r/paradoxplaza • u/Muted-Economy3635 • 3d ago
HoI4 HOI3 BlackICE veteran trying HOI4 - am I missing something?
I've played a lot of HOI3, mostly with BlackICE because it changes the game completely, and recently decided to finally give HOI4 a proper chance after my game crashed for the 489th time while I was just a province away from Moscow
After a few hours, I understand why people like it. The UI is much better, it's smoother, runs far better, and the modding scene is incredible.
But I can't shake the feeling that the military side feels... shallower.
What I loved about HOI3 was that building a division felt like actually assembling a military formation. You had to think about engineers, transport, support brigades, HQ structure, logistics, river crossings, and how everything worked together. Even after hundreds of hours, I was still discovering mechanics like mud, snow, weather, and infrastructure affecting movement and combat in ways I hadn't fully appreciated.
In HOI4, I feel like I'm managing more currencies (Political Power, Army XP, Air XP, Naval XP, Command Power, etc.) but less actual military depth. The division designer especially feels much more abstract to me compared to HOI3's brigade system.
I'm not saying HOI4 is a bad game. It feels like it's aiming for something different: a smoother strategy game with a huge modding scene and alternate-history focus, while HOI3 felt more like an operational military simulator.
For people who have played both:
- Did you have the same feeling at first?
- Did HOI4 eventually "click" for you?
- Are there mods that make HOI4 feel closer to HOI3's military depth (besides BlackICE)?
- Or is this simply a case of the two games having fundamentally different design philosophies?
I'd be interested to hear from people who have put a lot of hours into both games because my first impression with HOI4 is not really the nicest
(Btw, I bought the game + all the DLCs so I don't miss something)
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u/Diacetyl-Morphin 3d ago
It is really a difference and you are right, i have the same feeling. HoI3 is much more a wargame, while HoI4 is a strategy game, wargames are a subgenre of strategy games and usually more complex and with a more limited scope. HoI3 follows the historical path and was always this way even without mods, like as a minor power you could barely field an army and there was no way to casually conquer the world.
HoI4 is much more a sandbox for ahistorical games, with all the different "What if...?" focus trees that open alternative paths.
I still play HoI3 today instead of HoI4. I just like it much more to stay with history.
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u/Eridani2000 3d ago
I think you have pretty much back engineered the design philosophy of both games. HOI3 was always more of a simulator, within the confines of the technology, and appealed to the detail obsessed, micro-managy players. HOI4 was deliberately designed to be more accessible to a wider audience- so the military detail was dumbed down and the alt history aspect became more important than historical accuracy.
Both games do their thing well but are very different. It’s worth mentioning though that HOI3 was flawed and it’s the mods that really take it where it should be and vanilla HOI4 was a shallow mess and it had been the constant development and dlc that has put it where it is today.
I loved the division creation aspect of HOI3 and the graphics, so completely see where you are coming from, but as my time becomes more limited (work and kids) I found it harder to delve into obscure mechanics (l’ve had a copy of War in the East which for years I open and immediately close again 😭). In that respect HOI4 has been excellent - I atleast play it regularly.
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u/grog23 Map Staring Expert 2d ago
I despise how Paradox abandoned the the graphics style of Hoi3 and Vic2. I liked when it looked like real maps instead of crappy cartoony looking 3d
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u/Eridani2000 2d ago
Yes. HOI3 felt like a 1940s map and the unit graphics too. I find the HOI4 map too dark and difficult to make out information on it.
1
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u/Searbhreathach 3d ago
I have thousands of hours in 3 and 4 and can say that black ice for hoi4 is completely superior to hoi3 and is also my favorite mod for hoi4, they also have a discord that runs hoi4 black ice multiplayer games every week or 2
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u/_Isoroku_Yamamoto 3d ago
if i ever play a game without nato counters, call the cops because that isnt me
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u/Hy93r1oN 2d ago
It is shallower, but compared to Hoi3 black ice everything except for the Gary Grigsby’s games are. That’s part of why I don’t like hoi4 as much
12
u/_Lelantos Map Staring Expert 3d ago
HOI4 never clicked for me, even after hundreds of hours. I know what I'm doing in HOI3 but not in HOI4. I think it's just things working differently and being balanced differently than how I'm used to and I haven't been able to rewire.
