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Steam Winter Sale!

Generals! The Quartermasters on Steam have reorganized the railways, lending for more efficient supply lines and offering Discounts yet again during the holidays. Grab something for yourself and complete that collection, or perhaps for a friend to conquer the battlefield together! This sale will run from December 19th to the 2nd of January until 19:00 CEST

BASE GAME


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

Expansions


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 30% off Hearts of Iron IV: La Rsistance 50% off Hearts of Iron IV: Man the Guns 50% off

Country Packs


Hearts of Iron IV: Battle for the Bosporus 50% off Hearts of Iron IV: Trial of Allegiance 20% off

Music & Unit Packs


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 50% 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 50% off Hearts of Iron IV: Axis Armor 50% off


[ 2024-12-19 18:03:04 CET ] [ Original post ]

ANNOUNCING the Hearts of Iron Board Game

BREAKING NEWS! Relive history or rewrite it! Announcing Hearts of Iron: The Board Game, Gamefound's most strategic board game to date, coming soon!
Based on our favourite Grand Strategy video game by Paradox Interactive, this competitive 2-5 player board game puts YOU in total control of history.
Navigate war, politics, and trade through real or alternative timelines. What if the Soviet Union faced off against Monarchist Germany?
What if Communist France competed against Democratic Italy? Maybe its time to find out.... [url=https://pdxint.at/3Vv81zp]
[url=https://pdxint.at/3Vv81zp]Launching on Gamefound soon, follow now to receive free gifts with your pledge! Click the above image or here for more information!


[ 2024-12-13 14:12:22 CET ] [ Original post ]

Gtterdmmerung | Patch 1.15.3 Checksum 0143

Generals! We've released a minor hotfix to address a number of graphical content options recently added with Gtterdmmerung. This is in addition to our developers continued efforts on Hearts of Iron IV, most recently with Patch 1.15.2. ##################################

# Graphics


################################## - Replaced some graphical content in the German version of the game. - Removed game option to use silhouette portraits for German leadership and focuses. Thatll be all for today, so please continue sending in your bug reports in the meantime! [url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/3152810/Hearts_of_Iron_IV_Expansion_Pass_1] Make sure to check out the Expansion Pass Here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3152810/Hearts_of_Iron_IV_Expansion_Pass_1


[ 2024-12-12 14:21:23 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hearts of Iron IV - 2024 Battle Report

Generals!


The year is rapidly coming to an end but the battles rage on. Below, youll find a brief snapshot of how your collective efforts shaped the Frontlines this year, whether you focused on making the best Division templates, completed the focuses you needed for victory or Promoted the best friend one can have. For the full roundup, march over to the forums and let us know what stats you wanna see next time!
To see the full infographic, click here or on the image above!


[ 2024-12-10 14:38:44 CET ] [ Original post ]

Gtterdmmerung | Patch 1.15.2 Checksum 2dd1

Generals! Our delightful Command have been hard at work since the initial release of Gtterdmmerung, so were pleased to share with you our latest innovations, a few hefty bug fixes and some gameplay tweaks! Be sure to read them below, and let us know what you think! ##################################

Balance


################################## - Concealment Expert visibility reduction changed from -15% to -10% - Submarine Torpedoes Hit Chance reduced from 0%/+1%/+1.5%/+2% to 0%/+0.5%/+1%/+1.5% - Anechoic Tiles visibility reduction changed from -25% to -20% - Submarine Snorkels visibility reduction changed from -7%/-15% to -7%/-13% - Increased the amount of factory and dockyard output penalties when hitting max MEFO penalty - BEL: Added Weekly Manpower to The Belgian Legion. - Balancing the Prioritize Economic Growth branch by adding Civilian Economy trade law and slightly re-arranging the reduction of Consumer Goods Factory factories through focuses - If Germany completes the focus "Seek to the Eastern Front", Poland will be more willing to join an alliance with them ##################################

AI


################################## - AI correctly resets its desire to unlock army/navy/air spirits when unlocking a spirit ##################################

Modding


################################## - AI equipment templates now allow specifying a design_team (MIO) - Added code support for new on-action before a peace conference starts - Can have multiple same_support_type on support brigades ##################################

Graphics


################################## - Added a new European President cosmetic tag flag and made the 3 versions all use one central tag. Changed adjective from Dutch / Belgian / Austrian to European. - Added a game option to use silhouette portraits for German leadership and focuses. ##################################

Bugfix


################################## - Fixed transport planes description text - Fixed CTD caused by incorrect update sequence - Fixed typo in German Scientist's name Helmuth Walter - Fix AI sometimes not moving its troops after a civil war starts - Fixed typo in German city Wrzburg. - Fixed typo in Bormann's trait. - Fixed typo in effect tooltip of German focus Strike Eastward. - Fixed various issues with spelling errors and grammatical inconsistencies in African Union events. - Fixed an issue where Romania would be blocked in their focus "Split Yugoslavia" due to Debar not being targetable by the subsequent decisions. - Austrian decisions should no longer annex tho overlords via decisions targeting their puppets - Fixed a spelling error in the Luxembourgish election event. - Added Schleswig to the Yalta Conference to better resemble a historical post-war Germany - Fixed an issue where non-Gtterdmmerung Hungary would accidentally bypass their focus "Protect Czechoslovakia". - Slovakia won't receive Slovak states if they're controlled by someone else, and neither will Poland. Poland won't receive Zaolzie if Germany partitions Czechoslovakia with Hungary if Germany and Poland are at war with each other - Fixed an issue where Turkey was locked out of joining a faction with a Monarchist Germany when having the Gtterdmmerung dlc enabled. - Fixed an error where two unique German traits could be randomly generated for characters. - Fixed an error where a Greek Admiral had an army trait incorrectly assigned to him. - Italy's decision to support the Hungarian claim to Vojvodina will now also work in historical scenarios. - Fixed an incorrect naming syntax for a constitutional Kingdom of Hungary. - Albania now gets the correct party name when Wilhelm of Wied becomes their country leader. - Fixed a misspelled name for a German Mine Clearing vehicle. - BEL: Legacy of the Great War requires you to be at war. - BEL: King's Surrender text no longer refers to a "full state", you only need to hold Liege, Antwerp or Brussels. The Ardennes can be safely sacrificed for the greater good (the greater good). - BEL: Peacekeepers reduce Global Tension Required by -100% instead of -75%. - Corrects grammar in the focus Legitimistische Jugend - Removes misleading tooltip stating that the anschluss ratio will start ticking down much earlier than it actually does - clarifies the effects of going "Via Danube to Europe" and how this makes integration harder - BEL: Removed early election as this is simulated by Government Resigns. - BEL: Updated Advisor type icons to better suit their role. - Makes sure only faction members are targeted by the federalization decision. - hides popups for hidden techs in Austrian focus tree - Fixes Austrian subjugation and annexation decisions cancelling incorrectly if the targeted country gets annexed while the decision is ongoing - Canceling the MEFO Bills after annexing Czechoslovakia from the focus Fate of Czechoslovakia will now trigger the MEFO Payments National Spirit. The same fix have been applied to similar circumstances elsewhere, such as carving up Yugoslavia through focuses - If Germany has completed the Focus Brothers in Arms, they should no longer receive the Event Austrian Pro-German Sentiments and thereby annex Austria. - Land Cruisers should no longer be able to have more than one aerial module. - No more Austria diplo annexing the Soviet Union in weird edge case scenarios - Germany will no longer be able to steal Slovakia if its a puppet of Romania and created by the focus Split Czechoslovakia after completing Fate of Czechoslovakia - Cancel Germany's National Spirit "Redirected Naval Production" is they're at war with Britain, or if Britain is either a subject or doesn't exist nny more - The focus Assemble the Red Orchestra is now available with and without the DLC La Resistance - German focuses to annex Czechoslovakia will now be bypassed if Czechoslovakia is a subject of Germany and have done one of the focuses "German Satellite" or "German Protectorate" - Fixed Supersonic Jet template design bonus to be granted if you own "By Blood Alone" - Fix bug where AI started trading with countries it didn't have a valid trade route to - Vichy France should no longer increase the monthly increase of Germany's Consumer Goods Factory factories in Economy of Conquest any further when they reduce their own National Spirit of "Occupation Cost", unless they outright remove the Spirit all together Thatll be all for today, we hope you enjoy causing mischief and mayhem on the battlefield with these new inventions. Please do continue sending in your bug reports in the meantime! [url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/3152810/Hearts_of_Iron_IV_Expansion_Pass_1] Make sure to check out the Expansion Pass Here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3152810/Hearts_of_Iron_IV_Expansion_Pass_1


[ 2024-12-05 09:34:53 CET ] [ Original post ]

Steam Autumn Sale!

Generals! The Quartermasters over on Steam have improved the efficiency on their supply lines, allowing us to make massive discounts for their Autumn Sale! Grab something for yourself and complete your collection, or maybe grab something for a friend right before the holidays! The Sale will run until December 4th 2024 19:00 CET

BASE GAME


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

Expansions


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 30% off Hearts of Iron IV: La Rsistance 50% off Hearts of Iron IV: Man the Guns 50% off

Country Packs


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

Music & Unit Packs


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 50% 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 50% off Hearts of Iron IV: Axis Armor 50% off


[ 2024-11-27 18:01:22 CET ] [ Original post ]

Gtterdmmerung | Patch 1.15.1 Checksum c86b

Generals! It has been a week since the release of Gtterdmmerung but Command has continued their work in the background, with today's patch rolling out with some much needed bug fixes, some balance passes and a few tweaks to the AI. Make sure to check them out below as we continue to work diligently on more for the future! ##################################

Balance


################################## - Reduced the base convoy cost for the Underway Replenishment by ~20%. (From 0.35 per fuel to 0.28 per fuel) - Adding days to the mission "Public Dissent" to give the player more of a fighting chance to avoid the negative fallout of the mission and subsequent event - Fixed an exploit with swapping division templates - Added basic transport plane technology to more countries in 1936 bookmark - Made political power a bit more abundant for the Freedom at Gunpoint/African Union branch for Congo. Also modified some AI chances, and added a version of the liberation decision to liberate subjects of colonial powers, and not just occupied territories. - Added dimishing return for breakthrough gain from number of scientists (more facilities doing basic research will be less advantageous per facility) ##################################

Gameplay


################################## - Renamed Submarine Ballistic Missile Launcher to Submarine Nuclear Missile Launcher - Basic Torpedo tech no longer unlocks Torpedo Mountings module. - France can now gain access to AMX as a tank MIO by completing the Form State Arsenals focus ##################################

UI


################################## - Equipment Designer dynamic version-naming checkbox now functions correctly when manually toggled ##################################

AI


################################## - AI can now cancel low-scoring raids if that's needed to unblock command power so a higher-scoring raid can be created - AI should now exercise their divisions (when not involved in a war) to a larger degree - AI should now get correct AI strategy values immediately after loading a save file (next hourly tick instead of next daily tick) - Sanity check of British plane designs, fixing a bunch of invalid designs - Ai will only volunteer to give back core states if democratic or communist, support for adjusting this added ################################## #

Bugfix


################################## - Fixed issue with supply flow reduction not showing in tooltip - Fixed missing faction in invitation tooltip for Ally Chiang Kai-Shek focus - Update resource need for special project on game load - Fixed possible CTD when selecting project iteration reward - Fixed issue with showing empty army theater - front lines and units can no longer be highlighted when main menu is open - Corrected the Belgian Neutral Royalist party to the House of Saxe-Coburg Gotha from House of Leopold. - Added to a number of Belgian people. - British speech War with Germany now requires Germany to be at war with Poland in order to be triggered when UK declares war on Germany. - Fixed a spelling error in the Congolese focus "Strict Anti-Clericalism". - Fixed a bug where the UK wouldn't be able to get any extra resources from the effect of the Congolese focus "Enter the Sterling Area". - BEL: Made the European Crusade focus more readable. - German focus Crossing the Atlantic: Added a cap to the amount of states that can get dockyards, and set up a criteria to prio coastal states with 2 mils first, then coastal states with 1 mil, then coastal states with no mils. States can no longer get dockyards twice. Missleading tooltips about multiple target states are no longer part of the tooltip. - German focus Crossing the Atlantic: After completing the focus there is now a tooltip showing the states that got dockyards. - German focus Crossing the Atlantic: Fixed and simplified broken trigger so that the requirement is to not have any major enemy controlling a state in Europe. - Fixed cyrilic instead of latin K in Soviet Nuclear Submarine name, breaking the name in some fonts. - Operation Jericho can now be performed even if France controls some of their core states, as long as Germany still controls the relevant states - BEL: Flooded Tank Barriers will now affect the attacking army. - Ethiopia/Congo's African Central Bank focus and events now give a positive modifier rather than a negative one. - Removed Zaisser as an advisor without La Resistance enabled, removed a duplicate modifier from the National Idea "Stasi" and replaced it with something else, and hid a focus without La Resistance since it only gives operatives and nothing else - Fixed event Information Leak triggered by nuclear Special Project firing only for the first country triggering it. - Historical AI Germany will replace Bormann by Himmler as Reichsleiter for the Inner Circle later so that Bormann can generate more PP during early and mid game. - Fixed technology Maintenance Company III granting +30% Recovery bonus to Armored Maintenance Company, it now grants the intended +3% bonus like the other Maintenance techs. - Fixed German High Command Viktor Schutze being an Anti-Submarine Specialist, he will now be a Submarine Specialist. - Fixes decisions showing up when they shouldn't in "Subjugating our Old Lands" - Fixes a minor typo in "Recall Retired Generals to Service - Fixed German Ho 229 Flying Wing 3D model not showing up in the plane designer - Fixed issue with Soviet Improved Tank Destroyer using the wrong model in the tank designer. - Fixed issue in which German focus Party Chancellor Hess that could be locked without progressing or being able to cancel it if the Flight of Rudolf Hess happened while the focus was being completed. - fix to an achievement triggering incorrectly - Fix sounds missing for raids and special projects if you don't have the Gotterdammerung expansion - Fixed an issue where the Silesian Uprising would appear during the German civil war despite not owning Gtterdmmerung, with it thus being unstoppable. - Lock the Prioritize Economic Growth focus if you have the Economy of Conquest National Spirit; it's too late to fix economy now, buddy - fixes a flag not being removed properly if Austria manually gets a non aggression pact while working on the decision to get a non-aggression pact - Decisions to invite other countries into the EU will now cancel properly and not softlock if the targeted country flips communist or fascist - Fixed a bug where Kaiserin Victoria was unobtainable without Gtterdmmerung. - Fixed an issue where the naval base in Tasmania wasn't showing up as intended. - Fixed an issue where the Pro-German Mwami wouldn't become the leader of the Congo if chosen while Germany wasn't fascist. - Fixed an issue where the achievement "Our Place in the Sun" would only check for the old focus with the same name, thus being unobtainable with Gtterdmmerung. - Tweaked names of Nuclear Missile equipment to make it more clear that they are in fact Nuclear Missiles tier I and II. - Flamethrower tank icons and models are now part of the pools of their regular tank counterparts, with low priority. - Added a game designer back to the credits - Fixed ship casualties not shown in War Overview window - Fixed task force reinforcement constantly moving ship in and out of a task force - First Berlin Award now grants Zaolzie to the southern ally of Germany. - Promoting an officer no longer switches the other player's window if playing in Co-Op mode - German Tank Scientists Erwin and Aders are now unlocked without AAT by hiring their related Designer. - Fixed Raj character Bhabha being a nuclear theorist. He is now a scientist. - Fixes Karl Renner sometimes appearing as an advisor without a trait - Fix issue where raids could be detected even if intel was under the required threshold (10%) - Removed the "Class" from 2 variant names since that's provided by the variant versioning - Fix damaged facility icon not being visible in state view - Fixed helicopters looking incorrect in 3D preview window. ################################## #

Modding


################################## - has_truce_with trigger added ------------------------------------------------------- That is all for today, we'll continue to monitor things and look to make some fixes and changes, however please do keep sending in your bug reports in the meantime! [url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/3152810/Hearts_of_Iron_IV_Expansion_Pass_1] Make sure to check out the Expansion Pass Here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3152810/Hearts_of_Iron_IV_Expansion_Pass_1


[ 2024-11-21 15:40:31 CET ] [ Original post ]

Complete Advanced Guide to playing HOI with Gtterdmmerung

Generals! Now that you've conquered the Beginner's Guide, its time to take on your next challenge with Gtterdmmerung and our Complete Advanced Guide to Hearts of Iron. Join Hammotimee as they bring you up to speed on every HOI DLC and their unique mechanics. Whether you're looking to master Espionage or become the Global Market leader, to the daring new Raids on your enemies and finding the right scientists to unlock your country's full potential, learn it all for your future campaigns! Make sure to check out the video here or the preview below [previewyoutube=rIaRUIn1Eko;full][/previewyoutube] [url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/3152810/Hearts_of_Iron_IV_Expansion_Pass_1] Make sure to check out the Expansion Pass Here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3152810/Hearts_of_Iron_IV_Expansion_Pass_1


[ 2024-11-19 14:03:12 CET ] [ Original post ]

Last Chance to grab your very own Kaiser of Plusshia!

Generals! It is soon time for the Ruler of Plusshia to return to his campaign of conquest, but fear not! Makeship has been kind enough to delay his stay until the 27th of November so those of you who have not yet gotten your own. Make sure to get your requisition in before time runs out! Others lack that flair of Discipine, the Gravitas and Authority only this Kaiser can embody. Equipped with their formal regalia and one stylish moustache, this Platypus has unbridled ambitions for global domination... Grab your very own Duck-billed friend here or by clicking the image below


[ 2024-11-18 14:53:59 CET ] [ Original post ]

Gtterdmmerung AVAILABLE NOW!

Gtterdmmerung Available NOW!


And finally the time is upon us. If youre reading this, what are you doing? You could be playing Gtterdmmerung this very moment! Its been a long road, but in your hands is the power of life and death - will you become the guarantor of peace, or a destroyer of worlds? Gtterdmmerung brings with it a prodigious array of mega-projects, raids, focus trees and mechanics that the team have been diligently working to provide. As usual around any launch, were maintaining an active presence here and around social media to get feedback and provide context. Dont hesitate to reach out with any queries, otherwise Ill leave this short and sweet: we sincerely hope you enjoy Gtterdmmerung! /Arheo [previewyoutube=FrDwvcy40ZM;full][/previewyoutube] Get your own copy of Gtterdmmerung below https://store.steampowered.com/app/3152810/Hearts_of_Iron_IV_Expansion_Pass_1/

Important Information


Hi everyone! Katten here, your friendly neighbourhood community manager. I want to share some important information about a potential issue you might encounter. The expansion is now available for individual purchase at $24.99. However, if youre interested in the instant unlocks, please note that these are not pre-order bonusesthey are exclusive to the Expansion Pass. Its also important to understand that the Expansion Pass on Steam is a package, not a dynamic bundle. This means that if you purchase the expansion separately and later decide to buy the Expansion Pass, youll end up paying for the expansion twice. This is due to Valve's requirements for selling Expansion Passes on Steam If youre still unsure about what the Expansion Pass includes, heres a detailed breakdown: Instant unlock of three new 3d tank models and a music track
  • The Gtterdmmerung expansion (Nov 14th 2024) - $24.99/21.99/24.99
  • The Graveyard of Empires country pack (Q1 2025) - $14.99/12.79/14.99
  • The Prototype Vehicles unit pack (Q3 2025) - $6.99/5.89/6.99
I hope this clarifies things for you! Now, onto the fun stuff!

Mods Updated for Day 1


Now let's talk about mods. You might remember that with Arms Against Tyranny, we worked with and assisted some of the most-played mods to help them update their mods alongside our DLC release. Well, weve done it againthis time with even more mods! Check out the full list below, complete with links to their mods. And if youd like to see a cool video showcasing them all, click here!

Patch Notes


If you missed the patch notes or changelog we posted yesterday, you can find them here.

All Developer Diaries & Spotlight Videos


If you missed any of our developer diaries or spotlight videos and want to catch up on all the new features in this expansion, you can find everything you need at the links below:

Version Rollback


As always, youll be able to roll back your game to previous versions. The rollback option will become available shortly after the DLC release, so if you dont see it right away, please be patient. If youre unsure how to roll back your game, you can find a helpful guide here.

Known Issues


There are some issues we know about; weve detailed them in this post, and are working on resolving them.


[ 2024-11-14 17:02:42 CET ] [ Original post ]

Gtterdmmerung | Patch Notes

Greetings all, With a mere one day to go before the launch of Gtterdmmmerung, it is tradition that we leave you with the change log to pore over. The usual disclaimer applies; this list should be comprehensive but omissions may have occurred. Any items we add retroactively will be placed in a separate spoiler underneath the main list. ################################## # Expansion ################################## - Added new German ahistorical focus tree paths - Added full Austrian focus tree - Added full Belgian focus tree - Added full Congo focus tree - Added new Hungarian focus tree - Added over 180 new 3D models, including cool experimental equipment, unit models, cool experimental equipment and landmarks. - Added 11 new music tracks - Added 28 new Special Projects - Added Air, Paratrooper Raids, and targeted missile raids - Added VO for Austria and Belgium - Added Helicopter Brigade - Added Helicopter Logistics - Added Helicopter Medevac - Added Armoured Maintenance Company - Added Armoured Engineer Company - Added Assault Engineer Company - Added Super-Heavy Artillery Companies - Added Land Cruiser Support Company - Added Super-Heavy railway gun ################################## # Feature ################################## - Research Tab was enriched with Scientists, Experimental Facilities and Special Projects. - Added 15 new Special Projects - Added 2 Special Projects to the No Step Back expansion - Added new historical German focus tree paths "- Reworked Land and Coastal Forts - their maximum buildable level is now capped by the province terrain type. Those caps can be increased primarily by researching new Fortification Technologies " - Added numerous new technologies associated with or unlocked by Special Projects - Added a variety of horse colours for cavalry units - Added focus shortcut system showcased in the German national focus tree - added raids system for launching nuclear bombs ################################## # Balance ################################## "- Rebalanced Norwegian advisor traits - Added Rolf Jrgen Fuglesang, Eivind Blehr, Eivind Heiberg, Christopher Hornsrud and Kirsten Hansteen as new advisors for Norway." - Updated a few Czechoslovak focuses to be a bit better or faster. Also added more flavour to many of the names of the Czechoslovak focuses. - A few faction-joining focuses in the Spanish and Portuguese trees have now been made into 35 days focuses. - Updated the French focus and national spirit "Fortification Focus" to additionally grant +1 max level for land and coastal forts. - Updated the Czech "Fortification Studies" and "Sudetenland Fortifications" focuses to grant additional max fort levels, to accommodate for the new fort system. - The Turkish AI shouldn't start WW3 with historical focuses on "- Fixed an issue with the French decisions to reorganize the various Air Force MIOs so that they no longer get the same name duplicated. Also rebalanced the decisions to be more worth taking. - Added the Socit Franaise Radio-lectrique asa new electronics concern for France. - The French focuses Latin Entente and Towards a New Europe now dont only change the country leader, but also change the name of the leading political party to match the leader you gain. - The French Focus Bring Home Quebec now also gives claims on all Quebec cores. - Fixed an issue where the French focus Grow the Empire didnt account for the new Congolese states added in BBA. - The French focuses Reach Out To Spain and Invite Portugal have been made into 35 day focuses. - The French focus The Natural Borders of France now also gives claims on the target states. - The French focuses Celebrate the Commune and Legal Equality have been made into 35 day focuses. - The French National Spirit Agricultural Collectivization now additionally grants -10% consumer goods factories factor. - The French focus Proclaim the Third Empire now creates a faction called The Continental System, that is renamed to Confdration du Rhin when taking the focus Disunite Germany. - The French national spirit Le Dluge now additionally grants 10% war support. - The French focus Utilize the Leagues now grants an additional 75 political power and -3% stability. - Adjusted a few consumer goods factories values in the Soviet industrial Branch that still held values and tooltips from before the factories to factories factor change. " - The British focus "Home Defense" now unlocks a decision category that can use to aid in the defense of the British Isles. - The American focuses "Tank Destroyer Doctrine" and "Main Battle Tanks" are now 35 day focuses. - Croatia is now more likely to be created when yugoslavia ends up at war with germany - South Africa now has access to a few of the British MIOs, and the focus "South African Railways" now can unlock the basic train tech for free, as well as adds 15 British trains to the stockpile. - Added a new focus for the United Kingdom with La Resistance to expand the MI6, and gain an intel agency, operative slot and some other intel bonuses. - Updated the Polish air-focuses to work better with the BBA techs. Also made the focuses "Expand Air Bases" into a 35 day focus. - Added the ability for Ethiopia to prospect for a small amount of extra resources within it's core territory. - The Estonian focus "Join the Axis" now takes 35 days instead of 70. - Italy can now gain an Air Facility north of Rome in the focus "Citt dell'Aria". - The Soviet focuses "Modernize Aircraft Facilities" and "Soviet Atomic Bomb Project" can now give them a facility of the corresponding type. - Sonar Modules Submarine Detection increased from 6/10 to 8/12 - Depth Charges Modules Anti-Submarine Attack Values increased from 8/12/16/20 to 8/13/17/22 - Submarine Torpedo Modules Attack Values reduced from 14/18/22/28 to 13/17/20/25 - Submarine Engine Modules Visibility Reductions changed from 0%/-5%/-10%/-15% to 0%/0%/-5%/-10% - Some Chilean democratic focuses are no longer blocked from each other. Some effects in the branch have been adjusted to accommodate for this. - Players can now reject handing pre-planned expansion states over to Bulgaria. - Cavalry now gets +5% Breakthrough in Infantry Offensive Doctrine (Grand Battleplan Infilitration Path) and Cavalry Recon bonus from Infiltration Assault (Grand Battleplan Infilitration Path) now also extends to mounted infantry -Prioritize Naval Aircraft Construction Decision for Japan now provides -10% cost reduction to Carrier Naval Bombers and Carrier Air Support, to reduce their double-dipping effect from -40% to -30% -Admiral Trait Concealment Expert Visibility Reduction was reduced from -20% to -15% -Giving Refuge to Italian and German Scientists now also provides +2% Special Project Research Speed - Fuel Silos cost is now cheaper based on the amount of already existing Fuel Silo in the state. ################################## # Gameplay ################################## - Added names for Polish Cavalry Brigade Commanders - Added the Czechoslovak State Railways as a new industrial concern (railway company) for Czechoslovakia. "- Added admiral roles to Dimitrios Oikonomou and Epameinondas Kavvadias - Added Stylianos Gonatas as a military high command and general for the Greek republicans - The Greek industrial focus Fiscal Responsibility now hires Emmanouil Tsouderos for free if possible - The targeting for construction in the Greek focus Making Use of our Islands has been switched from owned to controlled states, and can also target Cyprus if they are a puppet of Greece. It can also integrate Cyprus if that is the case. - The MIOs gained from the Greek focuses Rapprochement with the Italians and Appeal to the Soviet Union now gain 2 sizes immediately - The Hellenic Air Force Academy national spirit now grants an additional 5% air exp gain factor - The Greek focus A Legacy of War also grants 3% organization - The Greek focus The Backbone of the Army now grants half a percent of recruitable population, from the previous a fifth of a percent - Added a new focus to the Greek industrial branch to utilize the Macedonian Farmlands in order to gain supply bonuses and a tiny reduction to consumer goods factor - Many Greek focuses regarding switching ideologies, factions or wars, are no longer available to them if they are a subject of another nation - Added a new focus to the Greek monarchist branch, allowing for the Reorganization of the Royal Guard, leading to some manpower and two free divisions - Modified the event The Monarchists in Greece Request our aid so that the British are much more likely to say yes and send equipment - Added a new focus in the Greek monarchist branch allowing for the further utilization of British capital, allowing for more infrastructure and building slots in Greece " - Added the Antillean Confederation as a new formable for nations in the Caribbean. Also fixed an issue where Belize couldn't access the decision to Form Central America. - Added New South Wales Railway Company as an industrial concern for Australia. - Added New Zealand Railways as an industrial concern for New Zealand. - Various old focuses connected to the Soviet Union, Finland, Sweden and Portugal now grant dams as buildings that give states additional positive state modifiers. - Added Fanny Schoonheyt as a General for the communist Netherlands. - The French advisor Charles Maurras can now also be unlocked by the focus "Orleanist Restoration". - Added Vasily Flug and Boris Shtefion of the Russian Protection Corps as characters that can become available through various means for Germany, Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union. - Added a focus for Fascist/Tsarist Russia to gain a wargoal to reclaim Uryankhay Krai. Also changed the focus "Vengeance for the Yoke" to a 35 day focus. - Tsarist/Fascist Russia can now release nations after taking the focus "Reconvene the Zemsky Sobor". - Updated and improved the Post-Yalta events between Poland and the Soviet Union. - Added a focus for the United Kingdom to expand Vickers Experimental Facilities in Foxwarren. - The British national spirits "Wartime Industry" and "Prepare for the Inevitable" can combine, thus enabling less clutter in the UKs country screen. - Luxembourg now starts with ARBED as an available Industrial Concern. - Ethiopian High Command Feodor Konovalov can now join the Russian White Forces when the Second Russian Civil War starts. - Added a crossing in the Philippines between Mindanao and Sulu. - The British AI will now protect their main island better - Mutapa can now be formed when a subject of another nation, and has seen its borders expanded slightly. - Added Georges Valois as an advisor for France. - If the conditions are right, Georgia may find an unexpected visitor on their doorsteps. - Added Marcel Dat as an advisor for France. -Degaussing Effects are now standardized. For MTG players, Degaussing Technology now gives +10% Submarine Detection to the Destroyers and Cruisers - and the unique spirits that awarded them are no longer granted. For non-MTG players those national spirits still provide the effect for those select countries - Added new unit categories in order to clean up some of the less 'readable' technologies and doctrines (Hello, Mobile Infantry!). - Cavalry now benefits from Anti-Tank Weapon Technology with the same ratio as Support Weapons. (2/5 - so +10% Hard Attack and +40% Piercing) - Supremacy of the Battlefleet Japanese National Focus now awards a National Spirit granting +10% Capital Ship Armor and +100% Super Heavy Battleship Special Project Completion Speed - Area defense orders now start with no pre-selected parameters, reducing overall interaction required in most circumstances ################################## # UI ################################## - Fix of bug where factory conversion button had no glow when selected. From now all building construction buttons will glow at once only if player not uses all of the available factories. - Country-specific train icons are now shown properly in the production menu ################################## # AI ################################## - Fascist countries now also respect negative declare_war AI strategy values - implemented a new system for AI political-power spending - Invasion importance score is affected by 'invade' strategy, and tweaks to the US Operation Torch strategies ################################## # Modding ################################## - Fix trigger all_enemy_country trigger to evaluate all countries and not just any - Added variable divisional_commander_xp to set divisional officer experience on unit creation - Allow using MIO category equipment group as equipment bonus type - Add state_resources__factor state modifier - Add a equipment_production_min_factories_archetype AI strategy which only affects equipment of a specific archetype - Fixed bugs and revamped how the AI designs division templates. Removed a bunch of properties from division templates that either didn't make sense or were simply not useful. - AI division templates now get their AI role assigned on creation based on their target template, rather than being dynamically matched to a role based on match_to_count. - Add MIN_SHIPS_FOR_HIGHER_SHIP_RATIO_PENALTY define which can be used to make penalties from having a higher ship ratio not apply to small fleets - Added support for specifying division name list for AI templates - Implement a trigger parameter to get all the states in a given continent - A new trigger for naval invasion: has_naval_invasion_against_state - Implemented a console command to show/hide all hidden techs - Implement a new console command sp_prototype_reward - Add AI strategy force_concentration_target_weight to affect which targets are being used by AI Force Concentration - Add AI strategy force_concentration_factor to control to what extent the AI uses AI Force Concentration - Add force_concentration_front_factor AI strategy - Added support for disabling grow animations on buildings ################################## # Graphics ################################## - 3D buildings on map will now have fire/smoke pillars if they are damaged enough - 3D cities on map will now have fire/smoke pillars if corresponding civilian structures are damaged enough - Fixed DX11 trying to switch modes when Alt+Enter is pressed - Selecting display monitor now works in DX11 - Selecting display monitor now works in both windowed and borderless mode - It is now possible to override display settings from command line - Free France flag should now use the proper historical blue/red hues rather than the post 1976 ones - Updated the Czechoslovak focuses to improve the variation and spread of their focus icons. ################################## # Bugfix ################################## - Fixed a rare CTD for ai garrison order - Now correctly display battalion modifiers when the factor is additive - Spirits are now shown in the Modify Officer Corps alert - Checkboxes in the strategic air view details graph and the fuel stockpile graph are now clickable - Fixed an issue where previously-capitulated Lithuania would be released controlling Wilno state due to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. - No longer possible to justify war goal on impassable states - Fixed an issue where the incorrect modifiers were applied to the Crusade Against Democracy ideas, leading to the effect not applying correctly. - Fixed an issue where the the democratic party of Norway wasn't Hyre after taking the focus to get their leader as the new country leader. - Fixed a bug that caused incorrect unit distribution when frontline is split - Fixed an oversight where a few Turkish admirals were using the army versions of the traits "Career Officer" and "Media Personality". - No longer possible to delete division templates used by divisions escaping into exile (which could cause crashes) - Fixed broken texts in French news event for Claiming the French Throne. - The Mexican decision Support the Spanish Right now also works with Non-Aligned Francoist Spain. - Replaced Terrain Penalty Reduction modifier which was not working in National Spirits by the modifier Terrain Traits XP Gain. - Fix the bug with the UI where daily power is clamped to 0 despite it being negative - Soviet Union: Purge-Related National Spirits will now be transferred to the Stalinist side in the Soviet Civil War, and the relevant decisions to remove them will be available for the Stalinist side during the civil war. - Soviet Union: Dissolve Aircraft Design Bureau purges will now properly work with MIOs when Arms Against Tyranny DLC is active. These purges will no longer trigger twice for an already dissolved bureau. - Soviet Union: The decision tooltip to Reinstate Aircraft Design Bureau will now display the days that have passed since the Bureau was dissolved (as the decision is unavailable until a year has passed since the dissolution). - Changed the post war names for Italy and Romania to better match the historical names - num_battle_plans now also counts the field marshal's own battle plan - Fixed an issue where Japan couldn't have integrated puppets despite no longer being fascist or non-aligned. - Fixed an issue where Argentina could core states that it had already cored. - Fixed an issue where the warlord focus Ideological Education required you to be and not be a subject at the same time. - Fixed an issue where the Dutch focus "Expand the Artillerieinrichtningen" said it unlocked and gave bonuses to the MIO Siderius when it was meant to give it to A.I. Hembrug. - adds conditions to effects that construct forts and coastal forts, as well as availables and improved bypasses in the British focus tree - Fixed various instances of unlocalized strings throughout content. - Fixed issues in the Italian events and decisions to invite Turkey or Greece to your faction in exchange for the Dodecanese, where they would previously target the wrong countries. - Building slots are no longer reduced by 50% due to non_core_controller. This should be purely handled by resistance & collaboration - Fixed an issue where the Blackshirt March on the Isle of Man would count as one having been done in the Highlands due to an incorrect flag being set. - Fixed an issue where the Lithuanian general Kazys Skuas used his large portrait where he should have used his small icon. - Fixed a small LOC issue in the Polish decision "Sideline the Right". - Fixed an issue where Romanian puppets wouldn't be peaced out with their enemies when Romania switched sides using their decisions. - Fixed and updated the requirements to take and bypass some of the Turkish faction joining focuses. - Fixed a minor typo in the description of the Argentinian national spirit "The Roca-Runciman Treaty". - Fixed an issue where Swedish advisor Frans Severin was hidden prior to being unlocked. - Fixed ?s showing up instead of unknown characters in the Vietnamese namelist - minor fix to Swiss focus Preempt Anschluss to bypass if Austria doesn't exist, or is a subject of someone else In addition to todays change log, we are also including a link to a mod update and migration guide compiled by a series of mod authors that have been given early access to Gtterdmmerung in order to begin the process of updating their mods early. You can check it out here https://pdxint.at/4epKrek [url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/3152810/Hearts_of_Iron_IV_Expansion_Pass_1] Make sure to check out the Expansion Pass Here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3152810/Hearts_of_Iron_IV_Expansion_Pass_1


[ 2024-11-13 14:00:38 CET ] [ Original post ]

Developer Diary | Art & Achievements

Hello! And welcome to the last Dev Diary for the DLC Gtterdmmerung! Im CreamGene and I hope you have had a good time reading previous Diaries and are as excited as we are for the release. Since Im here, I would like to share with you some of the art we on HOI have loved to see the most as well as show off some behind-the-scenes or WIPs of how some of the features took shape and came to be as well as a passion project from me that Im very excited to finally unleash!

Features


From my point of view, the features took some time to nail down and feel right, and I think it's very important to invest time and effort in that. Here Ill showcase some of the steps and directions that the Special Projects and Raids went through. I believe that you have already gotten some nice run-throughs from earlier DDs so if you want to refresh your memory, please head to the earlier DDs where our fantastic Content Designers explain the hows and whys since Ill mainly showcase the art journey for them.

Special Projects


Let me tell you that I already had the vision here and Im so happy that it came through! Since we wanted to introduce scientists and all the things they can do I wanted to make it look and feel like stationary! Paper and folders, ink and coffee stains to really tie this together. I started to change the font as well to match better and Im so happy that it could stay in.

Mock-ups of how the windows could look

Fixing the Scientists and the List to hire scientists WIP!
Window coming together (WIP)
The project windows starting to look alright. Still, some tweaking left to do.
Adding colour-coded ribbons in the research tech tree to better tie the techs together.



Current In-Game look for Special Projects

Raids


This was interesting because we really wanted to make this one feel right, and also stand out as its own thing. You primarily play from the map but the icons shouldnt look like any generic icons but still not steal too much attention, yet be visible enough for you to interact with. Also, the window should feel linked to this as well. There was a bunch of trial and error and a lot of playtesting involved but in the end, I think we managed to get some really nice-looking art for you to go along with a cool feature!

The launch window. From concept (and this is just the most recent concept, there would be too much to share if I showed the whole iteration process) to in-game.

The outcome window. Again, from concept and prototype to how it looks in-game.

The on-map icons, from concept (again, so many iterations) to how they look in-game!
And some fancy iconography that shows how the landmarks look in the province view.






Current In-Game look for Raids

Focuses


You know the drill! Here are some of our favourite Focus icons for this DLC.
German Focus Icons
Austrian Focus Icons
Hungarian Focus Icons
Belgium/Congo Focus Icons

Portraits


And of course some of our favourite Portraits as well!
German Portraits
Austrian Portraits
Hungarian Portraits
Belgium/Congo Portraits
Scientists Portraits

Loading Screen


Another DLC, another loading screen! Directions for the loading screen this time around were: Alt-history with the feeling of a rally, personal and a nod towards the cathedral of light! I cant say that buildings have been my strongest suit to put on but I believe it turned out pretty alright in the end! I hope you guys enjoy this too! [strike]and not a boat in sight[/strike]

Horse Coat Colour Project


Maybe you already know this but Im passionate about a four-legged creature called horse. During one of our internal development times, meaning not planned development time for this DLC, I felt something needed to be done with this poor outdated little guy. Everyone else gets a shiny new update like, all the time! Why not the horse too!? I made it my project during two PDTs (personal development time as it's called) to breathe new life into the companion that brings the soldiers to the battlefield. Opening the 3D texture for the horse made me realize my limitations. The legs are mirrored, so that limited me making individual markings and gave me less customisation than I really wanted. Oh, cruel world. [strike]Maybe updating the 3D model can be something for me in the future?[/strike] Anywho, I got to work pretty quickly and started to map out different shades and colours and took requests from the team if they had a favourite colour I should add as well. When spawning the new looks for the horses into the game I also realized how careful I had to be with the shades but also how little or too much could show up on the model in the game because of the zoom limitations. There were a bunch of tweaking involved before I got the hang of it. And when I did no one could stop me. This is how the UV map looks for the horse in HOI4 and me doing some shenanigans to create a new colour.
Painting new coats on the diffuse map (diffuse = colour). And here is an image of the same UV-map but on the 3D model where the pink part has been highlighted so that I know which parts are mirrored on the models diffuse sheet. Of course, I had excellent help from our 3D guy slurpen whenever I needed it.

