Comments on hoi

[Gary Tatro]

There are about 30 patches, each one is not compatable with the previous patch and the game still crashes. HOI as a group of nut-o gamers who post how to fix the patches buy going into the code using your own computer. :p

I have played maybe 4 games. Never to the finish. Most of the time I make it to 1944 and as the Axis have concured all the world except North America. :p The AI is absolutely terrible. It is almost immposible to win as the Russians.

Throw away the instruction manuel that comes with the game and go to the website and down load the one there. Also down load patch like 1.9999B.

Granted it was fun conquring the world in 3-4 years but after that what else is there. HOI crew has made changes and it is now playable, but if you do not have high speed internet access, for get it you will never be able to download the 20meg patches.

Anyway the game is fun in an arcade kind of way, but real strategy. :p :p :p
You will have fun playing it through once or twice but never there after.

[Frank W.]

i secend gary´s opinion.

it´s no real strategy IMHO.

it can be fun if you overlook some bugs
and interface errors..

i put it back in the box and wait for 1.06
or so....

meanwhile i´m enough occupied w/ SPWAW
and EU 2.

i also play an old adventure called "beneath a steel sky "
quite funny game

[IJN_Shinano]

There are about 30 patches, each one is not compatable with the previous patch and the game still crashes. HOI as a group of nut-o gamers who post how to fix the patches buy going into the code using your own computer. :p

Hmmm... all that has to be done is to simply download the latest patch (you don't need to download any of the earlier ones) and execute it. Doesn't sound too difficult to me.

Sometimes I think that people are talking about a different game than I'm playing. I never had a single crash with HOI and have found it to be the one game I've kept on my hard drive for the past year (in truth, I never have crashes with any of my games). Detailed and deep; and just enough micro-management to keep even the groggiest bean counter happy. And until my penultimate wet-dream game comes out (MatrixGames 'War In Flames' conversion), HOI's a great "temporary" substitute.

I have played maybe 4 games. Never to the finish. Most of the time I make it to 1944 and as the Axis have concured all the world except North America. :p The AI is absolutely terrible. It is almost immposible to win as the Russians.

I haven't found a decent AI (except for Korsun Pocket, mind you) in any wargame, so this isn't unusual. As for the Russians... well... I don't know how you can say the AI is "absolutely terrible" and still have problems beating it when you're playing as the USSR. When I play as the USSR, it's a hoot. I can win the war against the Axis alone, if need be, and serve out in detail the historical platitude of the Soviets winning the war and the rest of the Allies' just happening to 'be there.' For me, it's the easiest country to play.

I find that the most rampant complainers (who haven't played many full games of HOI, btw) always play the 1936 campaign. Play the 1939 campaign. You'll find the game a LOT more balanced and, truth be told, challenging. The AI has more difficulty dealing with the 1936 campaign since players often take some very wide historical turns in terms of technology acquisition and deployment. Too many unique possibilities for the AI to handle. The 1939 campaign? Totally different story. And a whole helluva lot funner to play as the Soviets (i.e., the Axis has got its sh*t together, so to speak).

Anyway the game is fun in an arcade kind of way, but real strategy. :p :p :p
You will have fun playing it through once or twice but never there after.

Well, until someone can find me a game that models the skills of over 3000 separate military commanders and their appropriate effects on troop concentrations, then I guess I'll continue having this kind of "arcade" fun. But I actually enjoy the "arcade-ish" effect of an event popping up on my screen informing me that Poland has enacted some sweeping legislation regarding its sanitary districts... and knowing that such legislation is actually going to impact my game. I play with the C.O.R.E. add-on (in reality, just a massive series of "events".... thousands, in fact) and it really gives HOI the historical flavor I crave.

My advice is to play it slowly... turn down the speed. Name some of your units (you can do that). Create historical troop concentrations and assign their historical commanders. Get involved with the game. It's pretty good in my book and I'd recommend it.

