i know there's a vicky3 to hoi4 converter out there and I keep an eye on it's development, but it's not there yet.
All the HOI4 mods that try to cram in a century of historical events and alt-history into a few years do a heroic job but vicky 3 is so much better at setting up state of the world (social, economic, alliances, great powers, etc).
Full disclosure, I state this as someone that prefers the HOI4 build up phase over the warfare, but also think vicky 3 warfare is too simplistic and janky. So best keep vicky 3 focused purely on the set-up, the run up, the historical materialism and great social forces churning together in the shadow of industrialization.
Let HOI4 handle the big war and the frantic industrial conversion and tech rush. Why is that the "big war" vs a bunch of WW1 style great wars that broke out in vicky 3?
Nukes. Fundamentally, that's what HOI4 is about. It's the last, conventional war possible before everyone can just start flinging nukes at each other. It's a ticking clock. The rush before the great equalizers that promise untold destruction to all sides. Whether you are leading a glorious global communist revolution or just rapping the knuckles of some unruly fascists (how dare you turn colonialism inward! uncouth!)
Obviously if you achieve global communism by 1936 there might not be a fun playthrough there. Maybe a reactionary/capitalist uprising to put down, or World War Leftist Infighting.
i've actually thought that if I finish a good run of Vicky 3 and like the result that I might just transfer what I can using the converter and try to make a bunch of focus trees based on my game's historical lead up. Using whatever tools I can find since my modding skills are limited to edits.
Anyone else thought of this as something that sounds really great together? your peanut butter + chocolate?
small addition: this is about converting Vic3 playthrough to HOI4 and playing it as a "long HOI4", not actually combining the games into one system.
Yea it all sounds pretty neat. I agree that Vicky 3 is such a better game for emergent storytelling. Something I've noticed watching a lot of paradox grand campaigns (ck to hoi4) is that the narrative just kind of falls apart in hoi4. Its a great war game in the context of WW2, but you really have to work to make it interesting narratively outside of it, since wars are fought to complete annexation and everything is driven by focus trees which are hand created. (Not to say the HOI4 mods aren't impressive, they are, but clearly its a lot of work)
I'm not sure how one would be able to bolt together the two systems since Vic3 is so macro focused but much of HOI4s interesting combat comes out of the economy micro of choosing how to design your equipment and how your division templates are setup. I think the whole 1836-1936 period is such a difficult one to do military because they changed so much in that time period. I've seen before ideally you'd have the EU4 system of Vic2 and then it somehow transitions to HOI4 towards the end.
I suppose my write-up was more a lament that the Vic3 to HOI4 converter is still very, very barebones and I wish I could help with it.
The mod team is making a "stories system" that I think takes the various emergent events that occur in your Vic3 game and uses them to build focus trees and thus a narrative reason for the situation that starts in 1936.
Sounds incredibly ambitious and I really hope they pull it off and people have interest in it.
The only major change i would make to Vic3 combat is a focus on naval warfare. Land warfare was mostly a grindfest during most of the period, but naval warfare was where all the advanced tech, innovation, and rapid development occured. Going from sail ship to ironclad to WW1 is way too simplistic.
look at a battleship from the 1880s and how advanced it is and remember this is when cowboys are riding horses in the wild west still.
But I'm also a weirdo that really likes HOI4's current naval system, mostly because it abstracts the whole "scout, detect, harass, maneuver, concentrate, engage, pursue" style of naval combat before satellites and guided missiles. So yeah I love division, ship, and vehicle design from HOI4 I try to ignore "min max" and just do what I think would make sense. Ship design would be fun in Vic3 but everyone would hate it. But I want my pre-dreadnoughts with 6 different gun calibers, casemates, and brass decorations dueling with converted fishing trawler torpedo and gun boats.
I have not been following the vic3-hoi4 converter, that stories system actually does sound pretty interesting, hope they succeed too!
Yea I agree the naval needs some work, though I think the latest patch did at least emphasize how important naval control is to a country that trades overseas, naval blockades are crippling!
Do I detect a fellow rule the waves fan?
That whole era of pre-dreadnoughts to interwar ships is super fascinating because of all the developments and weird shit they tried.
As for hoi4 I could never really get into the naval but I do think it achieves exactly what you point out at the strategic level, I just also like the actually controlling the fleet engagements. I will say I love the designers in HOI4 too, it's just fun to twiddle around and see what cursed stuff you can make, or just try to replicate historical designs as best as possible. I do hate that the naval designer for battleships the batteries always come in pairs, so you always either have 2-4-6-8 etc batteries. Too abstract for my liking
uhh no but i may have heard of it looks it up omg it's one of those extra crunchy warsims. and you can design ships!? maybe i will be soon
and yeah the HOI4 design is pretty abstract. and at this point I have a pretty fixed design procedure that unfortunately does take advantage of some meta stuff (like having bare bones escort destroyers, cruisers that are basically frames, etc)
there was an arcade style warship game called Naval Ops 2 i used to love a long time ago because of the ship design (which went from WW2 to railgun future). and before that, when I was much younger, PTO (Pacific Theatre of Operations) that was even more abstract then HOI4 but started my obsession with crunchy number grand strategy. so yeah I am a naval nerd. my WW2 vet grandfather did navy and fed my obsessions
now i'm going to look at this game you mentioned and it's going to be like when Attila total war opens when you fight a battle in CK4 as your character, the mod. which worked really well.
so i'm going to be like "can that be done with this" lol.
i would totally give any spare time I could to that project if I had any modern coding skills or experience with paradox modding. like if they just needed a gal to copy/paste stuff endlessly.
but i don't want to embarrass myself and i am very patient with ongoing projects.
Oh yea rule the waves sounds right up your alley, the whole game loop is just designing ships and then you get to see how they succeed or fail in the battles where you control the ships (with differing difficulties letting you control a main formation, all formations or each individual ship.) I do love me some crunchy wargames. That PTO game seems interesting, reminds me of a game much later called Pacific Storm, very jank and buggy but i did have lots of fun with it as a kid.
Yea that's fair, fingers crossed for it!