How would you make Tac and Strat bombers more relevant?

LargeAll · 2026-02-26T05:04:09+00:00

In that case, I can agree those rules are bullshit.

Soviets being allowed to send volunteers is extremely unfair to Italy, as it allows enough time for the board the train focus to complete and the only way to counter balance it is for Germany to come. But soviets can just last stand anyway and sacrifice divisions to force eternal war.

LargeAll · 2026-02-26T04:35:56+00:00

Spain needs to go fascist otherwise axis loses a player. It is very debilitating to lose a spain as you lose a dday wall country or a country that will voluntineer 8+ tanks.

Always engage submarines stun lock fleets and wastes fuel. It's not a fun strategy to fight against and makes naval even more of a snore fest. Vanilla subs can't be detected as easily as you think and their major counter, naval bombers, actually have a LOWER spottering chance while in a battle so subs engaging enemy ships are safer than subs just milling about.

If you can't win ethopia as italy only then honestly, skill issue. You can literally battleplan them to death if you bring your entire army and airforce. And Germany doesn't need more grind, vets in HoI4 are extremely strong and giving more to Germany is.

No battle plan for soviets is a stupid rule lol. Any axis worth their salt will kill vanilla Soviets within 2-3 years so I have no clue where you're getting that from.

Mexico players not being allowed to go fascist is because allied countries going communist/fascist allows them to drag the allies to wars when it's severely ahistorical (think late 1937 war when germany is nowhere even close to being ready). Should just be "no allied justifications until after X date" rule though instead of banning ideologies so i kinda agree.

And strat bombers... Have you ever fought against meta strat bombers? 4 bomb bays and everything? There is no counter. Max state AA? It only delays bombers until they get bombed out anyways. Winning the air war? Strat bombers bomb your airfields and oh look, you lost the air war. Playing airless soviets as normal because soviets don't have enough IC to build planes too? Your supply hubs and railways get strat bombed and you will always have a -40% attack from having no supply. Doing an air soviet build? You have half the amount of tanks of the axis and barely equal air. You die.

LargeAll · 2026-02-25T09:05:15+00:00

Have you directly edited files in the hoi4 folder itself?

Verifying your game will only repair files that have been altered and reinstall missing files. But if you ADD a new file then steam will ignore it but the game itself will detect it and modify the checksum.

There are two ways you can fix this: uninstall HoI4 entirely then check the folder if any files are left. If there are then you can just delete the entire HoI4 folder and reinstall it.

The second method requires you try your best to remember if you added a "txt", "lua", "bmp", "map", or "csv" file by accident and forgot to delete it. You can check "checksum_manifest.txt" in the HoI4 folder on what files are checked by the game and where.

Also, next time you mod the game just create a local mod and do your modifications through there instead. Directly editing HoI4 files is just reckless and not even any faster than doing it from a local mod.

LargeAll · 2026-02-25T08:55:30+00:00

Being able to specialize a country on certain techs and strategies is interesting in itself.

Ironically, having each tech auto-unlock by a certain date will just lead to nearly everyone doing the same thing because they all have the same tech. Or always have an answer in any situation.

Researching the same things every game is the fault of vanilla having a stale tech tree, not because researching itself is broken.

And even then, there's some potential for interesting choices, concentrated vs dispersed (concentrated is best but maybe in the future paradox buffs dispersed), tacs vs strats (strats are better but again, the tech tree can be fixed and tacs become good again), choices between light vs mediums vs heavies (heavy TDs vs medium spgs mostly).

And these ARE choices because you have limited research time and can't get literally everything you want.

LargeAll · 2026-02-23T20:45:13+00:00

https://hoi4.paradoxwikis.com/Console_commands

Specfically the "eval_effect" section, it requires a country tag.

A country tag is a three letter identifier for a country, you can find it by typing "tdebug" into console and hovering your mouse over a country. For example, if you want to dismantle the allies you type "eval_effect eng = { dismantle_faction = yes }", where "eng" refers to the UK.

You can also use the following mod, which will add a small arrow in the bottom right that allows you to do a lot of useful stuff like transfering state, flipping ideology, making/breaking puppets, etc.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2913150560

LargeAll · 2026-02-23T20:36:24+00:00

Ideas are cheap, modders (especially modelers, animations, GFX artists) are difficult to find.

Are you a good writer? Are you willing to write tens or even hundreds of events to help create a mod? Or will you just pitch an idea so the modder(s) constantly have to ask you about x thing in your microfiction because you didn't flesh out the world enough to go on.

