From what I can tell World Tension should work a little like Aggressive Expansion. The further away from the act of aggression you are the less of an impact it should have. Effectively each country would have their own WT number.
For instance, Italy's invasion of Ethiopia should be little more than a blip on America's radar.
Forex, on the eve of Germany's invasion of Poland tensions in Europe should be around 60-75%, but across the Atlantic in the USA, the Tension should be more like 25-35% unless the human player takes certain national focuses. After the Invasion of Poland, Denmark, and Norway, the USA's WT would be at around 42-45%. This would allow Cash and Carry.
By 1940, due to the Fall of France and Unrestricted Submarine Warfare (USW would be a modifier that gradually ticks up USA's tension meter), USA's tension should be over 50%. This would allow Lend Lease and a more unrestricted military build up. In Europe tensions already at 100%.
By 1941 USA's tension should be at around 55% due to the German invasion of the USSR. By the end of 1941 Pearl Harbor happens dragging the US in to war with Japan. Then of course Germany can accept the call to arms or not, thus delaying the USA's entry into the European theater.
Of course there should be foci on the USA focus tree that Ahistorically drives up tensions for players who want to get involved early.
So. I've been thinking about internal politics, and how they might be improved.
It would be pretty easy to add a whole bunch of political parties and just have them sit there, not doing anything. Internal politics should be a fleshed out feature, and it should add something to the game besides flavour.
So, what I was thinking is that political parties should have some of the features of the domestic policy sliders from Hearts of Iron II. Get rid of the "Democratic/Communist/Fascist/Nonaligned" system, and get rid of the party popularity pie chart.
Instead, each country has a number of political parties, and each has a set of policies, which would be as follows:
Ideology: These would be the ten old minister ideologies from HoI3: Stalinist, Marxist-Leninist, Radical Socialist, Social Democratic, Social Liberal, Market Liberal, Social Conservative, Paternal Autocrat, Fascist, National Socialist. The main purpose of ideology would be 1) to determine whether the party will allow elections when they're in government and 2) provide a base for diplomatic relations. Rather than a flat "-10 different ideology" the way it is now, there should be a sliding scale. So a Social Democratic government is somewhat fine (perhaps no relations bonus or penalty) with a Radical Socialist government, they'd be okay with all the other Democratic governments, but they'd have a strong relations penalty with right-wing dictatorships. Likewise, Social Conservative governments would have okay relations with Paternal Autocrats, minor penalties with further right-wing governments, minor bonus with all other democratic governments, and severe penalties with left-wing dictatorships. Finally, the "blue" parties count as Democratic, and when those parties are in power the country holds elections. If a "brown" or "red" party comes into power, a dictatorship is established.
Foreign policy: Interventionism/Isolationism. If your ruling party is interventionist, you have a lower World Tension threshold that you have to reach before you can do certain actions (further changed by special modifiers, such as with the USA). Likewise, an isolationist ruling party has a higher WT threshold before you can start getting involved in things.
Economic policy: This one might be a bit unnecessary, given how economic laws work in HoI4, but you could have a Free Market/Mixed Economy/Central Planning scale. Free Markets get bonuses production efficiency growth and factory construction, and the cost of requiring more factories devoted to consumer goods and more resources to trade. Central Planning economies, meanwhile, get bonuses to factory output and production efficiency retention, at the cost of construction speed and production efficiency growth. Mixed economies get no bonuses or penalties.
Each party would have two internal stats: organisation and popularity. Organisation (scale of 0 to 100) represents how much control a party has over the government and state institutions, while popularity (percent value) represents how much of the population supports a given party. When trying to take over a foreign government, you'd have a choice between boosting popularity or boosting organisation. Boosting popularity takes longer, but creates a more stable government and allows you to subvert the democratic process. Boosting organisation is quicker and requires violent overthrow of the state, and can result in a party taking over that has little popular support. Boosting organisation in the short-run can also boost popularity in the long-run
Furthermore, if you coup a nation with a party that has your exact same ideology, you have the choice of forcing the nation to join your faction (if applicable) or turning the country into a puppet. If you coup a nation with a party with a similar ideology, you don't get that option, meaning you have less control over the new government.
