Hearts Of Iron 4

[Max Peck]

Yoink! Appropriated...

[Isgrimnur]

[tgb]

I came across this excellent video manual/tutorial/noob guide/whatever you want to call it.

It's 2 hours plus, but the guy who made it is very clear on why he's doing what he's doing, and I found it a big help.

[Lee]

Thanks, going to have to watch that later. I swear I have spent more time watching videos learning to play PDX games than I have playing them. Need to change that.

[tgb]

Thanks, going to have to watch that later. I swear I have spent more time watching videos learning to play PDX games than I have playing them. Need to change that.

Until yesterday I was unfamiliar with Bridger and his videos. Now I need to subscribe to his channel. He revealed so much stuff about what goes on under the hood during combat in the first hour alone, it feels like a different came entirely.

[Rip]

Thanks, going to have to watch that later. I swear I have spent more time watching videos learning to play PDX games than I have playing them. Need to change that.

Until yesterday I was unfamiliar with Bridger and his videos. Now I need to subscribe to his channel. He revealed so much stuff about what goes on under the hood during combat in the first hour alone, it feels like a different came entirely.

Agree, I've watched dozens of hours of streams and the like without learning a fraction of the things he covered.

[Rip]

It needs some tweaking but I'm having fun playing.

[Fitzy]

Not having any messages for ground battles is a terrible oversight I think. I lost 3 marine divisions. I have no clue what happened to them. My running theory is aliens. Or there were Japanese soliders on the islands I thought were empty.

It is a fun game though.

[Sepiche]

I wasn't planning on picking this up at all, but I gave in after watching a few videos and seeing I could get it for 20% off on GMG.

Really fun so far. I played a lot of HoI2, but kind of skipped HoI3, so there were a lot of changes to come to grips with, but I find they fixed one of my chief complaints of the older HoI games... how much of a micromanagement chore combat was. Just being able give aircraft regional orders and have them handle the rest, and once I figured the UI out, being able to give strategic orders to armies is fantastic. The AI is not perfect in handling the troops, but once you kind of figure out how it thinks, it's pretty easy to give them their initial orders, get a planning bonus, and then tweak their movement as you need to.

In HoI, I always seem to go with China for my first game as they start weak, and have to go to war with Japan early, but played well they can be a powerhouse in the late game. I'm closing in on the end of 1939 in my game, and I've managed to hold off the Japanese in the north, forced Mengchukou out of the war, and I've started to push the Japanese army back to Korea. Along with the Red Chinese troops, I've got about 120 divisions up on the northern border, with another 40 or so spread out along the coast, protecting from naval invasions. I've fended off a score or more naval invasions now, and only one ever got a beachhead going.

[Cortilian]

I am also really enjoying this. Played HOI 1 and 2, skipped 3, I am not super nitpicky on the AI but I'm sure It'll get tweaked but I haven't seen it do anything super stupid but I could have missed it . I LOVE the ability to set a front line and then assign commanders and then see the battle plan they devise and adjust as necessary. That is just awesome. I've played some as Italy, France and the US.

[Sepiche]

Finally pretty much finished up my China game, and lots of fun all around. I was playing with non-historical decisions, and it made for a long, weird war.

Japan invaded like clockwork in '37, but I invested a lot in infantry and artillery early on, and was able to hold the line against their first push and eventually drove them off the mainland and took Korea from them. By then they had joined the Axis along with the Siamese empire, so I sent my army south and helped the French drive the Siamese/Japanese army back and took control of Siam. After that Germany officially declared on me and landed a small army south of Siam and started to fight up the peninsula toward me.

I held them off and liberated all the territory they had taken, and by then the German army had taken most of Europe, but strangely had moved into India, and was in the process of routing Britain there. I sent my troops in and drove them out of India and then redeployed my communist allies to the Turkish border where fascist Turkey was attacking the USSR, and then sent my main army to the Russian/German border where the German invasion was well underway and almost to Moscow.

Now, one twist to all this is the USSR never joined the Allies, and as a matter of fact formed the Comintern, but pissed off the Allies early by invading Romania, so they were at war with the Allies and the Axis at the same time. I was part of China United and wasn't allied to any of them, but it was in my best interest to beat up the Germans, so I figured helping out the Russians was the easiest way to start.

