later), and should have two additional heavy machinegun turrets, sloped armour, the best radio you can give them, torsion bar suspension, welded armour, diesel engines, and no armour or engine upgrades. This should give you a tank that rolls along at a stately 4 kph, has 100% reliability, will be impenetrable to most enemy guns, and will really chew up soft targets (which is most of what the AI uses).

If you're interested in speed, you can swap the infantry battalions out for faster ones - bicycles, cavalry, motorised or mechanised will all work, and will accompany faster tank designs nicely. To get a faster tank, replace the engine from the design above with a petrol one, and consider a Christie suspension and engine upgrades. It's much more expensive to make your tank divisions fast though, so I don't usually bother.

Gort
Aug 18, 2003

Good day what ho cup of tea

soviet elsa posted:

Honestly one of my big HoI complaints is ahistorical not making a Big One. Sometimes you get lame one-off stomps. But customizing in the game rules removes the fun of an ideal ahistorical mode. Not to mention the AI just can’t handle some trees. For example a fash Canada can blitz the USA. AI fash Canada will never even turn fascist, let alone threaten a U.S. player.

I think if they're making a HoI5, the best thing to do would be to have "ahistorical mode" just pick between a bunch of pre-thought-through scenarios designed to make sense and lead to a fun conflict. So you might get WW2 as usual, except the UK joins the Axis and Italy joins the Allies.

CuddleCryptid
Jan 11, 2013

Things could be going better


Thanks, this is really helpful. I know about the width issue but it was hammered into me that stacking units was more efficient for both the support companies and for total unit cohesion, with how the calculations for attack works. Essentially that it's better to have one unit pick a target and nuke them rather than several units of the same size spreading their damage out randomly across the enemy line. But if that doesn't really make a difference then that works better, and it's a lot more flexible. Just one thing, you use regular infantry instead of motorized infantry for the attackers? I thought that you needed motorized to keep up with the tanks.

I can see if I can post some screenshots later. One thing that I wasn't sure about in that scenario was that I would often get a massive debuff that just read "state", which I assumed was a doctrinal debuff from nation focus on the part of the defender. But I've never been able to find a clear answer to that online.

CuddleCryptid fucked around with this message at 16:18 on May 15, 2024

Gort
Aug 18, 2003

Good day what ho cup of tea

CuddleCryptid posted:

Thanks, this is really helpful. I know about the width issue but it was hammered into me that stacking units was more efficient for both the support companies and for total unit cohesion, with how the calculations for attack works. Essentially that it's better to have one unit pick a target and nuke them rather than several units of the same size spreading their damage out randomly across the enemy line. But if that doesn't really make a difference then that works better, and it's a lot more flexible.

While it is true that each unit picks a target and it's best to concentrate fire, they added a stat called "coordination" somewhat recently in the game's life which encourages units to team up against a single target instead of spreading their fire. It increases with radar technologies, the signals support unit, and certain land doctrines.

quote:

Just one thing, you use regular infantry instead of motorized infantry for the attackers? I thought that you needed motorized to keep up with the tanks.

Only if your tanks are fast. Fast tanks are more expensive than slow ones, and motorised infantry are more expensive than infantry. If you design a tank that goes 4 kph, infantry are an efficient choice to accompany it.

Faster tanks are useful (for overruns and encirclements particularly), but I tend to play countries that are on the back foot industrially (EG: France, UK, China) so I have to cheap out. I also find fast tanks outrun their supplies very easily and I don't get as much out of their speed as I otherwise would. In that previous post I mention how you might design a faster tank division if you want to, but the speed of your tank divisions doesn't matter if they can't win a battle to break through the enemy lines in the first place, and that requires a sufficient mass of tank divisions concentrated in a single spot.

CuddleCryptid
Jan 11, 2013

Things could be going better

Gort posted:

While it is true that each unit picks a target and it's best to concentrate fire, they added a stat called "coordination" somewhat recently in the game's life which encourages units to team up against a single target instead of spreading their fire. It increases with radar technologies, the signals support unit, and certain land doctrines.

Only if your tanks are fast. Fast tanks are more expensive than slow ones, and motorised infantry are more expensive than infantry. If you design a tank that goes 4 kph, infantry are an efficient choice to accompany it.

Faster tanks are useful (for overruns and encirclements particularly), but I tend to play countries that are on the back foot industrially (EG: France, UK, China) so I have to cheap out. I also find fast tanks outrun their supplies very easily and I don't get as much out of their speed as I otherwise would. In that previous post I mention how you might design a faster tank division if you want to, but the speed of your tank divisions doesn't matter if they can't win a battle to break through the enemy lines in the first place, and that requires a sufficient mass of tank divisions concentrated in a single spot.

Ah, I didn't know about coordination, that helps a lot. Thank you!

Alchenar
Apr 9, 2008

Gort posted:

I think if they're making a HoI5, the best thing to do would be to have "ahistorical mode" just pick between a bunch of pre-thought-through scenarios designed to make sense and lead to a fun conflict. So you might get WW2 as usual, except the UK joins the Axis and Italy joins the Allies.