This would add a new strategic layer to the game. For example, let's say you're the Soviet Union and you're trying to make France communist. The French Stalinist Party (eg the PCF) starts with low popularity and low organisation. The Radical Socialists (eg SFIO), on the other hand, have much higher popularity and organisation, so have a better chance of winning an election, but a SFIO-led France is less likely to toe the party line coming out of Moscow.
You could try to infiltrate foreign parties to get them to align more closely to your interests. In the above mentioned scenario, rather than trying to boost the PCF, a USSR player could infiltrate the SFIO and slowly turn the party into a Stalinist one that will obey directives from Moscow. Countries with low national unity would be more susceptible to this, and it would take quite an investment of political power to do this successfully, but it would allow you to find a party with "similar" ideology, make use of their existing popularity and organization, and use that to your own means.
Finally, you should be able to change your ruling party's policies through national focuses, or possibly some sort of new system just so the choice is repeatable, but it should take much longer than the standard 70 days, perhaps 240 days, to represent it being something very difficult to do.
Not every country will have a party for all ideologies, so a sample selection of parties might look something like this:
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA)
Ideology: National Socialist
Foreign Policy: Interventionist
Economic Policy: Central Planning
Organization: 0
Popularity: negligible
Leader: Fritz Julius Kuhn
GERMANY
Communist Party of Germany (KPD)
Ideology: Marxist-Leninist
Foreign Policy: Interventionist
Economic Policy: Central Planning
Organisation: 5
Popularity: 10%
Leader: Ernst Thälmann
Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD)
Ideology: Social Democratic
Foreign Policy: Interventionist
Economic Policy: Mixed Economy
Organisation: 15
Popularity: 15%
Leader: Kurt Schumacher
German Democratic Party (DDP)
Ideology: Market Liberal
Foreign Policy: Isolationist
Economic Policy: Free Market
Organisation: 5
Popularity: 5%
Leader: Wilhelm Külz (mainly because Germany needs his beard)
German Centre Party (Zentrum)
Ideology: Social Conservative
Foreign Policy: Isolationist
Economic Policy: Mixed Economy
Organisation: 20
Popularity: 10%
Leader: Konrad Adenauer
German National People's Party (DNVP)
Ideology: Fascist
Foreign Policy: Interventionist
Economic Policy: Mixed Economy
Organisation: 40
Popularity: 5%
Leader: Carl Friedrich Goerdeler
National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP)
Ideology: National Socialist
Foreign Policy: Interventionist
Economic Policy: Central Planning
Organization: 75
Popularity: 55%
Leader: Adolf Hitler
Using "ministers" to change your government would also have to be adjusted. There would be an "opposition parties" law that you'd change from "opposition banned" to "opposition tolerated" or "all parties legal", significantly boosting the organisation of the "blue" democratic parties. You could then further boost parties' popularity through events, choosing which sort of democratic party you want to be in power.
Going the opposition direction from democracy to dictatorship would probably be pretty close to how it is now: choose a minister and wait for dictatorship to come about.
I wish there was a tool to raise national unity. Like spending 150 political power and have a modifier that would raise national unity but would give a modifier that would prevent you from using it too often.
Just playing Germany, tore apart Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia. Have Hungary in camp, preparing to annex Danzig after coup. Got Poland to agree to land transfer (Slovakia for Danzig!)
Biggest threat?
Italy facing down my puppet state (Croatia)
I don't know actually. I'd steam rolled the Axis by 1943 and the SU had been so weakened by the war I felt like it was no threat.
Then the peace conference happened. I fucked up by basically failing to understand how they worked and the changes it caused were so radical the game crashed less than 24 hours after the conference ended.
