Hello there! It's your friendly neighborhood Community Manager, Katten, here. The first War Effort update of the year has finally been released! It mainly focuses on bug fixes and some balance changes, including adjustments to the USA MIOs, which Content Designer Gareth will discuss below.

Remember to please send in any bug reports when you discover them HERE, so that we can fix them as soon as possible!


[h3]USA Mios[/h3]
Hello! My name is Gareth (AKA MordredViking). Ive grown to really like the MIO system we have in the game, and wanted to expand the unique variants (ie, the special nodes which certain MIOs get). First up, the USA.


For the tanks, I wanted to add more differentiation between Chrysler (quality), Army Ordnance (balanced) and Detroit Arsenal (quantity), so I have tweaked their initial traits and added some new unique nodes to represent this.

For example, this node for the Detroit Arsenal reflects its position as the first, purpose built tank production factory.


Next up, lets take a look at the navy.


Here, I was rather more rigorous in changing the archetype to reflect their historical output. Norfolk had a significant role in the production of destroyers and liberty ships. Electric Boat Company was a pretty dedicated submarine producer, Brooklyn was the originator of many of Americas battleships, while Newport News had some of the largest drydocks, and was capable of maintaining the carrier fleet.

For example, to reflect Newports ability towards carriers, they were granted more carrier production output from their initial trait (vs Task Force Ship Builders which just adds HPs).


Next up, Aircraft.


I wanted to highlight some of the similarities between the design philosophies between North American Aviation and Lockheed, their initial trait and unique nodes now reflect a specialization towards Light or Medium aircraft while both give bonuses to range. Once again, more unique nodes were added to each MIO to give the USA some more flavour.

Unfortunately I didnt have time to do more for the Small Arms / Artillery / Motorized MIOs, but I hope to be able to spend more time on these (and other nations) in the future.


[h2]Patch Notes[/h2]
##################################
[h3]Balance[/h3]
##################################

- USA MIO: Changed description of North American Aviation and Lockheed to better describe their roles.
- USA MIO: Added new variants to Douglas, Detroit Arsenal, Brooklyn Naval Yard and Norfolk Naval Yard
- USA MIO: Switched Norfolk Naval Yard to Escort and Brooklyn Naval Yard to Taskforce
- USA MIO: Changed Electric Boat Company from Raiding Fleet to Submarine Designer
- Updated Paraguay and Uruguay with more accurate victory points
- The Chilean decision to release the Inuit now grants them cores on Attu Island and the Chuckchi Peninsula, as well as ownership of them if they are controlled by Chile or one of their subjects.
- Fixed multiple issues with the Canadian focus "The Newfoundland Act". The focus now has a clearer available tooltip. It should also be able to be taken in the patriation path, as the "demanded patriation" opinion modifier is now set to last for three years, instead of indefinitely.
- Fixed various issues with the final focuses in the shared Chinese focus tree, adding is_subject = no as well as a check for Japan not being a subject in the "Dominate Japan" focus.
- Fixed and updated targeting and bypasses for the Estonian focuses "Unite Karelia" and "Unite the Sami".
- Fixed an issue in the Romanian focus tree where the focus "Appoint Pro-Axis Government" would say it unlocked a decision to join the allies, despite instead unlocking one for the Axis, and made the effects of the three focuses "Appoint Pro-Axis Government", "Appoint Pro-Allied Government" and "Appoint Pro-Soviet Government" more readable.
- The "Caliphate of Cordoba" formable nations decisions no longer require you to control impassable desert states, as their controller can be more than finicky at times.
- Fixed incorrect grammar in the Norwegian Infanteridivisjon and Binrdivisjon unit templates.
- Mengkukuo no longer has MIOs only accessible through the shared Chinese focus tree, and has also received a generic plane MIO.
- Fixed a long-standing issue where the weekly negative change in the Italian Balance of Power wasn't removed upon them regaining control of their core states.
- Fixed an issue where the focus "British Guns" would only show two out of the three unlocked decisions, and added subsidies to the artillery decision to make it match the anti-air and anti-tank decisions.
- Added Luxembourg to the list of targets in the French focus "Natural Borders of France", as it is west of the Rhine.
- Poland now gets a puppet wargoal against Czechoslovakia if they are a puppet of another nation in their focus "King of Bohemia", instead of simply stealing said puppet.
- Added the option for a non-aligned Lithuania to adopt Mstislav Dobuzhinsky's flag design through a decision.

##################################
[h3]UI[/h3]
##################################

- Fix the speed of some scrollbar when using mouse wheel
- State mapmode now shows modifiers at state level

##################################
[h3]Graphics[/h3]
##################################

- Fixed Sinkiangs flag to use Cheng-Chi-Tsai's second flag, as the old one was their pre-1934 version.

##################################
[h3]Bugfix[/h3]
##################################

- ICE: King Knud now gains proper skills when made an admiral.
- Fixed issue with Soviet Union not being able to generate a wargoal after a country rejected an ultimatum.
- Added decisions and events for Denmark's overlord to request the Faroes and Greenland back after these have been occupied by the UK and USA respectively.
- Denmark will now automatically declare war on one or several nations when completing the conquest focuses in the Occupation Branch.
- Enabled Danish Medals
- Added the is_subject = no available clause to multiple Turkish focuses regarding factions, wars and changing ideology. Also added a clause to the Turkish focus "Renew the non-agression pact with the Soviets", to disallow taking it when at war with them.
- Chile: Fixed an inverted tooltip for Encourage Bond purchases
- URG: Fixed an issue where Tour to italy wouldn't give you the tanks that you were supposed to get
- The Ottoman Empires decision to core the Khedivate of Egypt now includes the state of Cairo.
- China and Communist China now have the shared focus "Incite Foreign Investors" already completed in the 1939 start date, so that they no longer have completed focuses beneath them without having done their prerequisite focus.
- Prince Paul should now get the Collaborator King trait as intended when going down the fascist branch.
- Fixed the Romanian focus "Invite German Advisors" granting them access to Germany, and not the other way around as intended.
- Fixed an issue with the claims gained from the French "Congress of Paris" event chain which would not grant claims on the new African states added in BBA.
- Prevent exploit where already produced equipment could be modified by hiding it in the market stockpile
- Fix the Alaska Chromium prospecting bug
- Fixed an error where the names of one Argentinian and two Bolivian generals weren't showing up correctly.
- Fixed the illegal unit templates in the Romanian focuses "The Armored Division" and "Royal Guards Divison", the Spanish focus "The Army of Africa", the Lithuanian focus "Establish Royal Guards", and the Polish focus "The King's Guard".
- Fixed an issue where the "country is not Argentina" would show up on the Hold a national referendum decision no matter which country you were playing.
- Fixed an issue where the image wouldn't show for the Ethiopian event "Communist guerrillas in southern Ethiopia".
- The Soviet focus "Claim Bessarabia" now requires the owner of Bessarabia to also control the state, preventing some previous strange behaviours.
- Removed a TODO tooltip from the Ethiopian focus "A Libyan Revolt".
- Fixed the focus for Manchukuo "Claim the Mandate of Heaven", which was still using the old system for changing the name and portrait of a "character", so that it now actually interacts with the character of Puyi, thus letting him keep any traits he has gained.
- Fixed an issue where Iceland could still create communist uprisings in the UK against them even if they were communist themselves.
- Fixed an issue where choosing to go against the Soviet breakaway states in the Russian civil war would only put them at war with you, and not with Stalin as well.
- Paraguay: Fixed an instance where a general would get manouver bonus instead of planning
- Fixed invisible spirit for Legacy of the arms race if MtG was disabled
- Fixed various issues surrounding autonomy status and Indonesian civil war on_actions etc for Australia.
- Fixed a grammar mistake and a misspelling in Finnish "White Death" events.
- Fixed an issue where the Swedish focus "Reclaiming the Rus" would exclude giving a claim on Sao Tome instead of Crimea.
- Swapped out the train reliability effect in Soviet advisor Lazar Kaganovich's trait, as it is not applicable to trains.
- Fixed an issue where the British focus "Global Defense" would check if Malaya owned the state Malta, instead of checking for said aforementioned nation.
- Fixed an issue where the Chilean fascist advisors gained from the focus "Utilize National-Populism" would get transferred to the opposing side in the civil war when going down the Araucanian branch of the focus tree.
- Fixed two typos regarding the Treaty of Brussels decision and event.
- Fixed multiple occasions where Australia could build radar and air bases in the Central Australian impassable area.
- Fixed an issue where the lend_lease_tension_with_overlord modifier in the autonomy "Satellite" was broken and had no effect.
- added text to an event option that was missing
- Adds a requirement for Germany to control at least one coastal state for the focus "Expand Dockyard Facilities" to be available, adds loc to describe effects if the focus is not avail to avoid the standard "has no effect" string
- Fixes typo "Mathilda" -> "Matilda" for starting production of tanks in UK start in 1939
- Adds requirement for Spain to be fully independent before taking the focus "Support French Communists" to prevent strange behavior with French Communist Civil War
- Localizes the operative names Robert Ivanov, Nadiya Morozova and Julieta Soria from the focuses "Form the EICI" and "Sway the Neighbors"
- The Polish Midzymorze branch now requires the recipient country to be fully independent. Switches from is_puppet = no to is_subject = no to avoid edge cases
- Fixed various issues with cores and requirements for formable nations, notably Turan, Macedonia, Turkestan, Majapahit and Persia.
- Fixed unlocalized plane module category (Defense Turrets x2)
- Fixed an issue where the Italian focus "Corpo di truppe Voluntaire" would be bypassed automatically if reached before the Spanish Civil War had begun.
- The Anarchist economy law "Collectivized Society" now has its base expectation of 15% consumer goods back, having been accidental made into a 30% factories factor modifier.
- Fixed an error that caused you to be able to invite your faction members and puppets into MERCOSUL as Brazil.
- Fixed issue with German focus "Puppet Turkey" being unavailable when Greece was a German ally or fully occupied by Germany or German allies.
- Fixed the Free French focus "Intervention in Madagascar" to have the "is not in faction with Free France" available trigger, to match the other intervention focuses.
- When completing German focus Puppet Turkey, Soviets will now receive Turkish states as long as Turkey previously controlled them, and the state Van is now also transferred to Soviets.
- Fixed issues with some of the Communist Chinese focuses when having gotten the focus tree as a Communist Warlord through the focus "Proclaim Rival Government".
- Fixed issue for the music players' weighted shuffle where half the songs were not eligible
- Fixed an issue where Yugoslav military high command Borivoje Mirkovic's Portrait was replaced by a generic one.
- Fixed various unit and vp/building locations in the northern Amazon where they would previously show up outside of the specified province.
- Fix hotjoin ctd when division designer was opened
- Fixed additional incorrect and missing cores and requirements for the formable nations Al Andalus, Arabia and the Empire of Zion, as well as made Regnum Bospori become a Roman puppet upon their release.
- Fix to !11630 ( Fixed an issue with the British focus "Global Defense"), making the Malta stuff target Malta and Malaysia stuff target Malaysia.
- Soviet National Spirits Curtailment of the Collective Farms and The People's Revolution should now have the intended Recruitable Population modifier, with proper impact on the available manpower.
- Fixed issue in which the Synthetic Refineries granted by the focus Tire Factory at Nokia were not appearing if the DLC Arms Against Tyranny was not active.
- Fixes to make sure events only sends to overlord and not puppet, only allows for the compromise option of the target joining the faction if ITA is the faction leader
- Clean-up of some duplicated and messed GFX, aiming to fix some issues with a few DLC portraits and tech icons.
- Fixed a typo in Italian communist leader Antonio Gramsci's trait Cultural Hegemony Theorist.
- Fixed an issue where Brazil could take the focus Potenj River Conference despite being a puppet. Also changed the focus filter for the focus "Establish Royal College of Rio de Janeiro" from political to research.
- Soviet Union: Fixed an issue with decisions to remove Junior Army/Navy Officers Purged national spirits not showing up after assassinating Stalin. These decisions should now show up after swapping country leader in either of the opposition branches or after assassinating Stalin in the Right Opposition branch.
- Soviet Union: The Right Opposition focus "Coup d'etat" will properly remove any Anti-Soviet Military Thinking national spirit (previously it would remove only the Army one, now it will check for and remove the Navy and Airforce ones too).
- Improved triggers in all the national spirits related to the purges to ensure they will be transferred to the Stalinist side in case of a civil war, even when Stalin is dead.
- Fixed a rare CTD in peace conferences

Generals!

The War Effort continues with Operation Grouse, so to prepare you for the battlefield, we've gone ahead and grabbed some intel from Command on the upcoming changes coming in patch 1.14.5 and are releasing them on an Open Beta.

To join the open beta, right click HOI4 in your Steam Library and go to Properties. Once there, you can go to 'Betas' and at the top right select " open_beta "

Prepare for some Balance changes, some minor graphics and UI changes, and a whole LOT of bug fixes!

##################################
[h3]Balance[/h3]
##################################

- USA MIO: Changed description of North American Aviation and Lockheed to better describe their roles.
- USA MIO: Added new variants to Douglas, Detroit Arsenal, Brooklyn Naval Yard and Norfolk Naval Yard
- USA MIO: Switched Norfolk Naval Yard to Escort and Brooklyn Naval Yard to Taskforce
- USA MIO: Changed Electric Boat Company from Raiding Fleet to Submarine Designer
- Updated Paraguay and Uruguay with more accurate victory points
- The Chilean decision to release the Inuit now grants them cores on Attu Island and the Chuckchi Peninsula, as well as ownership of them if they are controlled by Chile or one of their subjects.
- Fixed multiple issues with the Canadian focus "The Newfoundland Act". The focus now has a clearer available tooltip. It should also be able to be taken in the patriation path, as the "demanded patriation" opinion modifier is now set to last for three years, instead of indefinitely.
- Fixed various issues with the final focuses in the shared Chinese focus tree, adding is_subject = no as well as a check for Japan not being a subject in the "Dominate Japan" focus.
- Fixed and updated targeting and bypasses for the Estonian focuses "Unite Karelia" and "Unite the Sami".
- Fixed an issue in the Romanian focus tree where the focus "Appoint Pro-Axis Government" would say it unlocked a decision to join the allies, despite instead unlocking one for the Axis, and made the effects of the three focuses "Appoint Pro-Axis Government", "Appoint Pro-Allied Government" and "Appoint Pro-Soviet Government" more readable.
- The "Caliphate of Cordoba" formable nations decisions no longer require you to control impassable desert states, as their controller can be more than finicky at times.
- Fixed incorrect grammar in the Norwegian Infanteridivisjon and Binrdivisjon unit templates.
- Mengkukuo no longer has MIOs only accessible through the shared Chinese focus tree, and has also received a generic plane MIO.
- Fixed a long-standing issue where the weekly negative change in the Italian Balance of Power wasn't removed upon them regaining control of their core states.
- Fixed an issue where the focus "British Guns" would only show two out of the three unlocked decisions, and added subsidies to the artillery decision to make it match the anti-air and anti-tank decisions.
- Added Luxembourg to the list of targets in the French focus "Natural Borders of France", as it is west of the Rhine.
- Poland now gets a puppet wargoal against Czechoslovakia if they are a puppet of another nation in their focus "King of Bohemia", instead of simply stealing said puppet.
- Added the option for a non-aligned Lithuania to adopt Mstislav Dobuzhinsky's flag design through a decision.

##################################
[h3]UI[/h3]
##################################

- Fix the speed of some scrollbar when using mouse wheel
- State mapmode now shows modifiers at state level

##################################
[h3]Graphics[/h3]
##################################

- Fixed Sinkiangs flag to use Cheng-Chi-Tsai's second flag, as the old one was their pre-1934 version.

##################################
[h3]Bugfix[/h3]
##################################

- ICE: King Knud now gains proper skills when made an admiral.
- Fixed issue with Soviet Union not being able to generate a wargoal after a country rejected an ultimatum.
- Added decisions and events for Denmark's overlord to request the Faroes and Greenland back after these have been occupied by the UK and USA respectively.
- Denmark will now automatically declare war on one or several nations when completing the conquest focuses in the Occupation Branch.
- Enabled Danish Medals
- Added the is_subject = no available clause to multiple Turkish focuses regarding factions, wars and changing ideology. Also added a clause to the Turkish focus "Renew the non-agression pact with the Soviets", to disallow taking it when at war with them.
- Chile: Fixed an inverted tooltip for Encourage Bond purchases
- URG: Fixed an issue where Tour to italy wouldn't give you the tanks that you were supposed to get
- The Ottoman Empires decision to core the Khedivate of Egypt now includes the state of Cairo.
- China and Communist China now have the shared focus "Incite Foreign Investors" already completed in the 1939 start date, so that they no longer have completed focuses beneath them without having done their prerequisite focus.
- Prince Paul should now get the Collaborator King trait as intended when going down the fascist branch.
- Fixed the Romanian focus "Invite German Advisors" granting them access to Germany, and not the other way around as intended.
- Fixed an issue with the claims gained from the French "Congress of Paris" event chain which would not grant claims on the new African states added in BBA.
- Prevent exploit where already produced equipment could be modified by hiding it in the market stockpile
- Fix the Alaska Chromium prospecting bug
- Fixed an error where the names of one Argentinian and two Bolivian generals weren't showing up correctly.
- Fixed the illegal unit templates in the Romanian focuses "The Armored Division" and "Royal Guards Divison", the Spanish focus "The Army of Africa", the Lithuanian focus "Establish Royal Guards", and the Polish focus "The King's Guard".
- Fixed an issue where the "country is not Argentina" would show up on the Hold a national referendum decision no matter which country you were playing.
- Fixed an issue where the image wouldn't show for the Ethiopian event "Communist guerrillas in southern Ethiopia".
- The Soviet focus "Claim Bessarabia" now requires the owner of Bessarabia to also control the state, preventing some previous strange behaviours.
- Removed a TODO tooltip from the Ethiopian focus "A Libyan Revolt".
- Fixed the focus for Manchukuo "Claim the Mandate of Heaven", which was still using the old system for changing the name and portrait of a "character", so that it now actually interacts with the character of Puyi, thus letting him keep any traits he has gained.
- Fixed an issue where Iceland could still create communist uprisings in the UK against them even if they were communist themselves.
- Fixed an issue where choosing to go against the Soviet breakaway states in the Russian civil war would only put them at war with you, and not with Stalin as well.
- Paraguay: Fixed an instance where a general would get manouver bonus instead of planning
- Fixed invisible spirit for Legacy of the arms race if MtG was disabled
- Fixed various issues surrounding autonomy status and Indonesian civil war on_actions etc for Australia.
- Fixed a grammar mistake and a misspelling in Finnish "White Death" events.
- Fixed an issue where the Swedish focus "Reclaiming the Rus" would exclude giving a claim on Sao Tome instead of Crimea.
- Swapped out the train reliability effect in Soviet advisor Lazar Kaganovich's trait, as it is not applicable to trains.
- Fixed an issue where the British focus "Global Defense" would check if Malaya owned the state Malta, instead of checking for said aforementioned nation.
- Fixed an issue where the Chilean fascist advisors gained from the focus "Utilize National-Populism" would get transferred to the opposing side in the civil war when going down the Araucanian branch of the focus tree.
- Fixed two typos regarding the Treaty of Brussels decision and event.
- Fixed multiple occasions where Australia could build radar and air bases in the Central Australian impassable area.
- Fixed an issue where the lend_lease_tension_with_overlord modifier in the autonomy "Satellite" was broken and had no effect.
- added text to an event option that was missing
- Adds a requirement for Germany to control at least one coastal state for the focus "Expand Dockyard Facilities" to be available, adds loc to describe effects if the focus is not avail to avoid the standard "has no effect" string
- Fixes typo "Mathilda" -> "Matilda" for starting production of tanks in UK start in 1939
- Adds requirement for Spain to be fully independent before taking the focus "Support French Communists" to prevent strange behavior with French Communist Civil War
- Localizes the operative names Robert Ivanov, Nadiya Morozova and Julieta Soria from the focuses "Form the EICI" and "Sway the Neighbors"
- The Polish Midzymorze branch now requires the recipient country to be fully independent. Switches from is_puppet = no to is_subject = no to avoid edge cases
- Fixed various issues with cores and requirements for formable nations, notably Turan, Macedonia, Turkestan, Majapahit and Persia.
- Fixed unlocalized plane module category (Defense Turrets x2)
- Fixed an issue where the Italian focus "Corpo di truppe Voluntaire" would be bypassed automatically if reached before the Spanish Civil War had begun.
- The Anarchist economy law "Collectivized Society" now has its base expectation of 15% consumer goods back, having been accidental made into a 30% factories factor modifier.
- Fixed an error that caused you to be able to invite your faction members and puppets into MERCOSUL as Brazil.
- Fixed issue with German focus "Puppet Turkey" being unavailable when Greece was a German ally or fully occupied by Germany or German allies.
- Fixed the Free French focus "Intervention in Madagascar" to have the "is not in faction with Free France" available trigger, to match the other intervention focuses.
- When completing German focus Puppet Turkey, Soviets will now receive Turkish states as long as Turkey previously controlled them, and the state Van is now also transferred to Soviets.
- Fixed issues with some of the Communist Chinese focuses when having gotten the focus tree as a Communist Warlord through the focus "Proclaim Rival Government".
- Fixed issue for the music players' weighted shuffle where half the songs were not eligible
- Fixed an issue where Yugoslav military high command Borivoje Mirkovic's Portrait was replaced by a generic one.
- Fixed various unit and vp/building locations in the northern Amazon where they would previously show up outside of the specified province.
- Fix hotjoin ctd when division designer was opened
- Fixed additional incorrect and missing cores and requirements for the formable nations Al Andalus, Arabia and the Empire of Zion, as well as made Regnum Bospori become a Roman puppet upon their release.
- Fix to !11630 ( Fixed an issue with the British focus "Global Defense"), making the Malta stuff target Malta and Malaysia stuff target Malaysia.
- Soviet National Spirits Curtailment of the Collective Farms and The People's Revolution should now have the intended Recruitable Population modifier, with proper impact on the available manpower.
- Fixed issue in which the Synthetic Refineries granted by the focus Tire Factory at Nokia were not appearing if the DLC Arms Against Tyranny was not active.
- Fixes to make sure events only sends to overlord and not puppet, only allows for the compromise option of the target joining the faction if ITA is the faction leader
- Clean-up of some duplicated and messed GFX, aiming to fix some issues with a few DLC portraits and tech icons.
- Fixed a typo in Italian communist leader Antonio Gramsci's trait Cultural Hegemony Theorist.
- Fixed an issue where Brazil could take the focus Potenj River Conference despite being a puppet. Also changed the focus filter for the focus "Establish Royal College of Rio de Janeiro" from political to research.
- Soviet Union: Fixed an issue with decisions to remove Junior Army/Navy Officers Purged national spirits not showing up after assassinating Stalin. These decisions should now show up after swapping country leader in either of the opposition branches or after assassinating Stalin in the Right Opposition branch.
- Soviet Union: The Right Opposition focus "Coup d'etat" will properly remove any Anti-Soviet Military Thinking national spirit (previously it would remove only the Army one, now it will check for and remove the Navy and Airforce ones too).
- Improved triggers in all the national spirits related to the purges to ensure they will be transferred to the Stalinist side in case of a civil war, even when Stalin is dead.
- Fixed a rare CTD in peace conferences



Let us know what you think down below, and have yourselves a great day!

Hello there! It's your friendly neighborhood community manager, Katten, here. It's been some time, but starting right now until the 9th of April, the game is Free to Play! This is also accompanied by a Massive sale that is larger than any we have had previously, both of these starting at 19:00 CET
https://store.steampowered.com/app/394360/Hearts_of_Iron_IV/


If you are a new player or a veteran looking for people to play with, tips for your games, or just want to chat about the game, then join our Discord below. If we hit 100K members this weekend, we will be giving away 500 copies of the Base Game next week!

Click the above image to join the Discord, or click here instead!


Now, what is all of this new art and logos you see everywhere? Well, from player feedback and ourselves looking over the game, we thought it would be a good time for a brand refresh, as we call it. So, Hearts of Iron IV now has a new lovely key art with an additional gentleman in the back (let me know if you know who he is!), a new logo, and a little new icon that represents the game on Steam! This is also accompanied by "Waking the Tiger," "Death or Dishonor," and "Together for Victory" now being part of the base game in all senses. If you want to see a cool new trailer, check below!

[previewyoutube=F-uGP2DkZKE;full][/previewyoutube]

[h2]Sales and Discounts Starting at 19:00 CET[/h2]
[h3]Base Game[/h3]

• Hearts of Iron IV 80% off
  

• Hearts of Iron IV: Arms Against Tyranny 20% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: By Blood Alone 30% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: No Step Back 40% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: La Rsistance 50% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Man the Guns 60% off
  

• Hearts of Iron IV: Battle for the Bosporus 60% off
  

• Hearts of Iron IV: Songs of the Eastern Front 50% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Eastern Front Planes 50% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Allied Speeches Pack 60% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Radio Pack 50% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Sabaton Soundtrack 50% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Sabaton Soundtrack Vol. 2 50% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Allied Armor 60% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Axis Armor 50% off
  

Hello, Community Manager Katten here. I want to begin by thanking you all for the feedback we have received on our two latest news posts regarding the DLC Integration and Trial of Allegiance Reception & Thoughts. We are reading all your comments and are working on responding to as many as possible.


[h3]Steam Store Changes[/h3]
Since our update last week, which added "Country Pack" to the beginning of the names for Battle for the Bosporus and Trial of Allegiance, we have received more feedback about the unclear naming of our DLCs. Of particular concern is the Subscription, referred to as the "Expansion Subscription," which may suggest to some that it only includes expansions when it actually encompasses all DLCs for the game. As a result, we have made the following changes to provide better transparency:

• Hearts of Iron IV: Eastern Front Planes Pack > Unit Pack - Hearts of Iron IV: Eastern Front Planes
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Eastern Front Music Pack > Music - Hearts of Iron IV: Songs of the Eastern Front
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Axis Armor Pack > Unit Pack - Hearts of Iron IV: Axis Armor
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Radio Pack > Music - Hearts of Iron IV: Radio Pack
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Allied Armor Pack > Unit Pack - Hearts of Iron IV: Allied Armor
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Allied Speeches Music Pack > Music - Hearts of Iron IV: Allied Speeches Pack
  
• Hearts of Iron IV - Expansion Subscription > Hearts of Iron IV - DLC Subscription
  

[h3]Spring is Here and So Are Freebies for Hearts of Iron IV Fans![/h3]

As the flowers bloom and the world awakens anew, the Hearts of Iron IV team is thrilled to announce a Spring Sale celebration. Everyone knows that long military expeditions should start in the spring, so with campaign season upon us, we are excited to share not one, not two, but THREE DLCs for absolutely free: Death or Dishonor, Together for Victory, and Waking the Tiger.


It is clear that the Hearts of Iron IV: Starter Edition has become the go-to choice for newcomers, and is recommended by the veterans of our community for its comprehensive introduction to the vast and intricate world of Hearts of Iron IV. In our quest to continuously improve the gameplay experience for new recruits and seasoned generals alike, we've decided to integrate the above-mentioned three DLCs into the base game, ensuring every player enjoys a richer, more complete Hearts of Iron IV journey.

Our view is that while the experiences they contain add a great deal to Hearts of Iron IV, parts of the content within Together for Victory, Death or Dishonor and Waking the Tiger no longer match the scope and direction that has developed in the game over the last several years. In addition, there are numerous core mechanics that we would like to rely on in future content that are difficult to work with due to ownership limitations. By rolling these expansions into the core game, we open up new opportunities for utilizing the features they contain, and create new avenues for developing content our players are repeatedly asking for.

[h3]Why Redeem Now?[/h3]
As we incorporate these DLCs into the base game by the end of the Spring Sale (21st March), failure to update your game could lead to disruptions, such as save game incompatibilities. Redeem your free DLCs now to ensure your conquests and campaigns continue smoothly without a hitch.

[h3]How to Redeem:[/h3]
To claim your free DLCs, simply log into your Steam account during the Spring Sale 14th - 21st of March and visit the Hearts of Iron IV store page. From there, navigate to the DLC section where you'll find Death or Dishonor, Together for Victory, and Waking the Tiger ready for redemption.


[h3]FAQ[/h3]

Question: Will I receive a refund for the DLCs that are now free?
Answer: No, if you have recently purchased any of them, here is the Steam refund policy: DLC bought from the Steam store can be refunded within fourteen days of purchase, provided that the underlying title has been played for less than two hours since purchasing the DLC.

Question: Does this mean that Hearts of Iron IV development has stopped?
Answer: On the contrary, this will help future development as we can assume that all players now own the first 3 DLC.

Question: What happens to my saved data when the DLCs integrate into the base game?
Answer: If you didn't possess the DLCs when creating your save file, it will become corrupted and unusable once they are integrated on March 21st.

Question: Why is Starter Edition still available when the DLCs included in it are free?
Answer: Once the Spring Sale has concluded on 21 March, we will be converting the Starter Edition to the current base game. For now, the Starter Edition remains a convenient way to access the base and three free DLCs. So that new players dont have to redeem the DLCs one by one. The Starter Edition is also currently available with a price reduction to match the base game price.

[h3]Spring Sale Discounts[/h3]

Base Game

• Hearts of Iron IV 70% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Starter Edition 76% off
  

• Hearts of Iron IV: By Blood Alone 30% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: No Step Back 30% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: La Rsistance 50% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Man the Guns 50% off
  

• Hearts of Iron IV: Battle for the Bosporus 50% off
  

• Hearts of Iron IV: Eastern Front Music Pack50% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Eastern Front Planes Pack50% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Allied Speeches Music Pack 50% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Radio Pack 50% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Sabaton Soundtrack50% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Sabaton Soundtrack Vol. 250% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Allied Armor Pack 50% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Axis Armor Pack 50% off
  

Greetings all!

Today marks the first dev diary since the release of Trial of Allegiance, so well be looking back over how things went, and community reactions in a little more detail than usual. While I would have loved to have some data on player choices and interactions for todays diary, our analytics engine is busy chugging away. So, well have to hold off on that until the machine spirit has assessed the incoming preponderance of data.

[h3]The Elephant in the Room[/h3]
It would be hard to talk about Trial of Allegiance without first mentioning that were acutely aware of its critical reception from fans. I see no reason not to be transparent about this, and Im going to use today as an opportunity to talk about what it means to us and how we analyze reactions, so lets dive into some of the facts:

[h3]Everythings on Fire![/h3]
Well, actually no. Trial of Allegiance has thus far been one of our most stable releases in terms of bugs and player-encountered issues. This doesnt mean there arent bugs: stuff always creeps through, but as you may have noticed by now, weve had an Open Beta running with a patch scheduled sometime today. The patch notes will be attached to the end of this document. Furthermore, we have another patch scheduled in next week to give us a chance to tackle more complex problems.

Due to the low incidence of bugs in the ToA content, were spending a bit more time on general improvements and things folks thought were lacking.

Developers Perspective: bugs are defects in the game - errors or unforeseen complexities that render part of the experience to not work as intended. We dont usually consider design choices or outdated content as bugs unless they cause the first statement to apply, since that evaluation is often subjective.

[h3]Circles Within Circles[/h3]
Our steam review score has taken a fairly heavy beating on Trial of Allegiance. Reviews on DLCs are notoriously hard to draw accurate conclusions from, as very few people tend to leave reviews compared to the overall number of people who bought a DLC. Trial of Allegiance is particularly notable in that regard, as there are fewer reviews overall than we would normally expect. Its absolutely possible to theorize behind why that is, but thats all those are: theories.

That said, we read every review. Aaand its quite hard, tbh. Being a venerable ancient of the internet, I could wax lyrical on toxicity, vocabulary, and dissociation, but at the end of the day folks leave reviews for a reason. The language they use isnt as important as the sentiment theyre trying to convey, even if they dont always know the right way to do it.

What we try and do, therefore, is to try and don our armor of not-taking-things-too-personally, and group negative reviews by common themes or sentiments.

For Trial of Allegiance, we assessed clear meta groupings in order of weight*:

- Unhappiness about recent regional currency price adjustments
- Unhappiness about the price of the country pack
> Compared to other HOI4 expansions
> Other
- Bought it but wanted something different
> New mechanics, or
> A european expansion
- Unhappy with the quality of the release
> In relation to specific issues;
> In relation to mods
> Unclear/Unintelligible
> Unclear/Horrendously offensive

*This requires looking at global reviews, not english-language only: something we take quite seriously.

The exact weighting here changes a lot over time, but suffice it to say that the top grouping is significantly larger than any of the others, and the last grouping vice-versa.

But hang on, does this just mean were being review bombed by angry interest groups? Well, that would be a nice easy assumption that allows us to feel good about ourselves and go home for supper, but there doesnt seem to be any coordinated effort here as far as we can tell.

What we can tell here is that folks commonly leave reviews for reasons unrelated to the content we made.

So, these are the findings. So far these have been presented as factual; now we take a more subjective view when it comes to reacting to the findings.

[h3]Regional Pricing[/h3]
This one was a little unexpected, though in hindsight it shouldnt have been. Looking back over recent reviews on our other expansions, we see the same trend.

In January, Paradox made efforts to normalize pricing across various currency regions according to (as I understand it) a standard used by Valve. On HoI, we saw this as a mostly administrative change, and did not, I think, ask enough questions about the effect it might have on our game-specific player base.

I am not promising any sweeping changes here for decisions that have already been made. What I can say however, is that we will not be treating any such changes as administrative in the future. We will be doing our due diligence.

[h3]General Pricing[/h3]
A little more expected, perhaps, but with some important notes. The vast majority of complaints about the pricing of this release came with comparisons or in relation to other content weve released in the past.

While it overlaps a little with the next topic, I feel like we could have been clearer with setting expectations about what a country pack is.

Another observation here is that our fanbase seems to attach more importance to the consistency of expansion prices than we tend to. A lot of the comparisons were seeing are equating content made many years ago or at a completely different scale to Trial of Allegiance.

[h3]Wanted Something Different[/h3]
This one is a real games-industry conundrum. Traditionally, if you bring something to market that doesnt interest everyone, the uninterested ones avoid it. Not so here.

We knew that South America would be a divisive topic amongst the fanbase: some regard it as important, some do not. We calculated that this would make these nations perfect for a country-pack release instead of a full expansion - including mechanics in something that may not interest everyone would put fans in the situation of having to purchase something they did not want.

And, uh, that backfired a bit. Overwhelmingly, reviews in this category are asking where the mechanics are, or why were spending time on X instead of Y.

Importantly though, we arent gonna change that. We will sometimes have country pack releases, and they will not contain mechanics, though perhaps theres some middle ground for tech/unit/other additions.

This all comes with a big but: the Juno team who created Trial of Allegiance are not the only ones working on HOI4. Creating content packs is not being done at the expense of other things. We arent ready to talk about exactly whats coming yet, but simply put: we have mechanical expansions in the pipeline that are being built at this very moment. Outside of expansions, we have even more big stuff happening for HoI in the very near future. Watch this space.

Developers Perspective: Even if we wanted to, making two mechanical expansions in parallel would be a significant technical challenge. Some games are built to make that easy! HOI is not one of them.

[h3]Quality of Release[/h3]
This is predominantly the stuff that reviews traditionally focus on. Was the delivered content good/bad/neutral? The nature of this is subjective, and these reviews are really where we can act by making changes and fixes. Below youll find the patch notes for our first iteration on ToAs content, with more to come soon.

