Hearts of Iron IV

I'm kinda curious about this game. Never tried it. Gonna be meeting the devs next month, and out of all the paradox games, this one seems like it would be most "up my alley."

I want to like this game, but for some reason, I just can't get into it. I played lots of HoI2 back in the day but this feels harder to control. I've played about 6 hours so far, mostly as the Soviet Union.

The new additions, like the production changes the way you draw orders over the map like battle plans, etc, all look great, so I'm willing to spend some time learning it, but I also don't feel much more comfortable with it now then when I started playing.

Any tips on getting better at the game?

Edit:

To be honest, I'm baffled by how difficult this game feels, because I used to play tons of HoI2 back when I was in high school, and I don't remember it being that hard. Have the games gotten more difficult, or have I just gotten accustomed to easier games?

The major countries besides Germany are going to be a real pain to play if you don't have experience with the not terribly intuitive mechanics. I recommend you play a country like Romania and ignore building/ researching ships entirely. Once you get a hang of the mechanics with a small country it's pretty easy to scale up. Ally with a major faction that will do broad stuff while you focus on a single front. If you are designing your own divisions look at combat width, you want it to be a multiple of 40 for maximum efficiency. 20 is recommended.

Also the dlcs are way overpriced but really necessary for the game, I recommend you do something naughty

Europa Universalis 4 (with all major DLCs) is the best Paradox game in the moment.

Avoid HoI4. Its a horrible game.


If you want a "true" Hearts of Iron experience, try that:


Darkest Hour: A Hearts of Iron Game - https://store.steampowered.com/app/73170/Darkest_Hour_A_Hearts_of_Iron_Game/


Its a HoI2 game made by modders.

Thanks for the advice, Tobis. I'll try playing as Romania and I'll see how things go.

Europa Universalis 4 (with all major DLCs) is the best Paradox game in the moment.

Avoid HoI4. Its a horrible game.


If you want a "true" Hearts of Iron experience, try that:


Darkest Hour: A Hearts of Iron Game - https://store.steampowered.com/app/73170/Darkest_Hour_A_Hearts_of_Iron_Game/


Its a HoI2 game made by modders.

In my six hours with Hearts of Iron 4, my main thought has been "I want to play Darkest Hour again instead."

Verdict's not in yet, though; I will give HoI4 a chance.

Could you elaborate more on why you prefer Darkest Hour? That's my current impression as well, but I haven't played HoI4 long enough yet to form a strong opinion.

I have 700-800 hours of HOI4 and I'd say that I definitely got my money's worth. However, after learning and understanding the game mechanics (though still being frustrated by them), the games becoming stale, monotonous, and sometimes outright stupid.

These complaints mostly reflect singleplayer and they rest on my observation that the truly challenging and lengthy games require the player to play as Germany or as an Axis nation in Europe for the simple reason being that the German AI is so incompetent that it loses the war. This issue was made worse with the "Death or Dishonour" DLC which made Germany's gobbling up of territory much more difficult. Basically, what ends up happening, is WWII starts very early and the Nazis just lose (one example is the AI Hungary backing Austria's independence and then allying with Italy) or Germany does OK against France and the Low Countries but then decides to declare war on the Soviets and launch Barbarossa in 1940 which proves extremely disastrous.

Eventually, with a democratic Germany, the USSR and the Allies will be drawn into a war because the USSR will intervene and declare war on Poland (Poland could join the allies), or meddle in the Middle East and Iran/Iraq/Turkey will be able to join the allies. This is because the AI, regardless of relations, will pursue their "National Focus Tree" (which roughly represents political actions that the player, as the leader of the country —often above the leader— can take) in its entirety if it is able. The focus trees are what the countries use to pursue their historical political actions (Hitler militarizing the Rhineland, Anschluss, claiming Czechoslovakia) but also actions that could have been taken (Hitler can partition Yugoslavia and then make Greece its puppet in addition to its Czechoslovakia branch of the tree).

After the monotony of the game is sort of...discovered, I guess, it makes playing any other country that won't intervene with a large economy/manpower pool irrelevant or any allied nation as irrelevant because you'll just win by 1942 or 1941 or even earlier. The only exception is France, which is often extremely difficult; however, as Germany goes down its focus tree and declares war on the Low Countries (assuming that France doesn't join the allies and instead makes the "Little Entente" and backs Czechoslovakia/Romania) the allies soon join in the war and win the game.

When it comes to multiplayer, there's a lot of issues surrounding the mechanics of the game that limit or inhibit your actions. Politically, the game can become a mess. When there are more than two factions involved in the same war or when there are three factions fighting it out against each other (allies vs axis vs comintern) the peace process gets complicated. Factors on the ground are ignored and instead the selecting of territories to directly control or administer through puppets rely on "war score" which is mostly an amalgamation of casualties sustained and territory occupied. I've played games where I lose hundreds of thousands of soldiers because they find themselves cutoff in territory that was awarded to an unfriendly state that I do not have access to (so supplies are exhausted and with 0 organization, the units cannot move). The peace process is also frustrating because the two highest-scoring players are able to dictate the outcome of the peace treaties, effectively sidelining other players. It's worse when the AI is one of those two players and they do something asinine. They often get inflated war score because they incur so many casualties in their stupid tactics of just throwing men at the enemy line and losing consistently.
When it comes to military combat, there are other limiting issues. It's impossible to plan a grandiose amphibious invasion like D-Day. Amphibious invasion plans and airborne drops cannot be coordinated on certain dates/times, and artificial ports are not a thing (although air-dropped supplies were recently added which mitigates this effect to some degree). So, the allies fighting for one-three months in Normandy w/out Cherbourg or Le Havre would be impossible in HOI4 because your units will just die. Amphibious invasions are also very easy to repel because of the way that the supply system works; in France or anywhere in Europe, a German player with good micro will be able to repel any invasion by simply encircling any blemish with superior numbers of divisions and, often, driving a panzer army into the middle of it.


There are a lot of other issues with the game that I don't really want to elaborate on as this is already lengthy, but I'd say that the game is good when you understand the mechanics and use those to win a few games. Then, it become stale and frustrating. Technology more or less stops in 1945 (as the game isn't built for a cold war) but I have played games (especially before I understood mechanics fully) that go into the 1950s and well into them.

tl;dr if it's on sale buy it.

That being said, if anyone wants to play sometime, I'd be down. multiplayer games are pretty fun and they switch up the stale shit. I like going with royalist or somewhat a-historical focus trees (Japan, Hungary are my two favourites).

Could you elaborate more on why you prefer Darkest Hour? That's my current impression as well, but I haven't played HoI4 long enough yet to form a strong opinion.

More deeper than any "pure HoI" made by Paradox.


Darkest Hour with Skiff icons > all