HoI3 - Discussion

[Jon Miller]

The game is apparently faster if you play full screen for some?

I went to war... took one nation and am currently fighting communist and nationalist china. By the way, be careful about puppeting, it is nice because they might be at peace with their neighbors, I Reloaded and didn't do it because supply doesn't go through puppets and so most of my troops lost supply.

JM

[Jon Miller]

By the way, here are some screens from my game.

I have mostly had control be at theater level or army group level.

However, currently you can see the theater wasting time guarding against the Mongolians. I really don't expect problems with them and wish that army would go south to fight the chinese. I will probably need to turn the theater back off again.

I did manage to reset the theaters a bit. Now the forces that are to defend Korea are on the Imperial Theater while the China theater is it's own thing.

I actually have two army groups there, once in the north and one in the south. The organization of this is made more difficult because Japan has Armies, Army Groups, and Theaters. It doesn't really have corps. I Should have done more reorganizing during the 18 months of peace.

Having the AI set at theater will allow everyone to work together. Setting it lower means that the two AI won't work together. This can mean that it won't attack because it doesn't think it has the troops, when it does, it is just under another AI.

JM

[Jon Miller]

Yeah, I just turned the theater AI off and it brought that army south.

Hopefully the two armies won't need to work together that much, they are mixed a bit in the middle.

JM

[Dinner]

The game is apparently faster if you play full screen for some?

I went to war... took one nation and am currently fighting communist and nationalist china. By the way, be careful about puppeting, it is nice because they might be at peace with their neighbors, I Reloaded and didn't do it because supply doesn't go through puppets and so most of my troops lost supply.

JM

Your supply doesn't go through puppet lands because it is assumed your puppet can supply them. Unfortunately, most cannot.

[BeBMan]

So, any first hand experiences about the *game*. I read a lot of negative posts about it on the paradox forums. Haven't tried the demo yet. But from what I read I think I'll wait a while before getting the game...

[Dinner]

Right now I'd give it a D possibly a D+. It needs a lot of work just to become functional.

[Garth Vader]

Dammit. I have some days off next month, I wanted to play it. At this rate I'll have to wait like 6 months.

[RGBVideo]

there's always multiplayer

who cares about the AI

[Dinner]

I haven't tried it yet but supposedly multiplayer is fubar as well do to extreme slow speeds and constant out of sync problems.

So v1.2 comes out tomorrow and supposedly they have modified 400 lines of code in order to speed things up and stop the game from being totally retarded. My personal pet peeve, desides the mind numbing slowness of the game, is how literally every country in the world joins the allies by 1938 and then the allies proceed to declare war on each other but no one can actually conquer each other because they're all in the same alliance. There is no word yet if Paradox has bothered to fix this bug yet. Honestly, this game just isn't fun for me the way HOI2 was but I also hated EU3 on release but after numerous patches and two expansion packs EU3 became a decent game. It's a shame we're going to have to wait a year or two before HOI3 becomes a decent game.

[Dinner]

1.2 readme:


################################################## ##########
# Changes for 1.2 below.
################################################## ##########

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
- New Features
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
- Added a simplified terrain mapmode where each province
- The interface now has buttons for zooming in/out without using the scroll wheel, with keyboard shortcuts (pageup/pagedown).
- Added graphics control for distance of visible counters
- Added cancel mechanics for Air Orders.
- Implemeted an option for production slider automation, with selectable priority order.
- Trade is now a separate automation toggle from diplomacy.


-----------------------------------------------------------------------
- AI Improvements
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
# Army AI
- Fixed some issues with units getting stuck in neutral territory
- Prevented massive overreaction against partisans
- Fixed a problem with puppet areas
- Fixed an issue with transport ship needs and player set objectives
- Several improvements to new threat handling (beachheads, partisans)
- Fixed an issue with front formation for provinces bordering multiple countries
- Fixed a problem with units getting stuck in neutral territory
- Fixed a bug with poor/non-existent build-up of forces on non-front borders
- Fixed a problem with damaged "reserve" units being moved out out of front forts too much
- Fixed a problem with reserves and HQs
- Fixed a bug where it might consider an ally an enemy
- Force needs, adjusted special force needs
- Force needs: Fixed a bug with strat bomber needs being ten times too big.
- Force needs: Improved transport ship need controls
- Force needs: Adjusted to reduce the armor bias, especially for Japan
- Fixed a bug where HQs could be used as garrison forces
- Tweaked to ensure the defense of the supplier province and capital
- Fixed a garrison distribution bug
- Fixed a bug with the objective assignment of child agents
- Lower level HQs should now be able to handle troop distribution in several different areas correctly
- Fixed a bug in the child unit front segment assignment
- Sub-theatre level units with only defensive objectives should now respond to nearby partisans/beachheads