Overall what were seeing from players that stated an active interest in South America is a trending positive reaction. There are some key problems raised to us from highly invested players, which well do our best to address. There are learnings we want to take into future country packs or war effort patches, including but not limited to:

• Shared branches were one of those things that made sense at the time, but in hindsight we should have avoided.
  
• People love map changes more than I thought humanly possible.
  
• Power creep is real, and we should have a balance reckoning sooner rather than later
  
• We can do more with units, tech, and non-focus content without being explicitly mechanical in nature. This was sort of on our radar already, but player feedback confirms that.
  

Generals!

Trial of Allegiance is now Live, and with it comes the Fury of Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay!

Join the fight to turn the tides of war, or to give South America a new path through History!

With it comes bug fixes, balance changes and even more content in the free "BOLIVAR" update



https://store.steampowered.com/app/2695150/Hearts_of_Iron_IV_Trial_of_Allegiance/


For Version Rollback, see this post.

For known issues with the "BOLIVAR" patch, click here.

Hello there generals, it's your friendly neighbourhood Community Manager, Katten, here to talk about, Trial of Allegiance patch notes!

But before that, I want to remind you that the DLC releases tomorrow at 17:00 CET! So if you want to secure the exclusive track 'Carnaval Do Brasil', pre-purchase now!

And if you missed what this DLC is all about, watch our release trailer below;

[previewyoutube=-oOM9cfxovc;full][/previewyoutube]
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2695150/Hearts_of_Iron_IV_Trial_of_Allegiance/



################################################################
######## Update 1.14.1 "Bolivar" #########
################################################################

##################################
# Trial of Allegiance
##################################
- Added Brazilian focus tree
- Added Argentina focus tree
- Added Chile focus tree
- Added minor focus tree for Paraguay
- Added minor focus tree for Uruguay
- Added Voiceovers in Brazilian Portuguese, Argentinian Spanish and Chilean Spanish.
- Added numerous new (awesome!) 3D models for the new nations
- Added 6 new music tracks

##################################
# Gameplay
##################################
- Admiral Trait Tree has been reshuffled, ordered now by fleet role and with some rebalancing
- The Monroe Doctrine has been reworked from the old USA guarantees to something more flexible to go with the ToA launch
- More sensible AI weights for interventionists USA going Monroe Doctrine. Will now only DOW if enough tension is generated by that country
- Tweaked Ethiopia to be more aggressive initially in the war against Italy
- Added Embargo Decision against Venezuela
- Changed handsoff tag to Haiti
- Added Quebec as releasable at game start
- Added an event to Mexican focus "Bolivarian Alliance" to ensure that players can refuse the ticking communism national spirit if they wish.
- Fix that ensures a certain shadowy German gentleman can be 100 percent obtainable if Germany capitulates and a certain focus in the Argentina fascist branch is taken
- Reworked the Amazon to have Impassable Terrain areas to model the deep jungle

##################################
# Balance
##################################
- reduced the number of super heavy tank destroyers needed for support battalion to 20
- reduced IC cost of jet engines considerably
- German focus 'Treaty with the USSR' now grants 1x200% research speed bonus for tank hulls, from 2x100%
- Medium tank created by german focus now starts with an MIO if AAT is installed
- Railway Company now gives 15% armor to armored trains instead of reliability
- Several mission specific air advisor modifiers that were non functional have been replaced with mission efficiency bonuses
- Airborn advisors now give bonuses to paratrooper defence and org rather than plane states
- Escort Efficiency now reduce disruption from enemy attacks
- Fixed broken turret for Italian SH tank Hand of God
- CAS leaders/doctrine now also give ground attack bonuses on top of mission efficiency to boost impact
- Added the Union Pacific Railroad as a new Industrial Company for the USA
- Added a variety of new Spies for Germany, Japan and the United States.

##################################
# UI
##################################
- Equipment designer name is now shown in the production list
- You can no longer accidentally click on units while in construction mapmode
- naval battle reports are now properly hidden on reading when parts of stacks
- Fixed list positioning in Military Industrial Organisation Roster

##################################
# AI
##################################
- Fixed bugs in how AI selects research
- A bunch of bugfixes and improvements to how AI calculates research weights
- AI will now pick more appropriate military spirits. AI now cares more about getting early equipment design techs in order to unblock them from iterating on tank equipment
- German AI will prefer picking silent workhorse before other advisors
- German AI will no longer value Heinz Guderian more than every other advisor combined :'(
- German AI will prefer to take army chief advisor before air chief
- Unit controller will now properly handle impassable neighbour adjacencies during an attack
- Discourage AI from changing production lines too quickly and too often and waste efficiency
- Allies of Britain will now share invasion strategies around Norway and be more hesitant
- make sure UK AI doesnt hold out on guaranteeing poland when it's time critical, just to save up for laws
- fixed a scope issue for italian AI strategies
- USA AI now more likely to lend-lease UK and Soviet
- UK AI should switch from interwar tanks quicker
- Various strategy tweaks for naval invasion behaviour around the mediterranean

##################################
# Modding
##################################
- Added AI strategy research_weight_factor
- Added variable values for deployed_army_manpower_k, deployed_navy_manpower_k, deployed_airforce_manpower_k, and deployed_army_manpower_k
- it is now possible to define colours on sub ideologies which will then be used over ideology group colour
- Added optional 'is_frame' argument to equipment definitions to let modders define fully designed equipment without the game thinking it's a frame.
- Added longest_war_length and war_length_with triggers to allow checking how long a nation has been at war
- Fix AI for assigning MIO to production line when Task Capacity is activated in mod
- From now on_leave_faction will fire every time someone leaves a faction.
- From now on_become_faction_member will fire every time someone joins a faction.
- From now on_send_volunteers will NOT fire when volunteers are sent back to their origin country
- AI strategy EQUIPMENT_PRODUCTION_UPGRADE_DESIRE_OFFSET now handles positive numbers as well

##################################
# Graphics
##################################
- Fixed some bugs in train gfx spawning which could cause almost all trains to pick high-traffic ports as target locations
- fixes and tweaks for mud look
- Several visual updates to make mud look nicer
- Mud never shown on impassable terrain areas as it makes them harder to see and you cant walk there anyways
- Fixed an issue with german army insignias

##################################
# Bugfix
##################################
- Fixed issue where submarine task forces attempting to pass through a strait would check the rule for navies instead of the one for submarines.
- Fix for a problem where white peace does not give back all owned territories, because neutral countries owned it.
- Fixed an issue where the price of equipment in a purchase contract could change.
- Newly created Spains (after SCW starts) now update their trade influence correctly, so volunteers sent to them will now reinforce correctly straight away
- Air deploy interface filters will properly work when land and CV planes are both in stockpile
- Slovenia, Palestine and Israel now start with the correct capitals
- Soviet Union: National Spirits for Anti-Soviet Military Thinking can now be removed via decision even when Beriya takes power before the Right Opposition Coup.
- Fixed bug where National Spirits from Scandinavian Joint Focus tree didn't always have an icon
- Fixed showing negative night penalty as a positive
- Sweden: Ebba no longer gets her construction speed bonus removed when upgrading her
- Sweden: Pull the Trigger decision for communist Sweden now makes Communist NOR/DEN very likely to want to form an alliance with Sweden, and reduces the want of wanting to join the comintern or other factions
- Fixed an issue that caused communist Sweden AI path to not work properly
- Fixed the names of Zimbabwe characters
- Fixed the names of Zambian characters
- Fix the diplomatic action Justify Wargoal disappearing when the target state is not controlled by the target country anymore
- Added namelists that were missing for LAO, VIN, CAM, TRA, KOS, PAL, ISR. Also fixed the capitals for Qatar and UAE being incorrect.
- Airwings attached to armies should no longer forget their missions when they lack coverage of target areas
- Italy no longer calls its allies to join the war against Ethiopia. Italy no longer joins war against Poland. Ethiopia in exile cannot join their overlord's wars until they have completed the "Formal Request" decision.
- Made Light Aircraft MIO now upgrade CAS as well as fighters.
- Blocked province buildings from being constructed in impassable provinces
- block construction fully in impassable areas
- Fixed a bug where no effect would come from the British focus "Gibraltar for Spanish Support" if having LaR enabled.
- updated the claims gained in the Portuguese focuses "Recover the East Indies", "Recover Brazil" and "Latin America".
- Norway's Modernise Armed Forces Decision available during wartime and can be selected after 3 months of war if the appropriate focuses have been completed
- CV NAV and CAS now have proper bonuses from Admiral traits (Dive Bomber and Torpedo Bomber)
- Fixed the bug where the airplane designer did not choose the proper 2d icon by default.
- Fixed an issue where navies could not be ordered to move out of blocked sea regions.
- Fix issue with Convoy raiding efficiency modifier from leaders not applying correctly
- Fixed issues in SCW hidden event handling the opposition side of the CW working on controlling garrisons against the player

##################################
# Stability & Performance
##################################
- Maximum number of players in a MP game can now be configured by the host in settings.txt. Bumped the default value to 64.
- Prevent CTD in International Market AI that could happen for sea routes
- Fixed a CTD in international market when sorting on linux and mac
- Fix CTD when a mod removes unit leader traits from DB

Extra! Extra! In todays news, we bring you new footage of the ongoing struggle on the South American continent. We will give you exclusive shots of the political and military development in Argentina, Brazil, and Chile.

It is yet unclear how the political landscape will evolve during this tumultuous time, though we have seen some prominent persons appearing in both the political and military landscape. Here are some of the most influential people weve identified:


Significant Figures from Argentina



Significant Figures from Brazil



Significant Figures from Chile

On the broader spectrum, our office analysts have looked into all the data we have collected and recognized a multitude of potential developments within the countries. No one can predict exactly how a country will develop in the future, but theyve drawn a general image of some focuses that the nations might orient towards:

A selection of focus icons from Argentina (Left Column), Brazil (Center column) and Chile (Right Column)

From our reporter on ground we have an exciting story on the military groups involved in the conflict in the South American region. Without further ado, we bring you this exciting interview.

marblemadness: So, Slurpen_Paradox, can you tell us more about what is happening behind the scenes?

Slurpen_Paradox: Yes! These are the most prominent armed forces that have been involved in the area.



marblemadness: Jolly gee! Is that an armed civilian? These people look very dangerous. Are there any other forces involved in the region as well?

Slurpen_Paradox: Im glad you asked! Other than the armed civilian there have also been groups driven by various political ideologies. Here are the ones I managed to capture on camera:


Slurpen_Paradox: Its not only ground troops that are fighting these battles. With the latest technological advancements weve seen in recent years all the primary countries involved in this conflict have acquired various planes, tanks, and armored vehicles to supplement their forces.

They seem to have a bunch of repainted ones as well as some that I haven't seen on the battlefield before!







marblemadness: All those vehicles looked dangerous. But hang on just a moment! This one does not look dangerous at all! Finally, some decent, upstanding


marblemadness: oh. I see. It belongs to the Liga Patritica Argentina. Is there any other footage you would like to share?

Slurpen_Paradox: Yes. During my time in the deepest parts of the Amazons Ive brought with me some dramatic photographs from the battlefields.




marblemadness: Oh, that looks absolutely brutal! Thank you for bringing this exclusive look on what is happening on the South American continent.

As a final section in our newspaper, especially in these worrying times, we try to keep our chins up by ending on a positive note. Now it is time for our final section; a series of comic strips developed by our inhouse art team.

AMERICA DECOLONIZED

As Mapuche Chile, Liberate all Native people in North and South America

AND THE SNAKE SMOKED

As Brazil, in the allies, capitulate Germany while controlling Berlin

CHILEAN EMPIRE

Control all of the mainland states that border the pacific in South America, North America and Asia

CISPLATINE WAR 2, ELECTRIC BOOGALOO

As Either Brazil or Argentina, be in a faction with Uruguay while at war with Brazil / Argentina

HISPANICS OF THE WORLD, UNITE!

As Chile, form the Hispanic Alliance and have at least 8 "Hispanic" nations in your faction

I'M HOME!

As Brazil occupy every core state of Portugal

ISLAS MALVINAS

As Argentina, hold the Falkland Islands and South Georgia for 73 days consecutively

KING OF WHAT?

Have Jaque Bernard as King of Chile and control Paris

LAMENTO BOLIVIANO

As Argentina, own all of Latin America except Bolivia

A LAND ON FIRE

As any country, drop a nuke on Tierra del Fuego

THE MERRY BAND

As communist Brazil, have Lampio as country leader and occupy Nottingham

PROACTIVE DEFENSE

As any communist South American country, occupy washington D.C.

RECONQUISTADORS

As Argentina or Chile, have a Conquistadors National Spirit active whil holding all Spanish cores

RED HOT CHILE PEPPERS

As Communist Chile, control California

REVENGE FOR THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE

As Paraguay, declare war on Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay within the same Month

RUMBLE IN THE JUNGLE

Own all Amazon core states as any South American nation

SOMEHOW HE HAS RETURNED

As Argentina, have Seor Hitler become country Leader

THE TRUE CONDOR LEGION

As CHL, BOL, PRU, ECU, VEN, COL - send volunteers to Germany

URSAL

Be communist and own all of South America

BAD ENDING - THE WHOLE WORLD IS NOW BRAZIL

Control every State in the World as Brazil


Thank you so much for reading todays issue of News from the Front Lines. And just as always, remember. We bring news, you make the story!




Make sure to check out Trial of Allegiance here
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2695150/Hearts_of_Iron_IV_Trial_of_Allegiance/

Hello there! AveeBee here again to discuss alternate history Brazil this week. If you havent already, I highly recommend reading the historical dev diary where we also covered the industrial and military branches for Brazil as this week we will be just looking at the political branches. Its worth keeping in mind that due to covering multiple branches this week, Im going to try and keep the overview to the highlights as there will simply be too much to cram into a single dev diary and I imagine most of you are still digesting last week's big bag of goodies!

To get started, heres some less obscured views of the full Brazilian tree and the political branches



[h3]Integralist Path[/h3]
First up, were going to look at the Integralist branch which constitutes the fascist path for Brazil. A little bit of context, the Integralist movement was established in the early 1930s by Plnio Salgado and in many ways mirrored the tendencies and aesthetics of Italian fascism with a distinctly Brazilian twist. In place of blackshirts, the Integralists formed greenshirted paramilitary groups which marched in opposition to liberalism and communism. Much of their doctrine consisted of an enforcement of typically traditional Christian values and a shared cultural/nationalist identity which glorified Brazil.

Last week we showed the historical/Vargas path and as you can see below, the Integralist branch is intertwined with that branch. The reason being, as Vargas attempted to increase his authority over the nation, he somewhat cozied up to the Integralists in order to sway them to back him. This can be seen in the manner Vargas adopted the rhetoric of contemporary fascists.


In this branch, the player has the option to Work with the Integralists which unlocks decisions to boost fascist support across the country.




Just as in the historical path, the goal at this point is to weaken support for democracy and to prepare for the forged Cohen Plan. With enough fascism support however, instead of taking the Estado Novo focus, the player can take Estado Moderno instead. This will realign Brazil to a fascist government with Vargas becoming leader of the Integralist party for now.



With the Integralists in power, the need to to hold on to it becomes pressing. As such, the next logical step for the movement is to expand the greenshirted paramilitary groups across the nation and begin bringing Integralist advisors into government. In the states that we have already conducted an Integralist rally, militia divisions can be recruited.



(The Eagle Division Icon is a placeholder)


Following this, there are a number of focuses to choose from to reconfigure the nation along Integralist lines. But the most important of these decisions is the choice between who should lead the party.


If the player chooses In Vargas We Trust, Vargas will gain a new trait and secure himself as the face of the movement. Meanwhile, if For the Fatherland is taken instead, the previously mentioned Plnio Salgado will finally take his place as leader of Brazil.



Once the nation has been fully indoctrinated into the Integralist way of thinking, Brazil can begin to look at its neighbors and how to interact with them. This brings us to the Domination of South America sub-branch which will also be available to alt-history/fascist aligned Vargas and the Monarchist path.

[h3]Domination of South America[/h3]


This branch can be broken down into three components, alignment with Germany, alignment with Italy, and territorial expansion. By collaborating with Germany, Brazil will gain access to improved espionage abilities via operation Bolivar and the ability to purchase/develop Panzers and U-Boats. This will culminate in the final push by Germany and Brazil to dominate the South Atlantic Ocean, giving Brazil claims to a number of islands in the region.


Collaborating with Italy on the other hand, based on the historical connections between the two nations, will allow Brazil to procure/develop its air and motorized forces to better dominate the continent. This sub-branch culminates in a joint partitioning of Africa, which when taken in conjunction with some of the monarchist focuses for dominating Portugal, can lead to a sizable Brazilian overseas empire.



The territorial expansion section of this branch will of course give various wargoals and methods for conquest across the continent, up to and including the Panama canal. By this Brazil has more than likely gained the ire of the United States for a multitude of transgressions. As such, it better be prepared for an intercontinental war, and what better way to do that then to unify the continent under Brazilian leadership!


However, if Ethical Internationalism is a more appealing method of securing the continent, theres also the option to Form Mercosul and work with Brazils neighbors to defend the continent.


[h3]Monarchist Path[/h3]
Next up, let's take a look at the monarchist path for Brazil. The starting focus for this path is shared with the democratic path and consists of rallying the opposition to Vargas to end the state of emergency he instituted. Without this, Vargas has no justification for securing more power for himself and his support will begin to crumble.


Following on from this, a new movement can be created from those who are disgruntled with the instability wrought by years of democracy and revolutions. Initially the movement will coalesce around the romanticization of Brazils Imperial history.


Once the movement begins to gain momentum, calls for a restoration of the monarchy will grow. However, the difficult choice of which claim to the throne should be embraced will have to be made.




Once enough support has been gathered for the chosen leader of the royal house, an initial push towards restoration is the establishment of a constitutional monarchy. Dont worry though, this is a stop-gap before the fun begins


With increased influence in government, the newly crowned King can get to work undermining the democratic apparatus of the country before finally pulling a Vargas and using a national security law to suspend it completely. Once this is done, the Brazilian Empire can finally be restored.


However, Brazil will still have a number of political issues to contend with such as a population that has been forced to become subjects largely against their will. While this can be overcome, alternative military recruitment methods, such as penal battalions, may be used to swell the Empires forces.

Through expansion of the Brazilian Empire, either through conquest or diplomacy, the population's initial reluctance to accept the new monarch can be overcome. And of course their are methods for unifying with Portugal to create a global Empire.




From this point in the tree, Monarchist Brazil has the decision to make between either collaborating with the Allies or pursuing more conquest via the Domination of the Americas sub-branch.


Before moving on to the next political branch, heres a close up of one of our prospective monarch's Portrait;


[h3]Democratic Path[/h3]
The democratic path, as mentioned earlier, shares the same starting point with the monarchist path which requires ending the state of emergency. However, instead of wallowing in nostalgia, the democratic path requires altering the constitution to prevent another such erosion of democracy.


This results in Vargas being ousted from power and Armando de Sales Oliveira being ushered in as President.


The primary concern for the new president will be preventing the military from attempting to overthrow the fragile government. As such, there are two methods for dealing with them. The first option is to promote federalism across the nation, embracing the distinct identities of the constituent states and allowing the creation of national guard. The government can also take a more social-democratic route, nationalizing the banks and meeting the promises of Article 138 of the constitution to support families.



The second option for dealing with the military is to promote centralization, strengthen the national government and find a compromise with the armed forces. Such a compromise will consist of allowing military personnel to take a more prominent role in the government as well as enforcing a policy of strict anti-communism by banning the movement completely. This will also force the government to take a less interventionist economic policy and promote traditional values.


Collaborating with the military will allow Brazil to be better prepared militarily, but increasing federalism will lead to a more stable country in the long run.

Once the initial concern over government stability in the face of military pressure, attention will have to shift towards preparing the country for potential conflict as the world descends into war.


Inviting foreign corporations to Brazil will allow those playing with Arms Against Tyranny to gain MIOs from a number of democratic governments.


Meanwhile War Bonds will allow Brazil to cut the need for consumer goods and increase war support.


Finally, with enough war support, Brazil will be able to progress towards the Good Neighbor Policy via The International Crisis.


[h3]Good Neighbour Path[/h3]
So, we touched on the Good Neighbor sub-branch in the historical dev diary but I didnt expand on the alt-history aspects of it. You can of course do the historical thing of working with the United States and joining the war against the Axis powers. But There is also the potential to oust the fascists and communists from South America unilaterally as well as creating a faction based around the Organization of American States.



The culmination of this path results in the (somewhat) peaceful creation of a United States of South America, which can be a pretty potent superpower in the late game.



[h3]Communist Path[/h3]
The final path were going to look at today is the communist path. As you can see below, this path is completely isolated from the others and does not have access to the Good Neighbor or Domination of South America sub-branches.


As mentioned in the historical dev diary, in 1935 the communists had taken part in an attempted overthrow of the Vargas government. As such, at game start the clock is ticking for the communists as Vargas and the military will be attempting to clamp down on communism, so any chance for a successful revolution will have to be taken as soon as possible.

The most likely result of increasing communist support will be a civil war. Therefore the communists need to make sure that they are better prepared than the government when it kicks off. This can be done by taking a number of optional focuses such as swaying the lower ranking personnel in the armed forces to the cause, reaching out to the Soviet Union for support or even persuading the Cangao to take the side of the proletariat.



Gaining Soviet support for the revolution will however depend on releasing Lus Carlos Prestes and Olga Prestes from prison first. The pair were arrested following the 1935 attempted revolution as ringleaders of the movement. Olga was believed to be an operative of Soviet intelligence due to undergoing military training at an academy in the Soviet Union.


Once enough support has been gained, the second revolution can begin.


Once the civil war is won, the next choice will be over who should govern the Brazilian Socialist Republic. Depending on the choices made earlier, there will be three potential options. First up is Prestes, allowing Brazil to become aligned with the Soviet Union. Next is the ANL council, which will allow Brazil to maintain its own path to communism. Finally, we have the wild card option of having the Cangaco trigger a coup and taking Brazil down an anarcho-communist path.






After a leader is chosen, the difficult task of rebuilding and modernizing the nation will begin. There are of course a number of ways to carry out the task.


Now we come to the foreign policy aspect of the communist branch which begins with Expand the Revolution.


After this, Brazil can either form its own communist faction in South America or join the Comintern. Regardless of the path chosen, Brazil will have the opportunity to expand its influence through both espionage and military aggression. However, the USA and the other great powers may not sit by idly while Brazil paints the continent red. In order to placate them however, they can take inspiration from China and dabble in some Jaguar Diplomacy.



With South America falling under the sway of Brazilian communism, a new world power can be forged to challenge the old powers.


[h3]Art[/h3]
Before wrapping up this week's dev diary, I want to share some of the awesome portraits and tech icons weve got hooked-in since the last Brazil diary, enjoy!












[h3]Conclusion[/h3]
Thats it for this week, I hope you enjoyed this dive into alt-history Brazil. Next week well be taking a broader look at art and achievements.
See you then!

Generals!

Command has issued a discount on rations, and more equipment for us all! Make sure to grab the content you're still missing, or perhaps some more for a friend, so you can all join the fray once Trial of Allegiance drops!

[h3]Base Game[/h3]

• Hearts of Iron IV 70% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Starter Edition 70% off
  

• Hearts of Iron IV: By Blood Alone 30% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: No Step Back 30% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Battle for the Bosporus 50% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Death or Dishonor 60% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Together For Victory 60% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Waking the Tiger 60% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: La Rsistance 50% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Man the Guns 50% off
  

• Hearts of Iron IV: Eastern Front Music Pack50% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Eastern Front Planes Pack50% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Allied Speeches Music Pack 50% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Radio Pack 50% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Sabaton Soundtrack50% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Sabaton Soundtrack Vol. 250% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Allied Armor Pack 50% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Axis Armor Pack 50% off
  

Hello there, Aveebee here to introduce this week's chunky Dev Diary covering a variety of topics. Well be covering everything free going into the upcoming patch that will release alongside Trial of Allegiance, an overview of some major map changes in South America, as well as some content pack specific updates. So without further ado, lets get started!

First up, we have Jonathan!

[h2]Bolivar Patch[/h2]
Hello again everyone, now its time for me to show you guys some of the things for this bag of treats that I have been working on for the patch coming alongside the Country Pack Trial of Allegiance!

[h3]The Peru-Ecuador Conflict[/h3]
First up in terms of what I have contributed to this bag of treats is the Peruvian-Ecuadorian war of 1941. Now, Ecuador starts with ownership and a core on Pastaza, and Peru will have to take it through war, with the option of a scripted peace if they manage to take it. Ecuador can however also secure themselves a scripted peace from this ordeal, as long as they take Loreto, which means a skilled Ecuador player can even gain territory from the conflict.



[h3]New Formable Nations[/h3]
But wait, theres more! Now onto new formable nations (that arent for the main countries getting a focus tree in the DLC) that are included in the patch. And for this part Im especially looking at you Hovelax ;).

The First on up is the Peru-Bolivian Confederation, formable in-game by either Peru or Bolivia.



The next one is the United Guianas, formable by either Suriname, Guyana or Cayenne.



And finally for new free formable nations coming in this patch, we have Hispaniola, formable by either Haiti or the Dominican Republic.



[h3]New Releasable Nations[/h3]
Now then, weve arrived to the non formable, but instead releasable nations added alongside this patch, or at least the ones that Ive implemented.

First up on the list we have Quebec.


After that comes Yucatan.


Then comes another historical Mexican breakaway state, the Republic of the Rio Grande.


And finally we have a new island nation, which you might have seen briefly in last week's Chile Dev Diary. That nation is Rapa Nui, most often known as Easter Island.


[h3]Canada War Effort[/h3]
And now, merged into this patch is a Canadian War Effort, updating and adding a small extra amount of content for our home and native land, Canada.

To start off with, Canada has a new industrial concern available to them, that being the Canadian Pacific Railway.


And after that comes the fact that the Canadian country leaders now start with their own unique traits.





And there are also three new focuses available to Canada, this time with more focus on the democratic branches.


The first two each give a National Spirit;



And then this focus allows you to gain Newfoundland and Labrador despite staying with the Allies, or even when going independent democracy.


A few of the old focuses have also been touched up, so I will show some. Not all of them are here, so you will have to find some differences on your own once the patch releases ;)

This focus now takes 35 days.


Taking this focus when having Mackenzie King as your country leader also gives him an extra trait.


And this focus now gives you two civilian factories.


Oh and whats this?


[h3]Update Central American Formables[/h3]
The old formable nation of Central America now has two possible follow-up decisions that can give them a small bit of extra core states.

First up is Integrating Panama.


And then you also have Integrating Yucatan.


[h3]New American Industrial Concern[/h3]
And now we arrive at my final contributions to this patch. First up we have the Union Pacific Railroad for the USA.


[h3]New Operatives[/h3]
As for the owners of La Resistance, you will also gain new operatives such as the new American Operatives, George Musulin, Joe Savoldi, Ren Joyeuse, Willian G Sebold and Serge Obolensky. These operatives are unlocked for the USA through some of the various War Plans focuses.


As for new German Operatives, there are Erich Gimpel, Johannes Sigfried Becker, Herbert Hans Haupt, Norman Baillie Stewart and Fritz Joubert Duquesne.

Johannes Sigfried Becker;


Fritz Joubert Duquesne:


And finally, there have also been some new Japanese Operatives added. They are Patrick Vaughan Heenan, John Semer Farnsworth and Ignatius Timothy Trebitsch Lincoln.

Ignatius Timothy Trebitsch Lincoln:


John Semer Farnsworth:


And thats all from me folks, next up Mordred Viking!

[h3]Naval Trait Rework[/h3]
Hello! My name is Mordred Viking, and I have recently joined the Hearts of Iron IV team. As some of you may know, I have a bit of a thing for naval warfare in HOI, and have wanted to retouch the Admiral Trait tree for a while now.

Heres the old version:


There were a number of things about this tree I was not a huge fan of, firstly how certain earnable traits (the ones you need to get through use) effectively blocked the latter assigned ones. Cruiser Captain being a particular pain to get due to Fly Swatter being very slow to gain.

Furthermore, there were a couple of traits which very rarely saw use, Mine Sweeper / Layer being most prominent. Having two traits for an area not often focused on anyway basically meant they just never got used.

Working together with C0rax, we rejigged the positions, trying to keep traits in some kind of role order; Raiding, Escorting, Cruising, Carrier-ing, and Big-Gunning. We also increased the number of pathways to the assignable traits, meaning you should find yourself soft locked far less frequently. Fly Swatter has been made an assignable trait now instead.

And heres the updated version:


We also combined the mine traits into one, and it has quite possibly the best description in the game (Ill leave you to find that for yourselves!).

[h2]Trial of Allegiance[/h2]
AveeBee here again! Before jumping into the content pack specific part of this dev diary, I think its also worth pointing out that there will be a lot of bug fixes going into the Bolivar Patch that have not been mentioned here but are no less important. Well be looking more at those in a later Dev Diary.

[h3]Amazon Rework[/h3]
The Amazon Rainforest is probably one of the most hostile places on the planet to get embroiled in a conflict due to the array of geographical features it includes. It is not the type of place you can sweep through with tanks or rapidly construct infrastructure to support massive infantry formations. As such, weve made some changes to its portrayal in Hearts of Iron to better represent the difficulty of fighting there.


As you can see in the screenshot above, weve added a number of impassible regions to represent the deepest parts of the Amazon where fighting would be almost impossible. However, we have created channels through the rainforest that follow the course of the major rivers along which troops can pass.


This creates some really fun gameplay due to the natural choke points that develop in the area. However, we wanted to make sure there were still enough provinces along the riverside to allow for encirclements and interesting maneuvers.


These changes have made the region challenging, but definitely more interesting. Anyone who can use the terrain to their advantage will likely enjoy fighting here. For example, using supply hubs along the river to support your troops without the need for railways can make a massive difference to your success in the region.

On the topic of map changes, we have also broken down the air regions above South America to make air combat more interesting.


[h3]Peron[/h3]
Hey everyone, its Eilidh again. After taking your feedback into consideration, we have decided to implement a short alternate path in the historical branch where you, as the player, can decide to elect Juan Pern as the leader of Argentina. The position in this tree means that you can either choose to support the allies or go on your own conquest of South America, depending on the type of game you want to play.




And before I sign off, allow me to show you the leader portrait we have cooked up for the man himself.


We hope you enjoy this addition to the Argentinian tree! We appreciate you giving us feedback as we go, and whilst we cannot implement all changes in the time that we are allocated, we will do our best to accommodate!

[h3]Paraguay & Uruguay[/h3]
Mba'ichapa!

Craniummuppet here to present two mini-trees, Paraguay and Uruguay. These trees started as a side-project for me after the release of AAT, mostly to give a small treat to you guys but kinda kept growing in size as time went on from a smaller shared tree into fully separated trees with a scope target like Aussa or Iceland. (Note that much of the icons are placeholders and will get updated)

[h3]Paraguay[/h3]
At the start of the game Paraguay is reeling from two costly wars - The War of the Triple Alliance and the Chaco War against Bolivia.

This is felt in Paraguay



In Feb 1936 Rafael Franco will launch his coup against the government where you can pick to either let him seize control of the country or resist him. Allowing him to take power will lead you down the historical path, and resisting him will plunge you into a civil war.


Seizing power will allow you to do various socialist and military reforms, while not a communist per-se Franco (not that one) certainly had policies that were left leaning in nature, but also had typical military dictatorship tendencies.

He didn't last long though, and got ousted by the military after pulling back troops from the Chaco region. You can keep Franco though (not that one) by not pulling back from the Chaco, which is the second alt-history choice.

Pulling back from the Chaco will lead to a revolt within the army, putting Higinio Mornigo in power


If Franco was more left leaning, Mornigo is the polar opposite. To put it bluntly he had strong pro-Nazi sympathies,with parts of the police force and the military adopting the symbolism of the Third Reich. He also allied himself with militias, banned parties and consolidated his power.

This focus path will pivot the country from the Franco left leaning military dictatorship towards a more fascist and authoritarian military dictatorship under Mornigo.
(As an example the police chief at the time named his kid Adolfo Hioritho )

While starting as unaligned in this path you can eventually commit fully to fascism, or you can stay as unaligned


One of the biggest reasons why Paraguay did not drift closer to the Axis powers was because of direct intervention from the USA. They started financing various endeavours in the country which kept Paraguay out of the war, such as favourable loans, road finance and technical assistance..

In game this is modelled by accepting American investment, whereby you wont be able to join the Axis for the duration of the investment. Going down all the investment paths will keep you out of the Axis powers, but grant you massive boosts to the economy. How far you exploit this is up to you.

Going back to the world where Franco does not pull back from the Chaco, the alternative is war with Bolivia, this lets you keep Franco, and get some early conquest. With Bolivia conquered, you can finally get a coastline by getting wargoals against Peru and Chile, which leads to a very weird shape of a country. This is my current playthrough


And yeah it has an interesting shape.


Going back to the top there is the other alternative history, the civil war route. Should you resist the Franco takeover you will enter a state of civil war where the army will rise up.


The army will have the upper hand at the start of the war, but the Paraguay river gives excellent defense.

To win the civil war, you can use the American scare of a communist state in its sphere of influence to increase your power. You can also use your wife's ties to France to get some aid from there.

Most powerful of all are the Marines, which will be used to break the river and win the war, or you can goad Bolivia to become involved in it which leads to a three way war that you can exploit.


When all is said and done you can use your civil war general, Jos Estigarribia to purge the military and cement your rule over the country. This leads to co-rule between Ayala and Estigarribia, or you can let Estigarribia take full control. It will take a while to rebuild the country as the civil war and various other wars have likely taken their toll, but eventually it will lead to a flourishing economy


[h3]Uruguay[/h3]
Uruguay was comparatively more stable than Paraguay during the time frame, despite being under a quasi dictatorship under Gabriel Terra.

Despite this they enjoyed a rapid GDP growth and relative stability. The beginning of the period centers around industrialization and the policies under Terra.


Around 1938 he will step down and you can pick between either the Colorados or Blancos, which are the two main parties in Uruguay, but both are democratic aligned.


If Democracy isnt to your liking you can instead go down to the Furhmann plan, ally with agitators like Adolfo Agorio become fascist and use it as a springboard for the Axis powers in South America. This path is now locked behind any election event and can be b-lined to at game start if so pleased.

Before asking, of course there's events for the Battle of the River Plate.


Which will be triggered whenever a British and German ship is in the Southern Georgia Sea or in the Argentine Coast at the same time.

[h3]Shared Branches[/h3]


There are also some shared branches between Paraguay and Uruguay which will appear in both trees.


First off, the conquest branch allows you to do a small-scale war at the start of the game for some quick conquests if you are cheeky enough. You can even conquer parts of Brazil while being in the Paraguayan civil war to bypass parts of the river line.

Uruguay has access to this as well but they target Rio Grande do Sul and Regin Mesopotmica. Later you can decide whether you want to go on a crusade against imperialism, forgoing any factions but having the ability to core more land, or a more conservative approach where you can core some land but you can still join factions.


Paraguayan Version;


Uruguayan Version;


A bit silly fun where hopefully it can be a challenge as well as long term goals in a playthrough.