Nice looking 3D model Skip this next part if youre bored with sciency-genetics stuff cause I can yapp! Welcome to CreamGene's Ted talk! Sit down, relax and enjoy a fun lil dive into some very basic horse genetics. A horse has two basic pigments; Red and Black which create two colours, namely: Chestnut (red), which is a fully (and when I say fully, I mean body, mane and tail) red-brown tinted horse and Black (black) which is a fully black horse. All other coat colours you see are created by additional genes and become a modifier of the two! I know how much you guys like modifiers. So all the brown horses you see are actually called Bay and have a modification that creates something called point colouration. Points in equine terms is a name for the mane, tail, lower legs and ear trims. I would say in HOI terms the point colouration is a modifier that suppresses the black colour to all but the extremities of the horse. Bay, together with Chestnut and Black is called a Base Coat and it's from these three colours that we can get a vast range and variety of coat colours for the horse. For Example: Chestnut colour variations and what they are named:
  • Liver chestnut: Dark red body, main and tail
  • Flaxen chestnut: Any shade of chestnut but with a significantly lighter mane and tail
Bay colour variations and what they are named:
  • Dark bay: Can look almost black
  • Blood bay: Bright red coat with black points
  • Seal brown: Can look almost black but the soft parts, such as the muzzle, around eyes, inner ears, and underbelly will be a light tan colour.
And as a bonus, I also want to add a lil snippet of some genes and modifiers that Ill be showcasing just down below! White? Horses are never white in terms of colour, but grey. Grey is a colour modifier that turns the original coat white with age! A pure white horse from birth is called a dominant white and is another form of mutation where the hairs are white and the skin is pink with dark eyes. Grey variations and what they are named:
  • Steel grey: Looks steel grey in tone but with age turns white. More usual on a black horse than a bay.
  • Dapple grey: Looks like the body has rings of grey hair mimicking dappled sunlight if you will. Will eventually fade to white or fleabitten grey with age.
  • Fleabitten grey: Fully white coat with either brown or dark grey dots throughout the body.
Leopard gene: A white horse with either black or brown spots, resembling a Dalmatian or a leopard. Here I mimic the breed Knabstrupper which is a native breed to Denmark. Silver gene: Affects the black base coat to a chocolaty brown, points will get a silvery shade and the mane and tail will usually range between a flaxen colour or a silvery grey. And from here we dive into the modifiers that change, tweak and add patterns to the horse's coat. There are a myriad of different colours and a bunch of different ways that a horse acquires them genetically and me explaining these occurrences would probably explode the character limit of what we can post on a DD. So Ill of course refrain from doing just that and just showcase the colours Ive made so far that you can now find roaming the maps of HOI4. However, If you are in fact curious, I highly recommend doing your own research. Welcome back from the lil Sciency bit if you skipped it! So with the power of Zoom, Ill present to you the different colours that you can now randomly find on your frontlines:



Chestnut, Flaxen chestnut, Liver chestnut and Flaxen liver chestnut






Seal brown, Blood bay and four basic-looking Bays

Just two cute-looking black horses with different markings


Dapple grey, Steel grey and Fleabitten grey

Bay base and Black base and my bad, I forgot the in-game look for the black leopard.
One cute Silver Bay horse! Maybe you have a new favourite horse colour now or maybe even a little bit of interest in the vast variation of our four-legged friend on the battlefield. Regardless, I hope you enjoyed scrolling through my little passion project and I do hope that they will make you look twice on the map when you play! [strike]Horse Designer when?[/strike]

3D Models


And of course, the Art and Achievements Dev Diary would not nor could not be completed without showcasing some of our favourite 3D models as well! Ill hand over to slurpen for this ofc since hes the one in charge of our pretty 3D models. Thank you CreamGene Wow, you really love horses! I suppose those 3D horses are a good segway for me to show off a bunch of the new 3D models related to this DLC! Theres a bunch of stuff to see so lets not waste time and get right to it! Lets take a closer look at some of the soldiers that will be seen on the frontlines this time around:

Something new to Hearts of Iron is the landmark buildings that can be seen around the map. They are fun to look at but even more fun to destroy. They will eventually get rebuilt but that may take some time.
Lets move on to some models related to the special projects. Various unique models can be seen on land, in the air and out at sea. Lets start in the air and work our way down!

Air-Based Projects


Somewhat steadily hovering over the battlefield are the helicopters. A groundbreaking new way of flying through the air! Are helicopters here to stay? Whatever the case, they may be of some use to you.

Helicopters Next up, we have the motherships with their adorable little planes that are there to protect them when things get tough! A big plane paired with a small plane should give you the best of both worlds right?
Motherships with their cute babies. One way to ensure air superiority is to be the fastest kid on the block. With the development of the jet engine, you can travel faster than the speed of sound. If you can manage to harness this power you might just be able to turn the tide of the war in your favour!
Supersonic Jets If nothing else works there are always nukes. Missiles and nukes can be developed and launched towards your enemies. The question is, who will strike first?
Missiles

Land-Based Projects


On land, we will have to start with the crazy but wonderful land cruisers. They are hard to miss after all:
Land cruisers You will need some big guns to take on those beasts. Here are some super-heavy howitzers that can even the odds:
Super-Heavy Howitzer
Super-Heavy Self-Propelled Howitzers Things are heating up! Speaking of heat, next, we have the flamethrower tanks coming in hot:
Flamethrower Tanks Land vehicles can be used for more than just destruction. They can also help clear a path or help out with retrieval missions. These vehicles are categorized as engineering vehicles. Have a look:
Recovery vehicles
Mine-Clearance vehicles
Crossing Support vehicles

Sea Based Projects


The ocean is vast so there is a lot of space for some crazy experiments. If you truly want to show off the power of our navy these ships will make a statement. Whether its a ship made of ice (kind of), a supercarrier or a modern super battleship equipped with radar equipment you are sure to make a name for yourself.
Special Project Ships If you prefer the sneaky approach to naval warfare, dont worry! We have got you covered:
Submarines Before we go completely off the rails with the in-game screenshots and achievement icons we cant forget the super heavy railway guns:
Super-Heavy Railway Guns To top it off let me show you some of the models in action:




Believe it or not, there is still more to see but I think we will wrap things up here. A lot of work has gone into making these special projects a reality so I hope you will have fun researching and utilising them in the game! Until next time, Slurpen out!

Achievements


And here we finally have them. What you have been waiting for. The awaited shiny new achievements for you to conquer from Gtterdmmerung! Disclaimer: Names and Descriptions of how to get the achievements can have been changed on release. Antischluss As Austria, control all German starting states
No Friends, Only Family As Austria or Hungary led by a Habsburg Monarch, Control the Swiss Plateau and have at least three other countries be led by a member of the Habsburg family
Edelweiss Seedelweiss As Austria have a coastline, at least 10 Battleships and have Georg von Trapp as an Admiral
Otto-man As Austria or Hungary, led by Otto von Habsburg, control the starting states of Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey as well as the states in Polish Galicia, Slovenia and Croatia.
Spaak of Genius As Belgium, with Paul-Henri Spaak as country leader, research at least 10 different Special Projects
Brentry As Austria, Belgium or the Netherlands be the leader of the EU and have the United Kingdom join your faction
The 501st Legion As Belgium, have the National Spirit Rexist Legion and be in control of all of your starting neighbours Capitals.
Congolese Belgium As Congo break free from the shackles of your old overlord and take control of all of their starting states
The Lenin Boys are Back in Town As Communist Hungary bring back the Lenin-fik and take control over Leningrad
A Great Hunger As Hungary proclaim Greater Hungary and control all of your historical states
Weltpolitik As Germany take control of all of your former colonies
Naval Arms Race As Germany led by an Admiral capitulate the United Kingdom
Woman in a High Castle As Germany with a female leader either annex the USA, including Alaska and Hawaii or have an American puppet that owns all the American starting states, including Alaska and Hawaii
American Prometheus As the USA have Robert Oppenheimer complete the Manhattan Project
Tsar Bomba As Tsarist Russia complete the Special Project for Thermonuclear bombs
Super Heavy Metal Complete the Special Projects for Intercontinental Bombers, Land Cruisers, and Super Heavy Battleships
Backfire As the United Kingdom complete the Special Project for Medium Range Ballistic Missiles, have a rocket site, and be at war with Germany
Dam It! Successfully execute a Dam Busting Raid
Bullseye Successfully launch a raid on a Landmark
The True Successor As Luxembourg led by Charles Marx control both Brussels and Trier
And with this Dev Diary on Art and Achievements, we on HOI4 wish you a happy conquest and many, many hours of challenges and fun gameplay! [url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/3152810/Hearts_of_Iron_IV_Expansion_Pass_1] Make sure to check out the Expansion Pass Here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3152810/Hearts_of_Iron_IV_Expansion_Pass_1 If you haven't heard just yet, we announced earlier today that we've launched a small Amazon Merchandise shop with the release of Gtterdmmerung. You can grab a Hoodie or T-shirt to better equip yourself for your World Domination endeavours, or simply to sport something stylish. (Some restrictions apply, check Amazon for shipping eligibility and costs) Grab yours via the link below or by clicking the image!


[ 2024-11-12 14:00:15 CET ] [ Original post ]

Developer Diary | Performance and Modding

Hello everyone, it's again the time to give you a glimpse into the fun stuff we've been doing from the tech side. You know, in addition to implementing the new features. This time around, I (PDXen) got the honour to write the Dev Diary. I'm gonna start off with some outdated news from the past: Did you know that we did a performance pass on Trial of Allegiance? I honestly hope that you didn't. Being a country pack, we never intended to improve the performance but we did make improvements to counter the influx of data that happens when we add more content. But I know you don't want to listen to ramblings about the past. So let's get started on what we've done this time. While we've taken time to look at the performance and improve parts of it, we've also added some new generic features that we hope our modders will like.

Performance


I'm gonna be brutally honest with you from the start: The performance goal of this DLC was to not decay performance. (Un)fortunately, this doesn't mean we can lean back and ignore it. More content and new features all add to the computations we need to run and I wanted all the new stuff to happen at net-zero performance cost. Essentially, the same thing as for Trial of Allegiance, but with much more. So we had to do something to maintain the status quo with performance. So whenever our performance tracking indicated a slowdown for the first time I took a look at what we could optimize and became a bit disheartened. The French Paradox did a very good job at parallelising much of our code for AAT. There were not many easy options for parallelisation left but we managed to identify a few places. Even on our machines with quite a lot of cores, this wasnt enough so we took a step back and looked at optimizing the sequential parts of the code. I hope this is quite good news for all of us that run on hardware with fewer cores. The hunt for optimization opportunities led to looking at old systems that now had more data and the uncharted lands of legacy code. Im just gonna give you a few tidbits of old systems that we found interesting assumptions about the data in or simply interesting ways of solving it.

Focuses


I imagine some of you have been with us from the start. Do you remember the size of the original focus trees? And for those of you who don't, simply open up the generic tree to get an idea. Over the years, we've had a large influx of focuses in the focus trees. For example, we have ~60 in the generic focus tree compared to the ~180 national focuses in Belgium, not counting the Belgian-Congo part. And the size of the Belgium focus tree doesn't even compare to the new German one (which is somewhere between 350 and 400 focuses).
The new German focus tree with 350-400 focuses, which I couldnt even fit into a 2k screen.
The new Belgium focus tree with ~180 focuses.
The Haiti docs tree is using the generic focus tree with ~60 focuses The size in itself is not that much of a problem since you generally dont have the focus tree open at all times. However, we have a nifty functionality to bypass focus. Over time this function has taken more and more performance to run. Guess why? It checked every single focus in the game, every single time. At some point in time that might not have been an issue but with the size of the current focus trees? The good thing is that its not as bad anymore. We now only check the focus that has a remote chance of being bypassed.

Dynamic memory and paralelism


When we started looking at the sequential parts of our parallel code we found a quite interesting trend. There's a lot of dynamic memory allocation. Now every time we do something that requires dynamic memory allocation, the operative system may grab a global lock. Essentially, risking the algorithm to become at least partially sequential. Finding this caused a period of going through the code and eliminating the worst of these dynamic memory allocations.

Hidden AAT Inefficiencies


AAT was the expansion that optimized HoI4 (in modern times). Now theres a drawback with the drastically improved performance: All the inefficiencies from the new systems in AAT were hidden by the drastic improvements in the rest of the game. A lot of old content was optimized by a large margin, and as a result new performance overhead simply got lost in the steadily improving numbers. For example, on my machine disabling the international market automation saved me 2ms per daily update. Its not a lot (about 0.5% of the overall performance on my machine). But for market automation? Good news, its way less now. Bad news, you can still improve performance a very small amount by disabling it (though, manually clicking will have way worse performance in terms of speed). Another hidden inefficiency that weve found is the increase in the number of equipment variants. Before, there was a very limited amount of equipment variants in a game but now, theres a lot of them. Every single MIO update can create a multitude of different variants. And not to mention that International Market and Lend Lease pass these variants around in the game. Now throughout the code base, there are a lot of things that interact with equipment. Every interaction wasnt adding much but all put together, thats quite a bit. I wont say that variants are free but please go ahead and add more, there should be less performance impact now than before at least.

Modding


Now lets leave the area of performance and continue with some other things weve looked at from the tech side: New fancy modding stuff. During the development, I got a bit fed up with requests for support for new tooltips. So we sat down and thought: How can we get content developers to write the tooltips themselves? While we couldn't backport Jomini to HoI4, we took some inspiration and made it possible to write more complex tooltips in the GUI and script files.

Localization, localization and localization


If you have looked into our localization files before, you've probably noticed something like the following: SCIENTIST_ROSTER_SORT_BUTTON_TOOLTIP: "YClick! to sort according to $REASON|Y$" Traditionally, this meant that `REASON` was replaced with something that was provided by the game (i.e. not scripteD). In many cases, these variables were just replaced with some other localized string. So to avoid having to update the source code every time we wanted to change this, we introduced a new concept to the scripting language: Bound localization. Bound localization simply allows you to bind variables to the localization from script. So instead of opening up the source code, we can now simply update the script files like the following: bound_tooltip = { localization_key = SCIENTIST_ROSTER_SORT_BUTTON_TOOLTIP REASON = SCIENTIST_ROSTER_SORT_BY_NAME_REASON }
The localization for the sort by name button injects the sort key from script to localization. Oh, and did I mention that its recursive so you can do stuff like this if you want to: bound_tooltip = { localization_key = SCIENTIST_ROSTER_SORT_BUTTON_TOOLTIP REASON = { localization_key = COLOR_GREEN DATA = SCIENTIST_ROSTER_SORT_BY_NAME_REASON } } Naturally, doing this was opening up Pandora's box with requests from some content developers so we continued a bit more to push the boundaries. For example, in the German focus tree we can find the following odd syntax: custom_effect_tooltip = { localization_key = building_state_modifier|dam INDENT = " " }
The custom effect tooltip that shows the state modifiers for a dam with a custom indentation to fit this very specific tooltip. This adds another new concept we introduced: localization formatters. Essentially, it allows you to get a localized text property of some static token (in this case then state modifiers for the `dam` building). Youll recognize a text formatter when you see a localization key that has the format `|`. Some of the formatters also take some parameters (such as the `INDENT` in the example above). The benefit of using these over new tooltip overrides for effects or triggers is that the localization formatters are usable in every place a bound localization is usable (some might require that its localized with some context but that should be documented). One of the main drawbacks with the new things we add, is that you can in general only use it in specific places that is pointed out from source code. Unfortunately, this still holds for the new stuff but the goal was for fewer requests for tooltips so we made some effort to make it a bit more usable. For example, you can use this in the very much (ab)used `custom_effect_tooltip` effect, `custom_trigger_tooltip` trigger as well as in some of the new places (see for example, the building database). But the main thing is that we added support for this in GUI files. All our GUItypes now support the new tooltip `bound_tooltip` construct. If you use this, then you'll be able to use the bound localization. And maybe more interesting is the `context_aware_tooltip` construct that is a bound localization but it will be localized with a context so you can use contextual localization. Unfortunately, this requires us to provide the context from the source so mostly new places support this (and we try to document it in the GUI files, when and where it is supported). Note that this is recursive so if a parent object is localized with a context, then all children objects will be localized with the same context. We'll come back to this in a short while when digging into the tech behind the new inner circle GUI in the focus tree.

Naming is Hard


Imagine that you have a province or state that, depending on who you ask, has a different name. For techs, equipment and a lot of other things weve had the support to add country specific names (we call it cosmetic tags) by simply adding the countries tag before the name of it. Now weve added the same support to province and state names as well. We can take Turku as an example, this Finish area has both a Finish and a Swedish name (Turku being the name in Finish and bo is the name in Swedish). Before we had quite some script to change the name of the state depending on its owner but now we simply have to prefix the name with the correct country tag in the localization file: STATE_926: "Turku" # Default name SWE_STATE_926: "bo" # Cosmetic name for when Sweden owns the state
The state of Turku (i.e. Finland owns the state).
The state of bo (i.e. Sweden owns the state).

Focus Navigation


More national focus means more fun, right? But at some point it just becomes hard to navigate the focus tree. Fear not, weve added an option to add navigation shortcuts to focus trees. The new German tree has 6 different navigation icons (as of me writing this).
The focus navigation tabs for the new German tree. If we click for example the Economy navigation tab, then well be moved to the economy section of the tree with a nice zoom level for it. Naturally, this is completely scriptable so you can modify the focus trees to your liking for your mods.

Focus Inlay Windows


You've probably seen the Inner Circle GUI in another Dev Diary by now, but did you know that the whole GUI is written in script, and it doesnt contain a single scripted GUI window? The inner circle is the first usage of what we call focus inlay window. A focus inlay window is, similar to the continuous focus window, a GUI object that is drawn inside the focus tree view.. Lets go through an example: We want to display all the potential members of the Nordic Defence Council and if they have joined. For some reason its also very critical for us that we show the leaders of the countries. Something like the following:
A focus inlay window to show the potential members of The Nordic Defense Council with access to the joint focus tree. When defining a new inlay window, there's three main components that you need to implement: The inlay window definition; the GUI definition; and add it to the focus tree(s) it should be shown. Let's start with the completely new construct, the inlay window definition. As for most components in HoI4 different databases have different folders and so has this. The inlay windows are located in the `game/common/focus_inlay_windows/` and we can throw up the first definition of the inlay window as follows: nordic_alliance_inlay_window = { window_name = nordic_alliance_ui_window } This is actually a minimum working example for a focus inlay window definition. We've now a new inlay window with ID `nordic_alliance_inlay_window` that points to a container window named `nordic_alliance_ui_window`. Let's continue with adding more stuff to this later on and continue with the GUI itself. guiTypes = { containerWindowType = { name = nordic_alliance_ui_window orientation = lower_left size = {width = 400 height = 450 } clipping = no # Never clip in focus inlay windows due to some legacy bugs background = { name = background quadTextureSprite = "GFX_tiled_window_1b_border" alwaystransparent = yes } instantTextBoxType = { name ="faction_name" orientation = upper_left position = { x = 0 y = 20 } font = "hoi_36header" context_aware_text = [Country.GetFactionName] format = center maxWidth = 400 } iconType = { name = "sweden_frame" spriteType = "GFX_ascended_advisors_unappointed_frame" orientation = upper_left position = { x=55 y=107 } centerPosition = yes scale = 0.4 } iconType = { name = "Sweden" spriteType = GFX_blank_leader_portrait orientation = upper_left position = { x = 40 y = 90} context_aware_tooltip = [SWE.GetLeader] scale = 0.2 } instantTextBoxType = { name = "sweden_text" orientation = upper_left position = {x = 100 y = 105 } context_aware_text = { localization_key = NORDIC_COUNCIL_MEMBER IN_FACTION = [SWE.NordicCouncilMemberInFaction] COUNTRY = [SWE.GetNameWithFlag] } } # Below are copies for the Sweden entries adapted for the rest of the Nordic countries. [...] The GUI components aren't anything new, but I've thrown in some of the new localization capabilities to give you an example. Since all focus inlay windows are localised with the focus tree country as the context, we're free to use all the new fancy stuff when writing the localization. We have one `context_aware_text` that uses the contextual localization to grab the faction name. Another that uses bound localization to localise `NORDIC_COUNCIL_MEMBER` with the parameters `IN_FACTION` and `COUNTRY` with the result from localising `[SWE.NordicCouncilMemberInFaction]` and `[SWE.GetNameWithFlag]`, respectively. Ive also thrown in a `context_aware_tooltip` to get the name of the leader when hovering over the portrait. While we're at it, we can complete the localization by adding the following scripted localization to the game (in `game/common/scripted_localisation`): defined_text = { name = NordicCouncilMemberInFaction text = { trigger = { is_in_faction_with = ROOT } localization_key = TRIGGER_FULLFILLED_PREFIX } text = { trigger = { always = yes } localization_key = TRIGGER_UNFULLFILLED_PREFIX } } And add the localization key `NORDIC_COUNCIL_MEMBER` to a loc file: NORDIC_COUNCIL_MEMBER: "$IN_FACTION$ $COUNTRY|Y$ has joined" With the localization done we only need to fix the portraits of the country leaders. Defining dynamic images for focus inlay windows is done in the focus inlay window definition: nordic_alliance_inlay_window = { window_name = nordic_alliance_ui_window scripted_images = { Sweden = { GFX_portrait_SWE_per_albin_hansson = { SWE = { has_country_leader = { ruling_only = yes character = SWE_per_albin_hansson } } } GFX_blank_leader_portrait = yes } # Insert definitions for the rest of the nordic countries below [...] The `scripted_images` entry contains a list of image definitions that will be used in the focus inlay window. In this case, the icon named `Sweden` will have its image replaced with `GFX_portrait_SWE_per_albin_hansson` if Swedens current country leader is `SWE_per_albin_hansson`. If this doesnt hold, then the next entry in `Sweden` will be checked and so on until something that evaluates to true is encountered. The last entry in this example (`GFX_blank_leader_portrait`) always evaluates to true and is therefore the default image if no other is true. Now theres only some final touches to be made. Firstly, well restrict the inlay window to only be shown if the country has formed (or joined) a Nordic joint alliance (i.e. has completed the `NORDIC_form_joint_alliance`. Secondly, well set the window to only be visible to the country owning the focus tree (so no other player can view it). nordic_alliance_inlay_window = { window_name = nordic_alliance_ui_window internal = yes visible = { has_completed_focus = NORDIC_form_joint_alliance } [...] } Thats it, really. Weve now completely defined a focus inlay window. All that remains to do is to add it to the relevant focus trees: focus_tree = { id = sweden_focus [...] inlay_window = { id = nordic_alliance_inlay_window position = { x = 6500 y = 1000 } } [...] } I really look forward to seeing all the cool stuff you can come up with the focus inlay windows. And I hope you all enjoy the new modding constructs. Happy modding! [url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/3152810/Hearts_of_Iron_IV_Expansion_Pass_1] Make sure to check out the Expansion Pass Here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3152810/Hearts_of_Iron_IV_Expansion_Pass_1


[ 2024-11-11 14:00:12 CET ] [ Original post ]

Developer Diary | Alt-History Germany

Hallo, wie geht es dir? [previewyoutube=61pzJKTLt_Y;full]video here[/previewyoutube] Stay tuned for tomorrow, Thursday November 26th, that there will be a Dev Q&A over on Reddit! Paradox_Danne here one last time to guide you through the final German Dev Diary before Gtterdmmerung drops and you can experience all of this first hand. Buckle up, because today were diving into German alt-history! Before we get started though, lets have one last look at the old German Focus Tree and then compare it with the new one.
The Old German Focus Tree has served us well over the years
But its time to let a new German Tree sprout As you can see, the new German Focus Tree is something of a behemoth and by far the largest Tree in the game. If youve read the previous two Dev Diaries about the Historical branches and the German systems (if not, stop reading this and head over there immediately!) most of you will recognize a lot of this, but theres uncharted territory here as well. Hoist your proverbial sails and lets see where the current takes us as we explore Germanys alt-history. But a word of warning before we cast off; all you are about to see is very much a work in progress, which means things might and will change.
Germanys democrats and monarchists have received more to do and are now even accompanied by the communists As you might be able to tell, the alt-historical branch has been greatly expanded upon and offers a wide range of different playstyles for Germany. One thing that remains the same though is the actual Civil War. We decided very early on not to expand this bit or alter it all that much; we reasoned that if you want to play alt-history you want the Civil War to begin and end as soon as possible. So its very much straight to the point still (with maybe one or two new minor surprises). Before moving on to the various political paths, lets talk about the few Civil War-centric focuses there are.
After starting the Civil War you have a few focuses to help you through these dark times With the Civil War tearing Germany apart, you can Rally the Nation to bring down the Nazis faster and Rebuild the Nation to help your industries recover faster, which then can be expedited with Revitalize the Nation. All of this should bolster Germany and help it recover quickly to move on to other things, such as tending to the future and deciding what kind of politics you want to pursue.

Democracy or Monarchism



The Democratic and Monarchist paths share most focuses but cater to different playstyles while not excluding any of them You dont have to be Sherlock Holmes to quickly deduce that the Democratic and Monarchist branches share almost all focuses between them. This of course means you can be hyper-aggressive as a Democratic Germany, or become the saviour of East Europe as the Kaiser and fend off Soviet aggression. This has been done to offer different ways of playing Germany, but it also has a basis in reality. After WW1 Germany never ratified the eastern borders set by the Versailles treaty (it would actually take until 1970 for the eastern borders to be accepted and ratified properly), and it always harboured a desire to regain these territories. Even during the Weimar Republic, Germany coveted these areas and never fully accepted the loss of these lands. Youll be able to regain these lost parts of Germany through different means - but more on that later. Lets discuss what exactly sets Democracy apart from a revived Kaiserreich.

Democracy



After you Re-establish Free Elections you can become a technological powerhouse, secure better relations with your Western neighbours, but also become a beacon of Democracy The Democratic branch is all about cooperation, reconciliation, and technological advancements. You can Reverse the Brain Drain to kick your research into high gear and then further improve it with Shared R&D Programs to really accelerate the research pace. And by making amends with your Western neighbours you can increase trade with them or even regain some of your old colonies. Depending on what you choose between Embrace Liberal Leanings or Strive for Conservative Values youll either make political advisors, Economic and Trade Laws much cheaper or get all political and military advisors at a slightly reduced cost while Conscription Law also gets a lot cheaper.
Cooperation and reconciliation will lead to technological innovations and more trade
The Shield of Democracy comes in two different flavours

Monarchism



After you Revive the Kaiserreich you can start to realize the Imperial Forces true potential The keen-eyed among you will notice that you can now choose which flavour of authoritarianism you want; the rule of good old Wilhelm II or install a Military Dictatorship with Wilhelm III as figurehead, with the Fourth Supreme Army Command as the true power in Germany. This also has a historical background with the Army Command being the de facto authority in Germany during the later parts of WW1. Both options have their own exclusive focuses with the Kaiser geared more toward research and the development of Special Projects while the Supreme Army Command is all about preparing Germany for the next war and strengthening its military. Whats true for both though, is the eagerness and willingness to rearm and demand lost territories and exact vengeance.

Weltpolitik



With Germanys old colonies lost, the question is how you will regain them Now, after having chosen your leader and political course, its time to set sail and venture out on the open seas to rebuild your old empire through some good old-fashioned Weltpolitik - which simply means world politics. This was the imperial foreign policy under Wilhelm II as Germany aimed to become a global power. There are basically two ways to become a global empire once more; you can either accept British naval dominance and ask nicely (and sometimes not so nicely - looking at you Portugal) to get your old colonies back, or you can simply go to war over your old claims and demand your rightful place in the sun. Wedged in between these two paths you have a third option; to align more closely with China and offer both industrial and military help to bolster them. In the end, youll carve up Asia between yourselves in spheres of influence. But wait, hold up, hold up, I hear you say after taking a long, hard look at the picture above, Carve up Congo doesnt sound like anything the British would agree on. Believe it or not, but this also has a basis in history; the then Prime Minister of Britain, Chamberlain, once offered Hitler to carve up Congo between both nations. This was a part of his appeasement strategy (famously working out oh-so-well), and the idea was that this would placate Hitler and his lust for conquest. Lmao. I thought it was a neat idea and put it here instead.

Realpolitik



What alliances and deals will you strike to strengthen Germany? If Weltpolitik is all about global power plays on the world stage, then Realpolitik is about how you conduct politics and diplomacy closer to home. The big name associated with the term is of course Otto von Bismarck, who used Realpolitik to achieve the unification of Germany and created a delicate balance of alliances in Europe designed to keep Germany out of a two-front war (which abruptly fell apart as soon as he left office - leading to WW1). Theres quite a lot to go through here actually, so lets get started - and were starting from the far left with:

Mitteleuropa



Tie other nations closer to Germany by strengthening their industries and exploiting their resources Mitteleuropa of course means Middle Europe and is a German term for Central Europe, but the definition of what Mitteleuropa encompasses has shifted throughout the ages. It is not merely a geographical term, but also a political one. Mitteleuropa envisions a German-dominated central Europe with countries strongly tied to, or even ruled by, Germany. And this is exactly what you can achieve by going down this branch. After the Civil War you stand alone, without allies, but this changes here; this is where you once again can form your own alliance to weather whatever may come. This is also where you decide how to handle poor old Austria; do you invite them into your newly founded faction or do you push for unification, giving Burgenland to Hungary to entice them to join Mitteleuropa? From here you have to decide whether or not to restore the old Central powers (with either Austria or Hungary depending on your earlier choice), but under a much stronger German influence, or try to unify as much of Europe under your leadership as possible while making every faction member stronger until youre able to form the European Confederation?

See to the Eastern Front



Who said playing nice cant be fun? Protect Eastern Europe before the Soviets come knocking on your door What happens if you play it cool and dont decide to gobble up other nations? Well, someone else is just going to take your place, arent they? Theres a very high likelihood that the USSR will start to eye the countries between them and you with increasing appetite (so not very different from history actually). Whos going to stop them anyway? You? Ravaged by Civil War you cant possibly hope to save the countries of Eastern Europe from their fate. It is sealed. A done deal. The Soviets will have these nations for breakfast. Well, I guess you can always try to help them. Offer them guarantees, construct forts, build up their industries, train their militaries - do whatever you can. Theres even a possibility that you can invite them into your faction and further boost their industries.

Restore the Brest-Litovsk Borders



Coerce your eastern neighbors into giving up lands so you can restore the borders set by the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk Well, what if you dont want to play nice? Oh, there are options for you too (the Weltpolitik branch notwithstanding)! Many of you may already know this, but Germany signed a separate peace deal with the Russians towards the end of WW1, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, where the Russians lost of their population and over 50% of their industrial lands. So, a pretty severe blow. Well, all of this was undone by the Treaty of Versailles which annulled the treaty, and all of the lands Germany had gained became free nations. It is now within your grasp to restore these borders and German honour!

Reject the Locarno Treaty



If you are of the mindset that the Treaty of Versailles was unfair you can Reject the Locarno Treaty and reclaim Elsass-Lothringen The Locarno Treaty was signed between Germany and a whole bunch of other nations to secure and guarantee Germanys new WW1 borders with France and Belgium. If you have chosen to bring back the Kaiser from his exile or appoint a military dictatorship, you have the option to first bully the Danes into giving back southern Jutland (another piece of land lost with the Treaty of Versailles), before you can Reject the Locarno Treaty and have at it with France one more time. As you may have noticed, this path is also accessible if you Accept British Naval Dominance in the Weltpolitik branch; the caveat being that France has to fulfill certain criteria first, much like the old focus with the same name. But what if you dont want to play a fascist, democratic, or monarchist Germany? Well, there are slim pickings then, but you can always start;

The Proletarian Revolution



Throw off the shackles of capitalism and free workers around the world as Communist Germany Welcome to the revolution comrades, its been a long time coming. Its time to establish the Proletariat and bring it to the masses all around the world. There are two ways of doing this, one more aggressive than the other, but neither is peaceful (those damn capitalists just wont see common sense!), but before we get ahead of ourselves we have to discuss how to turn Communist in the first place. You didnt think youd do it by the press of a button, did you? No, you need to press several buttons! Some of you may deem this the most unrealistic path for Germany to take, but they had several socialist uprisings just after WW1 and some even broke away from Germany and proclaimed their own, independent Soviet republics. In fact, it was the Kiel Mutiny of November 1918 that sparked the following revolutions and uprisings and the downfall of the monarchy in Germany. This mutiny had clear socialist undertones, and while the Left was finally defeated in the German Revolution of 1918 and all German Soviet republics abolished, the Weimar Republic emerged from this turbulence helmed by the Social Democrats. Ok, why am I giving you this quick history lesson? Because this is kind of how you turn Communist; by mimicking history.
Spread the Proletarian Revolution to new states to gain momentum for your cause! For each state you spread the revolution to the stronger the Communist movement grows, but so does the instability of Germany. And be mindful that not all states are equal; the more industries a state has the more workers you can sway to your cause, and the bigger the impact in loss of stability and increase in Communism support youll get. You might also have noticed the Imminent Proletarian Revolution thats ticking down. So what happens if you reach 0 days?
The Second German Civil War The states you manage to spread the Proletarian Uprising to will join you in any potential Civil War. Luckily, this Civil War is avoidable - if you play your cards right. For each state you spread the Proletarian Uprising to, you'll add days to the Imminent Proletarian Revolution, postponing the Civil War by a few days. This can also be achieved by completing certain focuses. Its a race against the clock, but one which you should be able to win - especially if you plan ahead just a little bit.
With The Peoples Victory, you have finally become a true socialist nation So, youve emerged as a Communist nation - what now? How will you secure the Revolution, or even spread it elsewhere? Theres a lot left to cover so lets do a blitz through the various shared branches the Communists have.
If you like the spy game, a Communist Germany is what youre looking for where you can form the infamous Stasi
Get Communist militias and upgrade Ernst Thlmanns advisor trait in the Nationale Volksarmee branch (where you might have to sack some generals but also get new ones)
Nationalize Industries to improve August Thalheimer and your factory output before expanding your Recruitable Population with Womens Rights and Equality
Sign the Second Treaty of Berlin to boost your and the Soviets industries and maybe trade some of your factories for resource rights And thats it for this blitz round. Lets turn our attention to more intricate stuff, like how you-

Spark the Flame of Revolution



You have had your revolution, comrades, but what about everyone else? If you like flipping countries Communist, this is the path for you! Here you can Bolster Communist Sentiment in countries, and in doing so eventually trigger a Civil War in said nation. But to secure the Revolution and guarantee that your side comes out on top, you can send Infantry Equipment to countries embroiled in a Communist Civil War, or even send boots on the ground with your volunteer forces. By completing Spark the Flames of Revolution youll also create your very own faction: the Proletarian International. With Strengthen Proletarian International youll automatically invite any country you helped turn red to your new faction (so those pesky Soviets dont sweep right in and reap what youve sowed by enlarging the Comintern).
Turn all of Europe Red to bolster your faction in ever-growing numbers and put an end to Fascism in Europe

Root Out Imperialism



You might have ended Fascism in Europe and turned all of your neighbours into docile allies, but what about the rest of the world? If you want to spread the Proletariat beyond Europes borders youll have to Root Out Imperialism and increase resistance and autonomy in African and Asian countries suffering under the boot of colonialism. After that, you can spread the word of Marx to South America or the Middle East before facing off against the forces of Capitalism (which we all know resides in the USA) and the remnants of corporatism in Japan (we dont care if theyve turned their backs on their emperor or not - to us theyll always be fascist sell-outs unless theyre actually Communists, which makes them waaaay cool).
Communist hegemony wont be realized until we have Hegemony over Europe

Legacy of the Spartacus League



Look toward the past and follow in the footsteps of the Spartacus League The roots of the German Communist movement and the German Communist Party (the KPD) can be found in the Spartacus League, a breakaway group of the Social Democrats. The Spartacus League was founded and led by Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg (both murdered during the Spartacist uprising in 1919), who both were very much anti-militarists. Luxemburg in particular believed in Democratic institutions and that Communism should use those venues to gain power, while Liebknecht believed in the proletarian revolution. This is also reflected in the exclusively Communist National Spirit of Politbro.
Politbro will take on different aspects depending on which Communist path you go down Honoring the Legacy of the Spartacus League emphasizes the spread of the revolution and embracing Democratic institutions, which all come together in a brand-new type of subjects, exclusive to this path - namely the:

Volkskommissariats


By spreading Communism to neighbouring countries you can subjugate them to Protect the Revolution after you Embrace Democratic Institutions and protect Civil Liberties. This in turn will let you create Volkskommissariats out of these neighbours. The Volkskommissariats will give you a higher percentage of their industries and manpower to their Overlord, namely you.
The Volkskommissarit will strengthen its Overlords industries and military You can also choose to develop your Volkskommissariats industry, which in the end will boost your own production. You can also help Instill German Discipline in your subjects, to make them a more effective fighting force
Boosting your Volkskommissariats will inevitably strengthen you too And in the end, you can choose to integrate any Volkskommissariats and create the German Socialist Volksunion. But what if you want more action? What if you dont like taking your time map painting? What if youre the impatient kind who just wants war? Welcome to the-

Proletarian Dictatorship



The Proletarian Dictatorship resembles the other branches more in the sense that you get to gobble up a bunch of nations This branch is more straightforward and to the point compared to the Legacy of the Spartacus League with its ability to set up Volkskommissariats; here you simply apply superior forces to conquer other nations. Yay! But before you can start your world-conquering rampage you have to sign a Defense Treaty with the Soviets to exchange mutual guarantees with each other, and after that, theres just one more step; carve Europe into Spheres of Influence. Divide Europe into your respective playgrounds, where youll relinquish control over the East but have the West all to yourself. How fun! This will mean that it becomes more expansive for you to try and take any state that resides in the others influence.
The Spheres of Influence will divide Europe between you and the Soviets Okay, you must be getting tired of reading about how to turn Communist, or thinking about if you want to protect Eastern Europe from the greedy Soviets, or if you want to gobble it up yourself. Were nearly done, lets just look at some pretty pictures before saying goodbye.

Country Leaders



Feast your eyes on some (but not all) of the new country leaders you can get with Gtterdmmerung There might be some more surprises besides these, but the only way to find out is to play the game once the DLC has been released.

Advisors



The political advisor roster for Democratic and Monarchist Germany
The political advisor roster for Communist Germany

The Various Shapes and Colours of Germany



Germany has a plethora of new formables

Units


Phew, were very nearly done! Thanks for sticking around this long (its been quite a long read). To finish this Dev Diary off we just want to show off some of the very cool new models we have! This is not all of them, but some of them.
Some handsome German Infantry
Some very hot German Infantry
Some Very cold German Infantry And with that, I would like to say so long, farewell, auf wiedersehen. This is the last Dev Diary about Germany before the release of Gtterdmmerung on November 14th, but it is not the final Dev Diary. Next up we have Performance and Modding dropping on November 11th, and after that, the last Dev Diary, Art and Achievements, out on November 12th. I hope you have enjoyed reading about whats in store for Germany and I cant wait for you to actually get to play it! See you around folks. [url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/3152810/Hearts_of_Iron_IV_Expansion_Pass_1] Make sure to check out the Expansion Pass Here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3152810/Hearts_of_Iron_IV_Expansion_Pass_1


[ 2024-11-06 14:04:43 CET ] [ Original post ]

Developer Diary | Congo

Hello! My name is MordredViking (Gareth), and Im joined in this Dev Diary by D3vil (Jonathan). We previously talked about Belgium and now its time to talk about Congo! Ill start talking about a specific part of the focus tree which relies on close Belgian cooperation, then Jonathan will take over and cover the rest of the branches. [previewyoutube=5AI2_-7s6bQ;full][/previewyoutube] Why Congo though? I know there was some surprise at their inclusion in this expansion, but there is a good reason for it. Namely, they contributed a lot more to the Second World War than you likely realize, plus they were of course intrinsically linked together with Belgium. It was their gold and diamonds which kept the Belgian Government in Exile solvent, meaning that they did not need any donations or loans from the other Allied nations. Congolese soldiers fought in the Force Publique together with other Allied troops against the Italians in Ethiopia. Congolese rubber production was expanded following the fall of South East Asia to Japan, and other raw materials were heavily developed for the war effort, particularly copper and cobalt. Plus, of course Congos Uranium was vital to the Manhattan Project, as Congo had at the time the largest known Uranium deposit in the world. Now, I am well aware of the elephant in the room. Belgiums relationship with Congo has not always been benign, and there was a period where horrible atrocities occurred, particularly under King Leopold II (King Leopold IIIs grandfather). While the situation in Congo during the Second World War had significantly improved from those dark days, things were by no means perfect. I would remind you however, that this is a war game, focusing on the war and as such we are most interested in Congos contribution to the conflict at large. Now, with that said, lets get stuck in!
Behold! The Congo Focus Tree in all its glory! And now for some reason, Im going to show you a part of the Belgian Focus Tree.
The fog has been lifted, and you can finally see some of those focuses look a little different.