I'm sitting here listening to a podcast about the Battle of Britain, that goes into excruciating detail about each day and numbers of planes involved and lost and it's just making it even clearer that the system in game is incapable of reflecting the reality of aerial warfare. The problem isn't the sheer numbers as I had said previously, I checked those and actually a single nation possessing thousands of planes at a time isn't that unrealistic. The problem comes with said nations ability to employ all of those aircraft seemingly simultaneously. I'm listening about a big raid the Germans are forming up for a big attack, a huge force, the biggest yet seen, numbering about 1000 planes in total, of which between 6-700 are fighters. That's supposed to be enormous. Meanwhile, in game, I'm looking at over 3000 fighters, not all aircraft, just fighters, patrolling the Channel. What the actual fuck.
I think the problems are three fold;
1) The game is incapable of simulating the fact that the pilots are not invincible robots that need neither food nor sleep and are perfectly content to fly around the clock for eternity if ordered to do so. Contrast with what I'm listening to about one of big problems facing both sides as September 40 approached being exhaustion of pilots. In addition, these robots are also apparently all made the exact same, perform identically and are incapable of learning anything, hence why there is no reflection in game that the planes are actually being flown by human beings (experience etc) and didn't just roll from the factory to the runway and take off.
2) The game is piss poor at dealing with obsolete aircraft. Sure, if I research the Spitfire or the Fw190, I don't want my Hurricanes or 109s to instantly disappear from existence. But equally if I spent the first few years building loads of 109s and now it's 1947 and everyone is pumping out jets, why am I still able to send poor Johan up in an aircraft that has been obsolete for 7 years? I'm pretty sure that's where most of the big numbers come from, the AI can deploy hordes of obsolete biplanes so will deploy hordes of obsolete biplanes.
3) There was definitely a third point but I've forgotten it while rambling about the other stuff. There's just so much wrong with the entire air system I could have half a dozen points and only scratch the surface.
I REMEMBERED. As with half the other borked system in the game, it's the AIs fault. The AI seems to be piss poor in handling airforces, not from a utility stand point but from an even remotely realistic standpoint. Exhibit A, 3000 fighters in the Channel, and nowhere else. If this reflected real life Britain would have the bulk of their forces in southern England, with some patrolling the Channel, some the North Sea coast, some in North Africa or Malta or Gibraltar etc (note that even this isn't realistic, Fighter Command in Britain was a mostly reactive force but the game can't simulate that at all, more problems for another time). Instead, 95%, or even all, of their fighters are patrolling one sea zone and I'm pretty damn sure if I tried to attack, say, shipping in the North Sea with naval bombers, I'd suddenly find 3000 fighters patrolling the North Sea. The AI simply can't realistically control it's airforces, instead throwing around this giant sledgehammer of planes of all makes and models, and the worst part is that the only way to counter it is to hit back with your own even bigger tard clump of planes.
Things get really weird if you are super aggro as the Soviets.
Declaring War on Germany in 1938 basically causes the AI Politics to commit suicide. Because the Allies don't have Poland to guarantee since I annexed it in '37, they have stayed completely out of the war.
The war goes as follows: Declare War on Germany, with about 12 divisions around Ostreprussen, and around 114 on the German border. Whenever my units are attacking they are pressing hard, pushing the Germans back. However, the Germans were counterattacking my lines which I was winning... over the course of a week or two, severely delaying my advance. However, my spearhead of 8 Light Tanks and 3 Motorized Battalions (default SU battalions, IIRC), Managed to collapse the German front against the Czech border, trapping about 25 of their divisions to starve while twelve of mine surrounded them. But as my lines reach the Pommern port, it becomes TTL Stalingrad. The Italians who joined the Axis in response to my DoW, have arrived. I can no longer advance, and it becomes a war of attrition. However, I am bleed equipment faster than I can produce it, and so my division's strength wanes.
In the East, Japan is slowly pushing my troops north. However China pushes Japan north as well, and I have a brief hope that we can sandwich them between us, before they get split in two by a Japanese invasion that gets assisted by some Italian and German armor divisions.