The industrial branch focuses on the exports of the country, which mostly comprises Beef, Wool, Hides and other agricultural products.


You can also choose to empower the landowners, upon which they will start improving your economy automatically. In this screenshot they seem really keen on adding a building slot.


The research branch is where you get your 3th,4th and 5th slot. You require to have some industry to unlock each, with each slot getting gradually more difficult to get.


This focus will also unlock more civs the more you have invested in the industrial focus. So if you want those slots early you might have to sacrifice some industry.

Similarly to all other focus trees in this pack, Uruguay and Paraguay will use the shared military branch. :)

Uruguay


Paraguay


[h3]Next Week[/h3]
AveeBee here again, that's it for this week, hope you enjoyed it and are looking forward to Trial of Allegiance!

Next week we will be taking a look at alt-history Brazil.

See you then!

Hola a todos! Jonathan here to bring you a brand new Hearts of Iron 4 Dev Diary for the upcoming DLC Trial of Allegiance! I will be introducing you all to Chile, a country mostly known as South Americas Prussia. And as such, its time for a country almost no one knows about (nor is probably all too invested in), its time for Chile!

And breaking from how we have done it ever since No Step Back, this Dev Diary will tell you about all of the Chilean content, as was done in the Argentinian Dev Diary.

As usual, please do keep in mind that everything youre about to see is still WIP so things might change before release and you will see some placeholder art and WIP values. The team thanks for your understanding!

Now then, on to the actual stuff!



So seeing as most if not practically all people know little-to nothing about Chile, I will start with some historical context, to get everyone on track, and catch you up (hopefully also slightly increasing interest in the country). I didn't know anything about the country prior to being assigned to work on it either, so you can imagine my surprise when I got to know what to work on, but after reading about it, despite having had no interest in the continent whatsoever, I can actually say that I now find it a whole lot more fascinating than I ever did before! The few things that are more widely known are Salvador Allende's socialist rule during the Cold War, and General Augusto Pinochets CIA-sponsored coup detat in 1973. But those are much later, so lets turn back the clock a bit.

In the beginning there was nothing, but somewhere around 3000 BC the first people seem to have moved in. Jumping forward, by the 16th century, Spanish conquistadors began to colonize the region of present-day Chile, and the territory was a colony between 1540 and 1818, when it gained independence from Spain. In Chilean history, the earliest period of the nation is referred to as the Patria Vieja, and the Patria Nueva (the old and new fatherland respectively), where Bernardo O'Higgins led the country to victory against the Spanish Empire during the Latin American wars of independence. From 1826 to 1932, Chile underwent many government changes and the people got quite used to coup detats and political instability. The Great Depression that began in 1929 was felt strongly in Chile starting from 1930, and was felt all the way into our current game-time. Chile was the country struck the hardest by the USA closing down their borders, as a vast majority of the Chilean economy revolved around exports of Nitrate and Copper to the United States. This all led to the coup that established the Chilean Socialist Republic briefly in 1932, and which led to a former president, Arturo Alessandri, being recalled to counter-coup the coup makers. Once the Republic of Chile was back on track, he began working to restore the country, and that is where we find ourselves at the start of the game.

Chile also took part in a few wars during this period, even winning conflicts in which they were outmatched. Examples of wars they took part in are the War of the Pacific against Peru and Bolivia from 1879 to 1884, and the Occupation of Araucana against the Mapuche and the Kingdom of Araucana and Patagonia that took place from 1861 to 1883. Its all very interesting, have a read up on it sometime!

TLDR for the last two paragraphs: Chile is and was very unstable, but also pretty tough

Thats that for historical context however, sorry for geeking out Now its time for the actual things you all came for, the in-game content, as Im sure you didnt all come here for a history lesson!



Arturo Alessandri is a very important figure in Chilean history, and now, as is tradition with almost all countries that get unique content, he starts with a trait. Be aware however, that despite staying democratic, he will not be around forever, as the elections roll around and new presidents need to be elected!

By 1936, Chile has grown quite a bit since independence, having conquered the south from the Mapuche, as well as Antofagasta, Arica and Tacna from Bolivia and Peru, though having sold Tacna back to Peru in the treaty of Lima (1929) to secure more funds to recover from the economic troubles.




And here you can observe the fact that Chile just doesnt really function at game start















And then the other two spirits are the Legacy of the Naval Arms Race and the Monroe Doctrine, both of which have been discussed in the previous two Dev Diaries.

As you can also see, the Chilean order of battle has been adjusted to better represent the army at the start of the game.



Chile also has quite a few new cool 3d models!







Chile also has quite a few new generals coming with the DLC, so here you can see some of the ones you start with (keep in mind that their art isnt fully in yet):






Chile also starts with a vast plethora of political advisors now, and though it may be many, are invisible from the start, or will go invisible once you start going down paths where the respective characters will no longer be available! So here are the ones visible from the start.






And here are the various Industrial Concerns the nations starts with:



But now finally, on to the thing you have all been waiting for, the glorious Chilean focus tree!



As you can see, the focus tree is divided into the classic political, industrial and military branches respectively.

The industrial tree is mainly divided into three parts, the public works, the mineral extraction, and the post-peso devaluation part.



The rightmost part gives bonuses to construction and infrastructure.



While the leftmost part gives bonuses to resource extraction and trade.



Then, when you want to move down to the stronger focuses below, you need to devalue the peso, in order for the economy to be on track so that you can properly undertake these big projects. Note that these stronger focuses require the devaluation of the peso to have run its time before they can be taken.





As you all might have, or might not have, seen in the Historical Brazil Dev Diary, the countries of the pack share the general layout and effects of this military branch, but as stated previously, they all have their own unique quirks and bonuses, as can be seen here.









Now then, on to the political, historical, democratic branch of the Chilean focus tree.



To start of with, in the early stages of the game, Chile has to try and deal with the upcoming attempted coup d'etat by the fascist party Movimiento Nacional-Socialista, or as they were more colloquially known as, the Nacistas.



There are various ways to deal with them, such as suppressing them, for the most part ignoring them, perhaps to your own detriment, or attempting to use them, unfortunately however subsequently increasing their power when the fated coup detat occurs.



As some of you eagle-eyed readers might have noticed, the first democratic focuses have to do with Arturo Alessandri being the president, and after that comes the 1938 Presidential Election focus. That is because, while you are locked out of the late-game focuses of the democratic tree until the election has happened and you have chosen a direction to take your country, but until then, you have Arturo Alessandris own policies to enact.



And as the founder of the Banco Central de Chile, a democratic Chile led by Arturo Alessandri can focus on upgrading this industrial concern, gaining hefty advantages to economy management.



And when the presidential election at the end of 1938 rolls around, it is time to say goodbye to Alessandri, and welcome a new president, where you need to decide, a left-wing president, or a right-wing one?



And throughout the game, the 1942 and 1946 elections will also occur, prompting you to select a new (or sometimes keep an old) country leader. These ones however will not lock you out of parts of the focus tree, at least in a sense



You see, there are focuses in the democratic tree that can only be taken while having a left and right-leaning president respectively. As seen previously, you can change your president at certain intervals, allowing you to, in theory, go for practically all focuses, seeing as Chile during this time went from being ruled by the Liberals, then Social-Democrats, then the same, and the Conservatives who placed bans on all form of communism, and then back and forth, on and on.



There are of course also those within the military who dislike the political changes going through the country. For example, general Ariosto Herrera could try something.





There are also multiple important choices to take throughout the mid-to-late game for a democratic Chile, such as how to deal with the democratic processes, and in what way to prioritize the industry. This part is important for one of the alternative history branches, so remember this.



And finally, as historically happened, you can go to war with the fascists by declaring war on Japan, or perhaps someone else if the world has taken a different turn.



There are also a few other big things that happened to Chile throughout this time, such as the great 1939 Chilln earthquake:



And the sinking of the SS Tolten.



And if you want to, you can do things that didnt really happen until quite a bit after the war.







And here are some of the potential country leaders you can get:



























Chile also has their own operative, the actress Rosita Serrano, of course provided you own La Resistance!



Now then, remember the focus: Increase Presidential Powers? Well, if you have a communist president in charge when you take the focus, your country will become communist. This begins the Communist sub-branch, as can be seen on the left-hand side of the democratic tree.



Here you will be able to either align yourself with the Russians and take the aggressive approach, eventually attempting to achieve Hispanic Unity.



Or go it your own, and attempt to expand your influence through diplomacy and the support of communist revolutions in Latin American countries.



And now we continue away from the democratic branches, and ponder for ourselves, what if the Nacistsas had actually succeeded with their coup detat? Well, thats what we will figure out in the fascist branch, starting off with you securing support for the coup, minimizing your loss of stability and war support once it commences, until you can finally take full control of the country.






Once securing your rule, you will have to shape the country to be better fit for your future ambitions.



After that comes an important choice for the party. Pick a side in the global conflict, siding with the Germans, or choosing to stay out of global affairs, though not counting out the possibilities for your own expansion and faction.



Both versions will have access to the small Revision of our Borders sub-branch, allowing for attempted territorial expansion gated by army size.



Both branches have their own focuses that they can do.



And in the end you will have two different choices of formable nations, choosing to either restore the old kingdoms borders, or going even further and uniting Hispanic America.



And finally, we move on to the alt-history branches that may indeed have the chance to bring every hoi fans beloved monarchy, and perhaps also something different.

These two branches start off by looking back to tradition to solve the issues the country is facing, and having the ex-president and general Carlos Ibez del Campo perform a coup detat to take matters into his own hands.



First, we will take a look at the leftmost branch, that being staying with general Ibez, and accidentally finding yourself in a civil war with a combined force of the fascists and communist on the opposing side.



During this civil war, the outnumbered president Ibez will be approached by a mysterious Frenchman who promises aid in exchange for the Chilean crown. His name is Jaques Antoine Bernard, and will be crowned the new king of the Kingdom of Araucania and Patagonia.






After having established your new french kingdom at the bottom of the americas, it is time to not only reclaim your namesake, that being Patagonia, but also going even further, becoming the Napoleon Bonaapate of South America.



And now for the final branch, we move onto a group that has lived in Chile long before the first conquistadors arrived. Its time for the Mapuche and Anti-Imperialist Crusade branch.



The branch starts up with you molding the rising Mapuche-nationalist movement to fit your future goals, and finally rising up against the current Chilean government.



Once the war against Chile is over and you have secured the state, it is time to first reclaim the old Mapuche territory of Puelmapu, and then move on to liberate the Amerindian peoples from imperialist oppression.



And there is a lot of work to be done once the crusade has started.



In the end, America can be free from modern states, and the governments of the region can be reorganized to the desire of the leaders of the new Mapcuhe state.









Also for the end, here are some other advisors and leaders you might have interest in, such as the Mapuche advisors:



And Antoine III of the Kingdom of Araucana and Patagonia.



And one of the possible fascist leaders, the starting leader for the ideology.



And thats been all from me this time. Tune in next week for a look at a bag of treats that will hopefully satiate all the hungry mouths out there!

Adis!


Make sure to check out Trial of Allegiance here
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2695150/Hearts_of_Iron_IV_Trial_of_Allegiance/

Hola amigos! My name is Eilidh, and this just so happens to be my first time writing a Dev Diary for you guys! Im very excited to introduce to you the work I have been doing on Argentina, one of the nations youll be able to lead in Trial of Allegiance. Whilst Argentina didnt get directly involved in the war until late in the game, the country went through massive changes and had an absolutely fascinating history during the 1930s through to the 1940s. So lets take a look at this Infamous Decade and allow me to give you a brief context overview of where the country is at the start of the game, before taking you on a tour around the various political branches you can take in the Argentinian focus tree. Without further ado, lets get stuck in!


[h3]Context Pre-1936[/h3]
Prior to the start of the Great Depression, Argentina followed a trend of strong economic growth, enough to rival countries such as Canada or Australia in per capita income. This strong era of development for the country was also matched by social and economic reforms brought about by the government - which currently seated the Radical Civic Union party. However, it was during the second administration of president Hiplito Yrigoyen that things took a turn for the worst. The Great Depression arrived in Argentina, bringing with it a crippling economic crisis. In 1930, the military took things into their own hands, ousting Yrigoyen in the first military coup in modern Argentine history. It is this event that marked the beginning of what would later be called the Infamous Decade in Argentina; a period of fraudulent elections, government corruption and further military coup detats.

After Yrigoyen was removed from office, there was another election, this time putting Agustn Pedro Justo in power, supported by the newly created conservative party known as the Concordancia. This party was a union of various dissident sectors of other political parties that opposed the late Yrigoyen. It was Justo that orchestrated the practice of electoral fraud that became prevalent during the 1930s in Argentina; a case that would be attached to the legacy of the Concordancia.

The Great Depression hit Argentina relatively hard, and in the wake of such a global economic crisis, Great Britain, the principal economic partner of Argentina in the 1920s and 1930s, took measures to protect the meat supply market in the Commonwealth. One of these measures was to create a bilateral treaty with the Argentine Senate known as the Roca-Runciman treaty; named after the two men who signed it. This treaty ensured and strengthened the commercial tires between Argentina and Britain.

Moving back to the time before the first world war, Argentina engaged in a significant naval arms race with its neighbors Brazil and Chile. After years of conflict between Argentina and Chile, a pact was formed in 1902 that limited the naval armaments of both countries. However, alarmed by the sudden influx of Brazilian warships a few years later, Argentina quickly moved to nullify the remaining months of their pact with Chile to join in the naval arms race and match the naval capabilities of their northern neighbor Brazil. However when the first world war ended, so did the arms race. Suffering from the financial cost of trying to expand their naval capabilities, all three countries suddenly found themselves unable to acquire additional warships. After the conflict, the race never resumed, but many plans for post-war naval expansions were postulated by the Argentine, Brazilian, and Chilean governments.

In game, we represent these issues with a number of national spirits that must be overcome if the nation is to prosper or expand. (Icons may change before release)





[h3]Historical Branch[/h3]
When the game begins, no matter which ideology you wish to go down, Argentina will always start Non-Aligned with Agustn Pedro Justo in power. However, he likely will not remain there for long, as each branch will require the Argentinian player to make some drastic changes to their government and president. Whilst we wont dwell on Seor Justo for long, please enjoy this updated art we have for his portrait!


With that out of the way, lets take a wee look at the historical branch of the focus tree.



It should be noted that the foreign policy branch is shared with the democratic branch. As such, the path that begins with Pan-American Cooperation and ends with The Second Argentine Republic is available only to those who have taken Argentina into an independent democratic future.


The first part of the branch is all about putting Roberto Ortiz in power, a man who dedicated himself to ousting the corruption in the Concordancia, despite being chosen through the most fraudulent election in Argentine History. As such, you will try to minimize the Political Corruption national spirit, by taking these focuses, as well as reinforcing the already existing relationship with Great Britain.


In the next part of the tree, things start to heat up for the Concordanica. Whilst you have the option to improve on Argentinas damaged economy in the left hand branch, the historical player must then choose to elect Ramn Castillo. However, this creates tensions within the military factions in government, setting off a timed mission that spells an impending military coup. If the player does not take the appropriate actions, either by embracing the military factions or resisting them, then they will face a bloody civil war across Argentina.



In order to avoid a civil war, you have two choices. Either go the historical route and allow the march to create a quiet turnover in government via March to La Casa Rosada or take things a-historically and enact federal intervention in states taken over by the military, before finally subduing the dissension within its ranks. However, if you fancy fighting a civil war, feel free to do absolutely nothing! The fun thing about Hearts of Iron IV is that you can play it however you want.



With your government secure, you can finally start to look towards engaging with the world and the war that is ravaging it. If fighting does not interest you what-so-ever, then feel free to reject the Allies and take your own path, remaining neutral. However, if you want to help the Allies in their fight against fascism, then you can join their faction, and begin Argentinas foreign policy branch. Keep that branch in mind for now, for I will go into more detail with it when we talk about the democratic path!

[h3]Democratic Branch[/h3]
Speaking of which, lets talk about what happens if you have a clean election instead of one that is corrupt beyond belief. Its time to see how Argentina fares as a true democracy.



At the beginning of the path, the Infamous Decade national spirit becomes less of a hindrance as you are taking the actions necessary to avoid the rampant corruption that was rife within the Concordancia. With this in mind, you will then elect Marcelo T. De Alvear as the new leader of Argentina, placing the Radical Civic Union as the primary party in government. From here on out, you will be able to enact further social change to the country, building it up as a safe and comfortable home for all who live in Argentina.


With the country stable, it is time for the democratic player to turn their attention towards expanding their military by either reinforcing their connection with the United States or with Great Britain. Alternatively, there is a third branch in which Argentina focuses internally, and instead looks to becoming the new bastion of democracy in the Americas.


It is time for democratic Argentina to get itself involved in foreign policy. This branch is shared with the Historical tree, but really comes alive with the context of playing Democratic. Aligning yourself with the Monroe Doctrine will grant a national spirit to help set yourself up militarily, and allow you to develop your alliance with Britain and America. Bolstering your connection with the U.S.A will allow you to start engaging in counterintelligence, eventually ending the infamous Operation Bolivar in South America. This path then ends with the opportunity to work towards removing communism from the continent. Alternatively, send an envoy to London and have the potential to secure the Falkland and South Georgia islands from them, setting them up as strong naval fortresses to aid in the war. As time goes on, you will eventually gain the chance to have wargoals on any fascist nations in South America.

[h3]Industrial Branch[/h3]
Lets take a break from politics for a second and have a look at Argentinas industrial branch, which is accessible for all ideologies.


Starting out by developing the Banco Central de la Repblica Argentina, the path opens up to multiple branches that will on large provide multiple bonuses to restore the economic prowess Argentina had prior to the Great Depression.


One of the first things the Argentinian player can do is reach out to various major nations and take out loans from them. This is done through a decision system that will provide numerous bonuses at the expense of daily political power. Of course, if you then wish to repay, you will be able to swap those bonuses to regain the daily PP that you have lost.


This branch deals primarily with the development of your industry and research. Many of the focuses here will provide you with factories both civilian and military, as well as a number of research boosts to various categories. You will also have the option to capitalize on Argentinas beef industry, and make changes to the Roca-Runciman Treaty national treaty you have at game start. Either revisit it and redevelop it as the Eden-Malbrn Treaty or revise it entirely, cutting Britain out of the equation and re-signing the treaty with any of your new allies.


This side of the tree is instead focused on developing Argentinas infrastructure and raw resources. The latter in particular will create more steel and aluminum for extraction in certain regions of the country, eventually culminating in unlocking the Yacimientos Petrolferos Fiscales as an industrial concern, granting boosts to Industrial and Resource research speed.

On the right, the focus is on building up the Argentine Metropole. Encourage immigration from Wales, Germany and Italy and develop the civilian economy, overall promoting a move from the more traditional rural lifestyle of old towards the larger cities in Argentina.

[h3]Fascist Branch[/h3]
As we move back to the political branches, we will be taking a look at Argentinas fascist tree. This explores the what-if scenario in which Roberto Ortiz worked with the Argentine nationalists instead of focusing on trying to improve the Concordancia.



In the 1910s - 1930s, a group known as the Ligas Patriticas were operating in Argentina as a nationalistic paramilitary group. Eventually, they would be reformed into the Argentine Civic Legion and then the Unin Nacional Fascista. This tied with certain members of the Argentina government supporting the Axis in Europe, meant that there was plenty to draw on for an alternative history in which Argentina pursued fascism.

The idea of this path is for the player to bolster nationalist spirit throughout the country. including sending aid to Franco during the Spanish Civil War. Doing so will allow you to demand Equatorial Guinea from Spain, giving Argentina a foothold in the African front. The player can also re-establish the Ligas Patriticas which will provide a number of divisions to use in the upcoming wars that you will no doubt be waging. Speaking of which, why not poke at Uruguay a little bit? If you can do so without escalating a conflict with Brazil, it would provide a nice foothold for your new regime to take on the rest of the continent.


Now the time has come to choose whether you will be a nationalistic Argentina or one that models itself after the German Reich. These branching paths will allow you to take fascist Argentina in two different directions. Taking Guardia Nacional will take you down a more hyper-militaristic path and set you up in a good position to join the Axis and act as an extension of Germany on the South American continent. Alternatively, if you take Unin Nacional Fascista then you will focus on bolstering the nationalistic spirit of Argentina, resulting in a pretty cool national spirit Spirit of the Conquistadors which grants war support, division attack and makes it faster to justify war on your neighbors.


Eventually, regardless of what flavor of fascism you install in Argentina, the time will come where you must decide to join the Axis and the war in Europe, or create your own faction, and begin the conquest of South America.


At long last, it is time to dominate the south. This foreign policy branch will take you through a number of steps where you will have the option to either bully your neighbors into submitting to you, or straight up marching on their borders in an all out war. Eventually, it will be time to turn to Argentinas oldest rival to the north: Brazil. By taking out the largest nation on the continent, the Argentinian player will be in a good position to secure the rest of South America, eventually creating the South American Confederation and opening up the opportunity to integrate conquered territories into your nation.


Of course, it wouldnt be an Argentinian focus tree without the opportunity to set off the Falkland War early now would it? Be careful though. Putting your sights on the United Kingdom will mean that you might fall into the Allies ire if you arent already.

[h3]Communist Branch[/h3]
But what if you want a more radical change to Argentinas government? Well, I have prepared a Communist branch just for that reason. Instead of a fraudulent or a clean election, its time for a call to reform as we dive into the Communist tree.



As with any communist movement, the first port of call is to begin garnering revolutionary support. This is started by inviting Rodolfo Ghioldi back to Argentina. Ghioldi was a political leader who supported the Argentine Communist Party. After a threat against his life, Ghioldi was exiled to Brazil, where he participated in a failed communist insurrection against Getlio Vargas. However, in this timeline, you will bring him back to Argentina to lead your revolution.

Eventually, after legitimizing the Argentina Communist Party and reaching out to the Soviets for support and rallying the workers, you will be able to launch a revolution against the government of Argentina. If you are able to survive the civil war, then you will play as Argentina Populares!


After the revolution, you will then have a choice in the kind of communism you want to build in Argentina.

Firstly, on the left, you can align yourself with the Soviets. This will keep Rodolfo Ghioldi in power and will make Argentina join the Comintern. From here on out, Argentina will gain access to Soviet companies (or MIOs if you have Arms Against Tyranny!) and focus on establishing a strong intelligence program in the name of state security. This branch culminates in Ghioldi centralizing power and becoming a true communist dictator!

On the right, however, you can put Fanny Edelman in power, creating a more independent socialist power in South America. Edelmans path looks to supporting the common worker and providing rights for women, as well as sending socialist volunteers across seas to aid in revolutions across the world. Eventually, it will be time to open up the Buenos Aires Conference, where you will decide whether to keep Fanny in power, or instead allow Anarcho-Syndicalist Antonio Soto a chance to rule (More on this guy later!)

The middle branch is accessible to both paths, and follows the standard economic upgrades that communist Argentina can install. Eventually, you will have to choose between enacting state atheism, or establishing Liberation Theology much earlier than it did historically. Liberation Theology, for those unaware, was a form of Catholicism created in South America that aligned itself ideologically with socialist theory.


The Foreign Policy branch of the Communist tree is fairly short and sweet. You will be able to choose between gaining war goals on all non-communist states in South America, or, if youre feeling peaceful, invite any communist country on the continent to join your faction! Eventually, you will have the choice to integrate conquered territories into your nation or enact Operation Ocaso Escarlata, bringing forth a Scarlet Sunset to anyone who opposes you.


But wait whats this? Antonio Soto got into power at the Buenos Aires Conference? Soto was an Anarcho-Syndicalist who was one of the principal leaders during the well-known rural strikes in the Patagonia region of Argentina during 1921. He returns to the Communist branch as a potential leader!

When selected as the new leader during the Buenos Aires Conference, instead of going down the usual foreign policy path, you instead unlock an Anarcho-Syndicalist branch where you will improve Patagonia, making up for the strikes all those years go, Establish your Free Association and finally take the fight to liberate any occupied or colonized territories in South America!

[h3]Military Branch[/h3]
Those with a keen eye would have spotted that we have a shared military branch that is accessed by all the nations that we are expanding upon in Trial of Allegiance. This is due to the fact that many of them start with similar military capabilities and issues at the start of the game.

To save me repeating myself, feel free to check out our first developer diary made by AveeBee on Brazil for more information on the Military Branch.


Dont fret however! The tree may be shared, but there are a number of focuses available that are flavored to each country. And whilst it may be large, it will allow you to create a truly bespoke military without causing any major balancing issues. Sure, its not intended that you take every focus here, but nothing is stopping you from turning Argentina into a superpower. It just takes time, you see!

[h3]Conclusion[/h3]

Well my friends, that brings me to the end of the Argentina Dev Diary. I hope this has given you more insight into what we have in store for you all and I hope you are looking forward to Trials of Allegiance.

There are some things that I have not touched upon in this Dev Diary, including a few easter eggs. But it wouldnt be fun if I told you what they were, now would it?

If you have any questions, please feel free to post them below. Get ready, because the Dev Diaries dont stop here - Chile is due to drop next week, so get excited!

Thanks for reading!

-Eilidh

Make sure to check out Trial of Allegiance here
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2695150/Hearts_of_Iron_IV_Trial_of_Allegiance/

Generals!

An Army is only as strong as its troops, and a good leader listens to their Officers - so its time for you to have your say once again!

Share you opinions about Focus Trees with the latest HOI4 Survey Below!



Or click this link instead~ https://t.co/xt6RxaEXAw

Hello there generals, it's your friendly neighbourhood Community Manager, Katten, here to talk about, Trial of Allegiance, the first-ever country pack for South America. Our aim was to craft a thrilling experience, allowing you to feel the power of constructing a regional superpower to confront emerging international threats or to use its power to expand your empire abroad.

Last year, we announced the formation of a new team dedicated to content creation. The Trial of Allegiance Country pack is the result of their efforts, showcasing three major focus trees for Brazil, Argentina, and Chile. Furthermore, it introduces additional content for both old and new tags in South America. If you haven't seen our announcement trailer, be sure to watch it below!

[previewyoutube=4iBXgrDqvn0;full][/previewyoutube]
Before I pass the mic to our Content Designer leading the development for Brazil, I also want to let you know that as part of our push for more HOI content, the team is also working on another big and exciting project that will be dropping later this year. So stay tuned, and as always happy map painting!


[h3]Intro[/h3]

Hello there! AveeBee here to introduce you all to the work weve been doing in South America, kicking things off with a deep dive into historical Brazil! Some of you are likely very familiar with the history of the nation during this time period (we see you Brazil players!), but theres likely a lot more of you that arent quite as familiar with this area of history beyond smoking snakes and the Brazilian Expeditionary force. So, Im going to try and give a brief overview of the nation prior to 1936 and how that is represented in game, before moving into the narrower chapters of historical events from the establishment of Estado Novo, the Vargas era and Brazils eventual participation in World War II alongside the allies.


[h3]Context Pre-1936[/h3]

After the fall of the Brazilian Empire and its reconstruction as a republic, oligarchs from the agricultural industry dominated the nation's economic and political life. This came to an abrupt end in 1930 when Getlio Vargas led a revolution to overthrow the old republic. Following this, the nation attempted to establish a new republican system that would avoid the issues of its predecessor. However, the various forces that backed Vargas ultimately created a constitution which satisfied none of them. In this power vacuum, Vargas dominated the politics of the nation in his role as president.

Amidst this political turmoil, the communist party and their allies orchestrated an attempted revolution of their own in late 1935. Although this revolution was ultimately crushed by forces loyal to the government, the ramifications of it were still being felt in 1936 as the establishment prepared to sentence and punish the leaders of the movement. Furthermore, the fear of communist infiltration of society would give politicians and the military a justification for their more authoritarian policies in years to come.

Another internal problem that had plagued Brazil for decades was the issue of separatism. Many of the constituent states of the republic had at one time or another attempted to secede or at the very least had sizable separatist movements. Many of these movements had grown from a sense of being neglected by the federal government. A related issue at the time was that of the Cangao; bandits who operated in the North East of Brazil. Although violent in their activities, they often gained support among the poor for their resistance and attacks against the wealthy in the region.

On the economic side, Brazil was devastated by the Great Depression. As a largely extractive economy based on agriculture and resource exports, the economy began to collapse when other nations stopped importing goods such as coffee. The government attempted various measures to stabilize the situation but by 1936, it remained stagnant. As was often the case during the time period, this led to many Brazilians turning to more radical ideologies to lift them out of poverty and insecurity.

On the foreign policy front, prior to World War I, Brazil had been engaged in a naval arms race with its neighbors in Argentina and Chile.This had culminated in a number of famous dreadnoughts such as the Rio de Janeiro which would end up in the hands of the Ottoman Empire and ultimately the United Kingdom. Brazil had been aligned with the Allies during the first world war, following an attack on civilian shipping by Germany in 1917 which allowed the unpopular government of the time to focus the nation's anger at enemies overseas. In the inter-war years, Brazil would primarily be focused on its domestic issues, but anxiety remained that the old foe of Argentina could take advantage of Brazils internal strife.

In game, we represent these issues with a number of national spirits that must be overcome if the nation is to prosper or expand. (Icons may change before release)






[h3]1936-1938[/h3]

The period in which the game starts primarily revolves around Vargas attempting to maintain his grip on power under the constraints of the flawed 1934 constitution. As we will see throughout this diary, Vargas is an odd figure that often escapes the usual political categories we often place leaders in. He came to power on a wave of liberal reformism, but would eventually flirt with the tenants of contemporary fascism and would ultimately suspend democracy to keep himself in power. However he would also implement reforms that appealed to the rural poor and the urban workforce. To represent this in game, Vargas begins as the leader of the ruling democratic provisional government, but he wont stay that way for long.


(Vargas will be getting a fresh portrait, but it wasnt quite ready to be hooked into the game just yet)

Next, well take a look at the historical portion of the focus tree.



As you can probably tell, the historical portion has some overlap with the alt-history branches too, but Im keeping those relatively hidden for a later diary. The first portion of this branch requires building enough support among the military or fascist movement to be able to orchestrate a self-coup.


As you can see in the earlier screenshots of the Weak Government and State of Emergency national spirits, Brazil starts with a ticking time bomb of steadily increasing non-aligned and communist support. This requires the player to focus on curtailing the communist influence as quickly as possible. Historically, Vargas gained support from the military by taking a hardline anti-communist stance. Meanwhile, he also attempted to win over the Integralist movement to his cause in order to appeal to urban workers who might otherwise turn to communism. We will discuss the integralist movement in a later dev diary, but for now you can think of them as Brazils take on Italian fascism.


With enough anti-communist/democratic support, this culminates in The Cohen Plan focus. Historically, a document that went by that name was forged by forces aligned with the government. The document supposedly outlined plans for a communist takeover of Brazil and was used by the government to justify a wave of authoritarian measures being used to protect the nation. Despite the document being a complete forgery, Vargas succeeded in suspending democracy. In game, taking this focus requires the player to complete the following focus: Estado Novo.



[h3]Vargas Era[/h3]
Estado Novo, or New State, marks the end of democracy in Brazil for the time being. While Vargas remains in power, his ideology is switched to non-aligned along with the ruling government. To cement his grasp on power, Vargas not only used the emergency powers of the 1934 constitution, but drafted an entirely new authoritarian one inspired by the Polish constitution of the time.


To the left of this branch, we have a number of focuses that represent the utilization of the new constitution by curtailing the separatist movement (Decree Number 37 - this focus removes the separatist movement national spirit) and increasing stability by clamping down on political movements and increasing employment.


In the center of the tree, we have a number of focuses that are shared with the Integralist path which are concerned with kickstarting the economy, expanding the nation's intelligence services and its research capacity.





[h3]Industrial Branch[/h3]
Before jumping into the more foreign policy orientated aspect of the historical focus tree, let's take a look at the industrial branch.



Due to the aforementioned impact of the Great Depression, Brazils primary objective is overcoming its reliance on exporting coffee and raw goods, instead building up a domestic industrial base and consumer economy. As occurred historically, the first step towards this was the establishment of the coffee department to better control the supply and price of coffee exports.



Around this time, a number of radio stations were also established in Brazil that would keep the public informed and entertained. Although many would ultimately become propaganda outlets for the Vargas regime.




A number of the focuses in this branch interact with a modifier in many of Brazils states that were historically neglected. The Resource Extraction focus for example gives a research bonus and reduces the penalty of the neglected state modifier.



A number of these focuses will be familiar to you, expanding industry, infrastructure and efficiency through various means. So well skip towards the end of this branch to take a look at some of the more unique focuses for Brazil. We have two focuses at the end here which allow the player to make a choice between establishing a domestic motor company (taking the form of a military industrial organization for those who will be playing with Arms Against Tyranny) or expanding ties with the Ford Motor Company through the expansion of Fordlandia. Fordlandia is a fascinating piece of Brazilian history, whereby Ford established a colony to expand production of rubber for their car tyres. During World War II, access to rubber became crucial for the Allies and Brazil attempted to meet the demand.




We also have some light alt-history in this branch allowing Brazil to establish its current capital a few years earlier than it did historically.


You may have also noticed a focus in this branch called Deal with the Cangao. A number of states in North East Brazil begin the game with a negative modifier where the Cangao are operating. Every so often, a mission may be carried out by them which will lower stability or allow them to spread their influence to a new state. The aforementioned focus therefore unlocks decisions to allow law enforcement operations to take place that will remove the negative modifier from the respective state.




We have some interesting alternative interactions with the Cangao, but youll have to wait for the alt-history dev diary to see them!

[h3]World War II[/h3]
Lets get back to the historical political branch. Once the domestic and economic situation in Brazil has been steadied, attention can be shifted towards foreign affairs. Historically, Vargas and his regime dismantled much of the democratic apparatus of the Brazilian Republic. As such, the Axis powers were keen to promote trade with Brazil and the United States became increasingly worried about the nation aligning with fascism. Despite concerns over the erosion of democracy, the US therefore attempted to win over Vargas to ensure Brazil remained aligned with them.


Much of the US attempts to sway Brazil consisted of economic and military support, for example, aiding in the construction of a massive steel production facility near Rio de Janeiro in exchange for setting up air bases in North East Brazil for the US Air Force. This alignment with the US however also served to deter Brazils age-old foe, Argentina, from antagonizing them for fear of American retaliation.

When World War II erupted in Europe, demand for Brazilian rubber and other resources began to increase as access to British controlled rubber plantations and supply lines across the seas became vulnerable to Axis interception. As ties between Brazil and the Allies increased, German U-Boats began attacking Brazilian shipping in the Atlantic. This pushed Brazil to declare war on Germany in 1942.



In game, we represent this situation in a number of focuses and decisions whereby Brazil can choose to work with the United States and gain some bonuses, but the US will expect Brazil to join the war within two years. Failure to do so will result in the US intervening militarily to ensure Brazil makes better decisions in future




Joining the war of course leads to the creation of the iconic Brazilian Expeditionary Force, along with a number of new 3D models to match.




Historically, the Brazilian Expeditionary Force, went on to fight in Italy and played a crucial role in defeating Axis forces there. But it is of course up to you how you intend to deploy your forces to win the war. In some of the screenshots you may have noticed some alt-history focuses. We will go into them more when we discuss alt-history Brazil in the coming weeks.

[h3]Military Branch[/h3]
Now, some of you may have noticed Ive been focused on the political and economic side of the focus tree so far. Dont worry, we also have a separate military branch to finish off the tree.



