Defense In Depth #2 [A USSR Let's Play for Hearts of Iron IV]

The continuation of the most titanic struggle of all human history - The Eastern Front. Join me for this exploration of HOI4's mechanics in an attempt to hold off the Wehrmacht.
Full Schedule Here: gaming.kzbin.info...

[@s.bakyhnh1756]

"You gonna get yo shit pushed in!" Joseph Stalin, 1941.

[@stuartburchell5816]

1:43:02 Stalin during the great purge

[@capelli8275]

XD

[@falatsky7170]

Underrated

[@arandompersonlol1202]

IM DYING😂😂😂😂😂😂

[@LuchesChan]

I think the light tanks you sent to china early in game actually turn the tide for the chinese between the actual intense fighting begin. The chinese doesn't even have much tanks at the start of the actual sino-japanese war, so your gifts probably change the course for them

[@Moshimaru22]

Dude I love HOI but I didn't find any youtuber who can entertain me as you :) You gained a suscriber, cheers!

[@watch_dog204]

It's like a reverse Barbarossa 😂

[@stig4]

I liked this! just a request(if you do those), would/could you try to do a campaign as the Soviet Union, where you you keep pushing into the western nations after the fall of Germany, with the end goal being a final confrontation with the USSR's future arch-nemisis, America?

[@pira707]

I would love one were onlly 2 players are in the game and they have to choose USA and the Soviets and they have to conquer every nation first then attack each other after.

[@tylerbennett4488]

Dylan Elliott It's too bad that even with the enemy strengthened to hell this game is so easy you can conquer America as Columbia by 1941, but you know.

[@jsaurman]

If the USA gets Pax Americana, then that is the end of that. They will squash you like a bug if you try anything beyond that point.

[@LTrotsky21stCentury]

I generally find it useful around 1940 to change my trade posture to limited. Even though you take a hit on a few things by this, more of your domestic resources are available for production, and less for sale to places like Germany and Italy.

[@Kejmil22]

I really hope this game will be more challenging than that :/

[@Bridger15]

I believe there was a bug that let the USSR go straight to War economy for cheap. It should have taken much longer and cost much more political power. So I wound up having waaaaay more factories than I should have since they compound on each other. I've also seen Germany do much better against the allies in other games. Seems like it derped this time.

[@Kejmil22]

+Bridger yeah hopefully this will not be a regular thing. I am A bit worried about the AI though. I may be wrong but I doesn't strike me as something that can for example take advantage of mistakes made by a player and counteract adequately. HOI 3 wasn't perfect in that regard either but I think the AI was a lot more aggressive...

[@kubusta]

I agree. I enjoyed the stream so much but it seems Germany failed so so hard :/ I hope the AI gets better

[@humbabadook3962]

if you want a challenging hearts of iron and haven't played it yet, play darkest hour. that game is sick hard and has very good AI. one of the hardest but also one of the best paradox games IMO!

[@Bridger15]

I tried to get into DH, I really did, but I just couldn't get past the interface. It is built on the HOI2 engine, so there really wasn't anything they could do. I'm sure it's a great game, but i can't stand older interfaces anymore, it just bugs me too much. I hate having that pet peeve though. It prevents me form enjoying some good games :(

[@fabiansteigerwald7509]

how is there a moldowan division in the SU when its still Part of romania?

[@sempermilites87]

Who else here is watching this after a year it came out and cringing when you saw that 34 width division he created? lol

[@Bridger15]

There is no data to suggest that 20/40 width divisions are more effective. It was a speculation that spread through the community and was never proven to be better or worse than any other. Higher vs. lower width does certainly have a case to be made, but 42 vs. 22 doesn't matter because they aren't exact multiples of 20. It matters because you have fewer large divisions vs. more small ones.

[@sophietaylor9753]

Is it just me or did you never actually start building upgraded support weapons?

[@Bridger15]

What do you mean support weapons? "Support Equipment" has only one type for the entire war. The "Support Weapons" research line gives you flat bonuses. Only the large rectangles in the research window unlock new equipment (like "Infantry weapons 2" and "infantry weapons 3").

[@simonkuznetsov9393]

wait what ?!?! "The Axis is about to get their shit pushed in" WTF!!!!!!

[@leftnoname]

They absolutely must introduce OOB system back into the game. Managing huge stacks of different units that have different movement and attack values is rather annoying.

[@Bridger15]

It seems fine to me. You don't organize your units into appropriate armies and army groups? How would the OOB from HOi3 fix it?

[@thestrageticgamer1742]

I will subscribe to his channel so whats his channel name?

[@Bridger15]

Who?