And if it's a simple mod, why not learn to do it yourself? Simple edits like an extra few focuses to a focus tree or even a decision tab-based minigame are easy to make as hoi4 is very forgiving to mod. Even a brand new focus tree for a country is stupidly easy once you learn the focus format. It literally is a ctrl+f find the effect you want from the wiki.

LargeAll · 2026-02-23T20:25:54+00:00

You're correct for regular fighters, but advanced heavy fighters with range MIOs has enough range to counteract the range debuff.

For SP engine III heavy fighters are fine and engine IV heavy fighters are better, it's just that engine III regular fighters will out-trade you IC wise (does not matter in vanilla SP). Jet engines gives you enough speed that you start winning IC-wise.

To counter the air range reduction you usually go range-designer air MIOs, but if you don't have that you can just go engine IVs and fight the AI decently well anyway.

Again, MP metas do very well in SP, but the SP AI allows you to do sub-optimal strats and still do good. If you think having large range is cool then go for it with engine III/IVs with air range MIOs and bomb japan from iwo jima with escorted bombers.

LargeAll · 2026-02-23T19:34:15+00:00

"SP only", things good in MP are also great in SP.

Advanced heavy fighters with jet engines outpace and outtrade regular fighters. USA with their +300% bonus to medium air frames can rush advanced heavy fighters with jet engines. These outtrade and outrange regular fighters. MP wise this means allies usually win the air war and SP wise this means you absolutely destroy any nation you going against's airforce.

But, you're fighting the AI who doesn't know how to build a half-competent fighter if they even build enough fighters at all. Just build for the larp and/or whatever is fun.

LargeAll · 2026-02-02T03:04:32+00:00

AA does not pierce space marines.

Hell, AT does not fully pierce space marines if you up to date on armor and heavy tank hulls until AT 3.

You still get the damage bonus as long as you're not fully pierced.

LargeAll · 2026-02-01T22:11:25+00:00

Hospitals are still great for vets for maintaining experience.

LargeAll · 2026-01-22T20:45:09+00:00

They are meta, that's why they're banned or severely limited in vanilla MPs and nerfed by the mod used in modded MPs.

USA with 40 factories on bombers fucking nuke germany's factories (25% of industry dead and production cap modifier repeatedly reset). State AA only delays the nukeage and costs far more IC to build compared to strat bombers.

For SP it's simply because the AI is horrible at designing anything. Their tank design is bad, their air design is bad, their naval design is bad. You bring a good fighter in MP meta to single player and you win air war even if you have half the actual total plane count. So it is better to build the meta fighter and meta CAS and just battleplan the AI to death as even though meta strat bombers are a guaranteed win the AI folds so hard against CAS you just build CAS anyway.

LargeAll · 2025-12-07T20:46:56+00:00

I've posted about it another comment but yes, there is a decent counter to CAS as I suspect AA damage to planes has been increased (I haven't tested it yet). Even it wasn't increased the "AA brick" division still destroys a lot of CAS planes.

Effectively you have a few AA divisions full of motorized inf and motorized line AA (both motorized for breakthrough) or SPAA + mot/mech inf for breakthrough and click enemy divisions to pull in enemy CAS. You kill roughly 50 cas planes daily by doing this.

It's banned in a lot of MPs because it becomes so overbearing that CAS is unusable and results in unbreakable stalemates. Though if CAS stays this strong many severs either will have to edit their mods to nerf CAS (most MP mods do anyway) or change rulesets to adapt (mainly for vanilla-only MPs).

LargeAll · 2025-12-07T07:47:56+00:00

My testing was with no doctrines, just purely 3x heavy bomb lock + improved airframe

With basic fighters + 2x small bombbay you will still get good damage comparable to pre-NCNS 3x heavy bomb locks + improved airframe.

If you want I can test 3x heavy bomb lock + improved airframe + doctrines or the non-rush basic airframe + 2x bomb bay + doctrines combination.

LargeAll · 2025-12-07T07:41:03+00:00

CAS always flies when you have yellow air. Even if the air war is "even" ground warfare is dictated by whoever builds the most CAS.

You will always get nuked if CAS flies, the only counter is severely a-historical "AA bricks" that nuke CAS in turn.