It took quite a while, but the Russians and Communist Chinese troops conquered the Turks and took a chunk out of Bulgaria before the Germans formed a solid line that locked them in place. Meanwhile my troops in the north (about 100 divisions of mostly infantry, but also 5 or 6 heavy armor divisions and 10 or 20 mobile infantry divisions) started slowly rolling back the Germans eventually freeing Poland and all the Balkan nations, taking Berlin, and forcing the Germans to surrender.

From there I swung my troops south and easily took Vichy France, Italy, and Republican Spain (which had joined the Axis strangely). From there the only nation left I was at war with and hadn't surrendered was Japan, who I had been ignoring since driving them off the continent. My main problem of course was the Japanese navy. I had been building up a navy and more importantly a huge airforce of Naval bombers, CAS, tactical bombers, etc.

I managed to destroy a number of their ships at sea and crush their air force which, along with the US Navy which was busy landing troops in Siberia and protecting those, allowed my navy to start patrolling around the Home Islands. I also had to start quickly building a marine landing force to try and get a toe hold on the Japanese mainland. It took me quite a few failed attacks, but I finally launched two simultaneous attacks... one of 8 marine divisions attacking Nagasaki, and another 8 divisions landing in the province next door to try and open a second front on Nagasaki while the first force was trying to land.

Even though they had about 20 divisions of light infantry in Nagasaki, my flanking attack was successful and I managed to crush their forces in the city, take the port, and then I started quickly ferrying over my heavy armor and mobile divisions to reinforce. I easily pushed them north toward Tokyo. They managed to form a line around Tokyo, and it took me quite a while to wear down the 30 or so divisions defending the city, but my armor was very effective against them, and my regular infantry divisions, besides having a massive amount of artillery, were almost all veterans after leading the assault of Germany. Japan surrendered not long after the fall of Tokyo.

Really a fun game that took my spunky little Chinese army all over the globe and helped me learn the game.

I'll probably take a short break and start a new game.. still trying to decide who to play though. I'll probably try a more historical game next, but I'm leaning toward playing the US and turning them fascist so I can take over the western hemisphere.

[Sepiche]

I finally finished up the first season of the excellent Man in the High Castle, and so started my Fascist America game (along with a mod to give me the American Reich flag from MitHC) in honor of that.

I had one false start where I got up to about 35% fascist support and decided that was enough to launch a military coup, but it ended up giving me 6 out of the 40 US divisions and a small fraction of the US navy. I think I might have been able to win ultimately by throwing green troops into the fray using the fascist manpower bonuses, but ultimately I restarted since I think that path would have actually taken me longer than waiting for support to get over 50%.

Second try I waited until fascist support was over 50% and then changed governments, joined the Axis, and started building a case to go to war with Mexico. Things went well as I built up my armies, but the UK threw a wrench into the works by guaranteeing Mexico's independence which meant if I invaded Mexico, I'd need to be ready to fight Canada and the Royal Navy as well.

I took my time and built up a bit. Germany went to war with Poland in August of 1939, but Poland hadn't joined the Allies, so they took the entire country without going to war with the Allies, and didn't even have to give the Soviets their share. I launched my invasion of Mexico a few weeks after Poland was conquered, and that pretty much set off WWII.

The mountains in the west of Mexico were a bit of an issue, but otherwise I rolled over the Mexican army (and a few foreign divisions) pretty handily, and simultaneously launched my invasion of Canada. The Canadian invasion went fine, although I was really pretty under strength with my forces up there when it started. I took eastern Canada easy enough, but they built up a sizable force in the western mountains which took me a little longer to break through.

Ultimately I had Mexico and Canada under my thumb by April '40. By that point Germany had not so wisely declared war on the Soviets and had been in a stalemate with France for quite a while. They're holding fine on the French front, but the Soviets have been slowly grinding them down and just liberated Warsaw recently. In China the Japanese are finally starting to get pushed back by the combined armies of China and the Soviets. I still probably have another year before they get kicked off the continent, but when they do that will free up a lot of Soviet troops.

My plan for aiding them on mainland Europe has been to slowly advance in the north taking Greenland, Iceland, and the islands north of Scotland in preparation for the invasion of England. My hope is to take the highlands quickly, form a defensive line there with my marines, and hold out for heavier infantry that's massing in Iceland.

