Hearts of Iron II Doomsday

[AntiochusIII]

Now, I was looking to enter the Paradox bandwagon (it is past time to redress this blasphemy to God!) so I downloaded the HOI2 demo (Ardennes offensive scenario) and found it to be impressive (got trounced as the Allies, but won impressively as the Nazis!?), though the building-up parts, which are disabled, interests me much more--and I am quite sufficiently excited. So now I want to get a Hearts of Iron game, but I'm in a situation that, to cut short, is called a limited budget situation: being a kid who unusually is not accustomed to paying full prices for games, and not accustomed to buying games often, either, in such a way that every purchase counts. So, here is the question:

Should I get Hearts of Iron for cheap, or Hearts of Iron II anyway?

I know it's not that relevant to the topic, but I don't want to dig the old HOI2 thread up.

[ShadesPanther]

HOI I is a really great game but I think it would be better to get HOI II as it has many fixes to some niggling problems of the first as well as more provinces and the Tech and building up is so much better

[AntiochusIII]

I've got Hearts of Iron II: Doomsday! Hurrah! Hooray! Yippie!

...wait, is it stand-alone or does it require the original one?

*shudders*

Edit: Thx, disco. Now I'm assured.

Can't wait to try it out 'till morning today. Nonstop.

[discovery1]

stand alone

[screwtype]

Wow, I think you guys must be incredible masochists.

I just bought my first Paradox Game today - the original Hearts of Iron, Version 1.08, for $9.95. I haven't bought a Paradox Game before because I've had a feeling their games look just a bit too complicated...

Well, now I've got it, played through the tutorials and had a look at the game, and I cannot BELIEVE how complex it is!

I started out playing Britain in 1936, the first thing I notice is that I've got ninety convoys to manage. Ninety. And ALL of them unescorted, which presumably means I am going to have to fiddle with my scads of destroyers to allocate an escort for each and every one of these convoys. And that is before I even THINK about looking at overall strategy!

Then I found out I've got military assets in India, Australia...all over the world in fact. But no apparent way of easily identifying which countries are allied to me even. I mean, this game is HUGE. TERRIFYINGLY HUGE. I've even got a list of hundreds of individual commanders to assign to various units!

I quickly got out of that scenario, and tried Germany '39, where at least I wouldn't have to fiddle with naval assets. So I tried attacking Poland. When I click on an army, I have to set the exact bloody time of attack! So I click on one army, and it tells me it will advance into the province on September 8th. Then I click on another army and it tells me the earliest date of attack is September 11th. Then another one and the earliest date of attack is September 16th. And each time this happens, I have to go and reset all the other attack dates in order to co-ordinate everything!

So eventually I got a few attacks organized, then unpaused the game. And suddenly I'm getting message boxes coming up, DOZENS AND DOZENS of the blasted things, one after the other, so fast I can hardly keep pace with clicking the "Okay" button to get rid of them all, let alone watch my attacks develop!

But finally after about ten minutes of clicking "Okay" buttons I do manage to watch a couple of my attacks. So somehow one huge army I sent ends up getting thrashed. And then I watch the second attack. In spite of starting with a big numerical advantage, I see that I have just a slight advantage of 900 points to 850 or so. But then, while I'm watching, suddenly the enemy points goes up to 1250 and I'm losing again.

This is not a game, it's a bleedin' monstrosity!

[SwordsMaster]

That ain't nothing. Try Victoria.

[screwtype]

After another foray into the German 1939 scenario, I find it hard to believe that *anyone* could play this game and enjoy it.

In spite of a really careful setup I still got smashed by the Poles, who seem to have an unlimited number of reinforcements to keep sending to battle. My own reinforcements, when I can scrape some up, take days to arrive at the battlefield.

I'm Germany, for goodness' sakes! The Poles should be a pushover!

And the controls are so finicky, it seems it's impossible to select only the units you want. I did read the tutorial on creating new units but even if you do create one, I can't figure out how to select just this unit and send it somewhere.

And while it takes all my attention to try and keep control of these battles, my fleets are being sunk all over the world by the British and French. This game is just crazy.

I guess I can try doing the tutorial again, but at this stage I'm about ready to chuck it in already.