As many of the nations were expanding on in this DLC start with fairly similar military capabilities and issues at the start of the game, we took the decision to create a core military branch that will be utilized by all the new nations. However, countries have their own unique focuses and effects built around this branch to better represent the more unique aspects of their history, as well as country specific icons etc.

As can be seen in the above screenshots, the branch contains distinct army, navy and air sub-branches. The intention with these sub-branches is to give as many options as possible for creating a truly bespoke military, without allowing the country to become out of proportionally strong. However, that isnt to say that you cant fully utilize the full tree and turn Brazil into a military superpower, its totally possible.

[h3]Conclusion[/h3]
I hope that gives you some insight into what we have in store for you all. As always, if you have any questions please feel free to post them below. In the coming weeks Ill be following this diary up with one on alt-history Brazil. But next week you have the Dev diary for Argentina to look forward to.

Thanks for reading!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2695150

Generals!

Something lurks within the leaves, watch the video from our Recon team and let us know your thoughts...

[previewyoutube=NnzfUJfKg1E;full][/previewyoutube]

Generals!

Tension is rising! Are you ready for the final day of the HOI International tournament? Head on over to TommyKays channel to cheer on you favorite commander and watch the last battle unfold~

Who will win? Theres only one way to find out!

Make sure to check it out here -> https://pdxint.at/3ttaH63

[h3]Generals![/h3]

The Largest Community Tournament of the Year is about to come to its stunning conclusion! Hearts of Iron IV Frontlines has its spy network at 100% and the collaboration with TommyKay is about to fire to bring you the HOI4 International FINALS!

Set in the Commanders competitive mod, Over 200 players has been whittled down to just EIGHT players, with your top eight being;

• Konstantin
  
• Segl
  
• Lennard
  
• Mohammed
  
• Kristoff
  
• Silas
  
• Dankus Memecus
  
• NayF
  

Generals!

The Steam Winter Sale is now Live! With deals as much as 70% off, now's the time to grab those last minute gifts for a friend, or even a little gift for yourself for the holidays.

From all of us in the HOI team, we all wish you a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays :)

[h3]Base Game[/h3]

• Hearts of Iron IV 70% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Starter Edition 70% off
  

• Hearts of Iron IV: By Blood Alone 30% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: No Step Back 30% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Battle for the Bosporus 50% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Death or Dishonor 60% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Together For Victory 60% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Waking the Tiger 60% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: La Rsistance 50% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Man the Guns 50% off
  

• Hearts of Iron IV: Eastern Front Music Pack50% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Eastern Front Planes Pack50% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Allied Speeches Music Pack 50% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Radio Pack 50% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Sabaton Soundtrack50% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Sabaton Soundtrack Vol. 250% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Allied Armor Pack 50% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Axis Armor Pack 50% off
  

Greetings!

With the release of the Stella Polaris Patch (1.13.6) last Tuesday it's time to wrap things up for the year.

2023 has been a busy year. The team has been hard at work since the very start of the year, and the first War Effort patch was released during the very first weeks of 2023. Before the onset of Summer holidays we managed to release 5 of those. Together with the follow up patches after the release of AAT, and the December patch, we clocked in at 9 patches, plus a few hotfixes, over the year. So expect to see more of them next year, with the same mix of tweaks and bug fixes, and occasionally minor additions.

Of course, the main story of 2023, for us, from a fan point of view, was Arms Against Tyranny and the Stella Polaris free update. The lions share of it was done during 2023. We started talking about the release in May in a series of Dev Corners and we made the official announcement on June 7th.

What goes into a year? you ask. Something like 4 million code and script changes I think. Or if you prefer to look at file changes, some 10000 files were touched in one way or another :O


[h3]Arms Against Tyranny Stats[/h3]
After each big release we like to check out stats and take stock of things, and its fun to share this. So I hope you like graphs and numbers as much as we do!

First up, let's look at what nations people played during the first week and what path they went down:

Finland - 45%

• Finnish Neutrality - 48%
  
• Right-Wing Policies - 40%
  
• Soumalainen Sosialismi - 12%
  

• The Old Enemy Stirs - 70%
  
• Continue the Second Industrial Revolution - 30%
  

• The Stumbling Storting - 62%
  
• A Resurgent Labor Movement - 22%
  
• Continue Nygaardsvolds Government - 9%
  
• Vote of No Confidence - 7%
  

• Unify the Right - 80%
  
• Political Unity - 20%
  

• Not our King - 90%
  
• Kingdom of Iceland - 10%
  

• Germany - 22%
  
• Soviet - 12%
  
• China - 6%
  
• PRC - 6%
  
• Italy - 4%
  
• USA - 4%
  
• Japan - 4%
  
• France - 3%
  
• England - 2%
  
• Turkey - 2%
  

Generals!

Patch 1.13.6 has now been released. Some things you can expect to see are quality of life changes, some tweaks to the MIO's, balance changes as well as many many bugfixes for multiple nations including Iceland, Norway and more!

You can read the patch notes below;

[h3]Balance[/h3]

- reduced airframe weight curve for small airframes, with a higher effect at higher tiers
- increased air attack of lmg and hmg plane modules by 50%
- Finland: Tweaked AI weights for the Finnish decisions to surrender to Soviets or switch sides in the Continuation War so that Finland actually puts up a fight.
- Fixed several issues with the Karelian Uprising triggered by Finland during the Soviet Civil War, the non-Stalinist side of the civil war receiving both the Karelian Uprising and National Uprising events about Karelia, Finland not always properly joining the war against the Soviet tags, and the non-Stalinist side of the Soviet civil war not being able to decide whether to declare war on Karelia (and Finland when appropriate) or be friendly to them.



[h3] Gameplay[/h3]


- Germany: Removed starting import trade from Sweden
- Can now press enter to accept a resource trade



[h3]Stability & Performance[/h3]


- Fixed potential CTD encountered when removing all production lines



[h3] UI[/h3]


- Fixed visual bug when selecting ship refit production lines
- Added description to supply tooltip that increasing the infrastructure level increases base supply
- Replacing or upgrading MIO in Equipment Designer now updates the variant name
- From now in international market the equipment cost will be rounded to 2 decimals .
- Stats in Equipment Designer will now update when unlocking new MIO traits depending on whether the Upgrade MIO button was pressed
- MIO effect preview now works in legacy (non-modular) equipment designer
- Legacy equipment designer will generate a new name for equipment if MIO upgrade is possible



[h3]Modding[/h3]


- Add better debug info about AI research (in imgui ai_strategy window)



[h3]Bugfix[/h3]

- Log error and prevent CTD when trying to display 3D model of a non-existent entity in the division designer view
- Fix of bug where sometimes wrong 3d models of divisions were shown on map.
- The decisions to form a Nordic Formable Nation are now mutually exclusive with each other
- Fixed errors in MIOs and production lines in the Japanese and Soviet OOBs when No Step Back dlc is not active.
- Implemented missing tank generic tank icons for Germany, Soviet Union and Italy in the tank designer.
- Norway: Implemented Norwegian-themed custom counters.
- Fixed issue with the naming of the achievement icon No One Crosses the Finnish Line.
- Sweden: Fixed a faulty trigger for Hungershield not canceling correctly unless you removed your construction queue. Now needs to build > 14 civs from game start
- Norway: Vidkun Quisling is no longer available as advisor without Arms Against Tyranny.
- The controller of Greenland now also gets the last remaining, inaccessible province of that state
- Denmark will not have a Balance of Power during a Civil War
- USA will no longer hand over Greenland as soon as Denmark becomes free, but rather when they have no more wars
- Denmark gets lowered fascism/communism support when completing "Expand the Resistance" if the Overlord id fascist/communist
- Tweaking Danish ai weights for Occupation BoP Decisions
- Fixed AI having access to BoP decisions without having the BoP active
- Norway: Fixed Army Chiefs withincorrect Political Power costs
- Fix bug where annexing country, did not removed expeditionary forces provided by it.
- Fix bug where leaving faction removed all expeditionary forces even those from puppets.
- Fix of bug where freeing puppet did not give back the expeditionary forces automatically.
- Fixed the position of Porajrvi VP on the map. Fixed ships advancing deep into the Icelandic mountains when going into Reykjavik's port.
- Finland: Focus Seek German Protection now requires Germany to be either Fascist or Non-Aligned.
- Finland: Aksel Airo will no longer run and hide during the Fascist Civil War. if the decision Secure the Militayr is taken, he will be available to Fascist Finland both as general and as advsior. If the decision is not taken, he will be moved to the other side of the Civil War.
- Fix of bug where sometimes on start of war enemy divisions which had military access were not teleported out from country.
- MIO: Fixed British dominions sometimes lacking or having extra MIOs of certain categories.
- Iceland: Fixed bypass trigger for focus Reclaiming the Empire, which could make it impossible to either complete or bypass the focus in certain conditions.
- Iceland: Fixed wrong tooltip indentation in focus Keflavik Airbase.
- Sweden: The king can no longer conscript most of the population of the earth
- Iceland: Fixed political advisor lafur Thors having no trait icon on his sheet.
- Iceland: focus Keflavik Airbase now requires the first Anti-Air technology.
- Iceland: Improved tooltip in focus Break with the Crown focus to properly communicate potential effects coming from other focuses, as well as the removal of the National Spirit Christian X (in any of its versions).
- Iceland: The focus effects of Rally the Workers of Reykjavik and Prepare for the Revolution will now be properly applied even if they are completed after the focus Break with the Crown.
- Norway: Fixed issue where country name, color and flag wouldn't change for the Alternative Democratic path
- Norway: When changing ideologies after content-scripted instances, the name, color and flag of the coutnry will change accordingly.
- Norway: Trotsky now has the correct General portrait.
- Norway: Focuses 'Secure Swedish Ore' and 'Secure Denmark' now have the correct bypasses.
- Norway: Decision 'Modernize Armed Forces' now unlocks with 'Reform the Army' as intended.
- Nordic Shared Tree: Fixed missing Filter Tag for focus 'Nordic Development Fund'
- Norway: Focuses 'Ask for Foreign Support' and 'The Secret Army' will no longer be available if fascist.
- Norway: Focuses 'Ask for Foreign Support' and Nasjonal Samling' will now show the correct target if Germany is at Civil War or doesn't exist.
- Tweaked the probability of Danish overlord accepting Denmark's declaration of independence
- Removed the Danish overlord plenipotentiary if Denmark declares independence and the overlord accepts
- Achievement Two Arms Against Tyranny now actually requires Finland to be in faction with only one Nordic country when capitulating the Soviets
- Norway: Use XU now gives a National Spirit if you don't have La Resistance.
- Norway: Decisions 'Foment Resistance in Norway' and 'Support Rebellion in Norway' now unlock through focuses 'Use XU' and 'Preparing a Return to Norway' repectively.
- Norway: Peder Anker Wedel-Jarlsberg now has a more appropriate Generic Portrait when AAT is not active.
- Fix of bug where strategic redeploment by player sometimes could cause out of sync in multiplayer.
- Switzerland: Fixed issue where 1939 start wouldn't have Marcel Pilet-Golaz as councillor.
- Fixed the decisions to form the HRE and the European Union, the French focus Disunite Germany and the achievement It has my name on it to properly include the new state of Schleswig.
- Achievements:Fixed Brexit achievement tooltip missing "Northern Ireland" as a required target in which to start an uprising in order to get the achievement.
- Mexico: Fixed issue with focus One World Government being available when Soviet Union was led by Stalin.
- MIO: Fixed typo in trait name Low Drag Wings
- Can't create designed equipment variants with negative stats.
- Fixed a divide by zero in AI market equipment evaluation
- Fixed scrollbar for navy loss view
- Medium bomb bay now gives bonus to naval attack, rather than ground attack
- Soviet Union: Fix conscription bonus for The People's Revolution idea
- Fixed give and add state control where declining would re-apply the request
- Fixed pathing for exfiltration of marine commandos
- Fixed issue where air wings were assigned incorrect regions due to them being banana shaped (the regions, not the air wings)
- Finland: If Finland is a puppet, the decision to Demand Peace to the Soviet Union will now also make the Finnish overlord to sign peace with the Soviets, as well as any overlord's allies or subjects.
- Tank Designer: Medium and heavy turrets can now be converted into fixed superstructures.
- Finland: Fixed requirements of the focus Soviet Threat targeting the UK instead of the USSR.
- Fixed potential issues with achievement Not Much Fun in Stalingrad.
- Finland: Focus Preserve Spmi now requires at least one Sami core to not be cored by Finland and to not be controlled by a Finnish enemy. This should fix instances in which completing the focus grants no reward.
- Soviet Union: Soviets will no longer send an ultimatum to Finland demanding Karjala if they are already at war with them. The focus will only provide a Soviet claim in the state in that case.
- Norway: Quisling's Regime path will only require not being in a civil war if there aren't any other Norways around.
- Norway: Fixed small typo in focus Lurk in the Shadows.
- Norway: Fixed missing admiral portraits.
- Norway: Initial production now has MIOs assigned.
- Norway: Fixed General Trotsky's portrait.
- Norway: Fixed missing icon for trait in the Akers MIO.
- Norway: Focus 'Ask for Foreign Support' can now lower the Political Power cost on top of the time reduction.
- Switzerland: Fixed issue where completing 'The Alpine Protectorate' wouldn't disable the Absolute Neutrality System.
- Switzerland: Adjusted some National Spirits' Consumer Goods modifiers so they conform to the new scale of value for it.
- Switzerland: Focus 'The Alpine Protectorate' now cancels if it's not valid.
- Switzerland: Event 'David Frankfurter's Trial' now applies the correct Opinion Modifiers
- Denmark: Fixed the issue of broken text in the Occupation Branch if Denmark becomes a puppet of Sweden through the Swedish focus "Danish Alignment"
- Germany: Focuses that give air technologies now give bonuses to the correct category when By Blood Alone is active.
- Fixed bug where sometimes Bulgaria could declare war even if it was puppet of other country.
- Updated the Consumer Goods bonus from Italian National Spirits International Day and Peace Keepers of Europe to be in line with the latest Consumer Goods changes.
- Fixed a broken tooltip for Screen Efficiency in the Danish focus "Baltic Sea Domination"
- Norway: Rikstanken now appears in the right Tech when No Step Back is disabled.
- Fixed Greater Denmark flags not showing up.
- Fixed an issue with a number of flags from formable nations and cosmetic tags that were not showing up in Linux.
- Norway: Elias Corneliussen and Henry Diesen now have their correct portraits.
- Switzerland: Added missing tooltip for focus 'Switzerland on the Offense'
- Switzerland: Achievement 'You Shall Not Pass' will no longer be obtained with a non-defensive war.
- Fixed MIO effect preview in Equipment Designer causing the current MIO bonus to upgrade
- Switzerland: Adjusted the Air Volunteer Cap value for the National Spirit 'Volunteer Forces'.
- Soviet Union: Fixed issue preventing the Left Opposition to get some of the weapons that provided by countries via the focus Funds for the Cause.
- Soviet Union: Fixed an issue where the national spirit Anti-Soviet Military Thinking Banned would persists after a peaceful right opposition coup. Now it can be removed with the decision while Beriya is in charge, and will be removed automatically upon completion of the focus Coup d'Etat which establishes a Right Opposition government.
- Division designer can now be moved in front of equipment designers.
- Fixed one issue with overhaul mods crashing
- Republican Spain: Enrique Lster will now properly receive the trait Stalinist, preventing him to join the Anarchist side in the Civil War.
- Special Forces: Fixed unintuitive tooltip in Special Forces doctrine bonuses in Finland, Denmark and Sweden so that they use a more intuitive category that specifies "Doctrine" instead of "Tech".
- Finland: Finnish focus Marine Jaeger Divisions has been fixed so that the SF doctrine bonus only shows up if AAT is enabled. A tech bonus for marine and transport tech has been added regardless of DLC.
- Italy: The focuses Cruiser Submarines and Midget Submarines now have a different small bonus each to the Regia Marina national spirit when Man the Guns is not active.
- MIO: Fixed an issue preventing Italian Ship MIO CRDA to be assigned properly to the starting production lines of Caio Duilio battleships when Man the Guns was not active.
- Soviet Union: Mine Warfare focus now grant mines-related content only when MtG is active. Without MtG, the focus provides a Research bonus and a Doctrine Cost Reduction.
- Denmark can no longer get the achievement "Everything is Awesome" if they get puppeted by Sweden through the focus "Danish Alignment"
- Italy: Focus Intensify Torpedo Manufacturing will grant Research Speed for Torpedoes only when the DLC Man the Guns is active. When it is not active, the focus will grant a doctrine cost reduction bonus instead.
- Changed num_of_factories trigger to not include factories gained from trade or lend-lease.
- Re-open division and equipment design view on peace conference ended
- Ethiopia: Fixed multiple issues with Ethiopian character portraits, which in turn fixes previous issues with missing portraits for promoted generals with BBA, and missing portraits for generated generic characters and alt-hist country leaders without BBA.
- Italia: The description of the focus Moschettieri del Duce will now change based on the government, just like the focus name does.
- Finland: The text of the event "The White Death Embraces Us!" will now talk about "weeks" of combat instead of "months", since it is unlikely that the event will trigger more than a month after the previous event in the chain.
- Latvia: Focus Expand the Women's Aizsargi will no longer attempt to activate the decision Women in the Workforce since most of the time the decision will not be available or even visible, causing errors and resulting in the effect being invalid.
- The Swedish AI on historical mode should no longer guarantee other nations, and be less likely to join other nations
- Prince Frederik will now be called Frederik IX if he becomes king
- Influencing other countries as Denmark is now repeatable
- Tweaked ai weights for certain decisions
- Tweaked ai weights making countries more likely to accept Danish Influence actions
- Certain Focuses won't automatically cancel if you lose a puppet or World Tensions dips below a certain limit
- Remove country flag to make "Sway the Public" decision repeatable
- Fixed a number of scripted ship variants that were invalid or triggered errors: Italian DD Alessandro Poerio Class. Italian Coastal Defense Ship Eritrea Class.
- Fixed scripted Italian Super Heavy Tank variant The Hand of God that became invalid.
- Diplomatic actions: Fixed typo causing missing loc in a diplomatic game rule.
- Fixed typo in the Italian spelling of Repubblica Sociale Italiana.
- If co-op is disabled, random country will not select a country already selected by another player
- Fixed issue with adding more convoys to a sell contract
- Removed negative stat as a positive from design check

Generals!

The dev team has been hard at work on the next patch that will be releasing soon, as we didn't want to break any of your saves with a smaller one. But first, there will be an Open Beta to make sure everything is working, and some things you can expect to see are quality of life changes, some tweaks to the MIO's, balance changes as well as many many bugfixes for multiple nations including Iceland, Norway and more!

We're planning on releasing the patch next week, so here are the planned changes below;


##################################
# Balance
##################################

- reduced airframe weight curve for small airframes, with a higher effect at higher tiers
- increased air attack of lmg and hmg plane modules by 50%
- Finland: Tweaked AI weights for the Finnish decisions to surrender to Soviets or switch sides in the Continuation War so that Finland actually puts up a fight.
- Fixed several issues with the Karelian Uprising triggered by Finland during the Soviet Civil War, the non-Stalinist side of the civil war receiving both the Karelian Uprising and National Uprising events about Karelia, Finland not always properly joining the war against the Soviet tags, and the non-Stalinist side of the Soviet civil war not being able to decide whether to declare war on Karelia (and Finland when appropriate) or be friendly to them.


##################################
# Gameplay
##################################

- Germany: Removed starting import trade from Sweden
- Can now press enter to accept a resource trade


##################################
# Stability & Performance
##################################

- Fixed potential CTD encountered when removing all production lines


##################################
# UI
##################################

- Fixed visual bug when selecting ship refit production lines
- Added description to supply tooltip that increasing the infrastructure level increases base supply
- Replacing or upgrading MIO in Equipment Designer now updates the variant name
- From now in international market the equipment cost will be rounded to 2 decimals .
- Stats in Equipment Designer will now update when unlocking new MIO traits depending on whether the Upgrade MIO button was pressed
- MIO effect preview now works in legacy (non-modular) equipment designer
- Legacy equipment designer will generate a new name for equipment if MIO upgrade is possible


##################################
# Modding
##################################

- Add better debug info about AI research (in imgui ai_strategy window)


##################################
# Bugfix
##################################

- Log error and prevent CTD when trying to display 3D model of a non-existent entity in the division designer view
- Fix of bug where sometimes wrong 3d models of divisions were shown on map.
- The decisions to form a Nordic Formable Nation are now mutually exclusive with each other
- Fixed errors in MIOs and production lines in the Japanese and Soviet OOBs when No Step Back dlc is not active.
- Implemented missing tank generic tank icons for Germany, Soviet Union and Italy in the tank designer.
- Norway: Implemented Norwegian-themed custom counters.
- Fixed issue with the naming of the achievement icon No One Crosses the Finnish Line.
- Sweden: Fixed a faulty trigger for Hungershield not canceling correctly unless you removed your construction queue. Now needs to build > 14 civs from game start
- Norway: Vidkun Quisling is no longer available as advisor without Arms Against Tyranny.
- The controller of Greenland now also gets the last remaining, inaccessible province of that state
- Denmark will not have a Balance of Power during a Civil War
- USA will no longer hand over Greenland as soon as Denmark becomes free, but rather when they have no more wars
- Denmark gets lowered fascism/communism support when completing "Expand the Resistance" if the Overlord id fascist/communist
- Tweaking Danish ai weights for Occupation BoP Decisions
- Fixed AI having access to BoP decisions without having the BoP active
- Norway: Fixed Army Chiefs withincorrect Political Power costs
- Fix bug where annexing country, did not removed expeditionary forces provided by it.
- Fix bug where leaving faction removed all expeditionary forces even those from puppets.
- Fix of bug where freeing puppet did not give back the expeditionary forces automatically.
- Fixed the position of Porajrvi VP on the map. Fixed ships advancing deep into the Icelandic mountains when going into Reykjavik's port.
- Finland: Focus Seek German Protection now requires Germany to be either Fascist or Non-Aligned.
- Finland: Aksel Airo will no longer run and hide during the Fascist Civil War. if the decision Secure the Militayr is taken, he will be available to Fascist Finland both as general and as advsior. If the decision is not taken, he will be moved to the other side of the Civil War.
- Fix of bug where sometimes on start of war enemy divisions which had military access were not teleported out from country.
- MIO: Fixed British dominions sometimes lacking or having extra MIOs of certain categories.
- Iceland: Fixed bypass trigger for focus Reclaiming the Empire, which could make it impossible to either complete or bypass the focus in certain conditions.
- Iceland: Fixed wrong tooltip indentation in focus Keflavik Airbase.
- Sweden: The king can no longer conscript most of the population of the earth
- Iceland: Fixed political advisor lafur Thors having no trait icon on his sheet.
- Iceland: focus Keflavik Airbase now requires the first Anti-Air technology.
- Iceland: Improved tooltip in focus Break with the Crown focus to properly communicate potential effects coming from other focuses, as well as the removal of the National Spirit Christian X (in any of its versions).
- Iceland: The focus effects of Rally the Workers of Reykjavik and Prepare for the Revolution will now be properly applied even if they are completed after the focus Break with the Crown.
- Norway: Fixed issue where country name, color and flag wouldn't change for the Alternative Democratic path
- Norway: When changing ideologies after content-scripted instances, the name, color and flag of the coutnry will change accordingly.
- Norway: Trotsky now has the correct General portrait.
- Norway: Focuses 'Secure Swedish Ore' and 'Secure Denmark' now have the correct bypasses.
- Norway: Decision 'Modernize Armed Forces' now unlocks with 'Reform the Army' as intended.
- Nordic Shared Tree: Fixed missing Filter Tag for focus 'Nordic Development Fund'
- Norway: Focuses 'Ask for Foreign Support' and 'The Secret Army' will no longer be available if fascist.
- Norway: Focuses 'Ask for Foreign Support' and Nasjonal Samling' will now show the correct target if Germany is at Civil War or doesn't exist.
- Tweaked the probability of Danish overlord accepting Denmark's declaration of independence
- Removed the Danish overlord plenipotentiary if Denmark declares independence and the overlord accepts
- Achievement Two Arms Against Tyranny now actually requires Finland to be in faction with only one Nordic country when capitulating the Soviets
- Norway: Use XU now gives a National Spirit if you don't have La Resistance.
- Norway: Decisions 'Foment Resistance in Norway' and 'Support Rebellion in Norway' now unlock through focuses 'Use XU' and 'Preparing a Return to Norway' repectively.
- Norway: Peder Anker Wedel-Jarlsberg now has a more appropriate Generic Portrait when AAT is not active.
- Fix of bug where strategic redeploment by player sometimes could cause out of sync in multiplayer.
- Switzerland: Fixed issue where 1939 start wouldn't have Marcel Pilet-Golaz as councillor.
- Fixed the decisions to form the HRE and the European Union, the French focus Disunite Germany and the achievement It has my name on it to properly include the new state of Schleswig.
- Achievements:Fixed Brexit achievement tooltip missing "Northern Ireland" as a required target in which to start an uprising in order to get the achievement.
- Mexico: Fixed issue with focus One World Government being available when Soviet Union was led by Stalin.
- MIO: Fixed typo in trait name Low Drag Wings
- Can't create designed equipment variants with negative stats.
- Fixed a divide by zero in AI market equipment evaluation
- Fixed scrollbar for navy loss view
- Medium bomb bay now gives bonus to naval attack, rather than ground attack
- Soviet Union: Fix conscription bonus for The People's Revolution idea
- Fixed give and add state control where declining would re-apply the request
- Fixed pathing for exfiltration of marine commandos
- Fixed issue where air wings were assigned incorrect regions due to them being banana shaped (the regions, not the air wings)
- Finland: If Finland is a puppet, the decision to Demand Peace to the Soviet Union will now also make the Finnish overlord to sign peace with the Soviets, as well as any overlord's allies or subjects.
- Tank Designer: Medium and heavy turrets can now be converted into fixed superstructures.
- Finland: Fixed requirements of the focus Soviet Threat targeting the UK instead of the USSR.
- Fixed potential issues with achievement Not Much Fun in Stalingrad.
- Finland: Focus Preserve Spmi now requires at least one Sami core to not be cored by Finland and to not be controlled by a Finnish enemy. This should fix instances in which completing the focus grants no reward.
- Soviet Union: Soviets will no longer send an ultimatum to Finland demanding Karjala if they are already at war with them. The focus will only provide a Soviet claim in the state in that case.
- Norway: Quisling's Regime path will only require not being in a civil war if there aren't any other Norways around.
- Norway: Fixed small typo in focus Lurk in the Shadows.
- Norway: Fixed missing admiral portraits.
- Norway: Initial production now has MIOs assigned.
- Norway: Fixed General Trotsky's portrait.
- Norway: Fixed missing icon for trait in the Akers MIO.
- Norway: Focus 'Ask for Foreign Support' can now lower the Political Power cost on top of the time reduction.
- Switzerland: Fixed issue where completing 'The Alpine Protectorate' wouldn't disable the Absolute Neutrality System.
- Switzerland: Adjusted some National Spirits' Consumer Goods modifiers so they conform to the new scale of value for it.
- Switzerland: Focus 'The Alpine Protectorate' now cancels if it's not valid.
- Switzerland: Event 'David Frankfurter's Trial' now applies the correct Opinion Modifiers
- Denmark: Fixed the issue of broken text in the Occupation Branch if Denmark becomes a puppet of Sweden through the Swedish focus "Danish Alignment"
- Germany: Focuses that give air technologies now give bonuses to the correct category when By Blood Alone is active.
- Fixed bug where sometimes Bulgaria could declare war even if it was puppet of other country.
- Updated the Consumer Goods bonus from Italian National Spirits International Day and Peace Keepers of Europe to be in line with the latest Consumer Goods changes.
- Fixed a broken tooltip for Screen Efficiency in the Danish focus "Baltic Sea Domination"
- Norway: Rikstanken now appears in the right Tech when No Step Back is disabled.
- Fixed Greater Denmark flags not showing up.
- Fixed an issue with a number of flags from formable nations and cosmetic tags that were not showing up in Linux.
- Norway: Elias Corneliussen and Henry Diesen now have their correct portraits.
- Switzerland: Added missing tooltip for focus 'Switzerland on the Offense'
- Switzerland: Achievement 'You Shall Not Pass' will no longer be obtained with a non-defensive war.
- Fixed MIO effect preview in Equipment Designer causing the current MIO bonus to upgrade
- Switzerland: Adjusted the Air Volunteer Cap value for the National Spirit 'Volunteer Forces'.
- Soviet Union: Fixed issue preventing the Left Opposition to get some of the weapons that provided by countries via the focus Funds for the Cause.
- Soviet Union: Fixed an issue where the national spirit Anti-Soviet Military Thinking Banned would persists after a peaceful right opposition coup. Now it can be removed with the decision while Beriya is in charge, and will be removed automatically upon completion of the focus Coup d'Etat which establishes a Right Opposition government.
- Division designer can now be moved in front of equipment designers.
- Fixed one issue with overhaul mods crashing
- Republican Spain: Enrique Lster will now properly receive the trait Stalinist, preventing him to join the Anarchist side in the Civil War.
- Special Forces: Fixed unintuitive tooltip in Special Forces doctrine bonuses in Finland, Denmark and Sweden so that they use a more intuitive category that specifies "Doctrine" instead of "Tech".
- Finland: Finnish focus Marine Jaeger Divisions has been fixed so that the SF doctrine bonus only shows up if AAT is enabled. A tech bonus for marine and transport tech has been added regardless of DLC.
- Italy: The focuses Cruiser Submarines and Midget Submarines now have a different small bonus each to the Regia Marina national spirit when Man the Guns is not active.
- MIO: Fixed an issue preventing Italian Ship MIO CRDA to be assigned properly to the starting production lines of Caio Duilio battleships when Man the Guns was not active.
- Soviet Union: Mine Warfare focus now grant mines-related content only when MtG is active. Without MtG, the focus provides a Research bonus and a Doctrine Cost Reduction.
- Denmark can no longer get the achievement "Everything is Awesome" if they get puppeted by Sweden through the focus "Danish Alignment"
- Italy: Focus Intensify Torpedo Manufacturing will grant Research Speed for Torpedoes only when the DLC Man the Guns is active. When it is not active, the focus will grant a doctrine cost reduction bonus instead.
- Changed num_of_factories trigger to not include factories gained from trade or lend-lease.
- Re-open division and equipment design view on peace conference ended
- Ethiopia: Fixed multiple issues with Ethiopian character portraits, which in turn fixes previous issues with missing portraits for promoted generals with BBA, and missing portraits for generated generic characters and alt-hist country leaders without BBA.
- Italia: The description of the focus Moschettieri del Duce will now change based on the government, just like the focus name does.
- Finland: The text of the event "The White Death Embraces Us!" will now talk about "weeks" of combat instead of "months", since it is unlikely that the event will trigger more than a month after the previous event in the chain.
- Latvia: Focus Expand the Women's Aizsargi will no longer attempt to activate the decision Women in the Workforce since most of the time the decision will not be available or even visible, causing errors and resulting in the effect being invalid.
- The Swedish AI on historical mode should no longer guarantee other nations, and be less likely to join other nations
- Prince Frederik will now be called Frederik IX if he becomes king
- Influencing other countries as Denmark is now repeatable
- Tweaked ai weights for certain decisions
- Tweaked ai weights making countries more likely to accept Danish Influence actions
- Certain Focuses won't automatically cancel if you lose a puppet or World Tensions dips below a certain limit
- Remove country flag to make "Sway the Public" decision repeatable
- Fixed a number of scripted ship variants that were invalid or triggered errors: Italian DD Alessandro Poerio Class. Italian Coastal Defense Ship Eritrea Class.
- Fixed scripted Italian Super Heavy Tank variant The Hand of God that became invalid.
- Diplomatic actions: Fixed typo causing missing loc in a diplomatic game rule.
- Fixed typo in the Italian spelling of Repubblica Sociale Italiana.
- If co-op is disabled, random country will not select a country already selected by another player
- Fixed issue with adding more convoys to a sell contract
- Removed negative stat as a positive from design check



That should be it from us, you all have a great day, and a wonderful rest of your week!

Generals.

7 years. It has been 7 glorious years of strategy and conquest, of encirclements and outwitting your opponents. The amount of generals continues to rise as well, hitting a record amount this year here on Steam!

So far in 2023, weve released Arms Against Tyranny, revamping the Nordics and adding so many cool new features like the international market and the special forces doctrines. Before that, we continued our war effort initiative to try and update older content to bring it up to par, fix old bugs that slipped through the cracks, and add so much more to keep the experience fresh.


While your tournaments thrived, we came up with a way to give them even more exposure and rewards by releasing FRONTLINES, our tournament organiser to make sure more people can participate, can watch and can enjoy the action, and to give back to your hard work!


And the War Academy that ended yesterday, bringing a more personal touch from us to it and trying to get into a cool event for those attending and those watching from home alike by live streaming from a CASTLE. (How cool is that?!)


Weve continued to expand on our socials to make sure you get the latest HOI News wherever you can, by continuing to grow on Instagram and Facebook, posting more on Twitter (OR its X now huh) and having our discord reach over 90 THOUSAND members, which is amazing and is thanks to you.

All in All, none of this would be possible without you all, and we appreciate you immensely. Many games plateau or lose their player base, but youve all stuck with us for so many years, it's difficult not to admire your dedication and not be humbled by your continued support.

Heres to this year, and to the future.

-The HOI Team

Generals!

The Steam Autumn Sale is in full swing, and now is the time to grab the content you're missing or need, or perhaps a gift for a friend as well!

And at the same time, the Grandest Lan is taking place, streaming to YouTube and Steam, with some highlights over on Instagram as well, make sure to check them out here below



So here are the sale discounts;

[h3]Base Game[/h3]

• Hearts of Iron IV 70% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Starter Edition 70% off
  

• Hearts of Iron IV: By Blood Alone 30% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: No Step Back 30% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Battle for the Bosporus 50% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Death or Dishonor 60% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Together For Victory 60% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Waking the Tiger 60% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: La Rsistance 50% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Man the Guns 50% off
  

• Hearts of Iron IV: Eastern Front Music Pack50% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Eastern Front Planes Pack50% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Allied Speeches Music Pack 50% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Radio Pack 50% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Sabaton Soundtrack50% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Sabaton Soundtrack Vol. 250% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Allied Armor Pack 50% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Axis Armor Pack 50% off
  

Generals!

Command has sent through the patch for 1.13.5 and with it comes loads of bug fixes, many balance changes to Sweden alongside some to Norway and Germany, plenty of bugfixes and gameplay tweaks!

Read below for the full patch notes!

