Does Hearts of Iron IV simulate history?

[Philippe_at_bay]

I bought Hearts of Iron IV over the weekend and am starting to have second thoughts.

Is the game a serious WW II simulation, or another Paradox alternate history sandbox?

There's a fair amount of complexity in here, but I'm left wondering if the designers were trying to build a model of the actual history or of a Paradox game system.

I really like the idea of Crusader Kings II, but every time I try to start playing it I come up against the realization that what I'm seeing portrayed in the game is the Crusader Kings II game system and not the Middle Ages.

This isn't a problem for something like Stellaris, because when you're playing a Space Opera, whatever game system the designer chooses is appropriate.

But WW II is a fairly known quantity, so the game shouldn't get too far from the script.

From what I've seen there are only two start dates, 1936 and 1939. I'm fine with an earlier start date for WW II, though I would have expected July 1937 rather than 1936. But where are the intermediate staging points? If there isn't a 1941 start date, the alternate history simulator may have drifted too far off course to give a convincing simulation of the German-Soviet showdown. And the same holds true for almost every other year of the war.

Is Hearts of Iron IV an alternate history sandbox (which is ok if you're into that sort of thing), or a platform for trying out the what-ifs of history by reconstructing the actual situation?

[AeneasXI]

It is both depending on the option you Choose in the Start Menu...

If you Choose Historical Focus then the AI will behave mostly like the countries did in reality during ww2.

If you uncheck it then it may go similarly or it may go completely offrails with britain going fascist, france communist, germany democratic and USA doing nothing all game invading venezuela or something like always! :D

[Stephano]

its whatever you want it to be. you can mod it out like crazy make up really weird scenarios. it is also a simulator if you want it to be exactly like real life. you can plan exactly what devisions you want, how your navy works, what airplanes to build, how to manage fuel, etc. you can go down strictly historical focus tree or alt history if you want. paradox games are all about whatever you want it to be it will be that. eu4 for example you could be historical spain and go and colonize. or you could change religion and crusade against your former catholic nations. (this works with ck2 aswell)

[shiggies713]

If you play the 1939 scenario on historical, it will be mostly historical. If you don't do one or the other, or neither it can change off course quite a bit, even historical 1936 can turn out quite different than what happened in real life sometimes, especially if you as the player mess with things like annexing Austria before Germany can for example. Usually either Germany or Japan seems OP or underpowered depending on what happened.

[ProducentRobi]

yes

[Azoniar]

No,

[NamelessOne]

The course of WW2 had a lot of random luck. If the breakthrough in the battle of Franch hadn't happened, the war would have been much different. Same with how Dunkirk went. If the Americans were more careful with how they operated Pearl Harbor, or had lost at Midway, wildly divergent timelines.

[GoldenTalon]

It's an alt history sandbox with WW2 skins. Very little to do with WW2 units, strategies or situations. If you're interested in anything remotely like WW2 try Hoi3, Darkest Hour or Arsenal of Democracy for RTS and Order of Battle, Panzer Corp 2 or Strategic Command WW2 for TBS - all way way superior to Hoi4.

[|H|H| Fr3ddi3]

If you play on Historical Focuses mode, yes it does ... but only to a point.

To put this into perspective.

On historical focuses you can rule out with 100% certainty that Germany will oppose Hitler and bring back the Kaiser, you can rule out the 2nd US civil war, Japan overthrowing the Emperor to unite under communism and the UK going Fascist to reclaim the 13 colonies. These things simply will not happen unless you the player force them either by playing as those countries or by influencing the politics of these countries and staging coups.

You cannot however rule out France standing up to oppose Hitler when he marches his army into the Rhineland in 1936, Or that the Allies won't simply back down over the Sudetenland Crisis.

While the former is pure fantasy fiction with no basis in reality, the latter were realistic plausible outcomes which all sides were actively aware and even prepared for ... at least to the degree that was possible.

The Royal Navy and RAF were on standby, the British army were mobilising and the factories were being shifted to producing war materials ... the UK were a million years away from being able to fight any kind of land / air war in 38 ... but they were on standby for that potential outcome. This is why these events in question have a degree of RNG attributed to them, to force the player and indeed the AI to have their house in order at all times just in case things do not follow the script.

