Hearts of Iron 3

[kris4o1993]

Аз ще я преведа, но този път няма да се откажа както стана с HoI2. Разбира се, ще ми трябва помощ...

[kris4o1993]

Development Diary #30 - 27th of May 2009

We’ve already run through the basics of the mission system. So you are probably wondering what else is new in Hearts of Iron 3.

There are two major changes. The first one is doctrine effect on air combat. By focussing on doctrines you can influence how your air units behave in combat. There are two sets here, one for air-to-air combat and one for ground attack. For air-to-air you can research fighter and bomber focus. This determines its targeting priority for mixed stacks of enemy units. The names are pretty self-explanatory, on the one hand you can take more damage in the short term and attrition down enemy fighters in the quest for air superiority, on the other hand you can aim for the enemy bombers and reduce your own damage from enemy bombing.

The second is front line and reserve focus. Here this influences which types of enemy units air power will bomb in when doing ground attack missions for enemy stacks in combat. You can aim for the front line units to try and force a break through or concentrate more on reserve units in a quest for generalised attrition against the enemy.

As I mentioned these come in pairs so they are not mutually exclusive doctrines. Essentially these techs supply a weighting value; identical levels of research give equal weight to the targeting choices.

As a side note you are wondering about the power of air bombing on ground units. Well this is the subject of much testing and balancing, but from our own internal tests air power comes into its own when units are fighting in combat. There the combination of bombing and fighting can induce units to shatter much quicker than they otherwise would. Regardless of which approach you take, bombing the reserves or the front line, close air support can swing battles.

The other big change is unsurprisingly AI control. Air units have no individual command structure; instead a stack of air units is always classed as a brigade. Thus any HQ in the chain of command can have air support attached to them. When on manual control this doesn’t actually mean anything as you order around the air units yourself. However when on AI control this can allow you to better control your air assets. Let’s say you have three army groups on a front but all your offensive objectives are in front of only one of those army groups. You can assign air units for the sole use of this army group instead of the whole theatre, focussing air power over the area you wish to attack instead of it being spread over the whole theatre.

Now if we reconsider our example and say you wanted to control the offensive army group yourself, you can assign air power to the army groups you want to hand over to the AI and allow them to use themselves without you having to manage both your offensive and air power over the whole theatre.

Now these examples are for large formations, but air power can even be assigned down to corps level. So if you think that a corps or an Army needs some special help for whatever reason you can detach the air power from the high level command and assign down for the exclusive use of this formation. When the help is no longer required simply detach again and reassign up the chain the command.

What we have aimed for is to maximise both flexibility and ease of management.

[kris4o1993]

Hearts of iron 3 - Italy and Technology

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISUGbr6G0Sk

[ssbg]

Като гледам доста добре ще е сложена играта. Дано е възможно малко по-бързо да се развиват държавите, защото за мен като начинаещ е доста трудно да скалъпя качествена наземна, въздушна и морска армия а и едновременно да изследвам различни доктрини или пък индустриални подобрения. Наистина провинцийте са доста повече, но някак си всичките ми изглеждат еднакви-не основните, а като се приближи доста ми приличат като отсечени с нож. Както и да е. Играта, отново се повтарям, наистина ми хареса, ще бъде на високо ниво.

[kris4o1993]

Battle for Leningrad

[kris4o1993]

New videos

Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NrNPixpSkY
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZ6o7yeaUmc

[kris4o1993]

Development Diary #31 - 3rd of June 2009

With Johan away to E3 we didn’t want to leave you all with a total information blackout so I have been drafted to fill the breach on the dev diary front. For those of you who have no idea who I am, I am Chris King and I am one of the designers of Hearts of Iron 3.

Let’s move swiftly along to the subject of today’s dev diary, the weather system. If you look at weather forecasting organisations, they use huge super computers to try and predict the weather and have been known to be slightly wrong on occasion. A highly detailed exact weather model was going to be beyond us, but that didn’t mean we couldn’t improve on our current province based, roll a dice model.