##################################
# Balance
##################################

- MIOs assigned to research can now be changed in the middle of research.
- Added manpower bonus for RK Nordland focus.
- All MIOs that have participated in a research now get a proportional amount of funds when the research is complete.
- Sweden: Alva and Gunnar Myrdal is now available for all ideologies when completing Stadsbarn.
- Sweden: Hungershield crisis is now active if less than 68% stability (from 65%).
- Sweden: Removing hungershield now gives 120pp as a reward.
- Sweden: Increased Hungershield requirement for removal to 45 (from 40) including trade, or you can remove it by having 25 civilian factories (excluding trade) in your territories, whichever comes first.
- Sweden: Hungershield crisis reduces political power gain by 25% (from -15%).
- Sweden: Vrnplikt conscription increased from 0.5% to 1%.
- Sweden: Reduced G p Blitz tactics and rapid defense force speed slightly.
- Sweden: Totalfrsvar (Total Defense) now requires > 75% DEM support.
- Sweden: The Counter revolution now gives 120pp and neutrality/fascism popularity, depending on what you took before.
- Sweden: Extending the time of preparedness now gives flat 26000 manpower.
- Sweden: Focuses that modify Folkhemmet now Swaps mils/civs bonuses by only 10% (from 16%). War support and stability is still swapped by 16%.
- Sweden: Reduced the bonus speed of Lynx armored cars support companies drastically (no more VolvoVrooms).
- Sweden: Slightly reduced the chance of other Nordics accepting the pressure from Monarchist/Fascist Sweden.
- Sweden: Reduced starting Folkhemmet bonus/malus to +20%/-20% civ/mil speed (from 25%).
- Germany is now slightly happy when Sweden joins the anti soviet pact.
- MIOs: Improved the funds to level up calculation to have a curve and be lower for early levels.
- Sweden: Spheres of influence lasts 2 years instead of 1.5 years.
- Sweden: Increased manpower gained from Nordic volunteers from 2000 per subject to 5000.
- Sweden: Reduced Ebbas law cost factor to 25% (from 33%) and advisor cost to 15% (from 20%).
- Sweden: Swedish volunteer force spirit now reduces required volunteer divisions required by 50% and removes existing neutrality idea.
- Sweden: Deep mining complexes now gives a 1y ahead reduction, reduced from 2y.
- Improved the AI tempates for ENG planes to be better.
- Increased base heavy airframe ranges.
- Reduced agility impact of fighter weapons, reduced weight of large airframe armor.
- Norway: Made Monarchist Demonstrations cost Political Power on top of Manpower.
- Norway: Adjusted Victory points so the south has a bigger impact in capitulation.
- Norway: Adjusted the balance for the Monarchist Demonstration decisions.
- Sweden: Getting the 5th late game research slot now requires 50 controlled factories instead of 35 civs.
- Norway: Focus Expand Hren now unlocks Winter Logistic Battalions so Norwegian troops can now ski their way to victory.
- Sweden: Sweden is now more likely to switch to free trade after 1941-06-01.
- Norway: Increased the cost of Historical Preparation decisions.
- Added Winter Attrition Reduction to New Hren National Spirit.
- Sweden: Nordic Defence Council puppet now has 0.35% CIC to overlord (from 5%) and 65% MIC to overlord (from 100%).
- Sweden: Reduced requirements for going down the Nordic Defence Council path.
- Sweden: Increased base stability by 4%.
- Sweden: Defense act now gives 3% stability.
- Sweden: Weapons contract now gives 3% War support.
- Sweden: Reduced required mils to complete Standardize equipment from 17 mils to 10 mils.
- Sweden: Fifth research slot now only requires 80 factories (including trade) instead of several late game focuses.
- Sweden: Reduced time for some focuses.
- Sweden: Old enemy stirs requires 8% WS, from 10%.
- Improved agility from jets, jets now cost chromium instead of tungsten, fighter weapons weight balance pass.
- Airframes increase in weight as they get more advanced.
- Slight improvement for germany air fighter presets.
- Norway: Added Army Chief role to Jonas Lie.
- Norway: Added Military high Command role to Henry Diesen.
- Norway: Added Chief of Army and High Command roles to Vidkun Quisling.


##################################
# Gameplay
##################################

- The new order now has a cosmetic tag.
- Sweden: Added a new late game Swedish formable and King Gustaf can now get the eternal trait.
- Sweden: Added strings notifying what variables affect the outcome of Monarchists/Fascists takeovers of the Nordics.
- Sweden: Now starts with heavy ship hull unlocked at game start.
- Sweden: Added conscription trait to Nordic Defense council.
- Sweden: Christian Gunter is now available at game start again.
- Sweden: Beneath sticks and stones no longer requires having the Ranger trait.
- Sweden: Added the king as a high cost advisor if he is not a country leader.
- Sweden: NDC Can now create faction if needed.
- Luxembourg: Germany will now attack the Soviets if Luxembourg manages to survive until the end of time.
- Norway can now get some of the generic political events after a certain point.


##################################
# Stability & Performance
##################################

- Added missing on map buildings, including a missing port in Stralsund that would crash the game if built.
- Fixed a rare crash occurring when a player lagging behind the host in MP tries to interact with a dead Air Wing or Air Group.
- Fixed a CTD on macOS related to large maps (multithreaded pathfinder running out of stack space).
- Sped up hourly move order revalidation by using all work threads.


##################################
# UI
##################################

- Equipment tooltip in the buyer's view of the International Market now also shows which country originally created the equipment (if different from the seller).
- Fix Military equipment production lines with MIO and collapsed making them draggable again.
- Support brigade 3D models now show up in the Division Designer.
- Background of the MIO detail window now changes depending on the MIO type.
- Fixed mission icons for planes being hidden when using filters.
- Equipment stats in legacy designers are now shown the same way as in the new designers.
- Upgrade button in the MIO History tab is now disabled if the latest bonus has already been applied.
- Added more information in the delayed tooltip in the MIO Details screen.


##################################
# AI
##################################

- Changing UK's armor division target templates to fix bugs and generally improve it.
- Adding info about AI target template replace_with chain to ai_templates debug IMGUI.
- Fixed bugs in how the AI selects best templates to produce and design.
- Soviet will no longer try sending every convoy it has to deliver supplies to Vladivostok.
- Task forces will engage faster and AI will cover slightly more naval regions per task force.
- Added better logic for AI buying and selling convoys (now based on ratio of total owned convoys instead of absolute number).
- Fixed bug where AI was so concentrated on constructing buildings in territory they didn't control that they forgot to build other things. (looking at you, democratic Germany).
- Fixed a bug that caused Germany to research airplane modules when they actually wanted to research radar.
- AI strategy 'research_tech' can now take technology name as argument instead of only technology index (which was bug-prone).


##################################
# Modding
##################################

- Fixed the auto unassignment of MIOs on production line when over task capacity.
- The game will now warn you on startup if you forget to setup a port building in the nudger for a coastal province.
- Added optional 'mark_older_equipment_obsolete' argument to add_equipment_variant effect.
- Added debug IMGUI for seeing music player information.
- Added documentation.info file to ai_templates folder.


##################################
# Bugfix
##################################

- Fixed description of the focus Keepers of the North to emphasize the "Nordic" aspect of it.
- Fixed the typos in tooltips related to International Market content.
- Added an event to proclaim Greater Denmark as well as events for Denmark to join democratic or imperial Germany.
- Sweden is no longer known as Sweden when doing RK Nordland and The New Order.
- Fix a bug where resources from overseas colonies do not need convoys to be transported.
- Fixed Steal Industrial Blueprints operations that were giving twice the tech bonuses.
- Fixed missing land policies for some tank MIO's.
- Fixed issue that made Polish Foreign MIOs disappear after completing the focus Adaptive Designs.
- Fix of bug where exiled templates and units were not transferred to host after the exile government ceased to exist.
- Implemented Norwegian tank and plane icons into the tank and plane designers.
- Fixed Rikstanken icon when creating the equipment variant.
- Added a version of the Danish 'Declaration of Neutrality' National Spirit for when 'By Blood Alone' is not activated. Also fixed the focus 'Securing Swedish Steel' so that Denmark doesn't puppet Sweden without sending the appropriate event.
- Fix crash on Mac & Linux when adding Traits to MIO queue.
- Fixed a tooltip showing the wrong number for overlord drift in all languages.
- Showing obsolete branches will no longer overlap each other and the appropriate focuses are no longer available if you are a subject.
- Fixed several issues with description texts for events and focuses for Denmark.
- Added a decision to request the return of Greenland from the USA, as well as tweaked the decision to request the return of the Faroes from the UK.
- Sweden: Made Rickard Sandler remove neutrality spirit, and simplified his requirements.
- Sweden: Swedish volunteer corps no longer gives equipment to Finland if at war with Finland.
- Sweden: Fixed an issue where Germany would not blow up Swedish factories if Sweden picked Allow Landsverk to operate independently, also added a less confusing string.
- Fixed a rare crash when an army group is deleted due to losing the last units in its armies.
- Fix Divisions reinforcement, now they will be reinforced with equipment with better MIO bonuses.
- Finland: Join Comintern Focus name is now more dynamic.
- Fix for the magic school bus counting days badly.
- Finland: Join Allies Focus name is now more dynamic.
- Finland: Join Axis Focus name is now more dynamic.
- Fix of exploit where players in coop could get back more equipment from the market stockpile than stored there.
- Finland: Minor tooltip improvements for Foreign Armor and Foreign Aircraft focuses.
- Finland: The tooltip of the focus Approach the Soviets will no longer mention the Finnish civil war if it has already happened.
- Finland: Finnish AI will no longer accept the Soviet territorial demands in the Soviet Ultimatum when historical focus is on, unless they are a Soviet ally or puppet.
- Norway: Fixed issue where Historical Quisling would start reviving Norgesveldet.
- Added several new state and province names if Denmark (or another "viking" nation") controls certain states.
- Baltics: Estonian and Latvian AIs should no longer cave in to the Soviets on historical setting, ensuring now that they will be totally integrated by the Soviet AI on historical.
- Fixed the bug where showing subsidy tooltip could cause an out of sync.
- Fixed bug where the mechanized infantry battalion wasn't unlocked after researching the technology.
- Finland: Focus Mineral Wealth Development will no longer require Finland to be in a faction, but to control (or have a puppet controlling) any Nordic state producing steel, chromium, tungsten or aluminum.
- Finland: Fixed scope issues in the event chain triggered by Mineral Wealth Development, where it looked like Finland would receive Finnish aid and that Finland would grant resource rights to Finland on a state in exchange. Now the appropriate faction leader should be displayed in the events, and the events would only be triggered if Finland is in a faction but is not the faction leader.
- MIO: Soviet naval MIOs will no longer have both Man the Guns and NO-Man-the-Guns versions of Plant 370 and Mariupol Plant traits when Man the Guns is not active.
- Finland: Fix typo in tooltip in the focus A Cry for Help.
- MIO: Soviet MIO traits can no longer be taken more than once by different MIOs. Each trait can now be completed once by a single MIO.
- Heavy gantry crane policy now targets the correct aircraft and MIOs.
- Norway: Norsk Hydro now has the Industry filter tag.
- Norway: Removed Political Filter tag from 'Expand Military Industry'.
- Balanced the AI weights for countries to accept a Danish event to join factions.
- Fixed crash when canceling a production line while MIO Roster screen is opened.
- Jan Mayen rises to its rightful place on the world stage!
- Norway: Custom decision costs now have the icons in the right position.
- Sweden: Fixed several issues with the Narvik solution.
- Sweden: Fixed an issue where severe lack of ammunition would not give the proper maluses.
- Sweden: Swedish volunteer corps can no longer be taken while at war with Finland.
- Sweden: Scania Vabis Armored Car MIO is now LaR DLC locked.
- Greece: Stratagems no longer show for all countries.
- Norway: Fixed various missing capitalizations in focuses.
- Norway: Power to the Royal Guard now gives proper bonuses to Special Forces.
- Norway: Doctrine tooltips now provide the name for Offensive Doctrines national focus bonuses.
- Norway: Doctrine tooltips now provide name for Rikstaken national focus bonuses.
- If Denmark becomes a puppet through their National Spirit "Declaration of Neutrality" they will not be able to join a faction until the right criteria are met..
- Installing a plenipotentiary in puppet Denmark will no longer switch out the overlord's country leader.
- Tweaked AI weights for some Occupation Balance of Power Decisions for Denmark.
- Sweden: Added localization improvements for Rationing decisions and fixed a bug where Gengas would repeat its timeout mission.
- Sweden: Fixed several lowercase errors that should have been uppercase.
- Denmark no longer switches ideologies before installing overlord's plenipotentiary.
- Adjusted some incorrect Special Forces Cap modifiers in Norway, Switzerland and the Joint Focus Tree.
- Norway: Fixed issue where Quisling coup branch wouldn't hide when going monarchist.
- Norway: Fixed issue where Trotsky would go to the Democratic side when the Communist civil war starts.
- Production Output bonus now works correctly.
- Fixed a bug where Preemptive Invasion of Iran focus of Soviet Union caused Finland to be attacked by Allies.
- Sweden: Fixed the wrong icon being used for Swedish Trucks in the production line.
- Sweden: Liquidate the Monarchy will now liquidate the Monarchy by removing the king advisor as it is supposed to.
- Sweden: Random AI now disallows achievement #SwedishBiasCorrected.
- Sweden: Joining the Anti Soviet pact targets all Soviets countries they have the big Soviet Kerfuffle.
- Sweden: Fixed some spirit issues with the 39 start bookmark.
- Norway: Added a way to remove Christian Laake as the Norwegian Fascists.
- Changed music player shuffle algorithm to weighted random (but avoiding recently played songs).
- Denmark: Field Marshal William Wain Prior's name is now visible.
- Denmark: Tweaked AI weights to make the AI more likely to do certain occupation decisions and event options.
- Forming either the North Sea or the Baltic Sea Empires now only requires that you control the Mainland of Denmark and only gives you cores on Mainland Denmark.
- Added a custom truck production icon for Denmark.
- Added "Will lead to war" warnings several Danish focuses.
- Fixed tooltip saying player could naval transfer to shoreline province without naval base.
- Fixed use-after-free that could lead to CTD on end of peace conference.
- Fixed CTD on resync when international market is open.
- Fixed stat issue with tank designer comparison.
- Fixed repair tooltips estimated time of completion.
- Allow factory conversion map icon during construction view.
- Norway: Trotsky finally goes to the correct side of the Communist civil War.
- Fixed production penalty modifier signedness. Can't be penalized from modifier without having penalty.
- Add mutually exclusive icons only if the trait is visible.
- Fixed CTD on steam callback during session change.
- Fixed issue with disabling music track enable button.
- Norway: Alt Democratic preparations decisions now take time to complete as intended.
- MIO: Fixed the research category of the Submarine MIO so that it can be assigned to research of Submarine tech and related modules only.
- Sweden: NDC no longer transfers its puppets armies to Sweden but creates 5 elite divisions for every NDC member joined, to avoid teleporting armies.
- Sweden: Made it easier to invite members to the Scandinavian defense union.
- Sweden: Fixed a bug where subjects would get the generic focus tree if puppeted.
- Norway: Fixed issue where Fascist Branch would disappear if focus 'Arrest Quisling' was bypassed.
- Fixed the American handover of Greenland back to Denmark and the disappearing Greenland Patrol National Spirit.
- The Occupation Law National Spirit for Denmark will be removed when Denmark no longer is a subject no matter the circumstances.
- The Butter Front National Spirit will no longer disappear if the overlord controls mainland Denmark.
- Made the Telegram Crisis Event more likely to happen.
- Norway: Country-wide preparation decisions in preparation decisions for the Alt-democratic path will still be available during war, as long as there's Country Preparedness.
- Norway: Made it less likely the Soviet Union will reject events sent from the Stalinist branch of the Focus Tree.
- Fix of bug where applying effect set_garrison_strength on state without resistance caused CTD.
- Fixed bug which led to players unlock mutually exclusive doctrines.
- Finland: If Arms Against Tyranny dlc is active, when Estonia causes the fascist civil war in Finland, the fascist side will get the Finnish focus tree if they win the civil war.
- Denmark will now be able to join factions, drop their occupation name, and get their original Balance of Power through peace conferences if being released as independent during the right circumstances.
- World tension modifiers for subjects now apply in both directions.
- Sweden: Fixed an issue where wargoal against the Baltics would expire.
- Denmark's Focus Tree will now show all branches, including the Occupation Branch, if the setting to show obsolete branches are enabled and Denmark is a puppet.
- Grumman smooth finish trait now affects CV light aircraft and naval bombers.
- Finland: Keepers of the North focus will now include Karelia if it exists, and states transferred to Finland via event will also get the compliance bonus promised in the focus.
- Norway - Fixed issue where Quisling has a generic portrait without Arms Against Tyranny DLC.
- Germany - Fixed issue where form Reichskommissariat Norwegen decision would require a Swedish State.
- Fixed issue where 'Operation Gunnerside' would not work with Arms Against Tyranny enabled.
- Denmark white peacing every nation its overlord is at war with when it becomes a puppet won't trigger the "You Shall Not Pass" achievement.
- Norway: Fixed issue in Monarchist Decisions where you should use National Interventions while demonstrating in states if more than one was active and any of them was completed earlier.
- Norway: Fixed missing icon for 'Investing in Norway' National Spirit.
- Nordic Shared Focus Tree: Fixed missing icon for 'Economic Cooperation' National Spirit.
- Sweden: Fixed issue where supporting communist civil war in Norway causes the communist side to have a generic leader.
- Norway: Quisling will no longer trigger his coup if the country is in a civil war already, regardless of origin.
- Removed World Tension limit to Rally the Nation for fascist Denmark.
- Norway: Changed the Nasjonale Regjerings color so it's not so close to Soviet Union's red.
- Norway: Focus 'Reawaken the Permanent Revolution' now creates either the Norintern or the Joint Faction depending on conditions.
- Divisions can no longer get citation by performing paratroop order on own territory.
- Fixed marine commandos so they can retreat from coastal areas. Can click on province with naval port to move troops from a naval port. Marine commandos can now path to fallback lines.


That's all for us today, we appreciate all the bug reports and input on changes that continue to help make the game great! You all have a lovely continued week, and an even better day!

Generals!

We have been hard at work to squash all of Arms Against Tyranny's pesky bugs, but we've also taken the liberty to do a small balance pass as well as add a small surprise feature for your MIO's, so make sure to read below for all of the info!





################################################################
######## Hotfix 1.13.4 "Stella Polaris" #########
################################################################

##################################
# Surprise Feature
##################################

- Military Industrial Organizations now have a queue function, allowing you to pre-select which traits to unlock and in which order. As the MIO then gains points over the game, traits from the queue will automatically unlock. Nb: Policies still require manual intervention.

##################################
# Balance
##################################

- Nordic defense council puppets can now remove the Centralized Nordic Army command once Sweden completes the Nordic Defense Complex focus.
- Sweden: Fika with the king unleashes his true warrior potential, removing his negative PP gain.
- Sweden: Can no longer have Birger Furugrd in both leading role and advisor role, increased recruitable pop from 5% to 10%.
- Sweden: Reduced bonus from hygienic housing from 12% to 10%.
- Sweden: Jgartrupper focus for Sweden now give at max 4 generals Ranger trait, instead of all.
- Norway: Reduced the amount of military factories awarded in Focus 'Expand Military Industry'.
- Norway: Made it more likely for the Soviet Union to accept Norway into the Comintern when the 'Join the Comintern' Focus is completed and when Trotsky is sent to the Soviet Union.
- Norway: Made it so the focus 'A New Norway' requires the 'Independent Norway' National Spirit, and completing said focus now improves it.
- Norway will regain the National Spirit 'Independent Norway' if it stops being a subject.
- Returned air wing deployment to 2 days due to unintended interactions.
- Norway: Reduced War Support requirement for Focus 'Shield of the North' and changed its War Support reward to Stability.
- Norway: Changed the decision 'Request Reinstatement' to require not being Capitulated plus controlling Oslofjord, instead of requiring controlling all states.
- Norway: focus 'Revive the Pomor Trade' now requires Troms and Finnmark.
- Fixed wrong values for agility on agility MIOs.

##################################
# Gameplay
##################################

- Added text describing ways to increase the acceptance rate of the Nordic Defence Council.
- Sweden guaranteeing a country now increases the chance of them accepting an invitation to the Nordic Defence Council.
- Flipping fascist as Sweden now spawns some Militias.
- Nordic defense council focus now gives funds instead of PP.
- Improved and redid some text to be more appropriate for the Nordic Defense Council Branch.
- Nordic Defence Council puppets now become automatically set as a NDC puppet if puppeted by Sweden while it is going down the Nordic Defence Council Route.
- The 'Quisling's Coup' focus branch in Norway will now be hidden if the focus 'Arrest Quisling' is completed.
- Added flavor rank names for Finnish Division Commanders.

##################################
# Stability & Performance
##################################

- Improved the performance of evaluating several costly state decisions.

##################################
# UI
##################################

- Removed erroneous use of The for country name in a window.
- Fixed localization error on Soviet decision.
- Added sub unit trait modifiers to effect description.
- Removed map icon adjustment. Fixed overlapping issue.
- Added creator flag to equipment entries in buyer's view of the International Market (if seller is different from creator).
- Make consistent the decimal numbers for the international market equipment costs.
- Avoid overlapping texts in the equipment designer stats grid.
- Avoid unnecessary long tooltips detailing all possible equipments when attaching a policy to an MIO.
- When building forts in construction, we now ignore clicks on naval and air bases. No more construction roulette (maybe?).

##################################
# AI
##################################

- Tweaked AI division production to reduce the time they aren't recruiting any divisions while the war is still ramping up.
- Prevent summed diplomatic AI strategy values (e.g. contain, befriend, etc.) from being negative before using them in a bunch of places where negative values didn't make sense.
- The Soviet Union will no longer try sending every convoy it has to deliver supplies to Vladivostok.

##################################
# Modding
##################################

- Fixed CTD on hot-reloading AI strategy plans.
- Target_state triggers can now be restricted to owned states, controlled states, and continents to lessen their impact on performance.
- Fixed a bug where reloading focuses by console command or changing the focus scripts led to a crash on a new game in the same session.
- If the Defines setting for the cost of assigning MIO is 0 then the cost is always 0.
- Added hot-reload functionality to ai_template script files.


##################################
# Bugfix
##################################

- Norway: Fixed issue where Historical Quisling would start reviving Norgesveldet.
- Fixed a bug where showing subsidy tooltips could cause out of sync.
- Fixed bug where the mechanized infantry battalion wasn't unlocked after researching the technology.
- Fixed a bug in the previous open beta build where the on map factory conversion button wouldn't work.
- We added a new logic so variants get made obsolete when designing new ones with the same role.
- When you get a new chassis the old ones are made obsolete.
- Removed generic duplicated illusive gentlemen for Sweden.
- The King in council now says "Royalists" becomes ruling party instead of Hgern.
- Karelian Uprising can now also include Karjala and Salla states, if appropriate.
- Fixed issues with Karelian Uprising during the Soviet Civil War. Karelia will now start the uprising at war with Stalin's side in the civil war, and the other side will decide if they want to declare war on Karelia too or not, just like with other nationalist uprisings.
- Fixed issue where tech categories for some Tank and Motorized MIOs were targeting Armored Cars when they shouldn't.
- Fixed double "League" in League of Nations Arms Resolution.
- Vilho Annala's Personal Agenda tooltip now clearly specifies that "Strong Nation" requires 300k+ Manpower in the field.
- Added localization for Militia tech.
- Fixed an issue with Militias not working as intended for Sweden.
- Fixed an issue where the Nordic Defense army complex would not set a country to have extensive conscription.
- Improved the tooltip for Finnish Influence in the Baltic focus, to name the appropriate Finnish faction, if any.
- It is no longer possible to kick capitulated countries from a faction.
- Sweden will no longer steal every unit leader from Nordic Defense Council puppets since certain unit leaders can also be country leaders (Looking at you Mannerheim) but rather a subset of generals.
- Nordic Defense Council puppets no longer need to have their focus set to generic.
- From now on, the planning factor dynamic modifier tooltip will support scripted localization.
- Renamed the modifier for changing production cost at production line level to avoid confusion with the one at equipment variant level
- Added missing foreign MIOs for Ethiopia: Fairey Aviation, Avia, Bofors, Volvo and Landsverk.
- Decisions to invite MIOs have been improved and some issues fixed so that now they show the flag of the country owning the original MIO, and the majority of their requirements have been standardized for all MIOs and all countries.
- The German AI is now less super-angry at Sweden if they go fascist or monarchist.
- Fixed missing bracket in the Bofors MIO.
- Improvements to Urbanization decisions trigger performance.
- Germany going to war with Sweden now cancels all resource rights in Vsterbotten.
- Fixed British MIO Fairchild Aircraft requiring the wrong focus.
- Fixed the Portuguese focus Portuguese Artillery showing the wrong MIO in the tooltip, instead of Portuguese FMA.
- Fixed issue with the three unique traits of Italian MIO Officine Meccaniche. Now they have the intended requirements, are granted the desired MIO research bonus (+5% per trait) and their name shows the equipment they target. The tooltip of the focus that auto-completes these traits, New Ricostruzione Industriale, should also be clearer now.
- Limited the number of countries that can puppet Denmark through its Declaration of Neutrality National Spirit; a country now must be stronger and nearby Denmark for the Danish to immediately surrender.
- Offer military access now also gives an opinion bonus, the same as Request Military Access.
- If Denmark was puppetted through the peace conference or other circumstances other than the Declaration of Neutrality-spirit they can now be called into wars and will be more cooperative with their overlord.
- Added clearer text that Denmark will lose off-map Civs if the Trade Deal is canceled.
- Fixed focus tooltip in Keepers of the North and Keepers of the Baltic Countries, now mentioning that Nordic/Baltic independent allies will also receive the annexation event.
- Fixed certain events triggered by Keepers of the North mentioning Baltic instead of Nordic.
- Fixed a couple of tooltips in the Keepers of the North and Keepers of the Baltic event chain to better display the actual potential event option's outcome.
- Fixed the correct pronouns in 2 events.
- Oslo can no longer be prepared in the Rouse the Proletariat Decisions.
- Made the Norwegian prepare state and deploy preparations in state more efficiently.
- Fixed missing capitalization in some Norwegian militia division names.
- Norma Projektilfabrik now gives +1 mil factory if completed while democratic Norway has a civil war, whereas it previously targeted fascist Norway.
- The Defend Finland-decision can now only be taken if Finland has a defensive war to avoid continuation wars shenanigans.
- The opposing side in the fascists civil war for Sweden will no longer use fascists Militia.
- Made the Communist Sweden AI path never accidentally pick the old enemy stirs.
- Made it so Joint Focus 'Fighter command' can require either Small Fighters or Heavy Fighters.
- Norwegian Advisor Peder Anker Wedel-Jarlsberg will no longer be available if the Royal Family is sent to Denmark.
- Sending Trotsky to the Soviet Union from Norway now awards the correct Opinion Modifier in the Soviet Union.
- Fixed pathfinding and movement options for exiled divisions.
- Fixed issue where changing the division template could delete the unit.
- Fixed issue where loading a game didn't reset the observer country for the tech tree.
- Fixed CTD on resync due to OoS when IM was opened.
- If master has totally cancelled the production, and progress has been made, leave at least 1 level on the subject side, so they don't loose the progress in case they did lots of contribution. When Master decide to build the same thing there again, we will link back to that existing production line.
- Made the BoP Decision "Speak out in Favor of Rearmament" available after completing the "Unify the Right" focus. Made the tooltips for "Seek Industrial Investments" and "Seek Military Investments" more clear. Removed the mutual exclusivity between "Agricultural Reinvestments" and "Industrial Reinvestments", and "Invest in Research and Development" and "Increase Industrial Production". Also balanced the National Spirits "Danish Produce" and "Improved Logistics".
- Privacy policy will now be displayed in the in-game language.
- Fixed an issue where the USSR could snatch the Baltics from another country that was occupying it.
- Assigned the correct equipment icon for early and basic Norwegian fighters.
- Fixed issue where deploying militias in state in Democratic Historical Norway would block from using any other deployment decisions in that state.
- Fixed issue where Norwegian Decision 'Integrate Militias' would add convoys instead of subtracting.
- Fixed wrong template counters for militias and integrated militias.
- Fixed overlap with the Joint Branch in Norwegian Focus Tree.
Norway - Focus 'Invite Soviet Designers now requires a Communist faction leader to exist
- When using auto-upgrade for modules and chassis in equipment designer, new variants will keep the MIO assigned when it generates a new variant
- Fixed Baltic countries starting the game in the 1939 bookmark with No Step Back national spirits when No Step Back is not active.
- Made the Return of the King-civil war harder to cheese.
- Fixed wrong focus check in the subsidies effects of Chinese focus Purchase Tanks.
- Fixed some characters that should not be available to communist Finland being available if Finland turned communist via other methods than focus tree.
- Akseli Anttila will no longer be available to the social democrats as a general.
- Erkki Raappana and Emil Vaateri will no longer be promoted to a corgi.
- Fix for Support Norwegian communist bypassing when it's not supposed to.
- Fixed an error where Volvo TLV-141 would have a wrong icon.
- Changed Norwegian Exiled decisions to require being In Exile rather than Capitulated.
- Norway: Fixed issue where Exile preparations event triggers when returning to Norway instead of when it goes into exile.
- Stop Youtube videos when closing the in-game browser.
- Fixed issue where Norwegian focus 'Co-opt Secret Army' didn't give the units shown in the effect.
- Fixed issue where Norwegian focus 'Fascist Invasion of Norway' wouldn't autocomplete if focus 'Arrest Quisling' was completed.
- Finland should no longer join war against the Allies when joining the Germans in Barbarossa for the Continuation War, they will only declare war on the Soviet faction.
- Germany should no longer join the Italo-Ethiopian War before World War 2.
- Removed check for embargoes between Finland and Sweden in the Finnish focus Foreign Armor, now the check is the embargo is checked between any potential equipment provider and Finland after completing the focus and only when BBA dlc is active.
- Fixing issue where Norwegian focus 'Revive Pomor Trade' gave rewards regardless of who controlled the mentioned states.
- Fixes to the Fascist and Communist Finnish AI plans to enable Finnish AI to properly prepare for the civil war and have an easier time winning it.
- Fixed old script issue that prevented every country's AI from hiring a fascist demagogue unless the country had completed the focus America First.
- Fix political screen to show MIOs in MP for clients that do not possess Arms Against Tyranny
- Fixed planes, infantry weapons and artillery icons for Norway.
- Fixed rare CTD when trying to access non-existing trade influence data.
- The dynamic tag in the Finnish communist and fascist civil wars will now properly receive a copy of the Finnish MIOs at their current size when the civil war starts, and will get back the Finnish focus tree in case they win the civil war.
- 1939 Bookmark now will apply +4 size levels to every MIO in a major country, and +3 size levels to every MIO in minor countries. This is additional to any extra funds/levels/traits possibly coming from focus completion.
- Support divisions with multiplicative battalion modifiers will no longer be further multiplied by the number of division types of the target type in the template.
- Added musical scores to appropriate Danish events and adjusted their probability
- MIO assigned to a research doesn't get removed anymore if that research is replaced
- Fixed bug where the game crashes when France is about to be capitulated while being the last major in the faction and Vichy France events trigger.
- If equipment bonus description is the only description. Remove first newline addition.
- Made it less likely for the USA to take Greenland if the Danish overlord isn't fascist or communist and not a major power.
- Removed extra comma from timed idea effect.
- Fixed tooltip in intel ledger for navy count.
- Fixed tooltip when paradropping into impassable terrain.
- Fixed modifiers being removed when switching view in country army view.
- Fixed issue where canceling war goal justification would not update world threat correctly.
- Fixed missing MIOs in Belgium.
- Added initial industrial manufacturers for Danish equipment.
- Norway: Demoted several Norwegian Heads of Navy to Admirals instead.
- Added missing roles for the Norwegian Royal Family.
- Trotsky now acknowledges Mexico as the place he arrives at after leaving the farm.
- Tooltip for Norwegian Focus 'King's No' will not show decimals anymore.
- Added convoy icons to decision and made them block the other option when active.
- Fixed requirements (have a buildable light/medium tank) and adds a tooltip to inform the player that recon will be added if that tech is researched.
- Fixed missing loc for the research bonuses Germany gets from the Italian-German research pact.
- Fixed the one word description of the popup tooltip for aircraft research.
- Fixed a small typo in the event where the owner of Palestine hands it over to the Papal State.
- Added scripted loc to the focus "The Fight Against Stalinism" so that it changes depending on the ideology (and leader in the case of communism) of the Soviet Union.
- Fixed missing loc in tooltip of "Invoke the Alliance of 1373".
- Fixed missing word in the event "The Swiss Confederation seeks secret pact".
- Adds scripted loc to have different texts for the event "The Fall of London" for the USSR/Russia dependent on ideology and leader.
- Updated the tutorial hint for MIO about PP cost on production lines, which have been cut.
- Changed the Back button to a Apply button on Custom Game rules, because Back is ambiguous on if the changes are applied or not.
- Fixed some wheels looking weird on a few tanks when the move animation is playing.
- Adjusted the width and location of the text in Swedish decision Train the Sheltered.



That's it from us, we appreciate the feedback, and as always if you have more suggestions make sure to leave some over on the Forums for the Developers to see :)

Have a great day!

Hello there!

I hope you are all enjoying the new expansion. we've identified two issues that need a quick fix. Rest assured, this hotfix won't impact your 1.13.2 save games!

The update will be available on the Microsoft Store at the earliest opportunity.


[h3]Bugfixes[/h3]
- Support company bonuses to battalions should now properly work, even with several sources of additive and multiplicative bonuses

Hello there!

I hope you are all enjoying the new expansion. we've identified two issues that need a quick fix. Rest assured, this hotfix won't impact your saved games!

The update will be available on the Microsoft Store at the earliest opportunity.


[h3]Bugfixes[/h3]
- Fix political screen to show MIOs in MP for clients that do not possess Arms Against Tyranny
- Support divisions with multiplicative battalion modifiers will no longer be further multiplied by the number of division types of the target type in the template. Tl;dr: no mega artillery stacking with rangers now.

Generals!

Arms Against Tyranny is here and now playable, so make sure to update your games and get working on those Nordic playthroughs- but before you do, let's take a look at the Release Trailer~

[previewyoutube=UO_ZBLd_wgw;full][/previewyoutube]
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2183930/Expansion__Hearts_of_Iron_IV_Arms_Against_Tyranny/


With the release of this expansion, we've seen performance improvements and quite a few changes as well towards balance, bugfixing and so much more, to review the Changelog check here!

There are some known issues detailed in This Post as well, and we are working diligently to resolve them as soon as possible :)

The Rollback Version for 1.12 will also be available later today as we work on the rollout!

Good Luck to you all in your playthroughs of Arms Against Tyranny, everyone, and if you want to talk all things AAT or play some Multiplayer with others as it's the best its ever been with some of your favourite mods already updated on release, make sure to check out the Discord below!

Generals!

The day is soon upon us, with Arms Against Tyranny and the Stella Polaris update sealed up and ready to ship. The development process for AAT has been a pleasure to be part of, and the team have acquitted themselves admirably throughout - were all keen to see what you think of our efforts, and hope you enjoy what we have to offer.

The coming weeks also mark a period of post-release support for us. We prefer to remain reactive to the communitys needs here: creating an immediate post-release roadmap actually makes it harder for us to do that. So instead, Im here to explain that well be here maintaining an active presence, and will react quickly as needed and as time and resources allow.

In time-honored fashion, were releasing the patch notes to you early, so you can theorycraft, eagerly anticipate, or commiserate the fixing of your favorite exploits a day or two early. As usual, missing notes can happen, and if we find these they will be added to a spoiler at the end of this post as time goes on.

The 1.13.0 Update & 1.13.1 will be released at the same time.

