Hearts of Iron IV

Hearts of Iron IV

National Focus Project
Balance Feedback
This is really cool, great work all. I've played through these a bit and have some observations on balance if you're interested. Having a thread for other people to keep that sort of thing out of your comment section might also be helpful:

Canada:
My general impression is that this is a pretty great national overhaul in general. Having less immediately strong division templates but more army XP from focuses feels good for an isolated democracy. In general this tree is a great example of spreading bonuses out over time so that the player has to make choices instead of complete the whole tree.

Canada gets a lot more resources than vanlilla, but having several from prospecting and a struggle for manpower going on is a lot more interesting, and probably more accurate? There's more industry from focuses than a standard generic tree as well, but canada has very few development slots so it doesn't feel like my production ever gets major-nation high.

China:
I need to devote a playtrhough to this so I'll pass on feedback here. It seems really interesting, similar crippling downsides to France and a lot of time pressure. Nothing leaps out as a no-brainer or absurdly strong.

Greece:
This seems like a pretty strong focus tree (similar to the generic one for raw power), but it's really great that it has a bunch of sensible territory demands and war ambition focuses. Actually really interesting when the AI picks them and neat for players.

The generic tree early mechanized and early infantry equipment III remains a bit crazy, if this eventually gets customized (and that tech rush removed) then the stronger mountain troops and artillery is probably fairly balanced and flavorful.

Australia/Netherlands/Yugoslavia seem a little imabalanced if you care for some more... negative feedback:

Australia:
This stands out as the least balanced, and honestly remains a reason I avoid enabling this mod even for playing as Oz. It's certainly *fun* don't get me wrong, it just sort of creates pretty silly shenanigans where Aussies are involved.

I can go straight to heavy tank III ignoring ahead of time the whole way with Krupp Smugglers, pretty well ahead of Porsche (who's designs I am apparently stealing).

The mechanized minor tech rush apparently wasn't strong enough, let's remove that ahead of time penalty.

Ahead of time reduction on jets.

Ahead of time night fighting.

A lot of my military command is strictly better than the rest of the world. Geniuses everywhere!

Germany levels of doctrine rush (4x 50%)

I can annex New Zealand by automatic national focus. The focus isn't even called ANZAC or anything =(

This is already too long but you get the idea, this is a fun tree, but it's hugely fantastical compared to the more balanced ones.

Netherlands:
The Dutch are pretty good in general but their civilian factories feel front-loaded. Spread across a few more focuses would help keep their exponential factory curve similar to other european democracies. Their union agreements can also happen extremely quickly as opposed to 10% world tension for austerity.

-10% carrier construction spirit feels wierd compared to say, a research bonus.

They have a research slot after 3 focuses which is a bit odd for a minor (though they do need a more diverse force than most minors).

A lot of this early development transfers very nicely to Germany when conquered.

Yugoslavia:
This tree is extremely heavy on national spirits with perminent bonuses, a lot of training time reduction, construction time reduction, recruitable population ect. Their spirit for small arms production is great character though.

There's a 100% research bonus for naval bombers and 2x75% for carriers both of which are very tech rushy.

There are a lot of free factories spread throughout the tree, I would say too many but at least they aren't civilian factories right at the start.

The democracy tree has bonuses which are far too potent (20% construction to Civ/Mil factories, 6th research slot).


Sorry for the huge wall of text, hope it's somewhat useful!
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Showing 1-2 of 2 comments
Jonny Powers 20 Aug, 2016 @ 8:31am 
I played through the Persian tree a couple times with friends and there are 2 things that are readily apparent: There are duplicates of advisor types (2 generals for the basic attack bonus, 2 smooth talking charmers, etc). this isn't the case for all the advistor slots, but several key ones. The other is the amount of conquest you can pull off in the revive the empire tree. I got Iraq, Afghanistan, and most of Saudi Arabia before turning Fascist, and that's just cause I didn't go for each conquest right after the other. The only 2 things that halted my advance were Turkey's 60 divisions and Britain deciding that enough was enough and declaring war on me. Also, the AI tends to declare war on both Afghanistan and Iraq at the same time, first hitting one and, before finishing, the other. They also oftentimes go communist, for whatever reason.

I'm not sure what the historical background is for this conquest, the fact that it's part of its own tree and not just a nationalist extension makes me wonder if this is historically plausible.
Trinity_Xtreme 25 Sep, 2016 @ 6:21pm 
Not sure if the creator reads these or not but here's my two cents.

From a couple of playthroughs:

-Canada is really cool, but it doesn't really make sense that Facist Canada gets the opportunity to demand Alaska and the maratimes. I feel like Communist tree AND Facist tree should branch into these. Otherwise Facism becomes an obvious choice.

-China seems powerful, like, REALLY powerful. We have yet to play a game where China doesn't kick Japan's teeth in. It seem like they get far too many divisions far too quickly. Not sure what would help this.

Will keep an eye out but loving the mod. Keep up the good work.
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Showing 1-2 of 2 comments
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