HoI3 Released: Broken on Launch (Surprise!)

[Thanas]

Hmmm. Looks like I might check it out then.

[Samuel]

I have to second Stark- the story is shit (feel free to skip the campaign) but the AI is competant. Annoyingly so for someone as bad at strategy games as me.

The only annoying thing is they keep on tweaking how the economy and buildings work. The only constant is the morality- go evil, grab the mind control center and never look back. Unless they fixed that exploit.

[Stark]

Neutral gets you the superguns nearer the start I think. I never use ethics, makes the game too easy.

[Vympel]

When I think space civ games, the last thing I'm worried about is the plot. To me the allure of those games is that you make up your own plot in your head as you go along.

And now I'm going to say that FRAGILE ALLEIGIANCE IS AWESOME, even though it's only tangentially relevant.

[Stark]

Don't make me crash my asteroid into your asteroid Vympel.

[Vympel]

Don't make me crash my asteroid into your asteroid Vympel.

Is it out on Steam yet? I have the original box + contents, but fucked if I know if it works on WinXP.

[Stark]

It takes a bit of poking but it works. Network play doesn't though, and if you can't fuck over your friends, what's the point?

Man, I wonder if Europa 1400 is on GOG or something, if network worked for that it'd be the best drunk game ever.

[fgalkin]

Whoa, so if the French hold only Paris, they can't be starved out?

Game fundamentally broken! HILARIOUS.

You surround Paris, and EVERONE ELSE starves.

Seriously. I've won wars that way. Surround the capital and their armies disintegrate.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[Duckie]

what's worse is the issue is easily solveable, especially with the improvements they made in HOI3.

Simply don't make every goddamn resource teleport/convoy into the capital first. Have local resource stockpiles in significant provinces, make it a distributed affair just like how their new headquarters system works, except automate it because nobody cares about managing resources even less than their clunky headquarters system. Make supply efficiency deteriorate based on distance and time taken, so that you need supply bases between the safe, empty backwater zones and the front to collect and distribute resources to the front-line, and the russians need the trans-siberian railroad to collect/send anything to the far east.

There, I just fixed the paris problem and the everything dies from encirclement problem, and made supply-heavy warfare- that is, invading russia and china- a lot harder legitimately, rather than the HOI3 way of giving communist china 50,000 over-teched soldiers and massive bonuses.

[Stark]

If you allowed the player to see/interact with the stockpile nodes, they could ignore it 99% of the time and still be able to move them during invasions. Holy shit, you could even steal someone's resources! AMAZING!

Turns out Paradox are dumb as fuck.

[Vympel]

The more I hear about this game, the less inclined I am to get it even after months and months of patches and an expansion pack to get it. Everything about it just reads dumb, lazy, sloppy, and ass.

HoI was a good first effort. It seems like they've been sliding downhill ever since.

[Thanas]

If you allowed the player to see/interact with the stockpile nodes, they could ignore it 99% of the time and still be able to move them during invasions. Holy shit, you could even steal someone's resources! AMAZING!

Turns out Paradox are dumb as fuck.

What is even better - during the 1944 HOI2 campaign, the AI russian player routinely moved the stockpiles when you got close to them. In the end, you had to chase them all to Siberia.

I wonder why they couldn't do that for the rest....oh wait, you already provided the explanation for that.

[Dooey Jo]

They must have had a temp-worker make the map or something. I can't believe a company that's made World War II games twice before can misplace Stalingrad. America I can see, because maybe swedes don't know where NYC is and it's not relevant to WWII, but how could they misplace stalingrad?

Oh I assure you, most Swedes have no idea where Stalingrad is/was, beyond "maybe Russia somewhere". Usually, maps are consulted to make up for such lack of knowledge. I don't know what went wrong in this case... Also, cool that they made Cloppenburg into its own sector or whatever. I've actually been there (not on purpose). It was so small it reminded me of home

[Battlehymn Republic]

D.) Refusal to consider certain game events like Holocaust or area bombing. I know that paradox doesn't want to approach the holocaust, because of european sensibilities; but, hell, in all of their games, they let you do Stalin's great multiple purges, which killed a lot of people, but somehow oppressing minorities is bad, especially considering how oppressing this minority led to a reduction in research brainpower (a lot of smart scientists fled Europe), and took away vital military needs (in 1944, as the Soviets approached poland, the SS monopolized railroads, shunting vital troop and ammunition trains to sidings to wait, while they fast-tracked expresses full of jews being 'evacuated' from areas soon to be liberated so they could kill them in germany.

