HoI3 Released: Broken on Launch (Surprise!)

[Psychic_Sandwich]

Or this might be paradox's evil idea to halt software piracy, by making patches only availabe through their forums to registered users of the game, by making v1.0 and 1.1 so horribly unplayable....

That would elevate them from bumblers to evil geniuses.

[Stark]

It'll work too, because nobody ever puts patches up for download - least of all pirates!

The only security Paradox software (I hesitate to use the word 'game') has is that so few people play them nobody can be fucked cracking them. It WOULD work if - like Stardock - the games were polished and fun, so people would rather buy than jigger about, but they're buggy, ugly, bland, slider-em-ups.

[MKSheppard]

Behold!



yes, that's australia invading east prussia.



Finland has invaded TRUK, in the Pacific.

[MKSheppard]

More Whackiness:


I present to you, the Mexican D-Day, and right into Germany too! Suck on it Eisenhower!

[Thanas]

UGH. The names. For heaven's sake, Cuxhaven is a nest of 10.000 inhabitants. Bremerhaven is merely the harbor of Bremen. Cloppenburg is a village. Wiesmoor is another small city. The real name for that regions would be the weser-ems region. And Leck/Heide...WTF?

None of that map makes any sense at all. We now learn that Paradox is too lazy to even pick up a decent map of germany.

[Samuel]

I'm curious- if you play the game as a minor power and in a way that does not affect anything what is the "normal" result?

[CaptainChewbacca]

Anyone shocked a conflicted, contradictory, and downright incomprehensible game was created by a company called 'Paradox'?

[Steve]

Mexican D-Day! LMFAO.

I still remember the one game I played of HOI2DD where Japan invaded Soviet Lithuania after Barbarossa.

[Stark]

Anyone shocked a conflicted, contradictory, and downright incomprehensible game was created by a company called 'Paradox'?

The only part that ISN'T funny is that I think Majesty 2 is being published by Paradox... so it'll probably suck and not work either.

[Serafina]

I'm curious- if you play the game as a minor power and in a way that does not affect anything what is the "normal" result?

Currently, it's pretty much "anthing goes".

In fact, it is very unlikely that you will get a historical outcome unless most major nations are controlled by human players.
The current diplomatic balance requires that these major powers take several diplomatic&spionage actions they took historically. However, the AI is utterly stupid, as far as diplomacy is concerned.

Thus, nearly every country will drift toward the allies, because germany will not use diplomacy the right way and has crappy espionage.

Also, the invasions are already infamous. It was possible to launch utterly ridicoulus invasions in HOI2 - such as human-controlled soviet union launching an invasion in northern germany.
Now, the AI is equally "competent" - in HOI2, the AI could harly launch any invasion, not they can - and they do it a lot.
Because they have no restrictions, you will see minor nations invade germany in 1939 and similar stuff.

I actually like most of the changes. Hoi2 was heavily railroaded - you could hardly avoid historical wars.
Hoi3 offers way more freedom, which is good.
However, the AI needs to be adjusted so that it acts historically - in HOI2, it was as much railroaded as the player.
Now, it is producing utterly unhistorical crap.

I can forgive these gross oversights, as far as the AI is concerned, because there are some positive aspects to it.
The only thing that really pisses me off is the map - nearly everything is wrong, names, positions, terrain...
There were some adjustments in HOI2 - Paris was not urban, to prevent a french last stand against the germans.
But these were rare and justified - Hoi3 is just plain wrong and stupid.

[Stark]

It's pretty funny that they break the map to stop 'wrong' things happening (that they simply don't like) instead of making the mechanics tend to produce the 'right' results. Hack in historical accuracy, because their totally broken systems will NEVER produce it.

[Serafina]

It's pretty funny that they break the map to stop 'wrong' things happening (that they simply don't like) instead of making the mechanics tend to produce the 'right' results. Hack in historical accuracy, because their totally broken systems will NEVER produce it.

If thats refers to Paris provincial terrain in HOI2:
Changing the terrain type of a single province is better than rewriting the whole combat system. Really, it was a desing decision based on simple observation:
Players used to create a stronghold in urban paris, delayig german troops for several weeks (as it is the french capital, you will have sufficient supplies). Superstacks made that even worse.
Thus, they changed the terrain type of a single province - it was a reasonable design decision.

The HOI3-map is in no way reasonable - getting a name wrong does not affect gameplay, its just plain stupidity.
Placing Stalingrad 500km away from its right positon could be justified by delaying german conquest -except that it is not, because that was not an issue in HOI2.
And so on.

[Stark]

Oh sure, late in development it makes sense; it's still a hack because their combat system sucks. The idea of holding out in Paris really shows why it's absurd to expect historical outcomes in the game given it's political and combat mechanics. That anyone thinks it's even remotely realistic is hilarious.

Their failure to even open an atlas for 3 is funny nonetheless.

[Samuel]

What is wrong with making a last stand in Paris? Didn't they do exactly that 1870? Sure it is ahistorical, but anything the human player does aims to be that way.

