Matrix Games Forums

I was looking at Paradox and trying to find the long post done by a magazine editor, as he had stated the 160 hour penalty which equates to four days. Which I cannot find in the manual so maybe he was full of beans. I can't even find his post now!? It was pretty negative, very negative so maybe they canned it.

Anyways, I never should have posted anything that I don't provide a link for. I know better too. [:(]

I'm going to play a few hours without the AI managed HQ's and see how it goes. Then I will know from first hand experience. None of this second hand information. [8|]

ORIGINAL: JudgeDredd

Larry - if I know you even remotely, I think ti's fair to say you don't troll. Not that I've seen.

Judge, you know me then. [;)] Although a poster can seem like a troll just by posting negative comments and not answering replies.

ORIGINAL: LarryP
Although a poster can seem like a troll just by posting negative comments and not answering replies.

You mean you're supposed to answer replies? Oh no! I'm a troll and didn't know it[;)]
Live and learn.

ORIGINAL: 06 Maestro

ORIGINAL: LarryP
Although a poster can seem like a troll just by posting negative comments and not answering replies.

You mean you're supposed to answer replies? Oh no! I'm a troll and didn't know it[;)]
Live and learn.

I knew someone would come along and twist what I said, or typed. [;)] I've seen you and your are not green or hairy. You're safe.

I bought HOI1 long ago when it was just new; and I actually did create one of the first "cool" mods for it; Shep's TechMod, which got incoporated into some nice full featured mods.

I also bought Victoria, later on.

But what eventually burned me out on Paradox beginning with HOI2 was:

1.) HOLY BUGGED RELEASES BATMAN! No game's perfect upon release; but Paradox is in a class by themselves for buggy releases. They're no EA, since they actually do *eventually* fix most of the bugs. But it's still pretty annoying that they're willing to release hideously broken games, and they're not a internet developer -- in that they can get their games on actual store shelves on release day, or close to it.

2.) Stubbon sticking to obsolete design decisions. Like for example:

A.) HOI's Axis/Comintern/Democracy system was okay, for a first try. But keeping it for round two and three? Why? That just ensues the game diplomatic and military alliance engine is only capable of handling conflicts narrowly limited to historic 1941-1945 WWII types.

B.) Lets Simulate all 24 hours in a day! Okay for a first try; but by HOI2, they should have been asking themselves: "Do we really need to simulate all 24 hours? Can't we just divide it into four six-hour pulses, instead of our present twenty four one-hour pulses? That would retain all of the granularity we need for WWII conflicts, with night bombing, and semi-around the clock fighting; while not straining the computer too much.

C.) Aircraft Carrier Brigades. A good improvement done beginning with HOI2, but still limited in HOI3, in that you can only buy composite brigades made up of predetermined units; instead of specifically saying: "I want three brigades of F4Us and one of TBFs to make up my fast carrier air wings"; you get stuck with buying composite brigades. Which is real puzzling considering their extensive expansion of the Division engine for HOI3 to allow separate regiments/brigades for land units.

D.) Refusal to consider certain game events like Holocaust or area bombing. I know that paradox doesn't want to approach the holocaust, because of european sensibilities; but in HOI1/2 and probably 3, they let you do Stalin's great multiple purges, which killed a lot of people, but somehow oppressing minorities is bad, especially considering how oppressing this minority led to a reduction in research brainpower (a lot of smart scientists fled Europe), and took away vital military needs (in 1944, as the Soviets approached poland, the SS monopolized railroads, shunting vital troop and ammunition trains to sidings to wait, while they fast-tracked expresses full of jews being 'evacuated' from areas soon to be liberated so they could kill them in germany.)

A simple "oppress minority Y/N?" event that fires in 1933 if the Nazis are in power, and a few additional "increase oppression? Y/N" which reduces germany's brainpower, takes away a few IC to account for oppression costs, and reduces germany's diplomatic standing in the world would work pretty good, while not being incredibly controversial and tasteless, like "Build Extermination Camps Y/N? This will reduce your IC by 5 and POP by 10."

Ryan, the game always started in 1936 and still does... so a trigger event in 1933???

I see what you mean. As for the 24 hour, I'd even be okay with 12 two hour impulses. As it is we wait and wait for something to happen. Speeding the game up is not always a good idea because you have so much micromanagement.

Lastly, if you have a holocaust trigger, you'd better set one up for the U.S. that interned so many innocent Japanese. I'd rather see a better use of captured equipment and prisoners of war.

ORIGINAL: geozero

Ryan, the game always started in 1936 and still does... so a trigger event in 1933???

I see what you mean. As for the 24 hour, I'd even be okay with 12 two hour impulses. As it is we wait and wait for something to happen. Speeding the game up is not always a good idea because you have so much micromanagement.