And don't get me started on multiplayer... that's where it shines and really can't be beat. Get four of your friends in a large room and play on a LAN... watch the beer bottles and insults fly. Totally rocks, but be prepared to lose 12 or so hours of your lifetime.

[ravinhood]

Sadly the Allied AI in HOI is horrible, they will never mount a D-DAY offensive and it's up to the player to do anything if Germany is to be pushed out of anywhere. Same goes for Japan vs USA, the USA will do little or nothing and sadly that makes the game not much fun or realistic, especially if you like to play minor countries.

But, if you like playing the Brits, or France or USA, then it's not a bad game. If you play Germany it's pretty much a pushover once Russia is out of the way, it's just a matter of time until you own the world.

To give you an idea how bad the AI is, I took a minor Brazil and crushed the Italians and Germans, with a little help from the Russians. Brazil now, all by their lonesome the saviors of WWII haha.

[Hortlund]

Try this forum instead.

http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/for ... y.php?f=79

[Tom Stearns]

They keep patching the game. Each patch has made it more playable. I've only played the German's and have had virtually no problem crushing the allieds, including invading England with no American intervention. I really enjoyed EU and now play Victoria a lot. I like the grand strategical scale. It's too bad they didn't do a better job with HOI. I'll keep downloading the patches and playing it occassionally in hopes eventually they give me the game they should have given from the beginning.

[Frank W.]

ORIGINAL: Tom Stearns

They keep patching the game. Each patch has made it more playable. I've only played the German's and have had virtually no problem crushing the allieds, including invading England with no American intervention. I really enjoyed EU and now play Victoria a lot. I like the grand strategical scale. It's too bad they didn't do a better job with HOI. I'll keep downloading the patches and playing it occassionally in hopes eventually they give me the game they should have given from the beginning.

true [:(]

the AI is still horrible ( while this is a problem of much strategy games ) and the interface is not user frinedly enough. also even with ver 1.05 there are too much bugs to enjoy the game. i just got back to playing EU2 which is quite better then HOI sadly. so there is still room for a grand strategy game. hope one of the wargame developers will deliver something in this genre which sets a new standard or so. perhaps a co.working of 2-3 developers would do the trick for such a huge project *HINT TO MATRIXGAMES*

[Les_the_Sarge_9_1]

Matrix is indeed planning to "do it right".

It will be either Computer World in Flames, or World at War.

Both games will use turns though, and both will not bother using some patently brain dead concept like real time at the grand strategy level.

And chances are you will wait till the damned game is finished, before it goes on sale. You won't be ambushed into being paying unwitting beat testers for an inconsiderate company.

At this time, I pass on furthering what was till the hack attack, a dead issue thread. It has already been said a thousand times here and elsewhere. Everyone already knows HoI sucks unless you belong to the cabal of fanatical believers that can't see anything else better to do, than work for free for the people that sold this trash.

And to re iterate, for those actually unaware, no I don't own this garbage, and I plan on never owning this garbage, because why would I throw away the money, when I could by a real wargame worth the money. There are no shortages of good games on the market.
So don't think that my not owning it, means bugger all to me. Nor relevant to my reporting what many already know, that they got sold a barely worth playing, barely capable of running piece of betrayal that maybe some day will be a marginal wargame, best bought for 5-9 bucks off a schlock games rack at best.

People that defend this game make me laugh.

[Tom Stearns]

Glad we could bring a smile to your face Sarge. Most Sarge's are dower faced grumps.[:)]

[degen]

I bought Hearts of Iron several months ago and could not get into it. I was looking for a strategic level game that was easy to manage and to allow me to make grand plans. Nothing doing here, the interface is complex, messages bombard you, attacking is not intuitive, so I gave up.

I commend those of you who have mastered this game, you are better supreme commanders than me!

[Hortlund]

ORIGINAL: Les_the_Sarge_9_1

Matrix is indeed planning to "do it right".

It will be either Computer World in Flames, or World at War.

Both games will use turns though, and both will not bother using some patently brain dead concept like real time at the grand strategy level.