Colonial Branch


You might notice that they share a rather large part in common, well this is the joint Colonial Branch that both countries share. There are parts which only one country can do (denoted by the singular flags) and there are parts which either country can do (denoted by both flags, side by side). As one country completes a focus in this section, it will also be completed for the other, with both nations getting something from it. Belgium must complete Monetary Reconstruction from their Industrial branch, and then Congo Investments and ideally Societe Generale de Belgique to gain access. Congo meanwhile, must do Belgian Congo and then Heart of Africa. So how does all this work? Well lets give you some examples.
The bunting flags beneath the focus show who can do what
Everyone gets something, regardless of who completes it Both countries have modifiers that these will generally improve. For Belgium its Colonial Returns. For Congo its the Model Colony. Societe Generale de Belgique : Completed by Belgium. Improves Congos Model Colony with better construction while also improving Belgiums Colonial Returns with some Political Power Gain. The Heart of Africa : Completed by Congo. Improves Model Colony with Research Speed for Congo, and gives +75 Political Power to Belgium. Bakwanga Mine : Completed by either Belgium or Congo. Gives Congo a Civilian Factory (and slot), while improving Belgiums trade resources per factory. Generally, the single-nation focuses will give a bigger bonus to that country (and in some rare cases, gives nothing to the other, or can actually cost them something), whereas the focuses either can complete will boost both. Some focuses also function like a gate meaning one country needs to complete a focus before the other can progress down a mini branch.
These are the central line of focuses which split the branch into tiers. The Colonial Branch is also split up into tiers, denoted by the central three (well, technically four) focuses. The Belgian Congo : Only accessible to Congo, and only Congo will benefit from these. Something of an introduction to the branch as a whole, and solid early-game boosts. The Heart of Africa : Tier 1, contains most of the resource improvements, as both countries work to kick-start Congos economy. Regional Specialization : Tier 2, requires 6 focuses in the Heart of Africa tier. More advanced resources are here, as well as increasingly technical areas. Congos Place in the World : Tier 3, requires 14 focuses from across Heart of Africa and Regional Specialization. This determines Congos future direction and their relationship with Belgium. Broadly the Colonial Branch is also divided left against right. On the left we have the focuses regarding the extraction of raw resources. These generally will increase Congos autonomy. On the right are the more developmental focuses, and these will generally decrease Congos autonomy.
How Congo feels about Belgium will determine their future options So why does autonomy matter? Congos autonomy when Congos Place in the World is completed will determine their future as a colony, and as a nation. Congo Free State: Belgium annexes Congo. Overseas Department of Belgium: Congo remains a puppet of Belgium. Dominion of Congo: Congo becomes a Dominion, much like Canada or Australia with Britain. Republic of Congo: Congo declares independence from Belgium. It is possible to achieve this peacefully, but it will be up to Belgium on whether they deem it important (or possible!) to fight to keep it. When a choice is made here then that status is locked, so note which of these can be completed by Belgium and / or Congo! Of course, if Belgium is no longer the Overlord, then this whole Colonial Branch will be locked. Congo lost its main investor.
Historically, after the war Belgium was able to recover the most quickly of all the European nations, and this was in large part because of how wealthy Congo had made them (plus their gold reserves were intact). This became known as the Belgian Miracle. Therefore, if Belgium is able to invoke the Congo Free State, Overseas Department or Dominion of Congo, plus Engine of the Economy from their own tree, then they can do the Belgian Miracle focus which comes with a massive industrial bonus.

Colonial Mini Branches


Lets go into a little more detail about what you can actually get out of the Colonial branch!
Belgiums Overlord branch. This is Belgiums Overlord branch, the first two giving access to the wider shared branch, however the latter part generally takes things from Congo, without recompense. These will have pretty large boosts for Belgium, but come at a high cost in autonomy.
The Katanga region, in southern Congo is especially resource rich Congo is very resource rich, and can bring a wealth of benefits. These range from growing the mining companies of CCCI and Forminiere, prospecting for gold or diamonds, and eventually, expanding the Shinkolobwe mine for more Uranium. Belgium however, must also bear in mind rising autonomy should it invest in this area too heavily though! Similarly, if Congo is on a path to Independence then it might want to sacrifice some of their mineral wealth for the greater good (the greater good). Speaking of Uranium, if Belgium is able to complete the Uranium Development Trust, then this will confer a bonus to Nuclear Special Projects for ALL members of their faction! Congo too can tap into this more sneakily, and smuggle Uranium to any other Major Power to give them that bonus too, for a price. Even if theyre at war.
These focus more on the non-mineral related activities within Congo, including rubber production Theres more to the Congo than mining, for one there is major potential for rubber cultivation as well as widespread agriculture. The sheer size of Congo is also a factor here, and you can invest in various forms of infrastructure to better utilize the vast interior. The Belgian Devaluation line contains autonomy reducing systems, while French Congo and Colonial Ambitions provide an outlet towards further African expansion.
The Force Publique was the militarized police force, significantly expanded during the First World War and critical in the war against German Africa The Force Publique section is initially locked so that only Belgium can access it, however should Congo find itself at war, then it too can begin completing it. Initially this section is about improving the Force Publique, increasing the manpower available, giving them bonuses to fighting in the Congo proper, and some hefty jungle warfare buffs. Later, you can modernize it into the Army of the Congo.
Congo can nab this talented officer from the Belgians! It was said of Raoul van Overstraeten that, he is likely one of the most talented officers in the Belgian military, the problem is that he himself knows it. Its unlikely (but possible) that Belgium will want to bring him back into service, however he served with distinction in the Congo during the First World War so may be more amenable to serve in Africa once more. Anyway, thats all from me on the shared part of the tree! I now hand over to D3vil (Jonathan) for more of the Congo-centric part of the tree. I warn you in advance he has added a lot of kings! Like seriously, there are a tonne.

The Unique Branches


Hello again, its me D3vil here to bring you some more interesting things regarding the Congolese content. So to start off with the unique Congolese focuses are divided into a few separated parts, namely: The Invisible Roof, Governor General Pierre Ryckmans, Congolese National Movements, Our Overlords War, The ANC and the Post-Independence Political branches. Also dont worry, it may not look like anything now, but a path may appear below the focus Assemble a Regency Council once someone has been chosen to take the throne.
The Branches in question! In order to give you a better idea of how the country starts off, so that I can better explain the unique tree, Ill show you their country screen and their starting national spirits.
The new country select screen for the Belgian Congo, with a TL:DR for the historical context
Their Starting National Spirits First of all, there is a small sub branch for ridding yourself of the Invisible Roof national spirit, costing of these three focuses. They can only be taken once you have become independent, through whichever means it may be.
The Invisible Roof focuses But to move on to some of the more interesting branches, lets start off with the ones I usually call the pre-independence political branches, as in the ones that start with the focuses Governor General Pierre Ryckmans, Found the Congolese National Movement and National Committee for Liberation.
The left-most focuses are to do with strengthening the colonial regime,while the ones to the right deal with achieving independence, one of them peacefully, the other through a war of independence
Some focuses in the Pierre Ryckmans branch If you wish for independence, one way would be to grow your democracy support and gain independence score to peacefully liberate yourself, while the other would be through war. The choice is yours, and breaking away peacefully will more than likely put you on a path towards democracy, but should you choose violence, well then the political climate may change drastically
Some focuses in the Push for Independence branches There is a branch available to you if you are still together with Belgium, and they happen to find themselves at war, perhaps by the Germans invading them to get around the Maginot. Should this occur, the Congo will be able to gain strong timed bonuses that will help it rearm and prepare to aid its allies in the new Great War.
The Our Overlords War branch and some of its focuses The armed forces of the Congo cant stay a colonial gendarmerie forever, and as such, either after gaining independence, or after finishing the Force Publique branch in the Joint focus tree, the Arme Nationale Congolaise branch will unlock, allowing for professionalization of your armed forces.
The ANC branch and some of its focuses After becoming independent, there are a few different paths you can take. One requires you to have 40% or more democracy support, one the same but for communism, and the third requires less than 40% for either political party.
The Post-independence political branches First, before we show off individual branches and focuses, it might be time to show what advisors are available to the Congo.
Congolese Advisors First off we have the democratic branch. This one focuses mainly on being able to quickly rid yourself of your administrative maluses, and industrialize as soon as possible. It does also contain the opportunity for a bit of expansion, and as the Congo has a new generic formable nation available to it, they have the ability to core some places no matter which path they choose.
The United States of Latin Africa
Some focuses in the democratic branch In the communist branch you have two main choices, similar to what you can do in Ethiopia. One is to use wargoals and limited wars to liberate nations, eventually leading up to forming the African union, with the other one about spreading the revolution throughout the continent, potentially also joining the Comintern. With the Congo also being able to use the formerly purely Ethiopian African Union mechanics, these decisions have been changed to be cheaper for both countries, and have had parts of their functionality revised.
Some focuses in the communist branches Now for something a bit more unusual. In the case that the country cannot unite behind one school of thought, a council of ministers can be put together to convene with a sole goal in mind. To end the political chaos, and select a ruler who can take the nation in a better direction. They will attempt to select a ruler from one of many regional monarchs in and around the Congo, in an event chain similar to the Polish royal election events. A focus branch will then appear, depending on who you decide on in the events. I will give you a sneak peek at two of the branches, and leave the rest of them for you to discover. I will however leave you with the portraits and names of the awesome-looking monarchs you can elect for now.
Two of the available monarchist branches
The Monarchs available to the Congo That has been all for now however! If you have any questions, Mordred and I will do our best to answer what we can. Be sure to tune in next week, when Paradox_Danne and ManoDeZombi will show you all about the new and improved German alt-history routes. See you then! [url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/3152810/Hearts_of_Iron_IV_Expansion_Pass_1] Make sure to check out the Expansion Pass Here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3152810/Hearts_of_Iron_IV_Expansion_Pass_1


[ 2024-11-04 14:00:31 CET ] [ Original post ]

Developer Diary | Belgium

Were going to be talking about a nation that was invaded in both World Wars, and were present and fighting until the end in both, despite being either partly, or wholly occupied for the majority of those conflicts. Their people were very much on the front lines, and the landscape remains scarred by the wars even to this day. [previewyoutube=kJsFqK0MBCM;full][/previewyoutube] Hello! My name is Mordred Viking, though some of you may know me as Gareth. I am a Content Designer on Hearts of Iron IV, and I very much wanted to see this nation given more content in the game because they contributed so much, but are often so little known. As such, Id like to present the real story of the plucky underdog: Belgium.
Behold! The Belgian Focus Tree! Plus a weird blurry bit in the middle. I wonder what that could be? I had a couple of goals starting out with the design of Belgium. Firstly, I wanted to give them a chance to actually hold out. Secondly, if this failed, I wanted them to be fun to play in exile. Thirdly, I wanted to showcase the close relationship between Belgium and Congo. As is always the case in these diaries, please bear in mind that all you are about to see is a work in progress.

Overview


Right! So with those goals in mind, lets start taking a closer look at what all this actually means.
Paul van Zeeland is the Prime Minister at the start of the game. You can see from his fancy top hat, that he is clearly a very trustworthy fellow! At the start of the game, Belgium finds itself in an interesting position. The memory of the Great War is still very much in mind, their economy still recovering from its impact and the countryside still scarred by the many trenches meandering through the fields of Flanders. In order to avoid a second Great War, the Belgians embarked on a policy of neutrality, much like the Dutch and Swiss. They even canceled their alliances with Britain and France, something which took both those nations by surprise as they had fought to protect Belgium previously.
The Chasseur Ardennais give Belgium some unique fighting options in terrain other nations would find too rugged. The political landscape wasnt much better, corruption plagued the government of Prime Minister Paul van Zeeland, causing a furor which was whipped up by the fascists under Leon Degrelle who demanded an investigation- well talk more about this later! Complicating all this, Belgium is of course a nation of twin cultures, the French speaking Wallons and the Dutch speaking Flemish. To reflect all this, they have the above starting National Spirits.
Which to tackle first? Security or corruption? Despite increasingly hostile rhetoric from neighbouring Germany, the Belgian government historically refused to sanction further military spending needed to bring state forces and defenses up to scratch without the promise of a declaration of neutrality from the crown, so that they could avoid being drawn into what they saw as other peoples wars. Simultaneously, Fascist agitation against the widespread government corruption can cause the Democratic government to resign, triggering political manoeuvring which can ultimately lead to any of the ideologies rising to power.

Military and Industry



Following the declaration that Belgium is Independent, Neutral and Loyal, you gain access to the defensive branch The so-called Defensive branch is about, well, defending. When hostilities seem inevitable, Belgium would be wise to invest some time and resources into these. The Redoubt of Antwerp line will see the rise of impressive fortifications, while Belgian Gates and the Iron Wall act as force multipliers and improve the effectiveness of these defenses. The latter part of the branch provides additional defensive options, including the radical decision to really tap into Belgiums position as one of the Low Countries, and saturate their enemies with more than just bullets.
The Belgians boast a number of powerful MIOs, particularly small arms producer FN Herstal who partnered closely with Browning (and would later go on to buy them). Belgiums army was surprisingly potent, having been able to muster 600,000 troops before the German invasion, with decent officers and well developed industrial support providing high quality equipment particularly in terms of infantry equipment and artillery. Ive also chosen to tap a little into their WW1 penchant with armored cars to give them that option, and they can eventually overcome the Scars of WW1 and turn those experiences into their strength. On the other side, education was important to the Belgian military, and high level courses in a wide range of different subjects were offered through the Royal Military Academy. Historically, Belgian integration into the British SAS met with excellent results, particularly in France where being able to speak French was a real advantage... Quelle surprise? This combined with the Chasseur Ardennais modifiers, means that the Belgian Special Forces can indeed bring something powerful and unique to the battlefield.
For such an industrial nation, the Belgian industrial branch is curiously small I wonder why? Could there be another facet to this? Although the economic situation facing Belgium at the start is quite poor, the scaling potential is quite impressive, with numerous ways to quickly get new factories up and running, and then to make those as efficient as possible. Historically, Belgian industry was in an interesting position, with companies having a very progressive attitude towards their employees, including the introduction of a 40 hour work week and paid vacations. The cornerstone of Belgian industrial might was Cockerill, a company that suffered through the First World War, and continued manufacturing machines and ships throughout the interwar period and into the Second World War. Historically, they survived the conflict, maintaining high levels of employment manufacturing pig iron and trains rather than weapons for the occupiers. This gets to the heart of Belgian production at the time, trains, which were the primary export in the run up to war.
The Belgians were real innovators in the air, unfortunately their aeronautical industry never really took off in time. Despite a good showing in the First World War, the Belgian Air Force was woefully under developed at the onset of the Second World War. The majority of Belgian aircraft in 1940 were old foreign planes, and despite a very brave attempt, the Belgians recorded only one German aircraft downed. However, they did have some good home-grown design talent, particularly Alfred Renard who was a pioneer in the development of all-metal aircraft, and Nicholas Florine, the father of twin-rotor helicopters. Who knows what they could have achieved had that domestic industry been allowed to flourish.
The Belgians had a huge and flourishing port in Antwerp, not to mention overseas colonial possessions, so surely they had a mighty navy to protect it all? The Navy in 1936 was well, there wasnt one. Despite being granted ships from Germany in the Treaty of Versailles, the Belgians disbanded their entire fleet in 1927 as a cost saving measure. This means that you have to start from scratch in order to develop a fleet at all. This focus branch therefore is all about doing just that. Thankfully, the Belgians are not without resources and capacity, with Antwerp particularly being capable of quickly bringing naval production online. This highlights another facet of the Belgian game weve not yet touched on, their excellent capacity for diplomacy. Through having the right people in Government and developing Antwerp, Belgium can enjoy a significant advantage when buying resources on the world market, spending fewer civilian factories for each trade.
The Port of Antwerp can really help your trade

Political Introduction



Behold! Politics! Now that weve talked about the industrial and military facets important to any Belgian game, lets talk about the political sphere, the Democratic resistance, Fascist rise or Communist tough-decisions. Finally, the Monarchy was a real power within Belgium and can be involved in all branches, although just what role they will play remains to be seen - and of particular concern to the people of Belgium is precisely where the Kings loyalties lie.
Step one. Stamp on van Zeelands hat. As we mentioned earlier, rife corruption is the first political hurdle to be overcome. In order to begin tackling those horrible corruption modifiers, Paul van Zeelands government will have to resign. This will call an immediate election, with two outcomes. Historically, the Emile Vanderveldes Labour Party won the most votes, but did not have enough to form a majority government. Therefore they allied with Zeelands Catholic Bloc to get the numbers needed, and the Government of National Unity was formed with our main man, and master survivor, Paul van Zeeland at its head. The other option is for Vandervelde to form his own minority government. While this will cause some instability, it will lead towards a left wing- possibly Communist path. Well talk about that in a bit. Going back to the first option, unfortunately Paul van Zeeland is himself a ticking time bomb, and his luck can hold out only so long. The Fascist Leon Degrelle intensifies the corruption investigations, and reveals that, shock horror, Paul van Zeeland himself is implicated! This leads in time to the fall of the Government of National Unity.
Dont make me choose! - King Leopold III probably. King Leopold III himself steps and mounts a royal intervention, declaring for either the democratic Paul-mile Janson, or acknowledging Degrelles work tackling the corruption inherent in the system and swearing Degrelle in as the new Prime Minister.

Historical Branch



The Historical branch is short and sweet, and it was definitely not an intentional design decision to give more time to spend on certain other parts of the focus tree. Nope, definitely nothing so nefarious. The Historical branch focuses on stabilizing Belgium following all the chaos that has dogged the democratic side. The first step is implementing Henri de Mans economic policies (historically, he was the Minister of the Economy), in the amazingly named Plan de Man which helps relieve some of the pressure from Economic Downturn. This in turn leads to the Economic Recovery, though it does require the Dyle Plan. What is the Dyle Plan you ask? Well, it was the result of Belgiums declarations of neutrality and breaking of their alliances with Britain and France. Despite this public neutrality, Belgium was under no illusions about Germanys intentions and maintained secret back channel negotiations with the Allied nations. The Dyle Plan was a military strategy where Belgium would resist invasion to the Dyle River line, allowing French and British troops time to arrive and assist in the defense, much like in the First World War. In game-terms, this increases the likelihood that Allied forces will actually come and help Belgium, rather than leave them to their fate. Unfortunately, the Economic Recovery was something of an illusion, and Janson didnt survive as Prime Minister, this time being toppled by Paul-Henri Spaak who is quite possibly the most important Belgian politician ever. Seriously, look this guy up, he was quite impressive. He was Prime Minister of Belgium several times, first President of the United Nations (and sponsored the entry of the Soviets Union into the UN, ensuring there was a platform for the two Cold War rivals to talk), President of the European Coal and Steel Community (forerunner to the European Union), and finally General Secretary of NATO. This leadership was first tested with the Adriaan Martens Crisis, where a Flemish Nationalist, WW1 German Collaborator and Fascist was appointed to the Royal College of Surgeons. Historically, Spaak did not survive this crisis, leading to his resignation and the arrival of Hubert Pierlot to the office of Prime Minister, although here you have the option to pay the political price and keep Spaak around, allowing you to call the Council of Europe, and form the European Union. Pierlot was the historical wartime leader of Belgium during the Second World War, and fled with his Foreign Minister (Spaak), Economic Minister (Gutt) and Minister of Colonies (Vleeschauwer) to London and formed the Belgian Government in Exile. Now it is possible to just not capitulate, in which case Pierlot can reverse the Belgian Neutrality and join a faction. If however, the worst should happen and Germany (or whomever) does successfully invade

The King Surrenders


Remember that I had a couple of goals starting out with the design of Belgium: I wanted them to be fun to play in exile - therefore there is a reason to keep playing if this happens!
I wont spoil the circumstances around just how this happens! Youll have to play it to find out. (Were still waiting for La Dame Blanche icon art!) The worst has happened, and Belgium has capitulated. Some of that blame will, rightfully or wrongly, fall on the Kings shoulders. Just how he is treated by the government in exile will determine whether he falls by the wayside, or becomes a figure around whom to rally resistance. The historical path was to declare the King unfit to reign, and centralize resistance efforts around the Government in Exile in London. This path is all about gaining support from allies, and using the resources in Congo to fight back and reclaim Belgium. The Prisoner King is a very plausible alternative path, and the real Exiles agonized about how best to mount the resistance. In this scenario, the King plays on his status as a prisoner in his own nation, using his influence to solidify Belgian resistance and begin a monarchist resurgence.

Fascist Branches



The rising power of the Fascists in Belgium have a lot of options open to them. (Were still waiting for Strength and Brotherhood icon art!) Once Degrelle has been invited to take power as Prime Minister, he will need to make a choice between which Fascist group to support and empower. Degrelle will remain in power regardless of your choice here, this is because I absolutely cannot imagine him giving up that position once hes got it, plus it was the King making *him* the Prime Minister, not the Fascists. They are still a minority in the country. As such, the decision here is not an indication of which faction is in power, but rather whose ambitions Degrelle is supporting. There were two major factions at the time (and a whole myriad of smaller ones), and each has a broad set of goals they want to achieve but it can loosely be considered as follows:
  • The Rexists are the Fascist Nationalist path - Build up Belgium itself
  • The VNV are the Fascist Expansionist path - Make a bigger Belgium
  • The middle shared path - Things both sides can do
The Rexists believed mostly in a strong Belgium and worked with many different groups to this end. They were the primary collaborator with Germany during the war, so in this branch they are very Germany-aligned (early designs even had them become a puppet!), and have the most to gain from an alliance with Fascist Germany. The main thing blocking this tall approach is internal Fascist support, so Degrelle will need to work at consolidating his grip on power within Belgium. The VNV (Vlaamsch Nationaal Verbond) were historically Flemish nationalists, and didnt want much to do with the Walloons. However, I really didnt want to add yet another civil war, nor did I want to break up an already small country (because a players first action would be just to unite it again). As such I thought theyd be most about embiggening Belgium, uniting with their Dutch speaking brethren to the north, and invoking the old ideas of Burgundy. If theyre feeling super bold, they can go after France proper in a bid to recreate the old Roman province of Belgica, including the ability to core a number of French states which comprised Belgica historically. The shared focus tree allows Fascist Belgium to do a number of things, including a peaceful union with Luxembourg, abandoning neutrality early in order to join factions or attack other nations, plus it gives them a number of tools to consolidate power and enhance the power of the state.

The Constitutional Crisis Branch - Turtle Belgium



What If Belgium held out? This is the branch to find out! So Degrelle has come to power, but Hubert Pierlot, fearing what this would mean for the democratic traditions of the country, invokes Parliaments own protections, declaring the King temporarily unable to reign before the monarch can sign the royal assent locking Degrelle in. This renders the appointment void, and Pierlot calls for a snap election. This will lead to King Leopolds abdication, and Charles, Count of Flanders appointment as Royal Regent (Leopolds brother). For those questioning the realism of this, something similar actually happened in Belgium in 1990. King Baudouin didnt want to sign a bill into law for personal religious belief reasons, so had himself declared temporarily unfit to reign, meaning Parliament could bypass royal assent. The election is then between the Liberals, led by Pierlot and the Socialists, led by you guessed it, Spaak! This gives Belgium a choice to gain Allied protections or go for another option- the Soviets. Internally, they build build build, combining defenses in this branch with the defensive branch will lead to some truly massive fortifications.
Belgian Maginot
Better than Maginot
Mobile Maginot!

Socialist/Communist Belgium



Belgian Socialists had some interesting opinions on Spain and Congo. Going down the other path after that initial election, choosing the Vandervelde Minority sets Belgium on the path of Socialism. At the time, there was very little actual support for Communism, with even the trade unions being quite weak. This was because, as mentioned earlier, many large companies were already very socially aware and progressive for their time. As such, in game Belgium will generally remain Democratic in this branch, though there are ways of going Communist further down. Therefore this branch is less about radical shifts in policy, and more about their diplomatic outlook. Belgium has the potential to provide significant support for the Spanish Republicans (something that Vandervelde historically pushed hard for). Similarly, Socialist attitudes in Congo were quite paternalistic, providing a strange combination of imperialism with socialist values. Finally, Socialist Belgium can send peacekeeping forces (volunteers) without turning their back on neutrality. Ultimately, lines in the sand must be drawn, and Socialist Belgium can turn to the Soviets (with Raise the Red Flag flipping them Communist for gameplay reasons), or form the European Union.

Advisors, Commanders and other Bits and Bobs



Belgium has a broad set of skills at their disposal Belgium has a good number of advisors, with a wide range of different abilities. Of note are: Paul Henri Spaak, who can increase the amount of raw materials per civilian factory in trade. Did I mention he was kinda cool? Edgar Sengier, who realized the importance of Uranium to atomic research, and so shipped the Belgian Uranium supplies to America before Germany could take them. He was also critical in reopening Uranium mining in Congo. It was his foresight that basically made the Manhattan Project even feasible. He boosts the speed of Nuclear Special Projects. Walthere Dewe, leader of the Belgian resistance in WW1. Anticipating the German invasion, he went back into hiding just before the outset of WW2 to rebuild his networks, and led the resistance AGAIN. In-game he [strike][REDACTED][/strike]. Dieudonn Saive, the principal designer at FN Herstal, and who collaborated closely with Browning. He increases factory output, research speed and MIO funds gain.
I know this was a weapon of the 1950s, but hear me out! While were on the topic of Saive, there is one slightly controversial topic that I just know will come up, so let's address it. Ive chosen to include the FN FAL as the final tier of Belgian Small Arms. So why is this weapon, widely adopted in the 1950s by NATO forces, in a WW2 game? I sincerely believe that had Belgium not capitulated, then between Saives exceptional weapon design capabilities, his very close collaboration with John Browning and access to the German Sturmgewehr 44 that Belgium would have developed their own assault rifle in the latter years of the war. As it was, the first prototype of this weapon was delivered in 1947 and it went into regular service in 1953. Ideally Id have included this as a 1943-44 weapon, but as this is the final weapon tech in our tree this is where it had to go. After all, isnt half the fun of these games the what-if scenarios?
The Chasseurs Ardennais rocked the iconic green berets, although they were worn longer on the side. Belgium was fortunate in generally having a competent officer class. While many of the generals here will not be available from the start, there is a good selection of skills available. Despite this, Belgium starts with no Field Marshals, and while a couple of the above would make good candidates in the interim, they can recruit the two below later.
Make the right choices and King Leopold III can also take the field! Now, Belgium didnt have a navy during WW2, and therefore I could find no admirals but wait! The unknown designer before me who had added a couple of Belgians to vanilla had included an admiral. At first I thought he was just randomly generated, but no. Turns out he was the chap responsible for rebuilding Belgiums entire fleet post-war, so hes in!
If you get him a navy, he will lead it for you! I know many of you will be curious about the Belgian units, well here we are!
Belgian Soldier (left), Chasseur Ardennais (right)

Music


Before I sign off, there was one last thing I wanted to cover, and thats audio. We have a super talented team who handles this, but it was the one area of development that I had never really collaborated with. Therefore when we were told that each country would have 2 new music tracks added, I had zero idea about how to approach this. We had a sit down with the audio directors and composers who wed work with, and they laid out the process. We then needed to find several reference pieces to give the general sound, as well as include the emotions we wanted the tracks to evoke. Belgian Wartime Track : Proud, Stubborn, Defensive Belgian Peacetime Track : Trepidation, Uncertainty, Loss
This was the general premise I provided for the peacetime track Ive got to say they absolutely nailed those notes, and I am super, super excited for you to hear these tracks when you play Belgium in Gtterdmmerung!

Final Notes


Thats all we have for you for Belgium! I cant wait to see you all give it a try when we release, and I eagerly await the stories from your playthroughs!
Next time See you on the 4th of November! [url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/3152810/Hearts_of_Iron_IV_Expansion_Pass_1] Make sure to check out the Expansion Pass Here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3152810/Hearts_of_Iron_IV_Expansion_Pass_1


[ 2024-10-30 14:02:16 CET ] [ Original post ]

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[ 2024-10-29 15:30:24 CET ] [ Original post ]

Developer Diary | Raids

[previewyoutube=BuYwiCCEmes;full][/previewyoutube] Hi, Thomas here talking about game mechanics again. I work as Design Manager and Design Lead on Hearts of Iron. Today we are looking at another of the new features that comes with Gtterdmmerung, namely Raids. The normal caveats apply, everything you see here is subject to change, especially visual details as some are awaiting final art touches at the time of writing, and other things, such as balancing and tweaking are ongoing. But you probably know the drill by now. The Raids feature allows you to plan and execute targeted strikes on enemy installations, or perform unique missions of various kinds. Whereas strategic bombing targets enemy industry and infrastructure in a general way, Raids are pinpoint strikes against very specific targets that usually require months of preparation. Targets can vary, but the general goal of a raid is to inflict strategic damage to your opponent that will hamper their war machine for an extended period of time. Perhaps one of the most important functions of the Raids is that you can use them to target enemy experimental facilities in order to disrupt their special projects. Once you know the location of a facility, you can start planning a raid to damage it, and inflict a setback to the ongoing project there. A successful strike not only damages the facility, slowing research down until repaired, but can also damage equipment etc. and set the progress back by weeks or even months. The feature also allows you to replicate things such as Operation Chastise, more commonly known as the Dambusters Raid. You can develop the Barnes Wallis' bouncing bomb, and then target an enemy dam with one of your raids. A successful strike not only knocks the hydroelectric power plant out, it also floods the region, hindering enemy troop movement. Or, if you want to take that concept even further, you can try to blow up the canal locks in the Panama Canal, to stop enemy ships crossing from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean. But you will probably need a very long range bomber for that - unless you start in Central America of course Let's take a look at how to work with the Raids:

Setting up a raid


The main interaction point for the Raids feature is the map. You see potential targets on the map and when you hover them you get more details about them. When you click the target icon, you start setting up a raid against that target. Some targets might have more than one viable Raid type, in which case you first decide what top target with this particular raid. What do you want to strike, the Reichstag, or the experimental nuclear facility in Potsdam? (Just an example, right. Germany does not start with a secret nuclear lab, Promise!)
Deciding on a target for a Raid in Northern Germany After having selected your target, you need to find a unit to perform the Raid, be it paratroopers, an air wing, or whatever is required by the Raid. You can do this from the map as well, or you can select from a list of units that is displayed at this stage. Various factors affect how good a unit is at executing a Raid, but the most important one is usually how experienced it is. The more experience, the better the chances of getting a really good result. But again, other things apply as well.
Time to choose the airwing The last thing you need to select is from where to launch the Raid. If it is an air wing you need to pick an airfield within range of the target. Once you have made these choices, the selected team is ready to start preparing for the Raid.
Lets launch from a safe place

Assembling and preparing


You cant launch the Raid immediately. The unit must travel to the starting location if not already there. Usually there are other requirements as well. It might require extra equipment of some kind. (Common examples being convoys, transport planes, infantry equipment, or even nuclear bombs) Once everything is in place, the unit can start preparing. Equipping the right type of bombs, undergoing special training, and so on. The amount of time needed depends on the Raid type. Once preparation is complete, you can launch the Raid whenever you choose to - as long as the launch criteria are met. What does that mean? Well, some raids can be prepared in peace time for example, but cant be launched unless a war is ongoing.
Its going to take some time, but hopefully it will be worth it But what if I dont want to sit and monitor whether a Raid is ready to be launched? First of all, you get an alert when a Raid finishes preparation, so you dont really have to monitor it that closely. Second, if you feel that it is not necessary to time it exactly you can select auto launch instead. When you do that you get the option to only launch when your chance of a successful Raid is at least at a certain level.

Launching and Success


As said above, the Raid can be launched either manually or automatically. Or if you prefer, you can launch all prepared raids at the same time with the press of a single (red) button. Once launched you will see a 3d model travel to the target, executing its orders. And when it strikes you get a report of the outcome.
Getting there A Raid will not automatically be successful. There are a number of factors that come into play when executing a Raid. Some depend on the unit itself (experience for example), others on specific conditions, such as for example air superiority, and others again on what the enemy does and how they have set up their defenses. You see a general indication of your chances on the Raids display, and when you hover the display you get a more detailed breakdown in the tooltip. As a defender you do various things to decrease the chances of a successful Raid. If it is an air strike you can add Anti Air and you can try to gain air superiority, for example.
Our chances arent super high, maybe time to do something about it There is one further lever you can pull. By increasing the risk taking of the unit you can increase the chance, but if they dont succeed they run a higher risk of taking severe losses. And vice versa, you can lower the risk taking, and thereby minimizing the risk for a disastrous outcome, but also somewhat lowering the chance of a very positive outcome.
It worked flawlessly

Cost


Starting a Raid is a bit of an investment. Especially in time, as the unit involved will be unavailable for quite some time. In addition, additional equipment is sometimes needed, forcing you to have it in your stockpile. Finally, there is a Command Power cost to Raids, lowering your max cap while preparing and executing.
Weve allocated 25 to this, but we still have plenty to go

Filtering


Together with the map mode selection ui, you have a new section with raid filters. This allows you to hide and display your raid targets and raids depending on your preferences. If you are only interested in displaying Air Raid targets for example, you can hide other categories. Or if you want to hide them all in the Land/Sea/Air map mode, you can do so, and only access them through the raids map mode.

Types of raids


There are a few different types of Raids to choose from in Gtterdmmerung, some of which I will talk a bit about below: As mentioned in the beginning, you can for example do a strike against an enemy experimental facility - much like the historical Raids on Penemnde. This will, if successful, cause damage to the facility; making it slower, and you can set the actual project work back by a number of weeks or even months, buying you more time to defeat your enemies. If you do the Bouncing Bomb special project first, you can strike an enemy Dam. Dams are a new building that we have added. They apply state level bonuses, and thus are useful for boosting your industry, but of course they can be a bit of a liability if your enemy comes up with a way of destroying them. You cant build Dams per se, instead you get a few starting ones, and then certain countries can get more through their focus trees where appropriate. Additionally, if you have developed the bouncing bomb, you can do lock strikes. There are two major locks represented in the game, Panama and Kiel. Blowing up one of these will stop naval traffic through the canals. And no, there are no locks or anything you can blow up in Suez Sorry Its just a flat stretch of water through sand Raids can be used as counters to enemy super weapons as well. If your enemy develops the V3 mega gun project, you can use your earthshaker bombs to target and destroy them. Another thing you can do is to try to strike at your enemys resources. For example, you can try to target the Ploieti oil fields, as was done by the USA in Operation Tidal Wave. A successful strike here will lower the oil output from Romania for quite some time, thus hampering the German (and Romanian) war machine.
Hampering the German access to oil A somewhat different type of Raid are the nuclear strikes. Yes, nuclear strikes are now planned in advance and you need to designate a unit to drop the bomb, you no longer just press a button in the state and province view. The nuclear raids work very similarly to other raids, with one major exception. Instead of having one or more set targets, the UI lets you select any province when planning a nuclear strike - as long as they can be reached. You can plan strikes against neutral countries, but you cant launch unless at war, and you cannot target your allies - they wouldnt be your allies if you could, right? In addition to the initial destruction caused by nuclear bombs, they also now have some lingering effects, making them a bit more devastating than they used to be for the country getting nukes dropped on them
Selecting a place to bomb

Custom Raids


Not all Raids are available to everyone. In order to make raids even more flavourful, we have also added a few custom raids; such as the German Eben Emael raid where Germany had spent a vast amount of money and resources on preparing for a combined paratrooper and glider attack on the Belgian border fortress - having their soldiers train on every step of the attack beforehand. Or as the UK, you can replicate the British bombing of Berlin during the early stages of the war (this was, and is in game, mainly a morale booster). We have also included some of the more odd but rather flavourful Raids, such as Operation Jericho where the UK tried to free French resistance fighters by blowing up a prison using Mosquito fighter bombers.


Chinese Bombers enroute to Japan - but wait what are they dropping? That's all for this Developer diary, we hope you enjoyed it. Stay tuned, more Gtterdmmerung content will be arriving on Wednesday where we will be talking about Belgium and neutrality. Surely Belgium can manage to stay out of the war this time [url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/3152810/Hearts_of_Iron_IV_Expansion_Pass_1] Make sure to check out the Expansion Pass Here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3152810/Hearts_of_Iron_IV_Expansion_Pass_1


[ 2024-10-28 14:01:24 CET ] [ Original post ]

Developer Diary | German Systems

Willkommen zurck to another German Dev Diary! [previewyoutube=8yeitFWiN0A;full][/previewyoutube] Last time we talked about the Common Branches and the Historical Branch of Germany. Now, I, Paradox_Danne, ManoDeZombi, D3vil and Nattmaran (please insert joke about how many content designers it takes to make a Germany) will at least try to explain the various new systems for Germany. As we alluded to and hinted at in the last German Dev Diary, Germany has a whole swath of new mechanics wed like to go through with you. Keep in mind that all of this is still very much a work in progress, which means things may change. So without further ado, lets press on!

The MEFO Bills


Historically, the MEFO Bills played a major role in the German rearmament in the 1930s and were devised by Hjalmar Schacht. It was partly a way to keep military production hidden (because it directly violated the Versailles Treaty from WW1) and functioned as a means to pay for the actual rearmament program. While Austrian and Czech gold reserves that were seized helped to bolster the economy and staved off an impending collapse, it only bought the Germans some time. In the end, this glorified Ponzi scheme almost bankrupted the country and can be seen as a motivation for why Germany went to war when it did. The armament program constantly required new resources to devour, so Germany was forced to continue to feed the beast as it were. This led to large-scale plundering and theft wherever the Nazis and the Wehrmacht went, to sustain the ever-hungry war machine. In-game, this economic collapse was never really seen or felt, and it wasnt until after the first war that you had to pay back the MEFO Bills. This means that the vast majority of players probably never even knew there was a price to pay for them. This is all changing. The intention of the reworked MEFO Bills is partly to slow down early German build-up somewhat and at the same time drive a German player to go on a conquering spree.
The MEFO Bills at the start of the game in1936 Granted, this is a far cry from what the MEFO Bills looked like in the old version, but if you read the previous German Dev Diary (which you really should) you know that this National Spirit can be improved. But something else you probably picked up on, is that Consumer Goods Factories factor (that is to say, the percentage of your civilian factories that are put on producing Consumer Goods, ergo not able to trade or build anything) is increasing each month, and it will continue to increase until it reaches 100%. This is the price Germany pays for quickly rearming again; all available resources are diverted to military production. The keen-eyed among you have also read two other things; additional penalties will be added once you reach 100% Consumer Goods Factories factor (henceforth known as CGFF because I cant be bothered to type all of that out every time I refer to it), and that the rate of increasing CGFF will be higher based on the amount of non-core states controlled by Germany. What does all of this even mean? Well, simply put, if you fail to feed the beast that is your arms industry, you will start to produce less material. And by controlling non-core states, youre diverting valuable resources away from rearmament.
Bad things will happen if you cant manage the MEFO Bills Price Controls There are of course ways you can manage the MEFO Bills - at least for a while. Institute Price Controls will not only lower the monthly CGFF increase by 0.5% (so from 3% to 2.5%), but it also unlocks decisions to temporarily lower the CGFF.
Institute Price Controls will reduce the monthly CGFF increase ever so slightly
Price control measures will be crucial to managing the MEFO Bills

Seizing Gold Reserves


Sooner or later youll run out of tricks to keep your economy afloat though, and what do you do then? You do what every other dictator does when things are going south at home; go to war. Going to war will trigger an event, asking you if you want to get rid of the rearmament program and receive Recovering Economy instead, or if you want to switch MEFO Bills for Economy of Conquest and unlock the decision to Seize Gold Reserves.
Would you rather have a Recovering Economy or an Economy of Conquest The decision to Seize Gold Reserves is key to managing the ever-increasing CGFF. Once you have capitulated a country (and this is important; the country must have capitulated to you or one of your subjects) you will be able to seize their gold reserves. This will temporarily reduce the CGFF - just as with the Price Controls decisions. The CGFF reduction is based on the number of total factories in the core states of the targeted country you control. Ergo, more developed countries will reduce the CGFF more. These decisions can however only be taken for countries in Europe - so dont go around thinking you can seize the USAs gold reserves. Theres one catch though; seizing the gold reserves of a country will increase Resistance and lessen Compliance in the states. Im also toying with the idea of giving each state a productivity penalty for a short amount of time.
Seizing Gold Reserves Seizing other country's gold wont fix your own economy though, its just buying you more time. Is there a way of getting rid of the Economy of Conquest? Why yes, yes there is! But it obviously involves a lot of conquering before you can fix the mess youve put your economy in.
By completing Autarky Achieved you will transform your economy and gain Wirtschaftswunder As you can see, you need a lot of natural resources. (Just a quick fyi here; these numbers are not set in stone yet and might change before release.) Not only will Autarky Achieved replace Economy of Conquest with Wirtschaftswunder (or Economic Miracle, for those who didnt read the previous German Dev Diary - naughty, naughty!) but it will also improve the Trade Law Autarky. And thats all there is to say about the MEFO Bills and Economy of Conquest and how to manage them. Lets move on to another brand-new mechanic, an utterly unique one for Germany.