Lastly, if you have a holocaust trigger, you'd better set one up for the U.S. that interned so many innocent Japanese. I'd rather see a better use of captured equipment and prisoners of war.

one of these things is not the same, one of these things is different.....

ORIGINAL: geozero

Ryan, the game always started in 1936 and still does... so a trigger event in 1933???

Well, I always liked modding in an event that fired on Hour 0000 of 1936 campaigns that would give you the player, an option to switch Germany from being utterly fascist to a continuation of the Weimar Government; becuase if Hitler was assassinated later on in the game, it wouldn't realistically affect German policy; it would just be less extreme.

Lastly, if you have a holocaust trigger, you'd better set one up for the U.S. that interned so many innocent Japanese.

I'm fine with that.

"Mr President, in light of the declaration of war by Japan, what shall we do with the japanese on our soil?

A. Intern them! +4 to national unity; those japanese can't be trusted.
B. Do nothing -4 to national unity -- the president doesn't care about america!"

I sort of like that... in fact I really like the game to have more events, so that the player has a choice of either staying the course historically or changing history. Because I think that's what makes this game so much fun. You can play ANY country and change events in history.

I would go so far as to give the Japanese similar events for their attocities in China, and for the Russians who also committed vast numbers to death.

I'd like to see the Flying Tigers in China... not sure if it's in there or not. Things like that.

ORIGINAL: geozero

I sort of like that... in fact I really like the game to have more events, so that the player has a choice of either staying the course historically or changing history. Because I think that's what makes this game so much fun. You can play ANY country and change events in history.

On another forum I frequent, this line of thinking led into the following discussion:

All they'd need to do is implement 'personality scoring', where each leader has goals/beliefs and you get scored by how much you follow these, and those who wanted 'historical' play could compare how CHURCHILL your Churchill was, and everyone else could play a sandbox wargame and ignore it.

I mean, playing as Germany, taking all the Hitler stupidness (getting high Hitler rating) and still winning? That's an achievement. Finishing a game as Germany by losing, 10 million <random minority> gassed, viking relics gathered, ark of the covenant secured and moonbase designs finalised? GREAT SCORE!

That would indeed be awesome, and actually perfectly possible with the way the HOI system works, since techs, events, laws, etc, can all be used to grant free victory points, change ideology, etc, and do all sorts of wacky stuff

Remember it's not just Germany, Remember that superheavy weight amphibious transport aircraft, that Hughes wants to build, oh and Tessla wants money for a "Deathray".

A similar line of thinking could offer a solution to some things though. Imagine for a second if the numbers the research screen told you for a technology were an estimate, and the actual tech may or may not resemble what it tells you there. AMAZING I know, to not have everything spelt out as a single numeric value that you can trivially maximise, but instead to have it give a general indication (possibly based off your science teams skills/traits) of what the technology is expected to provide.

This would give the germans the option of sinking lots of resources into "Eugenics Programs" to get the predicted +10 loyalty +100 production +277 attractiveness bonuses, which in the end do nothing. Or alternatively the "Occult rituals" which promises the ability to call magical storms but the research never actually finishes.

Alternatively your advisors could say that conducting a purge would inspire greater loyalty, but in fact it wont give the bonus.

Would this be far too subtle to the average gamer? Will there be floods of people complaining that theres magic in their historical sim (when in fact there isnt and they have missed the point entirely) or that they spent loads of time and money researching eugenics but it doesnt actually give a bonus and therefore the devs need to fix the "bug". This allows people to reenact history by choosing to follow historical options, but doesnt require you to actually waste time/money if you dont want to. Alternatively it makes the game harder for stupid people (Well nobody has any shoes, but that wont matter once I get my death rays! They say its almost ready, just a couple more months...) which is always a good thing.

I regret buying HoI3, I naively thought it could give me a few hours of entertainment. In its current stage it is pure garbage, and I do not say that lightly.

After massive patching it might be a playable "fantasy" wargame. I'm done with Paradox games, having played many of their previous releases.

This is what I posted about HOI3 on PI forum today:

"Started [a game] as USA in 1939.
From start on Japan was in the Axis.After 2 Weeks NatChin and then ChiCom and all the other Chinese factions started to surrender to Japan. Then they went members of the Axis.There was an German annexion of Poland, Finnish winter war. And in Summer 1940 without any Campaign in the West, Germany attacked French Indochina.

US presidential dates are way off (start date + 48 months, depending of the start date of the scenario). Not unimportant at all.

Research achievements are bizarro - no matter what scenario you play.

(Political) geography is way beside WW2.


Fact is: No matter what scenario you play, even the historical setting is at least badly researched or not at all and put together in a generic way.

Without even one day of in-game action passed, the whole thing is Fantasy of Iron 3 [FOI3], which is ok if you like World of Warcraft.