[@10inchtyler47]

Bridger deeznuts

[@mistermoss408]

Anonymou S I don't have nuts go ask the squirrel from ice age

[@internallyscreaming8444]

Bridger I assume he means the guy who was spamming subscribe to my channel that you kicked off the stream

[@onsholo]

I can be wrong but i think that the events to demand Bessarabia increase the facist support in Romania,in my experience Romania always goes facist after that event.

[@Bridger15]

Yup, that does seem to be the case. I guess that makes sense though. Much easier to take over a government if it's just been pushed around and lost a bunch of territory.

[@SpaceZukoFaraAang]

A paradox though is that Romania fought against the USSR in order to gain Basarabia back and then Romania switched sides beacause the Axis took land from them too, and so changing fascism for comunism

[@invictus4107]

How old is the pre-release version?

[@Bridger15]

Not sure. It is likely at least a week or two old. They'll have put together a release candidate at least a week before release and not done anything but change simple bugs. Meanwhile for the past month they've probably had another branch of the game being worked on for any major changes they've wanted to make, but were too likely to create new bugs so they didn't put it into the pre-release branch. Come release they'll probably merge that branch with the main release to get the "0 day patch' with a bunch of fixes.

[@invictus4107]

Thx for the reply. Great job on these

[@night6sceptre101]

It's obviously too late to point out to you, but the reason the Romanian rebels joined Allies is that you didn't invite them into your faction immediately. While research and national focus have a delay when it comes to selecting them, with joining factions you should immediately invited them to join. It's happened before to me where a country had the choice to join Allies or Comintern, and because I didn't invite them soon enough they joined the Soviets.

[@alexanderalonso-bauer3812]

night6sceptre101 ikr SOO ANNOYINF

[@boshwaglegit]

u could attack the Allies to

[@LTrotsky21stCentury]

In order to have a fighting chance against the Germans in a normal game, you need about 200 divisions pointing west. At this point, it doesn't seem like many players know how to accomplish that with the Soviets. In short, you have to build a lot of infantry equipment and artillery, and not so much on the fancy crap. In my game in early 1942, I have three full lines (45 factories) just building infantry equipment to support almost 400 divisions. And even that doesn't seem like enough.

[@LTrotsky21stCentury]

***** Yes.

[@Owlr4ider]

Division numbers is a completely irrelevant number for the player, it depends what divisions you design. You can have 200 of your starting NKVD divisions and it will be a terrible army. On the other hand you can have 48 proper large infantry+heavy tanks(a TD or 2 than a bunch of SPAs maybe 1 plain heavy no more) divisions on 44 width or so(whatever the Mass Assault bonus allows for to get an even 40 after the buff) and these 44 divisions alone will wreck the entire German army. If you use fast units well than 24(or a bit more if you use the combat front field marshal instead of a general) and a 24 division armor+mechanized division with a panzer general to breakthrough and encircle will also do the trick. Numbers don't mean much, it's how good your troops are and how well you use them.

[@LordVladrS]

Bridger, what difficulty is this on? I'm worried this AI is too easy.

[@Bridger15]

Normal difficulty. AI clearly has some kinks to work out, but I'm enjoying the game all the same. I fully expect the AI to improve over the next 6 months as PDX patches it. In the meantime, MP should be freaking awesome.

[@LordVladrS]

Bridger MP does seem perfect. Simplified UI and good battle planning makes not pausing ever possible!

[@nickj6747]

ive come to the realization stronk russian bear is stronk and doesnt get demolished like in hoi3

[@sa3874]

didn't watch from start, did he do the great purge? i'm playing without the purge, and managed to get 70 national unity regardless.. ..

[@dingdingdingding5544]

I just have a hard time trying to invade america as USSR

[@nickj6747]

YouCan'tHateMeMoreThaniHateMyself Invade the west coast, or start with alaska and canada to make a good pocket.

[@dingdingdingding5544]

that's how I took america playing as Japan, ive been able to do it as Germany or Finland, I'm just having some trouble due to the fact that they have over a hundred divisions garrisoned in their major east coast cities

[@nickj6747]

YouCan'tHateMeMoreThaniHateMyself Like I said, West Coast. You've got Siberia and Vladivostok. You can totally launch a large invasion aslong as you upgrade the infrastructure. USA neglects west coast always

[@BrotherRanceGwynne]

Could you make normal videos of this campaign.

[@Bridger15]

What do you mean?

[@BrotherRanceGwynne]

Continue the series but not doing live stream so you don't get bored.