The Inner Circle


The Nazi government functioned in a pretty peculiar way; on the one hand, you had the proper government and all its institutions and whatnot, but on the other hand, you had the Nazi party functioning as a parallel ruling body. This system of having two governing bodies often clashed with each other, and people within the Nazi hierarchy often plotted and intrigued against each other to gain the favor of Hitler. Hitler was happy to let them do this, he even encouraged it - as long as the results benefited him. Nazi officials often had overlapping roles, and these roles often overlapped with government institutions, creating a chaotic administrative system. We knew that we wanted to have this represented early on - but we struggled for a long time to get it right. Finally, Arheo and ManoDeZombi found a very (imho) interesting solution.
The people of the Inner Circle will try to ascend within the Nazi hierarchy So how will we represent the in-fighting between these fellas and the parallel administrative system that existed? By letting each one of them work on and complete focuses in their own mini-branch. This means that you will be able to work on multiple focuses at the same time.
An Ascending Reichsleiter will work on and complete his own set of focuses If you paid close attention you will have noticed that the GUI (Graphical User Interface) for the Inner Circle is shaped like a pyramid with Mister Mustacheman himself on top, and three empty slots just under him. And some of you might already have guessed that you can only have three Reichsleiters ascending (that is, working on their own focuses) at the same time. Yes indeed, you can only have three Reichsleiters simultaneously completing focuses.
Only three Reichsleiters can Ascend within the Inner Circle at the same time The cool thing though, is that you can swap out which of the Reichsleiters you want to ascend within the Inner Circle, which means that you can prioritize different things depending on your needs.
Swap out your Inner Circle depending on your current and future needs This doesnt mean that swapping out one Reichsleiter for another will save you from the jaws of defeat; it takes them quite some time to complete the focuses they work on.
Letting a Reichsleiter ascend within the Inner Circle takes time and investment Besides, why would you even want to let someone ascend within the Inner Circle? Well, they all offer different bonuses based on their historical roles. You can see their traits and bonuses both in the new UI in the Focus Tree, by hovering over the portraits, and in the National Spirit tab.
All Reichsleiters have their unique traits and bonuses Worth mentioning, most of these advisors have a small daily PP cost when ascended, which increases once they complete their second focus in their branch. On the other hand, your Party Chancellor (be it Bormann or Hess), will grant you daily PP bonus which counters part of the PP cost from the others, so if you are not swimming in PP it might be a good idea to save one of the Ascending slots for the Party Chancellor of your choice. Another reason why youd let someone ascend is if you want to swap out Hitler. Who needs that low-life scumbag anyways, right? Surely Himmler, Gring, or Goebbels could do a better job! Or why not maybe Hess? They all seem like very reasonable and stable people. Yes, this is how you get to play with an alternative Fhrer. They keep their Inner Circle traits and get a new one to boot!
A new Fhrer has Ascended How do you go about usurping Hitler then? Well, first off, you have to have three Reichsleiters completing all of their focuses they can complete and then finish A Strong Successor.
Whoever will you choose to become the new Fhrer We hope you like this new feature and find it interesting! It took a lot of blood, sweat, and tears (mostly ManoDeZombis) to get this working. One of the main goals of this system was to declutter a bit the otherwise-overcrowded political advisor list, so players can choose different political advisors within the three political advisor slots, while still being able to pick among historically party figures in the Inner Circle, which can in turn evolve and provide different bonuses and effects on their own, allowing the player to utilize the invaluable focus time in whatever branches they consider most important. Moving on, we would like to mention a small system that we didnt have the time to talk much about in the first German Dev Diary, and that is quite interesting and can prove to be pretty useful if you are planning on expanding your influence across the Ocean, and challenge the USAs hegemony in America.

The Monroe Doctrine


Hello again, Malin Monroe (its actually Nattmaran though) here to talk about the Monroe Doctrine. Weve all come to know the Monroe Doctrine through Trial of Allegiance, but as a recap; the Monroe Doctrine was USAs attempt at keeping the peace in America, primarily to make sure no one else, and certainly not someone hostile, got a foothold that close to them. Of course, the Germans however, would most certainly have liked to have a foothold that close, and we wanted to represent this in game.
The focuses below Crossing the Atlantic are meant to give you the tools to challenge the USAs military and influence over America
Decisions on the map will appear to sway American countries, once you have brought at least five countries into opposition, you will be allowed to destabilize the doctrine once and for all. The decisions are rather straightforward, you can bolster sentiments to boost the popularity of fascism in the target country. A fascist country is more likely to oppose the Monroe Doctrine. You are not alone in this endeavor however, the United States will be alerted of your actions, and like you, they might very well start their own campaign in search of support. Once you have garnered enough support (which is actually opposition) you can click the button, and demand the dismantling of the Monroe Doctrine, and as such, you will most likely have a good landing point for further American crusades, invasions and expansions.
Finally we are rid of some of the guaranteeswhen I took these screenshots, it came at a high cost however And we have one last system we need to talk about before wrapping up this Dev Diary, namely-

The Reichskommissariats


And now for the new Reichskommissariat mechanics, brought to you by D3vil and ManoDeZombie. Hi, its me, Jonathan here again to now introduce all of you to the new mechanics and content surrounding the Reichskommissariats! Starting off with how to get them, you will enable the mechanic after completing the focus Uplift the Rosenberg Office near the top of the fascist part of the focus tree.
The focus in question. Alfred Rosenberg, head of the Reichskommissariat projects, will not show up as a regular national spirit or advisor. Instead, he will show up in his own GUI in the decision category, and you will be able to see what effects he grants by hovering over his icon.
Alfred Rosenberg. Now I hear you asking, why would I create these puppets when I could just occupy the territory normally? Well about that, as explained previously, the MEFO bills/Economy of conquest grows ever more taxing the more non-core territory you occupy yourself, not counting puppets. Apart from that, these special puppets have various bonuses to both their leaders and national spirits, and not only that, because Alfred Rosenberg gets stronger the more Reichskommissariats you create.
Alfred Rosenberg becoming stronger when founding a Reichskommissariat. As seen in the image above, creating Reichskommissariats also gives you the choice of what kind of leadership you want to instate. One of them being a German governor who is better at keeping resistance down and granting more resources for you, the other being a local collaborator, one who will be better at gaining compliance in the Reichskommissariats-owned territories. The new Reichskommissariats do not have any cores, similar to Italian East Africa, but that shouldnt be too much of a problem due to the bonuses they possess.
The event you get when creating a Reichskommissariat. Reichskommissariats also possess a new type of ownership referred to as contested ownership, where, apart from their established capital state, they do not actually own states unless you own them first before selecting their respective decision. This helps to not mess with the surrender progress of the nation you are invading, for example the Soviet Union, so that you wont have to push past the Urals because you founded RK Ukraine, whilst also ensuring that not only the capital (for example Kiev for RK Ukraine) counts for the Reichskommissariats own surrender progress.
How contested ownership looks. From the beginning, only European Reichskommissariats are available to you, but there are a few focuses that can enable the creation of such states in other continents as well.
All of the Reichskommissariat focuses. And as one final thing before moving back to Paradox_Danne, here is how the world looks when having created every possible Reichskommissariat.
The New World Order.

Closing Words


Paradox_Danne here one last time for this Dev Diary, just to say thats it from us! All of these systems and mechanics are part of the German rework and wont require the Gtterdammerung DLC, but will be baked into the base game. Hopefully, youve enjoyed this Dev Diary about German Systems. We hope these systems will distinguish Germany from any other nation, and more importantly, that you feel theyre interesting and fun. But wait, were not quite done with Germany just yet! We still have to talk about the alt-historical branches for Germany; how will we handle the old Democratic and Imperial branches, and will there be a Communist one? Who knows! Tune in for the next, and last, German Dev Diary coming later. But before that, why not stop by to read the very next Dev Diary thats coming on October 28th about Raids? And if that doesnt sound too interesting, we have Belgium to look forward to as well! Tschss [url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/3152810/Hearts_of_Iron_IV_Expansion_Pass_1] Make sure to check out the Expansion Pass Here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3152810/Hearts_of_Iron_IV_Expansion_Pass_1


[ 2024-10-23 13:02:05 CET ] [ Original post ]

Developer Diary | Small Features

Hey everyone! I'm Plankie, one of the game programmers on hoi4, and one of my favourite parts of developing a game is to work on the game AI. So when I was asked, almost a year ago, whether I wanted to take charge of a small AI feature, I was delighted! The goal of this feature was to make the AI better at concentrating their hardest and meanest divisions instead of spreading them out along an entire front line. This is something we've wanted to do for a long time and with the Germany-focused Gtterdmmerung expansion, we had the perfect opportunity. We call this feature AI Force Concentration, or AIFC for short (an acronym which has caused many football-related jokes in the team).

AI Force Concentration


So WHY did we want to focus on this?


Well, first of all, the AI has frankly not been very good at handling their armoured divisions. Sure, they produce tanks and assign them to fronts, but they are seldom concentrated enough to actually pose a threat for the defender. Second, the AI always pushed along the entire front with equal effort. There's nothing strictly wrong with that, but most military operations have a strategic goal like capturing a city or a supply hub rather than just taking ground, so making a concentrated offensive effort towards a specific goal seems more realistic and human-like. Third, we want to make the combat gameplay more dynamic and interesting for you as a player. If the enemy concentrates more and better divisions in a certain sector, it requires you to make choices. Should you meet the anticipated offensive head on, will you lure them into a trap, or use the opportunity to attack somewhere else?
The days before Operation Barbarossa. The AIFC divisions are visible in the right picture as the turquoise army, preparing to quickly take a supply hub in Volyn when the war kicks off.

Cool! How does it actually work then?


For the most important fronts, the AI considers whether it wants to concentrate its forces. If it has enough units available to both hold the line and still allocate units for offensive duty, then it will create an AIFC army. This army will receive the "best" divisions along the frontline, taking into account factors like attack and breakthrough stats, how experienced they are, how fast they can move, and so on. The AI then evaluates possible targets close to the front line, for example supply hubs, ports, large cities and so on, and it finds a path from the front line to the chosen target. This path is determined according to the path-of-least-resistance principle, which essentially means that it tries to avoid river crossings, bad terrain, fortifications and so on, while also following railway lines in an attempt to avoid ending up in a situation where it can't supply the troops.
The paths evaluated by Germany before Barbarossa. The AIFC armies follow those paths-of-least-resistance and will continuously update their orders to make sure that the front lines match up with the intended path. Of course, since placing too many units too close together might cause some problems with your Amazon deliveries (a.k.a. your supply situation), they will spread out somewhat along the neighboring provinces. But as they say, "a plan never survives contact with the enemy". This can be true for the AI as well. Because of this, it keeps track of how well an AIFC offensive is going. If the offensive is going well, by all means let's continue pushing. But if it stagnates and fails to make progress towards the target, then the AI sooner or later decides that the plan indeed didn't survive the enemy contact, and it tries to find another target for its next offensive. Similarly, if the offensive succeeds and the target is taken, the AI will start looking for new opportunities to concentrate their forces and break through, taking into account the newly conquered areas as a potential start of the offensive. In order to make it feel like the AIFC behavior is not static, the degree to which it is used is (mainly) tied to the doctrines an AI has unlocked. This means there will be a difference between for example fighting an early war Soviet Union compared to a late war Germany. Doctrines which narratively and stats-wise promote a higher force concentration will make the AI prefer using AIFC to a higher degree (fully scriptable of course, so all our wonderful mod creators can play around with it).
On the receiving end of an AIFC offensive.

More new things


Thomas here now to add some more info about a selection of other things we have been working on. Aside from the AIFC, we have - as we tend to do - tried to touch up things here and there during the development of Gtterdmmerung. So lets take a quick look at some of the other smaller features and changes we have done:

New Technologies


The tech tree has as mentioned in the Special Projects Developer Diary received a few new techs relating to Special Projects. But those are not the only changes we have made to it. We have also added a few new techs to make research and gameplay slightly more diverse, and give you a few more options. First of all we have added a few new Transport Plane Techs and related tech and equipment icons. The main benefit of researching these is that your transport planes gain more range, allowing you to paradrop or supply your troops at a greater distance.
One cannot have too many Junkers, right? The other, slightly bigger change we have made is to Forts. Previously everyone could build level 10 forts everywhere from the get go. Now the max fort level depends on the terrain the fort is in, and the techs you have researched - as well as other modifiers you can get from e.g. focuses. This means the engineering tab has received 5 new techs for forts - one general, and two each for Land Forts and Coastal Forts. Initial maximum fort levels, without techs or other country specific modifiers are set to 6 for all Coastal Forts, and Land forts are as follows: Plains: 5 Hills: 5 Urban: 5 Forest: 4 Mountain: 4 Desert: 4 Jungle: 3 Marsh: 3 (Note that values might change before release. Yes I know that Ive said this already, but just to make sure the message gets across :) )
The new fortification techs,
Here we have upped our fortification capabilities a bit, just need to construct the actual forts

Command Power Cap


We have also slightly changed how the Command Power Cap works. Now your High Command will actually increase the Command Power Cap, so that with a good set of military commanders, you will have more Command Power at your disposal. This should make it less punishing to build up your high command, rewarding you for having a competent staff.
By adding von Rundstedt to our staff, we increase the Max Command Power by 20

Dams


As Mentioned in other dev diaries, there are now Dams in the game. They can be targeted by Raids which makes them a bit of a liability, but not by strategic bombing so they are relatively safe. What do they do? Their main effect is that they boost the state they are in, making it easier and better to invest in industry there. You cant build new dams except through specific focuses.

Landmarks


Another thing you can see on the map, and that several of you have already noted in previous diaries and streams are what we call Landmarks. First of all, these look super cool on the map, and make countries more unique. But additionally they have small country level effects. A bit like National Spirits, but as buildings on the map. The cool thing with these bonuses is that they only apply to the country that originally owns the Landmark, so by capturing for example the Statue of Liberty, you can deny the USA their bonuses, but you wont get them yourself.
A landmark in the UK

State and Province UI - minor QoL changes


In order to make the difference between State and Province effects a bit easier to see at a glance we have made some changes to the State and Province UI. The main focus of these changes were to ensure that Province Effects are in the lower part of the window, and state effects are in the upper section. A special area for all state effects and a summary of all state related effects from buildings has been added at the bottom of the State section. Some of the more unique Province level buildings, such as Dams, Landmarks, and Experimental Facilities, are displayed in the Terrain section, while the rest are displayed beneath it as before.
The upper section, marked in yellow in this image, contains things that are relevant for the entire state, so e.g. state related modifiers have been moved up there. Down in the bottom section, we have collected all the info that relates to the province, such as terrain, weather, victory points etc. Not a drastic change in any way, but hopefully it should be a bit easier to understand what relates to what.

Area Defense QoL


We have also done some minor quality-of-life updates to the Area Defense settings. First of all, no specific settings are active by default when you open it up (unlike the old behavior where all settings were activated by default). Instead, if no special setting is specified, the divisions will spread out as evenly as possible in the selected area. We changed this since a very common pattern when using Area Defense was to immediately unselect all the options one wasn't interested in, which led to a lot of unnecessary clicks.
The new Area Defense settings for guarding borders and special project facilities (red arrows), and the updated supply setting (orange arrow). The supply setting has received some small changes: Instead of trying to cover the supply hubs and ALL the railways, it will now cover supply hubs and railway junctions. It has also received a new icon depicting a supply crate instead of the previous railway icon. We have also added two new settings to Area Defense: Guarding borders, and guarding special project facilities.
The new Area Defense setting for guarding borders

Horsies with different colours


All horses arent bays, or browns for that matter. This is something one of our artists, who happens to really like horsies, was very aware of and wanted to do something about. So after having convinced one of the programmers that this was a brilliant idea, they set out to make a few new textures and ensured that the horsies in the game now have more varied and realistic colours.
I assume these would be Hanoverians

Theres always more


That was a selection of the things we have been working on aside from the major features for Gtterdmmerung. Of course, we have been up to more things. There is always some balancing, tweaking, and bug fixing work going on. And fixes to code and to the AI in general. We have made some changes to how we script things for example, that we hope to describe more in the upcoming modding diary (together with some other cool stuff). But for now, we hope that you have enjoyed this diary. [url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/3152810/Hearts_of_Iron_IV_Expansion_Pass_1] Make sure to check out the Expansion Pass Here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3152810/Hearts_of_Iron_IV_Expansion_Pass_1


[ 2024-10-21 13:00:11 CET ] [ Original post ]

Developer Diary | Historical Germany

Guten Tag oder guten Abend depending on when youre reading this! Me, Paradox_Danne and ManoDeZombi will guide you through the big boi; the myth, the legend, the one and only - the German Focus Tree. Yes, you read that right (and probably expected as much), Germany is getting a (much-needed) facelift. But what does this mean? It means that most of the old base Focus Tree is getting yeeted out, and replaced with a reworked version. Now, before we go any further, please remember and keep in mind that this is very much a WORK IN PROGRESS, which means, but is not limited to, missing icons, placeholder texts, and weird modifiers. Things might and will change, so feedback is very much appreciated so we can make the best possible German content possible. We know youre eager to delve into this, so lets get moving!

Quick Historical Recap


I think we all know this part of history pretty well, but lets quickly recap where Germany was at the beginning of 1936 and what it's gone through. After the defeat in the Great War, harsh stipulations were put on Germany, with the Treaty of Versailles causing resentment and economic hardship. Hyperinflation and political instability defined the early 1920s, and the Great Depression in 1929 led to rising support for extremists like the Nazis. By 1936, Hitler had become the absolute ruler of Germany and started to rearm, breaking the Treaty of Versailles.
The country select screen for Germany, a TL:DR for the historical context Whats that? New National Spirits and Focuses?! Oh, well get to the new Focuses - either in this Dev Diary or an upcoming one, dont you worry ;) But lets start with the political situation in Germany in 1936:
The Political Situation for Germany in 1936 As you can see, the Fhrer himself got a facelift as well. But what might be more interesting are the new National Spirits:
The National Spirits in 1936 for Germany Out of all of these, the reworked MEFO Bills might be the most interesting one, but its also the one we wont be discussing today; thats for another day and another Dev Diary about German Systems, so stay tuned. What I will say is that Germany was nowhere near ready for WW2 when they invaded Poland, and we kind of want this to be better represented. You now have to build up your strength, and this means that Germany is receiving quite the nerf without actually getting that many negative modifiers. Other than that, what might jump out is the new military Spirits, which have been split into three separate entities; Heer, Luftwaffe, and Kriegsmarine. They all have different maluses, representing difficulties they battled with. Germany initially saw great success with their Bewegungskrieg doctrine (popularized as Blitzkrieg) when they invaded Poland and France and subjugated both nations in lightning-fast campaigns. But as they tried the same tactics yet again against the Soviets, the vastness of Russia soon put a strain on German logistics they never really overcame. The German High Command had misjudged the sheer size of the Eastern steps, and the resistance they would face. The Kriegsmarine never saw a truly major, direct engagement with the Royal Navy - but when they did fight, the Germans mostly lost. The Battle of the Atlantic saw initial German success, but they suffered heavy losses. They lost most of their heavy-hitting ships, such as Bismarck, Tripitz, Admiral Graf Spee, and Scharnhorst in various engagements. The Luftwaffe was very effective and devastating early on, especially in its campaigns against Poland and France, and enjoyed technical superiority as the war broke up. But underneath it suffered from internal strife and poor leadership (looking at you Gring) among other things. It took heavy losses during the Battle for Britain, and never truly recovered. So thats Germany at the outset of 1936. But can you improve these National Spirits, I hear you wonder. And how do you do that? Can you change your fate? Must Germany face defeat in the skies over Britain, or among the ruins of Stalingrad? I suppose you want to see the new, reworked Focus Tree, dont you? Cant blame you; Ive been eager to show it off for quite some time now! So without further ado:
The Reworked Historical German Focus Tree Yes, its chunky - and this is only the Historical and Common branches. Its big, but it has a ton of 35-day focuses. And if you look closely youll see something completely new, something never before seen in HoI4
The Inner Circle This is yet another new system for Germany and something we sadly wont discuss today either, but sit tight; its coming up in a future Dev Diary with the MEFO Bills.

The Common Branches



The Military and Industrial Branches Something that definitely can be said about every part of the new Focus Tree compared to the old one is that its bigger - you wont be starving for things to do. And that is kind of the point; you will have to prioritize; what is absolutely necessary to have achieved before going [strike]on a world-conquering rampage[/strike] to war? Germany wasnt ready when they faced Poland and France. They more or less got lucky in France and Poland. Dont get me wrong, they achieved some stunning victories and shocked the world with how fast they conquered Europe, but in the end, they were ill-prepared to wage a drawn-out war, especially after invading the Soviet Union and facing off against the USA. But how can you avoid their missteps? What will see you knocking down the gates of the Kremlin or cruising past the Statue of Liberty in your battleships? Well soon find out, but first, we need to take a look at your starting commanders.

The Army



Germany now starts with fewer Generals and Field Marshals, but more can be unlocked through various focuses, while others might get retired. As the more astute of you may have noticed, certain generals and field marshals are missing. Where did they go, and can you get them back? Why yes, of course!
The Army branch allows you to specialize your army with an emphasis on either tanks or infantry and artillery Its in the Army Branch you unlock several generals and promote others to field marshal. The important choice in this branch is how you want to shape your army; do you want to rely on new tech and tactics using tanks, or do you want to expand upon the lessons from the Great War? Both options will offer different bonuses from each other and will unlock different generals. But the different paths also unlock two different Decisions to help you out with [strike]invading neighbouring countries[/strike] strolling past those tedious border checks - so you dont have to declare what you got in your luggage. You will simply speed right through. Lets take a look at what makes the different paths so different.
Honoring The Prussian Legacy will steer your army toward infantry and artillery, rather than the historical focus on tanks. I think the big question here is What the Hell is Operational Planning? That my friends, is how you speed past those pesky border checks by taking a decision that bolsters your military for a short while. This is of course meant to simulate Germanys blitzkrieg during WW2, but is focused on a more traditional approach instead of tanks. (Blitzkrieg was never an official doctrine, but rather a term applied to Germanys old and tested Bewegungskrieg tactics, which was all about maneuver warfare.) So what does this Operational Planning look like, how do you use it and what benefits does it have?
Operational Planning will yield a State Modifier in a country you are at war with, giving you an edge in those states A fully maxed-out Bewegungskrieg will look like this. Operational Planning is specifically designed to not make Germany too overpowered, while still giving some nice military bonuses and at the same time representing the lightning-fast invasion they are so famous for. The state modifiers will last 90 days, and the decision will be repeatable once a year to simulate the various offensives Germany launched throughout its Russian campaigns. Another cool thing you get from The Prussian Legacy path is this new Support Company, called Sturmtruppe
The Sturmtruppe Battalion is an elite force meant to help break through enemy lines and fortifications But what happens if you want to go down the historical route and have your panzer divisions steamroll the enemy? Luckily, theres an option for that too!
The Blitzkrieg state modifier puts an emphasis on tank warfare While the Blitzkrieg state modifiers might not last as long as the Bewegungskrieg one, theyre packing quite a punch nonetheless. And choosing to develop your panzer forces will unlock two familiar faces:
Taking Adopt New Panzer Doctrine will unlock both Rommel and Guderian as generals and military advisors To round this part off, lets check out what a maxed-out Deutsches Heer looks like by completing the Army Branch and compare the bonuses from The Prussian Legacy and Adopt New Panzer Doctrine paths with each other:
The left picture shows a fully developed Heer after completing the Adopt New Panzer Doctrine path, and the right picture shows a fully developed Heer after completing The Prussian Legacy

The Airforce



The Luftwaffe branch The important choice to make here, is how you want to specialize the Luftwaffe; will you go down the historical route and focus on dive bombers and CAS, or shift your doctrine towards tactical or strategic bombers?
The different bomber doctrines will yield different bonuses If you want to fix the issues that plague the Luftwaffe you have to Reorganize the Luftwaffe and Solve the Logistical Bottlenecks, but you cant do that while Gring is in charge. Speaking of the Devil, hes got a wholly unique trait to reflect the central position he held, not only in the Luftwaffe, but within the Nazi regime as a whole
Herman Gring now has the trait of Reich Marshal, which will allow him to produce more aircraft If you decide that you dont need him, youll unlock Helmut Wilberg, who historically played a major role in developing German air warfare and combined arms tactics - but since he was of Jewish descent you cant hire him with a Fascist Government (he was so crucial and competent though that Gring himself helped hide this fact). While the Luftwaffe cant be improved a whole lot, youll gain a lot of bonuses toward Special Projects for Rockets and Jets, and a whole bunch of timed ideas, and by far the most Aces in any focus tree (ALL aces from WW2 with 100 or more victories are German, but only roughly 50% survived unscathed).
A fully developed Luftwaffe could look like this

The Navy



The Kriegsmarine Branch will give you hegemony over the seas - and under them The Naval Branch works in a slightly different way than most other branches; there are no mutually exclusive choices here, but you will be forced to prioritize nevertheless. You cannot work on both the Plan Z and Trade interdiction paths at the same time; once youve started one of those paths, the other one gets locked, until you have completed The High Seas Fleet or Unrestricted Convoy Raiding respectively - and once you complete one of those focuses, the rest of that path gets locked. This got convoluted real quick. Lets try with an example: Say you finish Trade Interdiction first; this will lock you out from even beginning the Plan Z focus. To unlock that focus, you will have to complete Unrestricted Convoy Raiding, but this will also lock you out from doing any more focus under Trade Interdiction. In the end though, you get a much stronger Kriegsmarine, and completing Seeherrschaft yields even further goodies
A fully realized Kriegsmarine could look like this, together with Seeherrschaft

Wunderwaffen


Something Ive only touched upon but havent delved any deeper into is the Special Projects bonuses that Germany can get, which is a central theme and mechanic of this expansion. Germany famously tried to turn the tides of the war by putting their hope in these miracle weapons, but their doom was already sealed. But what if they put more effort into this earlier? Well, you can do that now, and the results come with one of the coolest icons in the game
Wreak havoc upon the world with your glorious wunderwaffen

Industry



The choice of Industrial path will have big ramifications on how you play as Germany Hellbent on becoming self-sufficient, Hitler launched the 4-Year Plan in 1936. The goal was to strengthen the industries so he could carry out an ambitious and rapid rearmament program. Going down this path will make you stronger in the short term, but will leave you open to other problems caused by the MEFO Bills (which, you will remember, we wont talk in-depth about in this Dev Diary). Suffice to say, the Four Year Plan will put a strain on your economy, but youll be ready for war sooner. This strain will be somewhat offset by, not one, but two unique laws for Germany and this path; Autarky and Totaler Krieg. Both new laws come with a price though; it will either remove another law or lock others from being accessible.
Autarky Efforts will unlock the new Trade Law of Autarky, but locks other laws in turn
The second unique law is the Economic Law of Totaler Krieg This particular path is closely tied with the MEFO Bills, which we will talk more about in a later Dev Diary, and the impact it has on your economy. For now, though, lets look at the non-historical Industrial path, which starts with Prioritize Economic Growth.
Prioritize Economic Growth will absolutely gut your economy, but you can rebuild it stronger than ever This path will ruin your economy, but fear not, because down the line you can rebuild it, stronger than ever. In pure numbers, youll get more factories from this path, but they take longer to come by. You even get more building slots, leaving room for even more factories. The trade-off is that the focuses take longer to complete and are locked behind tech and stuff. You might also notice that this focus unlocks a new advisor, Ludwig Erhard. This was the man behind the German Economic Miracle, or Wirtschaftswunder, after WW2 which this path is loosely based on.
After having paid off the MEFO Bills youll have a Recovering Economy with plenty of penalties but that can flourish into the Wirtschaftswunder And just for funsies, lets compare a fully developed Wirtschadftswunder with the evolved version of the MEFO Bills, namely the Economy of Conquest (mainly because I wanted to leave you all with a cliffhanger; whatever could Economy of Conquest be?)
Wirtschaftswunder vs Economy of Conquest and Wehrwirtschaft And now, onward to the really juicy bits - the political branch!

Political Branches


This part of the focus tree was mostly designed by the one and only ManoDeZombi , but hes frantically doing other stuff, so Ill walk you through the political branch. As you already have seen we have expanded the historical path for Germany quite a bit and changed existing focuses. We have built the new Focus Tree around the core of the old so that some things will be familiar.
The Political Branch is structured so that Far Eastern foreign policies are to the far right, European policies are in the middle, while Internal politics are to the left. The beginning of the political branch starts as before, with Remilitarize the Rhineland, whereafter you can decide where you want to take the Reich; perhaps focusing on re-establishing the old German colonies throughout Asia and Africa, to eventually invading the USA from the West, or influence the Middle East and secure beneficial trade deals for those countries, or tie the Baltic states and Scandinavia closer to you. There are plenty of possibilities here! But before we travel to the Far East and see what you can do there, lets take a minute and explain something you probably have seen throughout this Dev Diary and the focus tree and are wondering about - what the hell is this:
Introducing Historical Frames These are new icon frames meant to help players understand which focuses were historically taken - they act as a visual guide. Since this Focus Tree is pretty big (way bigger than the Soviet or Italian ones) we wanted to highlight and differentiate the historical path from alt-historical options. Oh, some of you dont like these handy guides? Fret not, we got you covered!
You can easily turn the Historical Frames guide on and off with the push of a button
The Far Eastern path allows you to reclaim old colonies and align more closely with either China or Japan and decide how you want to handle the Soviets and/or the USA. This path is all about cooperation and negotiation to get your old Asian colonies back, and getting claims on your old African possessions. Ultimately, youll have to decide if you want to approach the Chinese in order to take down the Japanese, or if youd rather strengthen your ties with Japan for a more advanced navy and go after the USA. A little bit to the left, and West as it were geographically, youll find focuses concerning the Soviet Union. These largely remain the same as in the old Focus Tree, except that the unholy Berlin-Moscow Axis you get through Alliance with the USSR only lasts two years now; an alliance between these countries would never have lasted anyway. So youll have your cake and eat it too in the sense that you can turn your attention to the Western front without worrying about the East, but also rolling your panzers across the wide-open Russian steppe and knocking on the gates to Moscow. Itll just have to wait a little while longer ;)
An alliance of convenience with the Soviets will make you both stronger when eventually facing off Now, lets turn our gaze towards Europe - the bread and butter of the Historical branch. As we already stated, we built this part around the old focus tree, just adding bits and pieces here and there. You might notice that theres now a focus for Operation Sealion and an entire mini sub-branch for tackling the Americas. There are also alternative focuses for using diplomacy to sway countries to your side, instead of having your panzers run over everyone - if you like that kind of thing. Me, I prefer my enemies as flat as possible ;)
Do you want to conquer all of Europe by force or would you rather use diplomacy to get your way? Some conquering may be required Youll notice that before you can do Anschluss and use Austria as an appetizer, you have a choice to make; are you siding with Ribbentrop to Reorganize the Wehrmacht or will you Heed von Neuraths Concerns? The first option will lead to the infamous Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and a non-aggression pact with the USSR, and the dismissal of several of your generals. The reorganization of the Wehrmacht was a very important event in Germany in 1938 just before the outbreak of war and is how Hitler assumed direct control of the armed forces as Supreme Commander. The second option will instead have you listen to the concerns of von Neurath and the Wehrmacht, which will prepare you for the wars to come. The downside is of course that you wont have that non-aggression pact with the Soviets. Oh well, it cant be that important.
Do you Reorganize the Wehrmacht or do you Heed von Neuraths Concerns? Having made your choice you now face a revamped Anschluss, as alluded to by Nattmaran in the Austrian Dev Diary (go read it if you havent!). The requirements to start this focus have changed, and while the numbers might seem ludicrously high, you have to remember that Austria doesnt have a big army to begin with, and is severely hampered to expand it. Basically, what you need is a bigger army than the Austrians, and it has to be well-equipped. Having gobbled up Austria, the world is your oyster! One final thing before we start looking into our new (and old) advisors and 3D models, we have one last mini branch to look at.
To Bribe Senior Officers was a very real thing and part of the reason why so many generals remained loyal to Hitler Some of you may be wondering why there havent been any mentions of a Balance of Power for Germany - and thats because there is none. We just wanted to spell that out so no wild speculations are going on as to what it might entail. Something else we didnt touch upon on this Diary was the Reichskommissariats, and thats because theyve been expanded upon and new features have been added to it. But thats for another time and another Dev Diary - namely (you guessed it) for the German Systems. Regarding the SS divisions, the system has been reworked a bit. SS Divisions are now unlocked by the focus Expand SS Divisions which will not only allow for the recruitment of foreign SS units, but it will right away spawn some historical German units. Infantry battalions within these divisions are now represented as Militias. These militias can also be significantly improved by Himmler within the Inner Circle system. And they also got a new model!
The focus Expand SS Recruitment unlocks the recruitment of SS divisions.
And these militias have gotten a new 3D model too!

Advisors, Designers and Concerns


Phew, were nearly done! Thanks for sticking around this long (and its been quite a long read) - were nearly done now. With all of the Focus Tree finally being discussed, lets turn to internal affairs, specifically advisors of all kinds, designers, and industrial concerns - because there are quite a few to go through! Lets start with the advisors you can hire (and those you cant ). There are way more advisors to choose from now; some are locked behind ideologies and others behind focuses. Quite a few of these can be upgraded and plenty have unique traits now. Advisors
German political advisors You might be wondering what happened to some of the more prominent historical figures, like Himmler, Goebbels, Speer, etc. Well, they are gone from the political advisor roster, they now belong to the new Inner Circle system, well go through it in detail in the German Systems Dev Diary in the near future.
German military theorists
German High Command
German Army, Navy, and Air Chiefs

MIO's


MIOs (or rather Military Industrial Organizations) were added in the last major DLC Arms Against Tyranny where I [strike]was forced to expand the Danish Focus Tree beyond the two focuses they realistically should have had[/strike] happily worked on Denmark and where ManoDeZombi made sure the Finns could stop the onslaught of the Soviet in well, Finland. Anyways, Germanys MIOs have also been expanded upon with unique traits and even organizations. Lets do another blitz!
German Tank MIOs
German Ships MIOs
German Planes MIOs
German Material Equipment MIOs And lastly, we have the Industrial Concerns, and guess what? Theres more of them too now!
German Industrial Concerns In terms of 3D models, and without getting into Special project content, Germany has gotten a few nice additions:
You can now proudly deploy the old Leichttraktor
Some infantry models, including colonial troops unlocked by the Far East and Africa -related focuses
German soldiers are now way more comfortable under extreme weather thanks to the newest tactics developed by the Wehrmacht: rolling sleeves and furry hats!

Conclusion


And thats more or less everything from us! Remember to look out for the next Dev Diary, which is all about Small Features. Among other things, this will dive into AI, Command Power and New Technologies. This will be airdropping on or near you October 21st. Auf Wiedersehen! (Note: We are also working on a video for Historical Germany; it will be added next week!) [url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/3152810/Hearts_of_Iron_IV_Expansion_Pass_1] Make sure to check out the Expansion Pass Here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3152810/Hearts_of_Iron_IV_Expansion_Pass_1


[ 2024-10-16 13:01:07 CET ] [ Original post ]

Developer Diary | Hungary

J napot kvnok! [previewyoutube=2gx7dft5q5w;full][/previewyoutube] Jonathan here to bring you another Dev Diary for the upcoming DLC Gtterdmmerung! I will be (re)introducing you all to Hungary. Originally we had planned to do a minor update to accommodate the Austria rework, but quite early on in the project we decided to give it a proper overhaul as we were going to rework it anyhow and felt it could do with one. Well, since its been a long time since the last Hungarian dev diary (7 years to be more precise), lets start off with a bit of historical context! Oh, and as usual, please do keep in mind that everything youre about to see is still WIP so things might change before release and you may see some placeholder art and WIP values. The team thanks you for your understanding!
The new country select screen for Hungary, with a TL:DR for the historical context
A zoomed out overview of the Hungarian Focus Trees general layout

From Austria-Hungary to World War 2


So to keep it very brief and as simple as possible; at the end of the Great War, Hungary, alongside other states such as Czechoslovakia and the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs, broke off from Austria-Hungary in an attempt to avoid partition and blame for the war. History would not however be lenient on the Hungarian state, and through many twists and turns, the Treaty of Trianon was signed, leaving them with 92,962 of the 325,408 square km that had constituted the Hungarian crown, as well as with a practically completely dismantled military, and large reparations to be paid. The first Hungarian Republic had been declared, but was soon toppled and reorganized into the Hungarian Soviet Republic. In an attempt to reclaim lost territory the soviet republic entered wars against Cechoslovakia, Romania, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes and the Hutsul Republic. All of this resulted in the destruction of the Soviet regime and a counterrevolution which in turn led to the reestablishment of the Kingdom of Hungary, where admiral Mikls Horthy would take up the role of regent, a role which he held until the Kingdom was disestablished at the end of the second World War. I know that you all didnt come for a history lesson, so lets move on to Hungarys starting situation in the game.
The National Spirits at startup for Hungary Hungary now starts with four national spirits instead of the old usual one. As can be seen above however, this isnt a purely negative thing for them, though the Treaty of Trianon has been made harsher to be more accurate to the historical stipulations. Apart from that one, Hungary starts with an economic dependency on Germany, as well as with two different types of active paramilitary organizations in favor of the government. Apart from this, admiral and regent Horthy also shares a part of his power with Prime Minister Gyula Gmbs, who signed the previously shown treaty with Germany, and who seeks greater influence over Hungary's politics.
Mikls Horthy and Gyula Gmbs And with this background and knowledge of the starting situation, we can finally jump into the focus tree, starting with the industrial and military branches!

Common Branches



An overview of the common branches, with the industrial tree on the left, and the military branches on the right. As can be seen above, with the rework of the focus tree, I tried to keep it in similar shapes and general positions as the old one, so that the memory and muscle-memory of our old players wont fail them when starting a new game as Hungary. The Industrial branch on the left eventually leads into the military branches in the center and right, and contains most of the expected factories and research slots, whilst the air force, land forces and naval trees contain bonuses and effects that pertain to their respective branches of the armed forces.
These focuses which previously started the political branches, now start the industrial branch. The main goal of the industrial branch is to get the Gyr program up and running, in order to resuscitate national industries and expand Hungary military capabilities, a program historically launched by Prime Minister Klmn Darnyi.
A few of the effects and items relating to the Gyr program. The start of the military branch revolves around getting rid of the Trianon restrictions, just as it did before. With the right-most side of the land branch being available immediately, the more technology and industry focused parts on the left of it, as well as the air force branch, require the Gyr program to have been started before becoming available.
The Air and Army branches. That should be a good overview of the common branches, so let's move over to the real highlights: the political branches!

Historical Branch



The focuses available to Historical Hungary The general shape and feeling of the old Hungarian focus tree has been preserved, while being expanded upon. The main difference to the old Hungarian tree however is that historical Hungary, though joining the Axis, now stays as non-aligned under Horthy. The reason for this is that when seeking to gain peace with the Allies and the Comintern and betray Germany, Hungary was invaded and Horthy was replaced by German puppets (with a bit of a back-and forth), the leader and party of whom is now the fascist party for Hungary, with its own branch if they are what you want to play. The tree starts with reinforcing the regency and the admiral's grip on the nation, while repairing it and repressing opposition groups. The latter half focuses on alliances (to the left) and expansion (to the right).
Some of the focuses and their effects The ultimate goal of post-trianon Hungary is almost always to restore Greater Hungary in some shape or form, as will be seen in other branches as well.
Greater Hungary, restored.
And as historically, Gyula Gmbs will eventually die, leading to you having to decide on how to deal with the M.O.V.E, the paramilitary organization loyal to him. But now, on to some alternative history, starting with the actual fascist branch.

Fascist Branch


The fascist branch begins with the same focus as the historical focus, deciding to continue the regency. After that though, things will start to change for Hungary.
The Hungarian fascist political branch. Here you will start the game by having Gyula Gmbs attempt to overthrow Horthy and take the mantle of regent for himself. To do this he will strengthen the fascists, which in turn has some unintended consequences
The Lead Up events to becoming fascist.
Gyula Gmbs and Ferenc Szlasi as country leaders. Though I will not take too much of your time for this branch, here you can see some of the focuses available to the fascists in a bit more detail.
Some both early and later game focuses.
You can also embrace the Turanist ideas of Hungarian origin. But thats that. Now I think its time to show a lot of players most anticipated parts of the tree, the monarchist branches (Yes it is indeed in plural).