[SwordsMaster]

Try playing the 1936 scenario with some country like Portugal or Turkey to get used to the mechanics. Don't dive into the deep end directly. Monsters like UK, Germany or USSR are a bit too much to handle for a first game.

[screwtype]

Thanks for the tip! Maybe I'll try that

[L'Impresario]

A terrible cliché of an advice would be to start checking the Paradox forums, after trying a bit the less complex factions. It would also have helped if you had started with simpler Paradox games, like CK or EU2, the interface has many similarities in all their grand strategy games.

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

Screwtype, HOI: II is WAY better. Less pop-ups, you can set the computer to auto-manage quite a few things efficiently, and it is overall more fun and less complex. It's also cheap, not much more then HOI: I.

[screwtype]

Screwtype, HOI: II is WAY better. Less pop-ups, you can set the computer to auto-manage quite a few things efficiently, and it is overall more fun and less complex. It's also cheap, not much more then HOI: I.

I was wondering about that. HOI certainly seems like a game that hasn't had enough development, especially in regards to the UI.

I think I've seen a copy of HOI 2 Platinum around for $29.95, which is still pretty cheap. Maybe it would be worth the extra...

[GoreBag]

Try playing the 1936 scenario with some country like Portugal or Turkey to get used to the mechanics. Don't dive into the deep end directly. Monsters like UK, Germany or USSR are a bit too much to handle for a first game.

He's right. My first game was as Peru, and when I'd finished, I still had a lot to learn, but I was getting the hang of things. Managed to get Ecuador and Colombia under my belt, too.

[screwtype]

He's right. My first game was as Peru, and when I'd finished, I still had a lot to learn, but I was getting the hang of things. Managed to get Ecuador and Colombia under my belt, too.

You wicked imperialist you

I've just been playing the HOI 2 Demo. I've found that switching to unit symbols rather than icons helps a bit, because you can see how many units are in a province.

I can also see that that the enemy troops are moving around a lot, changing their deployments from hour to hour, which I guess helps to explain why I couldn't break through the Poles before.

But I'm still having problems maneouvring my own units. I told them to attack but only a couple of them seemed to participate while the rest just got a "moving" symbol on them. Which meant that I didn't have enough strength in the attack and got beat again.

Yeah, it sure is hard to figure out how to win a battle in this game, LOL. When you're used to the instant results you get in most wargames, it's a big change to find yourself trying to manage a battlefield that is changing from hour to hour!

But hopefully if I stick with it I'll figure it out eventually...

[SwordsMaster]

The 2 basic rules of modern warfare: Encircle and move. If you fight, encircle the enemy, and never stop moving to stop the enemy from reinforcing, redeploying and beat him piecemeal. Other than that I think you should have a look at the forums, there are lots of useful tips there.

[AntiochusIII]

Yaa, I bought Doomsday (for only 20$, that's very nice of a deal for a brand new stand-alone expansion that, frankly, includes the original game too) and began with, as usual, UK. I almost killed myself with the details which are humongous, and the pains of the real British leaders as they tried to hold to their Empire was quickly appreciated. I quitted that game and started as Argentina. It was way more fun...and easier. I trounced Chile and Uruguay (or was it Paraguay? The small one near Buanos Aires...) and kept my profile low after that--too high a belligerence to dare provoke more of the US hostility. Ended the game as an Axis, though, barely victorious thanks to the apparently lucky stroke that the Japanese took all China early and managed to save the Germans from the Russian hordes...

And I've been playing all week. To 5 A.M. every day in this Spring Break...

[SwordsMaster]

Finally got the time to get the game, and have been playing for a couple of days. The addition of spyonage is nice although it reminds me of Trade Centers in EUII as far as micromanagement goes which is slightly annoying. I like the expansions to the tech tree although I find the "hospital" line to be plain stupid. Come on! It is not like medicine stopped being researched during the war anyway...

Other than that, it is basically HOI2, with some extra features I like (like commanders' history, or the option to not reinforce or upgrade - I'm starving out all my militias), and the game is going well, as Italy in '36, I've annexed Ethiopia, Albania, took the Balearic islands, Seville, Hualva and La Coruna during the Spanish Civil war, won a war against Portugal, annexing all of their European possessions except Lisbon and most of their colonies, and I'm building up now for an invasion of Republican Spain, weakened by the Civil war, and Greece, which is just nice to have. I' also building a new fleet and trying to restore my energy production which is under minimums. Its sometime late in 1937 and I'm enjoying the game.