[@Bridger15]

If anything, live-streaming makes games less boring; what with the interaction. Do you mean continue this specific game? I had already achieved my goal (conquer Germany) and was itching to try out another nation, which is why I ended it where it was. Or do you mean continue playing singleplayer games and uploading them as let's plays? In that case, I am afraid I can't help you. I find the AI to be trivial at best now that I have a few hundred hours in the game. I cannot enjoy nor create an enjoyable stream when it provides no challenge. However, I will be continuing to stream/upload multiplayer games; because I'm having a ton of fun with that :)

[@BrotherRanceGwynne]

I ment contuine the series, anyway thank for replying.

[@Bridger15]

I'll be looking at trying out a mod that proports to improve the AI and make it more of a challenge. Going to see how that works out and possibly stream it sometime in the future.

[@godzillaboy1037]

i did the same strategy and i lost

[@danielm6739]

Goddamn, Germany got rekt.

[@Pmseven]

Light Tanks are totally useless by 40-41...

[@sidahmadmalki9374]

Hai

[@raglanheuser1162]

wow. the ai really doesn't understand how to airplane

[@ungface]

2:40:00

[@snowwalker218]

They attacked the islands before the US because they needed oil for their military; so why would they attack the US before they had the oil they NEEDED

[@danielunnamed9438]

Why don't he care about synthetic oil tech?

[@295Phoenix]

Caucasus? And from I read on the Paradox forums, synthetic oil refineries only make sense if you lack both oil and rubber. Otherwise, if you only lack one or the other then it's better to have more military factories working at decreased production efficiency than it is to trade those military factories for synthetic oil refineries.

[@the_kovic]

+295Phoenix Or trade for the stuff

[@Br1ckbuster]

1- He has enough oil, however, he could have used it for trading. 2- The amount of rubber it gives is so small, and you have so many civ factories as the USSR

[@keithjohnston4488]

This game is currently absurdly easy and therefore no fun. I will wait until the AI improves - if it ever does.

[@Bridger15]

A lot of modders have found tiny fixes that can be made in the balancing files that vastly improve the AI's decision making on things like "should I build light tanks?" and "should I switch to war economy?" NONE of the AIs ever switched their economy laws because they were not set to do so >_

[@balyint7879]

Budapest is not Bucharest!

[@CastelDawn]

meh...

[@b3ead]

omg your speed at 3 is like my speed at 5 ://

[@vonmang3524]

Two questions.... 1) If you can research everything but the advance weaponry before the war starts, why even have the player waste his/her time going through the motion. The research tree is to small and the research times to short. 2) Germany with no units on Russian front is beyond unforgivable programming fail, but even worse; why can Russia build a military bigger and more advance than Germany before the war? Research again is way off, as well as resources, military doctrine choices (Russia's army could not modernize due to communist ideas of keeping a weak military to prevent an anti-communist coup), and it resources where vast but their tech was so backwards that they did not get to modern levels until AFTER the war... so having the resources shown in the game is silly, historically.

[@Bridger15]

1) I'm not sure what you mean? You can't research everything before 1939 or even 1941. The research tree goes all the way to 44 or even 50 in some places (jets). 2) The AI still needs a lot of work. It doesn't prioritize fronts correctly or properly build up military units and construct proper division templates. They made a bit of progress with patch 1.1 but it still has a ways to go.

[@vonmang3524]

1) I was referring to the "Focus Tree" research... but I guess that is intended for pre-war directions in a sense. 2) I wasn't really talking about AI as much since Paradox games have always had issues with that... my comment was on the ability of Russia to grow its army and utilize its resources at game's start. But also the whole navy concept in the game is wrong, wrong, wrong. The idea that you just create "Death Stacks" and attack the enemies' "Death Stack" is beyond unrealistic. No nation could supply such a force in a single area for any amount of time. Also, with the hazards of such a huge force moving about in the ocean (sea) a single storm would be catastrophic, and it would never find any other fleets as they would be able to see the "Death Stack" coming from days away. The navy groups make-up was set by the needs to protect shipping, establish control of a sea zone, or support an amphibious landing... none of which can be shown in the game as supply ships are only represented, but not actually in play.

[@WinstonKillDeath]

It's so frustrating watching you miss research pop ups. Who cares about theater reorganization, you have research, national focus, AND military factories to assign!!!

[@Bridger15]

It's my first game man, literally. This was recorded 4 days before the official launch. Give me some time to have fun looking around the interface and learning things eh? :P

[@pashongustinella1839]

Lol

[@WinstonKillDeath]

+Bridger oh, I wasn't criticizing, I was the same way when I started! I enjoy watching your lets plays!

[@techbit7607]

Sudden Strike is a far better game, this game has very poor graphics and I hate the monopoly board setup.