So we went off and spent a couple of days becomes experts in Meteorology (feel the power of the Wikipedia!) and began to build up our weather model. The Weather in a province is constructed from three basic building blocks, pressure temperature and humidity. Pressure and Temperature are province based properties. We actually have a mean temperature map, this is then modified by time of year to give a desired temperature for the province, it further fluctuates around this based on local factors. Pressure works in a similar way, but we will come back to it later. Humidity rises over things like water (especially during high temperatures) and then falls when it rains.

So far pretty basic stuff. However this allows us to create two further parts to our weather system, the overhead and ground conditions. As humidity rises and/or temperature falls the overhead conditions will change from clear to overcast and then to rain. If it is cold then you get snow. If the winds are high and it is raining you get a storm and if it is snowing a blizzard. While on the ground if it is cold then you get Frozen Conditions. If it is raining enough or if the ground has ceased to be frozen you have a chance of Mud (modified by local infrastructure).

So far so good, but we could of done all of this with a simple province based system and odds. However this is where air pressure and a bit of research comes in useful. If you take Western Europe as an example, low pressure appears around Iceland and moves east. There is a permanent area of high pressure centred around the Azores which pushes the low pressure systems along their familiar track. Hearts of Iron 3 is very similar in this regard. The area around the Azores is defined as high pressure which radiates out, while Iceland will generate low pressure that tracks into Europe and is repelled by areas of high pressure. Low pressure systems pickup their local weather and move it in weather fronts. What you end up with is bands of weather moving around the globe bringing things like rain and snow.

Now as I said at the top of this dairy a precise weather system is going to be beyond us, but it doesn’t mean we can’t create a system with a nice touch of reality. In our case you will be able to see the weather fronts moving and this feeds into to your strategy. You are thinking about invading France as Germany, but when? Well it is raining over Germany at the moment, but you can see that the weather coming out of the west is clear. The answer is soon.

To show the shocking outcomes that our new weather system produces, here are some screenshots of rain coming to Scotland.

[kris4o1993]

Tons of new screenies on IGN

http://media.pc.ign.com/media/142/14275415/imgs_1.html

[kris4o1993]

Development Diary #32 - 10th of June 2009

This week we’re not going to talk about one huge new feature, however what will do is do a number of small features that aren’t enough to do a dev diary of its own.

First off let’s do a return to supplies. We talked about supply line and networks in a much earlier developer diary. What do we do about allies and puppets? Well first off if you have troops inside someone else’s supply net you autotrade supplies to that country for free. Note if they are overseas these supplies still need to be shipped, also the country that they are in needs to pay the supply tax. To give an example here let’s say Germany decides to send a few divisions to Italy in 1943 to stop a possible allied invasion then Germany will trade the supplies needed to Italy. These appear in Rome and then it is up to Italy to distribute them and pay the supply tax for them. In the case of puppets it is slightly different. Since puppets are owned body and soul by their master they do not generate a separate supply net. Instead they are linked to the master’s supply net and instead send supplies to their master to keep their troops supplied.

What effects does this have? If we take an World War II example if Germany sets up a puppet state in Croatia, then they will simply lock into the Germany supply network allowing the German troops further into Yugoslavia to remain supplied without any problems. This is important when it comes to determining the occupier. In order to keep the supply nets functioning the country that is supplying the troops becomes the occupier of the province. Thus puppets never occupy provinces, while allies can.

Combat is also something we have been looking at. In Hearts of Iron 2 we had the combat delay, a unit would not carry out new orders for a time period after an attack while it got itself organised. Well it is back in Hearts of Iron 3 but with a new twist. Land Doctrines reduce the delay, giving a country like Germany a real edge of a smaller country like Poland, as Polish units will be delayed longer. We also put in a restriction that if a unit is about to shatter it cannot attack. This means as a player you do not have to constantly monitor your units.

Then we have CAGs. Now as we mentioned in an earlier Dev Dairy CAGs are air units now. Not as good as standard air units but are multi-role and can do a bit of everything. So you can give them missions just like air units. However the CAG also has a special default mission the carrier airgroup mission. There it will sit on the carrier and wait for targets. When the fleet engages enemy ships or is bombed the CAG unit will engage them.