I've also been skirmishing with and fighting the Royal Navy. I first started running into them in the Caribbean and around Bermuda where Admiral Nimitz scored a major victory early in the Mexican war, sinking a number of battleships, battlecruisers, carriers, and something like 40 lighter escorts. Later I also had a pitched battle as I sent my main fleets to patrol around the British Isles, and now the navy of the American Reich controls all the seas around them. My navy is currently divided into two fleets of about equal strength under Halsey and Nimitz... both have around 4 carriers, 8 battleships, 15 cruisers, and around 40 lighter escorts, not to mention my submarine fleet of around 100 Mk III subs and a much smaller Pacific detachment that's stationed in the Philippines.

When I left the game last I had just begun planning for the invasion of the UK, had sent the 30 odd mobile and armored divisions I had built to help the Germans along the Dutch front, and was just starting to mass troops in Iceland after driving the UK completely out of the Caribbean. I also had about 24 divisions of regular infantry and marines headed to Hawaii to prepare for a Pacific war. My hope is to take Australia and the Dutch East Indies to give myself and the rest of the Axis access to large rubber supplies before sending them north to try and relieve the Japanese army.

Really fun game all around, but it's going to be tough to beat the UK and France before the Soviets start to catastrophically weaken Germany.

[Doomboy]

Soooo, is there a mod out there to give germany a boost? Every game I have played (except as Germany), they get their butts wiped out before whatever nation I am playing can get into it.

One time Poland kicked their ass. Then in my current game as the US, long before I got involved, France took out Italy, and then Germany decided to attack Russia, which is not going well. Especially with France kicking at them from the south.

I did have one cool game as Germany where I made the unholy alliance with Russia, and we were starting to do a number on France, when they joined their country up with England! Wow, was that a weird event.

[Rip]

It desperately needs patched and the developers are just getting back from vacation. I've put it aside until they do a patch or two.

[KDH]

...
.. Hearts of Iron IV: Anniversary Pack ... FREE

Paradox Interactive celebrates the first anniversary of the release of Hearts of Iron IV with a free anniversary pack for the World War II strategy game. The Steam page has a bunch of details, and there's even more about the occasion in their announcement:

Paradox Interactive and Paradox Development Studio today celebrated the one-year anniversary of Hearts of Iron IV, the World War II Grand Strategy Game released to critical acclaim on June 6, 2016. Hearts of Iron IV, the game that challenges players to navigate the nation of their choice through history’s greatest conflict, continues to engage players one year later across Windows, Mac, and Linux PCs. To thank the community for their ongoing support for the game, Paradox today released the Hearts of Iron IV Anniversary Pack as free DLC, available now for all players.

Downloadable Content

This content requires the base game Hearts of Iron IV on Steam in order to play.

[Max Peck]

Apparently the Anniversary Pack messes up ironman mode. With the DLC enabled, I can't load or start a new ironman game. And even if I uninstall it, I still can't load the ironman save for my current game-in-progress.

[dbt1949]

Try looking online about what the ironman code looks like in your sved game. Maybe just try ironman.
Anyrate look for it in you saved game and see what you have to do to change it. May a 1 to a 0.
Use notepad and find.
I do this sort of thing all the time in HoI2, but don't have 4.

[Max Peck]

Try looking online about what the ironman code looks like in your sved game. Maybe just try ironman.
Anyrate look for it in you saved game and see what you have to do to change it. May a 1 to a 0.
Use notepad and find.
I do this sort of thing all the time in HoI2, but don't have 4.

From what I found online, there's a checksum of some sort and the free DLC changed it (like it's being treated as a mod rather than official DLC or something) so it is being treated as an invalid save file and the game acts like it doesn't exist. It was a late-game save, with the final outcome already evident, so I'm not too worried about finishing it. If Paradox fixes the bug I can always go back and let it play out to the bitter end. In the mean time, I started a new game (going with a Commie USA this time) after uninstalling the DLC.

[Sepiche]

I was looking through the workshop for HoI4 this weekend and ran across a fun Fallout mod called Old World Blues I thought I'd mention here. It starts sometime between the events of Fallout 2 and the events of Fallout: New Vegas and you can play as many of the west coast powers such as the Brotherhood of Steel, NCR, Caesar's Legions, New Vegas, etc.

Still in Alpha and there are noticeable holes in both the graphics and political tree for some factions, but there's a pretty fun arc you can follow if you play one of the major powers. There's even a number of submods that among other things add the Enclave Remnants as a faction, and one that adds courier 6 to the NCR vs Caesars Legion event chain.

Good for a fun change of pace if you're into slaughtering tribals with powered armor.

[Isgrimnur]

1.9

Please note that 1.9 will not be save game compatible with 1.8.2.

La Résistance