Hearts of Iron III

Tellus · Jul 16, 2009

I'm surprised that theres no HoI3 thread yet! Less than a month to go, and the game looks hugely promising. Ive caught up on the dev diaries that explain all the new features of the game:

http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?t=379311

But more importantly there are a couple AARs from testers that are popping up, including a Soviet player defending from Barbarossa here:

http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?t=412229

Watch him get encircled and his ass kicked by the German AI on this page:

http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?t=412229&page=38

Can you say EPIC?! This USSR is the biggest Ive seen modelled with so much detail. 10000 land provinces. Itll be a bitch to conquer all!

What you're seeing at this zoom level is regions rather than provinces, with about 3 to 5 provinces per region. This is why in some border regions you see several stacks of units; theyre actually in different provinces. It gives a sense of scope.

Here you see the fighting over Bessarabia, and the provincial sub-divisions are shown at this level of zoom.

Tech system! Very detailled. This is the infrantry tab, as you can see, there's not a lack of distinct research paths!

Laws and their effects, as well as the Party's political power!

And to finish: The Stalin Line. (Once again, this is regions, not provinces!)

Solomaxwell6 · Jul 16, 2009

Interesting.

Sounds like it'd be really difficult to keep track of everything, though.

OAM47 · Jul 16, 2009

I managed to get one vote! One doesn't get me free game though

Tellus · Jul 16, 2009

Solomaxwell6 said:
Interesting.

Sounds like it'd be really difficult to keep track of everything, though.

The game provides you with the ability to choose what you want to control and delegate anything else to the AI.

You could decide to only focus on technology and production and let all military ops in the hands of the AI. More realistically, you could choose to set overreaching goals for the military AI on each theater, control allocation of forces, technology, laws, and let the AI do the battles. You could also decide to micromanage each battle but never touch any diplomacy/trade/economy/tech/laws!

Ill certainly first play a pretty hands-off game where I mostly look at how the AI plays, and then Ill unleash my micro-managing might on a scope thatll make the OKW think that Hitler was fairly hands-off in his approach to the eastern front.

Kome · Jul 16, 2009

This makes me few really stupid i bought Hoi2 last year. I hope they improve the ai without making it cheat.

Tellus · Jul 16, 2009

Hoi2 was worth the money if you played it nearly as much as i did

Plus, well, if you got it last year surely the price had dropped quite a bit already. Hoi2+Doomsday was worth every penny for me. Paradox is one of the studios that I encourage by actually buying their titles because I get incredible value out of them.

Ofaloaf · Jul 16, 2009

I'm curious about the political system and postwar puppet states. A few screenshots of Germany show the Nazis scarcely holding a majority influence in the body politic. How easy would it be to turn Germany into the Land of Freedom and Democracy without a war going on?

And I'm just wondering about what puppets can be released postwar or during occupation. I want more options than the FRG and DDR, damnation!

Tellus · Jul 16, 2009

Ofaloaf said:
I'm curious about the political system and postwar puppet states. A few screenshots of Germany show the Nazis scarcely holding a majority influence in the body politic. How easy would it be to turn Germany into the Land of Freedom and Democracy without a war going on?

And I'm just wondering about what puppets can be released postwar or during occupation. I want more options than the FRG and DDR, damnation!

Pretty hard without intense intelligence activity. It doesnt actually matter whether or not a dictatorship enjoys widespread political support as there are no elections. As long as a German player doesnt decide to change these laws manually (in which case all bets are off), foreign opponents can basically only fund dissent and try to organize a coup. Only in the post-Coup scenario would political affiliations start to matter at all. This creates a very historical and very realistic situation where if you are funding a coup, you're better off if the resulting regime is another dictatorship (friendly to you), rather than a true democracy that can swiftly vote you out.

Keeping dissent high over long periods of time will lower the party's support, whilst victories will increase it, but it has little practical effect as long as they are in power. Bush would still rule with his 20% approval rating if there had been no elections, after all.

OAM47 · Jul 16, 2009

Wow, I generaly like to control everything, but setting the military AI would be much more realistic if RPing as the polititians.

Tellus · Jul 16, 2009

OAM47 said:
Wow, I generaly like to control everything, but setting the military AI would be much more realistic if RPing as the polititians.

Indeed. You can also specify different settings for each theater (you decide what is a theater), so you could decide to micro-manage the battle for Suez while letting the AI handle Russia, for example.

Furthermore you can always change your mind on the fly. In a theater set to AI control, if you see your troops making an obvious mistake, you can override the control with a single click for a single unit or stack and change what they are doing without having to modify theater settings. Hopefully it won't piss of the AI as much as it did the General Staff every time Hitler did that

lothaw · Jul 16, 2009

Wait, you can just give your commanders a list of goals and let them at it?