A simple "oppress jews Y/N?" event that fires in 1933, and a few additional "increase oppression? Y/N" which reduces germany's brainpower, takes away a few IC to account for oppression costs, and reduces germany's diplomatic standing in the world would work pretty good, while not being incredibly controversial and tasteless, like "Build Extermination Camps Y/N? This will reduce your IC by 5 and POP by 10."

The community is full of stupid nationalists who get pissed off about the borders of Serbia. They do not need to deal with more cans of worms.

[Vendetta]

D.) Refusal to consider certain game events like Holocaust or area bombing. I know that paradox doesn't want to approach the holocaust, because of european sensibilities; but, hell, in all of their games, they let you do Stalin's great multiple purges, which killed a lot of people, but somehow oppressing minorities is bad, especially considering how oppressing this minority led to a reduction in research brainpower (a lot of smart scientists fled Europe), and took away vital military needs (in 1944, as the Soviets approached poland, the SS monopolized railroads, shunting vital troop and ammunition trains to sidings to wait, while they fast-tracked expresses full of jews being 'evacuated' from areas soon to be liberated so they could kill them in germany.

A simple "oppress jews Y/N?" event that fires in 1933, and a few additional "increase oppression? Y/N" which reduces germany's brainpower, takes away a few IC to account for oppression costs, and reduces germany's diplomatic standing in the world would work pretty good, while not being incredibly controversial and tasteless, like "Build Extermination Camps Y/N? This will reduce your IC by 5 and POP by 10."

The community is full of stupid nationalists who get pissed off about the borders of Serbia. They do not need to deal with more cans of worms.

More imporantly, Germany is a large market, and including those elements would render the game unsellable there. Paradox don't want to spend time balancing one version, let alone having to do two.

[Noble713]

Gave the game a run today after patching to 1.1 (which you CAN get from 3rd-party sites, BTW).

The trade system sucks. Germany tends to have a surplus of energy, and usually you have enough IC that you can dump it into supplies and have a huge surplus of that as well. In HoI2 you would trade your energy/supplies to other countries in exchange for oil/rares. Now you can't barter resources. Instead of doing 1 transaction (my supplies for your oil) you need 2 (my supplies for your money, my money for your oil). However, I can't get ANYONE to accept my money, even when they clearly need money and have a huge surplus of what I want. It's May 1936 and I have about 30 days of crude oil left.

I have no idea how the military hierarchy works. The tutorials don't even cover it.

Some information isn't clearly available. One of the triggers for Occupying the Rhineland is that the German army needs 40+ division. The "Statistics" tab lists the total number of brigades (100+) but not the number of divisions. I've just been assuming that I'm in the high 30's and hoping that the 4 reserve divisions I put in my production queue will be sufficient.

Bottom line: play the Total Realism mod for HoI2DDA and wait a year for sufficient patching/mods.

EDIT: I think the tech system could be pretty nice, once some competent folks go and tweak the hell out of it. When the game starts in 1936 you can't build IC/factories because you have to research a certain industrial technology first. The tech has the year 1918 on it....WTF? I could understand Liberia needing to research this, but Germany?

[TC Pilot]

More imporantly, Germany is a large market, and including those elements would render the game unsellable there. Paradox don't want to spend time balancing one version, let alone having to do two.

That probably has a lot to do with it. It's why Swastikas aren't even allowed on the forum, and why Paradox doesn't care all of its HoI games are banned in China.

[Serafina]

Gave the game a run today after patching to 1.1 (which you CAN get from 3rd-party sites, BTW).

The trade system sucks. Germany tends to have a surplus of energy, and usually you have enough IC that you can dump it into supplies and have a huge surplus of that as well. In HoI2 you would trade your energy/supplies to other countries in exchange for oil/rares. Now you can't barter resources. Instead of doing 1 transaction (my supplies for your oil) you need 2 (my supplies for your money, my money for your oil). However, I can't get ANYONE to accept my money, even when they clearly need money and have a huge surplus of what I want. It's May 1936 and I have about 30 days of crude oil left.