Note that Localisation for the Changed Log will be added later in the day, and if you missed the Dev Diary that went along with this, you can check it out here!


################################################################
######## Hotfix 1.13.1 "Stella Polaris" #########
################################################################


##################################
# Balance
##################################

- Improved light airframe MIO bonuses to air attack and air defence
- Removed speed buff from agility fighter initial trait
- Reduced air attack bonuses for agility MIO
- Reduced starting civ for SWE by 1 in Vsterbotten
- national_socialist_veterinarian and Ardent Conservative now give flat conscription instead of conscription_factor and military conscription speed construction factor

##################################
# Gameplay
##################################

- Added design companies to some pre-designed equipment for Germany, France, Britain, and the Soviet Union
- Folkhemmet is no longer removed when going fascists or monarchist

##################################
# UI
##################################

- Fix of the bug where dynamic modifiers from Nordic Joint focus tree showed wrong text in other parts of UI.
- Fix of bug where plane designer did not update the sprites on auto design.
- From now the country leader traits in diplomacy screen support scripted localization.
- Hardness change in the equipment designer is now displayed as percentage
- Display the correct inter war chassis in research window
- Fixed several text boxes that were too small for non-english localization

##################################
# Modding
##################################

- Added shorthand alias "roic" for console command research_on_icon_click

##################################
# Performance & Stability
##################################

- Fixed a rare crash triggered when a unit is standing on a province involved in a border war without being a participant
-Fixed map overhaul mods crashing on Mac when they went over a certain amount of province/borders. This should address the issue of most major total conversion mods failing to start on Mac.

##################################
# AI
##################################

- Soviet AI sells less rifles and slightly increases armor production
- Non-aggression pact also positively affects acceptance score when purchasing equipment, not only market access
- AI groups equipment by archetype when deciding whether to sell it, instead of per individual equipment variant
- AI will now also buy convoys if needed
- AI should no longer use division templates that are marked as obsolete for suppression, plus added an extra cavalry battalion to the generic suppression target template

##################################
# Bugfix
##################################

- Do not show unactive MIOs when filtering for MIOs that can spend trait points
- NOR: Enabled several post-capitulation focuses.
- Disallow changing the attached policy if a MIO is not available
- Swiss MIO Hispano-Suiza will now require Switzerland to be at peace with Spain, like every other foreign MIO.
- Replaced national spirit Finnish Army by Repurposed Small Industries in the 1939 bookmark window.
- Fixed wrong BoP value for Finland in the 1939 bookmark.
- Fixed rare CTD when opening MIO History tab
- Fixed manpower laws being available when it was not supposed to be available
- Added Danish tank icons for when NSB is disabled
- Fix crash when opening Air Theaters after a civil war
- Fixed wrong icon name for Rikstanken tech icon
- Soviet Union will now lose any claims in Finland after being forced to peace out, and Soviet AI should no longer want to justify on Finland right after it.
- Fix of rare crash caused by border wars.
- Fixed Petsamo not being transferred to Soviet Union after they force Finland to peace out, even though the event tooltip said Petsamo would be transferred.
- Decisions to Fight Alongside our Comrades should no longer become available right after activating them and having the country intervening in the civil war.
- Prevented Finland from taking both decisions to "Request an Armistice with Moscow" and "Offer to Switch Sides in Return for Peace" simultaneously. Now one decision will hide while the other one is ongoing, and the hidden decision will come back if peace was not achieved.
- Fix role icons for planes and ships presets
- Added Danish air plane icons to the air plane designer for Denmark and added the Danish motorized infantry icon to the production line
- Added missing icons for Joint Alliance National Spirits
- Fixed issue with Norwegian Focus Lynrytter's Subsidy
- Adding missing Focus Filters to Joint Focus Tree
- Fixing missing icon for Joint Amphibious Effort National Spirit
- Few MIO traits with no parents and no prerequisites have been moved to the top row of an MIO tree.
- Added the correct starting National Spirits in the Bookmarks for the 1936 and 1939 starts respectively
- Added a missing tooltip claryfing that the Focus "Unify the Right" unlocks a Balance of Power Decision
- In Joint Focus trees, a country cannot start anymore a focus that has is mutually-exclusive with another focus that was already started
- Removed the Danish Balance of Power mechanic without "Arms Against Tyranny"
- More Finnish focuses will now require Finland to be independent.
- Countries with Joint Focuses in their tree but not part of the Joint Focus Alliance should not see the progress of the Alliance
- Added subsidies to the international market for various nations
- Fixed issues with Norwegian Territorial Claims focuses sending ultimatums to the wrong country.
- Removed the option to make Trotsky available from the first event of his chain if the player is going Stalinist
- NOR: Tweaked post-capitulation focuses for Norway. Added several offmap dockyards to the tree to allow for in-exile convoy production.
- Fixed issue with Arrest Quisling requiring the wrong focus to bypass
- Fixed missing names in Icelandic tech and doctrine bonuses from focus tree.
- Tweaked the Danish AI to be more prone to engage with the Balance of Power when under Occupation
- Added requirement for Germany to exist and be fascist for Norwegian focus 'Invite Fascist Engineers'
- Fixed issue where Norwegian Focus 'Proactive Defense' would add funds to unavailable MIOs
- Added missing script variable for national focus equipment modifier
- added a bunch of subject bypasses
- Birger Furugrd can no longer be leader and advisor
- Fixed Finland not able to complete Lone Wolf and strike a pact for Continuation War in time when starting from the 1939 bookmark.
- Fixed Soviet production lines MIOs at game start.
- Added Portuguese MIOs to initial production lines
- Bulgarian MIOs now are unlocked with extra size to compensate for them being unlocked later.
- Bonuses from Nordic Alliance will now properly be removed if the faction is disbanded


################################################################
######## Update 1.13.0 "Stella Polaris" #########
################################################################


##################################
# Arms Against Tyranny
##################################

- Added ahistorical Finnish focus tree paths
- Added full Norwegian focus tree
- Added full Swedish focus tree
- Added full Danish focus tree
- Added a full ... other focus tree
- Replaced equipment design company ideas with Military Industrial Organizations (MIOs). MIOs can be attached to research and production, gaining funds and unlocking increased benefits upon your production and equipment.
- Diplomacy tab replaced by the International Market. Equipment can be bought and sold for civilian factory output, giving countries a way of arming themselves with advanced equipment, or war-profiteering for their own gain. Diplomacy menu can be accessed via a button at the bottom of the international market
- Added Special Forces doctrine page, with branches including unique gameplay utility for Mountaineers, Marines, and Paratroopers, and 3 new support battalions
- Added numerous new 3D models including snowmobiles, cold-weather infantry, and a reindeer for some reason
- Added many new music tracks for Nordic countries, as well as several main game themes

##################################
# Feature
##################################

- Land trade routes are now shown on the map. Trade Embargo action now prevents land-based trade from passing through a country if they are embargoing the final recipient.
- Land Doctrines now contain a variety of bonuses to specific support battalions which enchance the capabilities of other battalion categories in their division
- Added support for historical tank templates in the tank designer, accessed from tank chassis blueprints
- Added a new focus for Germany that gives Germany resource rights for Vsterbotten, and Industry for Sweden
- Added modding and script support for 'joint' national focuses, allowing several countries to progress in the same shared focus branch
- Added Finnish historical focus tree paths

##################################
# Balance
##################################

- Reduced Germanys steel
- increased Swedens steel and tungsten from 220 Steel, 67 tungsten, 42 chromium to 260 steel, 123 tungsten and 63 chromium (closed trade respectively)
- Added seperate divison design groups for combat support battalions
- adjusted acclimatization tolerances across the board, it should now be gained in a more realistic range of temperatures
- added lend lease threshold modifiers to automomy and economy levels
- added lend lease threshold modifiers to ideologies
- Super Heavy tanks are now support companies. Super Heavy tanks are no longer line battalions
- Support company research times now have a curve with a shorter starting time (approx 120 days, from 200). Subsequent support techs have a gradually increasing research time.
- Cavalry supply usage returned to the same level as infantry
- Engineer support upgrade techologies now yield 33% entrenchment per level
- Added a new adjuster type: Snow. This kicks in if a province is considered to have the snow ground condition.
- Several nations now have the ability to unlock a second special forces branch specialism in their focus trees. Nations that reach major status can also unlock a second branch specialism after 1940.
- Most tank chassis' now grant 10-20% more armor
- Super heavy tanks now cost more overall, but require 20 per support company
- The winter war should now start according to historical timetable
- Tip of the Spear military spirit now grants flat special forces cap instead of naval invasion capacity. Commando trait now adds flat special forces cap instead of SF defence. This should make it possible to run a modest elite force irresepective of the size of your military.
- added 5% for local resources from compliance gain (from 0.6 to 0.65)
- People's Army focus now grants a battalion modifier from military police to horseback cavalry suppression value
- slightly reduced air accident rates
- reduced the factor on accident chance for air excercising
- New airwing deployment now takes 30 days, from basically nothing
- increased the max effect of intel on enemy mines
- Field Hospitals now grant 15% experience loss prevention from 10%
- Maintenance Company Research 3 now provides 1% Equipment Capture per armor battalion in a division, from 5% flat
- starting french Char B1 variant is now a basic heavy chassis
- ENG & USA start with 200 more convoys
- reduced the base damage of mines for both strength and org
- reduced mine accident chance, reduced mine impact on speed
- mines are now much less potent in deep ocean and shallow sea's, hit chance reduced for mine in these areas
- maratime patrol bombers wing size is now 10
- AA tank anti-air modules have between 10-20% more air attack
- Super Heavy AA, TD, and SPART are now support battalions, not line battalions
- When a puppet controls a province that's part of a strait, the overlord's policy is now considered, preventing the puppet from letting through the overlord's enemies or their puppets.
- increased hardness penalty for wheeled and half track suspension for tank designer
- USA now starts with tank engine 1 tech
- slight balance changes to welded and cast armour to fit reality better
- tank speed & armour upgrades are now added stats not multiplicative
- tank base speed, armour & reliability rebalanced for changes to above upgrades
- Excess thrust will now increase agility instead of max speed
- airframes now how base max speeds to better representairframe size speed effects
- added damage reduction to piecing thresholds for naval combat
- convoy hitprofile reduced from 120 to 85 bringing it inline with new hitprofile calulations
- torpedoes accuracy increased to bring them back inline with new hitprofile calculations 145 > 100
- slightly decreased AA disruption from ship AA
- reduced terrain combat widths slightly, change support widths also
- major air rebalance pass for airframes and modules
- increased tech date for survival studies to 1939
- Improved aircraft turrets, slight decrease in agility hit for large bomb bays
- rebalanced, ship engines, removed visibility impacts from medium guns, rebalanced IC costs to reflect engine changes
- super heavy armour now part of normal heavy armors, rebalanced armors, added cruiser armour to carriers
- Armor skirts provide 1 more armor
- doubled the effect of agiltiy on naval anti air fire
- removed visibility effects of suepr heavy bb armor
- small airframe can only take single terret modules, adjusted turret stats so they are less powerful for fighters but better for bombers
- rebalanced thrust and weights of modules and airframes, added new modules
- Added new techs for blame designer
- Agility and speed increase effect on air combat
- updated combat width defines
- implemented type 2 combat widths
- rebalanced dismantle and conversion costs for BB eninges
- adjusted damage reduction thresholds for ships

##################################
# Gameplay
##################################

- Adjusted Swiss focuses so they pause instead of cancel when conditions are not met

##################################
# Stability & Performance
##################################

- Fixed rare out of sync triggered by player observing armies intercepted at sea
- Improved game performance by up to 30% based on hardware. Machines with higher spec will notice a greater difference.
- Improved perceived performance and responsiveness during high processor load


##################################
# UI
##################################

- In the division designer you can now shift-click on a battalion to remove it from the template
- Fixed various issues with some tech folders in the tech tree on non-standard resolutions
- Fixed issue where some notifications were visible in front of windows and the loading screen.
- Now right clicking on railway gun repair line will pan camera to the unit and left clicking repair line will select the unit.
- Fix priority buttons for all production line types
- Now, if you hover mouse over a invasion arrow, the whole path will be visible even if it is overlapped by another one.
- Fix bug where the army leader traits overlapped the preferred tactics icon.
- Add equipment upgrades to have increment/decrement with 5 and 10
- Victory point map icons now have independent visibility thresholds based on their own VP value. Several new defines added to control this behaviour
- Doctrines with unfulfilled allow conditions now correctly display as unselectable, and list conditions.
- Show Active setting on generals subwindow is now respected the first time you open it

##################################
# AI
##################################

- AI now evaluates motorization per-supply-node, resulting in reduced truck usage, and more sensible overall priorities.
- Further improved AI behaviour for germany as regards Africa and suicide-invasions
- British AI will no longer be denied access to the baltic unless Germany is war mongering in europe (meaning trade can once again flow between UK and the Nordic states)
- AI should no longer embargo countries who are helping them with lendlease or volunteers (looking at you, Spain)
- AI more likely to upgrade divisions in the field even with equipment deficits
- added generic AI upgraded infantry template for late game infantry
- added ENG and USA upgraded infantry templates for AI and imrpoved their infantry templates in general
- reduced the maximum targeted sea regions per strike force fleet for AI
- improved air tech priorities
- ENG will build more Mil factories and ease up on fighters after it has enough, and will generaly build a few more bombers
- USA will build more maritime patrol bombers
- USA and ENG will try build more dockyards pre war
- USA will now do liberty ships national focus in 41
- added albania and sardinia ai areas
- eng will resist the urge to invade useless italian land to early
- Italy will once again join the anti-comintern pact
- ai build slightly more cas and bombers
- AI will now recreate Austro-Hungary by decision if they own the correct cores
- improved AI templates for planes
- SOV should now be more inclinded to defend Leningrad during the Winter war
- ai is less interested in railway gun research
- eng fighter templates are now upgraded with a higher prio
- improved the UK's invasion & defense strategies for historical accuracy
- Germany will now go to war with the USSR if the a Norweigan, Danish or Dutch controller is a player, for the Dutch both Belgium and France must have fallen
- Improved fascist AI peace conference logic resulting in less bordergore, but fewer puppets
- Switched default Peace Score options to roll in puppets to faction leaders
- Partially improved AI ability to use non-standard equipment types and templates. This will be further iterated on.
- AI for some majors will now unlock and construct additional Marines templates, along with unlocking the new SF doctrines
- AI for some majors will now unlock and deploy paratroopers as part of their line forces. By design, they will not perform paradrops.

##################################
# Modding
##################################

- Now the resource values will be localised.
- Make sure triggers are re-evaluted when reloading events and scripted loc
- effect give_resource_rights now accepts a variable or a keyword for receiver parameter
- From now on, tooltip for add_dynamic_modifier effect will show the variable values in dynamic modifiers
- Fix add_resource so that give_resource_rights can be executed right after without having to wait for an hour to pass
- Added ai_wanted_divisions_factor ai strategy, which acts as a % modifier
- Fixed the use of scripted loc in name and description of dynamic modifiers
- Add the heavy_fighter category for medium plane with fighter weapons
- fix is_subject tooltip when used within multiple targets triggers like any_country
- Ocean, the default naval region terrain type, is now handled as any other sea terrain type; tooltips will show modifiers as expected, and map colors and modifiers should be applied properly.
- Tech folders will now correctly hide their name field if disabled. Follow the naming pattern in countrydoctrinetreeview.gui to achieve this result.
- for has_resources_rights, if input state has no resource, the trigger will return false instead of crashing


##################################
# Graphics
##################################

- Use DX11 flip mode and allow tearing when supported by driver. Make sure FSAA pass isn't done on UI.

##################################
# Bugfix
##################################

- AI strategies that abort will no longer purge all values related to the strategy type they affected
- Fixed issue where exiting the intelligence window did not lead to swapping back the map mod to previous one.
- Now the recruiting of colonial division is capped in same way as recruting other divisions.
- Fixed the bug where long messages in the lobby message input field sometimes appeared in two lines.
- Super Heavy Battleship armor now reduces Torpedo critical chance instead of increasing it
- Fixed disappearing icons in division designer when NATO symbols are used
- Fixed issues with misplaced focus branches in UK and USA focus trees when Hide Obsolete Branches custom rule was set as "Show".
- Conscription factor modifiers under 0.1% are now respected [precision error]
- Now the deployment target state tooltip will contain the proper state name.
- Don't allow export (lend-lease etc) of chassis/hull/airframe equipment
- Fix serialization of 64 bit integers
- Various Military focuses now give the right completion effects, such as Night Penalty, or land doctrines, and research bonuses
- Fixed issue where some icons persisted on screen during peace conference.
- Fixed the bug, which made it impossible to play singleplayer after leaving a multiplayer lobby which loaded multiplayer save file.
- Fixed issue where certain regions did display the weather on the 3D map.
- Fix a CTD when loading an older save
- Units are now properly ejected from border wars
- AI should no longer attempt to design strategic bombers too heavy to fly
- fixed loc for prefered tactics modifeirs in army spirits
- recalcuate the cached trade influence
- Fixed Hungary being able to spam Sweden for support if they are democratic
- You can now paradrop in peacetime in your own territory, and paradropping should no longer cause airwings to get stuck
- Prevent CTD and log error if script invalidated a war relation while it is still being added
- German Ai should now use correct Tank icons and models where possible
- AI tank templates (and new historical templates) now work properly for templates that have out-of-order module requirements (big gun+ fixed superstructure ie)
- Japanese AI template for Heavy TD II is no longer too slow to move
- Axis AI and Historical tank templates now (probably) use the correct sprites and models
- incorrect count of military factories given to other countries
- player could request more licenses than available factories
- Fixed bugs in ReleaseFactories in trade
- Exiled templates should now be removed after peace conference even if the hosting country is not among the losers
- fixed incorect can convert for light tank super structure
- Paradrop missions can no longer get stuck when trying to target a region they are not allowed coverage in. Regions without coverage can no longer be targeted by paradrop mission selection.
- AI should keep using their factories even if all their equipment needs are fulfilled
- Turkish AI will no longer randomly decide to pick a military junta to succeed Ataturk on historical
- SOV should now try to be more aggressive at Karjala
- Fixed hardlock after getting kicked from a server
- Fuel Usage modifier will now appear with the right color: red when positive, green when negative
- fixed ship armour penetration calculation, proportional system can now work in parralel to stepped system
- old armor penetration value for ships set to 0
- fixed missing agility values for bomb bays
- fixed damage reduction happening before stat initialisation, fixed +1 to threashhold values
- Romanian and Hungarian focuses that created a tech sharing group for military doctrines now grant doctrine cost reduction instead
- Industrial Destruction modifier tooltip is now present
- Industry Liasons no longer provides double bonus to airframes
- Free French 'intervention in' focuses can no longer target countries in a faction with Free France
- Counter-decision 'Disarm Monarchist Militants' for targets of polish monarchism now correctly removes monarchy support
- Added missing flag localisation to Ethiopia's Build Resistance Force decisions.
- Democratic Hungary can no longer spam Sweden to join their war endlessly
- Changed Ethiopia missing localisation "GetName" to "Ethiopia" as opinion does not allow for dynamic names.
- POL : Made Develop Gdask Shipbuilding and Integrate Gdask Industries actually require Gdask.
- POL : The National Commonwealth can now be completed if Lithuania is a subject
- ETH : Hindenburg Wall now does not build in provinces not occupied by Ethiopia
- POL : Changed Integrate Gdansk Industries to require Coastal rather than Gdansk province, otherwise Naval tree is blocked.
- Soviet national spirit Transformation of Nature now grants a flat +1 Building slot.
- TUR : Join Axis focus will now check to see if Germany still exists and if they are the faction leader. Turkish Join Axis event trigger was also tweaked to give it a timer for more consistent with CD guidelines.
- British AI will no longer only use biplane images for every type of plane
- Fixed Penal Battalions being available outside of the locked template for Soviet Union.
- The German's no longer become upset at Lithuania for banning Naziism if they themselves don't accept the ideology
- The Soviet's can no longer resolve their Border issues with Japan by giving them North Sakhalin if either they don't control it, or Japan doesn't control South Sakhalin
- Some cities that should have been renamed after a white victory in the second Russian civil war were not included. They are now safe from Stalin.
- The Soviet focus "Claims on Bessarabia" can now lead to correct wargoals if denied by countries other than Romania, and will now bypass if the Soviets are already at war with the owner.
- Modifying a variant but retaining the same number of modules no longer fails to register any changes to the saved variant (in rare cases)
- Japan will once again surrender to Manchuko in an independence war, if the war was bloody enough
- Fix issue where the AI wouldn't design any planes if it didn't have any plane designs to produce.
- Fixes missing requirement in GER focus Expand Dockyard Facilities
- African countries with generic alll weather experts will correctly use a defined portrait
- Developing the Eregli steelworks decision is no longer visible to non-turkish nations
- Planning spirit awarded to czechoslovakia anbd faction members no longer disappears
- CZE will no longer be able to give away sudetenland while at war with Germany
- Switzerland tooltip fix
- Turkey will no longer be able to join the Axis if there is no Axis
- Opinon modifier is correctly removed from Spain if Balearic islands are transferred
- Tooltip for french advisor is more specific now
- Hungarian Re-armament events use the correct name def if hungary has changed cosmetic tag
- Hungarian FIghter Competition now provides the correct number of fighters (from 0)
- OTO Naval Guns now grants navy experience if MtG is not owned, as opposed to an unusuable research bonus
- Novus Ordo Italian state modifier now correctly has an icon
- Mohammad Yayyo no longer has a blank portrait if BBA is disabled
- Railway Guns are less likely to stay put
- El Salvador no longer has access to ancient Lost Technology when BBA is enabled
- El Salvador has replaced their ancient Lost Technology with the ability to produce basic infantry weapons
- Fixed Italian focus Flotta d'evasione being always unavailable with MTG

Bonjour nouveau, friends! I dont know if the third time makes it a tradition but I appear once more before release to give some updates from HoIs tech team.

If you havent seen much of me since last year, its because Ive partly been busy with **REDACTED**, **REDACTED** and also with **REDACTED**, but my attention has fully returned to HoI for the last couple months.

So, whats new with HoIs tech in 1.13 Stella Polaris?

[h3]Mines, or the greatest urban legend[/h3]

First off, great news, naval mines will not slow down the game anymore! Hurray!


Except thats a lie. The mine lag I keep reading about in some community house rules isnt a thing. Hasnt been for 2 years. I know because I fixed it in 1.11 (Barbarossa). But dont feel bad for missing the notice, as it turns out this change from December 2020 (shipped in 2021 with No Step Back) never ended up in the changelog.

commit da0ce4ac94ba1938459ffb6abe3bf2b0cd4bab1e
Author: Mathieu Ropert
Date: Mon Dec 14, 17: 38:59 2020 +0100

[X] Fixed performance issue when mines are used

Oops.

But I have even better news. While the usage of mines didnt slow the game down, the existence of mines as a concept was still incurring a performance cost, whether you used them or not. This has also been greatly improved for 1.13.

So go ahead. Go nuts. Mine the whole ocean. See what happens.


[h3]V-Sync, G-Sync, Free-Sync, NSync[/h3]

While there is no big platform update this time (supported operating systems remain the same), we have introduced some small improvements to rendering tech in HoI.

The main one is support for variable refresh rate monitors and GPUs. If you use DX11 (the default since 1.12) and your hardware supports it (and you use Windows 10 or higher), you should get more FPS with vsync off. On my NVIDIA RTX 3060 at work, it goes up from 140-150 FPS in 1.12 to about 190 FPS in 1.13 when the game is paused.

Im not saying youll actually be visually able to tell the difference, but you wouldnt be our fans if you didnt like when numbers go up, so this should give you some stonks for free.

Weve also tweaked a bit how the game renders when unpaused, especially when your hourly/daily tick starts getting slower than 16/33/50ms (depending on game speed). Long story short, the cost of keeping the FPS going steady when the simulation gets more CPU heavy has been improved, meaning better FPS and less perceived lag especially in speed 4 and 5.


[h3]General performance improvements[/h3]

I used the mines example earlier as a teaser, but in general this update comes with a good amount of performance improvements. Those were partly inspired by having spent time looking at our other titles and a bunch of secret stuff I sadly cannot delve into, and partly just due to getting a fresh set of eyes on old problems.

Heres some side by side comparison between 1.12 (Avalanche) and 1.13 (Stella Polaris).

First, a fresh new 1936 game on my work i7-12700k and its 20 cores:

HOI4 1.12 Avalanche - 1936 - Intel i7-12700k


HOI4 1.13 Stella Polaris - 1936 - Intel i7-12700k

And heres 2 similar-ish saves from 1943, same machine:

HOI4 1.12 Avalanche - 1943 - Intel i7-12700k


HOI4 1.13 Stella Polaris - 1943 - Intel i7-12700k


This might look a tad overwhelming if youve never seen the in-game profiler from previous dev diaries (console command imgui show profiler to make it pop in game). The bits I would like to direct your attention to are the Ticks per second and Last 24 ticks average that give you a rough idea of how fast the game is going.

Long story short, the 1936 scenario goes from a 15ms average to 10ms average for the hourly tick (the time it takes to simulate one in-game hour). Or if you prefer, from 42 to 64 hours simulated per second.

In the 1943 scenario, where there are way more wars, divisions, fleets and planes involved, we go from 43ms to 29ms hourly tick average. Or again, up from 17 to 27 in-game hours simulated every real world second.

In both cases, this makes the simulation about 1.5 times faster. In practice, the perceived speed will be a bit less because we still need to account for GPU time and the like, but it should be fairly noticeable still.

Of course, we understand that not all of you are running top of the 10th+ generation i7 CPUs, so it would only be fair to also look at what it means on lower end machines. Luckily, I also have access to a modest AMD Ryzen 3 1200, a quad core CPU that the internet tells me is roughly equivalent to an Intel i5-7400. Brace yourselves for more graphs.

First, 1936:


HOI4 1.12 Avalanche - 1936 - AMD Ryzen 3 1200


HOI4 1.13 Stella Polaris - 1936 - AMD Ryzen 3 1200

And then the same 1943 saves:


HOI4 1.12 Avalanche - 1943 - AMD Ryzen 3 1200


HOI4 1.13 Stella Polaris - 1943 - AMD Ryzen 3 1200

First off, if there was still any doubt in your mind, yes, switching to a beefier machine will absolutely make HoI run faster. As you can see in the numbers here, this ran about 3 times slower than the high end 20 core machine from before.

Second, you can also see that 1.13 still performs better than 1.12 (about 25-30% faster), but not as much as on a high end machine. Why? you ask. Because threads!


[h3]HOI4: You Can(not) Multithread[/h3]

It is a recurring misconception that Paradox games dont use more than one thread. This is obviously not the case. Ive been talking about it since my days on Stellaris.

But it is true that some parts of the game simulation are better than others at making use of many cores. And once theyve been made to only use one core, its usually quite difficult to change as the game simulation starts relying on it.

This all comes back to the olden days where Europa Universalis was a board game ported to PC. After all, it is fairly common for those to be designed in a way where each actor takes a turn. The German player moves all his troops on the board. Then the British. Then the Soviets. Etc This is a very serial process. Easy to understand and design, but slower than if every player could go at the same time. And of course it is very hard to change after the fact, because if everyone suddenly starts moving at the same time then you get conflicts and need rules to identify and resolve them.

Crusader Kings 3 resolved most of those issues by taking a radically different approach to its technical design, but we obviouslydont have that luxury. And no, unlike what Ive heard before, this has little to do with the engine. Understand that ol Clausewitz (and its friend Jomini) are mostly concerned with graphics, networking, loading and saving files, that kind of stuff. The bulk of the performance bottleneck isnt there, its in the game simulation and thats almost entirely up to each game to decide how they wanna approach it and that decision is usually made (and hard to change) in the first years of the game development, before it even releases.
Still, in this patch we were able to identify places where we could break that turn-based design and replace it with a simultaneous process and nobody would be the wiser. Which allowed us to throw all your cores at the problem, rather than rely on the one.

This is, I believe, the main reason why you will notice more improvement the more cores you have. For example, if a process took say, 2ms before. Now it will take 0.5ms with 4 cores (2/4) and 0.1ms with 20 cores (2/20), roughly speaking. Heres a rough outline of HoI4 CPU usage in a late 1942 save with 20 cores for example:


Notice the CPU chart at the top which shows how many cores are being used at a given time. Ideally youd want it to be fully green all the time, but this is what we get with the upcoming release of HoI4.

For those of you who are more technically inclined, I can recommend you this (updated) talk Ive given at ACCU 2023 about multithreading challenges in PDS Games.

Multi Threading Model in Paradox Games: Past, Present and Future - Mathieu Ropert - ACCU 2023
[previewyoutube=M6rTceqNiNg;full][/previewyoutube]

And with that, Ive just noticed something off while making the screenshots for this dev diary, so Ill go back to investigate and see if theres some more we can do to improve even more in the post-release patches

I will leave you with this side by side comparison of letting the game run for 30 seconds on 1.12 vs 1.13. Keep an eye on the date/time at the top.

[previewyoutube=kaI4xFN_QIQ;full][/previewyoutube]

Hello, and welcome back to the last Developer Diary for Arms Against Tyranny!
Im CreamGene, HOI4s 2D artist and since I am here, you guessed it, it's time to talk about art!

I once again get an opportunity to talk about what happens on the Art Front during a HOI4 production and Im excited to share with you some of the things that have been in the works. Both challenging tasks as well as funny ones, of course.

I know I usually showcase the how-to when I do loading screens when I get these opportunities, but I think you can find the two latest descriptions from earlier Dev Diarys to be adequate if you need to know the how-to-think. But Ill show some small step-by-step just because I can.

Loading screen
It started with our Game Designer Bradley, or as you know him as well, Corax, who already had a vision for what he wanted. He wanted two different ones. One of the Finnish Winter War, with Finnish soldiers watching Soviet troops, make their way through the frozen marshlands. And one with the sinking of the Blcher. And I got to choose which one to do.

Of course, I chose explosions because I hate myself that's pretty cool. I drew explosions before, but never like this so I thought it could be a nice challenge if I could pull it off.

I was provided with reference images of the ship and the place as well as a video clip of the event from the movie The King's Choice. Even if its a reenacting of the sinking of Blcher it still is a pretty cool scene to draw inspiration from.
So let's speedrun this demonstration!



3D elements put together! Renders made by our 3D artist @Slurpen_Paradox (because if I can avoid hard surfaces, I will).


Here, the paint-over progress has started. trust the process.


After a loop of feedback and paint-overs, it finally starts to look like something more interesting than just a dark blob where it started. Just some more tweaking and adding texture as well as some action and itll be done.


And here we are! I hope youll enjoy the new loading screen for Arms Against Tyranny!

Here is also the winter-themed one (tho I cant take credit for it) made for AAT.

[Art made by @the_real_timor]


[h3]The Joint Focus Tree[/h3]
We also wanted to do something new for a Joint Focus Tree when the discussion of a joint Nordics was a must. So now the idea phase starts. How different should it look? How much of different shapes will still make you think Focus Tree? Will it look good together as a tree? How do we best portray the different ideologies for each outcome?

So now some thumbnailing of ideas happens as well as the thought Is just the naming bar enough to change? The answer is no. Of course, we wanted to go full out when we had this new idea.


So when we realize that we want to make the actual focus icons mirror the ideologies we have a new question What would a joint focus tree even look like? What would have to change to make it stand out?
So I started to make up the shape language for what each ideology would feel like.
It ended with a bunch of experiments that you saw @carloPDX showcase in the Joint Focus icon Dev Diary

Yeah I didn't feel anything out of these.


We landed on these types of shapes in the end!
The communist one is in line with sharp angles, red and gold, and feeling very industry.
The democratic one with its very simplistic design and a retake on the metallic swan.
And the monarchist one, in Sweden at least, we call the moose the King of the Forest so we thought it would be fitting to have a King represent all the Nordics with pompous decoration and gold details.


A small selection of the communist branch icons;


A small selection of the democratic branch icons;


A small selection of the monarchist branch icons;



[h3]Portraits[/h3]
And now I think it's important to show off some of the fancy portraits that have been added for the Nordics!

The amount of art that needs to be done for each DLC varies but something that stays true, and heavy is Portraits and Focuses. These are easy to outsource in bulk and to offload the strain of getting all the art done for each DLC on time, we send these types of art tasks to an outsourcing studio.
We occasionally have to pick up these types of tasks as well in-house but thats usually when Content Designers realize they need a leader for a last-minute polish task and a path they forgot would do with an actual portrait of the historic person instead of a generic one. Safe to say, it's impossible to plan for every leader there will be for their specific country. I know I wouldn't be able to think of everything beforehand, and that's why I cant stress enough that to get a successful art-filled launch, communication is key.

So, here is a small selection of historical figures we would like to showcase beforehand!





[h3]Focus icons[/h3]
With the same principle as the portraits for HOI, these are easier to outsource in bulk, and therefore the majority of them, tho far from all, are done through outsourcing.
We usually try to make as much as we can in-house for these but we need to prioritize our workload to fit our schedule the best we can.
We always estimate all our tasks beforehand so whatever we know we cant manage in-house will be shipped to outsourcing.

And once again, a small selection of some of the nicest looking Focuses for AAT.





[h3]3D art[/h3]
Even if I am not in charge of the 3D art (in fact that's entirely @Slurpen_Paradoxs domain) I will of course show off some of the models that have been made for this DLC

First of all, lets enjoy some high-definition renders showing some of the models up close:

These guys have dressed up for today's fashion show!


A mix of old and new (maybe new is too strong of a word here).


You need to be ready to fight against air and land attacks.


Okay, maybe thats enough land vehicles for one Dev Diary.


In other news, here are some planes!


..more planes!


Ready to fight against tyranny!

Here are some in-game screenshots showing some of the models in action (using some fun camera angles of course!):


They see me rollin!


Danish militia models in fighting stance!


These guys are deadly in snowy conditions!


Norway has some ships to defend its coast!


Things are heating up!




Thank you @Slurpen for the 3D renders!

Let's be real, youve been waiting, youve been scrolling, youve been sighing through this DD. Go ahead. Don't be shy. Scroll down some more.

Finally! I would like to present the achievements of Arms Against Tyranny!

[h3]Achievements[/h3]

Spmi, United by the fire
As Sami, own and control every Sami core.


Norway Jose
As Norway, own and control every Mexican core.


Pinot Noirway
As Norway, own and control the state of Burgogne.


Cheese your fighter
As Norway, with Peder Jarlsberg as coutnry leader, own Telemark, Glouchestershire, Normandy, Lombardia and Holland.


Med Plutonium 2
As Denmark, nuke Sweden.


Everything is Awesome
As Denmark, get Maximum Welfare Spending after January 1st 1941 without being puppeted or capitulating


The Danelaw
As Denmark, conquer England.


Vinland
As Iceland, conquer Newfoundland.


Brexit
As communist Iceland, make Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland rise up against the United Kingdom.


Two Arms Against Tyranny
As Finland, capitulate the Soviet Union while having a 2 country faction with another Nordic.


Uralic Brothers United!
As Finland, have Hungary, Estonia, Sapmi, Karelia, Mari El, Udmurtia, Komi, Ostyak-Vogulia, Yamalia, and Nenetsia as subjects.


Lone Wolf
As Finland, form Greater Finland and own every core and claim without having ever joined a faction.