[SwordsMaster]

A little update: I declared war on Greece thinking it would be asy pickings, as I'm allied to Bulgaria and between the 2 of us we can quickly destroy the greek resistance. I occupied Salonika, and after 3 months of tough fighting, managed to take Ianina. And, as my battered landing forces are moving into Ioanina, Yugoslavia declares war on me and occupies the former albanian provinces. The only forces I could throw at them were the 7 divisions stationed in Venecia, with heavy artillery which made them really slow too.

Thankfully, Greece offered peace giving me some of their energy-producing provinces, which I accepted as that allowed me to turn the 6 divisions faring in Greece up to the north. I managed a landind in Dubrovnik and Split, took Mostar and by then my northern forces were already in Yugoslavian territory.

In the south, though things were not going so smoothly. To retake my albanian provinces, 4 divisions and 2 tactical bomber groups spent 5 months, during which, Yugoslavia occupied Sofia, my allies' capital. Good thing is, while they were tied down there, my light landing forces occuped Belgrade, and waited there for the heavier artillery and tanks to surround the nearby enemy before attacking. The turning point of the war was the surrounding and annihilation of 14 Yugoslavian divisions in Dubrovnik by 4 indantry divisions and 3 mountaineers, with heavy fire from my batleships and frequent bombings (BTW, the bombers that wotked Yugoslavia are 5 star veterans now), a full combined arms asault, and 14 destroyed divisions. Then I took control of the bulgarian forces and surrounded and destroyed the 5 divisions in Sofia. And that was the end of the war. So now I control an uninterrupted strip of land from Genoa to Athens after the annexation of Yugoslavia and the re-annexation of Albania.

That was 1939-March 1938.

By now, my infantry had been upgraded to the '39 model, my cavalry became mechanised and I shipped my most experienced divisions to Spain, where, as I said, I was planning on campaigning before the Yugoslavian war broke out. It was a good moment: most of the treaties Repblican Spain had with other nations had just been outdated, but my spies confirmed that there were over 34 infantry divisions and 7 armoured in the Rep. Spanish army. While I only had 17 divisions, most of them veteran from Yugoslavia, Greece or Portugal, and 5 cavalry divisions which proved to be unvaluable. But nothing could prevent me from changing my plans: I needed that energy and those ICs (the building of a new navy meant, all other aspects of producing were under minimum), I had commisioned 3 new ships, 2 class 4 battleships, and a light aircraft carrier for patrolling purposes (I joined the light carrier with a few of my oldest light and heavy cruisers and destructors to get a smallish but ok-competent group), but there were still destructors and a couple of super-heavies waiting to be finished.

I waited until al my divisions were in place, my dissent under 5% and the declared war on Spain (Feb, 1939).The first few months were unexpected: my cavalry broke through much superior forces when they were only meant to act as a diversion, and my main attack groups struggled to maintain their positions and were even cutoff once during a particularly unexpected contraofensive by the spanish. All in all, my planes cotrolled the air, and another 2 tac bomber groups and escorts were brought over to help, and they proved unvaluable. Madrid fell after 3 months of war, but I was failing to advance my positions in the south, where my 4 Yugoslavian divisions were struggling to maintain at bay the 9 spanish divisions surrounding them.

It is now November of 1939, and my 17 divisions are in Huesca and Tarragona, surrounding the last 20 spanish divisions in Baecelona. all 3 of my bomber groups are on "ground attack" and there is constant shore bombardment missions for the heaviest of my ships. Still, and with the rest of Spain occupied, All 3 of my assaults have failed. I'll give them until Christmas of grinding them into the ground. And if I still can't win, I'm going to go for their colonies, until they can't even resupply from anywhere else and just starve.

[screwtype]

Wow, this game is a really tough slog isn't it? LOL.

I'm going to have to go back and fiddle with this HOI 2 demo again. I'm completely bamboozled by the combat system, but it sounds like too fun a game not to try and persevere with. I'm already bored with Homm5 after only 2 1/2 missions, LOL.