[Stark]

Ahistorical doesn't necessarily mean 'unrealistic'. The point is that if you start in 1938, having this happen is apparently 'bad' so they hacked it to be impossible (clumsily). All the other totally bullshit things that happen are too hard to fix this way so everyone just shrugs and claims the combat and dip systems aren't totally broken, and it's all about the sliders anyway.

It basically means the game has zero ability to produce realistic results, so the WW2 trappings are just superficial shit to sell games to idiots.

[TC Pilot]

The way capitals worked in HoI2 was pretty bad. It's where all your supplies and resources are distributed from. In a game as Germany one time, I encircled Moscow but didn't capture it, which caused the Red Army to starve to death since it couldn't get any supplies. It also allows silly things like, as Poland in 1939, moving all my troops to Warsaw and camping there, making it an impenetrable fortress. Same with just about any urban terrain province.

[Stark]

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

Game fundamentally broken! HILARIOUS.

[TC Pilot]

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

Not unless they run out of stockpiled supplies, which you should have enough to last for years, but you can use the IC in the capital to make more, until you run out of stockpiled resources, which you should have enough to last for decades.

[RogueIce]

I suppose it's an odd balance in these games. I mean you, as the player, know what's going to happen and when it's going to happen, more or less. And so you spend the pre-war years building along those lines. Unless something weird happens, like Poland folding in "Danzig or War!" or whatever.

As a developer, how do you prevent the player being "gamey" with this historical knowledge? As the USSR, for example, you could build up your army, sit them on your western border and just wait for Barbarossa, which you know is coming sometime in 1941. So that when the Germans declare war, you just steamroll their asses. I'm sure there are other little tricks you could use as well.

So in one sense, the crazy unhistorical things that are happening are interesting, in the sense that as a player you have to be ready for lots of stuff...like the Mexicans stabbing you in your dick back as Germany when you're trying to invade the USSR.

Nonetheless though, they could definately stand to fix things, like the diplomatic drift to the Allies that always seems to happen. People on the Paradox forums have wondered why they went back to the triangle when the system in HoI2 seemed to work semi-decently, at least in the sense that not everybody went to Allies/Comintern and fucked the Axis.

On a nonserious note regarding the map, I just wonder if some map designer was following the forums and people complaining about how "this river should be HERE!" and so on, so he or she decided to just say, "Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke" and we get the map in this game.

[Samuel]

As a developer, how do you prevent the player being "gamey" with this historical knowledge? As the USSR, for example, you could build up your army, sit them on your western border and just wait for Barbarossa, which you know is coming sometime in 1941. So that when the Germans declare war, you just steamroll their asses. I'm sure there are other little tricks you could use as well.

Well, for starters it would be used as an indication by the AI that you were planning to invade Europe and would cause nations to make defensive alliances to counter you.

If you can't make the AI smart enough to do this, make it triggers for the most common "cheats" so that you can't invade the US in 1936 or unify the Americas while your neighbors wait to be conquered.

[RogueIce]

Well, for starters it would be used as an indication by the AI that you were planning to invade Europe and would cause nations to make defensive alliances to counter you.

If I remember the dev diaries right, that is what they did. And may be partially to blame for the "everybody in the Allies" thing, because Germany is taking over Europe so the other countries shit a brick and ally up.

Not that they're apparently doing so in the smartest fashion, ie: some example I heard of where Hungary (?) went with the Allies, even though there was no way the UK and Co. could help them and they'd be easily taken by the Germans.

[Samuel]

You could counter that by having countries in weak positions decide their alliance based on ideology. So right wing would join the Axis under threat even if the threat was the Axis. It seems the right style of diplomacy for this time period.

[Stark]

Only idiots or simulationists care about 'ahistorical' (and frankly if Paradox weren't totally incompetent they'd offer a 'historical mode' to give people their 'proper WW2' fix). It's that the core systems of the game produce totally absurd results, and they have to cripple/hack/clumsily patch over the consequences of their own maths to make the game seem 'realistic'. It's really nothing of the sort, of course, but they're selling the cachet of a 'serious' strategy game that is so totally broken top to bottom that almost nothing that happens will make any sense.

What Paradox passes off as 'diplomatic AI" I call 'nine or ten set rules'. GalCiv2 had actual based-on-game-situation dip; this doesn't.

[Thanas]

^Is GalCiv2 fun? I have a copy sitting in my living room, but I have never picked it up.

[Stark]

Its idiosyncratic and contains some awful writing, but as a space civ sort of game its excellent. The dip isn't perfect, but at least the enemy players react to situations and know what the victory conditions are (ie, they can work out you're selling ships to their enemy and get angry, they can work out if you die than another player will win through diplomatic victory and thus work to keep you alive, etc). Your ability to propose diplomatic actions is sadly limited, but its still more 'interesting' than the likes of Civ etc.

EDIT - Each of the expansions added functionality, so I'm not sure what goes with which version. I believe the first addon was nearly essential, but they added much of it into later patches for the basic game too.