No One Crosses the Finnish Line
As Finland, survive until 1944 without losing control of a single core ever.


Danzig Queen
As Sweden, own Danzig.


Caramelldansen
As Sweden, puppet Japan.


The return of the King
As the exiled King of Gotland, retake mainland Sweden.


Satisfactory
Have at least one MIO per category at level 10+.


Cod Wars
As Iceland, capitulate the UK.


The Magic School Bus
With the Per Albin Bus, drive to Cape Town



We all hope that youll enjoy the up-and-coming DLC, Arms against Tyranny, and along the way have fun and feel challenged with the new content and achievements we have added, as well as enjoy the latest models and art!

CreamGene

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2183930/Expansion__Hearts_of_Iron_IV_Arms_Against_Tyranny/

Generals!

We've released another Arms Against Tyranny tutorial! Get ahead of your enemies and discover the ins and outs of MIOs with this quick primer from Dijondillan

Watch it here
[previewyoutube=5YDe93TOjfU;full][/previewyoutube]

Generals!

With the release of Arms Against Tyranny, there will be plenty of saved games and mods that will be broken as we move into the Stella Polaris patch, so if you haven't already make sure to finish up those games or backdate your versions!

However, we have been hard at work with the Modding community to make sure some of your favourite mods are up to date alongside the release of AAT! So here is your comprehensive list of mods that will be updated on the same day as the new patch;

[h3]WATCH THE REVEAL HERE[/h3]

[h3]Road to 56[/h3]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=820260968


[h3]Kaiserreich[/h3]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1521695605


[h3]Equestria At War[/h3]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1826643372


[h3]Millenium Dawn[/h3]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2777392649


[h3]The New Order: Last Days of Europe[/h3]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2438003901

[h3]Cold War Iron Curtain[/h3]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1458561226&searchtext=

[h3]Kaisserredux: A Kaiserreich Expansion[/h3]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2076426030&searchtext=

[h3]Old World Blues[/h3]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2265420196&searchtext=

[h3]BlackICE Historical Immersion Mod[/h3]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1137372539&searchtext=

[h3]Expert AI[/h3]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=741805475&searchtext=

[h3]Pax Britannica: An Imperial Timeline[/h3]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2792132018&searchtext=

[h3]Lord of the Rings Mod[/h3]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1314446921&searchtext=

[h3]End of a New Beginning[/h3]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2856963714

[h3]World Ablaze[/h3]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2149567872

Hello there it's me C0RAX. It's time for another feature dev diary and this week we are going to look at the International market.

So previously we showed this feature off in the international market dev corner and some things since then have changed. Weve on top of this loaded the feature with brand new functionality to improve the flow and usability as well as refine the information we provide you throughout the feature. So remind ourselves let's go over what intents and goals we started with in that original dev corner.

Feature Intent & goals

Introducing a place for nations to buy and sell equipment benefiting both nations with a reward. Creating a new way for countries to contribute specialist equipment to other nations
Be able to source equipment from other nations as needed
For majors to set the global standard for common place equipment leveraging their superior economic might.

The international market acts as a one stop shop for all your equipment needs from other countries. It's an international store front, with multiple sellers being able to sell the same thing from the same store front. This means that provided you have the appropriate market access, you can go into the international market and buy tanks from the USA and planes from germany in one interface (but not 1 purchase).

The feature

So first of all, how do we get to the international market? Well, it's pretty easy. We have replaced the diplomacy button with the international market. This will take you to the home screen of the international market



You Can still access the diplomacy menu from this button at the bottom of the international market.


Now let's go buy something. The first thing we need to do is to get market access to another country. This will allow us to see what they are selling on the market. By default we have access to all of our subjects and they have access to our market.


The market access is by default automatically sent and accepted so any AI that will accept will be added to your market and you will get access to them as well meaning that you don't need to worry about missing out of a market you could have access too. You can also toggle auto accept purchase requests which will always accept other countries asking to buy your equipment on the market.


To manually get market access we simply go to the diplomacy screen for a given country and use the diplomatic action negotiate market access.


So now we have our market access set up and it's time to buy something. First we need to go into the buying mode of the international market. We do this by clicking the buy equipment button.



Now we can see the USA is selling some trains and convoys on the market right now so let's buy some. To start a purchase draft all we have to do is click on a piece of equipment we want to buy.


Here we can set up our contract to purchase some equipment. From here you choose how many pieces of equipment you wish to buy of each type. Each equipment entry will show how much the equipment of that type will cost in economic capacity(EC) (this is the output of civilian factories). There is also a handy purchase button if that is what you wish and you can use keybinds to change the steps of the plus and minus buttons just like in other parts of the game.



At the bottom of the draft we have the draft totals, here we can see the total EC cost, total convoys needed and then finally we have our payment settings. We can choose to assign up to 15 factories to pay for the equipment. These factories will work towards paying off the total EC cost of the equipment you selected. The more you pay every 30 days, the more equipment will be delivered per delivery. So here we can see that with 5 factories paying for our equipment we will receive all of our equipment in 4 deliveries:120 days.


Now we have sent off our draft to the USA and we just have to wait for them to respond and accept.


And here we have our accepted and now ongoing contract, we can see all of the important information on our contracts from here. Active contracts are shown in the default international market screen.

We can see our factories are assigned and paying off the contract and all 4 convoys are available. If anything is causing deliveries to fall behind the expected amount be that lack of factories, convoys or even if your convoys are being intercepted and the equipment lost to the depth of the ocean, the contract efficiency will reflect this.


As your contracts progress you can see the bars fill up and the deliveries tick down.

Now let's sell something on the market.


To sell we click the sell equipment button right now we can see we are not selling anything so now let's add something to our market. We do this by clicking on the add equipment to market button.


Here we will get all of the surplus equipment we have in the right hand window and everything we are adding to the market on the left. From here we have the same controls for equipment numbers as with buying. You can select all, or choose any number in-between.




Additionally from the screen we can set the price levels of equipment, this can be done for the whole set or individually for each equipment. You can set the price to be 25% higher or lower than the normal price, this is done in order to not overcomplicate the economic gameplay here. Fully Variable prices would be very complex to understand as a player and be at odds with the economic detail of the rest of the game. This inconsistency would make the pricing very troublesome to understand, keep stable and to keep free from exploits. Generally this would detract from the core gameplay of HoI in a negative way, taking time and concentration away from the warfighting for something less useful. The final total EC value is shown at the bottom of the window if you want to see the effects of your pricing choices.


Now we can see all of our equipment has been added to our market for sale.


We have now received our first purchase requests and you can see our equipment has been taken from our market listing as it is reserved while the requests are pending. Let take a look at one of these requests


Here we can see Sweden is looking to buy the 35 light tanks we put up on the market. In the request we can see all of the necessary contract details to make an informed decision. Of course if we had auto accepted purchase requests this would have already been automatically accepted and the contract would be ongoing already.


And now we can see our purchase of american equipment and our sales of equipment to portugal and sweden all in one menu allowing you to easily keep contract of you ongoing contracts and if there are any issues with deliveries. We can also filter this list to just buying or selling if you have lots of contracts all at the same time, and we cancel contracts from here if you need to do so.

Going back to the buy menu lets take a look at some of the sorting and filtering options that help in the later game when there is significantly more equipment on the market. First lets look at the sorting options.

First we can sort by the amount on the market.


And we can sort by the EC cost


Now onto filters; we can sort by country and by equipment type



Finally we get to subsidies. Subsidies are a way of getting a better deal with purchasing contracts, you can get them from national focus and decisions or any other bit of content. An example of this can be found in the danish focus tree where you can get subsidies for buying aircraft if you choose to seek external sources. As mentioned subsidies target specific equipment types such as fighters and can be limited to contracts with specific countries as well. They work by having an EC value and when applied to a contract they will match the EC generated by your factories until the EC value of the subsidy is drained. So if 1 civ produces 5 EC/day then the subsidy will also provide 5 EC per day for each civ allocated to the contract.




With the general flow we will look at the detailed mechanics of how payment works. We are paid for contracts in EC generated by factories assigned by the buyer. Instead of receiving those factories directly to use, you are given the EC output of those factories to boost your own civilian factories. We opted for this solution in order to improve the granularity of bilateral trade, as well as to give the seller a new kind of incentive to take part in trade.


Here we can see our EC income from all of our current contracts, any collected EC is stored in our EC surplus here in the market window.


Here we can see the EC surplus being applied to your construction queue to boost it above the normal maximum rate. The amount you can boost a construction is based on your trade law. Here we are on export focus which gives us a 10% boost on top of the base 25%. This can also be affected by other construction boosts. The important thing to understand is you do not receive temporary foreign factories, you receive their EC output which boosts your own civilian constructions.

As an addendum to the addition of the international market we have adjusted lend lease in order to better fit to the new world market. So let's talk about the changes there. Firstly, subjects can no longer always use lend lease and are subject to the same limits as other countries. Now subject levels have modifiers to the required world tension in order to use lend lease.


In addition to this ideology and laws impact the tension requirements for lend lease, fascists and communists will find it harder to give equipment for free to there allies compared to before as will countries who operate on tighter trade laws


Countries on closed economy and special cases such as the USA can also block access to certain markets or totally block all market access so be careful before taking foci like the neutrality act.


That's all for this week, as always please do ask if you have any questions about the feature and Ill do my best to answer you. Next week we will be looking at the final art DD, you will get to see more 3D models, 2D art (including the new loading screen art) and the coveted achievements coming with Arms against tyranny, I hope to see you there. C0RAX Out.

Generals!

The fourth and final Feature Breakdown video for Arms Against Tyranny is out NOW over on our YouTube channel!
This one spotlights the new Military Industrial Organizations feature, as well as the upcoming changes to Support Companies!

Make sure to check out the video!
[previewyoutube=Kx7X-hDaiNc;full][/previewyoutube]

Hello there it's me C0RAX. It's time for another feature dev diary and this week we are going to look at military industrial organisations (MIOs).

Now we talked about the concepts of the MIOs in the Dev corner in may but since then we have done a lot of work taking onboard internal and community feedback and from that work we have changed lots of things. This means that some of the things we talked about previously in the dev corner won't be true anymore. That's enough prefacing so let's get into it, let's see what the finished MIOs look like.

So to reiterate what we went over in the last dev corner here is what we identified and how we wanted to improve it. Firstly we have the current model of companies in HOI.

Currently we have to provide static modifiers and sometimes change them via scripted decisions or focus rewards, this makes them very un-interactive and mostly something you click once and then forget about, it's just another modifier on your country.

By creating a more organic system to upgrade your design companies you the player can now decide what these upgrades are and tailor them to fit your playstyle. Additionally we can now reward the player for using a design company as opposed to simply having you save up a resource and click a button, rewarding you for putting effort into them.

From this we had an intent and goals established.

[h3]Intent[/h3]

• Create a sense of a living organisation the player can interact with rather than a static bonus as with current design companies.
  

• Allow the player to define their designer direction.
  
• Integrate design companies into production
  
• Provide a framework for national specialisms that can be used on the world stage
  

Generals!

We're sending out a Call to Arms! Help us shape the future of Hearts of Iron by completing this survey, and to share your thoughts. Visit the link below or scan the QR Code

Thanks for your time and have a great day~


https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/5Q32XTT

The Premier Frontlines Event: Join Us on Sweden's West Coast for a Massive Axis VS Allies LAN Party, Presented by HyggeGaming!


HyggeGaming wishes you all a very warm welcome to Bergagrdhof23!

A Hearts of Iron IV multiplayer event with 36 players, hosted in Falkenberg, Sweden.

Here you can follow the whole event as it unfolds in real time.


[h2]Watch Live now on Twitch![/h2]

And now for me. Hello everyone, its me Jonathan, here to write about some of the content I have helped with creating for Finland for the upcoming expansion. I have been jumping around and helping my fellow content designers wherever help has been needed for AAT, whilst working on other stuff in the background.

The White Death
During the winter war, the Finnish fought fiercely to stave off Soviet attacks, cleverly using a combination of their (as mentioned in the previous Finland Dev Diary) Motti Tactics alongside snipers, who had been trained either by the Suojeluskunta (Finnish voluntary militia Civil Guard) or as hunters or Jaegers. Among these snipers was Simo Hyh, who thanks to Finnish propaganda later came to be known as the White Death. The White Death however, despite being said to have been attributed to Hyh by Soviet soldiers, to them rather symbolized the severe cold in the deep forests, and the tenacity of the Finnish people in a more general sense.

The White Death news event:


In game, this is represented through a series of events for Finland and an aggressor, be it the Soviets or someone else in case of an alt-hist scenario, where Finland has the option to prop up their sniper organizations, dealing damage to enemy manpower and equipment pools through events, and where their enemy can choose between simply taking the hits, or spending equipment and command power on dealing with these snipers before they become a problem. Finland also gets the option to either do as historically and use propaganda to build up Simo Hyh as the embodiment of the White Death, or to embrace the original meaning of the word, by making their enemies take more attrition. At the end of the event chain, Hyh can either escape unscathed, be wounded (as historically happened), or be killed by the enemy, getting a hero's funeral.

[h3]The Continuation War[/h3]
At this point, you have all heard about the Finnish Continuation War before, but one not all that known fact is, how did they manage to worm their way out of the mess they had found themselves in?

Well, there were talks held with the Allied powers around the time of the battle for Stalingrad, as Finland saw that there was great risk that things would go south real fast, regarding changing sides, and declaring war on the Germans in exchange for peace with the Soviets, but this plan never really panned out due to the Western Allies fear of intruding on the Soviet sphere by allowing Finland to join them. That is why though it didnt succeed historically, it and the historical outcome both exist and can happen, as can be seen below.

Decisions to get yourself out of the Continuation War if worse comes to worst:


When not switching sides, but instead offering concessions to Moscow in exchange for peace, Finland will have to concede any of Salla, Petsamo and Karjala that Finland still owns, and they will need to transfer equipment over to them, signing the historical Moscow Armistice with the Soviets.

The Moscow Armistice news event:


This is however not the end of the struggles for Finland or its people, as a part of the agreement signed with the Soviet Union was the expulsion of Axis troops from Finnish territory. As the Soviets press Finland to comply with the treaty, the Lapland War starts, and Finnish troops clash with Germans retreating into German-occupied Norway (or Sweden, if the game has gone slightly a-historical). The Germans will have options for how to deal with the Lapland war, allowing for slightly different bonuses and maluses when withdrawing.

The German response to the Lapland War starting:


When all this is said and done however, if this was the option of peace Finland chose, there will be no actual war between the countries, as compared to if they were to switch sides completely.

The Lapland War news event


[h3]City and State Name Changing[/h3]
Now onto something a little bit different. During BBA, Italy introduced states and vps that change names depending on who controls them, such as Zara being called Zadar when not under Italian control.

This has now been updated to include certain state and vp name changes for Finland and Sweden, as seen below.

Petrozavodsk becomes nislinna if under either Finnish or Karelian control


Murmansk becomes Muurmanski, Kandalaksha becomes Kantalahti, and the state of Murmansk becomes Kuolan Niemimaa (Kola Peninsula) when under either Finnish or Karelian control


Many cities in Finland, due to the sometimes significant Swedish minority (or in some specific places even majority), officially use both Finnish and Swedish names to this day, such as Turku and bo both being frequently used for the same city, and Sweden and Finland still harboring a close bond to this day. Thus, if Sweden were to go rogue and decided to occupy Finland, it would only make sense that they would use the Swedish names for towns in the region.

Here you see the southern parts of Finland when under Swedish control, with many cities gaining their official Swedish names, such as Turku becoming bo, and Viipuri becoming Viborg.


And here you can see northern Finland when under Swedish control. Also take note that Inari (which can not be seen here) becomes Enare.


[h3]Releasables and Game Rules[/h3]
And now we can move on to something a bit less Swedish, and also a bit less Finnish, we have two new game rules for the fragmentation of the Nordic countries!

You can choose between no fragmentation, only releasing Spmi from the Nordic nations, or doing that alongside liberating Iceland, Karelia and Greenland from Nordic countries. If you combine any of these rules with the fragmentation of the Soviet Union, Spmi and Karelia will gain their Soviet-held cores as well.

The new game rules


The Nordics Fragmented option has been chosen


And with our brand new releasable nation, Spmi jumping into action, we had to do them some justice with just that extra pinch of flavor added on top. As can be seen in the image below, Spmi will not only have unique party names and flags as do any other nation, but also unique leader and general portraits.

Spmi with all of its cores


Spmi has its own unique Admiral portrait


Spmi also has its own unique General portraits


Spmi has many new advisor portraits, some of which can be seen here



And thats been all from me for now. I will see you all when I have more cool stuff to deliver! But now, back to Manu.


Alright, lets take a look at the last batch of changes and content for Finland.

Some of you might have noticed a new focus in the historical branch that was not there in the last Dev Diary.
The focus Prmis Devils, available for both historical and fascist Finland, is themed around the Finnish Separate battalion 21, a penal battalion formed mainly by political prisoners and commanded by Nikke Prmi.


In-game, this focus will unlock a limited recruitment of Divisions formed by penal battalions, and spawn Prmis very own full division, a veteran unit with a very promising officer ready for action!


A few extra Generals have been added at game start, based on some of the feedback from the last Dev Diary.
Karl Oesch is now available to Finland.


Aksel Airo is also available to Finland, although his portrait is still not in the game.



Raappana has made an appearance and is now replacing Trni as the general unlocked by the focus Sissi. Trni will, in turn, be unlocked via the fascist focus Military Promotion.


In terms of military advisors, Vilho Nenonen has joined the Military High Command roster as an Artillery Genius, while Kaarlo Somerto has been downgraded from Artillery Expert to Artillery Specialist. This way, Finland has the option to go for a cheaper and weaker artillery officer early if needed, and then move on to the Genius later on.


Akseli Anttila is now only available to Communist Finland, and Erik Heinrichs is the available military theorist for non-communist Finland


Something I wanted to implement for a while was French Renault tanks (available at game start) and the modified British Vickers tanks (available in the 1939 Bookmark or via Foreign Armor focus).


And before finishing, I would also like to give a big kudos to our 2D and 3D artists because they keep doing an amazing job delivering incredibly cool assets for our content! From focus icons to portraits, tech icons and 3D models, theyre great!

Throughout the diary you have seen a lot of cool 2D art but only a few 3D models, so here are some more pics of the new Finnish 3D models!

Lets start with the new Soviet T-28 model (and icon), which is now the default model for the Interwar Medium Chassis for Soviets and for Finland.



We now have a Marine 3D model for Finland, based on the Rannikkojkrit (or Marine Jaegers).


And we got a fourth regular infantry model, the best of them all. Behold the beauty of an infantry division walking alongside one of the coolest means of supply, the reindeer!



This new infantry model also has a winter version and a warm weather version. This is the winter one. Again, the coolest of them all in my honest opinion..


And last but not least, the hot acclimatization version of all 4 regular infantry models!


And that was all from me! I hope that you all enjoyed reading about the Finnish Alternative history content coming with the new DLC as well as the changes and additions implemented since the first Finnish diary. I wish you all a nice week and make sure to stay tuned for the next dev diary where well be talking about one of the new features in Arms Against Tyranny: Military Industrial Organizations!

Nhdn pian!

Moi! It is Mano de Zombi again to welcome you all to a new HOI4 Dev Diary for the upcoming DLC Arms Against Tyranny, and just a heads up this one is going to be split in two here on Steam since its a hefty one!

Today well be talking about the alternative history available to Finland with the new DLC. In case you missed it, you can read more (a lot more) about the Historical content for Finland here

As per usual, keep in mind that some of the stuff youre about to see is still work in progress, there is still some balancing to be done and some art in the workings. Last but not least, some of the content might vary if certain previous DLCs are not active.

And without further ado, allow me to introduce you to Finlands Alternative History content, starting with a screenshot of the full Finnish Focus Tree!


Lets begin with the Fascist Branch, to the right of the Historical focuses. First a short-ish piece of context!

In the 1920s and 1930s, Europe saw the rise of far-right and authoritarian movements in response to economic difficulties, social unrest, and the aftermath of World War I, and Finland was not immune to these trends, with various far-right and nationalist movements emerging.

The most notable of these movements was the Lapua Movement, formed in 1929, and succeeded by the Patriotic Peoples Movement during 1932-1944. It drew its support primarily from agrarian and nationalist groups. The movement aimed to combat what it saw as the growing influence of left-wing and communist forces in Finnish society, using tactics such as street violence and intimidation to suppress left-wing organizations and activities. They targeted labor unions, communist sympathizers, and other perceived threats to Finnish nationalism.

The actions of the Lapua Movement led to a political crisis in Finland, with the government struggling to maintain order. Eventually, President Pehr Evind Svinhufvud declared a state of emergency and took measures to disband the Lapua Movement and restore stability.

But now lets take a look at how the branch looks in-game.


As you can see, the Fascist Branch shares some focuses with the Historical Branch, which were already covered in the Historical Dev Diary, so lets talk about the unique stuff:
Right-Wing Policies is the first focus in your path towards a Fascist Finland, unlocking your Fascist Demagogue so that you can start boosting ideology in the country.
After that, you can choose to Discredit the Democratic System for a slower-going but peaceful change of ideology, using your advisors to boost ideology in the country until you reach the required support and stability to complete A Fascist Regime and have a peaceful change of government.
On the other hand, Prepare a Military Coup will set you up for a faster (yet more violent) change of ideology. This focus will unlock a series of decisions granting some advantages for the Civil War that will, in turn, be triggered by the Focus A Fascist Regime after choosing the military coup focus.


And simple as that, you are now a fascist. But what does the future hold for you? Well, first of all lets take a look at your new leader, Vilho Annala:


SOME CONTEXT
Vilho Annala was a Finnish economist, nationalist and far-right political figure active in the 1920s and 1930s. He played a role in the early stages of the Lapua Movement, and was known for his involvement in organizing paramilitary activities and actions against left-wing groups during the turbulent political climate of the time.
He supported the replacement of capitalism and free market economy with state-led corporatism, similar to Italy.

In-game, this is represented by Annalas trait Economic Reformer. Also, to represent the influence of other prominent individuals of the right-wing movement, Annalas personal Agenda will make the Balance of Power (BoP) move towards high trust when Finland has a considerable army and is not losing a war, whereas having too much Democratic or Communist support will make the public trust decay over time.

In the focus tree, the rightmost sub-branch is themed around internal affairs and utilizing and empowering multiple right-wing organizations.


Here you will unlock advisors, get bonuses for the army and industry, some Balance of Power, etc. But there are a few focuses that stand out a bit more:

Mustapaidat was a youth organization of the Patriotic People's Movement (Blackshirts), the successor of the previous Sinimustat (Blue and Black, hence the color of the focuses in-game). The focus will unlock militia units and spawn some in the capital state.


Take Over the Suojeluskunta represents the fascists taking absolute control over the Voluntary National Guard and will grant a new division template and spawn some of these units, which can be useful as garrison against sneaky naval invasions.


As for the final focuses, Intellectual Elite grants the fifth research slot, while National Fanaticism will, among other things, boost the armys manpower and performance when on core territory, increase the Militia cap and improve their stats, and finally improve Vilho Annalas trait as country leader, to represent is success as the leader of the country and the turn towards national corporatism in Finland.


Finland will potentially have to deal with a winter war regardless of Finlands ideology, and in this regard the fascists have the historical option A Cry for Help, or they can Seek German Protection, trying to secure a Non-Aggression Pact with Germany and a German Guarantee, in exchange for military access and some resource rights.


In terms of Alliances, Fascist Finland can either Join the Axis or work to achieve Finnish Supremacy in the North and form a Finnish-led faction focused on the Nordic and Baltic states.


The focuses under Join the Axis are more focused towards getting German (or other major fascist countries) aid to boost Finnish industry and army getting, among other things, some research and doctrine bonuses, military factories and some old foreign tanks, whereas the mutually exclusive focuses spin around Finlands own way of developing the armed forces, boosting Finnish generals and divisions.


Finnish Irredentism has multiple effects, the most relevant ones being claims in Kola and East Karelia, significantly reducing the cost for taking cores and claims during peace conferences, and unlocking a new set of decisions: The Last Kinship War.

The Heimosodat, also known as the Kinship Wars or Kindred Nations' Wars, were a series of conflicts in the early 1920s involving Finland and other Finno-Ugric ethnic groups in the aftermath of World War I and the Russian Revolution. These wars were characterized by the desire of various ethnic groups to assert their independence and self-determination.

Finland's involvement in the Heimosodat was primarily aimed at supporting the aspirations of fellow Finno-Ugric peoples, such as the Estonians, Karelians, and Ingrians, who sought to break free from Bolshevik or Soviet control and establish their own nations. Finnish volunteers and military aid were provided to these groups during their struggles.

In HOI, Finland has now the option to ignite one last Kinship War in Karelia.
These decisions are available both to Fascist Finland (via the focus Finnish Irredentism) and to Non-Aligned Finland (via the focus Finnish March of Conquest).
You will start by creating Anti-Soviet sentiment in Karelian states controlled by the Soviet Union.



Once you have stirred the Anti-Soviet sentiment in the region, you have one year to arm the Karelian independentists and ignite the uprising, before the instability and agitation fades away. During this time, the Soviets will also have a decision to crack down on Karelian rebels, crashing down the uprising before it had the chance to happen.


Once the Uprising happens, Finland can choose to openly side with Karelia, fighting alongside the Karelian independentists against the Soviets and puppeting their government, or just provide support to Karelia without officially joining the conflict.


Here you can see a Karelia, supported (and puppeted) by Fascist Finland.


Karelia will also spawn with a general who will also be the leader of Non-Aligned Karelia if it is Non-Aligned Finland causing the uprising.
His portrait is still not implemented in-game (it is almost finalized now), so I took the liberty of making a quick sketch for you so that you all can get an idea of what he looks like in-game.
You are welcome.


And this is how his portrait is coming along. I know what youre thinking, you can barely tell the difference between the in-game portrait and this one, just a couple of shadows here and there


Just a final note about the Kinship War content, you can also support your Karelian friends during the second Russian civil war.


Finally, Keepers of the North will demand Nordic states from allies and claim states controlled by neutral or enemy countries.


And just like with Non-Aligned Finland, this branch culminates with Greater Finland, granting the final cores and claims that Finland needs to further its expansion in Scandinavia, Baltic and Russia.


And to wrap up the Fascist content, lets take a quick look at the fascist advisors and generals unlockable throughout the branch:



And now lets jump into the Socialist branches:


Finnish Socialism in the 1930s and early 1940s was marked by political tensions and the growing influence during the 1940s of the Finnish Communist Party (SKP). The Great Depression had led to economic hardship, fostering support for socialist ideas among the working class. However, as Finland geared up for the Winter War (1939-1940) and the Continuation War (1941-1944) against the Soviet Union, political focus shifted towards national unity, temporarily reducing internal political conflicts. Socialist parties, particularly the Social Democratic Party of Finland (SDP), still advocated for workers' rights and social welfare policies during this period, but the geopolitical challenges of the wars played a dominant role in Finnish politics.

The conservative political parties in Finland are represented as NonAligned, so it kinda made sense to have the democratic ideology representing the more progressist social-democrats, and having the Communist and Democratic branches sharing part of the focuses.

Since the two branches are a bit intertwined, lets start by looking into the way of changing government and the unique focuses in each branch.

Suomalainen Sosialismi unlocks the Communist Revolutionary and Democratic Reformer political advisors. These advisors will in turn unlock decisions to help Finland switch ideology when they are hired.


The focuses below (Towards a Red Government and Social-Democracy) will unlock two more ideology-related advisors each. And these advisors will also unlock, when hired, more decisions to help change the government.



Pragmatic Socialism will peacefully swap the government to Democratic. It requires fairly high Democratic support (60%) to be available, but with the help of your advisors and their decisions, you should be able to get there without much problem.
The rest of this democratic internal affairs sub-branch is initially focused on BoP, PP, boosting ideology and unlocking advisors shared with the Historical branch (Align the Agrarian League and The Finnish Swedish Party), shared with the communist branch (Sosialistinen Eduskuntaryhm) and unique to the social-democrats (Social Democratic Womens Union).
The last focuses, Mineral Wealth and Funds From Kalevala Koru Oy grant some factories, resources and consumer goods.


And now you are democratic, what does it imply? Well, first of all you get Vin Tanner.


Tanner played a crucial role during the Finnish Civil War as a leader of the Red Guards, the socialist faction, which ultimately lost to the White Guards. After the war, he faced imprisonment and later political rehabilitation.

During the turbulent years leading up to World War II, Tanner adopted a pragmatic approach. He supported President Risto Ryti's government during the Winter War (1939-1940) and the Continuation War (1941-1944) against the Soviet Union, prioritizing national unity over internal political divisions.

In-game, Vin Tanner is the Democratic country leader, a Pragmatic Socialist. His BoP Agenda includes having very high democratic support while controlling all owned states (including Karjala even if ceded to the Soviets) in order to get trust, and watching out for Fascist or Communist rise in the country so as to not have Public Trust decreasing.

Well talk more about the late-game focuses available for Democratic Finland later, but for now lets just move to the leftmost part of the tree and see how the communists can rise to power in Finland.

Flipping to Communism in Finland can be a bit faster than flipping to Democratic, but its definitely going to be harder, since you will have to undergo a civil war in order to achieve it.

All the decisions unlocked by the Communist advisors will help you getting the upper hand when the civil war starts: granting extra states and percentage of the armed forces, sabotaging some of the enemys factories and supply lines, imprisoning far-right politicians and officers to weaken the fascist side, and getting aid from the Soviet Union.



Once you are done with your preparations and complete the focus The Second Finnish Civil War, it is time to purge fascism from Finland once and for all!


Militia divisions will be spawned for both sides in this civil war (some pre-civil war decisions will grant the communist side more militias and some will grant the fascist side less militias).


Once you have dealt with the tiny issue of fascists rampaging around the country, you can start working on the internal affairs branch.


Here you will get access to extra advisors (some of them shared with the social-democrats) and get some industrial and intelligence bonuses, and a couple of custom operatives.


As for country leader, Communist Finland there are a various options:

The initial Communist leader is Aimo Aaltonen.


Aaltonen studied in the Soviet Union for several years during the 1930s, where he became a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. He returned to Finland on two occasions to organize the military branch of the Finnish Communist Party, but got arrested in 1935. He remained in prison until his release after the Continuation War, and was elected chairman of the now-legalized Finnish Communist Party.

In-game, Aaltonens BoP Agenda will be focused on fighting (and be winning) wars against fascist countries in order to increase Public Trust, and keeping a united proletariat with a very high Communist support in order to not lose Public Trust over time.

The focus The Red Watch unlocks a decision to appoint Yrj Leino as leader of the Communist Party.


Yrj Leino was sentenced to three and a half years imprisonment in 1935, for high treason.
Allegedly, he became a communist during this period and, when he was released in 1938, he participated in underground activities of the prohibited Communist Party of Finland.
During the Winter War Leino stayed underground, hiding in communist safe-houses across the Finnish countryside.
In 1940, Leino was detained in a secure facility, until 1941 when he escaped from a prison train in Riihimki, which was taking prisoners to fight in a penal battalion. Leino participated in underground Communist Party activities until the 1944 armistice between Finland and the Soviet Union and the legalization of the Communist Party.

Leinos BoP Agenda will make Public Trust grow by wiping out fascism from Finlands society and from European Governments. Just like Aaltonen, he needs high Communist support to prevent Public Trust from going down over time.

Last but not least, Otto Wille Kuusinen will automatically become the country leader the moment Communist Finland joins a faction led by Stalins Soviet Union (including if Soviet Union puppets Finland after a war), and the Finnish Democratic Republic will be formed.


Kuusinen had fled to Soviet Russia after the defeat in the civil war, and there he forged his political career. He played a key role in the founding of the Communist International and managed to survive the Great Purge. During the Winter War Kuusinen was appointed as leader of the Finnish Democratic Republic, also known as the Terijokis Government, a short-lived puppet state of the Soviet Union in occupied Finnish territory during the war.

In-game, when the Finnish Democratic Republic is formed, Kuusinen will grant the Soviet Union a small but convenient Consumer Goods and Supply Efficiency boost for a couple of years, in exchange for some construction speed bonus for Finland.

In terms of his BoP Agenda,
A Solar system of organizations" is a reference to Kuusinens proposal for a network of various political and mass organizations that are either sympathetic to or directly affiliated with the Communist Party. These organizations would work in conjunction with the Party and serve as a means to influence and mobilize the masses for political purposes aiming to create a system of interconnected entities that can effectively advance the party's objectives and prevent the loss of political influence among the masses.

Even though this concept has nothing to do with actual invasion of any nations, in order to spice-up Kuusinens gameplay and make it a bit more rewarding to expand with him in charge, controlling all Scandinavian and Baltic countries or having them as puppets will make Public Trust increase, while not having control over all three Karelian states will make Public Trust slowly decrease.

Regardless of its ideology, Finland will most likely have to deal with the Soviets kindly asking for Karjala state in order to secure Leningrad from potential threats coming from Finland.
In this regard, both Communist and Democratic Finland have two options: Approaching the Soviets or Antagonize the Soviets.


Approach the Soviets is your way to show the Soviet Union that Finland poses no threat to their country, trying to cooperate with them and leading to establishing a Finno-Soviet Pact, getting a Guarantee from the Soviets as well as other diplomatic deals.
This option will also unlock Finnish generals exiled in the Soviet Union, available for the Civil War, and a decision to request the extradition of Kullervo Manner, who was imprisoned in 1935 in the Soviet Union and died of tuberculosis in 1939, so you better hurry to get him out of that prison camp before it is too late!


On the other side Does Finland really need the trust of the Soviets? Antagonize the Soviets will make Finland reach out to major communist or democratic European countries (Soviets dont count, obviously) to get a guarantee from them. Further down the branch, you have focuses themed around the fortification of the country and getting trade Agreements with friendly nations.


In between those two options, there are shared focuses granting the fifth research slot, boosting industry, and seeking a union between Finland and Estonia.

When it comes to factions, as you have probably noticed already, there are three options:

To the left, assuming Communist Finland did Approach the Soviets and a Finno-Soviet Pact was signed, you can choose to Join the Comintern.
But remember: if you do so with Stalin at the helm of the Soviet Union, Kuusinen will inevitably pop-up, pushing aside your former leader!
Well, Stalin might initially not be in the mood to trust just any Finnish leader, so he will only accept Kuusinen, but over time, he will get confident in the Finnish leadership and you will be able to complete the focus Finnish Autonomy, once the industrial bonus to the Soviet Union, provided by Kuusinen, has expired. This will bring back your former communist leader, country name and white color on the map!


Apart from territorial and war-related focuses, the branch culminates with Red Finland, which, similar to Greater Finland, will not only grant some cores and Resistance bonuses, but it will also increase the Militias cap and improve the country leader trait (whoever is in charge).




To the right, Democratic Finland can Approach Major Democracies, assuming you decided to Antagonize the Soviets previously.
This branch will get some industrial and naval bonuses, some territorial demands and it has two culminating focuses:
Proclaim the Grand Finnish Federation will grant cores and big Compliance bonuses in certain neighboring states, and Socialist Welfare will grant pretty good bonuses to industry and research, but it will also improve your current leader trait



But Finland can always (regardless of your ideology and how you dealt with Soviets) opt for forming their own faction, the Northern Defense Front.
This branch will (unsurprisingly) focus on the Nordic and Baltic countries, and as you can see shares many focuses with the other two options.
However, there is one unique focus, Confederated Finno-Russian Republics, with which Finland will work towards the integration of several semi-autonomous republics within the nation, appealing to the Finnic peoples living in these regions to spread a sentiment of trust towards the Finns among the local population.



