Heart of China

by on December 8, 2024 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Computer games

This is the fourth in a series of reviews looking at the evolution of Hearts of Iron IV. See the previous reviews here:
Hearts of Iron IV: Heart of Production
Together For Victory: Commonwealth of Iron
Death or Dishonor: Heart of Eastern Europe
After two country packs, the head Hearts of Iron developer put together a list of features they were looking at for improvements and changes for future patches, before announcing HoI IV’s first major expansion on November 15, 2017. Waking the Tiger was released with patch 1.5 on March 8, 2028. It, and the two earlier county packs, Together for Victory and Death or Dishonor, were incorporated into the base game as of March 14, 2024.

Ununified Support

National unity was broken up into stability and war support for this patch. Unity had been introduced in HoI III, to force countries to capitulate after the major sections were occupied, but now they wanted to add some nuance.

Stability represents a country’s internal processes, so strong party support adds to it, and at high values it grants industrial output and political power (the currency that lets you reform the government and work through the focus tree).

War support limits conscription and production laws, so a country with low war support can’t institute the higher levels of these laws. Fascist nations generally start with high support, but aggressive actions will cause high support in their victims, so they can put themselves in a bad position.

All of this came with new events and other options hooked into the new system. It’s a good idea, though it hasn’t interfered with me enough to give me a good idea of how it changes things.

Decisions

The biggest change for the patch was that a new top button was added for a decisions screen (or side bar). The primary goal was to allow more time-sensitive actions than the focus trees could allow, and add more flexibility to the game.

Even a country with no targeted content can expect to have a propaganda section, used to drum up support when world tension is already high. There’s also a good number of general political actions that can be used to steer away from particular factions, increase support, and a few other trade-offs.

Many parts of the world have further resources available by taking a decision to “develop” them. This generally requires some level of excavation or construction technology, and takes time as well as civilian factories to complete.

There are of course, lots of more specific decisions for the big countries, revolving around various historical options. Some focus tree events will trigger new decisions (for other powers), and some independent events have been moved to decisions, mostly so they are not things that must be dealt with that instant, bogging down a busy multiplayer game.

Overall, it’s definitely a good addition to the game, and opens up a lot of flexibility on how to handle things. My main problem with it is just being used to not handling things that way.

Revisions

The new focus trees from the previous two country packs had as part of their options some true alternate history bits to send each country towards the other factions. This had proved much more popular than originally thought, so Paradox added these kinds of options to Germany and Japan at this point.

Germany’s full tree has not changed since (that I can see) but the major political branch is only available with Waking the Tiger. This has elements of the army start a civil war to throw Hitler out, and Germany can either go democratic or constitutional monarchy (unaligned) from there.

There’s still a lot of choices within that tree, and it can even get a sixth research slot. There is no branch of the focus tree that gives a communist government (there are still other ways to do it), though there is a part of the army branch that can give a full alliance with the USSR and disband the Axis in favor of the “Berlin-Moscow” faction.

Japan got a redone tree with the political parts also hidden in the expansion (more understandable, but Germany should have been free to start with). There’s the historical fascist branch, an unaligned branch, and a democratic branch. The last causes a civil war, and forces Manchukuo independent, and in control of Korea.

The Communist branch is even worse, with a civil war that sees most of the generals and the Japanese navy go over to Manchukuo. But all ideologies are available, and Japan is capable of starting a faction in any branch, though some are simply to take the place of a major faction abandoned by someone else’s abandoned historical route.

Past that are the usual paths to boost research, get the fifth research slot, and other effects. However, Japan does have three unique units available. Army expansion leads to bicycle infantry, which has slightly better speeds in some terrain, and better suppression (of insurgents). The naval branch has torpedo cruisers (an alternate light cruiser type to represent Oi and Kitakami, who were outfitted with a very large number of torpedo tubes). The air branch allows for kamikazes.

Additionally, Japan gets an extra national spirit with Waking the Tiger: Interservice Rivalry. This starts balanced, but there are decisions to swing it towards the army or navy, which change dockyard and military factory production, and the decisions themselves have good effects.

Personally, I find the wilder political options too unbelievable to be a fan. Apparently, I’m a minority, but I’d like a middle ground with some options, just not as ahistorical as these often get. I’d also have thought it’d be a good idea to keep the full German tree available to everyone (they are the most popular power to play), and just put the full Japanese tree in the (thematically appropriate) expansion.

China

China is struggling with a civil war through this period, and is broken up into two ‘name brand’ nations: (Nationalist) China, and Communist China, which each get their own focus tree, and a number of warlord states, which all share a general tree for them.