PI might not have had the resources to iron out all performance issues. That's ok. But even if this aspect is neglected, there are enough aspects of FOI3 which are really sloppy.

Sure, most of it will be ironed out. But the point is: Many already ha[ve] paid the full regular price NOW to get FOI 3.

Nobody gave an ammount of money, which had to be patched afterwards, because our bucks weren't enough or outdated.

And what starts to make me angry on reflection are two other points:

1. PI made a poll about selling additional downloadable content for FOI 3 before they even published the game. While I appriciate that they made at least a poll and then were rethinking the whole issue, personally I find the whole maneuver in retrospective not very sympathetic and in fact a little bit greedy given the state of FOI 3 as it is right now.

2. A few weeks ago Johan posted in some other forums about the non-existent AI of certain recently published games. On another occasion somewere else he made some patronizing remarks about the UI of some other games. Not that his remarks weren't justified. But given the state of FOI 3 on publishing (enabled AI production while closing the production window anyone?!) now I find those remarks are ... just not cricket.

Last not least, what I really did enjoy were the developers diaries. Those truely were entertaining and presented in a symathetic way. But I enjoyed those more ... than the actual game.

Regards"

ORIGINAL: sveint

I regret buying HoI3, I naively thought it could give me a few hours of entertainment. In its current stage it is pure garbage, and I do not say that lightly.

After massive patching it might be a playable "fantasy" wargame. I'm done with Paradox games, having played many of their previous releases.

I stopped playing it and will not play it again until at least one good patch, maybe two. The one thing I thought the game was good at was stability on my systems, then BAM! Lockup. Then there's the speed issue, horrible choppy clunkiness (my 3 PC's are fast), resume starting on its own when paused, supply, historical inaccuracies galore, on and on... [:(]

Every company releases software with bugs but I can't understand how some of these huge issues got by beta??!!

Big let down. However, I'm not mad, as I know from the past what Paradox games are like when first released. I bought it knowing this, so I wait... [8|]

EDIT: Every game I own from Paradox has eventually been fixed, so it's just the waiting game, for the game. [;)]

US presidential dates are way off (start date + 48 months, depending of the start date of the scenario). Not unimportant at all.

This I don't get. This is their third WW2 game. HOW could they just forget all this stuff from the last two?

The obviously question is "do they care?"...[8|]

BTW, have they still got every month with the same number of days?

I bought the game and this will probley be my last in their series. Its getting worst. HOI3 has got to have the ugliest map ive ever seen. Mexico landing in Germany! I don't think so. If I wanted fantasy I would play red alert 3.[>:][;)]

You read my mind.

ORIGINAL: sveint

I regret buying HoI3, I naively thought it could give me a few hours of entertainment. In its current stage it is pure garbage, and I do not say that lightly.

After massive patching it might be a playable "fantasy" wargame. I'm done with Paradox games, having played many of their previous releases.

Yesterday I received the copy of Hearts of Iron III I pre-ordered and I haven't played it much, but I still have hope for it. Particularly after what Johan posted:

"Hi guys.

We're working on a 1.2 patch including fixing reported bugfixes and improving gameplay.

The goal is to have it released in late august, but may be first week of september.

Our goals includes.

- New autocontrols for sliders and trade agreements.
- Severe performance improvement.
- New mapmode for simplified terrain. (hoi2 style)
- Day&Night indications
- Cancellation of orders
- Revised Technology Setup for all scenarios.
- Improved Invasion & Theatre AI.

& of course, fixing reported bugs."

It may take a patch or two, but I expect with the fixes and the mods to come it will be worth the money I paid for it.

ORIGINAL: Terminus

The obviously question is "do they care?"...[8|]

BTW, have they still got every month with the same number of days?

Give me a break; like it matters. I'm certain two extra days in February would not have affected the outcome of WWII in the slightest.

ORIGINAL: Titanwarrior89

I bought the game and this will probley be my last in their series. Its getting worst. HOI3 has got to have the ugliest map ive ever seen. Mexico landing in Germany! I don't think so...

I wonder if it occured to any how easy it would be to create this setup by playing as Mexico and then switching control over to the AI before capturing the screenshot. I certainly haven't seen anything like this in the games I've played so far (either before or after patches).

I really don't mind people with the game sayign what they see - but it really is irking me to see people on here who don't have the game just regurgitating the same old stuff.

It reminds me of some CCTV footage I saw once where a guy was laid out on the deck by one punch from a HUGE bloke, and then several of his mates jumped in to stick the boot in.

Shame on you people. [:-]

Oh and Terminus - asking if a developer cares about his software is probably one of the single most ridiculous (and therefore inflammatory) posts I have seen from you. Clearly you are not a developer.