In terms of advisors, these are all the ones you can unlock in the Socialist branches.



These are the generals that Communist Finland will unlock. As you can see, a couple of portraits are not finalized so they have not been implemented yet


Here is the (WIP) portrait of one of the missing guys, Antikainen.


And, even though this is pretty much the alternative history for Finland, we are not done with all the new content for Finland just yet, since there have been some changes and many new things implemented for historical Finland (or just Finland in general).
And for these various flavorful details and content I have had the luck to count with some extra help, so allow me to hand you over to Jonathan!

[h3]Click this for second part of today's Dev Diary![/h3]

Generals!

Now that the QnA is wrapping up, we've got yet another announcement for you all:

We're proud to introduce HOI4 Frontlines - the brand new Hearts of Iron E-Sports community hub to help you set up your own Paradox supported HOI4 multiplayer events!

[h3]Find out more below![/h3]
[previewyoutube=G3ep__9CHG8;full][/previewyoutube]

Hey there, everyone, Carlo here. As Content Designers, and developers, we not only make content, but were always trying to find new tools to do our job better and faster. And since HoI4 is crazy moddable, these tools are available to modders too, these are some of the new things youll be able to do when making mods, starting with Joint Focus Trees.

[h3]How do you make a Joint Focus Tree? [/h3]
Well, at its core, a JFT is a Shared Focus Branch, one where depending on conditions, has a set of member countries, and the completion of the focuses is shared between them, and different effects apply either to the country completing them, to the rest of the countries or to all of them equally.


After that its all Joint Focuses, and theyre different in a few ways. First thing youll notice is the text_icon parameter, well talk about later, but the SECOND thing youll notice is the joint_trigger section. Its a trigger that determines which countries will be considered part of the JFT and get their corresponding effects. In this case its checking if you have the alliance leader flag or you are in a faction with this country.


The other thing thats different from normal focus trees is theres 3 (THREE) different sections for Completion Rewards.


First one, regular old completion_reward does its effect in every valid country in the Joint Alliance, the same for everyone.

Then theres completion_reward_joint_originator, that only applies the effect in the country that completed the focus.

And finally the completion_reward_joint_member, which applies the effect on every valid member of the alliance that is not the country that completed the focus.

Thats basically it. Its a simple system, but we hope itll be flexible enough to have a bunch of use cases and variations, specially since it doesnt need to be a faction! We used a faction as the most obvious use for it but you can make any amount of related or unrelated countries share the tree. Every country in a continent? Sure. Every communist country? Go ahead. Countries on both sides of a war? Cant stop you!

I cant wait to see what you do with it.

[h3]Focus Title Background[/h3]
In the previous point I mentioned a text_icon parameter, thats the way we are giving you the ability to change the background for the Focus titles. Its one of the features that were added to enhance the Joint Focus Tree, but can be useful for any kind of focus tree content..


It came about because we wanted a way to quickly differentiate normal focuses from joint focuses. At first we thought about just making them have the same framing on the focus icons but that proved Not ideal.


The biggest problem is that it immediately made every focus icon be too busy and hard to read.


Plus, when the whole tree was pentagons everywhere, it looked way too repetitive.


Eventually, we accepted that we couldnt solve this problem with art or design, and we were gonna have to resort to an extreme measure Talking to a programmer D=

We barely survived, but after an arduous process we agreed to make a system to change the title background changeable. It was the best option; relatively simple to implement, noticeable, and we didnt need to make every icon from scratch. Of course there was still a bit of trial and error to get the look right.


Setting them up is relatively easy. First, you will have to set up the 4 GFX entries you set up in the nationalfocusview.gfx, in our case, most of the animations and masks work just fine so it was mostly copy-pasting.


Theres a new file called 00_titlebar_styles where you can add style entries and specify the GFXs for each state, and set one as default so you dont need to specify the style for every single focus..


And now you just use your new style with the focuses you want in the text_icon parameter. Theyre set on a focus by focus basis so you can go wild and do dumb stuff with any kind of focus!



[h3]Dynamic Focus Icons[/h3]
Another feature that we added thanks to the Joint Focus Tree. You now can have the focus icons change depending on conditions. This is something Ive wanted for a long time but never found a big enough excuse to do it Until now.

The reason we finally added it for the JFT is that we want to have the option of playing it as more than one ideology, while still giving you some thematic distinction. After all, a democratic alliance should have a very different look from one formed by monarchies and dictatorships.


How theyre set up is very simple. Instead of specifying a GFX, you can open brackets and enter a trigger and a value. First one to be true becomes the icon for that focus! Just remember to add the dynamic = yes parameter so its updated more easily.



[h3]Showing Event Option Tooltips[/h3]
One of the things I hate the most when doing events is showing the effects of both sides of the events in tooltips. Usually, when we have an event option that sends another event to another country, we have to show you what will happen in your country, and in the other country, so you can better judge whats the right choice. This has always meant adding effect_tooltips and duplicating the other sides effects inside it, which is time consuming and annoying to maintain and keep track of.


Well not anymore! (Kind of). Weve added an effect called event_option_tooltip, that allows you to show the tooltip that option will display.


This is also very useful for those effects that go after the If They Accept tooltip.


It does have some limitations, like ignoring anything inside a FROM so you dont accidentally crash the game with an infinite loop if you have a show_event_tooltip on both sides, but its already been a time saver and we hope to improve on it in the future. .

[h3]Modifying the Effectiveness of Forts[/h3]
You know, not every fort is built the same, but until now they were in HoI. To make it easier to represent just how bad and outdated fortifications were in Norway and Denmark we needed something extra, so we added a couple of percentual modifiers that change the attack penalty inflicted on the attacking enemy by forts: land_bunker_effectiveness_factor and coastal_bunker_effectiveness_factor.


Before, if we wanted to represent having bad forts, our only option was reducing their production speed, which numerically could make some sense but feels a bit off thematically. You can be very fast in making really bad forts and vice versa.


For example, if a fort normally inflicts a 15% penalty and you have a -50% value in land_bunker_effectiveness_factor, that penalty will be reduced to 7.5%. Forts are already plenty effective so were mainly using this to make them worse, but of course, there are exceptions here and there.


And thats it for me, but Mano de Zombi has a bunch of other stuff to show you!


Mano de Zombi here!
After returning from a sunny vacation to this Swedish deluge I really needed to go through some of the code support we've been getting lately in order to give meaning to my life and remind me of the things that I enjoy and that not even this weather can ruin for me.
So here you have a selection of functionality, tools and improvements that have been added during the past months by our amazing coders:

Scripted Loc can now be used in Dynamic Modifiers
Your dynamic modifiers can now dynamically change name (previously we needed to create duplicates and swap the modifiers and it was really painful and ugly T_T)

New Generator Parameters for create_wargoal effect
We can now use an array as the generator in the effect create_wargoal, allowing us to set the generator states based on the world conditions by the time the effect is executed:

• You can use an already set array if you so desire:
  
• Or you can create your own array and add states based on whatever requirements you'd like:
  

• Designer Modules in the Ship/ Tank/ Plane Designers
  
  
• Battalions in the Division Designer
  
  
• Production Lines and Equipment in the Production Tab
  
  
• Intel Agency Upgrades
  
  
• Operations and Phases
  
  
• MIOS and Traits
  

Velkommen tilbage to Dannes Danish corner and the country where one of its leaders looks like Santa Claus while another one is literally named Christmas. Its time for another Danish bashing Dev Diary, where well look at what kind of alt-history shenanigans Denmark can do to avoid their world-breaking record for fastest capitulation. Will they be able to withstand German Panzer divisions? Will they be able to ally with the Germans? Will they be able to avenge their humiliating defeat of 1864? Will anyone finally make sense of the Danish language? Of all these questions, I have the least hope for the last one

Before we get started, you might want to read up on the Historical Dev Diary if you havent done so, and keep in mind that all of this is still a work in progress - things might and will change before release.

Lets start off with looking at a bunch of art assets that I either forgot last time around, or that werent finished back then. Here you can see Denmarks standard infantry at the very top, together with the Danish Brigade and the Resistance militia divisions. And down in the left corner, you can see the literally brand new militia unit - based on Denmarks WW1 uniforms. Fun fact: the faces of the Danish soldiers are in fact modeled after a real-life Danish officer who fought in WW2.


And here are 2 airplanes unique for Denmark - and definitely alt-history since these designs never left the design phase:



[h3]Aligning with Your Overlord[/h3]
Denmark (in)famously capitulated two hours after the German invasion, and if you capitulate to an invading enemy the Occupation Branch becomes available and youll be able to gather foreign support to eventually topple your evil overlord and become free once more. Thats all historical and nice and all - but what if you could join forces with your overlord and go on a conquering rampage through the Nordics? Wouldnt that just be swell? Well, if that sounds interesting I got just the thing for you, chap!



Why not take advantage of being a puppet and use your overlord for your own gains? By completing the Focuses Align with Overlord and Contribute to the War Effort you unlock Denmarks Military Branch again and you can conquer the rest of the Nordic countries youre not in a faction with. Sometimes it just feels good being bad! This doesnt preclude you from backstabbing your overlord though; you can still pursue your independence by building up a resistance movement, declaring your independence, and waging war against your former masters. Or, if you against all odds have had your fill of war, blood, and steel (I doubt it though), you can work on becoming independent through peaceful means.



[h3]Rearming Denmark[/h3]
But what if you really dont wanna become a puppet of a bigger, stronger neighbor? Well, theres something for that too. If you want to withstand the onslaught of the Wehrmacht, you better rearm and seek out allies in the Rearmament Branch.



Historically, there were forces within Denmark that wanted to rearm and strengthen the defenses - Christmas Mller, the leader of the Conservative Party, being a notable example. Thorvald Stauning, the Prime Minister of Denmark, even tried to seek an alliance with the rest of the Nordic nations, but those plans fell through. He then tried to initiate cooperation with the UK, where he under no uncertain terms was informed that they could not guarantee Denmarks safety and wouldnt make any commitment to military support. This cemented Danish pacifism and neutrality even further. But you dont have to suffer the same fate

Lets start off with the sub-branch that is shared with the Historical Path:



This branch is all about building up and improving your industries and production. Youll add 1 level of infrastructure in all of mainland Denmark, before having to choose what kind of regulations you want to impose on your industries - if any at all.




The astute among you will have figured out that there is no pure communist path for Denmark - but that will not be an issue if you want to overthrow the king and let the peoples revolution sweep across the nation! You simply have to use the election system implemented for Denmark ;) But they do have a Focus only they can take, namely Introduce the Five Year Plan



And if you dont wanna go commie, you can have a Limited Social Mobilization to face any German looming threats



Now, lets get to the meat and bones of the Rearmament Branch. One thing thats prudent to do is to prepare every facet of society for the coming war, which you can do through the various Preparation Focuses before being able to do a Full Social Mobilization



Preparations are all fine and dandy, but it might still be a bit challenging to hold back German Panzers all on your own. As luck would have it - you dont have to do it all by yourself. Completing the Focus Seek Protection will open up two distinct possibilities for you; seeking out a Guarantor of sorts, or joining a Faction. Both of these sub-branch's effects will vary slightly depending on the choices you make. But lets break them down individually, shall we?

Signing a Non-Aggression pact might seem like a silly focus to do, and not at all worthwhile - but there are benefits to be reaped eventually. Completing the Sign a Non-Aggression Pact will open up the decision Seek a Guarantor, where you can choose between different countries to approach. Mind you, they will all have different ramifications for the following focuses!


Then with Negotiate a Trade Deal you get a couple of Subsidies for various equipment targeting the Non-aggression signator country - plus a Licensing Agreement with them



With Enter a Research and Partnership Program you start to truly see the effects of your previous choice of country to sign a pact with:





And the last focus of this sub-branch, Territory for Protection (which is precisely what it sounds like), is where the true effects of your choice of signatory country comes into play; which piece of your nation are you willing to part with in order to get a guarantee from a major power?






But there are other ways of getting friends if you dont feel like parting with a single territory of your realm. All you have to do is seek Strength in Numbers, which will remove your National Spirit Declaration of Neutrality - which also means that you no longer will have the option of instantly becoming anyones puppet in case of an invasion. Completing this focus will give you a Decision to choose what nation you want to form an alliance with; do you want to join an existing one, or maybe start a brand new one? You also open up the Joint Focus Tree if you want to have deeper cooperation with your Nordic neighbors. But as with Sign a Non-Aggression Pact, the choice of ally will have ramifications for the following focuses.







Yeeeeeaaaaah, thats one BIG tooltip, isnt it? Im afraid its necessary in order to show the different outcomes of each choice you can make; I would rather have a well-informed player than remove crucial information.

Last but not least, you can invite the other Nordic countries into your faction. But see, the Scandinavian nations werent too keen on joining any alliances at this point in time, so what do you do if or when they turn you down? Well, I suppose they would still need protection, whether or not they realize that themselves. And I suppose it would be best if a fellow Nordic brethren did the protecting. And I suppose you, who understand and see the severity of the situation, would be in the best position to offer said protection. And I suppose you have been rearming Denmark for a reason, so you might just as well put that brand-new grand army to use - to protect the Nordic peoples of course.


But what if you want to take a more proactive approach instead of letting the Germans come to you? Well, you can always-

[h3]Let the King Assume Power[/h3]
Now, historically King Christian X didnt meddle too much in politics - not after the Eastern Crisis, when a Civil War almost broke out in Denmark - even though he had the authority and power to do so. He actually served for quite some time in the army before becoming King, and as such he often wore uniform and maintained his identity as an officer. But even so, he cant just overthrow the government and grab power for himself willy-nilly. You gotta work for it, where the first step is to Unify the Right and start to gather the right-wing parties in a form of coalition. The first few focuses in your effort to give Christian X full authority of the government will be all about strengthening the support for the Non-aligned party and undermining the Democratic parties, but also to gaining the support of the officer corps and strengthening them too. But while doing so, youll also boost the Fascist party - so be mindful not to let them become too powerful!



Having come to power, Christian X can promote unity with For Konge og Fdreland, where youll get access to the Chief of Navy and begrudgingly bad-ass-looking crown prince of Denmark.


And just heres a non-game related picture of the future bad-ass-looking King of Denmark, Frederik IX covered in tattoos. Who knew royalties were even allowed to get inked?


Youll also be able to realign the industries and economy to better serve national interests with Align the Industries to National Interests and Economic Mobilization and making sure that Denmark isnt a technological backwater by expanding Copenhapens University and gaining one more Research slot.



While you can take a more proactive foreign political stance, you can still choose to join forces with the Allies, imperial Germany, or any of the Nordic nations and access parts of the Rearmament Branch. This would preclude a more offensive approach though - but the choice is there.

If you choose to take the offensive to your enemies and turn your gaze toward a Europe in turmoil you have first to secure your Northern Flank with Scandinavian Security. Youll have to decide if you want to create your own faction, or if you wanna solo it completely.


After that, the Nordics are your oyster! You can try to influence countries around the Baltic Sea and eventually offer them proper protection in the form of subjugation - there is after all something to be said about the pen being mightier than the sword.



Or you can try to reclaim old Danish territory. Norway was after all united with Denmark for literally hundreds of years, and Sweden really should know its place under Danish rule - just like in the good old Kalmar Union days. On your way to conquering the Scandinavian countries, youll be helped by a nifty National Spirit;


But, if you manage to convince one of these nations to accept your protection and become a puppet, the focuses will offer other benefits;



And with Sweden under your control you can exploit their immense mineral wealth, and even offer resource rights to a nation for guarantees:



And lastly, we have the end focuses for Denmark - all based on different time periods in Danish history. You can either take on the Germans with Avenging 1864 - to make sure that they never threaten the Danish heartlands ever again. Or, you can pick up the Danish ambitions of establishing a Baltic Sea empire, the Dominium Maric Baltici; Danish expansions into the Baltics go back to medieval times and they fought the Swedes over dominance in the region.

Lastly, you can turn your gaze even further back in time, to when Denmark first emerged as a unified country, and try to re-establish the Danelagen, or the Danelaw. This will allow you to re-form the old Viking realm of the North Sea Empire.


But this last focus is only available to the fascists. Oh, I suppose we have to talk about-

[h3]The Fascist Options[/h3]
Having overthrown the government and installed a new one, you might not want to empower the monarchy any further, but take Denmark in a different direction. Well, then youll have to have the Fascists March on the Capital to show how discontent they are with the lack of influence they have in the new regime. And after reaching the capital you have to make a choice; do you wanna go alone about conquering the world, or do you wanna team up with your fellow Fascists down south, just across the borders; the German Reich?


If you simply Seize Power for yourself, a civil war will ensue, but after that, you can put Denmark First and create a faction of your own - but this will of course remove your National Spirit Declaration of Neutrality.



On the other hand, if you want a big, strong neighbor helping out in your expansions you can always turn to the Germans and Ask for Support. You can then deepen your cooperation with the focus Dano-German Military Cooperation.



But the countrys been through quite a bit at this point - not one, but two coups! - so youll have to Rally the Nation before moving on.


But after that is done you can wreak havoc as you see fit. The Fascist path largely shares the same expansionist focuses that the Monarchist path does, so you know all about that part already. But what the Fascists can do is Institute Corporatism


Youll also get the opportunity to Prioritize Svrnet or Prioritize Hren



And if things are going really badly for you and you find yourself being pushed back on all fronts and losing ground, you can declare Total Krig - Total War


I think thats about it for alt-historical Denmark. I hope youve enjoyed reading these Dev Diaries and found at least one of the branches intriguing - I have had a blast working on Denmark! I think their history with the occupation was really interesting, and trying to incorporate that somehow was a lot of fun. Their failed attempts to join or create an alliance were also really useful. Their rich history ranging from the Viking era to their different forms of empire throughout the ages gave a lot of inspiration to where to take their alt-history paths too. Hopefully, you can take this small nation and restore it to empirehood once again (Ive heard that those pesky Swedes have been bad-mouthing the Danes - so go and teach them a lesson in humility)!

And with that,
Jeg m lbe, p gensyn!

Generals!

Arms Against Tyranny is on the horizon, and with it, our latest Pre-Order bonus track Skkijrven Polkka!

In this latest video, we're letting you get behind the scenes in its production!

Make sure to check it out here

Good morning/evening/night!

Summer break is over here in Sweden, most of the team is back from vacation and it's full steam ahead towards the finnish line. As mentioned in the last Swedish DD theres two designers for the Swedish tree, so you might see both of us answer in the comments below. Without further ado

[h3]Communist Sweden[/h3]
In game the path to communist Sweden is to the left side (we finally managed to have the communist path on the left and the fascist one one the right) of the democratic historical path where you instead choose to align with the Swedish trade union to unlock some communist advisors


When your support for the cause is high enough, you can flip communist with the leader Nils Flyg. This guy definitely does not fit into the HoI mold as he became disillusioned with the Soviet Union and became pro-axis.


In game this means that the non-comforming Flyg can join the Axis (for the rest of you historical figures it would really help us if you only stuck to your designated 4 allowed ideologies please)


Flygs grip on power will be challenged by Karl Kilbom after a period of time, where you can choose to align more with the allies for a less radical future.

As you flip communist the fascists are not all too pleased and will start gathering support for a counterrevolution, eventually also dragging in the military if you wait too long. Preventing a counter revolution will expose the big ringleaders of the plot.


The ringleaders are 3 of your generals, and you get to decide what to do with them. Either you prosecute them for treason using the legal system, which retires them permanently but gives stability, or you promote them away from power where they can do any real harm, keeping them as generals but getting a debuff.


In any case fascism is crushed in the country and we now get to a cornerstone of the communist branch, socialist reforms. All those toasters that you used to throw away? They are now used for something


You also get to enact different policies that relates to consumer goods, turning your civilian population into a potential powerhouse.


To the left there are two refuge focuses. The first one is quite self explanatory.


The second allows Sweden to get foreign communist advisors depending on what focus path other countries are going for. In this example Portugal has gone down the Iberian Wedding path, Poland has gone with the April constitution and Ethiopia has gone down the Fascist path, so these advisors will flee to Sweden and become available. This list will grow or shrink depending on what other countries pick as their focus path. Regardless, the player will always get the specialized Communist Military Council.


State planning committee and Establish Politibury both expand on the consumer goods decisions and give some needed factories, while the Starve the fascists/allies of iron embargoes your future enemy and increases your output at the cost of consumer goods.


The end of the tree deals directly with your neighbors, for Norway and Denmark you can more easily influence them and eventually topple their government in a civil war for that James Bond () spy experience.


The Finnish version is more about actively helping the Finns and use them as a buffer state against a potential angry USSR.


The capstone focus of the tree is when you offer everyone a base minimum income, which will help with newly conquered states compliance. At the end the path merges with the late game focuses as described in the first DD.

As you might see, a lot of this path is focused on using consumer goods in a beneficial way. You can control how much/little goods you spend, thus increasing the strength of Folkhemmet at the cost of your consumer industry.


In this extreme example I have gained a lot of bonuses


But it has also resulted in my civilian economy tanking.

[h3]Small changes since last time[/h3]
There's some small changes since the last DD that I think I should mention, first of which are changes to how Hungershield works.

Previously if you were under a % stability threshold the game would roll a die each month, and if the player were unlucky enough they would get strikes. While being under the threshold had the desired effect being at unease I never liked putting the player at the hands of RNGesus for such a critical component.

The most likely outcome if a player got a bad roll would probably just be reloading from the latest autosave, which was something I wanted to avoid.


The system is now more deterministic. The player can always see the conditions for the strikes starting to tick down, and it gives you some time to adjust your strategy accordingly, which is a more fair system. If you have ever played Mexico this might look familiar to you.

The Nordic defense council branch also got some additions. There are some new focuses, and the entire branch now hooks directly into the tail end of the democratic branch so that it is no longer just a dead end..


And if you get to a fully powered council you get to build the ultimate battleship, but it might sink your economy for a little while.


If you are unlucky and no one accepts your invitation, you can now coax them to join, so even if no one initially joins its not game over and you have to restart.


And here is the council portrait itself



Raoul Wallenberg is now an advisor and operative and Sweden now gets a snow focused armored car


[h3]Resource balance boggolo two[/h3]
Unrelated to Sweden here are some new numbers on the upcoming steel changes coming in the accompanying patch. All stats are at game start (36), with infrastructure and no production lines. The (start) rows are with the starting trade law of the country, while (total) is on closed economy.

[table]
[tr]
[th]Germany[/th]
[th]PRE-AAT[/th]
[th]AAT[/th]
[th]Delta[/th]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Steel (start)[/td]
[td]381[/td]
[td]253[/td]
[td]-128[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Steel (Total)[/td]
[td]508[/td]
[td]284[/td]
[td]-224[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Austria[/td]
[td] - [/td]
[td] - [/td]
[td] - [/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Steel (start)[/td]
[td]5[/td]
[td]15[/td]
[td]10[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Steel (Total)[/td]
[td]10[/td]
[td]29[/td]
[td]19[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]France[/td]
[td] - [/td]
[td] - [/td]
[td] - [/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Steel (start)[/td]
[td]457[/td]
[td]313[/td]
[td]-144[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Steel (Total)[/td]
[td]914[/td]
[td]625[/td]
[td]-289[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]UK[/td]
[td] - [/td]
[td] - [/td]
[td] - [/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Steel (start)[/td]
[td]229[/td]
[td]262[/td]
[td]33[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Steel (Total)[/td]
[td]452[/td]
[td]524[/td]
[td]72[/td]
[/tr]
[/table]

As you can see Germany and France still get axed in regards to some of their steel production, but not as bad as before. With the drastically reduced steel production presented in the first dev diary Germany had no option to go on any other law (unless spending massive amounts of resources on trade).

While making Germany more reliant on trade and reducing the overabundance on steel that the game has, essentially allowing Germany and France to bypass a lot of the resource aspect of the game was a goal, I did not want to force players to be on limited trade and that was the end all be all, which would be the same as free trade being the end all be all before.


Now a German player has the ability to go on Free Trade while still hovering on the green (barely) at game start with no additional mils (using the starting lines).

If the goal is to build civs for the first years of the game free trade might still be lucrative for you, but once you start ramping up military production you will probably be forced to change laws.

Vice versa if you are more into a mil rush build you might want to bump the law to export focus instead.

France instead has gained some steel from before, mostly due to Africa.


Northern Africa's deposits are now more abundant than before (note that you dont access it all due to compliance at the start but can unlock it all with the Blum -Violette proposal). My hope is that it is gonna incentivize the Northern African campaign from both sides, with the allies wanting to secure the steel and the axis wanting to claim it.

As you can see the UK has also gained some resources, those are from the Sierra Leone and Ghana mines


This is to give a larger purpose to areas of Africa that historically in game has had little reason of justification to hold or conquer. The real value of the steel is a bit higher than is presented here but is lower due to occupation and compliance.



Germany also has 1 new focus where it can gain resource rights for Vsterbotten, giving them a nice 49 tungsten, 55 steel and 21 chromium, and some nice buffs to Swedens economy



Additionally Operation Weserbung now has the additional effect of adding civilian factories if Germany controls Narvik. This hopefully will add some extra incentive to control the port. However this also gives the option of the UK launching Plan R 4


If the UK invades Narvik they can be given the option to go into Sweden, blow up the Swedish iron ore mines and get out. Successfully doing this will remove all the civilian factories that Germany has gotten from controlling Narvik, and sabotaging the Swedes mines. It will also give the UK the option to white peace Sweden to avoid a full scale Swedish war. This will only be available for a short period though as if you fail the operation the public will see through the charade of we are just trying to help the Finns, leading to a large drop in stability.

Currently the resource gained from compliance has also been increased from 60% to 65%, but as always balance is in flux and these might be changed later. Germany still starts with 2 extra civs.

[h3]Fascism and Monarchism[/h3]
Lets dive into the other ideological alternate history paths for Sweden, those being monarchism and fascism. It isnt really accurate to categorize Swedish far-right activity during this period as simply fascist. The public were largely disdainful of Italian style fascism, seeing it as a foreign ideology trying to undermine the foundations of their nation, much the same as they viewed communism. Instead, many would-be fascists looked to German National Socialism for inspiration due to the strong cultural and economic links between Sweden and Germany. While this would make the movement more palatable to Swedes, it would have repercussions for the movement in the long-run.


The National Socialist movement in Sweden during this time period, while active and visible, was unsuccessful in gaining much traction with the public. There were many reasons for this, but we shall try to summarize the main points. Perhaps the primary factor that undermined them, and the communists for that matter, was the success of the Social Democrats in providing a strong social safety net and employment for the masses. This meant people were less likely to be radicalized in the same way that occurred in Germany or Italy following the Great Depression. Furthermore, there were multiple National Socialist parties all bickering with one another, keeping the movement fragmented.

Geo-political factors also contributed to undermining far-right activity. The historic animosity with Russia led many to see communism as a Trojan horse for Russia to gain influence over Swedish affairs. This prevented the communists gaining too much support and in turn prevented large numbers of would-be National Socialists joining movements to curtail them, as had occurred in Weimar Germany following WWI. Furthermore, Swedish neutrality over the previous century meant there was little appetite for the militaristic rhetoric that was so successful in other nations of the time period and there were no seriously pressing territorial disputes that could be called upon to galvanize the public against a common foe. Instead, most of the public supported the nations continued neutrality, save for the Winter War when many Swedes were prepared to fight in defense of their eastward neighbor, Finland.

As mentioned above, the far-right in Sweden were predominantly National Socialist in character and this would ultimately be the undoing of the far-right in Sweden. Once World War II began there was a shift in Swedish attitudes against National Socialism, due to the threat Germany now posed to Swedish independence. While there were those of a Quisling persuasion who hoped to be swept to power by a German occupation of Sweden, the National Socialist Movement fragmented further and was forced to drop their militaristic uniforms and tone down their rhetoric to maintain any semblance of support among the public.

With regards to the monarchy during this period, King Gustaf V had reigned since 1907 and had overseen the transition of the nation from a highly centralized power structure around himself, to a constitutional monarchy with universal suffrage. While there was much controversy over the Kings actions during the time period and high proportion of aristocrats in positions of power in the military, there was no movement advocating for the return to absolute monarchy.


Given all of this, you might be wondering if we even bothered to make a fascist or monarchist path for Sweden. Well, rest assured that we did. And whilst it took some time to figure out how to do it, I think we were successful in creating some engaging alt-history narratives that give players an immersive experience into how different things could have been in little old Sweden. So lets get into it.


As youre well aware by now, the National Socialists and the monarchy both suffered from similar issues and their supporters shared common grievances. Therefore, the path to restoring the monarchy or installing a National Socialist regime are initially the same. By taking the focus The Old Enemy Stirs players can use the publics fear of the Soviet Union and communism to gain support for their nationalist agenda. Players will have to walk a tightrope between lowering stability enough to gain support for radical political changes, while not enraging the political opposition too hastily and triggering civil disobedience.

The first real choice in this path is between undermining the fascists or revoking the anti-militia laws. Undermine the fascists will put the player on the path towards restoring the powers of the King and becoming an absolute monarchy once more.



Meanwhile, Revoke the Anti-Militia Laws will lead to the National Socialist movement coming to power. The historical context for this focus comes from 1931 when the Munckska kren, a paramilitary organization of anti-communists were unveiled which led to a debate over such groups among the public. In 1934, the government would outlaw such organizations before they could get out of hand. This prevented the same sort of street violence that occurred in other nations during the time period, but in this scenario we are reversing course. In game play terms, this will allow players to recruit Stormtrupper militia divisions. These will be crucial to the player should the nation be embroiled in a civil war.

The following focus is shared between the monarchist and National Socialist branch, but allows the player to increase support for their respective ideology via decisions. However, these boosts in support will come at a price. Once democracy is suspended, missions will be activated whereby the player must fulfill their obligations to these benefactors, or face severe hits to stability.




On the National Socialist Side, another path must be chosen between pursuing a purely independent movement in Sweden, or approaching the German Reich for support. Gaining the support of Germany will be the easiest path for changing ideology and offers great rewards, however it will come at the cost of becoming their puppet. At least for now


Let's take a closer look at the Delegation to Berlin sub-branch first. As you can see, there are multiple mutually exclusive focuses here that allow the player to tweak the nation to their play style. While many will be content to fight alongside the Axis as a puppet, there are those who enjoy the challenge of overthrowing an overlord, both options are viable here. The path culminates in a decision to become the master of Scandinavia in the German sphere of influence or to backstab the Germans by declaring an independent Swedish Reich and attempting to defeat them militarily. Timing your betrayal of Germany with the war turning against them can be extremely fun.


Over in the independent part of the branch, the path to power requires gaining enough support to orchestrate a putsch. With the country undergoing so much internal turmoil in such a short space of time, the following focus gives a boost to rebuilding the nation and preventing adversaries from undermining the new regime via espionage.


If a monarchist play through is more your interest, youll have noticed the Meet With the King branch. This section was inspired by three main factors, one being the historic ties between the Swedish royal family and Germany. The Kings wife, Queen Victoria, was one of many royals of German descent for example. These historic ties lead many to believe that King Gustaf was somewhat sympathetic to Germany during the time period. This wasnt helped by him writing to Hitler of his support for the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. The second factor that influenced our narrative was that the King invited the leader of the National Socialist party, Sven Olav Lindholm to the royal palace for a meeting. The third factor in our narrative was King Gustafs willingness to insert himself into political discussions despite the undemocratic nature of doing so. For example, in 1940 he threatened to abdicate as a means of forcing his preferred policy option during the midsummer crisis.
In our monarchist path, weve expanded on these factors so that we can see what might have happened if the King had been a little bit more politically active. The Meet With the King focus triggers an event for unifying the nationalist movements of the nation under the banner of the King. Decisions are then unlocked to boost support for the King and the restoration of his authority. In order for this to work, the authority of the Social Democrats and the unions has to be undermined in the following focus. Finally, with enough support and destabilization, the King can return to power as absolute ruler.


Now, with either the King or the National Socialists in power, we come to The Counter Revolution and the job of rebuilding Sweden upon a new ideology. This focus triggers the previously mentioned missions for fulfilling obligations to the supporters of your chosen movement as well as removing the Social Democrats Folkhemmet national spirit. This in turn allows the nation to more rapidly expand the military at the expense of stability. You may have noticed a number of hits to stability in this branch of the tree, this is because we wanted the process of changing Sweden from a well established, neutral democracy to a more authoritarian government to feel challenging.


Finally we come to the foreign policy aspect of this alt-history branch, which unsurprisingly allows for multiple expansionist opportunities at the expense of your neighbors. While we wont go into every possible route today, the overarching theme for initial expansion is similar to Germany in the 1930s. These focuses give Sweden the opportunity to create an international crisis over small territorial disputes with their neighbors that ultimately undermines the integrity of said neighbors and allows Sweden to eventually conquer or puppet them.


However, we also have more co-operative methods of foreign policy here too. Sweden has the opportunity to approach the Allies and join their faction in exchange for Swedens historical overseas territories being returned to them. If accepted, Germany will be starved of much needed Swedish resources during the war and give Sweden territory in the Caribbean, Africa and India.


To the opposite end of this branch, we have opportunities to cooperate with the Axis and Finland in their dealings with the Soviet Union. This side culminates in Sweden gaining claims on the lands of Eastern Europe that once had historical ties to the Swedish vikings in centuries past. For those unaware, much of Russia and Ukraine was invaded or colonized by vikings who used the river networks of the region to navigate deep into the continent. While this may seem far fetched at first, its not unheard of for nationalistic movements to demand some sort of ownership of distant lands due to long forgotten or dubious claims. So it seems fitting that such a movement in Sweden would make such outlandish claims too. Plus, youre still going to have to conquer and occupy those regions which offer interesting challenges.


The ultimate culmination of this branch though, is the creation of the Greater Nordic Reich. This focus allows Sweden to fully integrate the Nordic regions of their empire, gaining greater access to their resources and manpower.


Thats it for this week's dev diary! Hopefully you enjoyed this foray into alternate history Sweden and are looking forward to playing it for yourself in the not so distant future! Next weeks diary will be on alternate history Denmark with Daniel. See ya!

Generals!

The Steam Strategy Fest is starting now! We've got the deals for you all to get the packs you want or need for up to 70 percent off!

[h3]Base Game[/h3]

• Hearts of Iron IV 70% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Starter Edition 70% off
  

• Hearts of Iron IV: By Blood Alone 30% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: No Step Back 30% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Battle for the Bosporus 50% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Death or Dishonor 60% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Together For Victory 60% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Waking the Tiger 60% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: La Rsistance 50% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Man the Guns 50% off
  

• Hearts of Iron IV: Eastern Front Music Pack50% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Eastern Front Planes Pack50% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Allied Speeches Music Pack 50% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Radio Pack 50% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Sabaton Soundtrack50% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Sabaton Soundtrack Vol. 250% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Allied Armor Pack 50% off
  
• Hearts of Iron IV: Axis Armor Pack 50% off
  

Generals!

Our next Feature Breakdown Video on Arms Against Tyranny is here!

With it comes a look at the Finnish Focus Tree and a look at the first Major Feature of the Expansion: The International Market!

Make sure to check out the video here