Nationalist China gets five new national spirits with the expansion, three of which severely limit China’s military. Army corruption makes all units half as effective, and take longer to train. This can be earned off with the army reform focus, followed by a series of decisions, which all cost army experience, so it won’t happen until deep into a shooting war. Incompetent officers reduces the new command power currency to nearly nothing, and can be bought off after the army reform.

There is also low inflation, and a number of focuses will raise or lower that. One of the goals of the Chinese government is to introduce a welfare state, which will raise stability and war support, but will generally increase inflation. Naturally, it is harder to reduce it, though it can be done.

Communist China is currently on the losing end of the civil war, and with the expansion has four national spirits that only have negative effects. There’s multiple routes to getting rid of them, but they’re also far from the only problem. Non-violent solutions to the civil war are included, but have their own, quite high, costs (generally in political power, but also possibly in infantry equipment).

The international section of both focus trees are the same, and deal with inviting various Western powers into the country to help out (including possibly collaborating with Japan, but the historical parts deal with things like the Burma Road).

A new behind-the-scenes feature is that the shared focus tree above is really ‘shared’ at the coding level. The warlords’ focus tree has a branch to support the Nationalists, which will then swap out their focus tree for the main Chinese one, and a branch that does the same for the Communists. And then there’s a branch that puts them into opposition to both, side with Japan, and proclaim themselves as the true Chinese government.

Finally, there is a concept of political support points, to shift who is in charge of China as a whole. This becomes important a little into the game, once actual political maneuvering is underway. Basically, each province contributes some points to showing who has legitimacy. Part of the Communist abilities is to undermine this and get provinces they don’t control supporting them.

Also, Manchukuo (Manchuria under Japan) gets its own focus tree, with a copy of the general Chinese foreign investment branch. The other part of the tree splits between staying obedient to Japan, and going independent to reclaim China and expel Japan on its own. The ruler of Manchukuo is actually the heir to the Qing Dynasty, so it can form the Chinese Empire under the right conditions.

Overall, the expansion really does a good job with China, and gives it mechanics that make it operate in a much more realistic way. The biggest problem is the political support points are under-explained, and often just not visible, even though they’re extremely important.

Resources

There are two basic reworks of resources as part of the patch. First, the amount of resources from an area is dependent on the infrastructure there, so building infrastructure in your resource-rich states now grants more resources. They also redid the interface to show this and better show the current infrastructure while building more.

Synthetic oil production was also redone. It used to be every level of the technology allowed another refinery per state. Now, the first level always lets you build up to three, and there are two branches under it.

Each technology in one branch adds one oil production to every synthetic oil refinery, and the other branch adds one rubber production. This means you can now concentrate on the resource that is causing all the trouble. (Or take both, if you’re short on both.) It’s a very nice change, and makes the refineries even more useful.

Enhanced Command

The patch introduced some unit hierarchy. Army groups became collections of armies, and field marshals can be promoted from generals to lead them. The general idea is you can now do planning at this level, and let the system assign frontages to each army, and so on. You can even work out plans at both levels, and once an army plan is done, it’ll default to the army group plan. And if you skip the army group level of command, the field marshal in charge will still provide bonuses to everything under him.

It is a far cry from the full chain of command from HoI III, and personally I’d like to have corps as an optional container to order several divisions at once. But, it is a good enhancement to the existing army system, and there are places where it’s very handy.

They also reworked the basic leader stats. They still have an overall skill level, but this is now generally for determining when/how they level up, which grants three points in four skills, attack, defense, logistics, and planning (for generals, admirals use maneuvering and coordination in place of the last two). So, now some leaders are much better at defense than attack, for instance.

Some of the trait system was reworked to go with all this. There’s a bunch of mini-trees of traits, which can be earned by experience, but you now have to go in and confirm them. Overall, I like the changes, but I don’t care for how the traits are now organized, nor the need to micro-manage.

Conclusion

For some, this expansion is a bit disappointing, as it can definitely feel like a country pack writ large. There are some important overall changes here, but they’re mostly on the patch side. Possibly the most valuable patch feature is one I haven’t mentioned, where you can attach air units directly to armies. The air unit will then follow it around, reducing micromanagement of air assets.

That said, there is a lot of content in the expansion; I’m surprised they generally just mention China and Japan for the focus trees, when there’s four different Chinese focus trees. More general content is a bit low, however, with the field marshals being the main standout.