And chances are you will wait till the damned game is finished, before it goes on sale. You won't be ambushed into being paying unwitting beat testers for an inconsiderate company.

At this time, I pass on furthering what was till the hack attack, a dead issue thread. It has already been said a thousand times here and elsewhere. Everyone already knows HoI sucks unless you belong to the cabal of fanatical believers that can't see anything else better to do, than work for free for the people that sold this trash.

And to re iterate, for those actually unaware, no I don't own this garbage, and I plan on never owning this garbage, because why would I throw away the money, when I could by a real wargame worth the money. There are no shortages of good games on the market.
So don't think that my not owning it, means bugger all to me. Nor relevant to my reporting what many already know, that they got sold a barely worth playing, barely capable of running piece of betrayal that maybe some day will be a marginal wargame, best bought for 5-9 bucks off a schlock games rack at best.

People that defend this game make me laugh.

Again you seem to missunderstand the difference between real-time and continuous-time. A real time game is a game where the clock is always ticking. Like Age of Empires, or Close Combat. In those games you cannot pause and do stuff. In a continuous-time wargame, you are able to pause the clock and do stuff. Europa Universalis or HoI are good examples of continuous-time wargames.

There is a difference between continuous-time and Real-time, you should realize this and use the proper term when talking about a wargame. Now I know that you have never played Hearts of Iron, and I realize that that puts you in a rather ankward spot when it comes to pesky details like knowing what the game looks like or what the game plays like, but you should at least make an effort.

You constanty mouth off your critiqe against HoI, and you constantly thrash the developers of the game. And, to re iterate, for those actually unaware, your critiqe against the game and the developers come from wayy out of left field since
you have never played the game

Clearly you have an axe to grind with Paradox, and clearly you will not let pesky details like "knowing what the hell you are talking about" stand in your way when it comes to thrashing Paradox and their products.

At first, when I read your agressive attacks on Paradox and HoI, I thought it was kinda peculiar. It is not often you see forum members spin off into extremely agressive attacks on games they have never played. It is even more rare to see forum members wish personal injury on game developers. And it is EXTREMELY rare to see a forum member thoroughly thrash a game he has never played, AND wish personal injury on the makers of that game.

Then I read one of your posts in another thread where you said that you end up playing your table top games solitare. And you also play wargames hotseat against yourself. And man...suddenly everything fell into place. I realized that you are probably just very lonely and frustrated guy.

So I realized that this is probably about something else. You dont really hate HoI and Paradox, you are just frustrated and angry at the world. I said before that I would make sure that your lies about HoI and Paradox would not be left unchecked. And I said that I would not tolerate your lies and insults. But after reading that post I realized that you are probably just venting alot of frustration.

But please choose another target for your frustration. Because HoI is a great game and it does not deserve your criticism, and Paradox is one of the best game developers there are, and they sure as hell does not deserve all your ill-wishes.

So...back off.

Thanks.

[Frank W.]

ORIGINAL: Panzerjaeger Hortlund

But please choose another target for your frustration. Because HoI is a great game and it does not deserve your criticism, and Paradox is one of the best game developers there are, and they sure as hell does not deserve all your ill-wishes.

panzerjäger:

which nickname do you have in the paradox forums ?

btw: i think i´m qualified for critics ( played the game
since 1.03 ), also i have up to 400 posts in the paradox
forums, also bug reports and such ( which were confirmed
by others ) but in the next patch that came out the bugs
were still present... also i think EU2 is in the end
a better more complete game.

but with 1.06 i will install HoI again and see what this
time the guys brings us...[;)]

[ravinhood]

HOI wouldn't be so bad SARGE if the AI did what it should do. The real time aspect can be slowed to a crawl and I didn't mind this type of continous time that could be paused while I made my decisions, at least it wasn't a click fest like normal RTS games.

The tech tree was quite unique, but, for some countries not very realistic. The game took the tedium of moving 100's of units around per turn out of the grand strategic picture, I was glad of this.