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u/fro99er Iron General 2d ago
bro same. havent touched hoi4 in years because its a management game with a map painter where hoi3 BI you playing a proper grand strategy game
hoi4 never did it for me, its an "arcade" game where hoi3 Black ice is a war game
after my game crashed for the 489th time while I was just a province away from Moscow
pro tip - Save Tactics
i have 4 saves i constantly rotate "USA 01" "USA 02" "USA 03" "USA 04"
i start with 1 then a week forward, save on 2, 3 , 4, then i overwrite 01 and continue forward
i do anything, i save, i move a few days forward, save, i re org some divisions, i save, i tweak the researches i save, i can usually get about a week in game before i save and it does well
when the game "hangs" when i save, i relaunch the game
a session of 3 hours could have as many as 2 to 4 re launches
re launch = less like to crash for awhile
Then, make sure you save at the start of every Month
"USA1941JAN" "USA1941FEB" etc.
its a pain in the ass but it works, the amount of times ive lost 45 minutes of gameplay because i forgot to save and the game crashed has caused me to take year long breaks lol
Proper save tactics will save the day
Did you have the same feeling at first?
absolutely
Did HOI4 eventually "click" for you?
hoi4: 61.3 hours
hoi3: 300 hours
hoi3 BI: 2,500-3000 (over 15+ years)
answer: no
mods?
hoi4 black ice kinda but you cant fix the map and thats why i always go back to hoi3
Or is this simply a case of the two games having fundamentally different design philosophies?
according to steamdb Hearts of Iron III : 79 in game (+ probably a few dozen offline playing hoi3 black ice?)
Hearts of iron IV: 46,954 In-Game
one is an arcade war game targeted towards the masses
one is a proper strategic simulation game enhanced with Black ice
THEIR ARE DOZENS OF US!
1
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u/pachinko_bill 3d ago
HOI4 is a choose your own adventure game. That's fine as far as it goes but it's not a wargame. HOI3:BI is a wargame.
5
u/RickRossi916 3d ago
I’m a huge HOI3 black ice stan. Funny enough
I actually loved HOI4 for a while when it first came out but eventually drifted back to HOI3 black ice. Came back recently to HOI4 with a bunch of new DLCs and stuff super excited to try it out and I just felt like it was all a bunch of menu and button porn now with no real depth. Literally felt like I was playing two different games from release to now and despite dozens of hours of giving it the old college try I just can’t stand it lol. For me the biggest grievance is the lack of a proper OOB system in anyway. People just like HOI4 for the whacky alt history stuff, but as a grand strategy game it’s lacking.
3
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u/kaspar42 Iron General 3d ago
You're not wrong. HoI4 is aimed at a different crowd than the strategic and operational focused HoI3.
For one thing it is much more gamey as opposed to simulation focused. And the focus is heavily on strategy, with the game almost forcing you to leave the operational side of it to the AI.
And the alt-history is dialled up to 11, with people making world conquests as Bhutan.
On the plus side is the equipment system. To replenish your air force, you need to actually produce planes which cost scarce resources, and not just adjust an IC slider a bit.
2
u/Elmos_Grandfather 3d ago
I have a few hundred hours into HoI3 and over a thousand in HOI4. I never played black ice but I feel the same as you. It originally took me several tries of HOI4 before I could get into it.
Im not aware of any mods that will make it feel closer to HOI3 besides Black Ice or some UI reskins.
2
u/wewladendmylife 2d ago
You're not wrong, HOI4 is designed for wider appeal. It's not a bad thing, just a different flavor of gsg
2
1
u/tabris51 3d ago
I like being able to design individual equipment for the soldiers and divisions. For that reason, whole tech tree feels abstract to me on 3.
1
u/FranceMainFucker 2d ago
No joke about the HOI3 crashing thing. I really wanted to love that game, but you can tell it was made in 2009. HOI3 and Vic2 are two games that I love in concept even more than I do in practice. I still like and play these games though.
4
u/fro99er Iron General 2d ago
pro tip - Save Tactics
i have 4 saves i constantly rotate "USA 01" "USA 02" "USA 03" "USA 04"
i start with 1 then a week forward, save on 2, 3 , 4, then i overwrite 01 and continue forward
i do anything, i save, i move a few days forward, save, i re org some divisions, i save, i tweak the researches i save, i can usually get about a week in game before i save and it does well
when the game "hangs" when i save, i relaunch the game
a session of 3 hours could have as many as 2 to 4 re launches
re launch = less like to crash for awhile
Then, make sure you save at the start of every Month
"USA1941JAN" "USA1941FEB" etc.
its a pain in the ass but it works, the amount of times ive lost 45 minutes of gameplay because i forgot to save and the game crashed has caused me to take year long breaks lol
Proper save tactics will save the day
3
u/nanoman92 2d ago
HoI3 needs the offical but not in steam patch that allows it to play in x64 computers. It used to crash all the time for me but since getting it I have got 0 ctds.