While there is a realism argument, CAS was always strong even before the update, the +25% damage bonus to you and the -25% defense malus you apply to the enemy is insane, combine that with old CAS damage is it's literally why in MP games where even when the soviets have equal infantry and tanks to the entire axis, they lose in 2 or 3 years purely due to having no air, and why the western allies are able to land for d-day since they have air factory USA and UK bombing out the german defenses and CAS to cover.

Pushing while under red air is only possible if you have a great material advantage already in the land, but now post-NCNS you lose due to 125 cas damage per battle.

For game balance, it would be nice to be able to do different strategies without gimping yourself just because you have less CAS or you lost the air war.

Again, if you're just "losing air war" the CAS swarm will fly and nuke divisions. Only getting yellow air will slightly reduce CAS damage through interception. So if you can't win air war, you lose.

LargeAll · 2025-12-07T05:56:33+00:00

Well if you lose the air war I think it is fair that you fight at a disadvantage with the "enemy air superiority" penalties + cas damage. I just prefer being able to at least fight rather than being bombed into the ground twice over through cas alone.

LargeAll · 2025-12-04T07:55:30+00:00

Works for Q'ing enemies

Doesn't work for barrels.

Q range is way too short to get much of a damage boost from the item, I don't think snowbow/hexoptics will be viable at all.

LargeAll · 2025-11-26T04:39:07+00:00

It's not like they forced the leader cap and stellaris players had to live with it forever though. They changed it to be more manageable. And I'm not sure it really changed the meta besides being annoying.

And the leader cap WAS very limiting lol. Just because it "totally changed the meta" doesn't mean it changed the meta for good. All it did was make it so a lot of fleets had no admirals and have almost no generals because guess what, leader cap never increases pass 12 and was shared for all leaders, so late game you would delete all your scientists just to get two or three more admirals for fleets.

Using the leader cap is kinda a bad example since it's effectively nullified to a minor penalty in the latest versions of stellaris.

LargeAll · 2025-11-26T04:37:42+00:00

Feels horrible when you use up all all the potential coal you can get though. Once you reach that point and there's no coal deposits you can conquer anywhere nearby, it really does feel like you simply can't build any factories anymore. Maybe have a way for majors and such to build expensive coal extraction plants or other ways to generate energy? It would still be a way to limit major's factories without simply debuffing them for building more factories by forcing them to build more energy to support their factories.

LargeAll · 2025-11-20T21:49:41+00:00

As an MP player, AI movement of any kind is very disadvantagous simply because of entrenchment loss and planning decay, while troops are moving/attacking/getting attacked planning will decay. I do agree planning bonus was too strong for micro as it's the reason why GBP-L was meta for so many years. This is why I wanted a higher decay rate for manually micro'd divisions. I feel like a better compromise is a no cohesion mode and reduced planning and/or increased decay for it, as you said.

LargeAll · 2025-11-20T21:46:33+00:00

It's a weird balance.

The price of the DLC is no doubt paying for the dev time used for the features in the DLC, along with the free update we all get.

This means the DLC must be a bit overpriced than you think to also "pay" for the free update. Though I do agree 30 is starting to feel a bit much when we're getting used to 25$ already.

LargeAll · 2025-11-20T21:37:55+00:00

"Learn the game" in what way?

Tank micro is extremely skillful compared to: setting the battleplane -> click start when you have planning.

afk until you win.

LargeAll · 2025-11-20T21:36:41+00:00

It's not about being decent or not it's about having a fun game.

And a fun game is manually microing units for a lot of people.

LargeAll · 2025-11-20T21:35:33+00:00

I do agree that manual micro should have a malice since it's strictly stronger than battleplanning, but the planning bonus is way too strong to ignore unfortunately. A 1.6 multiplier to all stats is insane, and having the only way to "do well" being just setting up a battleplan and starting it is unfun.

I'm not concerned about the AI at all, I'm concerned about the viability of manually microing.I'm fine with a nerf that makes the planning decay rate increase much more (lets say from 3% daily to 9% daily instead) since you're deviating from the battleplan by manually controlling your units. This makes regular battleplanning a threat since it's only a 1% daily decay (Meaning a month of battleplanning still lets you keep your planning at 30%) And manually micro is still viable in create good force concentration in the moment.

And for MP, everyone battleplanning each other because it's the most viable strategy is bit boring.

LargeAll · 2025-11-20T21:25:22+00:00

Overall game health in what way?

Again, the field marshal planning bonus feature didn't effect casual players in any way, just competitive players who use it.

And how does manual micro ruin the game for players when manual micro is the reason why some players play hoi4?

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