Clearly, you are doing it wrong. Trade is working just fine - just get into the diplomatic screen, there you can sort nations by their resources. Try to get oil from Venezuela and Persia. I can do it with the Soviet Union, so you should be able to do it, too.

I have no idea how the military hierarchy works. The tutorials don't even cover it.

RTFM - it's covered in the manual. You will need to rethink a LOT from HOI2, though.



[quote="Noble713"
EDIT: I think the tech system could be pretty nice, once some competent folks go and tweak the hell out of it. When the game starts in 1936 you can't build IC/factories because you have to research a certain industrial technology first. The tech has the year 1918 on it....WTF? I could understand Liberia needing to research this, but Germany?[/quote]

Well, thats another thing paradox messed up. The starting techs just make no sense. It's not that bad in 1936, as you can quickly research everyhting that is missing.
But if you start the 1944 scenario and the SU does not have a single industrial effectivity technology researched - thats just plain dumb.

[Commander 598]

Gave the game a run today after patching to 1.1 (which you CAN get from 3rd-party sites, BTW).

You can also get it right off the launcher under "Check for Updates".

[MKSheppard]

So, I know this is sort of a necro, but Patch 1.4 is now out.

I installed it on my unmodded version (which I got for a mere $7.50 from D2D during their great christmas sale.

Summary:

HOI3 Patch 1.04
Road To War 1936 Scenario
1920x1080 60 Hz
Core 2 Quad Q6600; 8 GB RAM, Geforce 8800 GTS

It takes about 4-5 seconds for each day in January 1936. By that average, it takes 150 seconds (2.5 minutes) for a 30-day month to pass. That comes out to 1800 seconds (30 minutes) for a year to pass.

1936-1939 is three years. That's 1.5 hours of doing nothing but staring at the screen as the US waiting for war to break out.

HOI3 is utterly unplayable, period. While waiting 30 minutes for a year to pass may be acceptable to some younger masochoists who have a lot of time, I'm no longer the person I was in 2002; I'm older now, and I don't want to spend time twiddling my thumbs.

For this reason, I just can't play Silent Hunter 3 and 4 anymore -- even a simple war patrol in SH4 with a S-Boat out of the phillipines takes several hours, due to the absolutely horrid time compression.

[Scottish Ninja]

I can't even stand to look at it; my eyes just glaze over as I fumble around the interface.

[Samuel]

Is HoI2 playable or does it need extensive modding? The game sounds interesting (at least better than The Calm and The Storm), but from the description of 3, it sounds like it is crap.

[Bluewolf]

Don't buy HOI2, go for Arsenal of Democracy instead. It is basically a mod of HOI2 sold as a game but it is a lot better than normal HOI2 and is less cluttered.

HOI2/AoD is far better than 3 but it sometimes can be a little pear headed, confusing and downright stupid. However it is not a bad game once you get the hang of it and AoD helps amend a lot of problems and cleans up some of the UI problems so if you feel like getting a HOI title, get that.

[MKSheppard]

One thing I just realized.

Why do I have to intervene and micromanage the diplomacy of the third reich?

I should be able to bring up a list of countries, and allocate a percentage of total diplomatic points to specific countries and set the overall tone of my diplomacy towards each country -- concilatory towards sweden, aggressive versus poland; and then hand it off to the Diplomatic AI to make the deals and wheedle people for me.

I should only have to intervene when a major strategic decision must be made that would have huge consequences -- e.g. you do NOT want the computer deciding on it's own to use your diplomatic points to try for a pro-fascist coup in Sweden; cause if it fails it will drive others away from you...

[TC Pilot]

Turns out there's an expansion for HoI3 in the works: 'Semper Fi'

-Player-determined hidden victory conditions that will keep opponents guessing
-Greater cooperation with allies, allowing players to request troops, convince their allies to attack a specific target and more
-Hundreds of new events added to immerse players in their own version of World War II, comparing the unfolding, alternate timeline to real history
-Vastly improved AI that will defend its territories valiantly, marshal large naval taskforces and launch multi-stage invasions