[GoreBag]

...my cavalry became mechanised...

Whoa, mechanised or motorized?

It is now November of 1939, and my 17 divisions are in Huesca and Tarragona, surrounding the last 20 spanish divisions in Baecelona. all 3 of my bomber groups are on "ground attack" and there is constant shore bombardment missions for the heaviest of my ships. Still, and with the rest of Spain occupied, All 3 of my assaults have failed. I'll give them until Christmas of grinding them into the ground. And if I still can't win, I'm going to go for their colonies, until they can't even resupply from anywhere else and just starve.

Spain only has one overseas factory, so shipments must be coming from that particular island in the canaries. Your options: set your navy to convoy raiding missions around the Barcelona and Canary sea zones; set your airforces to strategic bombardment missions in the Canaries (if you can reach) and in Barcelona (does Barcelona have any factories? I don't recall); hunker down your ground forces and prepare for an attempted breakthrough. Keeping their army out of supply will drain their strength and organisation, and the winter will cause attrition losses on their troops that can scarcely be reinforced.

Landing in the colonies isn't worth much, unless you're aiming for that single colony with the factory (which usually doesn't hold much of a garrison). The other colonies are worth nothing and bring you no closer to full annexation after being taken. I'd concentrate on eliminating their forces and capturing Barcelona - you have them in an excellent position.

[SwordsMaster]

Whoa, mechanised or motorized?

mechanised.

Spain only has one overseas factory, so shipments must be coming from that particular island in the canaries. Your options: set your navy to convoy raiding missions around the Barcelona and Canary sea zones; set your airforces to strategic bombardment missions in the Canaries (if you can reach) and in Barcelona (does Barcelona have any factories? I don't recall); hunker down your ground forces and prepare for an attempted breakthrough. Keeping their army out of supply will drain their strength and organisation, and the winter will cause attrition losses on their troops that can scarcely be reinforced.

That is my intention, yes. Barcelona has a factory and it's worth 2 VPs. I already have 2 fleets of subs patrolling the straits of Gibraltar and Barcelona, but they seem to have a decent amount of supplies...

Landing in the colonies isn't worth much, unless you're aiming for that single colony with the factory (which usually doesn't hold much of a garrison). The other colonies are worth nothing and bring you no closer to full annexation after being taken. I'd concentrate on eliminating their forces and capturing Barcelona - you have them in an excellent position.

Thats what makes it all the more annoying-I control the rest of the peninsula and have the better troops, but the bastards won't just surrender. Actually that should be included as an option

[screwtype]

there were still a whopping 70 Divisions of varying nationality holed up in London.

That sounds a bit unrealistic, how could so many divisions survive without supplies?

Also, I think the diplomatic model sounds a bit underdone - Germany ought to have a say in whether or not Italy gets to take major assets like Vichy France and Britain.

[ShadesPanther]

It's a problem with the game. The supplies come from the capital so if you encircle the capital the whole of the country loses supplies. But the frces in the capital can be supplied indefinately. Also any divisions deployed come from the capital and goes to lands connected to the capital. In this case all new divisions are put into London with supplies.

[SwordsMaster]

It's a problem with the game. The supplies come from the capital so if you encircle the capital the whole of the country loses supplies. But the frces in the capital can be supplied indefinately. Also any divisions deployed come from the capital and goes to lands connected to the capital. In this case all new divisions are put into London with supplies.

Except the garrison divisions that have the "Strategically redeploy" option. Very true though, I think the maximum numver of divs a province should be able to mantain when surrounded is the province's ICx3 or something like that. And maybe make that upgradeable with some technology.

[GoreBag]

mechanised.

Isn't that a little early for mechanised cavalry?

[SwordsMaster]

Isn't that a little early for mechanised cavalry?

sorry, you were right, its motorised.

[screwtype]

Hmmm, this isn't as easy as I thought.

I thought I'd take you guys' advice and play a smaller nation to learn the ropes, so I picked Turkey.

I tried to go to war with Greece but got a message that I can't just declare war on another country because I'm a democracy! And there isn't enough support for a war.

I looked at my diplomacy points to see if I could stir up some trouble that way and they are zero! I don't have any. And I get an extra 0.5 diplomacy points per...not sure, I thought it said per year?

