Hearts of Iron 3

[alanschu]

Soooo,

 

As some of you know I like WW2 strategy games. I in particular have been a big fan of the Hearts of Iron series. THe third installment is coming out soon (in like 15 minutes haha) and I plan on playing this.

 

 

I'll be creating an AAR report for this game as well. I'll likely be playing as Germany my first game, since they're the ones that see all the action. If all goes well, I'll control the entire world before 1949 (game ends Dec 31 1948 haha).

 

 

Should be good fun!

[Calax]

Can we just set up a site called "Alans AAR's!" or something? then you could get like a round table of generals who help you plan your strategies?

[alanschu]

I am not against this line of thinking haha.

 

I am actually working on making a site to host the AARs, so I can be more picture-friendly. Hence my lack of update for War in the Pacific (though I do have a week played in the game with some updates pending).

[EUIX]

Everytime I play a knew HOI I always play Communist China first and see if I can win. I've only done it once and that involved cheating on my part, mostly because the U.S. AI sucks ass and never beats Japan, which forces you to win on the continent. This is also useful just for seeing how the computer plays out the game in Europe and the Pacific, since you basically sit still and do nothing until '38, '39.

Edited August 7, 2009 by EUIX

[alanschu]

They are introducing more variability in the HOI3, so I'm not sure how well that w ill work.

[alanschu]

I think the idea of a war room will be good fun!

 

I'm taking a look at the game to see how I can make it work!! Hahahaha.

[Rostere]

I will be playing as well. I think I'll choose Tannu Tuva in my first game

[Kaftan Barlast]

Will this game be playable by normal humans beings, the kind that have played a campaign or two of TW, or is it so hardcore that it will make your head explode?

[Llyranor]

Darn it, not even sure if Canada is getting a retail copy of this. BB/FS don't have it listed on their site, and EB doesn't even know it exists. I wanted the physical manual!

 

I might cave in and get the GG version, though I didn't preorder, so no extra sprites. I'll be playing with counters anyway!

 

I'll be France, Nick will be UK, alanschu's replacement (WE FOUND SOMEONE ELSE, YOU PIECE OF CRAP) will be Spain. We'll try to keep the US out of the war.

 

The game isn't that hardcore. A lot of things can also be automated. You just need half a brain and have more of an attention span than Morgoth.

Edited August 7, 2009 by Llyranor

[Hurlshort]

You could make a wikispaces page and invite us all to help develop strategies.

 

Googledocs would work also.

[alanschu]

Even with Sprites the game defaults to counters at the far zooms levels, so I am playing with Sprites.

[213374U]

Everytime I play a knew HOI I always play Communist China first and see if I can win.

Problem is, in vanilla ARMA, CHC is pretty much neglected by the devs as far as events go. A CHC game I played with MOD34 (or was it 33?) was one of the most I enjoyed. Getting events like Long March, formation of popular armies, etc... really changes things.

 

 

Will this game be playable by normal humans beings, the kind that have played a campaign or two of TW, or is it so hardcore that it will make your head explode?

HOI2 was very accessible to strategy n00bs... but I only found this out after I discovered an AAR that explained every single thing in great detail. Think Fall Wei

[alanschu]

The most complicated thing about HOI3 so far I am finding is wrapping my head around the command structure.

 

Having said that, I think it will be easier with a 1936 game where I can customize the setup.

[213374U]

I've been following some of the dev reports, and one of the things I found most interesting was the new front/reserves combat system in provinces. How is it?

 

And, did they do something about northern and central Russia being essentially four huge provinces? What about central China?

[alanschu]

The game has TONS of new provinces. There are some bigger ones but nothing really that big. I haven't really looked at anything outside of Europe at this point (trying to d/l at work to look more at lunch hour, but servers are stalling hahahaha).

 

 

I only played around with combat a little bit. The demo had an order of battle set up in such a way that exceeding the frontage limit of 10 was never really an issue.

 

But basically there's a limit to the amount of units that can fight at any given time. The frontage limit is a total width of 10 (you can exceed this slightly, in that you can add in another division if you're only using total width of 9, which will put your width to 12 if that division has a width of 3).

 

Supposedly your general will try to rotate in troops from reserve if you've started to take losses, based on the leadership skill of your Corps General.