That'd be even more fun than micromanaging if you ask me. Reacting to what they're able to do.

Iamwinterborn · Jul 16, 2009

Did you not even bother to seach before posting "there isn't one yet?"

https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=110699&highlight=HOI3

I'll admit it's been getting very dusty, but noone responded to the old one usually.

Tellus · Jul 16, 2009

Iamwinterborn said:
Did you not even bother to seach before posting "there isn't one yet?"

https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=110699&highlight=HOI3

I'll admit it's been getting very dusty, but noone responded to the old one usually.

Yes I searched and didnt find it for some reason.

This being said, its over a couple months old, so I was better off making my own. Some people consider reviving anything over a month old necromancy. Personally I have nothing against it, even multi-year-old threads can be enlightening, but anyway. This is the thread now.

lothaw said:
Wait, you can just give your commanders a list of goals and let them at it?

That'd be even more fun than micromanaging if you ask me. Reacting to what they're able to do.

Precisely. You get to choose your exact level of involvement. The game even allows you to pick a country and delegate *everything* in which case you are essentially playing hands-off (just watching the show) until you decide to take over some aspect of the country.

Communist Wizard · Jul 16, 2009

Hmm, interesting. I like micromanaging AND watching the show, so doing both in a WW2 strategy set up is AWESOME. I like this game a lot now.

AND those maps are awesome!

Trotsky · Jul 16, 2009

I've been keeping track over at the Paradox forums. Looks cool but I doubt I'll play it for a while, as I don't want my CPU to blow up.

Iamwinterborn · Jul 16, 2009

Trotsky said:
I've been keeping track over at the Paradox forums. Looks cool but I doubt I'll play it for a while, as I don't want my CPU to blow up.

Ha!

I've been playing EU3 (MMP1.5), and it's been making my PC pant heavily. It's a good thing my A/C can be pointed right at the PC, otherwise I think it would have exploded by now.

I don't want to know what an enitrely new generation of engine will do!

wilcoxchar · Jul 16, 2009

Iamwinterborn said:
Ha!

I've been playing EU3 (MMP1.5), and it's been making my PC pant heavily. It's a good thing my A/C can be pointed right at the PC, otherwise I think it would have exploded by now.

I don't want to know what an enitrely new generation of engine will do!

HOI3 is using the same engine as EU3.

Faeelin · Jul 16, 2009

Eh. I'll buy it when the AI works.

karl2025 · Jul 16, 2009

I just hope I'll be able to determine what territories a puppet gets when I create them/force them to surrender. I was playing a game of HoI2 and took over Spain. I wanted to break it up into three equal nations, but ya can't do that because as soon as you create Euskadi you can't create Republican Spain or Nationalist Spain.

Tellus · Jul 16, 2009

karl2025 said:
I just hope I'll be able to determine what territories a puppet gets when I create them/force them to surrender. I was playing a game of HoI2 and took over Spain. I wanted to break it up into three equal nations, but ya can't do that because as soon as you create Euskadi you can't create Republican Spain or Nationalist Spain.

Although its not hard to mod the revolt.txt file to determine the border of releasable entities, there hasnt been sweeping changes since HOI2 in this respect. In fact, if anything, the game makes it harder than before to attain peace on the borders you would like once you're at war.

The justifications include that countries in this time-frame are nation states, and carving puppet states outside ethnic borders is difficult. Truly powerless puppets are also best represented by military occupation than separate governments. So in other words, expect a bit of file tampering if you want to create nations with absolutely no historical basis. However the list of releasable puppets is larger than before and includes many fictional entities that have a basis in history. Scandinavia, Flanders-Wallonia, a large Arab Federation, a restored Ottoman Empire, a restored Austrian Empire, pre-unification pieces of Italy and Germany, Kurdistan, and many others are possible puppets.

This being said, puppets in and of themselves are more interesting than before. They share your supply grid 100% for example - you get all their resources and you give them what they need to operate as if they were part of your country. So you can maintain direct supply to troops in Greece even if you release Croatia as a puppet, as Germany, for example.

They certainly made political entities a bit harder to totally ignore after their military conquest as well. No longer is there a magic annex button that ends all enemy resistance. Every country you conquer goes in Exile and continue to fight you as long as youre at war with someone. Polish, Dutch, Norvegians in exile will keep up the fight from London, and they fund partisans in your occupied lands. If you can shatter British morale through conquest and strategic warfare, you can gain the isles, but then theyll still be fighting you from Canada unless you make concessions on your conquests through events in exchange for peace. Its more realistic than before, though it might be a bit harder to have a feeling of satisfactory completion of the war as the Axis unless you manage to truly go on an ahistorical rampage across the globe.