# Naval AI
- Fixed an issue where it would jump the gun and launch invasions with too few divisions (due to a lack of transports)
- Will not even attempt invasions of too well-defended ports
- Additional checks to make sure it does not invade port-less provinces
- Fixed a problem where it would withdraw too many units from fronts to stage invasions
- Minor faction members should only invade to take back lost provinces
- Some work on the sending of exp forces to overseas allies
- Transports are now available for use even if their strength and org are lowish
- Snappier intercepts of invasion fleets
- Naval intercepts no longer worried about absolute naval power vs the enemy

# Air AI
- Improved tactical bombing target choices
- Should be better at basing tactical bombers and interceptors, even when there is no front in the theatre
- Will rebase even damaged or low org units if the theatre currently has no fronts
- Fixed a bug preventing air unit merges

# Country AI
- Tweaked inter-theatre force allocation
- Fixed an issue with premature retrieval of exp forces from allies
- Will not send exp forces to a rival main faction, even if currently allied (UK to SOV etc)
- Fixed some issues with unit allocation on theatre redefinition
- Should now prefer sending exp forces to allied war zones rather than opening up new beachheads under many conditions

# Theatre AI
- Fixed a bug where it would start lots of redundant agents for lower level HQs
- Landless theatre HQs are now properly deleted for players as well
- No more German European mega-theatre
- The USA now have an eastern and a western home theatre
- Immediate HQ validation on theatre redefinition. Players should never see landless HQs in existence.
- Fixed a nasty problem where the controlling AI agent would believe it was for another theatre

# Diplomatic AI
- Removed the date limits on when germany decides to attack western europe. it will now do it when it can and makes sense.
- Countries are now less likely to join factions with bad progress.
- AI should now agree to trade under debt with the needing
- AI should be more likely to do counter influencing when necessary
- Tweaked ai alignment
- Allies now much more likely to give transit rights
- AI much more restrictive with embargos
- Embargos no longer running forever no matter diplomatic changes
- Britain more likely to influence the USA
- Threshold for calling in support to a limited war increased.
- AI will not call in allies during the early parts of a limited war.
- Governments in exile no longer create/join alliances
- Tweaked trade frequency

# Spy AI
- Spies should no longer perform counter espionage on puppets, countries with military access and someone helping you in a war

# Misc AI
- Autosliders try harder to keep a positive money balance
- More shift to keeping some money in autosliders for spare IC
- Fixed a bug with building less than requested convoys
- Fixed a bug with countries getting stuck in a death spiral of ever increasing escort production
- Tweaked ai valuing of stockpiles of supplies so it wont run them too low
- AI should now be doing some upgrading
- Production AI now cleverer in where to put spare IC
- Production AI now tries to always allocate 5% to upgrades if possible
- Auto slider controls will start using up stockpile if approaching supply cap
- Tech AI should now research doctrines
- Improved auto-deployment choices.

# Misc AI Bugs
- Fixed an issue with CAGs being auto-assigned to Theatre HQs
- Ground Attack Order: Overstacking penalty checks added
- Invasion orders will abort if the invading units are no longer in a condition to fight
- Fixed a bug with the end date for sent exp forces in the unit command
- Cut out trades involving small amounts of money (energy/money for example) that rounded to 0 money

# Generic AI Balancing
- Balanced out relation changes between canceling/creating trades to stop slowly lowering relations to trade partners with dodgy economy
- Should be harder to exploit AI by stationing expeditionary forces to get out of supply use


-----------------------------------------------------------------------
- Gamebalance Changes
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
# Country
- It is now slower for national unity to move the further it is away from the middle.
- Comintern units now use less supplies.
- Pure theory techs are no longer assigned to countries at start.
- Impact on strategic warfare is now depending on countrysize on target.
- Election and the likes will now acutally change ministers

# Occupation
- Non-core territories are now as bad as full occupation territories.
- Increased impact of partisans on supply tax by x5.
- Made revolts less likely, but a fair bit stronger units.