It's a tricky one because from a design perspective the best thing to do is to grab back the mechanics of choice from CK/EU/Vicky and tack them onto a core HOI design and make Paradox's Shadow Empire, but from a commercial perspective abandoning the historical theming would be a terrible idea.

RabidWeasel
Aug 4, 2007

Cultures thrive on their myths and legends...and snuggles!

Alchenar posted:

It's a tricky one because from a design perspective the best thing to do is to grab back the mechanics of choice from CK/EU/Vicky and tack them onto a core HOI design and make Paradox's Shadow Empire, but from a commercial perspective abandoning the historical theming would be a terrible idea.

Paradox's take on Shadow Empire would be so interesting, hell, they could make it themed around Stellaris and use the same jargon for ethics / species / etc.

"Planetary scale sci-fi warfare" seems like such a good setting for GSGs in general but sci-fi strategy games overwhelmingly pivot towards a galactic scale

CuddleCryptid
Jan 11, 2013

Things could be going better

Played some more HOI4 last night and got more into some of the details, doing a lot better now. I think that part of the issue I was having on offenses after being told that 40-width was best was that you can fit 40s into battles with fairly minor penalties, but the reinforcements won't come in if they won't fit so battles are constantly stopping with a lot of possible reinforcements on the hook. I'm still having a lot of trouble with breaking tough nodes but I think I need to invest in paras or somehow make invading by sea possible.

I am having a lot of trouble with my navy because I'm just getting outclassed by England entirely as Germany, and I'm not doomstacking enough on my strike fleets. I think I just need to focus more on efficient fleets.

Also hey, it turns out you don't actually have to build up the political capital to mark every state in a country before justifying war, you can just mark one and then take the whole country after you're done. I think it makes it cheaper in negotiations to take states you marked, but if you are the only participant then no one cares. I think the other part of me having such an issue before was that that was waiting super late to start attacking nations and relying on the national focus tree to make demands for me, which meant that by the time the war kicked off everyone was super built up.

TheMcD
May 4, 2013

Monaca / Subject N 2024
---------
Despair will never let you down.
Malice will never disappoint you.

Generally speaking, you shouldn't need to manually justify wargoals and just do stuff through the focus tree as far as a historical playthrough is concerned. If you're too slow through the tree, you need to take less extraneous focuses and concentrate on the more important stuff.

Also, navy can be completely trivialized by just using naval bombers. You can just turn the channel into a graveyard with them and Sealion with ease.

Archduke Frantz Fanon
Sep 7, 2004

TheMcD posted:

Also, navy can be completely trivialized by just using naval bombers. You can just turn the channel into a graveyard with them and Sealion with ease.

thus always as it was thus always shall it be

Vizuyos
Jun 17, 2020

Thank U for reading

If you hated it...
FUCK U and never come back

CuddleCryptid posted:

Played some more HOI4 last night and got more into some of the details, doing a lot better now. I think that part of the issue I was having on offenses after being told that 40-width was best was that you can fit 40s into battles with fairly minor penalties, but the reinforcements won't come in if they won't fit so battles are constantly stopping with a lot of possible reinforcements on the hook. I'm still having a lot of trouble with breaking tough nodes but I think I need to invest in paras or somehow make invading by sea possible.

I am having a lot of trouble with my navy because I'm just getting outclassed by England entirely as Germany, and I'm not doomstacking enough on my strike fleets. I think I just need to focus more on efficient fleets.

Also hey, it turns out you don't actually have to build up the political capital to mark every state in a country before justifying war, you can just mark one and then take the whole country after you're done. I think it makes it cheaper in negotiations to take states you marked, but if you are the only participant then no one cares. I think the other part of me having such an issue before was that that was waiting super late to start attacking nations and relying on the national focus tree to make demands for me, which meant that by the time the war kicked off everyone was super built up.

40-width was optimal for a good while, but they made various changes to the combat mechanics to make that less generally true.

Honestly, it's one reason I'm not a fan of the relative prominence of unit design stuff in HOI4. There's always an optimal way to build the units, but the system is so complex and disconnected from the player that you don't get any real useful feedback on what works, and it's too expensive to make meaningful adjustments on-the-fly ingame anyway. So people just wait for the stats nerds to analyze all the numbers and come up with the optimal general unit build, and then everyone looks that up and uses that (with occasional slight tweaks to fit the situation).

At that point, it's just annoying for everyone when Paradox makes combat balance changes to shake up that meta. It just invalidates all the unit design advice that's already out there and ends up with a bunch of people unknowingly using wrong unit builds because they don't realize that they're using the previous version's optimal army build, let alone that said build is now a trap choice that's been intentionally nerfed. And the game doesn't really give any feedback that there's something off. Unless they analyze the whole combat system themselves and carefully scrutinize all the numbers, all they know is that they're losing a lot and they don't really know why.

Poil
Mar 17, 2007

Not to mention the number of results you get when searching for it, most of which do not tell you which patch they applied to. :shepface:

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Raskolnikov38
Mar 3, 2007

We were somewhere around Manila when the drugs began to take hold
i just never stopped using 20 widths for line infantry. though my armor divisions are either 30 or 36

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