BF2S Forums Screenshots of What You've Been Playing

SuperJail Warden wrote:

Hearts of Iron IV is literally the worst strategy game I have ever played. I will openly admit that I am bad at it because if you air your grievances about the game in some space they will say "get good" as if fundamental parts of the game aren't broken or don't make sense. Even more annoying is when they cite completely wrong pop history to defend the game acting erratically or not working.

So let's begin:

I started off my first Iron Man campaign as Nazi Germany so I could win World War 2 and fulfill my life long dream of preventing myself from being born. I didn't take any screenshots of anything up until the point when the game went off the rails. I was actually having a lot of fun with it until that point.

So as Germany I was playing historically and peacefully absorbed Austria and Czechoslovakia and was preparing to invade Poland. So I setup my units around Poland but then got a message that Italy invaded Greece and Great Britain and France had joined in defending Greece. So far so good. World War 2 starts over Greece instead of Poland.

Here is where things started going crazy: France invades Germany and for some reason the game isn't letting me move my units in Poland to fight the French. This is a bug with a $20 DLC feature but basically the French conquer Germany while the German Army stays in Prussia.

Whatever, first time playing the game and I have a lot to learn? Something that also happened that was strange was the Netherland declared war on Germany at the same time and then Poland declares war on me too. After that the game explodes into countries joining the conflict and the name of the conflict changing rapidly. The Soviet Union invades Poland and joins the war on the side of the Axis but other countries are still randomly joining the war that keeps changing its name.

This is in October

In November the war has evolved into the Italian-American War because Great Britain called the U.S. into the war and Italy is the war leader for the Axis. There was no Pearl Harbor event. Great Britain just asked the U.S. to join and we did because history

At this point I am just watching the game play itself because Germany was totally occupied by France. Japan joins the war on the side of the Soviet-Axis alliance for some reason somehow Italy captures Paris which then reforms my country back into existence from literal nothingness.

Hitler is still alive and so are all of his generals and advisors because Hitler famously went into exile. I start to raise armies again and got lucky doing so because even though I was totally conquered and disappeared from the map, the game let me keep vast stockpiles of weapons I produced before the war.

I'm still not good at this game and the American-Dutch-and French armies push my reformed 5 divisions led by Rommel into Berlin.

The game still gives me access to vast stockpiles of weapons (they are in the cloud I guess) and I hold a sliver of territory someplace that allows me to actually raise armies in Berlin. So after awhile I have 15 new divisions in Berlin

I am still surrounded but I am undefeated because the enemy AI will not send in all of their divisions at once to kill me. Instead they are sending them in 1 at a time to fight my 5 then 10 then 15 sized army. This goes on forever until finally they manage to take the city and I disappear from the map again. But even though I literally do not have a single piece of land, the game allows you to keep researching tech which means I eventually begin to develop nuclear weapons while also not existing.

Eventually Italy is defeated and all of the Euro-Axis powers turn into democracies while the Allies and former Axis continue World War 2 agaisnt Japan and the Soviet Union. What this means practically is that I am given back almost all of my pre-World War 2 territory. France somehow actually loses land in the peace deal.

I am stronger and France is weaker despite the fact they conquered me twice. I am their 'puppet' but I get out of that by literally clicking one button because I had points saved up from when I let the game play itself.

The game then gives me an event to absorb Austria again.

At this point the game also gives me the to form the European Union?

Sure, why not. Who will stop me? I am still at war with the Soviet Union and since I am allies with Poland in this war, I can't invade them at this moment. I need to end World War 2 first. I noticed the British-Italian-French-Polish-American armies are stuck fighting Russia on the Polish border. I send some units over to see what is happens and there actually isn't much happening. Both sides are just shuffling units around the frontline while attrition destroys their armies. I check the game ledger and apparently the U.S. took 7 million casualties because they are letting their men freeze to death while shuffling around the Polish border.

So I am forced to raise armies again to start the invasion of the Soviet Union. It goes well actually since I have basically NATO on my side. I pushed back the Soviet armies to Moscow, Leningrad, and Stalingrad singlehandedly because my AI allies are still just shuffling their armies around the front not doing anything. I eventually capture all three major cities (the Nazis in real life captured none). The Soviet Union is still refusing to quit and I have nuclear weapons now. So I nuke Russia.

It looks really cool on the game map but doesn't actually do anything. It didn't kill any units or destroy the city infrastructure. So I nuke the city next to it and again nothing happens.

At this point I stopped really paying attention and the Russians got Moscow back because the AI management of my units is doing the same shuffling around the front and freeze thing my allies are doing. So I nuked Moscow next.

The Russian AI is still refusing to quit since it holds 30% of ''victory points" on the map. So I dropped 4 more Atomic bombs on each victory point city on the map and nothing happens still. I manually marched my freezing AI army to various victory points and nothing is happening still. I then see an Atomic bomb go off on a city I nuked once already. The AI got annoyed and started Atomic bombing places too. It was at this point that the Soviet Union surrendered. It took 8 Atomic bombs which is 6 too many.

So it is 1948 and we are still at war with Japan which is starting to get pushed back as a NATO-Russia alliance is invading Japanese occupied India. Okay, whatever. Good luck with that.

I do not recommend this game. I think get one of those fancy shiny achievements which is all I wanted in the first place.

Last edited by RTHKI (2021-03-14 13:05:09)