At one point, I’d have probably given this a limited recommendation. Japan and China is an important part of WWII to flesh out, and if you want a proper global war game, that needs to be in the mix, and I think they did a good job with it. That said, if you’re the type to avoid naval warfare, you’re probably also avoiding Asia, and may not notice.

But now, it, Together for Victory, and Death or Dishonor are part of the base game. The stated reason is so they know the features from those expansions are available to everyone for building off of. I can only speculate which ones they have in mind, but the expanded German focus tree is a possibility. I suspect the enhanced puppet types from the first two are also part of the reason.

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The Roman Revolution

by on December 4, 2024 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

Nick Holmes is doing a very good job writing a clear beginning-level series on Roman history. This also has the advantage of being recent (2022), and so has access recent findings.

There is one short chapter two-thirds of the way through titled “Climate Change” which talks about what fairly recent research has to say about the Roman Climate Optimum from 200 BC to AD 150, and how it seems to have helped Rome’s rise, and how shifting climate trends after that added instability (he starts with a series of years where the Nile did not flood, or had a very weak flood in the 240s).

This was the highlight of the book for me, and if there’d been more chapters like it, I’d have been very happy with the book. However, it seems there are missed opportunities here. He talks about the Roman economy at times, and reference to The Roman Empire and the Indian Ocean could have helped develop some arguments. That book has problems, but talking about the evident closing of the Iberian silver mines after the Antonine Plague would be valuable for Holmes’ discussion of the Roman economy.

At the same time, Holmes is wanting to make a specific argument, and I just didn’t feel like he ever got to really arguing it. A better feel for what he considers ‘revolutionary’, as opposed to ‘evolutionary’ would have helped (he doesn’t use the latter term; part of his trouble is a lack of contrast against his thesis). The idea seems to be that the Crisis of the Third Century left Rome in a vulnerable place, and the way out (at least the one taken) was the ‘revolutionary’ measure of converting the Empire from Ancient paganism to Christianity. But there’s not enough there on what that meant either.

Which is part of the other weakness: A real look at where Roman thought and culture had gone during the life of the Empire. He does address part of it, trying to unravel the rise of Christianity. But, he doesn’t look at the other side. From other books (I don’t remember which ones), it’s been argued that paganism had hit a dead-end, with it becoming slowly clearer to the educated that the myths and mysteries associated with the old cults had no reality behind them. And there was nothing really to put in it’s philosophical place. Other than those odd monotheists that is.

So, it’s not really the reassessment of the Third Century Holmes says it is, but it is very readable, and does a good job presenting… too long of a period in a very readable format. To give background, Holmes goes back to the mythical founding of Rome and gives a quick view of how it got to a Mediterranean empire. But that is a lot of ground to cover, and so takes up a fair chunk of the book, no matter how abbreviated it is.

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Two Rounds of Mummius’ Defeat

by on November 30, 2024 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: CC:Ancients, Technology

After trying out a chase in SFB, Patch and I moved back to a round of Commands & Colors: Ancients. We’re in Spartacus’ rebellion, this time with a defeat of part of Crassus’ army under Mummius from Expansion #2. The Roman army is concentrated in the center, and there’s three camps on the barbarian side; taking two of them is worth a banner.

Patch had the Romans first, and started with Order Four Right (pity there’s only three units there), with each of us losing two blocks, and Patch’s LC losing another on a retreat. I Ordered Three Left to push the remaining units back with another two losses. Move-Fire-Move let him redeploy, but he couldn’t get any hits, and I Ordered Three Center to cause one loss with missile fire. Patch did a Line Command in the center to drive off my LC with losses. I Out Flanked, driving Patch to the baseline, and he lost a leader, but he finished off the Warrior that was weakened at the start.

Another Line Command brought Patch up to the camps in the center, where he weakened my Auxilia, and did a block to a Medium with ranged fire, at a cost of two blocks to a Medium. I Ordered Three Right to come in on the flank of the advancing Romans, knocking out a Medium, but taking two blocks in the process. Inspired Center Leadership let Patch react, knocking out two Mediums, and killing Spartacus as he was forced to evade through a Roman unit, while I did four blocks back. Order One (Leadership Any Section—I only had one leader) let me finish off a MC, but momentum only let me force his Auxilia to retreat to the baseline. Leadership Any Section let Patch finish off my weak Auxilia in the center. 3-5