Monarchist Branches


The monarchist branches start differently from the historical or fascist branches. There are a total of 5 different monarchist branches available to Hungary, that share certain parts with each other or with the historical/fascist branches. They revolve around Horthy deciding to actually name someone king, either choosing to comply with the stipulations laid out by the little entente and thus selecting a non-Habsburg monarch, or going against their will and doing just that, leading to some elevated tensions with your neighbours.
The monarchist branches in all their glory. Before we go into detail on any of their specific branches, though there are only five branches, here are the six different country leaders you can get throughout these branches.
The different monarchs. So starting on the right, and going to the left, first up we have the fascist king, which works relatively similar to the old version. The reason this is still around is to enable for a only slightly alt-hist Hungary, as well as being able to go a flavour-wise different route while still sticking with the Axis. Friedrich Franzs two completely unique focuses are these:
The Fascist Kings focuses. To the left of him lies the democratic king, which is no longer the only way for Hungary to go democratic, but which has been expanded to have a bit more to do, such as hold referendums to regain territory, reverse the Hungarian brain drain and get a head start on some nuclear projects, or even propose a union between themselves and Romania, forming Hungary-Romania. (And perhaps Carl V Wilhelm might want to return to claim the Swedish crown as well)
Some of the Democratic Kings focuses. If none of these are to your liking however, but you still dont want a Habsburg on your throne, perhaps Horthy has just the thing you are looking for. As seen previously, he or his more popular son can now be crowned king, and they have a chonky branch of their own.
Horthyist monarchist focuses. Taking this or the democratic king path, the fascists will begin preparing to oust you, as they wont endorse a new dynasty nor some liberal Swede. This takes the form of a short decision system, in which you can attempt to stamp it out before it has the chance to escalate to a civil war.
The Arrow Cross coup attempt. But with those brief appetizers out of the way, it is time to move on to the main course, namely the Habsburgs, of which we will start with the last Habsburg ruler in Hungary, namely Palatine Joseph August.
Joseph Augusts focuses. His goal is to recreate Greater Hungary, unlike Otto who will attempt to restore Austria-Hungary.
Some highlighted focuses from the branch, including Hungarys own fifth empire focus. And now on to the last (but most certainly not least) of the monarchist branches, Ottos Austria-Hungary tree!
The new Austria-Hungary branch. Oh, and do not fret, for I have not forgotten @Nattmaran promising that I would show you what we refer to as the Austro-Hungarian joint focus tree, something accessible by not only Austria and Hungary when going down their relevant branches, but also by any of their puppets who were a part of the former Austro-Hungarian empire, such as Czechoslovakia, Croatia or Lombardy-Venetia, to name a few. This branch allows you and your newfound friends to jointly build up and increase the combined strength of the new Austro-Hungarian empire (or Danubian Federation if that is more your style).
The Austro-Hungarian JFT. Ottos new tree starts off with restoring the personal union between Austria and Hungary, now with Hungary as the main part of the union. While the tree however plays using the new puppet type of Austro-Hungarian vassal state, which was introduced in the Austrian dev diary, there are two avenues to annexing your puppets and gaining the old Austria-Hungary cosmetic tags, this being through the focus A Thousand Year Federation at the end of the joint focus tree and Renovatio Imperii at the end of Ottos tree. The foreign policy of Austria-Hungary can be very flexible, as it has the option to either formalize an alliance with a monarchist Germany if there is one, sign an agreement to join the Allies by calling back to the Grand Alliance, or to only trust family, and found the Habsburg Alliance. If you are rejected from joining anothers faction, the Habsburg Alliance focus will be automatically completed. An image can say more than a thousand words (well I guess in this case because the images themselves contain words..), so I will now highlight some focuses and other interesting things in the Austro-Hungarian branch.
Some of Ottos focuses. And though many Habsburgs were mentioned in the Austrian dev diary, there are always more. Among those are Carl Pius of Spain, Vasyl Vyshyvanyi, Joseph Ferdinand of Tuscany, and Maria de Iturbide of Mexico. There are also other figures that can appear as you play, such as Ferdinand Pius of Bourbon-Two Sicilies, Wilhelm of Wied, and George Bagration to name a few. Enough about monarchism and traditionalism though, how about some republicanism?

Republican Branches



The Republican branches in the focus tree. The republican branches all start with preparing for the only required civil war in order to go down a certain political path in Hungary, where they will eventually oust Horthy from power and dismantle the regency. When the civil war is over, it will be time to choose who will lead, all of which will take you down different paths in the tree.
The possible republican country leaders, main three at the top. Starting left to right of the branches we have Mihly Krolyi and the Second Republic branch, a democratic branch in which you will also have the option to elect any of the bottom two characters above to become your president. In this branch, the two main choices are between taking the diplomatic approach and attempting to formalize a Danubian Alliance, also unlocking the Austro-Hungarian joint focus tree, or to go for achieving Hungary's ultimate goal of reclaiming the lost lands, doing all in your power to restore Greater Hungary.
Some democratic focuses. Now to the communist branches. The first one is Mtys Rkosi and his Comintern-friendly branch, which centers around utilizing connections with the Soviet Union to build up the industry and military, eventually becoming their bulwark towards the west, acting as a strong minor power in the Comintern.
Some of Rkosis focuses. And last but not least we have Bla Kun and his, well, Comintern unfriendly branch. As someone who was on good terms with Lenin, but who was nearly executed by Stalin, Bla Kun will attempt to establish his workers paradise in Hungary, no matter the costs. His ultimate goal, like that of many Hugnarians during this time, is to restore Hungarian borders, just like the reds tried to during the civil war. The end goal however in the branch, once you have achieved your peak form, is to take down Stalins empire of evil and bring an end to his Marxist-Leninsit charade.
Some of Kuns focuses. And before we end this, here is a quick peek at some advisors and such available to Hungary.
Political Advisors.
Generals at the start of the game.

Conclusion


And thats all for today folks. I hope this brief introduction has wetted your appetites and has enticed you to load up a game of Hungary once the DLC drops. Up next is the big one that you have all been waiting for, Historical Germany brought to you by ManoDeZombi and Paradox_Danne. Oh, and speaking of dev diaries, as a fun throwback I must say, we sure have come a long way since Death or Dishonor Viszontltsra! [url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/3152810/Hearts_of_Iron_IV_Expansion_Pass_1] Make sure to check out the Expansion Pass Here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3152810/Hearts_of_Iron_IV_Expansion_Pass_1


[ 2024-10-14 13:01:12 CET ] [ Original post ]

Developer Diary | Special Projects

Hi, I am Thomas, the Design Manager and Design Lead on the Hearts of Iron Expansion Team. Today I am here together with Manuel, also known as Mano de Zombi to introduce one of the new features of the upcoming Gtterdmmerung expansion: Special Projects. As always, please note that everything here might change before release The UI in particular is receiving final touches at the moment, so it can most certainly look different on release day, but also any values, texts, etc you see in screenshots might change. But you know this already, right? In Gtterdmmerung, we have added a new way of acquiring super weapons and other experimental technological advancements that can give you an edge over your opponent. You can now construct secret experimental facilities, assign lead scientists and start up Special Projects there - trying to beat your enemy to getting those long range rockets, the atomic bomb, or the land cruiser mega tank. With this new feature, Special Projects, you invest time and resources into specific fields, in order to produce those new super weapons, or similar things that can hopefully affect the outcome of the war, or at least will look cool and impress neighbouring countries :)

Experimental Facilities and Specializations


Okay, so how does one start one of these Special Projects? Well, the first thing you will need is an Experimental Facility. This is a new type of building that you can only have one of in a state (of any kind). There are four types of Facilities, and all Special Projects are grouped into one of four specializations that match the types of Facilities. The four Experimental Facilities are:
  • Advanced Physics Facility (mainly nuclear related projects)
  • Naval Engineering Facility (Naval, both Surface and Submarine projects)
  • Aerodynamics and Avionics Facility (Air and Rocket projects)
  • Land Warfare Facility (mainly Tank and Artillery related projects)

New Mexico seems like a safe place to construct an Advanced Physics Facility Once constructed, you can see your Facilities on the map, and can click them in order to assign a scientist (more on them later) and start a Project from the map - or if you prefer from the top menu.
And here we have our new Experimental Facility, ready to change the world as we know it The old research button found on the top bar has been given a Facelift. If you click it as before, you open the research menu as before, but there is now a second tab that you can click to access the Special Projects. Or if you prefer you can right click on the research top menu item and go directly here. The third option, as I mentioned earlier, is to click on the Facility on the map.
I wonder who would be the perfect candidate to assign to our new facility in New Mexico?

Unlocking and Breakthroughs


So you need an Experimental Facility to start a Special Project. However, you cant start a project just because you have built a facility. In order to start a project you must first have at least one Scientific Breakthrough in the current field/specialization. Breakthroughs are earned in two ways. The fastest and most efficient is by researching related technologies. This will generate progress towards a breakthrough in the field. For example, researching regular aircraft technologies will generate progress towards a breakthrough in the Aerodynamics and Avionics specialization. Once you have gotten a Breakthrough, you can use it to start a Special Project from among those that you have available. So basically, regular technology research will give you the chance to start specific Special Projects. If you focus your research on Air technologies, you will more quickly generate Breakthroughs in Aerodynamics and Avionics. Some projects are more advanced and require you to have more than one breakthrough in order to start working on them. The other, and slightly slower way (at least with a less experienced scientist) to generate Breakthroughs is to have a scientist attached to an Experimental Facility with no active project in it. The Scientist will then do Basic Research in the field, and this will generate progress towards the next breakthrough.
Researching Air techs generates the majority of the Breakthrough progress here, but Heinrich Focke helps as well. Of course, not all projects are available from game start. Some will be, but some require you to have a basic technology researched in order to become available. For example, Submarine Special Projects are only available once you have researched Submarines. Additionally, some projects require other projects to be completed before they show up. That could be in the same Specialization, or in another, or even both. For example, in order to start the ICBM Project, you need to have completed a few other Rocket Projects, but also the Nuclear Warheads Project.

Prototyping


Projects take a long time to complete, and they are done in a number of prototype iterations. At the end of each iteration, progress is generated to the project. Sometimes other things can happen as well. Work with the project can for example give a research bonus in a related technology, or army xp, or similar things, depending on the outcome of the iteration phase. If you are unlucky, some powerful-yet-dangerous projects could make the facility suffer damage due to an onsite explosion

Iterations generate project progress, but sometimes you get other interesting things Simple Rewards Some iteration outcomes will lead to a choice that can affect the final project output as well. Do we want our rockets to be range focused, or is explosive power the main thing? This gives the project a bit more life of its own, and makes not all end results be the same. But in general, each prototype iteration brings the project closer to completion. Researching a Special Project is, as mentioned in the beginning, a bit of an investment. First you need to have, or build, the experimental facility of the appropriate specialization. The project also takes time, during which you cannot do anything else in the facility. In addition, the Facility needs to be hooked onto the supply network (you can only build them on or next to a supply depot or naval base) - and lastly, some Special Projects consume resources while you run them.
Firepower is what we go for here

Completing a Special Project


When project completion reaches 100%, the project finishes, and you get whatever it is you get :) from completing it. This could be a new piece of equipment that you can produce, a new building you can build, or something else. Usually you also get something more tangible as well. Couple of examples: The Nuclear Reactor Special Project will not only unlock the Nuclear Reactor Building type for you, but you will also get a Reactor for free in the same state as the Experimental Facility - assuming there is space for it that is. The Super-Heavy Railway Gun Project will not only unlock the Super-Heavy Railway Gun equipment to be produced, but it will also spawn one on completion. Some projects also unlock new technologies in the basic tech tree that are not available, or even visible if you havent completed the Special Project in question. For example, when you complete the V1 Project you get access to tech that you can research to improve your rockets, but also to rocket powered bombs, that can improve your strategic bombers. Some projects, like the Bouncing Bomb Project only unlocks a new module for your airplanes. But that module in itself unlocks special Dam Busting Air Raids that allow you to try to destroy enemy dams, disrupting their industry and strategic movement in the affected state. Oh, and yes, dams are a thing. Ill talk more about dams in a future Dev Diary

Capturing Experimental Facilities


If you manage to capture an enemy Facility with an ongoing project, you will not only get to keep that Facility, but also earn some progress in that project - if you have it unlocked and it is not already completed. Additionally you will gain some breakthrough progress in the field related to the specialization.

Scientists


An Experimental Facility needs a scientist leading the work. All major powers and some minor countries start with historical scientists and all countries can recruit more if needed. Scientists have a skill level related to the field in which they work - some may have more than one. The skill level affects how long prototype iterations take, and thus how long the projects take to complete. Skill level also affects the previously mentioned Basic Research. When involved in Basic Research, the scientist will generate progress towards a new breakthrough as described above, and the amount generated depends on the skill level of the scientist. Additionally, by doing Basic Research, the scientist will speed up regular research in related technologies. Aside from skill levels they can come with traits, for example making them better at a subset of projects, or giving them other bonuses/penalties. Worth mentioning that scientist is a new character role, and as such all the old Nuclear/Rocket Theorists, along with a few other relevant scientists/engineers previously represented as advisors, have now become scientists instead.

Any scientist with level 1+ on a specialization can work on those projects. However, traits can boost specific projects making a scientist faster than the others at researching certain projects.

The Projects Themselves


The expansion comes with a decent number of Special Projects. There are, of course, projects allowing you to do your own Manhattan Project, and to take it even further There are various Rocket Projects, you can develop the V1 Flying Bomb or the V2 Ballistic Missiles as was done historically. We have included some (slightly) fantastic Special Projects that were perceived/started during the era, like Project Habakkuk (the British Ice Carrier Project), or the Ratte Project (The German Mega Tank) as well, but weve tried to stay on the feasible side of things, so some of these might not be very efficient on their early stages, but might become more powerful and viable if you research further technologies unlocked by their Special Projects. In general, most projects will unlock a piece of equipment (Super-Heavy Howitzers, Parasites-Mothership Aircraft), a unit (Land Cruiser, Early Helicopter, Habakkuk), a module (Flamethrower Tank, Earthshaker Bomb, Anechoic Tiles) or a building (Nuclear Reactor, V3). Some projects can also boost existing equipment and projects that unlock very big things might also create a unit or a production line with progress in it. A few projects have more unique effects, such as the Naval Project, Underway Replenishment, which unlocks a new feature that Naval Task Forces can use. Here are some examples of projects:

We have a few Naval Projects to choose from, and there are more hiding



Changes to Old Content


There has been some rework to the tech tree: We have added some new technologies, most of them invisible at game start and unlocked by Special Projects. Some previously-existing technologies are now hidden at game start and unlocked via Special Projects. Besides the aforementioned V2 and the Manhattan Projects (rockets and nukes), other equipment has been moved into the Special Project feature, For example: Flamethrower tanks are no longer unlocked by Engineers II technology, but they have their own early Special Project, with an additional technology mid-game that will boost the flamethrower. Cruiser and Midget Submarines, previously equipment only available to very specific countries, will now have their own Special Projects making them accessible to any country. With the addition of the Super-Heavy Railway Gun Special Project, we can now differentiate between normal Railway Guns, and insane much bigger ones, like Schwerer Gustav and Dora. This means that Germany gets a new model and icon for the regular Railway Gun researchable in the tech tree, and Dora becomes the Super-Heavy Railway Gun unlocked by a project.

A Word About Rockets


In the old systems, there was one type of rocket. Now there are several. The V1s are classed as Flying Bombs. These work similarly to before, but the rocket bases themselves have changed somewhat. The V2s however, are now classed as ballistic missiles. Ballistic missiles use another type of air mission, and are not affected by anti air. No one during the WW2 era had the capability to knock these rockets out, so that is something for later.
Different types of rockets to choose from Oh, yes. You do have to actually produce rockets now, they are no longer constructed by rocket sites. We have made some quality of life improvement to the Rocket interface as well, making it easier to select target and mission. You decide which type of rocket you want there, from the ones you have available, and then you can just right click on their target, as they each have only one mission available - so you do not need to pick mission type first.
Sending some rockets to the low countries Thats all for now. Next Dev Diary will be about something completely different A country that we decided to do a rework on in this expansion, namely Hungary. [url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/3152810/Hearts_of_Iron_IV_Expansion_Pass_1] Make sure to check out the Expansion Pass Here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3152810/Hearts_of_Iron_IV_Expansion_Pass_1


[ 2024-10-09 13:01:07 CET ] [ Original post ]

Developer Diary | Austria

Guten Tag! [previewyoutube=pUMqmW8LQDk;full][/previewyoutube] Nattmaran here to kick off the Dev Diaries for Gtterdmmerung! This will be the first Dev Diary I write, and you can bet that I am excited to finally show you what I have been working on! We are going to start out with a country that many of you have been requesting, Austria! Lets get right into it with a little bit of context shall we?
The country select screen for Austria, a TL:DR for the historical context
A zoomed out overview of the Austrian Focus Tree

Interwar Austria


I wont go into what happened during the Great War, but it was a bad time to be Austrian. Unfortunately for the Austrians, this did not let up much during the interwar years, it simply took another form. With next to no army due to the Treaty of Saint-Germain-En-Laye, half of the country unemployed, an economy in shambles, not being allowed to gang up with their old buddies in Hungary or Germany and violence between political paramilitary groups, it is safe to say that the country was in a really bad state.
The National Spirits at startup for Austria Just after the Great War Austria operated as a republic, with decently functional elections and a parliamentary system. However, paramilitary groups still clashed frequently and these clashes led to numerous conflicts. Perhaps the most notable was the July Revolt of 1927 when the Ministry of Justice was burned to the ground by the Social Democratic paramilitary group Republikanischer Schutzbund. Conservative sentiments grew much stronger following this uprising. The Austria you will come to know was formed in 1932 as Engelbert Dollfuss was elected chancellor. Dolfuss had great plans, and they started with removing the parliament. Said and done, via the so-called Self-Elimination of the Parliament, Democracy was abolished in one fell swoop. Under the ideology of Austrofascism, a combined right-wing party Vaterlndische Front was formed from various conservative parties and agrarian leagues. All other parties were banned, making Dolfuss more of a dictator than a chancellor. Ideologically Austrofascism was more like the Fascism found in Italy, than the German counterpart. Ironic as it sounds, the rather Fascist VF banned the Austrian wing of Hitlers NSDAP, DNSAP, from operating in the country. The bans were largely ineffective, and in 1934 Engelbert Dollfuss was assassinated in a coup attempt by DNSAP. But, lets get into the actual content of the game! In 1934 Kurt Schuschnigg took over as chancellor, and in -36 he also assumed leadership of Austria, which was now in an almost even more precarious situation. Still no army, the economy only slowly recovering, unemployment rates still high, political violence still rampant and now the Germans seem to be on the prowl as well. What a great time to come to power! TL:DR; The interwar period was a very bad time to be Austrian!
This is how things will look as you load up the game. As you can see, VF is listed as Non-aligned, this is to attribute their past, and the fact that they are a hodgepodge of different political groups

"Historical" Branch


This needs a rather obvious disclaimer. We all know what happens with Austria in the Second World War, they get Anschlussed and die early on. As a player you will have to stave off this threat, and I have faith that you will, but it will mean that should you survive, a historical playthrough of Austria wont be that well historical. Not only regarding Austria, but regarding the rest of the world, and war, as well. Almost all of the focuses you find in the Historical branch have been drawn from some of the actual actions taken to attempt to stave off Anschluss, and later on in the tree was based on what was deemed a likely Austrian ambition depending on their political stance. Oh! And as always, everything shown below is subject to change or fixes before release.
The path that Historical Austria will follow has them attempt to secure the guarantees they were promised to survive the German threat, and then, try to regain what they lost Lets ignore the Anschluss system for now, there will be a separate section for it further down. As we learned earlier, Austria is already rather authoritarian, but not ruled by a single Fascist party. We start out Non-aligned, but Schuschnigg and his cabinet will soon overturn this making the country properly Fascist. DNSAP was historically already banned by this time but by further clamping down on the party it can be fully dissolved. Unfortunately for us, much like in history, this doesnt fully get rid of them but instead makes them Non-Aligned and us Fascist. Worse yet, this angers the German Reich. In response to this obvious slander, the Germans might demand concessions, or even, as was historically done, influence in the Austrian cabinet.
Arthur Seyss-Inquart, who indeed looks comically like a stereotypical fascist, just so happens to lead both DNSAP and Grossdeutsche Volkspartei. Anywhere you ban, or disband, DNSAP, no matter the branch, the Germans might kindly insist that you have him in your cabinet. Concerning. This means that the threat has become very real for Austria and fast. At this point most of your effort will likely be spent on finding ways of delaying the inevitable. The Treaty of Saint-Germain-En-Laye stops Austria from building troops, but it also stipulated that certain countries would help protect Austria, if need be. Now, historically, the guarantors just decided to not help Austria, but maybe you can sway them?
Help plz? Anyone? After making use of the good part of the Treaty, it has to go, you need those troops! You can of course ask permission from the other parties of the Treaty, but there is no guarantee that they will oblige, or you could just rip those useless papers and be done with it! Easy! It might annoy the other parties though, and anyone who guaranteed you might even retract that guarantee if you do.
There are different ways of going about getting rid of the Treaty of Saint-Germain-En-Laye, appeasement may be safer, but success cannot be guaranteed. If no agreement can be reached the consequences will be similar to outright disregard No matter which way is chosen, rearmament will be necessary. Unless Germany has decided against their usual plans there will be a race against the clock to prepare as best as possible. The Heimwehr militia can be enlisted to help your regular army, and eventually, they can be integrated into the army proper. Below Poised To Strike we find an assortment of focuses to help develop Austria into the Austrofascist Corporate State that Schuschnigg had envisioned and on the left, we find a part that is actually shared with the Monarchists.
Austria post-rearmament has quite a few options for both building up the state, but also for expanding and reclaiming their old lands. Eventually, they can get cores, and proclaim the Austrian Empire So here is one of those cases where I have had to extrapolate from what little history gave us and create some fun for you folks! Austria, had it been left to live, would likely have had a bit of a revanchist sentiment, at least on the Fascist and the Monarchist paths. Since I know you like map painting just as much as us devs, it is time to conquer! Starting with the obvious target, Hungary, Austria will slowly claw back their former territories, and can even try to get the old Central Powers gang together! There is also an option to join the existing fascist faction, but if the current faction leader is a historical Germany, they might not be keen on letting the Austrians in considering that they would probably like that land for themselves.Towards the end of these branches, you might see a familiar colour combo of yellow and black, and youd be correct. You will be able to form a Fascist Austrian Empire and be a force to be reckoned with, being cause for concern for Germans, Soviets and just about anyone else. Finally Austria can live up to that one article that described Schuschnigg as wanting to Out-Hitler Hitler and create a Better German State!

Anschluss


The Anschluss system is one that is shared between all branches. Each branch might have a few unique ways of trying to stave off the threat, like the Fascist branch seeking guarantees, but this system stays the same. An important thing to note is that historically, a large portion of the Austrian people welcomed Anschluss, but the politicians most certainly did not. It is rather telling that Schuschnigg, who was very authoritarian, was trying to stage an election, to prove that the people did not want Anschluss, in the hopes that that would make the Democratic powers finally help them. These efforts failed, of course, but you might not!
The Anti-Anschluss Measures decision system is where you will find decisions to strengthen your country to prepare if this diplomatic conflict turns hostile As you can see there is a risk level displayed. The amount of decisions available depends on the risk level, starting things like civilian factory construction and extra garrisons, ranging to emergency conscription, fortification construction and extended work shifts. The risk is an indication of how close Germany is to being able to complete the focus for Anschluss. The requirements for the focus has been revamped slightly to use a ratio of equipped manpower instead of a flat number of manpower in the field for Germany. But, Ill let Paradox_Danne and ManoDeZombi explain that instead as it is more closely related to Germany than it is Austria.

Monarchism


Historical in all its glory, but sometimes we want something different. With both the Austrian Empire, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire being somewhat recent to our time period, what needed to be done was obvious. We need Habsburgs.
The Monarchist path in all its glory By ripping up the old May Constitution Austria can start down a new path, and with the Monarchist path, this starts with reinstating the Herrenhaus. Replacing the parliament with a bunch of nobles allows for alternative ways of electing a leader, such as by name. How does Habsburg sound to you? Unless the pesky Hungarians have already installed Otto von Habsburg on their throne, you can place him on the throne of Austria. Should the Hungarians have unjustly stolen him, the Prince of House Starhemberg, Ernst Rdiger Starhemberg, will happily step up to take the crown. (google that man, he had an interesting life)
The two candidates for becoming ruler of a monarchist Austria Of course, both of these men can later also go from Prince to King, and that will give you a new snazzy flag! Though you will still only be called a Kingdom
Back in business with their old flag and a Habsburg on the throne, like it should be! If you want to become an Empire once more, you will have to rebuild. As soon as you have gotten rid of the Treaty with the Rebellious Rearmament focus the branch splits into two, one more focused on building yourself internally and one more expansionist. Expansion can be done in two ways, much like the fascists, you can go down the route to annex your old lands, if you wish to reform the Austrian Empire, but there is also another option. Led by Otto von Habsburg, Austria can strive to form a new Austria-Hungary by attempting to puppet their old lands instead.
Time to rebuild your Empire, starting with Hungary and moving on to all of your old lands, targeting both countries that currently exist, and breakout states in the event that they exist By going through this branch, you also unlock a Joint Focus Tree with your puppets! I wont show it here today, but rest assured, someone, potentially named D3vil, will show this to you soon. But Nattmaran, we wanted map painting! I hear you call, and do not fret, I also enjoy map painting, so of course, you can paint the maps. You get a specific type of autonomy for your puppets by puppeting them through this system for this reason! It should be noted that the annex system uses the same decisions leading up to annexing or subjugating the country. This will allow you to decide if you want to spend time on trying for a diplomatic annexation or subjugation, or if youd rather take your chances and if needs must, take what is rightfully yours by force.
The system for subjugating those formerly within the Empire. If diplomacy fails and your formerly loyal subjects have turned defiant, you can always puppet them by force. Your puppets also have an appropriate colour for what they are, Austro-Hungarian Vassals As you can see, once some of the countries have been subjugated we can do what a Habsburg does best; spread, everywhere! This might not have the biggest effects, but I thought it was a fun little touch!
How does Joseph-August von Habsburg of Hungary and Karl Albrecht von Habsburg of Czechoslovakia sound? Or maybe you can catch some more elusive ones, like Joseph-Franz or Robert von Habsburg that can crop up elsewhere. And no Habsburg run is complete without controlling the true homelands. Depending on your ambitions, you may also join a faction, or create your own, before you take on the Germans, the Soviets or both! The world really is your oyster if you make it to this point! You might have noticed the lack of mention of branch-specific anti-Anschluss mechanics for the Monarchists. See, thats the caveat. Austria as a Monarchy would be a very proud and independent country, not wanting to rely upon anyone else after the troubles they have been put through. It is unlikely that a Monarchist Austria would have gotten, or asked for, any help. Going down the Monarchist path for Austria will mean an uphill fight to stave off the Anschluss.

Democratic


Say you decide to adhere to the Treaty a bit more, and wish to reinstate Democracy again. After all, the Self-Elimination of the Parliament wasnt too long ago so the nation could still be yearning for Democracy. Much like the Monarchist branch we must first tear up the old constitution, and then before an election can be held, political opposition must be allowed once more.
The Austrian Democratic Branch The election will be close, it will fall to you as the player to decide the course the nation takes. From the three candidates we have a Social Democrat, Karl Renner who had previously held power in the parliament, Vinzenz Schumy of the Landbund, and wait is that Kurt? Again?! Yes, Again! Kurt Schuschnigg starts out as the Non-aligned leader of a combined party Vaterlndische Front, and can then swing both ways, going Fascist with VF, or Democratic with his old Christlichsoziale Partei, depending on which path is taken. Surprisingly enough, Kurt isnt even the most right-leaning candidate, as Vinzenz Schumy and the Landbund were by far more right-leaning.
All three Democratic candidates have their strengths, and they all lean different ways politically. Renner will have access to one extra Communist focus, but otherwise there will not be much of a difference, apart from their trait bonuses With a Democratic system in place, surely you should be safe from the threat of Anschluss? Unfortunately, no, you still have no army and cant train troops, yet. Much like the fascists, you will be requesting help on the basis of the Treaty. Leveraging the fact that you are now a Democratic country, Austria will be slightly more likely to actually be allowed to rearm by the guarantors in this branch. Otherwise, you could always bribe them, and if they end up rejecting, it means that they are not following the treaty. And if they arent, why should you?
The focus The Right to Rearm opens up the small but potent military branch for Democratic Austria, but it also has an effect for Non-Aligned countries, reasons to be explained soon As with most Democratic branches, you will be able to join the Allies, but you can also create your own faction called the Alpine Federation. Either way your goal will be similar, end Fascism in Europe.

The Danubian Federation


Did you notice that chunk in the middle that neither Monarchist nor Democratic touched upon, and that The Right to Rearm has an effect for the Non-Aligned, despite being in the Democratic branch? Democratic branches can feel a bit samey, and I wanted to avoid this, or at least spice it up a bit. The perfect opportunity for this presented itself via Habsburgs of course! Hear me out; Otto von Habsburg was a long standing member of the EU parliament after its formation, and it would not have been too far fetched that he would have lobbied for something similar to be initiated if he came to power. And surely if Otto had that idea, someone in a Democratic party might have had similar ideas, right?
The Danubian Federation is a branch available to both Democratic and Monarchist branches in place of their more traditional routes The Danubian federation starts out as a faction, but it also unlocks the Joint Focus tree for Austria-Hungary. Meaning, even if you are Democratic you can now access some Austro-Hungarian content! It will be a different way of playing, depending more on inviting a plethora of countries and building a strong faction. By ensnaring your faction members more closely to you, you will be able to subjugate them, and, in the Joint Focus Tree you might be able to take things even further.

Communism


Last out of the political branches is the Communist branch. Though not the most likely, Austria still had some Communist movements. The branch starts out with Austromarxism, which was a real ideology, situated somewhere in between Social Democracy and proper Communism. Considering this, there is an overlap between Communism and Democratic in Austria
The Communist Focus Branch
Apart from the Gain Schutzbund Support all of these are available to both Communists and Democrats. Gain Schutzbund Support, granting bonuses to your militias, is available only to Communists and Social Democrats, led by Karl Renner. As Im sure youve figured out, Austria has a long way to go to become a Communist state and for most, this road will involve a civil war. To have a fighting chance, the Treaty has to go. Austria preparing for civil war simply does not care about what anyone thinks and will be allowed to just shred the Treaty and enact Emergency Measures to rebuild more rapidly.
Once you feel ready, or once you feel that you cannot delay any longer, the Civil war can be started from the focus Reclaiming Red Vienna. As you can see from the tooltip, you can avoid the civil war entirely by building enough Communist support. Otherwise, the civil war will trigger, and if the focus Gain Schutzbund Support has been completed, three new militia units will spawn on your side along with an amount of units comparable to your communist support. If you have 50% support, you get 50% of the troops and so on. Dealing with this civil war is difficult on your own, so there is a choice to be made, you can ask the Soviets for help, or you can invest more heavily in your militias to try and gain the upper hand. Once the civil war is over these two sub-branches will eventually lead to either joining the Comintern, or establishing a new Faction called the Danubian Bloc. The final parts of the Communist branch will allow for spreading Communism in the Danubian countries, and countries that historically had an interest in the Danube. The decision system for this will be unlocked by completing Encourage Communist Sentiments and then expanded upon in Demanding the Liberation of Workers, and will allow you to sway your targets towards Communism, and then start a civil war, in case they disregard the needs and wishes of the proletariat. Finally there is a possibility to retake some land in Galicia, or tell the Soviets whos the better communist state in a rather violent way. As long as you are not in the Comintern that is!

Military & Industry


As mentioned previously, Austria was in a terrible state economically, industrially and militarily, so now lets have a quick look at what we can do to make it less bad, to start with, and great, later on.
The Austrian Industrial Branch is split in four distinct paths to make it easy to navigate where you need to go when your industrial problems become too pressing. The Industrial branch is rather straightforward, there are four main branches focusing on four things. From left to right we have the resources branch for boosting your domestic resources, the infrastructure branch for connecting the country, the economic branch to save your crashing economy and the industrial branch to build and improve construction of factories. All branches have interesting points but they are the most potent together.Economic Resuscitation can salvage the most broken of economies and lessen a Consumer Goods malus from 40% to 20%. By going down the Industrial branch several problems can be solved with one focus as Start Apprentice Programs will alleviate issues with stability, political power and consumer goods all at once. And Expand the St. Pltner Steelworks gives both heaps of steel and a factory Austria has tried the 2877% inflation rate before and this branch ensures that she is not going back there.
Not the largest air branch, but enough to build up a functional air force if there is need for one While Austria was technically allowed to have an air force, it was not prioritized. As such, you will pretty much have to start from scratch. There will be two main paths, focusing on domestic production, or focusing on establishing foreign partnership and importing your fleet. They both have their ups and downs, both requiring significant investment, one in the form of getting the funds to purchase aircraft, the other Well, you need factories and research to build them, right? Towards the end we can improve the infrastructure around our air force with anti air, radar stations and air base construction bonuses. Wiener Flaktrme were a real thing, they were however built by the Germans after the Anschluss. No matter, they will likely be useful in the air war. Though an air force might not be your initial concern, this branch will be here once you need it.
Though primarily locked behind getting rid of the Treaty of Saint-Germain-En-Laye, Austria boasts a rather sizable army branch. The army branch is the largest of the Military branches, as this is what Austria mainly focused on historically. In this branch you will find that there is one major choice to be had between Franz Bhme and Alfred Jansa, both of whom are, ironically, historical.
Jansas defense might come in handy in holding off the Germans, but so might Bhmes more aggressive tactics Alfred Jansa was from an early point worried about Germanys plans for expansion and had a plan laid out to counter this. Naturally, the Austrian cabinet, who were equally worried about this, appointed him as a chief of army. Just as naturally, the Germans protested this, not wanting a man with a defensive focus in power. Bhme was much more favorable towards Germany, so demanding that Austria replace Jansa with him was a win-win, and historically the Austrians did comply. That doesnt mean that you have to though
The Navy branch is unlocked only when you actually gain control over at least one coastal state. Considering Austrias geographical location, this might not be the most prominent branch As Austria doesnt have a coastline this branch starts out locked. But in the event that you acquire a coast line, this branch is for you. This branch has some rather hefty bonuses to bring you up to speed, but youll have to pick. Focus on larger ships like battleships and heavy cruisers with Rebuild the Armada, or gear yourselves towards submarines and destroyers with Defending the Coast. Theres even a few somewhat historical admirals for you to recruit. We even have MIOs (Or Designers if you have yet to pick up Arms Against Tyranny) to help build Austria into a great Naval nation! Okay that might be stretching it, but you get the point!

Conclusion


There we have it, thank you for staying a while and reading through this Dev Diary! Austria is a country with many challenges before her, but with some cunning plans and strategies, ripping up some treaties and a staunch refusal of German advances this little country can become quite the powerhouse. Just as a funny little note to end on, the work presented here was initially planned for both me and D3vil to do together. However, when we were told to do Austria-Hungary and just mildly touch up Hungary we instead decided to split the work and give you both Austria, and a full revamp of Hungary! Youll get to see what has been improved and expanded for Hungary in a week, but first, on Wednesday, youll get to see some really special projects! Auf Wiedersehen! A peek of the brave units that will help protect your country
[url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/3152810/Hearts_of_Iron_IV_Expansion_Pass_1] Make sure to check out the Expansion Pass Here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3152810/Hearts_of_Iron_IV_Expansion_Pass_1


[ 2024-10-07 13:01:48 CET ] [ Original post ]

Gtterdmmerung | Expansion Pass

Greetings all! [previewyoutube=vfpjRVIo9X8;full][previewyoutube=X35yPqws-vk;full]YOUTUBE VIDEO ANNOUNCEMENT GOES HERE[/previewyoutube][/previewyoutube] https://store.steampowered.com/app/3152780/Expansion__Hearts_of_Iron_IV_Gtterdmmerung/ Aaand there we have it, with the release of this video there can be no more subterfuge: our expansion Gtterdmmerung drops November 14th. Of course, weve kept this one under wraps for a bit longer despite some subtle hints, so now is our opportunity to explain a little about what Gtterdmmerung heralds, and what else is coming for Hearts of Iron in the near future. With the above said, Id like to draw attention to the fact that Dev Diaries and related events will be arriving with high frequency over the next six weeks - two or three items per week up until launch. This means today we wont be diving into extreme detail on each of the headline items, but you wont have long to wait to see more.

Special Projects


A German themed expansion is something many of you have been clamouring for for many years, and as weve been quite clear about in previous roadmaps, weve also wanted to work on a super-weapons feature since the release of HoI4. Naturally, these two things made sense to tackle together. War drives all sorts of technological innovation in an attempt to out-do opponents and although many projects ultimately never saw the battlefield, Gtterdmmerung aims to tie together existing research systems with a new experimental research mechanic that allows for both historical and less historical but plausible super-projects to be pursued. The research process will become an important part of gameplay, with scientists, map-located experimental facilities, and supporting infrastructure all combining to produce a wide variety of outcomes that can augment your forces or change the very nature of the war you are fighting.

Military Raids


Of course, the story of experimental project development during the war was one fraught with strategic implications. From the secrecy around the Manhattan project, to the dambusters raids or targeted strikes on important facilities such as Peenemunde, there are numerous examples of targeted military strikes that had a severe impact on the nature of the conflict. The military raids feature aims to add more narrative to your conflict while remaining an inherently strategic tool in your arsenal. Target experimental facilities, important military installations and more with high-risk, high-reward planned operations across multiple disciplines. Weve aimed to have as much integration as possible here with special projects: raids will be one of your main counterplays to an opponent scheming to develop their own [redacted].

Germany


Germany will be receiving a totally revised historical national focus tree and a host of new alternate historical paths. Well go into further detail about exactly what is coming here, but weve put a high premium on retaining the core feeling that Germanys old tree gave the player: a sense that they are the protagonist in the events leading up to the war; that the conflict revolves around their actions.

Austria


Resist the oncoming storm, cast off the shackles of enforced military impotence and retool your nation around your chosen identity. Forge a new history for Austria free of German control, standing as a beacon of resistance or reclaiming your fractured empire.

Revised Hungarian Focus Tree


A completely overhauled Hungarian focus tree, with a detailed historical revision and a completely unique perspective on reforging the Austro-Hungarian Empire, independent of Austrian content.

Belgian Focus Tree


Resist or welcome German supremacy. Draw on the natural wealth of the Congo and build potential for an African government-in-exile. Alternatively, play as the Belgian Congo, and either support the war effort, or throw off your old masters. And of course thats not all. With any release theres a host of other items that will appear, some small, some bigger, and notably some pretty nice improvements to the way the AI will play on a tactical and planning level.

Expansion Pass


With Gtterdmmerung well be trying something a bit new. The release will be part of an expansion pass. Expansion passes are our way of both giving you a Roadmap for the content thatll be arriving over the next few releases, and for letting you sign up to get that content when it arrives with a discount of 20%. The expansion pass will include:
  • Instant unlock of three new 3d tank models and a music track
  • The Gtterdmmerung expansion (Nov 14th 2024)
  • The Graveyard of Empires country pack (Q1 2025)
  • Prototype Vehicles unit pack (Q3 2025)
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3152810/Hearts_of_Iron_IV_Expansion_Pass_1
Now to get ahead of the game here: we understand that this method wont appeal to everyone. All items listed above except for the first bullet-point will be available for purchase individually as usual, or in the DLC subscription.