By en large, the chances of the pre-war not following the script closely enough is not very high at all. There will be differences with regards to dates but for premature war? not really.

For war to break out over the Rhinland for example France needs to pick the option to oppose it when Germany walks in, which is like a 1 in 10 chance of happening, but that's not all.

They then need to ask the British for their support, British Support is something like a 50/50.

With the British response in hand, France gets asked the first question again, stand up or fold.

IF France proceeds, with or without British Support (without it they are more likely to back down), Germany has the final say. Go to war or let the allies have a minor victory early doors which is not really too damaging. Germany typically backs down if the Brits stand up with France but they typically go to war if it's just France.

When you really delve into the odds of these things ... war in 36 really is not that common at all.

That is the same for most events in the game where there is an alt history option, war can happen over those tetchy periods ... and it is common enough for you to not take things for granted, but not at all common enough for your typical experience to not follow a relatively close approximation of the war itself ... in game terms at least.

The biggest catalyst for alt history timelines, is a player ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ things up. BY which I mean Invade the dutch as Germany and the Allies will categorically go to war over the Sudetenland and other such shenanigans.

Wars are not scripted to happen on exact dates, winners or losers of said wars are NOT pre determined either.

[TasteDasRainbow]

On a broad and generic scale, yes it does simulate WW2. Nations are designed to represent their real life counterparts and will attempt to act as they did. That being said, on a micro level, you will find a lot of key aspects of ww2 missing. This isn't to say that the game isn't a good ww2 simulator, simply to say that most people expect a simulator to be a full rendition of play by play, and not a 'what if' based on their own actions. I honestly don't even like to pretend this is a 'what if' simulator because there are thousands of things that occur in game that no reasonable nation or military would even consider attempting, this is definitely a sandbox, but it's a sandbox with a lot of flavor.

To articulate that better, the game is not a 1:1 of world war 2, because the AI design is based on evaluating every situation based on it's context, and there is lots of room to act slightly out of historical basis, which can snowball. To give this an example, major battles aren't staged to happen, meaning no AI deliberate pearl harbor, midway, dunkirk, normandy, etc. D-Day could hit Breton as much as Normandy, the ♥♥♥♥ could deploy their navy to the Coral Sea, if they have the assets to risk declaring war on the US at all, depending on how the war in China has dealt them.

If you're expecting a documentary style of realism, no 4x game can really do that because the players choices, and how the AI reacts to said choices, and how other AI react to that AI, etc. massively delineate that depth. It does however allow a fairly satisfying degree of control over nations at this point in time, and gives the opportunity to make a wide range of capability to affect those nations.

[lubed_assassin]

Originally posted by NamelessOne:

The course of WW2 had a lot of random luck. If the breakthrough in the battle of Franch hadn't happened, the war would have been much different. Same with how Dunkirk went. If the Americans were more careful with how they operated Pearl Harbor, or had lost at Midway, wildly divergent timelines.

Careful in hindsight for pearl harbor, we were actually overcautious and afraid of Japanese sabotage, put all the planes next to each other wingtip to wingtip, made great targets.

[NamelessOne]

Originally posted by lubed_assassin:

Originally posted by NamelessOne:

The course of WW2 had a lot of random luck. If the breakthrough in the battle of Franch hadn't happened, the war would have been much different. Same with how Dunkirk went. If the Americans were more careful with how they operated Pearl Harbor, or had lost at Midway, wildly divergent timelines.

Careful in hindsight for pearl harbor, we were actually overcautious and afraid of Japanese sabotage, put all the planes next to each other wingtip to wingtip, made great targets.

They had radar, the technicians were incompetent.