# Diplomacy
- Fixed a bug with proximity capping distance too early with alignment progress.
- Repulsion, threat and revanchism factors at alignment is now only effective if close in the triangle.
- Drift due to threat is now scaled with country IC so a big country (like US) is more concerned with world politics, whereas smaller countries are more concerned with keeping their heads down and wont be as affected.
- Trade should now allways fail if not enough DI is available
- Dissolve alliance now checks for the correct amount of diplomatic influence
- Declaration of war no longer valid against faction members
- It is no longer possible to invite someone to a faction if they are at war with a member.
- Should no longer be able to join faction if at war with faction member
- Countries to peace in events will now get all their puppets set to peace as well.
- No longer possible to send theaters as expeditionary forces
- Threat is now wiped when a country is annexed.
- Influences now automatically stop after joining another faction.
- Embargoed countries can no longer cancel the embargo
- Embargo's now reduce threat when cancelled.

# Map
- Revised calculations to determine which province has which terrain.
- Desert are now a bit less likely to see rain storms.
- Made some tweaks to weather system to have weather patterns more mobile.

# Combat
- Paradropping now gives an attack delay.
- A unit in battle can no longer have an effective combat width of less than 1.
- Dissent impact on combat is no longer astronomical.
- Amphibious penalty can never go below 99% for any unit.
- AA is now twice as effective.
- Cags now give 25% of stacking penalty when attacking at sea.
- Cags now do triple damage bombing ships in combat with another fleet.
- Trickleback now works properly and gives you back manpower lost in combat.
- Aircombat is now a fair bit more dangerous.
- Org damage is no longer scaled by strength of brigade compared to other brigades.
- Scaled leadership experience internally so that it transfers to leaders higher up in the chain better.

# Units
- Improved calculation of actual supply/fuel usage.
- Paradrop missions will no longer progress if the paratroopers are in a delay after an attack.
- Units in Strategic redeployment can never gain org now.
- Strategic redeployment will now give the attack delay to a unit.
- There is now a minimum supply demand for small units so that long distances wont take all the supply tax.
- Airunits operating from a base that is no longer in range (ie carrier) will now abort
- Logisitcs wizard trait now work properly on units below it as well.
- Units will no longer be removed if strength drops to zero from manpower rotation or attrition.
- Airunits bombing will no longer continue moving during the bombing & aborting their bombing.
- Air and Naval units will now reset where they are based if they lose access to their current base.
- Unit stats like speed now updates properly when a brigade is upgraded.

# Officers
- Officers ratio now affects maximum organsiation and recovery of units.
- Officers now take casualties properly in battle.
- Officer ratio now affects attack delay of units.
- Increased officer production significantly.
- Officerlosses in battle is now proportional to unit type.
- Expeditionary forces now drain their homecountry's officerpool when taking losses.




-----------------------------------------------------------------------
- Interface Improvements
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
- Added day/night overlay to minimap
- Made a day/night icon in province interface, and remade the "clear sky" icon cause the sun looked weird next to the moon.
- Added terrain effect delayed tooltip to province view and to terrain mapmodes.
- Names should now appear instantly if possible. (minor lockups possible at crap cards.)
- Added strenght number to child units.
- Added weight to unitinterface.
- Fixed the display for max strength in brigade details.
- Softness changes from tech is now colorised green when decreasing and red when increasing.
- Remade oil icon to be more clear and visible.
- Added superheavy battleship Icons to navalcombat.
- Trade icons should now blink later.
- Tooltips for org on units will now show daily change as well.
- Fixed a couple of tooltips in outliner
- Fixed tooltip for dissent in intel view
- Tooltips in messages settings should now be correct
- Strength and VP mapmodes will now update more regularly.
- Added shortcut keys to cancel/accept orders.
- Escape now opens the ingame menu if nothing is selected, else it deselects all.
- 'w' now moves the map to the location of current unit.
- 's' now opens up the stance selection window.
- ',' selects all air units loaded on ship.
- '.' selects all loaded land units on a ship or plane.
- 'l' now loads or unloads a unit to a ship.
- 'p' now loads or unloads a unit to a plane.
- 'a' now opens up attachment interface.
- 'd' detaches a selected unit.
- 'c' now creates a new HQ above current unit.
- Alerts for wasted IC no longer shown when using auto sliders
- Fixed rounding error in officer rate
- Added 2 more trait columns in leader ledger page
- Corp/army/theatre now visible in brigade ledger page
- Fixed some more ledgerpages
- Leader experience is now shown as % in the ledger as well.
- Unit arrived message now fires only at final destination
- Expeditionary force declined should now give a message
- Tweaked collision boxes for tanks to try and make it a bit less wacky
- Diplomatic screen should now refresh when a country disappears
- Combat progress in interfaces are now loaded properly from savegames.
- Units changing country will now be properly be deselected.
- HQ's can no longer be merged.
- You can no longer transfer HQ brigades away from a hq unit.
- Cag's can no longer be merged with other airunits.
- There is no longer free diplomatic influnce from cancelling or creating transit rights.


