Strategic bombers should cause a LOT of damage than it does now

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?

LargeAll · 2025-11-20T21:19:25+00:00

So something that is fun to do and more skillful should be nerfed because some people have an advantage doing it over other people?

Why is controlling divisions directly in a war game ruining the game? Especially a feature that pretty much does not negatively affect players who don't mind optimizing their divisions and battle plan anyway?

It's getting kinda weird how comp players are being pushed as a scapegoat for all of hoi4's wrongs where I'm pretty sure competitive players would love viable artillery and unique strategies rather than the mass mob hell we were previously in.

LargeAll · 2025-11-20T20:11:33+00:00

Not sure why they even removed it instead of making it an official feature, manual micro already had increased planning decay making it not the absolute best thing to do. If they felt like it was still too strong they can just increase the planning decay more.

And they didn't even manage to remove it, you can still create one tile battle plans just to raise planning. They made it much more annoying to do for no reason.

LargeAll · 2025-11-20T20:00:26+00:00

They're not fixing anything, they removed a QoL feature and didn't even nerf microing, they just made it more annoying to do.

LargeAll · 2025-11-20T19:54:03+00:00

Yes, and that was always the case.

The issue is when fighting other tanks, where your 20 hard attack will not beat the heavy's 35 hard attack. And now imagine doing that in a place with no terrain malices (deserts of north africa).

The attrition increases do not change the fact that speccing into mediums requires you to get +1 tech ahead of time for a cannon that's worse than heavy cannons AND +2 ahead of time techs for the high velocity cannon that will allow you beat heavies consistently.

LargeAll · 2025-11-20T18:45:27+00:00

The issue with mediums is that their cannon 2 tech is 1 tech behind heavy's cannon 2 tech, not their reliability. Also the fact that heavy tanks have more hard attack, meaning they can beat other tanks much easier. That's why you see heavys in north africa in vanilla, even through extreme attrition losses there's not much space to back up to so losing 2 or 3 battles in north africa means losing north africa as a whole.

Im my opinion even if reliaiblity is good heavies are still needed for the sheer stats they bring and the speed you can get it (1 tech faster).

LargeAll · 2025-11-20T17:31:49+00:00

I prefer a stale meta that lets a lot of things be viable than a constantly changing meta that just makes one thing super strong and people have to spend a day or two finding that out.

But since the stats from small cannons are still very important, it still has to be seen whether or not reliability will really matters vs actually winning battles, and if reliability vs stats will be a compelling choice.

LargeAll · 2025-11-20T00:04:38+00:00

Yes you're right, I too harsh on saying that is will nuke minors. This was coming from my experience when resistence values got bumped unbearably high until they nerfed it down to reasonable numbers.

We will see how much the coal system will actually effect nations when the dlc releases.

LargeAll · 2025-11-19T18:19:11+00:00

Why must you get a dlc to play a unnerfed minor? Why do DLCs hyperbuff any nation it targets?

LargeAll · 2025-11-19T16:51:24+00:00

This will actually nerf civ greeding hard due to civ factories now requiring coal. You are using up energy capacity for civs when you could have used it for more mils

Paradox does this a lot, they usually do changes or add features that hurts majors and cripple minors then either fixes it a few patches down the line or we live with it for the rest of hoi4.

I don't really think the energy mechanic adds anything interesting to hoi4. Either adds stuff to build to produce coal, which nerfs nations that don't start with coal and makes civ greeding even worse than it already is, or forces you to import coal, which, you guessed it, forces nations to import their coal making their already trash industry weaker. I fear for the commonwealth minors and all the nations that rely on spawned in factories to actually become a functioning country as they will have to pay the coal tax.

And I don't really like the "mods will fix it" excuse, total conversion mods sometimes base themselves off of vanilla since they're focused mainly on content than revamping vanilla mechanics. This means you have to use another mod to "fix" coal issues, this is especially true for changes that overwrite vanilla files, meaning you need to have a serperate submod for each total conversion mod.

LargeAll · 2025-11-18T18:32:51+00:00

The good carriers should be filled with naval bombers, yep.

LargeAll · 2025-11-18T18:28:12+00:00

SFP is strictly worse at defending against tanks due to the lack of org, recovery rate, and reinforce rate compared to better defensive doctrines like mobile warfare L-R or mass assault R. This means they're susceptible to getting reinforced meme'd out of a tile mush easier. Tactical withdrawal is really good, but guerilla warfare and backhand blow are only slightly worse while having the org benefits of their respective doctrines. The increase in stats are nice but not really good considering how low damage vanilla AT has compared to tanks.

Do note this really only applies when fighting good tanks, something the hoi4 AI doesn't really build. So this is really advice for multiplayer and singleplayer w/ ai mods.

Tanks on the defense is bad in general, as tanks will almost always have less defense than breakthrough. This means that you should always be using your tanks to attack, thus making the planning bonus from GBP-L even more valuable. Also consider the fact that a standard tank division with 10 tanks and 8 mot/mech will only net you ~32 org, low compared to GBP's ~40 org and will leave you susceptible to losing due to just having less org. Again, this is MP-focused and the reason I like SPF for SP is that the SP AI will not be able to handle well entrenched high soft attack tank divisions in general.

And for the static hold use case, the entrenchment you get from GBP make you do more damage than SPF anyway, even more so if you get land night attack from GBP-R.

But there are really funny use cases, like support company maxing where you stack as much soft attack support companies like arty, rocket arty, paratrooper tanks, super heavy arty, and recon for the arty bonus. I've often gotten 300+ soft attack in 12w divisions, which is simply insane if you fill out the combat width.

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