In the second game, I led with Double Time to get at the camp in a hurry, and took two losses while severely depleting the two LS in the camps. Patch hit me in the flank with Leadership any Section, knocking out two Mediums and nearly destroying another, while taking three blocks in return. I closed up with Order Four Center which saw me take another two hits, but knock out a Medium, LS, and kill Spartacus. Patch Out Flanked to force a weak Medium to retreat, while I forced a Warrior to retreat in the center, while on my right we traded three blocks. Line Command let me advance in the center and finish off two units. 5-2

Afterword

Both games saw very bad Roman starts suddenly turn around for a quick victory. In the first game, I concentrated on the weak flanks, and they were pretty much gone when Patch rolled up the center for a win. The second time, my quick march into contact in the center went very wrong, but Patch couldn’t hold out when I kept the pressure up. Also, this is the first time we’ve a leader be the first casualty of the game.

It’s a fun quick scenario. Five banners is always fast, and the units are close enough that there’s not a lot of time spent trying to get into range. The Roman four-card hand is a real problem, but if they get the cards (and dice) they have what they need to win here.

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The Hidden Palace

by on November 26, 2024 at 5:40 pm
Posted In: Books

The Golem and the Jinni was a very good historical fantasy with a very character-driven focus.

It also had a very intricate plot with a lot of moving parts that don’t come into alignment until the end. That is still true in the sequel. We have our two main characters, the characters they touched before, a couple new ones… and a new golem and jinni. Just how they will fit in takes some time to be revealed, but it’s obvious that we’ve got some reflections of the main pair being set up.

And time is something this novel spends… pages with. It picks up about a year after the first book, with our happy-ending romance still stable, but they start growing apart as they struggle to hold their own identities, the identities they need in the human world, and their understanding of each other in balance. The last part of the novel is in 1915, but a lot of time is spent showing everyone changing through a decade and a half.

The climax of the novel is a bit like the first one: a cataclysm of magical shenanigans that draws attention, but keeps magic largely hidden from the modern world. The people at the center of it end up changed, but largely in less dramatic ways. The denouement is interesting, and seems like it could lead into a spin-off series. At the least, the door to more in this world is far more open than the end of the first book.

You could probably read this book first and pick up what’s going on. I don’t recommend it: The Golem and the Jinni is very good book and should not be missed. And this delivers the same degree of historical atmosphere, so don’t miss it either.

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Demon Offensive

by on November 22, 2024 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Gaming

After going through First Ypres, Mark and I tried out one of the old Dwarfstar titles, Demonlord. It’s a strategic fantasy game, showing a border clash between the demons and the declining human kingdoms.

You can tell that it’s by the same designer as Star Viking, as the units have a similar set of four factors (missile-melee-morale-movement). In combat, units face off against each other (with someone with more troops doubling up—also limited by the terrain type), for magic, missile, and melee in turn, a little like Federation Space‘s combat. Setup is largely fixed (a few ‘good/human’ forces have variable setup), and there’s a number of neutral factions that both sides can try to get on their side (at a potential cost in victory points), a few units they can invoke (summon; the only units that might return after being killed), and can ask for reinforcements (also at a cost of VPs).

The terrain system is fairly neat, with different movement rates for foot, cavalry, and winged units, and a limit to how big battles are. The depiction of it isn’t. I think the problem is made worse with some suspect color balancing of the Vassal module scan of the map, but it takes some time to figure out what is what on the map. Hills are described as red-brown—they’re an orangeish red. Mountains are listed as dark brown, they’re actually purple. It took a bit to really grasp things, but the primary goal is to take a city or castle from the other side, as that will start tilting the VP balance towards your side. (Well, the primary goal, which it is easy to get mesmerized by, is to take the captials of Timur or Nisshar, which provide an auto-win.)

Mark had Hosar (the human kingdom), which goes first, and he started moving troops from the various temples, while I moved forward to the border river in the south, and started moving troops from Nisshar behind the cover of the central mountains. By the end of the second turn, Timur had a large host encamped in its walls, while I was assembling a small flying strike army at the south end of the mountains. Mark had invoked the light spirit (the only thing they get that way except for a wizard that can be invoked after taking the reinforcements), and I had gotten the main group of five units invoked at the Temple of Ninnghiz.

Mark sent a small force around the northern edge of the mountains, and I quickly pulled back the few forces I had gathering up there, and sent the just-invoked forces that way, causing Mark to pull back again pursued (not really the right word…) by my army. Meanwhile, I had sent a force along the north to feel things out as Mark pulled more garrisons out. Lord Erush finally invoked Yorgash (a large dragon) at the Temple of Yorgash, and set out after the rest of his army, while Yorgash joined my flying force, which was now near my main army.