I'm only the ALLIED AI mounting amphibious assaults that are decent and the USA doing something besides pick their teeth away from liking HOI. Recently I have been told this is a game bug and will be fixed in 1.06, if that is so, then I will give HOI another try. When someone plays Germany they should have a hellofatime against the AI, as it stands now, it's just a matter of time and nothing else. Those that play multiplayer seem to like it moreso than us single players. Of course MP get the advantage of a human brain behind each of the major countries, and I can only ask for at least an average AI behind the computer controlled majors.

But, don't get me started on VICTORIA, that is the worst game Paradox has made, it's a financial spreadsheet, pretty boring, and just like ALL Paradox games, buggy and flawed as heck.

[Les_the_Sarge_9_1]

PJH makes interesting and funny as well as totally whacky assumptions about my character.

I will refrain from attacking him personally, as he is deserving of pity not hatred.

It's not his fault the only game he has to champion sucks.

Are you married to the guy that made this junk by any chance?

Not his fault he has never met me, and would thus know even less about me than I do about that stupid game. Pauseable non pausable it matters not. It is poorly designed garbage.

As for the "personal injury" comments though that is a dangerous slander PJH, so keep that out of your posts, or I will have you and your two months exceeding my membership account thrown off the site...permanently.
If you don't think its possible, ask the owner.

Accusing me of wishing personal harm to anyone is not something I will tolerate.

[dinsdale]

HOI is not a game which is "ruined" by real-time, continous-time, or whatever you wish to call it. EU/EU2 have already proved that grand strategy can be accomplished very well without the need to press "Next Turn" 4000 times during a game

To play the game well you need the pause button, how else to set up a timed 3 province attack with air support, build some new divisions, and pick out the next batch of techs to use. This kind of pause-heavy micromanagement destroys the game as a multi-player experience and works against the continous time concept, as what is the point.

The game is not too complex, the UI is too convoluted to do anything effeciently, so IMHO it's a single-player only experience. Now a single-player game needs to have a competent AI behind it, not the Pacman AI which appears to have been lifted and grafted into the game.

One of HOI's biggest problems is that it was released in an unplayable state, and the first series of patches introduced new game-stopping bugs. By the time the game became playable, too many players had been turned off or worse; seen how futile the game really is to play.

Paradox put a lot of effort in, the game is certainly playable now. But in the end, IMHO, it's just not a very good game.

Victoria is much better BTW, although it has even more pause-requiring micro-management making it less suitable for multi-player games. At least the AI and rules provide enough smoke and mirrors to make the single-player experience rewarding.

[Frank W.]

i have to say i play EU2 again with a beta patch from 2 feb. or so
and must say it´s quite good. i din´t even have an CTD´s like common
in HoI. i like it and think EU2 is good game. perhaps HoI can
be improved to be on a better level like till now. but i doubt it
i mean this is already patch no. 6 that will come out hopefully soon.[&:]

[Tom Stearns]

The funny thing about the argument between to veteran posters who will go unnamed is that they are both right. Because what a person thinks about a game is their OPINION. Opinions are subjective, not objective.
So they can choose to like or dislike the game and neither is wrong, because it's opinion, not fact.

I personally like Paradox's game and have bought all of the EU/HOI/VIC titles. I like grand strategic games with emphasis on economics and diplomacy. HOI is the worst of the lot, but the most popular topic. If the topic were anything else but WW2, I don't think it would have gotten the run it has. One guy said he hated Victoria or something like that. Well, the poeple in Victoria, TX might not like what he said, but I just think he is missing out on a cool game. It may just not be his cup of tea. Some people think Steel Panther's is the next coming, but I have never gotten into it. Hey, that's my opinion, which we are all entitled to. In fact everyone who reads this post has just been entitled to my opinion about opinions.

So is this all clear as mud? Hurling insults at one another over someone's opinion is ridiculous. Live and let live guys and let's have fun discussing merits and strategy and neat stuff.