I actually quite liked 3, but I only played it with FTM and TFH. I really like the national focus system that they've introduced, the non-historical routes feel historical and don't punish you for not following the historical route. It also makes the Axis/Allies/Comintern system feel much more alive.

Division composition seems as difficult as ever, but less transparent because of the whole army experience factor. I'm not sure if expanding your current divisions is preferable or not, because I can't really tell how it influences combat width etc. And while I'm really glad that they made the air combat more sensible and realistic, I'm not sure I like how much focus is being placed on fighters. Air superiority is key, but I can't seem to figure out how to min/max it. In my Germany playthrough I had a lot of trouble fending of British bombers, Soviet naval bombers and establishing air superiority on the Eastern Front.

The AI seems to have a lot of issues, especially when it comes to the Axis. I've seen Italy being invaded and defeated by British naval invasions in early 1940, because they sent 90 divisions to a naval invasion of The Netherlands for unknown reasons. I don't like how your allies offer you expedition forces instead of just fighting themselves. The AI also makes really weird choices when it comes to front lines, and I can't really figure out why. Strategic redeployment to the front, 50 divisions just standing in a province doing nothing. I figured it was the supplies in the region so I sent them elsewhere, but unlike as in 3 you can't disable the AI from counteracting your orders, so they immediately redeploy elsewhere.

Research seems really simplified compared to 3. I think in 3 you had to commit to a limited amount of diversification of troops, especially if you weren't playing a major country (or Italy). In 4 you can basically research everything as a major, and the trade-off is that you have to decide between upgrading or training new divisions. I'm not sure how I feel about this, mostly because I really like the production lines but I'm unsure about the reduction in research technologies.

Despite all this, I really like it. The music is way better than in 3, much more diverse. But mostly I have complaints, because it's not as good as I hoped it would be. Most are minor complaints: for example the fact that you get a naval invasion warning sound + small popup every time an allied nation transports troops by sea to an allied province. I just don't get that, how did they not notice and fix that during development? HoI is an incredibly tense game for me, and that sound scares me. Are the British invading Northern France? Have the Dutch come to reclaim their country? No, it's the Greeks transporting a division to Albania.

 

I'm planning on picking this up once I get my desktop back up and running. I may wait for the first couple of patches to come out, though. Paradox are well known for releasing games that have pretty severe issues then fixing them up into playable shape over the course of a couple of months. Still, it's good that this one actually works on release. I remember when HoI3 came out.

 

They've tightened up in that regard. It's definitely stable.


Of course, AI is still trash. After *finally* teaching the AI to launch naval invasions, in true Paradox fashion everyone is now launching the damn things all over the place.

Still, the pieces are all there. It will be solid once it gets cleaned up.

 

What was so complicated about Division composition in 3? There were like 2 general builds for armored divisions and non-specialized infantry that only really changed in TFH. I always liked the implied variety but fundamentally the bonuses for a fully optimized division usually relied on uncertain terrain features and the differences between optimized and not were relatively limited (5-10%). It was a bit like optimizing Order of Battle and manually selecting every general, somewhat complicated and time consuming, but the ultimate benefit was relatively limited.

How do people feel about the battle planning features and combat in general? Are you using it or still microing individual units? Game certainly looks interesting but waiting for a few expansions or a complete edition is often a good idea with paradox games, or at least that's what I tell myself to stop an impulse buy.

 

The AI is crap, battleplanner is okay, britain is able to mobilize too quickly and is ridiculously strong with its ahistorical amount of divisions, tech- and focus tree are too simple.

That's my opinion of the game right now.

 

I've been playing this. I love it so far but it has two big problems. One being that the AI is just retarded.

I conquered US with Mexico by constantly luring them into the mountains and forcing them to drink attrition then pushing them back and making them do it again and again. By the time I started to push into US proper they had 3m casualties. And since the ai is retarded none of the other allies manage to launch a naval invasion.

Second is tanks being pointless. They are just too time/resource intensive for how strong they are. 2Inf/2Arty/Anti-tank columns appear to be the most cost effective way to conquer the world. I suspect it's the reason why USSR does as well as it does in this game, since they can just swarm with their unlimited manpower.

 

But they would just sit there. I would set a fallback line and reinforce my line to where they wouldn't/couldn't push forward and they would just sit there. In other pdox games they will at least reevaluate and try something else.

 

Having recently got the game, I have to say. Compared to HoI3, I am fucking loving my time with IV. Didn't have to spend the same bullshit hours I did last time to then learn that I had to tinker with 3's OOB to be successful. With 4, I can learn and still play the fucking game.

I'm really hoping they add something to do with Political Power because mid-game, it tends to accrue once your nation is set and do hope they add more National Focuses for the Balkan and Nordic countries along with Spain (Two, I think would fit depending on who wins the Civil war) and China (Similar to Spain).

That aside, the game is enjoyable and while there's problems here and there, Paradox is going to fix them.

 

Found out something fun. If you load your game all your warscore from bombing goes away.

I was playing a Romania game and decided to play it through to completion even if mopping up all the allies is a chore. (really brazil? I just nuked UK and USA back in to the stone age, but you think you should have a go at leading the free world?)

And since it's so much of a chore i decided to see if the AI can manage it while I read something. So I just set up some 10 runs of Strat Bombers and set to bombing the world as Germany ever so slowly advanced on the allies, also I threw nukes around like they were candy.

The combined effect of this was that I had something like 60% warscore, mostly from bombing, my occupation was half of Germany's.

So I load up the game today and lo and behold I'm at 29% warscore vs Germany's 60 as the game only shows occupation scores.