So can someone tell me a way I can get more support from my people for a war? Or how I can up my diplomacy points? Can I change my form of government to dictatorship?

Or have I just made a bad choice of country, and should forget about Turkey and pick some other country to play instead?

Edit: Given up on Turkey, playing Brazil instead. Just got my very first tank - a 40mm light tank - in April 1938. Just wait till I spring it on unsuspecting, oil rich Venezuela. Whee-hee-hee!

[doc_bean]

What are the differences between HOI2 and HOI2 Doomsday ? I know the doomsday campaign last quite a bit longer and focusses somewhat more on the cold war, but does HOI2 have anything more than Doomsday ? Would there be any reason to get HOI2 instead of Doomsday ?

I'm going to have to go back and fiddle with this HOI 2 demo again. I'm completely bamboozled by the combat system, but it sounds like too fun a game not to try and persevere with. I'm already bored with Homm5 after only 2 1/2 missions, LOL.

You bought it ?

[discovery1]

I can't help you with your other stuff since its been a long time since I played HoI 1(why did you buy that? the combat system is far inferior...) The HoI2 demo oder of Battle, at least as the Germans, is pretty bad though. All their troops start with commanders over their limit and tanks chained to inf divisions......

anyway...

Edit: Given up on Turkey, playing Brazil instead. Just got my very first tank - a 40mm light tank - in April 1938. Just wait till I spring it on unsuspecting, oil rich Venezuela. Whee-hee-hee!

It probably won't do to well in the jungles of venezuela. Mountaineers or marines would be your best bet.

What are the differences between HOI2 and HOI2 Doomsday ? I know the doomsday campaign last quite a bit longer and focusses somewhat more on the cold war, but does HOI2 have anything more than Doomsday ? Would there be any reason to get HOI2 instead of Doomsday ?

It has a new intelligence tab, vastly improved AI, more techs, and an editor. The only reason would be mods already for HoI2, although they will switch over to Doomsday.

[screwtype]

You bought it ?

No, not yet. I bought HOI 1 because it was on special, then I thought I'd try the HOI 2 demo. But I haven't bought HOI 2 yet. Maybe I'll just skip it and buy Doomsday instead now?

I can't help you with your other stuff since its been a long time since I played HoI 1(why did you buy that? the combat system is far inferior...) The HoI2 demo oder of Battle, at least as the Germans, is pretty bad though. All their troops start with commanders over their limit and tanks chained to inf divisions......

anyway...

Actually I noticed that in the demo, you have to reorganize all your troops before you start because the commanders are over their limit.

I bought HOI because it was selling for $9.95 - my preferred price point :) I didn't want to pay more for a newer version because I didn't know if I'd like the game. I'm still not sure if I like it, but I do kind of like the idea of World War II at a high level of detail.

It probably won't do to well in the jungles of venezuela. Mountaineers or marines would be your best bet.

Yeah, actually I noticed that Venezuela is mostly jungle shortly after I posted that, so I didn't bother building any tank divisions after all. Just infantry.

I'll tell you what I'm really pissed about though. I played for several hours up until February 1940, building up my army, my tech and my industry, then declared war on Venezuela. So I try to march my troops into Venezuela and it turns out they won't get there until May!!! Not sure what happened there as I've got infrastructure up to 60 which ain't that bad.

But then, shortly before May, I'm scrolling the map and I notice a couple of US divisions where some French and British colonies used to be. Oh, wait a minute, the French and British colonies are still there. THE US DIVISIONS HAVE TAKEN ONE OF MY PROVINCES. I'M AT WAR WITH THE FRICKIN' USA!!!

The game tells me everything that's going on over the other side of the planet, that I couldn't care less about, right down to letting me know when Slovakia has merged a couple of Army Corps (really? I so needed to know that) and the STOOPID GAME DOESN'T EVEN BOTHER TELLING ME I'M AT WAR WITH THE US!!! Doesn't even bother telling me the US has invaded and taken one of my provinces!

So it's an evening's work straight down the drain. And wouldn't you know it, just when I finished deploying all my divisions on the Venezuelan border where they don't have a hope of getting back in time to counterattack the Yanks.