Back at the German front, disaster is beginning to creep in. I learned my lesson from my first go at this, where I told my troops to fall back to a fallback line on better terrain and rivers, and the entire front collapsed and I lost a third of my divisions as they were encircled or overrun by the faster German armor. This time I told only half my troops to fall back, to let them build up entrenchment, and then prepared to manually retreat the rest. However, as soon as my troops left the line, the Germans began pressing their advantage. I quickly ordered my troops to reform on the front, losing precious ground. Slowly we were pushed back over the course of a month, but they paid in blood. However, just as things looked their bleakest... Communist France joined the fray and it became a two front war. The war should have been over instantly since there were literally 0 troops on the French border, but apparently the French believe in fair play and waited for the Germans and Italians to reach their border before actually attacking. However, this meant the fresh Italian forces were no longer guarding the German border and my understrength troops began pressing in. Finally, the German AI also decided that since they were at war with France, now would be an excellent time to attack Belgium, Luxembourg, and Netherlands. However, since the Allies were not at war, they all joined the Comintern. The complete rout of the German army and after the fall of Berlin was saved by Hungarian troops showing up, but the end was inevitable. All that remains of the Reich is their Chinese Army and lands. Italy has been pushed into the Mediterranean Islands, and France is pushing them out of Africa as well. Hungary has fallen, and the Netherlands have been taken back over by my troops.
New divisions of the NKVD are in training to suppress the German Population, but the lack of Infantry Weapons is putting everything on hold. After pumping out Military Factories to try and stem the bleeding, I am beginning to build 50% Civilian, 25% Military, and 25% Repairing, to prepare for the inevitable push into the Japanese home islands. Once the supplies issue has been fixed, it will be time to pursue carriers and prepare for Operation Morskoy Lev and the push into the Turkey and the Raj. In the meantime, I am following my focuses to grab the tiny little nations on my border if the UK doesn't guarantee them since I am not justifying against them the normal way.
Currently Luxembourg, Communist France, Netherlands, and Belgium are all part of the Comintern. I sadly didn't get China into it unlike my last attempt, where the war kicked off before the United Front could fire.
I REMEMBERED. As with half the other borked system in the game, it's the AIs fault. The AI seems to be piss poor in handling airforces, not from a utility stand point but from an even remotely realistic standpoint. Exhibit A, 3000 fighters in the Channel, and nowhere else. If this reflected real life Britain would have the bulk of their forces in southern England, with some patrolling the Channel, some the North Sea coast, some in North Africa or Malta or Gibraltar etc (note that even this isn't realistic, Fighter Command in Britain was a mostly reactive force but the game can't simulate that at all, more problems for another time). Instead, 95%, or even all, of their fighters are patrolling one sea zone and I'm pretty damn sure if I tried to attack, say, shipping in the North Sea with naval bombers, I'd suddenly find 3000 fighters patrolling the North Sea. The AI simply can't realistically control it's airforces, instead throwing around this giant sledgehammer of planes of all makes and models, and the worst part is that the only way to counter it is to hit back with your own even bigger tard clump of planes.
So the real question is whether or not this is actually a properly gamed response by the AI and not just something unrealistic. Does it make it impossible to do anything when there's that many planes? Would they be better served splitting it in two? Since the AI can react instantly, can they just keep moving the doomstack around? This will inevitably get figured out by the player who could game it by hitting one area, and wait for the planes to get transferred before hitting another and standing down the original group, but it may be a sign of progress by the developers. After all, there is no Overkill, just launch, fire, and return to base.
After several campaigns and currently even spread of defeats and wins my biggest problem is the unrealistic number of divisions that get deployed. In my last game as the Reich my allies and puppets Finland, Romania, Hungary, Croatia and Greece on their own defeated the SU while I was busy fighting in France. Alos in that game US lost some 800 000 troops while trying to land in norther Germany as I sunk the transports with Naval Bombers.
Had they landed in western France and advanced to the front I would have been overwhelmed.
I've hit upon the minor thing that annoys me the most, and it is a truly nit-pickey thing so please feel free to ignore it.
Ok, so when you are researching the different Infantry Equipments, the pictures are different depending on the country.
I'll skip over Infantry I for everyone, as it is the same, that is a mauserish rifle and a hand grenade.