[firestar587]

total war mod on historical sims it really well
base on historical? well the second the player starts ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ with it tends to break
such as annexing all of poland, romania and hungary as the soviets and being at war with the allies
THAT utterly shatters historical AI and it has no idea what to do when that happens past like 38-39

[GoldenTalon]

Originally posted by TasteDasRainbow:

On a broad and generic scale, yes it does simulate WW2. Nations are designed to represent their real life counterparts and will attempt to act as they did. That being said, on a micro level, you will find a lot of key aspects of ww2 missing. This isn't to say that the game isn't a good ww2 simulator, simply to say that most people expect a simulator to be a full rendition of play by play, and not a 'what if' based on their own actions. I honestly don't even like to pretend this is a 'what if' simulator because there are thousands of things that occur in game that no reasonable nation or military would even consider attempting, this is definitely a sandbox, but it's a sandbox with a lot of flavor.

To articulate that better, the game is not a 1:1 of world war 2, because the AI design is based on evaluating every situation based on it's context, and there is lots of room to act slightly out of historical basis, which can snowball. To give this an example, major battles aren't staged to happen, meaning no AI deliberate pearl harbor, midway, dunkirk, normandy, etc. D-Day could hit Breton as much as Normandy, the ♥♥♥♥ could deploy their navy to the Coral Sea, if they have the assets to risk declaring war on the US at all, depending on how the war in China has dealt them.

If you're expecting a documentary style of realism, no 4x game can really do that because the players choices, and how the AI reacts to said choices, and how other AI react to that AI, etc. massively delineate that depth. It does however allow a fairly satisfying degree of control over nations at this point in time, and gives the opportunity to make a wide range of capability to affect those nations.

Darkest Hour, Arsenal of Democracy and Hoi3 are all focused on WW2. As has been said many times on this forum Hoi4 is all about alt history. Even with "historical" turned on Germany will invade Sweden and Switzerland for example. On top of that, the AI is so braindead partly because "the AI design is based on evaluating every situation." It does a terrible job with basics like defending ports, etc. SeaLion is a joke as UK does nothing to defend ports, Japan and China can easily invade the US West Coast, etc. Cairo is undefended, etc., etc...

[Mr_Faorry]

There is a 'historical ai focuses' option which will make the ai go down their historical routes, you can still deviate from history yourself but it will lock them into following history more or less.
There are also options where you can have the ai do things completely randomly so things happen very differently in each game or set up specific scenarios of your own.

The main differences between CK2 and HOI4 is that in HOI4 each nation has a focus tree which dictates what they will do where as CK2 doesn't and thus the ai is free to do whatever. So with HOI4 the focus tree gives the ai several scripted paths it can go down, one of which will be the historical one, and the 'historical ai focuses' option forces the ai to go down their historical focus path in the historical order.

[Chief Wiggum]

On historical, it's quite realistic. For example, there are three government types - Democracy, Fascist, Communist. And some neutral countries.

The leaders are basically accurate for the time frames. Eg. For the UK: Stanley Baldwin, Neville Chamberlain, then Winston Churchill.

The historical events are also basically accurate, Eg. for Germany: Rhineland, Anschluss, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Plus the timing of events such as Germany attacking Poland in the fall of 1939 is more-or-less historically accurate.

Names of Military Equipment such as for the US: M3 Stuart, M4 Sherman, M26 Pershing is also basically accurate.

Of course, as a player you can decide to focus on different objectives such as for the UK: focus air, navy, or land production? Put troops in France to defend? Take our the Axis in Africa? When to D-Day, and attack mainland Italy or Normandy first?

This is a big part of the fun and replayability of HOI4 ... all the different ways to play a country. I love playing the UK for example, as there are so many different ways to play. One game might be a Air Fighter supremacy-focused approach, and the next might be an Anti-Air ground troop focus. Or build lots of Carriers, or focus on Battleships?

Or for Germany, go for air supremacy with fighters and close-air support (CAS). Or focus more on light or medium tank divisions. Build lots of 1940's subs to convoy raid the daylights out of the Allies? Or quickly spam a ton of 7 infantry/2 artillery infantry divisions. Invade Poland in 1938 for a quick Poland and France take-over? Or build-up more for a 1940 attack with 1939 tanks, 1940 fighters and CAS, and pimped-out divisions?

So HOI4 is a simulator where the framework is historically accurate, but you get to 'what-if' as you please.