Goodie, Goodie...

[Dinner]

I've been drinking ****ty beer for several hours and I just purchased a copy of Hearts of Iron 2. I shall now attempt to drunkenly conquor the world. YAAY!

[Nikolai]

Good luck. It's an amazing game.

[Edan]

Originally posted by Nikolai
Good luck. It's an amazing game.

One of the best strategy game in years, IMO.

[Dinner]

This game is actually kind of hard. Playing as Germany I was unable to get Italy or Japan to join my alliance and I couldn't even defeat Poland. As I was slowly pushing Poland back France attacked my western border and my armies just fell to pieces.

[Dinner]

Is it just me or are the Soviets way over powered?

[General Ludd]

Originally posted by Oerdin
Is it just me or are the Soviets way over powered?

You should see them in the hands of a human player. In my game as the soviets, the Axis ceased to exist only a few months after they declared war on me. Italy was annexed and germany was reduced to 6 provinces in occupied belgium and netherlands in 1941, before the USA even got it's events for considering war entry.

I then went on to steam roll over the rest of the world untill I got bored of it.

[Nikolai]

Originally posted by Oerdin
Is it just me or are the Soviets way over powered?

I've only played one game so far, with the standard settings and as Germany, but I do not think they are too powerful out of what I could see. They did have about as many units as me, but these were 1)scattered all over the place, even though they had only one front, and 2)of fantastic bad quality, 1936 models mostly(infantery)(I checked out why they lost nearly at the moment the battle started often) when I had 1941 models all over the place... It was afun game nevertheless, as I am an extremely bad player, I managed to loose most of my manpower(I had used quite a bit to build units already, but nevertheless...) during the operation, which lasted from may to november...

[Dinner]

I'm currently playing a test game where I keep jumping around to different countries trying to balance things out. Germany flattened Poland, took the low countries, but then started to lose to France. I took over Nationalist Spain and saved Germany's bacon by joining the axis and invading France. Luckily, drawing off half of France & Belgium's forces enabled Germany to make a breakout other wise the war would have been over in 1940.

Next I tried to help the Germans out by getting the various eastern European states and Turkey to join the Axis though it didn't do much good. The USSR declared war in 1941 and even with all of those allies the Soviets are currently rolling over the Axis. The Germans just don't build enough armor and the Soviets build so many units that they out number the Germans by 1940.

[Dinner]

Now I know the game is really broken. I decided to play Poland just to see how long I'd last and although Germany did get me down to just my capital I was never the less able to maintain my 45 divisions(!) of infantry with the industrial output of a city with ounly 5 factories. What's worse is that since the Germans never took out Warsaw the AI simply moved all of it's units around warsaw without actually trying to attack the city. That meant that western Germany quickly got over run by such super powers as Denmark and the Netherlands. Something is very wrong with a game which allows Denmark and the Netherlands to over run all of Germany in 1941.

By summer of 1941 100 German divisions continued to hold most of Poland while simultaniously not holding a single German provience. I can only say WTF?! Out of morbid curisity I continued to play until until white 1942 and the whole time the Germans held off Allied advances while utterly failing to try to retake any part of Germany and instead just sat around in Poland; I wanted to finish the Nazis off but all those German tanks easily beat my Polish infantry while totally failing to attack anyone. The whole time the Soviets just sat there, the US didn't do a damn thing, the Japanese never attacked China much less the US, and the only thing Italy did was the event scripted attacks on Ethiopia and Albania. France took a few German proviences but never bothered to press to finish off the German units in Poland.

After watching this display it is clear to me that the AI in HOI2 is broken. It just doesn't have the know how to play the game intelligently plus there are major play balance issues. If I can play Poland and fight Germany to a stand still then something is wrong. There is also a problem if I can support 45 divisions (to compare the modern US Army only has around 12) while controling just one small city.

[dojoboy]

Originally posted by Oerdin
Now I know the game is really broken.

Are you reporting this experience to Johan? I've not seen much on this at the Paradox forums, but that doesn't discount anything.

[Nikolai]

The German AI won't attack Warsaw no matter what is a known bug which is worked on.

[Dinner]

It seems they just repackaged the tired old AI from HOI1 instead of writing a better AI. In HOI1 they tried to get around this by scripting everything to make the AI act in certain ways and while that helped things it meant each game often went exactly like the last. It seems with HOI2 they've removed the crutch but didn't mend the broken leg.

[asleepathewheel]

I'm pretty dissapointed with the game thus far.

Not to the level of MoO3, but it nonethelessdid not meet expectations.


I like that you now can tell what has been modified.
I like that you can queque up ic/aa builds and parallle/serial builds.
I like that you can tell what science goes to what.
I like the beefed up/overhauled trade system, for the most part.
I like that my home town of 40k has made it as a province on the US map

I loathe the overall change to science. From the lack of choices in reasearch, basically ending up with the same units each game for each nation, to the year tie in. I miss choosing different paths. Now you research the 36 techs, then 37 techs and on and on. Blah blah blah.

I also dont see the point in money. I much preferred the diplo points in I.

I don't know why cav units look like infantry units, when the sprites were differentiated in I.

I really don't like the cost/benefit of improving your factory production. What's the point at 5IC per? Bah!


And that's all stuff NOT including combat!

If HoI had the new overview screen and the provincial queques, then it would be perfect for me! Alas.,..

[SirOsis]

I never did play 1 but I am enjoying this game. I also played as Poland and Germany didn't take Warsaw as I had 44 divisions in there. The soviets did declare war on Germany in 1939 and they are currently trading former polish provinces back and forth.

I've also played the Spanish Civil War and the South American campaign. These were enjoyable for a quick game or 2. These are good to learn the ropes on production and diplomacy and you don't have so many armies to be distracting when learning the game.

[Grumbold]

At this point in time the battle scenarios are in better shape than GC-36, which is always the hardest one to balance to meet all expectations (Germany should win until Russia '42 then bog down, Italy will lose in the desert without help, it should be possible to do better at research than historically, but only a little, etc)

For a full GC I think HoI 1.06c + CORE is a much more polished product, but that is after extensive calibration. HoI2 should become much better with less work. The air and naval missions especially are a triumph.