Hearts of Iron

[stokeriño]

The simplest you can make the military stuff is I guess to just create an army, assign it a front line (your border), assign it an objective line (the target) and click 'go'. You can cancel/edit those instructions at any time but if you don't then they will just organise their own little battles and manoeuvres in pursuit of their assigned goal.

Similarly with air forces or navies you just assign them to an area and click which action you want them to perform (e.g. air superiority, support ground forces, etc.) and you can just leave them to it.

Obviously keeping things this simple won't be the most successful way of playing the game, but technically it works.

12 minutes ago, Jasonmufc said:

- AI Germany is shockingly bad in every way on historical, because they will declare war as long as they have a war goal. So even though Germany was getting pushed back by the Dutch, they still decided to declare on Denmark/Norway, and the Russians too. Needless to say, it didn't go well.

In fairness, I discovered the hard way that if you have a war goal and ignore it for long enough then you get punished (as Germany at least) for being too weak with penalties to your national unity and political power and such.

Not to say that the AI Germany wasn't stupid. Just stupid in a different way.  

[JasonM]

1 minute ago, metalman said:

How did you find it? I like the idea apart from all the military strategy. I'm rubbish at that and find it all a bit too much micromanagement. But is there an automation option? I know given the nature of the game that wouldn't leave me with a whole lot to do. :/

As a whole I find the best thing Paradox has done in HOI4 is making it much less overwhelming than HOI3, 3 was a micro-managing slog and a half and had too many options. HOI4 on the other hand sometimes feels as it has too little options research wise, but it makes up with it by streamlining the experience. (early AI issues aside).

You can set up front lines using an easy drawing tool, and then draw one or multiple offensive lines for an army to follow. Which can be as simple as simply going 'get to paris', or more complicated by drawing offensive lines near rivers, mountains, cities, and just making a meticulously planned attack. The unit will prepare (giving them boosts), and once done you can send them on their way and they'll try to accomplish the objectives as you've set them up.

Currently it's very vanilla, which means there's plenty of issues with the AI on both sides of the fight. Which often means they're not aggressive, or overly aggressive in the wrong places (attacking over a river into a mountain area, whilst a few provinces back there's a weakly defended flank). Or they encircle an enemy, waste units to keep him there, and never actually crushing the pocket, which sometimes means there are multiple encircled areas of 1 division surrounded by 8, and they just stand there until you go in yourself and tell the troops to just finish the job.

But despite the AI doing their plans, you can always override a single divisions orders and perhaps send them to collapse a pocket, finish an encirclement, or rush a victory point, and the AI will react accordingly by sending other units to stack up as backup.

It's far from perfect, but with time the game will no doubt be yet another great paradox game. But I can suggest you check out a few Let's plays first before you might buy the game. I can suggest players like Arumba, Quill18, and especially DDRJake (who works for Paradox as head of QA)

[stokeriño]

I watched some of those Let's Plays. The 'Three Day War' multiplayer one that Quill18/Arumba/others did was so long that I skimmed through it, but it was fun watching the Axis players just obliterate France by 1938, with the remainder of the videos dominated by the other players going "...what the fuck just happened?".

[JasonM]

8 minutes ago, stokeriño said:

I watched some of those Let's Plays. The 'Three Day War' multiplayer one that Quill18/Arumba/others did was so long that I skimmed through it, but it was fun watching the Axis players just obliterate France by 1938, with the remainder of the videos dominated by the other players going "...what the fuck just happened?".

DDRJake is the best at powergaming, seeing he stomped South America with El Salvador (until the USA got involved), and he has conquered Asia, beaten Germany, and beaten Russia with lowly Bhutan.

But then again, he got hired by Paradox to be head of QA because he's relentless at abusing anything that can be abused against the AI when he conquered the world in EU4 with Ryukyu

[JasonM]