However, what we get otherwise is:
US: Infantry II is a Landmine and Grease Gun, which is perfectly fine, and then an STG knock off and a bazooka for Infantry III. Why isn't it an M14 and a bazooka? But hey, I can forgive them that.
USSR: Infantry II is a Landmine and a PPSH-41, which again is fine, but then it is a friggin DP-28 and Anti-Tank grenade?!? It's not like the Soviet Union has a very famous Assault Rifle design you could use or anything...
Germany: Infantry II is an MP40 and a Panzerfaust, which like the others is fine, and then an STG 44 and a Panzerschrek, which again is perfectly fine.
Japan: Infantry II is a Type 100 SMG and what I think is an Anti-Tank grenade, and then Infantry III is some sort of Type 100 assault rifle and a shaped charge on a stick.....ok then
However, for Italy, France and the UK, they just get the generic pictures that every other country gets, and the reason that it pisses me off is that they went through the effort to give them all unique pictures for their aircraft and tanks, and then they can not be assed to, i don't know, give Italy a Beretta SMG and Italian Handgrenade for Infantry II? Or maybe give Britain a Bren Gun and a Piat for Infantry III? It just seems kind of lazy to me.
And then there is the issue of them not even bothering to give the various Jet aircraft pictures, and any neutral country just gets a silhouette of their equipment instead of a picture. That last one bugs me the most, as it should be easy enough to have it in the game that if you are a minor nation, but are Democratic/Fascist/Communist you should get the equipment pictures of the country in charge of the faction that best represents you, sort of to help build up that this is a global conflict.
Hell, the friggin Commonwealth countries get the generic pictures. At least give them the same as the UK.
Ok, this got a bit rambly, and as I said is a very minor nitpick, but it just seems so, well, lazy to me. I mean it is essentially just a bit of cosmetic polish, would it have totally destroyed them to add it?
I've hit upon the minor thing that annoys me the most, and it is a truly nit-pickey thing so please feel free to ignore it.
Ok, so when you are researching the different Infantry Equipments, the pictures are different depending on the country.
I'll skip over Infantry I for everyone, as it is the same, that is a mauserish rifle and a hand grenade.
However, what we get otherwise is:
US: Infantry II is a Landmine and Grease Gun, which is perfectly fine, and then an STG knock off and a bazooka for Infantry III. Why isn't it an M14 and a bazooka? But hey, I can forgive them that.
USSR: Infantry II is a Landmine and a PPSH-41, which again is fine, but then it is a friggin DP-28 and Anti-Tank grenade?!? It's not like the Soviet Union has a very famous Assault Rifle design you could use or anything...
Germany: Infantry II is an MP40 and a Panzerfaust, which like the others is fine, and then an STG 44 and a Panzerschrek, which again is perfectly fine.
Japan: Infantry II is a Type 100 SMG and what I think is an Anti-Tank grenade, and then Infantry III is some sort of Type 100 assault rifle and a shaped charge on a stick.....ok then
However, for Italy, France and the UK, they just get the generic pictures that every other country gets, and the reason that it pisses me off is that they went through the effort to give them all unique pictures for their aircraft and tanks, and then they can not be assed to, i don't know, give Italy a Beretta SMG and Italian Handgrenade for Infantry II? Or maybe give Britain a Bren Gun and a Piat for Infantry III? It just seems kind of lazy to me.
And then there is the issue of them not even bothering to give the various Jet aircraft pictures, and any neutral country just gets a silhouette of their equipment instead of a picture. That last one bugs me the most, as it should be easy enough to have it in the game that if you are a minor nation, but are Democratic/Fascist/Communist you should get the equipment pictures of the country in charge of the faction that best represents you, sort of to help build up that this is a global conflict.
Hell, the friggin Commonwealth countries get the generic pictures. At least give them the same as the UK.
Ok, this got a bit rambly, and as I said is a very minor nitpick, but it just seems so, well, lazy to me. I mean it is essentially just a bit of cosmetic polish, would it have totally destroyed them to add it?
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