[EUIX]

I will be playing as well. I think I'll choose Tannu Tuva in my first game

Probably don't want to do that Tannu Tuva gets annexed in '44 by Soviet Union.

[EUIX]

Everytime I play a knew HOI I always play Communist China first and see if I can win.

Problem is, in vanilla ARMA, CHC is pretty much neglected by the devs as far as events go. A CHC game I played with MOD34 (or was it 33?) was one of the most I enjoyed. Getting events like Long March, formation of popular armies, etc... really changes things.

 

 

Will this game be playable by normal humans beings, the kind that have played a campaign or two of TW, or is it so hardcore that it will make your head explode?

HOI2 was very accessible to strategy n00bs... but I only found this out after I discovered an AAR that explained every single thing in great detail. Think Fall Wei

[alanschu]

I went Gamer's Gate.

 

Downloading it at work is funny because it's so slow today

[alanschu]

Sounds like there are some issues with the game (not at all surprised...Paradox game on release haha).

 

Influencing nations seems particularly powerful (it moves very quickly). A lot of people are seeing the Allies having a lot of people in their faction at earlier stages.

 

 

Also, sounds like Japan has industrial issues. Not sure how that got past testing, but to start the game it seems like they don't have the ability to sustain their own intrinsic demands, meaning that they're kinda SOL to start the game off in 1936 (all industry going into consumer goods, meaning no supplies/production/anything, even with trade routes for resources still established.

[Calax]

well alan, what you could do for the battle maps you're showing us is to use little boxes with things like "X Corps" and then somewhere else on the site have a listing of the makeup of the group... and maybe have a history showing when and where units were detached and attached etc.

[alanschu]

Yeah was thinking of that.

 

 

What I was thinking on doing is actually assigning some people to be equivalent of my various ministers. So they can decide where the area they are responsible for is set to focus.

 

Of course, I am also the Power Hungry Demagogue, so if I don't like your decisions I may overrule them

 

 

But an update of troop makeups will be neat for sure. If I feel really ambitious I could create the hierarchy via links haha. That sounds like a lot of work though.

[213374U]

Power Hungry Demagogue

Hahaha. Leader/minister epithets are awesome. Have you seen any new ones?

[alanschu]

No I haven't.

 

Unfortunately they are a bit more streamlined this time around, so you don't get as much flavour text with them. You'll get a title and applicable bonuses.

 

 

Sounds like Japan faltering is an unfortunate new bug in 1.1 that causes an error in consumer goods demand, requiring Japan to spend all of its IC on consumer goods.

 

 

Sounds like the game is much more ahistorical than the previous ones. This is good and bad. Good in that it's variable. I can't just leave a front unprotected because I know the Soviet Union won't attack it for 2 years. Bad in that it likely won't proceed like WW2 haha.

 

Oh wells.

[Rostere]

I will be playing as well. I think I'll choose Tannu Tuva in my first game

Probably don't want to do that Tannu Tuva gets annexed in '44 by Soviet Union.

 

I know that, since I have tried playing Tannu Tuva in HoI 2 (and played the SU like 20 times). However the event does not fire if you are not a member of the comintern .

[Calax]

Yeah was thinking of that.

 

 

What I was thinking on doing is actually assigning some people to be equivalent of my various ministers. So they can decide where the area they are responsible for is set to focus.

 

Of course, I am also the Power Hungry Demagogue, so if I don't like your decisions I may overrule them

 

 

But an update of troop makeups will be neat for sure. If I feel really ambitious I could create the hierarchy via links haha. That sounds like a lot of work though.

Well... you could set it up so that on your site you have it set up in a hierarchy of people, so You're at the top with a list of everyone under you. Then it's tiered so that you're able to go down the chain of command and see who is under them, and maybe the really high up people have the ability to edit their pages so that you don't have to do all the work.

 

Admittedly I don't know how fast you'd be able to do the game like this given you've got several people with shifting schedules. At some point you'd probably have to jump in and take over peoples theaters to keep it moving if something happens.

 

Actually, overall I don't think that this would work very well with a larger number of people... probably 3 directly under you and 3 each under them, otherwise you get into a case of having to many people to coordinate into a cohesive strategy. With the smaller number of people you can keep prevent fifteen strategies for the battle field that conflict.