Well that’s us with the little details for this week, and here is a screenshot of how the game currently looks.

[ssbg]

Знае ли се колко на брой ще бъдат Scenarios? Нямам време да прочета цялата тема, за това питам дали действието в играта ще бъде заключено както в HoI2 от 1936 до 1953? Благодаря.

[kris4o1993]

Доколкото знам ще са 7 и всеки ще започва от определена дата, като крайната дата е 31 декември 1948 ако не се лъжа:

[kris4o1993]

Development Diary #33 - 17th of June 2009

To warn you all this dev diary is no way assumes that you have any idea how to mod EU3 and EU:Rome so if you are familiar with the moding of either of these two games you will get a certain amount of déjà vu.

So let’s talk about the moding of HoI3. First off we have a Mod Dir allowing you to have multiple mods installed and also be able to plan the vanilla version all at the same time. Each mod you install does not over write the vanilla files and is instead stored in its own directory structure. Obviously for those of you who skipped EU3 and EU:Rome this should be a nice little change.

Next thing the map, there are 4 map files for you to play around with. All are bitmap files allowing you to tweak things to your hearts content pretty easily. One is the province map, you can redraw, add and remove province boundaries. Note changing this will involve the game recalculating paths the first time it is used and which takes a while, so you may want to ship the new paths with your mod. Then there is the river map, if you wish to move rivers about. The third map mode it the terrain map mode, this allows you to play around with the underlying terrain of the provinces. There is also a separate file that will change the textures according to your definition and also defines what terrain does. The final map file is the master temperature map that stores the mean temperatures around the world, the angrier the red is the warmer it is. The final piece of the puzzle is the master map file in here you find interesting things like the provinces that generate pressure zones.

The next big chunk is the common folder. This folder covers a whole bunch of variables, but the one you will be most interested in is the defines file. This has over 100 separate game variables for you to play around with. The biggest chunk being the military ones. If you think the defence is too good you can play around with the dig in values, play around with the maximum level and what affect each level has. All in all we have tried to provide a serious playground for moders here. Now for those of you planning things like regiment mods there is of course a variable BRIGADES_IN_DIVISION, guess what this does?

Let’s talk about the AI, we have a number of Lua scripts. We have two types, generic and country specific. We have exported a fair amount of the high-level country functions, like technology and intelligence into Lua scripts. We have done this in the case of the foreign minister to help steer World War II. For example in the case of Germany, if it is after February 1941, France is defeated and it has no wars with land neighbours the Lua scripts instruct the strategic AI to prepare for war with the Soviet Union. The Strategic AI then does things like prioritise theatres bordering the Soviet Union for troops. When the strategic AI is happy enough war will begin. There are exceptions to this though; the Soviet AI is so cocky it doesn’t even think preparing for war is worth the effort in the case of Finland.

We of course have scriptable unit files that as in Hearts of Iron 2 you can freely tweak the values. However not only are there more values in Hearts of Iron 3 (for example you can change the amount of space a brigade type takes up in a transport ship) but you are free to add in as many extra brigade types as you like. You cannot mod the brigade core stats those are hard coded.
Of course events and decisions are in plain text and are freely modable. So you can add more, edit the ones that are there. There is Lua support for evaluation of decisions, and even for the AI to prepare to execute a decision. Allowing you to do more with decisions than you ever were able to even in EU3.

Well that gives a brief overview of the moding potential of HoI3, we hope you have fun with it.


Here's a few screenshots to talk over..

[kris4o1993]

Hearts of Iron 3 - Japan and the Pacific War

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkgIdOvzoak

[ssbg]

Не обичам морски битки, оставям това на съюзниците ми. Видеото говори само за себе си. В плюс е, че е добавена солидна информация за всичко-като се почне от девизийте чак до провинцийте. Опростен е част от интерфейса (за правителството например), но друга част е силно променена и ще е нужно време, поне за мен, да свикна и премина от HoI 2 на HoI 3. Фоновата музика ми напомня тази от миналата версия на играта. Надявам се, че ще внесат и някой друг марш за морален стимул .
ПС)Чудя се при такава обещавата и вероятно страхотна игра, малкия брой мнения оставена в темата. Надявам се като излезе да навалят мненията, коментари, поуки и прочие.