Mark set out from Castle Lojar, crossing the river flowing south from the great woods, and I retreated back to Taegul while the main army skirted around the woods headed south. (I should have taken Castle Lojar, but at this point we understood taking cities was VPs, but hadn’t really grasped that holding an extra castle was also worthwhile.)

Mark assaulted the castle of Q’Mpika, and we got to see how nasty those are. There’s a penalty the first turn, so Mark merely invested the fortifications, and still lost a unit. On my turn, we both lost a unit, getting the garrison down to a unit of lancers.

Mark pulled out at that point, and finally tried to cover Barthek, which he’d left without a garrison. But he couldn’t get anyone there in one move, and my big army simply sent a couple of dragon riders to take it, while the main force picked off the intended garrison in the field. At the same time, my northern army finally got to Gunthoz Keep, which also had no garrison.

Now that I had a lead in VPs, I started calling for a truce, which took a few turns to happen (need to roll a 6, but it starts the end of game sequence). Mark sent armies from Rabat and Lojar after my major one, and I left a couple slower units to hold Barthek while everything took off after the force from Castle Lojar.

I had a small numeric advantage, and more of the magic-casting characters, which did no good, but the initial missile round routed a Hosar unit, and killed one, and killed two of mine, while also killing the Hosar bishop. Melee routed two of my units, wounded Yorgash and killed the Worm Lord, but routed two of Mark’s. Round 2 was a 4:3 battle, which went entirely my way, destroying two units in melee and killing Count Lojar. Baron Barthek and the horse patrol made a stand of it, routing some dragon riders before being routed themselves, letting me capture four units and the baron.

After that, Mark sent an army towards the center the great woods, and my southern army moved north to intercept with my field army also in pursuit. I rolled for, and got, an alliance with the Great Woods Barbarians. One of the VPs you can get is for having fewer alliances than the opponent, but with the fortifications I’d taken, I could afford to give that to Mark. This put Mark’s army in a bind, but it continued forward into the woods, where I caught up to it with the veterans of the earlier battle and the barbarians, and I took the empty Castle Lojar.

The battle featured better Hosar units, but was 7:5, and Mark withdrew after the first round, after Yorgash destroyed a unit and Wizard Rabat in the magic phase, and another was routed in melee. The army struggled through the forest on Mark’s turn, and a force arrived at my border in the north, and got an alliance with the Principality of Lyung (Cloud Prince). I forced another battle in the woods, this time destroying the army.

The peace talks were finally started, and the game would end after the next turn (13). The Cloud Prince took his two flying units to try a quick siege at Nisshar, which would be an autovictory if it worked (thankfully unlikely, but the best shot Mark had), and Prince Timur besieged Kahama with his small army. He assaulted both, and as it happened, forced Kahama to surrender, but he lost both air legions against the defenses of Nisshar.

Afterword

You get one VP per turn that you don’t call for reinforcements (we never did), one per turn for each enemy city you hold (Temple Ninnghiz also counts for that, which is where Mark was trying to get to—its not fortified—but I took Barthek), and one per turn for holding more of the fortifications than the enemy (…an alliance with someone who has a fortified space would count). Mark got a couple for me having more alliances. All told, the final total was 29 to 17. They don’t go into the nature of the peace afterwords, but I would think we’d trade Kahama and Gunthoz Keep back, and I’d retain my grip on the south with Barthek and Castle Lojar.

So the game is fairly neat, and certainly survived its outing better than my two plays of Star Viking. Mark wonders if it might have limited replayability, but certainly it can hold up to more than we’ve done, and it plays fast. It’s also made me interested in getting my copy of Dragons of Glory back out.

That said, sieges seem off. A little too deadly to the attacker (who certainly should lose units, but probably not at the pace we’ve seen), and there’s no punishment for having a lot of units trapped inside with no food. Also, all units are effectively identical in a siege, so no trying to assault (or defend) with your crack units.

Combat has potential problems of coming down to a few high-morale units that will rout on a 6, and otherwise shrug everything off. That’s not entirely bad, but I could see some combats really dragging out with one or two high-morale units on each side. There’s some nice combat modifiers I didn’t go into, but it took us a bit to really ‘get’ them all. The Demonlord army seems a bit nicer overall, though the part I was using was missile deficient (lots of low ratings, whereas Mark’s units were either ‘0’, or had a rating that could actually hit—despite that, his dice didn’t turn it into a practical advantage). In some ways combat feels like a more primitive version of what is seen in Levy & Campaign.

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