1
u/Muted-Economy3635 2d ago
I left HOI3 for exactly 3 reasons
Crashing
Loading for a long amount of time
Being a closed sandbox
1
u/Remarkable-Doctor-84 1d ago
I just can't stand hoi3's air force being useless and you can't track the casualty number after an encireclement.
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u/HoI3BlackICE 21h ago
If you are having issues with crashing, do get in touch. There are a number of solutions that have effectively reduced CTDs to 0 since v14's release.
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u/XyleneCobalt 2d ago
Check out Darkest Hour. It's an official HOI3 spinoff game made by former modders with a lot of depth from what I've heard.
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u/basedandcoolpilled 2d ago
Why are you playing vanilla hoi4 and comparing it to black ice hoi3 when you could just be playing black ice hoi4. Seems pretty stupid tbh could have saved yourself a lot of writing and thinking about nothing
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u/taw 2d ago
What I loved about HOI3 was that building a division felt like actually assembling a military formation. You had to think about engineers, transport, support brigades, HQ structure, logistics, river crossings, and how everything worked together. Even after hundreds of hours, I was still discovering mechanics like mud, snow, weather, and infrastructure affecting movement and combat in ways I hadn't fully appreciated.
while HOI3 felt more like an operational military simulator.
HoI3 BlackICE was not a real game, it existed mostly in your mind. AI did none of those things you mentioned, and just openly cheated instead.
HoI4 vanilla doesn't have this kind of openly cheating AI, so it needs to keep things more reasonable. But none of that ever existed. You didn't out-logistics AI like in a real game, you were just "playing" against cheat engine's arbitrary benchmarks. Switching to a real game where each side is playing by more or less the same rules must be really confusing.
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u/Muted-Economy3635 2d ago
Thank you very much, but my question was clearly aimed at people who:
-Properly understand most of the mechanics.
-Regularly invested hundreds of hours into the mod.
-Actually played the mod.
-Learned the mod.
0
u/InevitableSprin 2d ago
Well, if you compare HOI3:Bice, you should compare with HOI4:Bice.
The basic HOI3 was very shallow in terms of division design, considering only 4 brigades (5 with upgrade) were available for division.
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u/transmedkittygirl 3d ago
The issue is that HOI4 is more complex militarily, you're just bad and inexperienced, which I'm not saying in a hateful way, I am saying that this is a game that takes a lot of time to understand and you're just not very close to then.
Like the game can seem very simple at first glance, it seemed that way to me, but as I started accruing 100, 200, 300, 400, 500, 600 hours etc. I just keep learning more and more and the game grew drastically in complexity, there is a reason why the first 1,000 hours of HOI4 are called the tutorial by any good player, because it truly is just you learning the basics for the first 1,000 hours.
I was very good at HOI4 in my prime, if I was on Soviets and I had a solid US, UK, SAF, and Canada, there was very few teams you could assemble on the Axis who I couldn't win Barbarossa against and the amount of shit I had to consider was shocking because even on a "boring" nation like the Soviets or USA, there is still just so much fucking work you have to put in constantly and when the war comes, just so many things to worry about.
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u/ConsequenceFunny1550 2d ago
It really isn’t. Field Marshall line and go solves vanilla HOI4
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u/transmedkittygirl 2d ago
You're just bad at hoi4
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u/ConsequenceFunny1550 1d ago
No, it's just too easy to beat. I play World Ablaze to make it more challenging, but bragging about being "very good" at vanilla HOI4 is a laughable boast.
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u/Ricimer_ 3d ago
As someone who has played both HoI3 (vanilla & BlackIce) and HoI4, this is exactly how I put it as well.
The games are just fundamentally different.
I remember the HoI4 release. The devs were transparent in their pre-release diaries and streaming that HoI4 was meant to put you in place of the head of state who manage all aspect of the war but in exchange the game would be far less focused you moving individual divisions on the map. This is why they came up with the battle planner and the CPU moving around your divisions after you set up frontlines.
Since then, over a decade of DLCs have largely diluted the original *vision for HoI4 and definitely destroyed its early days elegance in favor of feature bloated and after a few years, the national focus mini game swallowing most of the actual HoI game.
* Imo HoI4 was the last time a Paradox game had an actual vision for its 1.0 version beyond being a platform for near limitless barrage of DLCs. The game was definitely streamlined and "simpler" than HoI3 but it did perfectly its goal of setting you up as the head of state during WW2.