[kris4o1993]

Development Diary #34 - 24th of June 2009

In todays development diary, we'll give you the first exclusive AAR of Hearts of Iron 3. I give the word over to King, who will tell you about his recent game as Italy.

Italy – 1938

While Germany slowly dismembers Czechoslovakia and Japan advances in to China Italy has grander plans. Our goal is simple Yugoslavia. The Italian people are ready for war and to we are confident that the Italian army is superior to the Yugoslav one. So unless someone intervenes we are confident of victory. We also do not have enough resources to sustain our economy on a war footing, we can either buy these and have to divert IC in consumer goods production to pay for them or we can simply take these from other countries stockpiles. Yugoslavia becomes a much more attractive target. Will there be consequences from our act of liberation? Most probably but the experience will be useful for our armies.

In 1938 the Italian armed forces are divided into 3 theatres, one covering our recently expanded Italian East Africa, one covering Libya (and Rhodes) and one covering Italy proper. All are put onto defensive stance, but the Italian theatre is given Belgrade as a specific objective. Then we wait.

The theatres start to put their units into defensive positions but the Italian theatre places special emphasis on the Yugoslav border since it knows that Belgrade is an objective. Meanwhile Italy upgrades troops and researches new equipment. We start with 4 battleships in production and we just leave them on. Italy is a member of the Axis, it knows Britain and France are Allied countries and are thus likely enemies, all theatres are crying out for more ships to meet this threat. We also start to build Radar Stations. One in Rhodes to start monitoring the Eastern Mediterranean and one Taranto to do the same in the Central Mediterranean. It will take a while for these to become truly effective but if we are given enough time we will have good monitoring capabilities on Allied fleet movements. When spare IC becomes available a third radar station will be built in Sardinia to give us warning of movements in the Western Mediterranean.




We have also increased our peacetime draft level; this is part of the formula for a quick victory over Yugoslavia. Our gamble is that the Yugoslavs will have a much lower draft level meaning that even if we hit them without a proper mobilisation our divisions will have a much high strength and organisation than the Yugoslav divisions. However this is a trick we will probably only be able to pull off once. Neighbours of Yugoslavia will see us an increased threat will probably mobilise their own armies at the thought of having Italy as a neighbour. Hopefully Yugoslavia will provide us with enough loot to sustain us until the next campaign.

This is sadly going to have to be a winter campaign, not a lot we can do about this. We want Yugoslavia out of the way before the war in Europe begins. Although things aren’t going to quite ready by then we set D-Day for the 1st of December 1938. We are going for the limited war because we do not want to share any of our conquests with Germany. This is going to be an Italian only show and we are going to show the world the power of the Italian army.




The Italian theatre is set over to Blitzing stance and the assault begins. The battle of frontiers goes exactly as planed. The Yugoslav divisions are heavily under strength as they had yet to mobilise and they shatter under the weight of the initial Italian assault.




So now it becomes a race. The Italian army needs to seize as much of Yugoslavia as possible before the shattered divisions are rebuilt enough to slow us down and fresh reserves appear on the frontline. 20 days into the war and already Yugoslavia is collapsing.




The glorious march continues, but it looks like future victories will be less easy. The Swiss have mobilised and we suspect that new neighbours we gain when we finish with Yugoslavia will probably do the same. However in the mean time we enjoy the victory. We are going to score practical war experience to help with doctrine research and also gain experience for units and leaders. This will help in future wars that we know will be much tougher. Basically our troops are advancing quick enough to prevent a new line of resistance forming. This was a war won by a combination of surprise and preparation. The Yugoslav army has its last stand around to Belgrade the troops are already so weakened that they will not stand for long against the Italian army.





With that out of the way Belgrade falls and Yugoslavia has been ‘liberated’, after 3 months of fighting. So ends this little AAR. What would of happened next with Italy? Well I would of activated the decision to annex Albania next and then looked to do something about the over all mobility of the Italian army. The troops will need to be faster when taking on better opponents like the United Kingdom or France.