-----------------------------------------------------------------------
- Multiplayer
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
- Removed several reasons for the game to go out of sync while playing multiplayer.
- Made multiline chatemessages look prettier
- Updating automation in lobby now shows for clients as well
- No longer possible to swith away from save selection for clients in mp lobby
- Mp save counter should now work.
- Moved checksum text and adjusted multiplayerlist in lobby.
- Date should no longer reset when new player joins after save is loaded.


-----------------------------------------------------------------------
- User Modding
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
- Exported current player tag from gamestate to lua for modding fun.
- Added a "terrain = x" command for provinces, to override graphical logic


-----------------------------------------------------------------------
- Performace and Stability
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
# Compability
- Added setting in settings.txt to not create 'waves' called _waves_
- Setting trees rendering off will now not create any tree gfx upon reload
- Restructured provincemanager a bit to help reducing startup crashes on some machines.

# Performance
- Optimised interface interactivity.
- Gamespeed and timeprogress have been optimised to provide a smoother gameplay.
- AI optimised, both in lua and the core game, which should improve gamespeed significantly.
- Tracked down and removed several memoryleaks, which made the game sluggish the longer you played it.

# Stability
- Savegames should no longer become corrupted, and previously corrupted savegames might be recoverable.
- Fixed several reported crash problems.


-----------------------------------------------------------------------
- Bugfixes
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
# Interface bugs
- Game should no longer unpause when clicking in outliner
- Opening main menu no longer closes the outliner
- Country flags should now be localised in triggers.
- Ledgerpage for buildings now handles provinces with the same name
- Fixed prereq graphic bug in Naval background.
- Fixed tooltip bug on Leadership/oil icons in province interface.
- Resized all terrain images so the terrain tooltip doesnt popup inbetween the icons below.
- Fixed the flag distortion on the minishield and the small minishield.
- Flags no longer shown through fog of war after being shown once.
- No more invisible units when armies split from events (like at civil war)
- Fixed issues with incorrectly shown counters
- Fixed lots and lots of typos
- Fixed a bunch of localisation issues
- Fixed unlocalized text in metaserver
- Fixed some non existing tooltip localisations
- Is in any faction trigger now displays correctly for "no" as well.

# Gamemechanic bugs
- Rejecting a NAP will no longer increase relations between countries.
- Faction specific rules are now set immediately after a reload again.
- You can no longer ask/offer transit rights with faction members because you already have access.
- Broken trade deals message now show correct trade goods order
- Returning expeditionary forces should now work
- Government in exiles will no longer wipe out the cash of the faction leader.
- Partisans will no longer stop an entire country to be annexed.
- French surrender will now work properly even if poland starts the war.
- A country being annnexed will now cancel all its trade agreements.
- Offmap resources are now calculated correctly for resource balance values.
- Needed for production is now updated properly from all cases of production.
- Build times/costs are now calculated properly for buildings after each is finished in a serial.
- Fixed mixup of ic and mp cost in brigade build screen.
- Fixed a bug with auto-deployment
- Fixed a calculation error with maximum manpower needed for reinforcement.
- Upgrading units now actually uses resources.
- Cags will now properly detach and attach to correct hierarchy position when rebasing.
- Fixed a problem where it was not possible to split cag units.
- It is no longer possible to deploy or reorganise new cags into units that would make them over the carriers capacity.
- Dissent penalty on ruling party popularity now works properly.
- Fixed a bug where units could still be in combat even though they had moved away.
- Commando trait now properly reduces the out of supply penalty.
- Airunits without fuel will no longer get stuck in air forever.
- Fixed a bug where units could get stuck after reloads.
- Paratroopers can no longer take control of hostile territory while on a plane.

[Dinner]

Read me part 2:


-----------------------------------------------------------------------
- Database Changes
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
# Technology
- Added Naval, land and air doctrines for all scenarios
- Changed the requirements for Small Warship ASW
- It should no longer be possible to research Super Heavy Tank Brigade more than once
- Added industry techs for: Germany, UK, France, USA, Soviet Union, Japan and Italy
- Added construction practicals for USA, UK, Germany, Italy, Japan and Soviet Union
- Armoured car techs now use mobile unit practical
- Lowered requirements to research helicopters
- Increased build time for escort carriers to 350
- Tweaked naval and construction practicals
- Reduced practicals for AA and radar stations.