[ 2024-10-03 16:09:25 CET ] [ Original post ]

War Effort | Patch 1.14.8 Checksum 9d66

Generals! The latest War Effort update is here and with it arrives more bugfixes and balance changes, with a few changes to France, the Warlords in the east and some changes to certain spirits! Check out all the changes below and let us know what you think, and what other changes you'd like to see~ ################################################################ ######## Patch 1.14.8 "Bolivar" ######### ################################################################ ################################## # Balance ################################## - Brazil: focus "Potenji River Conference" changed so that instead of having Brazil declare war on American major enemies, they now instead join the American war, thus not applying the Defensive War bonus on the Axis and Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere in the late-game. - Brazil: now even more extra hyper-unlikely to reject unification with Portugal if their ideologies match - Czechoslovakia: focus "United Population" now grants 10% stability and war support as well as 150 political power if the "Divided Nation" national spirit has already been removed by the focus "Czech Socialism". - France: Fixed an issue where SOMUA S35 was previously called SOUMUA S35. - France: focus ""Begin Rearmament"" will no longer be cancelled if you drop below the required war support. - France: wargoals for the French focus ""Secure the Crown"" target all Spains. - France: the Orleanist focuses Slum Clearing and Counter-Action are both now 35 days focuses, and added an extra building slot to the Slum Clearing focus. - France: focus ""Diplomatic Freedom"" now takes 35 days and give 50 political power. - France: fixed an issue with offsets in the tree when taking the focus ""Revive the National Bloc"". - France: focus ""Defensive Focus"" now gives 30 command power. - France: focuses ""Invite Yugoslavia"" and ""Invite Romania"" now are 35 day focuses. - France: Trimmed down the decision tooltips in the focus "Reorganize Aviation Industry" and added 2 Military factories as an instant completion reward in the focus. - United Kingdom: Fixed an issue with a duplicated available trigger in the British focus Commonwealth Ties. Also changed the focus to include British Malaya in its targets, as well as give the targeted nations 50 political power each. Also made it into a 35 day focus. - Warlords: focus Industrial Investments now gives 2 civilian factories instead of one. - Warlords: now start with the national spirit Warlord State which can be upgraded through 3 different new focuses, and which is removed upon becoming any other type of state. - Warlords: national spirit Long Term Economic Planning now also gives a 10% construction bonus to Supply Hubs. - China: national spirit Public Works now also gives a 5% construction bonus to Railways. - Warlords: focus Personal Leadership now takes 35 days and additionally grants 30 command power. - China: national spirit Rapid Mobilization now also gives a 10% bonus to mobilization speed. - Warlords: focus Opposition now also grants 5% war support. - Warlords: focus Cooperation with the Nationalists now also grants 5% stability. - Warlords: focus Cooperation with the Communists now also grants 50 political power. - Warlords: focus Cult of Personality now also grants 5% war support. - Warlords: focus Local Arms Production now gives 2 military factories instead of one. - Spirits: Professional Officer Corps now grants 15% division experience gain and 30 max command power in place of 5% land XP, -5% doctrine cost and 0.20 daily command power - Spirits: Elevated Engineering Corps no longer grants a 25% engineer trait xp gain factor. Railway gun bombardment bonus is now 25%, from 20% - Spirits: Proper Heritage no longer grants 5% cavalry attack, and instead grants 10% Leader Experience Gain - Spirits: State Serves the Military now grants 10% offensive war stability, from 10% political power gain - Spirits: Logistical Focus spirit now grants -10% fuel consumption instead of -5% - Cavalry Recon now gains a 15% speed bonus from the Mass Assault doctrine "Pocket Defence". - Horseback Infantry now have several early benefits in military doctrines. We would still like to see them phased out in favor of motorized infantry, but for countries with no real options in the early game they should lose their shine a little later then currently. - The Dutch MIOs Fokker and DAF are now both available from game start, and instead of being unlocked, are granted 2 extra levels when taking each MIOs respective focus. - Increased the spirit of the naval acadamy spirits chance to gain +skills on level up from 40% to 50% to be in line with the army spirits - the AI will be significantly less likely to leave countries alive on tiny islands during peace conferences ################################## # Gameplay ################################## - Added decisions for Wales and Y Wladfa to core each-others states if they control them. - The Free French focus Refus Absurde can now also be completed if at peace to remove the Defeatism spirit, and the focus Form the Provisional Government now also removes the spirit in case it hasnt been removed earlier. - Finland no longer cedes Petsamo to the Soviets when losing the Winter War. ################################## # UI ################################## - Added simple allow_branch and offset effects to the Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian focus trees. ################################## # Modding ################################## - Can no longer unlock a severely broken form of intelligence agency without LaR; this will error appropriately to help you track down the issue. ################################## # Bugfix ################################## - Bulgaria: Players with BftB should no longer encounter Fatherland Front when going to war with the Soviet Union while wrong ideology - The Request Expeditionaries feature works with size 0 armies once again - corrected railways around lille and dunkirk - All single category MIOs (naval, air, land) should now use the correct XP type - Fixed a bug when if you had a spirit of the army (leftmost army spirits) would cause any spirit from spirit of the naval academy (leftmost navy spirit) to not work properly - Fixed a wrong tooltip where the % chance to gain +attack/defense/manouver+coordination in the spirit of the naval academy would say you a way lower % chance to get the benefit that what it really was (it said 20% but it was in fact 40%) - Fixed a number of Soviet CCP icons that were not appearing correctly when the pack is enabled. - Fixed an issue where Argentina could core only Guatemala and no other central-american nations using their South-American unity decisions, as well as making them able to core Easter Island. - Fixed an issue where the 30 day cooldown for the damage dealt by Paratroopers after taking the "Combat Insertion"doctrine wasn't working and could be done an infinite number of times in the same state. - Fixed an issue where a Warlord state that had inherited Nationalist China's focus tree couldn't remove their version of the Ineffective Bureaucracy spirit through the Examination Yuan focus. - Fixed an error where the British Plan R-4 couldn't be successfully completed. - Land Doctrine: People's Army now correctly applies cavalry suppression buff to Military Police; buff reduced to 0.35 Suppression Per Honse from 0.5 - Unit supply consumption now correctly uses 2 decimal places in tooltips and UI (functionality remains unchanged) - Fixed an issue where the "Blockade Venezuela" decision would still be visible when Venezuela didn't exist. - Fixed an issue where the leader trait Unbreakable wasnt properly granting attack and defense modifiers. - Fixed an issue where the Spanish national spirit The Anti-Fascist Crusade wasnt properly granting the attack it said it was. - Fixed an issue where the Nordic national spirit The Nordic March wasnt properly granting the attack it said it was. - Fixed an issue where the Nordic national spirit To Arms Against Tyranny wasnt properly granting the defense it said it was. - Fixed an issue where the Latvian national spirit Dievturba wasnt properly granting attack and defense modifiers. - Fixed an issue where the various Italian Papal national spirits weren't properly granting attack and defense modifiers. - Fixed an issue where the Spanish national spirit Embrace the Spanish Destiny wasnt properly granting the attack it said it was. - Fixed an issue where the Spanish Crusade Against Democracy national spirits werent properly granting the attack and they said they were. - Gdynia is now also included among the states that Poland can return to a democratic Germany if they are close to capitulation. - Fixed various issues with the requirements and effects of the Norwegian decisions to convert convoys into destroyers. - Fixed an issue where Chile couldn't bypass the focus "Demand the Guyanas" when already controlling all three target states. - Fixed an issue where the Portuguese focus "Portuguese Artillery" didn't grant funds to the correct MIO. - Fixed an issue where the Brazilian focus "Bribe the Military" wouldn't grant a dockyard due to incorrect checks in the focus. - Fixed various issues where the Japanese Zaibatsu national spirits could join the wrong side of a civil war. - Fixed an issue where the Latvian focus "Renew the Constitution of Latvia" wouldn't correctly swap the trait of the political advisor Alberts Kvesis as it said it did. - Fixed an issue where the French focus and decisions for "Arms Purchases in the US" could be completed despite the requirements not being properly fulfilled. - Entrenchment Chief no longer refuses to follow naming consistency rules (Thanks Reddit, we hated it too)


[ 2024-08-29 13:02:08 CET ] [ Original post ]

Development Update | When to expect Dev Diaries

Hello there! Your Community Manager, Katten, here. Let's get right into it; we haven't talked about our upcoming expansion since all the way back in June. Let's change that and dive right in! The Hearts of Iron Development team has been hard at work since the end of last year on this upcoming expansion. But Im here to give you a rundown of what we have planned and when to expect it! We begin releasing Developer Diaries October 3rd, so mark the date! But dont worrywell give you plenty of reminders as it approaches. This time around, were trying something different. Compared to last year, our upcoming campaign will be shorter, but we've planned it to be highly intense, with something happening almost every single day. We currently plan to have two developer diaries per week, a weekly feature video, a biweekly stream and Q&A, and, of course, plenty of YouTube Shorts and other fun social media content related to the expansion.
Before I go, I want to thank you for being so patient with us. On Friday, well be sharing details about the upcoming Open Beta for the next War Effort update! Until later! Katten


[ 2024-08-28 13:00:16 CET ] [ Original post ]

End of Summer Sale

Generals! The end of Summer is fast approaching, and with it arrives additional sales! The Quartermasters have come around for another batch of Discounts to make sure that you all can grab what you need for your collection, a friend or whatever else you need~ Check out the Discounts below, and have a great week!

BASE GAME


Hearts of Iron IV - 70% off Hearts of Iron IV: Starter Edition - 60% off

Expansions


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 30% off Hearts of Iron IV: La Rsistance 50% off Hearts of Iron IV: Man the Guns 50% off

Country Packs


Hearts of Iron IV: Battle for the Bosporus 50% off Hearts of Iron IV: Trial of Allegiance 20% off

Music & Unit Packs


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 50% 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 50% off Hearts of Iron IV: Axis Armor 50% off


[ 2024-08-26 17:01:05 CET ] [ Original post ]

TACTICON SALE

Generals! The Quartermasters from Hooded Horse and Firesquid have added another supply route to our frontlines, with the TACTICON sale! Alongside some other amazing games, we've brought out the discounts with them! Check them out below~

BASE GAME


Hearts of Iron IV - 70% off Hearts of Iron IV: Starter Edition - 60% off

Expansions


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 30% off Hearts of Iron IV: La Rsistance 50% off Hearts of Iron IV: Man the Guns 50% off

Country Packs


Hearts of Iron IV: Battle for the Bosporus 50% off Hearts of Iron IV: Trial of Allegiance 20% off

Music & Unit Packs


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 50% 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 50% off Hearts of Iron IV: Axis Armor 50% off


[ 2024-07-18 17:02:05 CET ] [ Original post ]

Steam Summer Sale 2024!

Generals! It is time yet again for Steam's Summer sale, with deals up to 70% off, this is the perfect time to finish up your collection, or even branch into new titles with our Wealth and War Bundle to grab a great deal on Victoria 3 while you're at it! Check below for all of the deals;

THE WEALTH AND WAR BUNDLE


You've been winning the fight on the frontlines, but perhaps it's time to hit them where it hurts most: their economy! Grab this bundle to get even more savings on our other title Victoria 3 https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/42554/Wealth_and_War_Bundle/

BASE GAME


Hearts of Iron IV - 70% off Hearts of Iron IV: Starter Edition - 60% off

Expansions


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 30% off Hearts of Iron IV: La Rsistance 50% off Hearts of Iron IV: Man the Guns 50% off

Country Packs


Hearts of Iron IV: Battle for the Bosporus 50% off Hearts of Iron IV: Trial of Allegiance 20% off

Music & Unit Packs


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 50% 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 50% off Hearts of Iron IV: Axis Armor 50% off


[ 2024-06-27 17:03:02 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hotfix | Patch 1.14.7 Checksum: f03b

Generals! We're rolling out a quick hotfix to address a few minor issues cropping up with some scripts and implementation of the Content Creator Pack. ################################## # Bugfix ################################## - Fixed ship creation script from autoincluding version numbering inconsistently, leading to a few instances of invalid script - Non-Designer equipment will no longer show version naming by default* - A few CCP icons were being shown in unintended locations, this is no longer the case


[ 2024-06-24 13:02:14 CET ] [ Original post ]

Soviet Union 2D Art Pack | War Effort Update 1.14.6 [Checksum: 5a08]

Hello there! Katten here. Today marks the final day of our Anniversary Week. It's been one thrilling ride, kicking off with our teaser for the upcoming expansion, followed by a giveaway that saw over 10,000 participants! Then came our secondary announcement: our first Content Creator Pack - Soviet Union 2D Art. Sunday brought the sweat with our broadcast of the grande finale for this year's Community Cup, where the Red Baron team claimed first place! And now, today, we're excited to release the War Effort Update 1.14.6: Operation Badger, alongside the Content Creator Pack. This post below will contain two key sections. First, we'll delve into the details of our War Effort update, followed by our second and final Dev Diary for the Content Creator Pack. But without further ado, I'll hand over the mic to Game Director, Arheo. Wait, I almost forgot! Before that, we are also running a sale on the PDX Store with up to 70% off! Check it out HERE.

War Effort Update


Hey folks, Arheo here with the change log for Operation Badger, the War Effort update which we've been brewing for some time now. We've spent a little more time than usual on making sure that there's some good QoL or small-feature items in here as a part of the anniversary update, so I hope these keep you going for a while! Of course, this update goes live alongside the Content Creator Pack that the World Ablaze team have been working on, so I'll hand over to them for a deeper dive into what's coming there. ################################################################ ######## Hotfix 1.14.6 "Bolivar" ######### ################################################################ ################################## # Balance ################################## - Updated the French focus "Avenge Waterloo" to include Luxembourg in it's targets. - Increased warscore from sinking ships by 4-5x (this will continue to be iterated upon). Increased warscore from sinking convoys, and decreased convoy build decay rate to warscore. - Canada: Changed around the starting navy to be more historically accurate. Also fixed various issues regarding Quebec and their victory points, as well as a typo in their fascist party name. - Canada: Updated Canadian Air Chiefs - Norway: focuses Invite Cadillac to Norway and Invite Soviet Designers now grant extra levels to the MIOs unlocked, and the Cadillac focus now only takes 35 days to complete. - Norway: Now only Germany can trigger civil war by attacking - Norway: focus "Approach the Fatherland League" now gives -5% democratic support instead of -10% fascist support. - Iceland: mineral prospecting focus no longer runs a random list to decide which resource you get. You will always get 10 iron and 6 aluminium. Fishing industry spirit now grants -10% convoy cost at both levels. - Chile: Reduced research speed bonus from French Academia to 3% from 10% (this is not a subtle comment against French academics) - Chile: Reduced the amount of political power and war support available across several branches. - Chile: Rayen Quitral now grants 10% stability from 20% - Chile: Manuel Manquilef now grants 5% factory output, from 8, and no longer grants ideology drift defense - Chile: Antonio Neculman now grants 6% research speed, from 15% - Chile: Manuel Panguilef no longer reduces research speed, however provides 5% war support and stability, from 10% - Chile: Reduced most sources of attack & core division attack to be in line with similar nations - Chile: Adjusted most sources of national manpower factor to be more consistent with other nations - Chile: Reduced bonuses substantially - Chile: Grand Armada focus no longer grants dockyard output, but has increased dockyard construction speed; rewarding future plans rather than flat improvements. Positioning bonus removed. - Chile: Patagonian Giants focus no longer grants division attack and defense, but increases breakthrough by 10% from 8% - Chile: Development Inwards focus no longer reduces military factory construction speed by 25% - Chile: via trans radio chilena bonuses halved - South America Shared: hot and cold acclimitization factor reduced to 15% per focus, from 25% - South America Shared: Reduced potential for most direct combat stats from decisions and focuses (attack, defense & org) - Brazil: Reduced speed for research bonuses granted by Promote Resource Extraction focus to 50%x2 from 75%x2 - Brazil: Increases research speed from bonuses granted by Stimulate Civilian Economy to 50%x2 from 40%x2 - Brazil: Reduced research speed from bonuses granted by Italian Car Industry to 50%x2 from 75%x2 - Brazil: Increased research speed granted by bonuses in Desenvolituddimeot.... that one; to 50%x2 from 40%x2 - Argentina: Increase research speed bonus for synth rubber granted by Reinforce the Education System to 100%x1 from 50%x1 - Australia: Australian Army Catering Corps now grants 3x100% research speed bonuses to logistics company, from 1x300% - Australia: Airborne defence focus now grants 1x100% research speed bonus for paratroopers, from 1x300%. It also now grants 2x50% cost reductions for special forces doctrine - Australia: CAC Woomera focus now grants 3x100% research bonuses for specific hulls, from 1x300% - Australia: Uranium Mining now grants 2x50% research bonuses from whatever it was before, and now grants 2x100% research bonuses for excavation tech - Australia: Dominate the Skies now grants 4 air bases from 2, and 2 doctrine cost bonuses from 1 - Australia: Rebalanced several focuses in the Australian military branch letting them unlock an additional special forces branch specialism (AAT) quite early and without being a major, and granting a significant number of doctrine cost reductions for the above. - Baltic Shared: Original designs focus now grants 50% speed bonuses, from 75% - Bulgaria: Uranium Prospecting focus now grants 2x 100% bonuses, from 2x200% - Bulgaria: Normalized several tech bonuses, overall slightly reducing the efficacy of research benefits - Canada: Normalized several tech bonuses. Canadian Parachute Battalion now grants 2x50% special forces doctrine cost reduction, but reduces paratroopers research bonus to 100% from 300% - Finland: Normalized research speed bonuses - France: France can now unlock a special forces branch specialism from their military branch. Military branch has been slightly rearranged. - Special Forces Doctrine: special forces cap factor bonuses significantly reduced - Ethiopia: Normalized -some- of the research bonuses - Generic Focus Tree: increased army experience gains and normalized army research bonuses - Generic Focus Tree: Add Truck - Generic Focus Tree: Fascist branch now provides a total of 3% recruitable population, from 7%, but now also provides 25% mobilization speed and 15% reduced supply penalties on core territory - Generic Focus Tree: Communist branch now grants 400 weekly manpower (yes this will stack with the military spirit) - Greece: Normalized research bonuses - Italy: Normalized research bonuses (while a few went up or had charges added, these mostly came down) - Japan: Tweaked some research bonuses (no big changes) - Reduced Nuclear research bonuses across all focus trees - Norway: Normalized research bonuses - Poland: Normalized research bonuses - Portugal: Normalized research bonuses. Focus 'POR_tropas_paraquedistas' now grants 2 50% special forces doctrine cost reductions - Romania: Focus 'ROM_expand_the_marine_regiment' now grants 2 50% doctrine cost reductions for special forces doctrine - South Africa: Focus 'SAF_south_african_special_forces' now grants 2x50% cost reductions for special forces doctrine - Sweden: Normalized research bonuses - Soviet Union: Normalized Research bonuses (mostly unchanged, Jet research won't be as fast) ################################## # Gameplay ################################## - Mini-Feature: Variant version is now separated from name, resulting in an improved dynamic equipment versioning system. (Modding: unique version strings can be provided for ship, armor, and plane equipment on a per-country level.) - Mini-Feature: Civilian Factories can now be assigned to prioritize repairing damaged constructions - Mini-Feature: Captured ships can now be refit through the individual ship design screen. Once redesigned, you will gain a regular design variant to be used as normal. Redesigning this way will no longer cost the original creator the experience price. - Added Rio de Oro (The Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic) and Khuzestan as new cores gained when taking the 'Unite Arabia' decision. - Updated the British Blackshirt March decisions to include Cumbria and the Isle of Man. - Norway: no longer starts a civil war with historical focuses enabled - Norway: Added unique leader traits to the Norwegian country leaders who did not yet have traits, and added Edvard Christian Danielsen as a new Admiral for the country. - Changed the mutual exclusivity of the Nordic formable nations so that the "Kalmar Union" focus can be taken alongside one of the others, and only the "North Sea Empire" and "Nordic Union" are now mutually exclusive. - Norway: Added an event for the Kingdom of Norway to choose their Stance regarding foreign policy, allowing for different playstyles. - Norwegian fascist civil war can now be started when either Germany has declared war or when support for the fascist coup is significant enough. Other fascist powers can no longer be invited to invade. - Made the first news event regarding the Italian annexation of Aussa fire only for Ethiopia. - Equipment Variants are now a lot more 'sticky' with their names when you refit them, leading to much fewer instances of '1936 Destroyer Hull Class'. ################################## # UI ################################## - Many info popups now appear at the bottom-right of the screen and do not require manual interaction to clear. This change should drastically decrease the effects of 'popup spam'. ################################## # Modding ################################## - Equipment property is_frame should now auto-obsolete ################################## # Bugfix ################################## - Fixed an issue where the Chilean decision to Demand a Snap Election to become Communist was unavailable if playing with localization using a non-latin alphabet. - Fixed an issue where the Icelandic Admiral from the event "A Danish King once More" and a Swiss Admiral from the focus "Train Navy Staff" would have General skills instead of Admiral ones. - Fixed a minor typo in the event "War in South America". - Fixed an issue where AI Turkey would not always select Adnan Menderes as president when made to go the Ottoman path, thus locking themselves out of the branch. - Fixed an issue where in some fringe cases, completing the Spanish focus 'Caudillo of Spain' would accidentally kill Francisco Franco. - Fixed various issues with the American event "A New General for China" triggered by a Chinese focus, where Joseph Stillwell would always become unavailable to the US no matter who they chose to send, as well as the advisor position of the character sent not being available to China. - Fixed an issue where the full names for the Chilean political parties chosen in the 1938 election event wouldn't properly appear. - Fixed an issue where the non-MTG tree for the UK could start overlapping when going down the Home Defense path. - Fix OS inconsistency in how scripted bool values (yes/no) are parsed, leading to fixing a few script parsing errors on Linux/Mac - Fixed an exploit that allowed you to bypass the Mapuche civil war as Chile by using war support to instigate a small-scale communist uprising, and also added is_subject = no triggers to various Chilean focuses regarding ideology, factions and wars. - It is no longer possible to avoid air accidents by stacking air wings in bases. Air accident calculation has been adjusted as well, and the tooltip improved a little. - State mapmode stops trying to display modifiers without icon - Fixed two typos in the Soviet focus "Return Democracy to the Party". - Fixed various issues and inconsistencies with the name of the Arabian formable nation. - Moved provinces 13234 and 13235 in the state Northern Epirus from being erroneously counted as North America to being in Europe. - Changed the name 'Attu' from being applied to a province in Shanxi to actually being applied to Attu Island. - Fix focus 'Scramble for the Baltic' for Sweden where after one war the other war goals would disappear - Fixed an issue where Greenland would not start with control of their capital state when released in the Nordics Fragmented game rule. - Fixed an issue where you would be unable to construct Super-Heavy Battleships when running the game without MTG. - Fixed a few instances where MIOs did not provide the reliability they claimed to be. - NOR: Changed Extensive Recruitment and Expanded Conscription Drive to give a timed weekly manpower modifier rather than conscription factor. - NOR: Changed Build Supplies Network to provide construction boost to Naval Base as well as Supply Hub. - NOR: Notraskip and other focuses that used to require in exile government, now require capitulation instead for Man the Guns compatibility. - Fixed an issue where the name from the research bonus received when doing the Norwegian focus "Military Police" had the wrong name. - Fixed an issue where Chile could demand control of Guyanese territory from themselves if controlling any of the territory when taking their focus to do so. - Fixed an issue where the Norwegian focus "Forsvarets Intelligence Service" would show up when not having La Resistance active. - Fixed an issue where Genoa and Hinterpommern had incorrect names when playing with Russian localization. - Fixed two issues where the small portraits for King Haakon and Prince Olav of Norway weren't showing up as intended. - Fixed an issue where the Russian focus "Intervention in the Americas" was bugged and didn't have an effect. - Fixed an issue where South Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands wouldn't get cored when handed over to them by Japan as part of their scripted peace deal decisions/events. - NOR: re-balanced preparation system. - Fixed an issue where the North Sea Empire formable nation wouldn't get a core of Finnmark. - Do not trigger the event creating Free France and Vichy France if Paris is not owned by France (Avoids possible crash in Peace Conference) - Made the Brazilian focuses 'Join the Comintern', 'The Latin American Socialist', 'Reach Out to Our Neighbors', 'Establish Berlin Accords', 'Establish Rome Accords', and 'Form Mercosul'; the Uruguayan focuses 'Join the Allies' and 'The Fuhrmann Plan'; the Argentinian focuses 'Forge Our Own Future', 'Bastion of Peace', 'Argentina First', and 'Join the Axis'; the Paraguayan focuses 'Join the Axis', 'Join the Allies', and 'Join the Comintern'; and the Ethiopian focus 'Towards African Unity' require independence to be undertaken. - Super heavy armor now works for both Man the Guns and non Man the Guns superheavy battleships - Fixed an issue where Germany wouldn't get a core on Danzig when gaining it through the focus "Danzig for Slovakia". - Fixed an issue where Brazil would be locked out of taking their "propose integration" decisions from the "United States of South America" focus if a member of their faction left it when the decision was still ongoing. - Fix a bug where focuses (with modded icons) could get wrong icon in popups in MP - Spain: Fixed an issue where the POUM couldnt release nations, an effect which was only intended for the Anarchists. - Spain: Fixed a minor issue in the Carlist Ai-strategy plan for Spain. - Spain: Fixed an issue where the state modifier Autonomous State wasnt removed from the relevant states if Galicia, the Basque Country or Catalonia owned them. - Spain: Fixed a multitude of issues with Manuel Anaza not being an actual character, thus not being able to take certain focuses that required him as country leader if using non-Latin localization and more. - Spain: The Spanish Republican AI should no longer be blocked from taking the focus Enlist the Carabineros. - Spain: Made the falangist focus Primo de Rivera Prisoner Exchange take 35 days and also grant 5% war support. - Spain: Added a new late-game focus for Falangist Spain to core all Hispanic lands, provided they control them all first. - Spain: The Spanish focus in the Falangist path, Unite Iberia now also gives claims on Portugal. - Spain: The Spanish focus in the Falangist path, Absorb the Portuguese Empire now has a different description, and alongside the previous wargoals on their former colonies, also grants cores on any Portuguese core states controlled by Spain at the time of Completion. - Norway: Made the communist militias gained during the civil war disband at the end of it, returning any equipment and manpower they possessed to the player. - Norway: Rebalanced the Norwegian Communist Preparations system. - Norway: Fixed various issues with the Norwegian focus "Join the Comintern". - Norway: Added is_subject = no triggers to various Norwegian focuses. - Norway: Fixed an issue where the claims from the "Norwegian Royal Family Arrives" event weren't working.

World Ablaze CCP Developer Diary | Creative Process


[previewyoutube=xenCln0iQfc;full][/previewyoutube] Hi everyone! Coinciding with the release of the Soviet Union 2D Art Content Creator Pack ($3.99), Paradox has asked me to go over some of the creative process that has gone into this pack. Before we begin, I shall first introduce myself. My name is Aqeel Mughal, also known as Uncharted, and I am the founder and one of the head developers of World Ablaze. I have a degree in Illustration and Visual Communication and have spent the past 6 years working on artwork for Hearts of Iron IV. It became my most played game very quickly as I am a huge fan of grand strategy games starting all the way back from playing the board game Risk when I was a teen. Suffice to say, working on this CCP was an absolute treat, and I look forward to sharing the next moments with you all. The creative process involved in this CCP falls under 2 main sections: the National Focuses/Spirits and the Technology tree icons. For the focuses, the first step when creating the focus icons was to ensure as many icons in the focus tree conveyed a unique concept that represented the description and effect it was giving, and that meant for the vast majority drawing a tailor-made centrepiece. For the industry, this meant having factories or industrial machinery being shown, for example. For some of the political icons, I took inspiration from historical soviet propaganda posters/statues. I was very keen on each one being something 3D to help the focus pop out. After the centrepiece was drawn, an appropriate frame was chosen that allowed the centrepiece to be shown without too much negative space, and either a bespoke or regular background was used depending on the importance of the focus. Laurels and colours were picked by which one fitted the theme of the respective tree and the focus itself (you will see a lot of red in the politics section, for example). For national spirits, most of the icons created were either a smaller representation of the focus it came from or historical iconography. The rest convey the description of the spirit, such as the Trotsky Plot showcasing the intense rivalry of Trotsky and Stalin which led to the 1936 purges. When it came to the style I chose, I very much wanted to inject more colour saturation and a higher contrast in what I drew to make the icons pop out a lot more and give them energy which would harmonise well with the dynamic scenes depicted.
A selection of focus icons taken from different trees illustrating the diversity of what you will find.
A showcase of some of the national spirits that are part of the CCP.

A comparison of vanilla art with CCP art. When it came to the tech tree icons, there were a multitude of issues to try and address, a lot of generic and dated art was being used and I set out the goal to completely overhaul all of it to ensure consistency and higher quality for the CCP. After deciding what to draw I would seek blueprints or historical images where possible to act as my foundation. Each tech art starts with creating every shape and detail present in said blueprints/images before applying texture, shading, colour, and blending effects. The goal here was to create icons that fit in the game but pop out more, are somewhat proportional to each other (for example, light cruiser icons are smaller than battleship ones) and are consistent in their look. For any designs that are entirely fiction, they were based on the closest historical counterpart to ground them as proper what-if designs.
Infantry and support icons created to be unique and high quality.
New and improved tank icons with a colour scheme appropriate to the Soviet Union.
A highlight of air pieces with historical camouflage schemes used.
A completely new spin on ship icons for HOI4 prioritizing scale and using new shading.
Unique artillery icons drawn that match the equipment name in the localisation.

An example of a historical correction

An example of a quality improvement

With an overhaul of all soviet tech art, consistency is achieved with variant icons. Well everybody, thank you for reading and I hope you now have a good understanding as to the intentions and process of creating the artwork for this CCP. What I have shown is just a small snippet of what is in the CCP and with hundreds of icons included, I hope that all your future soviet games will be much more immersive and aesthetically pleasing. https://store.steampowered.com/app/2981720/Hearts_of_Iron_IV_Content_Creator_Pack__Soviet_Union_2D_Art/


[ 2024-06-10 13:05:38 CET ] [ Original post ]

Content Creator Pack - Soviet Union 2D Art | Announcement

Hello there! My name is Katten, and I'm your Community Manager for Hearts of Iron IV. Today, we are excited to announce our first-ever Content Creator Pack (or CCP for short) for Hearts of Iron IV which releases on the 10th of June. This is something we have previously done for Cities: Skylines and Crusader Kings. The pack is created by modders and published by us. [previewyoutube=b_ZBastfots;full][/previewyoutube] Before I hand it over to Ethan Mayer, one of the two creators of this pack, I wanted to address two frequently asked questions, as I'm sure they will come up. Did you just take a free mod and make it paid?

  • No, we collaborated with modders to create completely new content!
What do the modders get from this?
  • Modders get paid based on the number of copies sold.

Now you can see what was hidden in our Roadmap!

World Ablaze CCP Developer Diary | What is this & Who are we?


Hello everyone! I am not your usual Dev Diary writer, so let me introduce myself. I am Ethan Mayer, otherwise known online as 156, one of the Head Developers of the Hearts of Iron IV mod World Ablaze. I am proud to announce, with the support of Paradox, our upcoming CCP Content Creator Pack Soviet Union 2D Art which will soon be for sale for $3.99. Today, Ill be explaining to yall who we are, what this is, and how it all came to be. Lets get to it! Well save the backstory for later in this Dev Diary and firstly get straight into it by talking about what exactly is a Content Creator Pack. As touched on a bit previously, CCPs are small DLCs developed by modders and published by Paradox for their games, such as has been done for Crusader Kings III. This is a mutually beneficial deal for all parties: more content gets created for Paradoxs games while the modders, who already work hard in their free time to mod the game, can make some money. Essentially, Paradox is providing a convenient, official, and publicly accessible way for the community to support modders, and in return, you get a small CCP for HOI4. It is an incredibly generous program, and we are extremely grateful to have the opportunity to participate. This particular CCP is similar to the other existing cosmetic DLCs for HOI4, such as Unit Pack and Music DLCs, except the content will be in the distinct World Ablaze style rather than the traditional HOI4 vanilla style. As the name of the pack aptly suggests, the content we are providing for the CCP is 2D art for the Soviet Union. There are over 300+ pieces of high-quality 2D art found in this pack that cover a wide range of Soviet content, including (but not limited to) equipment, national focuses, national spirits, etc. Aqeel will show off the art and creative process involved in its creation in the next Dev Diary. There will be plenty of pictures to ooh and ahh at! As I said initially, many of you know me as 156, one of the Head Developers of the World Ablaze mod. Professionally, I am an electrical engineer, software engineer, and entrepreneur. Ive worked for the likes of NASA, Microsoft, and, best of all, myself. I am an avid gamer (maybe moreso in my younger years, but the passion remains), and my favorite genre is, of course, strategy games. Paradox games have always held a special place in my heart as some of the best Grand Strategy RTS games ever made. I started playing Hearts of Iron all the way back in HOI2 and have continued with every installment since (extra shout out to the great spinoffs like Darkest Hour: A Hearts of Iron Game!). Safe to say all these years later, I am as big of a HOI fan as ever. I followed the development of Hearts of Iron IV from its first dev diary to its last and have been playing it since the day it was released. Vanilla was great at first, but as soon as the workshop started getting populated, mods were my go-to way to play. Several years later in 2020, I met my good friend, partner, and fellow World Ablaze Head Developer Aqeel Mughal, otherwise known as Uncharted, and joined him to work on the mod. The rest is history. Weve worked hard over the years to make World Ablaze into the mod it is today: a historical and challenging overhaul of HOI4. We are proud of what we have built and look forward to continuing its development at least as long as HOI4 is supported. If anyone is unfamiliar with what World Ablaze is all about, you can check out our Steam Workshop page here. The main features of the mod include unique equipment and accompanying technology trees, custom mechanics, original artwork, challenging AI, improved map design, and other total overhaul changes such as custom content, focus trees, decisions, etc. World Ablaze started from humble beginnings as the Armed Forces Overhaul (AFO) mod, which was just a historical technology tree and equipment mod for tanks, planes, and ships. However, the scope of the project grew into a total overhaul. Once you overhaul equipment to the extent that AFO did, overhauling the rest of the game was not only natural, but required to accompany such impressive equipment work. Thus, the ambition eventually became to make the best historically accurate World War 2 overhaul mod for Hearts of Iron IV. We have focused on producing a high-quality and professionally run mod, and we can thank our persistent dedication to these standards for our steady rise to prominence. Our mods development complexity is high due to the amount of unique equipment and other complex mechanics. In addition to working on the mod itself, I use my professional expertise to create automated tools that help us with development. The results speak for themselves, and although we are not done yet, we have come a long way. In the past couple of years, Paradoxs outreach and communication with mods has improved significantly. We were lucky to be a part of all these Paradox-modder initiatives from their inception. As time went on, our relationship with Paradox grew, and more opportunities arose. One day, we began talking with Paradox about partnering to create a Content Creator Pack (CCP) similar to what has been done for other Paradox Grand Strategy Games, such as Crusader Kings III. As with CCPs for other games, they would be made by a modding team and published by Paradox as a way of both adding content to HOI4 and supporting modders, who dedicate a significant amount of free time to adding to the game. We were super excited about this opportunity, so we jumped on it. We immediately began drafting up proposals of DLCs we could create to send to the HOI4 team. After many back-and-forth meetings, presentations, and negotiations, we settled on the terms of our partnership and started work on this CCP. If youve played World Ablaze, you know theres a lot of great custom 2D art in mod. So, whats the difference between that art and the art included in the CCP? All the 2D art in the CCP is entirely custom and drawn from scratch for this CCP. While there will inevitably be similarities between the art in the mod and the art in the CCP (due to the fact the same entities, such as equipment, exist in both vanilla and our mod), all the art in the CCP will be of higher quality since any existing art was also redrawn from scratch to be better and more detailed. With this CCP, we've made our mark in the game by giving the Soviet Union an entirely new artistic feel. Featuring unique, high-quality World Ablaze-style historical art, every piece has been crafted to meet exacting standards to ensure a top-notch experience. It is a great addition to any players game, but bonus points if you already love the look of World Ablaze and want that in your vanilla games as well. Dont take my word for it; more information and examples of the included art will be shown off in the next Dev Diary! Finally, I wanted to take some time to give out some much-deserved thank yous. A big thanks to Paradox for allowing us this great and rare opportunity to create official content that will now always be associated with the game we love. And of course, I want to extend my gratitude to all of the Hearts of Iron players who decide to support us by purchasing this CCP. It means the world to us; we ultimately do all of this, both the mod and CCP, for you, and yalls support is the reason we can continue to do the work we do. We hope you enjoy our content!


[ 2024-06-08 13:30:19 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hearts of Iron IV 8th Anniversary

Generals, Katten here. Today marks the day before our 8th anniversary of Hearts of Iron IV. Eight long years on the frontlines, millions of provinces painted in strange colours, thousands of wild encirclements, and countless amazing mods have been created. This year, we also hit a significant milestone: 1.5 million monthly active users! Important Note: If you are unfamiliar with MAU, it is a behind-the-scenes metric that tracks the number of unique individuals who play the game each month. To celebrate, we have something special planned. Last year, we teased an upcoming expansion, but I think we can do even better! This year, we are celebrating what we call Anniversary Week! Five days packed with activities, from something you've been eagerly waiting for to something you've been asking for. How long have I worked here? Never mind that. Let's get to our Anniversary Roadmap!
The Roadmap is our way of showcasing what each fun day contains during the Anniversary Celebration.

  • We are starting tomorrow, June 6th, with a Top Secret Reveal that we have uncovered through an enigma cipher.
  • On June 7th, we celebrate our Discord server hitting 100,000 Generals by giving away 500 copies of Hearts of Iron IV! More info below.
  • On the 8th, we have a smaller secondary announcement with something you might not have been expecting.
  • On the 9th, we are ending our giveaway and sending out the keys. But that's not all! For the fourth year in a row, we are hosting the Community Cup, this year organized by Dankus Memecus. We'll grab our popcorn and soda and watch which team takes the grand prize of 2,500. But there is still another day!
  • On the 10th, our secondary announcement has something more to show you. After a long wait, our next War Effort Update will go live with some much-requested fixes and changes!
Now, I mentioned a giveaway above, so let's get into how you can join! First, you need to join our Discord. Second, go to the Hearts of Iron News channel and press the reaction button on our Giveaway message! If you can't see it, make sure you select the News role in the role selection process. On the 9th, we'll let the AI take the wheel and pick 500 winners, who will be automatically notified by our PDXBot, so make sure you keep your DMs open! Terms of participation are available HERE. I think that's all for today, but wait, is that a countdown on our YouTube channel? You might want to start looking for clues on my social media accounts.


[ 2024-06-05 14:09:03 CET ] [ Original post ]

Steam Publisher Week Sale!

Generals!


The Quartermasters at steam are releasing more supplies - For the next week, you can rearm your Hearts of Iron arsenal with discounts of up to -70% as part of the Paradox Interactive publisher week! Re-Up, Re-Arm, and Rejoin the fight with the savings down below;

Base Game


  • Hearts of Iron IV 70% off
  • Hearts of Iron IV: Starter Edition 60% off

Expansions


  • 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 30% off
  • Hearts of Iron IV: La Rsistance 50% off
  • Hearts of Iron IV: Man the Guns 50% off

Country Pack


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

Music & Unit Packs


  • 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 50% 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 50% off
  • Hearts of Iron IV: Axis Armor 50% off


[ 2024-05-09 17:01:35 CET ] [ Original post ]

War Effort - Operation Grouse 1.14.5 [Checksum: d40a]

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!

USA Mios


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.

Patch Notes


##################################

Balance


################################## - 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. ##################################

UI


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

Graphics


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

Bugfix


################################## - 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


[ 2024-04-23 13:00:17 CET ] [ Original post ]

War Effort - Operation Grouse [1.14.5 OPEN BETA]

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! ##################################

Balance


################################## - 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. ##################################

UI


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

Graphics


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

Bugfix


################################## - 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!


[ 2024-04-19 16:07:53 CET ] [ Original post ]

FREE TO PLAY | MASSIVE SALE | WAR EFFORT

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]

Sales and Discounts Starting at 19:00 CET


Base Game


  • Hearts of Iron IV 80% off

Expansions


  • 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

Country Pack


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

Music & Unit Packs


  • 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

War Effort


I know it's been quite some time since our last War Effort patch, but we're restarting very soon with the "War Effort Roadmap"! The content will vary from patch to patch, but the size of the updates will be similar to last year's. They will also arrive monthly, with quite a few planned before the upcoming expansion about [REDACTED], which is arriving later this year. Now for a recap of what War Effort is for those of you that might have forgotten or for any new faces that are present! What is War Effort? It's what's in the middle of a maintenance patch and a major update. They tend to include bug fixes, small quality-of-life tweaks and changes, gameplay balance adjustments, but most excitingly, they include new gameplay perspectives and focuses for some countries with older content. Now, what that means is that we revisit older released content and give it a more modern look. That all sounds awesome, right? But it's important to know that this does not involve large changes to major systems, feature-level implementations, or non-fix changes to key calculations (combat, production, etc.). This is partly to ensure that mod support during these small updates remains manageable. We will receive larger changes for major updates that come alongside DLCs. Now, what you've all been waiting for. Below, you can see the new and improved Roadmap! And trust me, there's more lurking beyond the shadows.


[ 2024-04-04 13:01:30 CET ] [ Original post ]

Steam Store Update | Patch 1.14.3 [Checksum 21DE]

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.

Steam Store Changes


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
Additionally, at 18:00 CET today, Waking the Tiger, Together for Victory and Death or Dishonor will have their store pages removed, as they will then be included in the base game purchase of Hearts of Iron IV for $49.99. However, the DLCs will not be fully integrated at this time, so you will still be able to toggle them on and off in your game launcher. Full integration is scheduled for a later time; we'll provide updates on this shortly The Anniversary Pack will also have its Steam page removed as it is already included in the base game of Hearts of Iron IV. We do not see a reason to have its own store page, as it currently only serves to confuse some of our new players.

Patch 1.14.3 [Checksum 21DE]


Now at 15:00 CET, our 1.14.3 Patch is live! With plenty of new balance changes and bug fixes. Feel free to leave your feedback in this thread or in the bug report forum as usual, especially if you encounter new issues not present in 1.14.3, or if something marked as fixed in the below changelog still occurs for you. ################################################################ ######## Patch 1.14.3 "Bolivar" ######### ################################################################ ################################## # Balance ################################## - South America Shared: Reduced Maximum Command Power Increase from Joint Operations Command (from 30% to 15%) - South America Shared: Reduced the org and core defense gain of strength of the common solider to 4% (from 5%). Also reduced the infantry bonus gained - South America Shared: Reduced attack modifier for Spearhead tanks specialization from 10% to 3.5% - South America Shared: Reduced specializing in heavy guns attack for artillery from 10% to 3.5% - South America Shared: Reduced specializing in heavy guns AA production reduction cost from 20% to 6% - South America Shared: Reduced specializing in heavy guns AT production reduction cost from 25% to 15% - South America Shared: Removed Recruitable pop factor from Increase Conscription focus - Reduced division defense from increased army professionalism from 10% to 5%. attack and org from 5% to 4%. Reduced traning time from +25% penalty to +15% penalty - Argentina: Reduced Women in the industry and state unions max efficiency factor bonus from 15% and 10% (25% total) to 7.5% (15% max) - Argentina: Reduced regulated salaries efficiency cap from 15% to 7.5% - Argentina: Reduced daily xp gain from US army training to 0.1xp/d (from 0.2xp/d) - Argentina: Reduced maintain neutrality spirit stability (from 10% to 5%) and efficiency cap (from 10% to 5%) - Argentina: Reduced our own path spirit recruitable pop factor from 30% to 15% - Argentina: Reduced spirit of the conquistadors attack (from 20% to 6%) - Argentina: Reduced Argentine Nationalism conscription factor (from 15% to 7%) and Civilian construction speed (from 10% to 6%) - Argentina: increased war division temp manpower gain from 50 weekly to 250 weekly - Chile: Replaced mapuche social classes weekly stability with a flat stability factor - Chile: Elena Caffarena gives a flat stability factor instead of a weekly stability - Chile: Reduced Embrace Indigenous Corporatism Factory output (from 10% to 5%) - Chile: Expand the agricultural field gives 1 additional build slot (from 3 to 4) - Old Guard for Army now gives 0.2 army XP daily (from 0.3) due to costing only 50pp - Chile: Gabriela Mistral - Reduced PP gain (from 20% to 15%) - Chile: Transport Minister no longer gives civ construction speed. Increase railway and hub construction speed (from 10% to 15%) - Chile: Minister of Trade development - Reduced Trade law cost factor (from -30% to -15%) and consumer goods factor (from -10% to -5%) - Chile: Father of Industrialization - Reduced Construction bonus (From 15% to 7%) - Chile: Minister of Defense - Reduced MIL construction speed (from 15% to 10%). Reduced Defense on core territory (from 10% to 6%) - TOA Shared Minister of Defense - Reduced mil construction speed (from 10% to 7.5%) - Chile: Reduced merchant marine manufacturer discount on convoy production (from -50% to -20%) and reduced their reliability gained (from +30% to +10%) - Chile: Unified in spirit - Reduced Org gain (from 10% to 5%) - Chile: Reduced Army attack of Patagonian Giants to 5% (from 10%), defense to 8% (from 10%) and breakthrough to 8% (from 10%) - Chile: Reduced the miners representative building speed (from 10% to 6%) and its max efficiency factor (from 10% to 5%) - Chile: Reduced conservative businessman civilian speed (from 15% to 10%) and its max efficiency factor (from 10% to 5%) - TOA Shared: Reduced the minister of lands and colonizaition non-core-manpower to 4% (from 10%) and 6% (from 15%) from version 2. Increased global building slots gained (from 5% to 15%, and 25% for version 2) - Chile: Reduced Minister of Economy and commerce trade laws cost (from -50% to -25%) - Chile: Reduced defender of araucanian soverighnty factory output (8% from 15%) - Chile: Reduced president of the central bank consumer goods reduction (to -5% from -10%) - TOA: Reduced social economist consumer goods factor reduction (from -15% to -7%) - Chile: Apostlic prefect of Araucania reduced factory output bonus (from 10% to 6%) - Chile: Reduced Emperor Of France and the Americas attack core factor (from 15% to 5%) and core defense (from 20% to 10%), war support (from 15% to 10%), and stability (from 15% to 10%) - Chile: Reduced Carabineros de Chile army core attack (from 10% to 5%) and core defense (from 15% to 7%) - Chile: Reduced Christian Democrat pp gain (from 15% to 10%) - Chile: Reduced Laizzes faire civ construction speed (from 20% to 10%). Reduces law cost reduction (from -50% to -25%) - Chile: Reduced High Quality Nitrate bonus (from 10% attack to 5% attack) - Chile: Utilize Famae Mil reduced by 1 - Chile: Reduced Carabineros de Chile Core attack (from 10% to 5%) and core defense (from 15% to 10%) - Chile: Reduced factory output from opressed working class (from 20% to 10%) and consumer goods (from -15% to -10%). - Chile: Reduced Francoist Model Defense (from 10% to 5%) and factory output (from 10% to 5%) - Chile: Reduced Max attack bonus gain from Pan historic rhetoric (from 10% to 6%) and defense (from 10% to 6%) - Chile: Reduced Max attack bonus gain from Pan historic rhetoric (from 10% to 6%) and defense (from 10% to 6%) - Reduced max attack bonus gain from the francoist model (from max 10% attack to max 5% attack) and defense (from max 10% to max 5%) - Shared focus tree: Reduced arty attack gained from heavy Guns industries (from 10% to 5%) and defense (from 15% to 10%). Gives 1 research boost instead of 2 - Chile: Spirit of the conquistadors now gives 6% breakthrough instead of 10% attack - Chile: Fascist Theologian gives 8% pp instead of 15%. Other stats unchanged - Chile: Reduced the true enemy factory output gain (from 10% to 5%) - Paraguay: Reduced Flourishing Economy (from 20% output to 15%) ################################## # Gameplay ################################## - Brazil now has updated infantry equipment names and icons. - Added an extra flag for US of Brazil - Added some extra flags for forming the United Kingdom/Empires of Brazil/Portugal and altered an event so that Brazil can now annex Portugal rather than puppet them to form the United Kingdoms. - Changed some icons for Uruguay & Paraguay ################################## # AI ################################## - AI no longer overwrites other countries' supply node motorization settings ################################## # Modding ################################## - Fix bug where on_ruling_party_changed sometimes didn't get the correct old_ideology_token - Adding on_ruling_party_change_immediate on-action as a deprecated and unsafe backwards-compatibility for mods that rely on that behavior ################################## # Bugfix ################################## - Added missing text for America Decolonized achivement - Fixed a typo for the DEF name for Nordic Defence council - Fixed a rare crash caused by government in exile eating resources without freeing them - Fixed an issue where the Chilean communist focus "Propose Closer Cooperation" wouldn't properly be able to target your subjects, thus preventing you from annexing the way you were meant to be able to. - Fixed an issue causing the Swedish AI to enable all strategy plans - "Brazil/Argentina makes aggressive moves on Uruguay" event no longer triggers when TOA is disabled - Fixed bugs where research agreements would kick out members for both Argentina and the Soviets - Fixed a bug for the fascist demagogue causing "Fascism on the rise" decisions to appear - Fixed a bug where Argentina would retain wargoal on UK after taking the Falkland and South Georgia islands - Fixed a bunch of local_resources modifiers in state scope that should have been state_resources - An attempt to maintain our neutrality bypasses if you are communist - Added missing flags for America do Sul formable (Brazil focus tree) - Brazil - 'Anuae!' national focus now gives a locked template to prevent an exploit. - Brazil - 'The International Crisis' national focus now sets the game rule 'can send volunteers' for Brazil. - Uruguay: Removed ghost focus in Uruguay - Paraguay: Fixed being able to take Mass Drafts before adopt minority languages - Fixed an issue where Paraguay could join cominterm despite not being allowed to - Generic "join" faction events can no longer be used to bypass "can_join_faction = no" rules - Brazil - AI Brazil will join Allies on historical instead of sometimes ending up in the Comintern. - Removed a character for Argentina which was causing problems with the fascist path. - Removed slot in Nigers impassable terrain. Niger proper now is rural Happy Map Painting!


[ 2024-03-21 14:00:28 CET ] [ Original post ]

Thank you for your Service | Spring Sale | Steam Store Update

Spring is Here and So Are Freebies for Hearts of Iron IV Fans!


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.

Why Redeem Now?


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.

How to Redeem:


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.

FAQ


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.

Spring Sale Discounts


Base Game
  • Hearts of Iron IV 70% off
  • Hearts of Iron IV: Starter Edition 76% off
Expansions
  • 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
Country Pack
  • Hearts of Iron IV: Battle for the Bosporus 50% off
Music & Model Packs
  • 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

Country Packs - Steam Store changes


Hello, Community Manager Katten here, I have some updates regarding the Steam Store. We've taken your feedback to heart regarding the clarity of Trial of Allegiance as a Country Pack. As a result, we've decided to rename both Trial of Allegiance and Battle for the Bosporus to include "Country Pack" at the beginning of their names. Please see the changes below:
  • Hearts of Iron IV: Trial of Allegiance > Country Pack - Hearts of Iron IV: Trial of Allegiance
  • Expansion - Hearts of Iron IV: Battle for the Bosporus > Country Pack - Hearts of Iron IV: Battle for the Bosporus


[ 2024-03-14 17:15:05 CET ] [ Original post ]

Reception & Thoughts | Patch 1.14.2 [Checksum fbf7]

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.

The Elephant in the Room


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:

Everythings on Fire!


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.

Circles Within Circles


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.

Regional Pricing


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.

General Pricing


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.

Wanted Something Different


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.

Quality of Release


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.
As I mentioned above, this has been a very bug-light release, but if an issue is plaguing you then please let us know through the usual channels, and well spend any time left over on making other improvements to ToAs content. -----------

Stuff That Doesnt Really Help


Reviews that are empty/irrelevant/insulting/contain mysterious dwarven chanting are not going to be useful to us. When I say that we read all reviews, Im not kidding - but if theres no actionable text, we cant do anything with it. Of course, it is your right to maintain a practice of critical ambiguity, Im just saying it wont produce results. Reviews and comments that set up a strawman and try to assign a motive to the decisions we make serves only to create a rift between developers and community. We love this game as much as you do, and while it would be naive of me to assume that every discussion can be equally polite and constructive, I do believe that it is better if we let people represent themselves. Of course, the vast majority of you understand this.

In Conclusion


From my perspective, team Juno had a cracking debut release, and Im beyond proud of what they accomplished. The strategic side of things is where weve fallen short, and that is my cross to bear. Finally, the reason Im saying any of this stuff is to give you folks some context. This is hopefully an insight into the thought process that collectively happens behind the scenes at HoI HQ. Ill be around to try and answer any questions! Below, youll find the patch notes for the update coming sometime today: ################################################################ ######## Patch 1.14.2 "Bolivar" ######### ################################################################ ################################## # Bugfix & Gameplay Additions ################################## - Presets in the equipment designer should not be blocked because of so-called negative stats - Blockade runner now requires fighting with at least one >37 knot ship - Added a decision for fascist Chile after completing the focus "Forge a New Chilean Identity" to change the national flag to the Patria Vieja based one, due to popular demand. - Added Felipe Molas Lpez as advisor for Paraguay - Valentino Riroko Tuki's trait has been buffed, and RAP now gains slightly more things when released and chosen to be played as a part of the Araucanian-Chilean civil war. - Blockade runner is now actually obtainable - Flourishing economy for Paraguay no longer expires - Revenge for the Triple Alliance and Rekindle old gripes now gives wargoals against both actors in a civil war if BRA or ARG is in a civil war - Fixed an issue where two designer companies for Chile wouldn't have icons with AAT disabled. - Fixed a bug where Bartolome Blanche would go to the revolting side in the Araucanian civil war despite the non-aligned side still meeting all the requirements to keep him. - Fixed an issue where taking any of the Promote Spanish Immigration decisions as Chile would permanently block the player from taking any further immigration decisions. - Support the Spanish republicans no longer spams the error folder - Historical AI behavior setting for Uruguay no longer disallows achievements - Fixed an issue where Paraguay could take a focus before taking the prerequisite focus - You no longer require French Somaliland for the Chilean empire achivement - USA should no longer guarantee Monroe countries in addition to having the Monroe spirit if Trial of Allegiance is on, unless Tension is > 90% - Replaced some Uruguayan spirit icons with nicer ones - Italy now joins the war when France proper is being invaded by Axis troops, or on the historical date - Reshuffled priorities for building slots for URG/PAR to make it less likely that the capital hits the 25 slot limit - Paraguay river navy gets properly removed upon capitulation - Fixed Oscar Escudero Otrola having his name backwards - 'Reach out to Soviets' in the Argentina tree now checks if the Soviet Union is communist. - Election event will now only fire if Brazil has completed 'Repeal the National Security Laws' - Made the requirements to get Senor Hilter slightly easier. - Added the correct Mechanized tech icons for Brazil - Fixed an issue where Argentina and Chile could not use their modern small aircraft icon for carrier aircraft. - Added a fix so you can now see that Prestes will become country leader with the 'Align with Moscow' trait. - Added a check to Argentina's 'Support the Spanish Republicans' focus so it can only be taken if the Spanish Republic exists. - some more portrait tweaks for minvervino, valentino and dartnell - Added a check to the Juan Peron focus to make sure he is still recruited. Also added tooltip to event to make it more apparent he will not be available. - Argentina can now peace out all UK allies when taking the Falklands - Modified requirements for 'Revise Treaty of Roca-Runciman' in Argentina focus tree. Now accessible to communists after civil war. - New Edelman portrait added and minor tweaks to previously existing portraits - Fix for the Cisplatine war achievement not working. - Fixed snake smoked achievement file names. - Nerfed some of the recruitable population and supply in Communist Argentina - Merged two instances of a duplicated Brazilian admiral/advisor - Added fix to prevent elections from firing if Vargas is still country leader - Eugenio Gomez portrait updated to show the right person - Neglected state and Cangaco state modifiers will now be removed when another country owns the state. - Fixed an issue that was preventing players from inviting countries to the Org of American states faction and made it easier to see how to integrate countries into US of South America. - Updated some focuses that were not adding cores to new states. - Added a fix to make sure that Support the Spanish Nationalists isn't available if they win the civil war - Added chief of army for those without ToA for Argentina - Removed "Fascism on the rise" decisions for Argentina - Made Fascist demagogue advisors available from game start in Argentina - Brazil and Argentina now have full access to their respective intel agency icons - Improved tooltip for Align with Moscow focus - Beneath the shadow of the Triple Alliance and Rekindle old gripes no longer instantly white peace PAR/URG, giving them the option of continuing the war without being teleported back - Fixed confusing Tooltip for blockade runner - Peru can no longer go to war with Ecuador if subject - Chile can no longer create their own faction is subject - Mexico can no longer invite Peru to their faction if they are at war with Ecuador - Normandy is now part of Chile's decisions to core France - Manuel A. Rodriguez no longer has a duplicated localization key and is recruited when ToA is disabled. - Added fix that prevents players from taking "Demand Compensation From Spain" if Spain does not own Equatorial Guinea - Fixed an issue with Argentina's starting plane having the wrong icon. - Fixed a bug where "TAG makes aggressive moves on Uruguay" event fires twice - URSAL focus now grants cores to Brazil - Fixed a bug which required reloading the game to show hidden Senor Hilter focuses ################################## # AI ################################## - AI now motorizes supply hubs if needed, even if they are controlled by allies or puppets - The ai should no longer be as willing to send volunteers to the Kingdom of Araucania and Patagonia for all of eternity. - Limiting some italy ai strategies for only when in faction with germany ################################## # Modding ################################## - Removed the check on negative stats that disabled create_equipment_variant and AI equipment creation ################################## # Stability & Performance ################################## - Improve performance in resource computation. - Various minor optimisations across the game (infrastructure etc)


[ 2024-03-13 11:50:30 CET ] [ Original post ]

Trial of Allegiance Available NOW!

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.


[ 2024-03-07 16:06:02 CET ] [ Original post ]

Trial of Allegiance | Patch 1.14.1 "BOLIVAR"

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


[ 2024-03-06 17:02:09 CET ] [ Original post ]

Developer Diary | Art & Achievements


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/


[ 2024-02-28 14:02:12 CET ] [ Original post ]

Developer Diary | Alt-History Brazil

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

Integralist Path


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.

Domination of South America



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.

Monarchist Path


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;

Democratic Path


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.

Good Neighbour Path


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.

Communist Path


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.

Art


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!










Conclusion


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!


[ 2024-02-21 14:00:55 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hearts of Iron Weeklong Sale!

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[ 2024-02-19 18:51:12 CET ] [ Original post ]

Developer Diary | Giant Bag of Goodies

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!

Bolivar Patch


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!

The Peru-Ecuador Conflict


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.

New Formable Nations


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.

New Releasable Nations


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.

Canada War Effort


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?

Update Central American Formables


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.

New American Industrial Concern


And now we arrive at my final contributions to this patch. First up we have the Union Pacific Railroad for the USA.

New Operatives


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!

Naval Trait Rework


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!).

Trial of Allegiance


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.

Amazon Rework


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.

Peron


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!

Paraguay & Uruguay


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)

Paraguay


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

Uruguay


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.

Shared Branches



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

Next Week


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!


[ 2024-02-14 14:03:28 CET ] [ Original post ]

Developer Diary | Chile

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/


[ 2024-02-07 14:00:02 CET ] [ Original post ]

Developer Diary | Argentina

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!

Context Pre-1936


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)



Historical Branch


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!

Democratic Branch


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.

Industrial Branch


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.

Fascist Branch


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.

Communist Branch


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!

Military Branch


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!

Conclusion


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/


[ 2024-01-31 14:02:21 CET ] [ Original post ]

Focus Tree Community Feedback Survey!

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


[ 2024-01-30 13:29:03 CET ] [ Original post ]

Trial of Allegiance | Historical Brazil

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!

Intro


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.

Context Pre-1936


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)




1936-1938


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.

Vargas Era


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.



Industrial Branch


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!

World War II


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.

Military Branch


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.

Conclusion


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


[ 2024-01-25 16:01:54 CET ] [ Original post ]

Something is on the Horizon.....

Generals! Something lurks within the leaves, watch the video from our Recon team and let us know your thoughts... [previewyoutube=NnzfUJfKg1E;full][/previewyoutube]


[ 2024-01-18 14:01:00 CET ] [ Original post ]

Catch the HOI4 International Tournament Finals NOW!

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


[ 2023-12-28 16:22:19 CET ] [ Original post ]

HOI4 INTERNATIONAL 2023!

Generals!


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
TommyKay will be joined by an illustrious team of casters including; FeedbackGaming, DiscardPixel, AbsoluteHabibi, Seemops and Midgeman! So, head on over to Tommy's channel by clicking the image below, and follow the story as he crowns a new CHAMPION over the next two days!


[ 2023-12-27 14:01:58 CET ] [ Original post ]

Steam Winter Sale!

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 :)

Base Game


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

Expansions


  • 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

Music & Model Packs


  • 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


[ 2023-12-21 18:02:56 CET ] [ Original post ]

Final Developer Diary of 2023!

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

Arms Against Tyranny Stats


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%
Sweden - 24%
  • The Old Enemy Stirs - 70%
  • Continue the Second Industrial Revolution - 30%
Norway - 12%
  • The Stumbling Storting - 62%
  • A Resurgent Labor Movement - 22%
  • Continue Nygaardsvolds Government - 9%
  • Vote of No Confidence - 7%
Denmark - 12%
  • Unify the Right - 80%
  • Political Unity - 20%
Iceland - 6%
  • Not our King - 90%
  • Kingdom of Iceland - 10%
Overall people strongly preferred the more historical route for Finland and restoring monarchies as Denmark, Norway and Sweden. Iceland bucked the trend. I guess ppl hate being a puppet more than they love the king ;D Overall the top 10 played nations are (5h+ games):
  • Germany - 22%
  • Soviet - 12%
  • China - 6%
  • PRC - 6%
  • Italy - 4%
  • USA - 4%
  • Japan - 4%
  • France - 3%
  • England - 2%
  • Turkey - 2%
This ranking has held fairly stable, but its nice to see how much it evens out as we make more content (except for the big two - Germany and Soviets).

The Future


The coming year is going to be a really exciting one as we have succeeded in something we have tried to do for a long time - create a second autonomous team filled with brilliant and awesome people! This means that you can expect more stuff and at a quicker pace during 2024 as we now have another team focused on delivering more national flavor and content. In fact they have already been at large for a while :) Without revealing too much this side of the year I will cryptically say: Next year you will see both a new face on something familiar, and take our first step into an untouched continent *Disappears with a mysterious hiss into a cloud of smoke* The Hearts of Iron IV team and I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! Oh, and keep your eyes peeled for a certain Steam event happening Later today.


[ 2023-12-21 13:53:00 CET ] [ Original post ]

Stella Polaris | Patch 1.13.6

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;

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


[ 2023-12-12 13:08:19 CET ] [ Original post ]

Stella Polaris | Patch 1.13.6 Open Beta [Checksum 4b5c ]

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!


[ 2023-12-05 14:40:53 CET ] [ Original post ]

Steam Awards 2023 Nominate Hearts of Iron IV!

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


[ 2023-11-24 14:13:38 CET ] [ Original post ]

Steam Autumn Sale and HOI Grandest LAN!

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;

Base Game


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

Expansions


  • 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

Music & Model Packs


  • 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


[ 2023-11-21 18:12:14 CET ] [ Original post ]

Stella Polaris | Patch 1.13.5 Changelog - Checksum 09ac

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!


[ 2023-11-01 14:02:21 CET ] [ Original post ]

Stella Polaris | Patch 1.13.4 Changelog - Checksum 15a3

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!


[ 2023-10-19 16:04:22 CET ] [ Original post ]

Stella Polaris Hotfix 1.13.3

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.

Bugfixes


- Support company bonuses to battalions should now properly work, even with several sources of additive and multiplicative bonuses


[ 2023-10-12 15:47:14 CET ] [ Original post ]

Stella Polaris Hotfix 1.13.2

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.

Bugfixes


- 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.


[ 2023-10-11 15:47:08 CET ] [ Original post ]

Arms Against Tyranny Available 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!


[ 2023-10-10 15:00:15 CET ] [ Original post ]

Arms Against Tyranny | Change Log

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


[ 2023-10-09 13:09:58 CET ] [ Original post ]

Developer Diary | Performance

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?

Mines, or the greatest urban legend


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.

V-Sync, G-Sync, Free-Sync, NSync


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.

General performance improvements


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!

HOI4: You Can(not) Multithread


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]


[ 2023-10-09 13:07:06 CET ] [ Original post ]

Developer Diary | Art & Achievements!

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 [strike]I hate myself[/strike] 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]

The Joint Focus Tree


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;

Portraits


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 [strike]art-filled[/strike] launch, communication is key. So, here is a small selection of historical figures we would like to showcase beforehand!



Focus icons


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.



3D art


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!

Achievements


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/


[ 2023-10-06 14:18:19 CET ] [ Original post ]

Arms Against Tyranny | MIO Tutorial

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]


[ 2023-10-05 13:13:00 CET ] [ Original post ]

Arms Against Tyranny | Updated Mods for Release!

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;

WATCH THE REVEAL HERE


Road to 56



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

Kaiserreich



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

Equestria At War



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

Millenium Dawn



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

The New Order: Last Days of Europe



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

Cold War Iron Curtain



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

Kaisserredux: A Kaiserreich Expansion



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

Old World Blues



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

BlackICE Historical Immersion Mod



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

Expert AI



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

Pax Britannica: An Imperial Timeline



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

Lord of the Rings Mod



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

End of a New Beginning



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

World Ablaze



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


[ 2023-10-04 15:54:42 CET ] [ Original post ]

Developer Diary | International Market

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.


[ 2023-10-02 13:18:59 CET ] [ Original post ]

Arms Against Tyranny | Feature Breakdown Video #4

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]


[ 2023-09-28 13:30:08 CET ] [ Original post ]

Developer Diary | Military Industrial Organisations (MIO's)

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.

Intent


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

Goals


  • 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
So let's see what the final version of the MIOs look like. So firstly how do you see your MIO's? This is as simple as previously you can find your MIOs in the political menu where you would have found the buttons to unlock design companies before.

From here we can click on details and this will show the detailed page for that specific MIO, this is where you will upgrade that MIO as it grows in size.
Right so this is very different from the mock ups from the dev corner so let's go through this. Firstly let's talk about the progression change in the middle. Previously we had 6 departments (3 design, 3 manufacture) each with their own stats and unlocks; this now has been condensed into 1 tree covering everything for the MIO. The old design was very void of narrative and feeling and often was overwhelming with choice but underwhelming in effect. By bringing everything into a tree like so with fewer actual unlocks your choices are more impactful and the compromises are clearer. The trees also allow for a narrative progression through the small advances made within companies that the bonuses provided represent.
In addition to this we have unique traits for some MIOs that represent them having their historical unique capabilities.
Departments now represent the groupings of equipment an MIO will affect this allows you to have a quick snapshot of the bonuses an MIO can and is offering so if you see an MIO with a department for medium tanks you know to expect it to give you houses for that and once youve unlocked some of those traits you will see them on the department/
Now we have some entirely new things. So let's start with the initial trait. Every MIO has an initial trait this provides bonuses to that MIO always and generally designates the type of MIO so an MIO such as supermarine has the initial trait agility fighter this tells us this MIO is focused around agility for small aircraft and the initial bonuses will also be for that

Next we have policies, policies are mid upgrade bonuses. They cost political power and provide a bonus that is outside of the normal traits you would get for the MIO. These bonuses specialise you MIO in certain directions from making it grow faster or giving bonus stats or building faster. Once you select a policy you cannot change it for 180 days so you need to make sure youre selecting the ones you need for each MIO because they are long term choices.



Now we will get onto using the MIOs, so as detailed before in the dev corner MIOs are applied when we research now, so when you go to research something that has an applicable MIO for it you will get the option to attack an MIO for a small PP income cost or to research without an MIO. MIOs offer research time bonuses so attaching them makes the time faster and adds funds letting your MIO increase in size as you research. If you didnt attack on MIO or want to change the attacked MIO you can also do this after researching. You can go to any equipment and create a new variant and attack or change the MIO on the equipment for a small XP cost. Once an MIO is attached to equipment it will apply to any further variants you make.



However the MIO attached to equipment is a snapshot of the traits of the MIO when it was applied and must be upgraded to gain any new traits unlocked since then also for a small xp cost. This can be done via the make valiant screen or via the history tab.
The history tab in the MIO details screen shows every equipment you have with that MIO attached and any equipment currently being produced by the MIO. from here you can upgrade the MIO on the equipment up to the latest traits individually or you can upgrade all non obsolete ones with the upgrade all button. You can also upgrade all whenever you unlock a new trait via a check box.

Finally we can add mios in the equipment designers this works the same as with other equipment but we do when designing the equipment.


Finally we have production, any production line can have an MIO attached so long as it has the equipment designed in one of its departments, most MIOs will have production bonuses for equipment allowing for faster or more efficient production when they are attached. On top of this you also gain funds from producing equipment so building something with you MIOs will let them increase in size faster. This is integrated into the flow when you add a new production line and can be added later simply via the production menu





Modding


Implementation of new MIOs are very easy, you can create a new one or include and extend/modify an existing one all natively in the api. An MIO has a basic structure like this equipment_type = { mio_cat_eq_all_light_tank mio_cat_eq_all_medium_tank } research_categories = { mio_cat_tech_light_armor_and_modules mio_cat_tech_medium_armor_and_modules } This acts to tell the MIO what equipment it will be affecting with traits and which tech categories it will be applicable to. Here we are using a new type of collection for MIOs equipment categories; these are script defined sets of equipment types that allow you to reference all of them with a single token instead of having to declare each one individually for every instance. initial_trait = { name = generic_mio_initial_trait_standardized_production equipment_bonus = { armor_value = -0.05 defense =-0.05 } production_bonus = { production_cost_factor = -0.1 } } Next we are defining the initial trait that is modifiers that the MIO starts with, these can affect the equipment modifiers, production modifiers or MIO modifiers like fund gain or research bonus speed. trait = { token = generic_mio_trait_simplified_suspension name = generic_mio_trait_simplified_suspension icon = GFX_generic_mio_trait_icon_reliability position = { x=1 y=0 } equipment_bonus = { reliability = 0.05 } } trait = { token = generic_mio_trait_crew_ergonomics name = generic_mio_trait_crew_ergonomics icon = GFX_generic_mio_trait_icon_maximum_speed position = { x=4 y=0 } relative_position_id = generic_mio_trait_simplified_suspension equipment_bonus = { maximum_speed = 0.02 defense = 0.02 } } trait = { token = generic_mio_trait_improved_tracks name = generic_mio_trait_improved_tracks icon = GFX_generic_mio_trait_icon_maximum_speed position = { x=0 y=2 } relative_position_id = generic_mio_trait_simplified_suspension any_parent = { generic_mio_trait_simplified_suspension } equipment_bonus = { reliability = 0.05 maximum_speed = 0.05 } } Now we are defining the traits we can declare where they exist on the trait grid and if they have any parents that they connect to and what parents are needed for the trait to be accessible. As above we have the any_parent trigger. We can also do things like mutual exclusivity and other things expected from hoi4s trees. When creating traits we don't always have to affect everything, we can limit a trait to only affect specific equipment. By using the limit_to_equipment_type we can select an equipment type that MUST be contained in the equipment_type categories defined. tree_header_text = { text = mio_header_tank_construction x = 3 } Finally for normal MIO setup we have headers, these are text entries that you can position on the grid. They will always be above a trait on the same grid location and are fixpoints numbers so can go between grids. Now that works great for a new MIO but now let's talk about taking an existing one and expanding on it to make it a bit more unique without having to duplicate this for every MIO. include = generic_medium_tank_organization This include line will take all the script from the defined MIO and use it for this new MIO; we can now modify this include as well. We can simply declare non trait values normally and they will override just like with parenting in other parts of hoi4s scripting. However for traits since they are a tree they need to have some explicit commands. add_trait = { token = ENG_mio_trait_expanded_turret_capacity name = ENG_mio_trait_expanded_turret_capacity icon = GFX_generic_mio_department_icon_tank_medium_tank_engine special_trait_background = yes position = { x=1 y=1 } relative_position_id = generic_mio_trait_all_round_cupola any_parent = { generic_mio_trait_all_round_cupola } limit_to_equipment_type = { mio_cat_eq_all_medium_tank } equipment_bonus = { reliability = 0.05 armor_value = 0.05 breakthrough = 0.05 } } Here we can see we have used the add trait line to add another tree to the tree just for this MIO, we are even able here to give it a parent by using the token for a trait declared in the included MIO. in addition to add we can also remove_trait and override_trait if we wish. The final part I'll talk about for trees is the allowed and available blocks. Allowed & available works just like any other in the game. We can lock MIOs for any reason. So if you want to stop a trait from being available because of a decision or national focus you can do this. And allows you to lock MIOs to specific countries but is only run on load as with other allowed blocks. The finally part of MIOs is policies mio_policy_land_cutting_corners = { icon = GFX_mio_policy_cutting_corners allowed = { OR = { has_mio_equipment_type = armor has_mio_equipment_type = motorized has_mio_equipment_type = mechanized has_mio_equipment_type = anti_tank has_mio_equipment_type = flame has_mio_equipment_type = anti_air has_mio_equipment_type = artillery has_mio_equipment_type = rocket has_mio_equipment_type = infantry } } available = { has_mio_size > 5} equipment_bonus = { same_as_mio = { build_cost_ic = -0.1 reliability = -0.05 soft_attack = -0.05 hard_attack = -0.05 armor_value = -0.05 } } } This is a policy in script. It's very simple to implement but we have a few special things for MIOs. Has_mio_equipment_type is the trigger used to ask if the MIO has a specific unit type defined in equipment_type = {.... so this is very useful for making sure policies are only allowed or available for the mios you want. Finally we have same_as_mio this dynamically makes the stat bonus apply to whatever equipment was defined for equipment_type = {.... So we don't need to worry if the armour bonus we add with a policy is targeted against the correct equipment or cover them all, so long as we are allowing them correctly we just add the modifiers under same_as_mio. That's a quick round up of most of the core parts of MIOs from a modding standpoint but feel free to ask questions if there's something still unclear. That's everything for this week as always feel free to ask questions about this feature and I'll do my best to answer them. Next week we will be looking at the International Market feature. I hope to see you there. C0RAX Out.


[ 2023-09-27 13:01:32 CET ] [ Original post ]

Player Feedback Survey!

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
[url=https://discord.gg/hoi4]


[ 2023-09-25 16:03:49 CET ] [ Original post ]

Bergagrdhof 23 - Live Streaming Now!

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.

Watch Live now on Twitch!



[ 2023-09-23 07:43:34 CET ] [ Original post ]

Developer Diary | Finland Alt History Part 2!

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.

The Continuation War


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

City and State Name Changing


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.

Releasables and Game Rules


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!


[ 2023-09-20 13:25:29 CET ] [ Original post ]

Developer Diary | Finland Alt History Part 1!

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!

Click this for second part of today's Dev Diary!



[ 2023-09-20 13:25:13 CET ] [ Original post ]

Introducing: Hearts of Iron FRONTLINES

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!

Find out more below!


[previewyoutube=G3ep__9CHG8;full][/previewyoutube]


[ 2023-09-19 13:35:20 CET ] [ Original post ]

Developer Diary | Modding!

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.

How do you make a Joint Focus Tree?


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.

Focus Title Background


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!

Dynamic Focus Icons


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.

Showing Event Option Tooltips


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. .

Modifying the Effectiveness of Forts


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:

New Functionality for CTRL + ALT + Click


Weve added more functionality for the (debug-only) hotkey CTRL+ALT+Click on certain UI elements. For those of you who might not know about this hotkey, this is an extremely useful tool for scripting and debugging: when used on a certain object in the UI, it will automatically open the file and lead to the line in which said object is defined, so you can immediately see the script behind it, and do whatever you need to do with it. Quick example: (with debug mode on) you can CTRL+ALT+Click on a focus and it will open the appropriate focus file and lead you to the line in which it is defined:

As a reminder, this could already be used in focus, events (clicking on any of the event options), decisions, ideas (National Spirits, Designers, Laws, Officer Corps Spirits), characters (advisors, country leaders, unit leaders), technologies and doctrines. Please forgive me if I forgot something, I can barely hear my thoughts on this rain Now, our amazing coders have fixed an issue with unavailable advisors not working with this (now they do!), and new functionality has been added so that we can now CTRL+ALT+Click on:
  • 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

Improvements for Division Commanders.


We have improved a bit the way of scripting Division Commanders (Field Officers). Now you can define them with a localized name and with portraits, both in OOB files and inside the create_unit effect:

Parameter random_select_amount


This useful new parameter can be added to all the every_[scope] effects (every_character, every_state, every_other_country, etc.). The parameter takes an integer as value, and this value is the number of times the effect will run before breaking the for loop running behind the scenes. Previously, we had a few different ways of applying effects to, lets say, 3 random states, but all of them required an unreasonable amount of script and custom tooltips in order to make sure that the effects could not be applied to the same state twice, and they all generated very shitty tooltips. Now, the use of random_select_amount allows us to apply effects to a number of random scopes (states, characters, countries) in a very simple way with no possibility of choosing the same scope twice and generating a standard tooltip that indicates the actual states targeted by the effect:

Filter for including invisible unit leaders in effects & triggers


If you ever had the need to apply effects to all your land and navy officers, regardless of them being visible to the country or not (due to, for example, the country not having completed a focus yet), you will find the new parameter include_invisible pretty useful. This parameter is now available as an optional parameter in the full set of scoped triggers and effects related to unit leaders (every/random/all/any_unit/navy/army_leader). By default is set to false, so you only need to use it if you want to scope to all the unit leaders belonging to a TAG, regardless of them being visible (unlocked) to the country or not.
This is the full list of effects and triggers that benefit from this parameter: every_unit_leader random_unit_leader every_army_leader random_army_leader every_navy_leader random_navy_leader all_unit_leader all_army_leader all_navy_leader any_unit_leader any_army_leader any_navy_leader

Use of Variables as tag in targeted modifiers


Now it is possible to input a variable as the tag parameter inside the targeted_modifier block, allowing us to store the appropriate country inside a variable and then apply the National Spirit targeting the appropriate country very easily!
And this is all for me, Ill see you soon in a future Developer Diary but in the meanwhile I wish you all a great summer!


[ 2023-09-13 13:03:45 CET ] [ Original post ]

Developer Diary | Denmark Alt History

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:

Aligning with Your Overlord


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.

Rearming Denmark


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 [strike]German[/strike] 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-

Let the King Assume Power


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-

The Fascist Options


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!


[ 2023-09-06 13:03:34 CET ] [ Original post ]

Behind the Scenes of Skkijrven Polkka!

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


[ 2023-08-31 13:04:38 CET ] [ Original post ]

Developer Diary | Sweden Alt History

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

Communist Sweden


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.

Small changes since last time


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

Resource balance boggolo two


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.

Fascism and Monarchism


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!


[ 2023-08-30 13:04:53 CET ] [ Original post ]

Steam Strategy Fest!

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[ 2023-08-28 17:22:53 CET ] [ Original post ]

Arms Against Tyranny | Feature Breakdown Video #3

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


[ 2023-08-24 13:06:19 CET ] [ Original post ]

Developer Diary | Norway Alt History

Hej everyone, its me, Carlo! Katten has been staring at me from the other side of the office all morning, which can only mean one thing: its time for me to write another Dev Diary! Now, Ive already talked about Historical Norway, the Joint Focus Tree, and modding stuff so theres only one more thing I could write about, and thats our favorite kamerat, LevTrotskij. Known outside of Norway as Leon Trotsky, he was one of the most prominent members of the bolsheviks in the Soviet Union, renowned marxist theorist, known for his permanent revolution, and even more permanent exile. He was Lenins successor apparent, but Stanlins political maneuvering forced him out of the government and eventually out of the Soviet Union. After that, he was allowed to move to Norway, with the newspaper editor, Konrad Knudsen. So far so good.
The important thing for us happens in an August much like this one, in 1936, when Quislings thugs ransacked Knudsens house, and wouldve gotten away with it if it wasnt because Knudsens daughter drove them off. So much for the tolerant left, smh. This event will be represented in AATs Norway, regardless of the path you take, and its the start of trotskijs event chain.
Historically, the pressure from fascists and stalinists was too much for the Nygaardsvold Cabinet, so he was put under house arrest in a farm in Hurum, which, by his own account, was one of the worst periods of his life. After that he was allowed into Mexico, and received by the artist Frida Kahlo and her husband Diego Rivera. And then they lived happily ever after. Though he was, indeed, kicked out when Diego Rivera found out he was having an affair with Frida Kahlo and then was killed with an ice pick by a Soviet Union agent. Other than that he had a good time in Mexico by all accounts.
Of course, you dont need to care about what happened historically. You can just imprison him, or send him to Mexico right away and use this altercation as a justification for increasing political repression, send him straight to Stalin, and even put him in government. Those last two are especially useful if youre going the communist route by the way. Communist Route?... Oh, right, thats what I was supposed to write about, Alt History content for Norway! Since I already wrote about Trotskij's fate, let me tell you about the options you have for turning Norway even redder.
First step, the labor movement needs to regain its momentum, with the A Resurgent Labor Movement focus. This will set Norway on to the path of Communism, but which one? You can compromise with the NKP to adopt their Stalinist stance or prosecute them and let the Labor Party embrace Trotskijs teachings, and if you kept him in Norway youll also have him as an advisor and general.

Each path has advantages and disadvantages: you can be beholden to the Soviet Union and their support, or you can go your own path and bring the Permanent Revolution to the rest of the world. Regardless of your communist goals, you will need to rouse the proletariat in states that are industrialized enough, and when youre ready you can trigger the communist revolution and fight in a civil war against the old Norway! Now of course, riling up the workers has its cost, because theyll do some heavy damage to your factories and infrastructure once they rise up for the revolution.
Lets take a better look at the Rouse the Proletariat Decisions. The first level will grant you the state once the civil war starts, but will leave your buildings in a pretty rough shape.
You can reduce this damage by bringing it to Level 2 and you will also be granted 2 irregular divisions.
Then if youre really serious about that state you can fully rouse its working class, reducing the damage to the buildings and upgrading those troops to Militias.
And before you think But Carlo, what if I just rouse the whole country and I skip the civil war?, Ill tell you now, that wont work. You will have to choose carefully how to approach these decisions, as you cant go over 20 Total Support for the Revolution and no matter what, the other side will have Oslo. Ok now, lets go over the things youll be able to do once youve seized the means of production in Norway. If your senpai Stalin noticed you, there will be plenty of improvements to your industrial base, manpower and a close collaboration with the Soviet Union, and even help them invade Finland. Maybe the Arms Against Tyranny thing is just aspirational.
If instead, you decided to go with uncle trotskij, as I said before, youll get an extra advisor and general, and that will put you behind the wheel of your very own communist faction, the Norintern with the focus The Permanentest Revolution. Thats what its actually called, and nobody has complained about it so I guess the name is final? Defend Finland, bring the war to Stalin, Sweden, Norway and even Hitler, bringing about a new, Trotskyist world order.
To summarize, with Stalin youll get soldiers and industry. With Trotsky youll get easy wargoals and offensive bonuses. Your pick. Now lets move slightly to the right. To the allied democratic branch, which starts with a fictional Vote of No confidence that the Nygaardsvold government loses. This branch is what happens when militaristic industry tycoons take control of the government. It overlaps somewhat with the democratic branch, except you can skip the whole Broken Gun thing and go straight for rearmament, so youll have more time to get ready for whats coming, but at the cost of a lot of civilian industry.
This path leads to a more centralized government, so all the local preparations are pooled together, letting you start nation-wide initiatives, both during peacetime and war time.