# Orders of Battle
- Renamed two duplicated units in the Italian and Chinese -36 oob
- Added a theatre to Argentina's oobs
- Revised and increased the number of historical leaders in the German and Japanese oobs
- Reorganized the Greek oobs
- Updated the -36, -38 and -39 oobs for Finland
- Updated the production queues for Japan, UK, Japan and the US
- Fixed some typos and added Tiger units to the German -43 and -44 scenario
- Moved the 6th Air Force to Saipan
- Moved 12. Juntuan and 66. Jun to Shanwel
- Nagano no longer commands the 37. Hoheishidan
- Replaced most of Shanxi's and Communist China's infantry with militia
- Fixed the Russian cavalry div. that had been replaced by infantry div. in the -44 scenario
- Repositioned some of the Italian planes
- Changed the location of the Enterprise Taskforce and Lexington Taskforce
- Removed some of Australia's transport ships and increased the number of reserve units
- Moved the Yugoslavian troops that had wandered off towards Sinope
- Added historical leaders to some of the expeditionary forces

# Buildings and Units
- Gave Newcastle, Hollandia and Guadalcanal airbases
- Added and adjusted some of the air fields, ports and coastal forts in Finland
- Moved the airbase and anti-air in Palermo
- Added naval bases to Aparri, Legaspi, Lingayen, Shantou, Baoan, Pulau Dolak, San Cristobal and Malaita
- Changed the speed of armoured brigades in mountain terrain
- Moved the industry in Canberra to Melbourne
- Increased Togtoh and Guyang's infrastructure to 3
- Rebalanced support brigade values
- Lowered infrastructure on the east and west coast of Australia
- Moved the naval base in Corpus Christi
- Repositioned the air bases and anti air guns in Cagliari and Tobruk
- Added new pictures for S-P Artillery and Cags
- Moved Argentina's capital to Buenos Aires

# Events and Decisions
- Fixed the "Second Vienna Diktat" so that Hungary gets the proper cores
- Added a second version of the "Bitter peace" event, if Japan isn't at war with the Soviet Union
- The "Ultimatum to Greece" can no longer be triggered if Greece is a puppet of Germany or Italy, or already at war with Italy
- "Japan demands bases in French Indochine" - requires Japan to be in axis instead of alliance
- Added a second version of the "Independent Croatia" decision, in case Croatia is still owned by Yugoslavia
- Tweaked the "Claim Bessarabia" and "Bulgarian claims to Constanta" decisions
- Tweaked the combat events

# Diplomacy
- Tweaked the occupation polices
- The US guarantees Bolivia from -36
- Removed Vichy France as a puppet state to keep them out of the war
- Adjusted the distribution of VPs for Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Ireland, France and the Netherlands
- Added a victory point to Kalgan
- Japan still controls the Carolines in -44

# Map
- Revised a lot of rivers in Asia and Australia.
- Removed a duplicated sea zone id
- Added a strait between Jiangmen and Bao'an
- Added "arctic" terrrain to the northern provinces of the Soviet Union, Canada, Norway and Iceland
- Added the Ligurian Sea, Bay of Naples and the Gulf of Iskenderun to the Mediterranean region

# Leaders
- Changed the start dates for Albert Speer, Joseph Goebbels, Karl Dönitz, Franz von Papen and Arthur Seyss-Inquart
- Added new ministers for Xibei San Ma
- Gave Ismet Inönu a new minister type
- Added an image for Hayashu Senjuro

# Text
- Corrected some of the French, Polish, Hungarian and Italian unit names
- Renamed the US "Democrat Party" to "Democratic Party"
- Corrected some duplicated and misspelled province names
- Fixed the erroneous label in the statistics page
- Fixed the tooltip for the "Airborne Assault" order
- Added Canadian party names
__________________

[Dinner]

1.2 helps with game stability and speed but most of the numerous bugs are still there.

[Nikolai]

Which is exactly what was promised. The game is very fun, even with the bugs though.

[Dinner]

I've now played 4 online games the first three with the same three people and the connection was pretty good though out of syncs would happen about every 1.5 hours at speed level 2. The fourth game, played last night, would out of sync every 2-3 minutes even at the lowest speed. We tried everything too. Metaserver, direct IP, and Hamachi. Plus we had to try it with at last 15 different people over a 2.5 hour period all in groups of five but no matter which combination of people or settings we used it would always go out of sync.

Honestly, this game's programming is pretty ****-tastic. It's just not robust at all and the lose of a single data packet crashes the game. Compare that to games like WoW, DDO, or even Colonization which have extremely robust online abilities to guard against crashes.

[Dinner]

1 hour of trying a 7 out of syncs later I through in the towel last night. It's just an unstable buggy mess.