It also overlaps a little with the Trotskyist path, just not the commie parts, and youll be able to join the allies instead of forming your own faction.
Lets keep going, I have actual work to do, so Im gonna skip the historical path. A few things have changed, but not enough to care, and the dog is still there so onwards to the fascist path, which, of course there is one.
It starts with The Stumbling Storting, in this reality the labor party fails to secure political stability for Norway, leaving the door open to fascists, and other undesirables.
Lets go with Undesirable Elements #1, fascists. In this scenario Quisling is somewhat good at making people think hes competent and that fascism is reasonable. The Nasjonal Samling will lurk in the shadows and build support for their agenda state by state, seeking support from the Fatherland League (A proto-fascist nationalist movement), industrialists, conservatives and even fascists abroad.
Eventually, youll reach a familiar focus, Quislings Coup, except this time, youre ready for it, you have built the support needed to make the takeover as easy as possible for you and the foreign fascist invaders, whom you invited! Yes, in this path you can invite the most suitable fascist regime to invade Norway so you can take over the government and help them on their fascist crusade. Dont worry if they say no, that rejection will also allow you to start the coup without them, who needs Hitler anyway.
The coup, as expected, will trigger a civil war in which, unlike the communist one, youll only control Oslofjord. Thats alright though, you prepared for this, which means that you can take over states where you built support in. If you only prepared base level support, youll get the state, not too shabby! But if you built more support, you will be rewarded for your efforts with a brand new Military Factory, and maybe even a couple of militias too if you fully prepared it.
This should put you on the right footing to start your fascist campaign, have fun making the world a worse place! Eventually, youll make it to your outlandish viking theme claims around the North Atlantic. Classic.
Now onto the last branch: The monarchist branch. For some reason a lot of people who want nordic focus trees also want a monarchist path, I can understand why, but I still think theyre wrong. I still made a monarchist path for Norway, whose king was reluctant to become their king, and even when he took over, by all accounts had no intention of becoming anything more than a figurehead.
This reality starts much like the fascist one, with the Storting devolving into chaos, and the Royal Chamberlain, Anker Peder Wedel-Jarlsberg uses this opportunity to build support for a more involved monarchy, with his steady hand at the helm of course. Obviously, he is not part of the real Wedel-Jarlsberg noble family that lives in Norway, any similarities are purely coincidental, etc. Hes not Wedel-Jarlsberg with a -, his is a minus symbol. Just do me a favor and dont tell the legal team, they dont need to stress about it.
Peder Anker will travel all around Norway proselytizing his monarchist cause, giving you bonuses for building defensive buildings, and adding more building slots, which will of course reduce the available manpower in the state, because, you know, theyre all busy being monarchists so they dont have time to be soldiers.
Except If you go all the way with your monarchism you get 2 free militia divisions, and once you get the power as the Regent of Norway you can edit to your hearts content. Theyve been so converted that they are now soldiers for monarchism.
Once the Absolutist Regency is the rule of the land youll recruit the crown prince, Olav to join either the Navy or Army staff, since he was indeed employed in both during the war. In this case youll probably want him dedicating all his efforts on one thing, so he can become either a General or an Admiral and will allow you to specialize your country further.

And of course you can get an extra set of outlandish claims. Faroe Islands, Iceland, Greenland, part of Russia, and even part of Sweden. At the end youll be able to consolidate your kingdom to make it easier for Peder Anker to rule over his kings land.
And well thats it. Obviously theres tons more to unearth if you ask the right questions ;) and many more things Ill either keep as a secret for release or havent implemented yet, like the new Trotskij portrait and the [Redacted] of [Redacted]. Also, dont forget to stay tuned for the Sweden alt history Dev Diary, where youll see how wildly different the world would be if Sweden had privately managed vacation instead of state managed ones.


[ 2023-08-23 13:00:36 CET ] [ Original post ]

Arms Against Tyranny | Pre-Order

Esteemed Generals! As the warmth of summer fades and the brisk embrace of winter draws near, we are thrilled to unveil the pre-order for the upcoming expansion, "Arms Against Tyranny." Mark your calendars for its grand release on the 10th of October. [previewyoutube=Ex2cgsCqqeo;full][/previewyoutube] To add an extra touch of coziness to the impending chill, by securing your pre-order, you will unlock exclusive access to the captivating bonus track, "Skkijrven Polka". Oh, and did we mention? Sweden's getting a communist focus tree. Because who doesn't love a cozy ideological makeover?


[ 2023-08-17 15:02:01 CET ] [ Original post ]

Arms Against Tyranny | Q&A

Generals! The moment has arrived for us to orchestrate a magnificent Q&A livestream scheduled for the 17th of August at 16:00 CEST. If you have any questions eager for answers, we kindly request you to submit them using this FORM


[ 2023-08-10 17:20:54 CET ] [ Original post ]

Developer Diary | Tech

Hey everyone! Im Plankie and one of the programmers on Hearts of Iron. Large parts of my work consists of feature work, bug fixing, and general game improvements. My absolute favorite part of game development is working with the AI and trying to make it more fun and interesting and immersive to play with. So, in this weeks dev diary Ill focus on showing how the AI interacts with one of our major new features: The International Market On a very high level, there are a few things that the AI needs to be able to do in order to utilize the market:

  • Gain market access so that we can see what other countries have put up for sale
  • Sell equipment to others, i.e. putting equipment up for sale on the market
  • Buy equipment from others, i.e. decide what we want to buy and how much
It also needs a surplus of equipment to sell, but fortunately the AI already knows how to produce equipment, so that just needs a little bit of tweaking! The basis of the AIs behavior on the International Market is the surplus/deficit it has of different types of equipment on the production stockpile (you know that list of equipment you see under the logistics tab). In general, it will try to buy equipment it has a deficit of and will offer to sell equipment it has a surplus of. This base behavior is then modified by other factors, such as AI strategies.
The familiar logistics tab showing what equipment is available on the production stockpile. The right-most number showing surplus/deficit is an important component of how the AI interacts with the International Market.

Putting things up for sale


Before anyone can buy equipment from the AI, it obviously needs to put equipment up for sale. Just like for a human player, it is only possible for the AI to add equipment to the market if it has a surplus of it. However, just because there is a surplus doesnt mean that its a good idea to put all of that surplus up for sale. And if the surplus disappears and we start lacking equipment again, the AI should take the equipment off the market so it can use it itself instead. We basically want something like the following behavior:
  • If we need the equipment ourselves, dont sell it
  • If we have a lot of surplus equipment, start selling some of it, but not all of it
The problem is that we need to define how much a lot is so we know when to start putting the things up for sale. This could depend a lot on what type of equipment it is and what situation our country is in. We could do something simple and say that if we have a surplus larger than 200, then start selling, but 200 infantry equipment and 200 strategic bombers are on completely different scales so using absolute numbers is not a good idea. But manually having to define the numbers for different equipment types and situations and countries also means a lot of work and balancing, so we at least want some good default behavior with a possibility of tweaking it. In one of the first iterations of the market AI, we just made it put a certain ratio (say 20 %) of its surplus equipment up for sale. Despite the simple approach it worked pretty well, and since its simple its also easy to understand and debug. It had some shortcomings so we modified it a little bit, but its still the basis of how the AI puts things up for sale. Every market AI update, it calculates its total surplus of every equipment type (surplus on production stockpile + anything on the market stockpile) and makes sure that the ratio is correct. This means that if the AI needs the equipment themselves, they have a total surplus of zero, so they put 0.2*0 = 0 equipment up for sale, i.e. they wont sell it. They will also pull back anything already up for sale so they can use it themselves. And if they have a total surplus of 100 equipment, it will put 0.2*100 = 20 equipment up for sale (assuming a ratio of 20 %). So the more surplus it has the more it tries to sell, while still retaining a buffer in case things go sour and it starts needing the equipment itself. It also means that we dont need to specify an absolute number for the threshold, it adapts itself to the situation. But as mentioned, the approach had some shortcomings. The AI had a tendency to trickle in equipment on the market, trying to sell 1 rifle as soon as it had a surplus of 5 rifles, etc, and this felt very artificial and not very human-like. This led us to modify the algorithm so that the AI thinks about the equipment in batches instead of singular weapons. The size of a batch is roughly how much equipment can be delivered in one month using one factory for payment, so instead of seeing the AI try to sell 3 rifles, it now waits until it reaches around 350 rifles (one batch of surplus) before putting it up on the market. At this point we had a reasonable default behavior for how the AI puts equipment up for sale, but we still needed the capability of tweaking it. This is done through scripted AI strategies! If you dont know what AI strategies are in HoI4, its essentially a way that content designers and modders can tweak the AI behavior through script. With AI strategies, its possible to modify things like
  • how much equipment is needed before considering it as a surplus to sell on the market
  • the ratio of equipment the AI wants to put on the market
  • the min and max amount of equipment to put up for sale (overriding the default batch size)
With the AI strategies, its possible to for example prevent minor countries from selling all their trains (which arent used much before the war, so they are technically a surplus). It is possible to script Germany to not sell their huge surplus of weapons when preparing for war (fun fact: the German AI isnt really aware that its going to end up in a big war until just a few months before the war breaks out, so without different scripted AI strategies they wouldnt prepare enough for it). Needless to say, the AI strategies are a very useful tool for the designers!

Buying equipment


If the AI is lacking some type of equipment, it will consider buying it from the International Market (assuming there is someone offering to sell it). First of all it decides how many civilian factories it is willing to spend on purchasing equipment. Second, it looks at all the available equipment up for sale and determines if there is anything there that matches what it needs. After that, if the AI has factories to spend and there is equipment it wants to buy, its just a matter of deciding what to buy first and how much of it. This is done by computing a score for each potential deal, a score which takes into account:
  • Construction cost of needed equipment - we prefer to fix our biggest needs first
  • How good the equipment is - we prefer newer equipment with better stats
  • How expensive the equipment is - we prefer cheaper stuff
  • Applicable subsidies - if we have any subsidies we prefer to use them
  • Scripted AI weight - we want to make the content designers and modders happy

Example of a debug info window for the market AI. Here, the US AI has a deficit of 294 tactical bombers and almost 19k infantry equipment. It would prefer to buy bombers since the value of the lacking bombers is higher than the value of the lacking infantry equipment, but for the moment only British infantry rifles are up for sale, so the Americans start buying that instead. So, now we know WHAT we want to purchase, but what about HOW MUCH? If we asked to buy 19k infantry equipment but only were prepared to pay with one factory, we could end up with a deal that would go on for years. In order to circumvent problems like these, the AI tries to create contracts that are neither too small nor too large by tweaking the amount of equipment and assigned factories until the completion time is acceptable. At the time of writing (and subject to change), the AI avoids purchasing more equipment than what can be delivered in about 10 months. It also uses the aforementioned batch size as a minimum limit of how much equipment to buy.
Paying off 19k infantry equipment with just one civilian factory takes a couple of years. Long-term weapon deals sound better before you do the math Of course there are also AI strategies for affecting how the AI purchases equipment. These are values that either go into the scoring calculation (affecting what the AI prefers to buy and from whom if there are multiple alternatives), or that tweak things like the threshold of when it wants to buy equipment of a certain type.

Establishing market access


Now we know how the AI puts equipment up for sale, and we know how they determine what they want to buy. But all that is for nothing unless the AI has access to another countrys market, so of course it needs some way of gaining market access. This is a relatively simple process since market access is nothing more complicated than a normal diplomatic relation, like docking rights or a non-aggression pact. Naturally, the AI is able to respond to requests for market access if you ask them, but it would be a pretty boring feature if they never took the initiative themselves. The exact factors that go into the AIs desire to have market access with another country are of course subject to change as we balance the game, but at the time of writing the most important factors are:
  • Diplomatic opinion - I really like this since I think opinion is underused in HoI4. It makes it possible for you to achieve market access with a country as long as you are prepared to spend some sweet PP to maintain it ;)
  • Trade influence
  • Ideological opinion - Some ideologies like other ideologies more or less
  • Competing factions - If the two countries are in different factions

The Soviet Union is really not interested in opening their market to those British capitalists. The result of this is that you tend to see something similar to trade blocs, groups of countries that trade with each other (often along faction or ideological lines). The boundaries between the trade blocs are soft, however, and its often possible to convince countries to trade with you by raising their opinion of you.

Producing surplus equipment


Finally, since the International Market revolves around surplus equipment, it wouldnt be much fun if there was no equipment to trade with. This ties into some changes to how the AI produces equipment, especially when they have already fulfilled all their own needs. As some of you may have noticed, since BBA a lot of smaller countries have been bad at fully utilizing their military factories. As soon as they have fulfilled all their equipment needs (including having a buffer for any armies in the field), they stop using their military factories. This behavior was not introduced with BBA, but because of some other changes to how the AI recruits armies the problem became much more visible. The reason they stop producing equipment is because they technically dont need any more equipment, and if you dont have any equipment you need to produce well, they simply stop producing it. As human players, we know that a war is looming on the horizon and there is no reason to stop production just because we have enough. Its better to be prepared with a larger stockpile. And with the International Market making its entry, we can suddenly satisfy our inner capitalists and earn something by selling our surplus equipment. So, now, when the AI gets to the point where they have enough equipment to fulfill their own needs, they start transitioning into a surplus production state. In this state, they once again use AI strategies to determine what to produce. This makes it possible to script countries to produce different types of surplus equipment, which in turn would allow for more equipment diversity on the market place and a larger selection of equipment to choose from.

Summary


We are nearing the end of this dev diary, so lets quickly sum it up! We did a little deep dive into the AI for the new International Market feature, and got to see the logic for how it puts surplus equipment up for sale and how it constructs purchase requests. In addition, we looked at the factors affecting how the AI opens up their market to other countries, and finally, how surplus equipment is produced when all other needs are fulfilled. I hope you found it interesting to see some of the inner workings of the market AI, and I definitely hope you will enjoy playing the game with your new trade partners! In next weeks dev diary you will get to join some of our content designers for a closer look at how to mod Hearts of Iron! Stay tuned!


[ 2023-08-09 13:04:37 CET ] [ Original post ]

Summer Open Beta Feedback Form!

Generals! As many of you saw, the Open Beta has now been closed, but that doesn't mean we don't want to hear back from you. We know the Beta sparked a lot of discussion, but R&D want to hear directly from the frontlines! If you participated in the Summer Open Beta, let us know in this survey below how its been for you. Fill it out here -> https://pdxint.at/47f0R6O
That's all from us today, see you next week with yet another Developer Diary, and have yourselves a great weekend!


[ 2023-08-04 12:15:42 CET ] [ Original post ]

Developer Diary | Small Features #2

Greetings all, Were still well in the middle of Swedish vacation time, but our regular schedule is not entirely interrupted: todays diary covers a few of the smaller features being added in AAT.

Special Forces Doctrine


For a while now weve wanted to give countries a way of specializing their special forces. Numerous militaries relied heavily on these elite troops, and some branches of what HOI4 terms special forces really found their identity during and around the second world war. I believe weve reached a good saturation point for equipment designers, and I wanted to tackle special forces in a manner that better befits strategic capability over detailed stat modification. The prolonged global conflict our game portrays led to significant doctrinal development when it comes to how militaries employed elite forces, and this seemed like a good place to start. In AAT, a fourth doctrine page has been added:
While any country can continue to make use of the Mountaineers, Marines and Paratroopers they are familiar with simply by researching the tech, doing so will unlock the ability to choose the corresponding special forces branch specialism. These doctrines will also cost experience, however unlike the other military doctrines each branch here will use the corresponding experience type: Army XP for mountaineers, Naval XP for Marines, and Air XP for paratroopers. The number of branch specialisms you can pick is limited however: initially to 1. Some nations earn the early ability to unlock a second (and final) branch specialism in their focus trees, but all nations that reach major status (this condition may be relaxed) will eventually earn the right to pick their second branch during the progress of the war. Why not all 3? The [Insert Country Here] military used all three of these! Well, partly for balance reasons, and partly because these specialisms dont represent the ability to use paras, mountaineers or marines, but the adoption of their capabilities as part of a militarys core doctrinal philosophy. We also wanted these doctrine choices to do more than give you stat bonuses - although of course these will be present. We wanted the choices you make here to a) change how you consider designing your divisions, and b) potentially change how you actively use your special forces on a strategic level.

Mountaineers



Initially, elevating the mountaineers will grant you a mountaineer supply usage reduction (decimal bug noted!), and some general special forces combat bonuses. Importantly, youll also unlock the Rangers support company: a more combat oriented alternative to mounted recon, with higher organization, bonuses in adverse terrain types, and which can be further specialized by the mountaineers branch specialism in the following two doctrines:

Here you are making the choice to train your elite ranger companies in rough+hot or rough+winter terrain. Ive added a Snow adjuster here (usable by mods, of course - although for performance reasons this does not extend to one adjuster per weather type Im afraid) which means you can guarantee improved combat performance in your preferred terrain/weather type, and the support company now also exerts a division-wide buff to cold/hot acclimatization. While I wont go through each doctrine individually, were making use of the new battalion modifiers to adjust how you are incentivized to build divisions:
Mountain artillery gives you a good reason to use artillery support in your mountaineer divisions, at the cost of a mutually exclusive choice with the following option:
Balance subject to change, of course. The final choice (and a choice which exists in each of the branch specialisms) is to decide between adopting your mountaineers as the core of your elite armed forces, or integrating them more widely:
The new modifier [Type] Special Forces Cap Contribution is a dynamic modifier that reduces the cap consumption of that special forces type, when counted against your cap. So, youll be able to support significantly more mountaineers, but not more paratroopers or marines.
Here youll get bonuses that are more applicable to a wider array of circumstances. If you plan on unlocking and utilizing a second branch of special forces, this option might be more your cup of tea.

Marines



The initial investment for the Marines branch will net you some similar small bonuses to special forces efficacy, a slight increase in naval invasion capacity (which can be acquired quite early), and youll unlock the Pioneers support company. Pioneers are used here to represent marine-trained sappers and combat engineers, and will be an alternative to standard military engineers. They have increased offensive capability in notably hostile environments, and can be further specialized as shore parties or jungle climate specialists:

The second mutually exclusive choice in the Marines tree is as below. If you want to go all-in on highly elite, more self-sufficient marines, you can go down the Marine Commando route. Marine commandos are a new line battalion that have the ability to perform quick hit & run naval invasions with an equally quick getaway plan - they no longer need to be at a port in order to exfiltrate. All battalions in a division must have this ability in order for it to function.
Further down the tree you can capitalize on the hit & run playstyle:
The alternative path will take you down a combined arms path, integrating more closely with other branches of your military:

Paratroopers



Elevating the paras will grant you tougher air transports, generally improved special forces, and the ability to field a small amount more paras.
The first choice you will have to make is which paradrop effect you want to adopt. Aimed at disruption, the recon and sabotage doctrine will damage enemy constructions after a successful landing.
Combat insertion is intended to augment well-planned general advances. If utilized carefully, this approach can put a hole in even the best fortified enemy frontline - however, the risk is high.\
It had to be done. The mutually exclusive branches for paratroopers once again distinguish between a focus on paratrooper combat and support ability, or a wider combined-arms benefit:
Make use of signals companies to coordinate a hasty defense after a drop.
At the cost of increased training time, ensure that only the toughest recruits find their way to the paras. Or choose to integrate the paras more traditionally into your armed forces:

And now, who doesn't like seeing some more of the 3D models?

















Thats all I have to show this time - as always, feedback on the details is encouraged; constructive criticism welcomed. /Arheo


[ 2023-08-02 13:04:10 CET ] [ Original post ]

Feature Breakdown #2 | Hearts of Iron IV: Arms Against Tyranny

Generals! Part Two of the Arms Against Tyranny Feature Breakdowns is here! Find out more about Sweden's new content and take a closer look at the Joint Focus Trees https://pdxint.at/3OxsrVw


[ 2023-07-27 13:08:43 CET ] [ Original post ]

Developer Diary | Joint Focus Tree

Joint Focus Tree Dev Diary Hej hei folks! Carlo here, and Im super excited to present this new feature, probably the first to be made with multiplayer in mind. Just remember that this is all work in progress so youll definitely see stuff that will change for release. Let me start with a hypothetical scenario: You and your friends decide to play a co-op campaign of Hearts of Iron. You get your healthy snacks and drinks, jump into a voice chat and load the game, hoping to play as Monarchist Poland. Theres one problem though, one of your friends wants to play as monarchist Lithuania, and hopes to annex Poland and the other Baltic nations. If this has happened to you, then youll love the Joint Focus Tree. Actually Im sure youll love it even if it hasnt. As nations that start the game disadvantaged against the big majors, a lot of minors rely on absorbing the countries around them to be able to compete. This happens with the Baltics, China, South America and importantly for us, the Nordic countries. Were hoping the Joint Focus Tree will solve this by giving you and your friends the opportunity to collaborate with your neighbors and make your faction be more powerful than the sum of its parts, so you can take the fight to the Majors and win, TOGETHER!
But what is it? Well its a shared focus tree that Nordics will have in addition to the countrys normal focus tree, but when you start it you create a special faction where anyone can complete focuses in it, and they will complete in every relevant country, giving effects to all Nordic members of the faction.
Lets take Joint Military Exercises" as a very basic example. If Norway completes it, itll get 80 Army Experience and 2 75% Land Doctrine bonuses, but because its a Joint Focus, it will give 60 Army Experience and 2 50% Land Doctrine bonuses to every other Nordic in the faction.
The best part is that then another country, say, Denmark, can complete any focus that requires it while Norway does another focus, Joint or otherwise. Youre all working together and strengthening each other.
Other focuses give the Originator (The player that completed the focus) a special National Spirit that makes it the leader in that certain area, and because the requirements are pretty high, you will have to coordinate with your friends so each country specializes in one area to continue spreading the benefits around.
Now that Ive explained the basic concept, let me describe how Arms Against Tyrannys Joint Focus Tree will work: If youre playing as any of the Nordic countries and youre not a puppet, youll eventually have the option of forming one of the three factions planned for this: The Nordic Council: The Nordic democracies have joined forces to defend their political systems and to eradicate autocracy and oppression abroad (Theres currently an actual Nordic Council in real life, though with a different aim). They will use their resources and expertise to focus on quality over quantity, and manufacturing technologically advanced equipment, while still providing for their people.
The Northern Peoples Union: The peoples of the North united against fascism and capitalism in Europe and beyond. Every worker thats not making the tools of communism at home must take up arms and fight abroad. Expect superior numbers in both personnel and materiel
And finally, the Kalmar League: A mirror of the historical Kalmar Union, the monarchies and dictatorships of Scandinavia and Finland call upon their shared past to bring forth their common goal of domination, through armed conflict and conquest. By any means necessary.
As you can see, many of the icons, names and effects will change depending on which one fits your countrys current politics. Credit goes to Marie for her excellent art, there was a lot of back and forth to establish a unique visual identity for each faction, and they are some of my favorite focus icons in Hearts of Iron. Heres some highlights
And you probably noticed the title background for these is different from normal ones, so stay tuned and well talk about them and how you can change them yourself through modding.
Let us continue then. The JFT has 7 different branches: Airforce, Navy, Army, Civilian Production, Research, Military Production and, right in the middle, a political branch that will let you unlock institutions that improve and further customize your faction.
For example, in the Communist faction, after establishing the Northern Federation, the factions National Spirit improves, and then you get something I call Capstone Selectors.
When someone completes it, it will unlock 4 extra focuses at the end of the relevant branch. The first choice in the NPU is between the Army and Civilian Industry, and if we choose the Army one, 4 new focuses will appear at the end of the army branch, giving you an extra advantage on that area, and letting you adapt to the situation.
After that you can upgrade your faction again, and then you get another capstone choice, this time between Research and military production. Every one of these factions has 4 different configurations, depending on what you need, and how involved you want to be with it.
Before we finish, I want to show you what are those focuses before the one that lets you form the Joint Alliance. These are simple old shared focuses that all Nordics will have access to. They are meant to represent how they all helped each other in the period, while avoiding all out war with their neighbors aggressors. The best examples are Sweden, Norway and Denmark secretly sending volunteers and equipment to Finland to fend off the Soviet Union, and Swedens surreptitious support for Norwegian and Danish liberation against Germany. Of course with these focuses and decisions youll be able to go further than that and join them in their struggle, or even join their enemies and gain territory yourself.
Lets dive in. Reaching Out to Our Neighbors starts the decision category, and from the get go gives the option to promote Nordic Unity, letting you improve their opinion of you, especially handy if you want to form the Joint Faction with the AI.
Then you can go for Industrial Cooperation, which unlocks decisions to improve your economy and the economy of a neighbor in equal terms, if you go the other route, Leverage Nordic Investments, you can invest in other Nordics and ask them to invest in your, always with better terms for the initiator, but theyll still get something out of it.
Mutual Guarantees is Well Mutual Guarantees. But Strengthen Ties is another useful one if you want to do the Joint Focus Tree, it not only makes your countries like each other more, but youll trade some party popularity, so if youre communist, and theyre democratic, they will get some communism, and youll get some democracy, as a treat.
It concludes in the focus to form the alliance, but I want to draw your attention to the focuses on the sides. One has the name of the expansion (Mostly) and the other one is the Nordic March. They both let you send volunteers more easily and give you bonuses for combat but their goals are very different.
The TAAT focus unlocks several decisions that let you expand volunteer capacity, make it easier to send lend lease and even join the war, provided youve been involved in it enough participation in it. Every time you or any other Nordic helps them, the conflict scale increases, and the higher it is, the more likely your participation will go up, until your neighbors enemy sees you as a threat and attacks you too! It will be a balancing act for you to help your neighbors and not get invaded in the process.
And thats it! This is how we plan to make the nations in this expansion work together more than ever, and introduce a new vessel for cool alt history. Obviously theres tons more details that I didnt include, but you can always ask me and Ill try to answer where and when possible. Dont forget to stay tuned for the next one of these, where Arheo will show you some diverse cool things!


[ 2023-07-26 13:09:45 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hoi4 Grandest Lan | Tickets available NOW!

Generals! New intel has arrived from Turbolarp about the upcoming Hearts of Iron IV Grandest Lan! Check it out below in the Infographic we created. For more information beyond this, check out the event website: HERE

Limited Tickets Available: Get yours Now!




[ 2023-07-22 10:05:31 CET ] [ Original post ]

Developer Diary | Small Features #1

Hello there, it's me C0RAX. This week we are going to talk about some of the small features coming with Arms Against Tyranny, these are small things that add or change the game to increase the QoL or add to the game. So this week we have 3 main groupings;

  • Division Structure
  • Economy
  • Presets

Division Structure


First up we have division structure changes. The way you make a division has been fairly static for quite some time. With this update there are some new changes that increase the challenge and compromises you will have to make when designing your divisions. First up we have some changes to the categories for each brigade that you choose when you pick the first battalion for each vertical column. Previously we had both artillery, AA and AT in the same category as maneuver units like infantry and tanks. This is no longer the case; artillery, AA, and AT are now in their own category meaning you need to choose how many support brigades you have and how many maneuver brigades you have. This extends to mobile battalion and armored battalion categories.
Previously there was never any real scarcity when it came to a division's battalion slots, you could generally always have whatever number of battalions you wanted in generally any mixture. Now your brigade also starts with the bottom slot locked making a 5x4 grid.this is the default state of divisions and you can unlock this 5th slot by unlocking doctrines giving you a 5x5 grid. When this is combined with the category changes you will need to think about how much combat support battalions you can bring vs vs how many maneuver battalions you you need if you want to make that large division with lots of tank and infantry you will be significantly restricting just how much Artillery, AA and AT you bring to boost your unit.

Economy


Now we are onto something many of you have seen in the focus tree dev diaries is the new modifier Consumer Goods Factories Factor . This new modifier exists because the Consumer goods calculation and its associated modifiers have changed. Previously the calculation of consumer goods was calculated by adding all the consumer goods modifiers to get a percentage; it then worked out the number of factories that percentage represented against your total factory count. So if you had 5 civs and 5 mils for 10 total factories and your consumer goods modifiers total was 10% you had to pay 1 civ for consumer goods. You were then taxed that number of civilian factories. This had a nasty problem in that it was very easy to first reach 0% consumer goods which was a considerable balance consideration due to it allowing faster snowballing of the economy. This easiness of reaching 0% consumer goods was then a problem because once you reached 0% other parts of the game where the reward was a further reduction of consumer goods were rendered useless since you cannot go below 0% consumer goods. This is now done a little differently, firstly there are now 2 steps to the calculation of the percentage. First we have the base value(expected consumer goods), this works the same as the old percentage calculation; it's a simple percent value that is added up together. This generally is only set by laws so it acts as a base value that everything else modifies. We then have the consumer goods factor (the new modifier) which multiplies this value and if there are multiple factor modifiers they are multiplied together meaning that you will generally never actually reach 0% consumer goods from just the factor alone and the effect of each additional consumer good factor modifier has diminishing returns.

We have also as part of this made the consumer goods calculation round down consumer goods factories which should help minors a bit while not really being highly noticeable for majors. For those who want a detailed copy of the calculations it's like this: ConsumerGoodsPercent = (Base1 + Base2 + .) *((1+Factor1) * (1+Factor2) * .) ConsumerGoods = Max(ConsumerGoodsPercent , MINIMUM_NUMBER_OF_FACTORIES_TAKEN_BY_CONSUMER_GOODS_PERCENT ) (ConsumerGoods * Total factories).RoundedDown

Presets


And finally I kept the most exciting one till last, and that is presets for your equipment designers. Ever since the introduction of the equipment designers we have known that some players don't want to or struggle to interact with the complexity of them especially when they are new to the features or game. This was for many off putting and something they would shy away from or be continuously frustrated with, Since the game didnt really teach you how to make a well rounded design for each role. This was doubly true if they wanted to recreate a historical vehicle that they know from their own knowledge of WW2 but didnt understand how to translate that into the game with the designer. What these are are premade designs for your equipment designers that are stored in the game files. When you create a new variant from a blank chassis you can press the presets button and will get a list of all the presets made for that chassis/hull/airframe. So should you open up the improved heavy tank chassis presets you will find an entry called Tiger I and you will see the picture of the Tiger I tank and if you click it all the modules and roles and values will be set for you. Should you be missing modules or upgrades the preset entry will tell you what you are missing in order to make it, then all you have to do is research those modules and then create the variant. So now if you don't understand or want to understand the deeper workings of equipment design you can still make good use of the equipment designers just pick the tank you want and the game will make it for you. Of course if you want to try out tweaking the designs to edge your way into the world of equipment design you can do that too. Once the preset is loaded you can adjust any part of the design as normal, and if you feel lost at any point you can just load the preset back in.

Some of you may wonder why were not allowing you to add your own presets or saved templates. In short, this is something wed like to do and are not ruling out for the future - historical presets are an important step towards making custom presets a possibility. However, this feature is entirely moddable so if you want your MP mods to have all the latest meta builds there as presets you can do that, or if you want even more templates for your super in depth history mod or maybe a totally different world you can do that. These presets are defined by the templates you make normally for the AI with some new additional fields, you can now define the art and the name of the template. That's everything for this dev diary, I hope you will enjoy these changes as much as we have. As always feel free to let us know your favorite parts. Next week we will be bringing you more information on a new system for content along with how it will be tied into the stories you can tell with this expansion and beyond. See you next week.


[ 2023-07-19 13:02:26 CET ] [ Original post ]

Arms Against Tyranny | Feature Breakdown #1

Generals!


Not only do we have a Developer Diary this week for you, but we also have some intel from the Development team about some of the features coming to Arms Against Tyranny! This is the first video fo a few that we have planned for you all, so we hope you enjoy! Make sure to check it out The Video [previewyoutube=Y1V584leGiY;full][/previewyoutube]


[ 2023-07-13 13:07:40 CET ] [ Original post ]

Developer Diary | 3D Art!


Hello everyone! My name is John and Im the 3D artist for Hearts of Iron IV here at Paradox! For this week's Dev Diary, I will be giving you all a behind-the-scenes look at my role in the team and our process for making the 3D art for Hearts of Iron IV. My role is to create and manage all the 3D art in the game! Not all 3D art is created by a single individual, however. To save time we also have help from various talented outsourcing partners to make sure we can have as much juicy art ready for release as possible! During this diary, there may be some terminology that may or may not be familiar to you but I will try and make sure that everyone can enjoy reading this and get a glimpse into the 3D art for Hearts of Iron 4. Creating, tweaking, and managing all this 3D art is a lot of work but it is also a fun and rewarding process so lets not waste any more time and get right into it!

Receiving art requests


First of all, I will receive a bunch of 3D art requests from our awesome content designers that will provide me with some general information as well as some reference images and useful links to help explain what they want to be added to the game. Doing research and finding material is time-consuming work so this is very useful to get things started. You never know what can end up being requested. There were a lot of interesting vehicles and uniforms during World War 2 so this helps keep things interesting! To manage all of these requests we use Miro which is a useful tool to manage a lot of images and text. These requests will be added to my 3D art board in Miro where I will sort them by things like priority and country. From here I will decide which units to work on. I will place the assets that I want to outsource on a separate board where they can be gradually reviewed along each step of the creation process. I will usually provide them with more technical feedback when it comes to the 3D art and our content designers will give input on how the asset looks from a more historical standpoint.

Finding references



These are the types of images that I look at when Im making a 3D model! For 3D art, you generally want to have as much reference material as possible so I will usually try to add some additional reference images from the information I have been provided if needed. To understand things like angles, scale, and movement better, watching videos can also be incredibly helpful. If there are any vehicles or uniforms that still exist to this day, then this will provide greater image quality and it can also be good for color reference. Its important to be aware of re-created paint jobs and modifications that may have been added after the war. Finding good references can be hard at times, we always try our best to stay faithful to the reference material but time is always limited so it can be easy to make mistakes. Being very meticulous and delivering a lot of assets in a short amount of time is definitely a balancing act!

Blockout


The process of creating 3D art can differ a bit from artist to artist or depending on what it is that you are creating but usually, I will begin blocking out the most important shapes for whatever Im creating. During this phase, I wont need to care too much about the typical rules of 3D modeling. Things like that will become more important later on. The most important part here is to create the basic shape and also get a good understanding of how all the pieces will fall into place. At the end of this phase, you can use the basic building blocks that you have created to make a high-detail and a low-detail version of your 3D model. This helps save a lot of time and it will ensure that the high and low-detail versions are not too different from each other.
A block out using simple shapes. A common trick to make sure that you have the right base shape is to disable the lights in the viewport of your 3D modeling software, this leaves you with only the silhouette. If the silhouette looks good you know that you are on the right track!
Can you guess the names of all of these vehicles?

High Poly - Making a detailed version of our tank!


Now we will use the block-out model as a base to start working on a version with a lot more fun details. This is the part where you can truly let loose in terms of geometry, no polygon limits are needed here! We will use this model and bake it down to our low poly version later. In short, this means that a highly detailed version of the model will be projected onto the lower detailed version to simulate detail. This will make the end product look less blocky and detailed without using a lot of polygons that can impact performance. In other words, we will get the best of both worlds! The thing I will need to keep in mind here is to add detail to make the model interesting and accurate to the source material but at the same time, it is important to not add too much detail that will make the model hard to read from a distance. Adding too many tiny details will make it hard for the brain to distinguish between different parts of the model.
Some extra details like tools or holes will be added! These arent present in the low-detail version of our model. I will use colors to mask out various parts that will help me later on when adding textures to our model.
Here is the high-detail version of our tank! Its fun to be able to view these models up close with this level of detail so here are a few other examples of high poly models for your viewing pleasure!
Here are some high-poly models that are used for Arms Against Tyranny.

Low Poly - Making an optimized low-detail version of our tank!


Now that we have added all that sweet-looking detail to our high poly 3D model, we can go back to the block-out version of our model to make ourselves a low-detail version that will be the version that is used in-game!
I will go through the model and make the adjustments like this! Most of the work here is spent on removing unnecessary polygons in various ways to ensure that the model is optimized. We have a polygon limit for each type of asset. We want to stay within these limits as much as possible without sacrificing too much visual quality!
Here is the low poly version for now! I have kept some polygons on parts that will help speed things up later on when we will prepare it for animation! Its important to remember how the model will move, so you will also have to be careful not to remove geometry on parts that will bend. This is especially important for objects with more organic properties such as the limbs of a character for example.

UV-mapping - Preparing the model for a paint job!


Before we can start adding textures to our model we need to go through a process known as UV mapping. This is where you create a 2D map of your model so that you have something to paint on. Its sort of like cutting a paper model into different sheets of paper that you fold out so that you can paint on them. Once you have cut your model into all of these pieces we will need to put them into a 2x2 square that will end up being our UV-map. This process is very much like a puzzle game. The actual size of the texture image that will be used in-game is quite small so different shells will be mirrored and stacked on top of each other. This is a technique thats commonly used in games when you want to cram as much resolution out of your texture map as possible. There are limitations to doing this, it can make camouflage or dirt look repetitive in ways that are not so appealing so we will need to be conscious of how the model will be viewed in the game. Not all artists enjoy this part but I find it to be pretty fun in its own right!
This is what our UV map looks once we have sorted everything!

Texturing


If you have ever painted a miniature model in real life then this is the part where we grab our brush and start painting our model! This is honestly one of the most satisfying parts of being a 3D artist because you are no longer looking at a model without realistic materials and well.. texture! To create our textures I will use a program called Substance Painter. I will prepare the high and low-detail models, sort the different parts by name and separate some parts from the rest of the model. After this, we will import our low-detail model into our texturing software. Once thats done we will take our high-detail model and project it onto the low-detail model. Once this is done we get a lot of these maps with different properties that we can use for various effects when we start painting our model. From here, its all about listening to your favorite music tracks (low-fi HoI anyone?!) as you add color and detail to your model. When you are texturing you will make adjustments to different values that will affect how different materials are perceived. Its good to start with a base color and from there, add color variation as well as other properties such as how shiny or metallic the different parts should be. Working in Substance Painter is all about working with layers and masking out different parts using various methods. Thanks to the colors that we added to our high-detail model earlier we can quickly add color to things such as tiny holes as well as materials to other details such as small pickaxes and other tools. I will add some ambient occlusion to add some dark color to the nooks and crannies. This will also help separate some of the details from each other. Camouflage will be made a bit larger than in real life to make the texture appear less cluttered from a distance. Last but not least, lets add a tiny amount of highlights to the edges to make the details pop!
A timelapse of the texturing process!

Rigging and Animating


We cant have our model be completely static in the game so lets make it come to life with some animations! Like many things, animation and rigging is a science in itself so there are artists that specialize in this process alone. But in most cases, I will be able to create my animations from scratch or reuse older ones if needed. Before our model can move we will need to add bones or joints that will be placed into the model. These can then be moved around to create our animation. We will place our bones in a manner that lets us manipulate how we want the model to move. Once the bones are in place we can move on to a process called weight painting which lets us tell the game exactly what part of the model should move together with a specific joint.
Now we will animate it by moving the skeleton we have created and pinning certain key poses. Its important to get certain timings right to sell the weight and gravity thats being applied to the vehicle as it moves. This can be trickier than it sounds but with some patience and minor adjustments, we will hopefully get the result we are looking for!
Its alive! Finally, Its time to put our model, textures, and animation into the game! Once added we will make some minor adjustments to the textures and thats that!
Tadaa! While we are on the subject of animated assets, here is a bonus one for you! You may have gotten a peak of it if you read the [spoiler] Historical Finland [/spoiler] Developer diary!
Look at them go! And with that, our tank is ready to wreak havoc on the battlefield! Things are still under development so changes may happen here and there but I hope I was able to give you some interesting insight into the 3D art for Hearts of Iron!
This is just a small taste of all the 3D art we will have in the upcoming DLC so I hope some of you will zoom in every now and then as you play, even if it's just for a moment! Best regards, John


[ 2023-07-12 13:02:52 CET ] [ Original post ]

Developer Diary | Summer Open Beta

Hello there, it's me C0RAX. [previewyoutube=wmEHf-SwKUw;full][/previewyoutube] A bit of the different DD than youre used to this week. I'm here to introduce a new thing I will be doing over the summer. This summer for weeks we will be giving you the chance to test some of the balance changes coming with the 1.13 Stella Polaris patch. These changes are hand picked for testing in order to get feedback from the community on specific changes that might have large impacts. These changes will affect all three major combat groups (Army, Air, and Navy), and vary from value changes to some new functionality and behavior so be sure to read the change list so you know what you're getting yourself into. So let's go into how this is going to work. From July 6th until August 3rd there will be a special Summer Open Beta branch on steam, this branch will have the new changes listed below. Additionally it won't have anything new coming with AAT just changes for base game and previously released DLCs. In the last week of the test we will post a feedback form to be able to collect feedback data that we can use to analyze your responses. Of course this doesnt mean you cant or shouldnt post about it outside the form, I want to encourage as much discourse, theorizing and number crunching as possible so give it a try and let us know what you think. Now lets go over the change log. ##########

Balance


########## ##########

Air


########## - Excess thrust will now increase agility instead of max speed (0.5 AGI per excess thrust) - airframes now how base max speeds to better represent airframe size speed effects - 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 - small airframe can only take single turret 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 - Large autocannon - Large bomb rack - Armor piercing bomb rack - 3 levels of torpedo mounting - Added new techs for plane designer (see above) - Combat better Agility and Speed has increased effect on air combat ##########

Land


########## - Super Heavy tanks are now support units. Super Heavy tanks are no longer line battalions - Armor skirts provide 1 more armor - Most tank chassis' now grant 10-20% more armor - Super heavy tanks now cost more overall, but require 20 per support company. ##########

Navy


########## - added damage reduction to piecing thresholds for naval combat - convoy hitprofile reduced from 120 to 85 bringing it inline with new hitprofile calculations - Ship torpedoes accuracy increased to bring them back in line with new hitprofile calculations 145 > 100 - slightly decreased AA disruption from ship AA - removed visibility effects of super heavy bb armor - rebalanced, ship engines - removed visibility impacts from medium guns - rebalanced IC costs to reflect engine changes - super heavy armor now part of normal heavy armors - rebalanced armors - added cruiser armor to carriers ##########

AI


########## - AI more likely to upgrade division 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 improved their infantry templates in general Right now let's get into some explanations. Thrust and weight: Let's get the big one out the way thrust and weight for planes. This change requires a bit of game explanation and some explanation of aircraft. So why affect agility, agility previously was a stat that was seldom increased but often reduced by making it something you are rewarded by not using all your thrust budget you can lessen the agility effects of modules by not loading up your entire plane creating a choice between maximizing raw damage or maximizing damage bonuses during air to air combat by bring higher Agility. Now the aircraft stuff, so power/weight is very not intuitive for aircraft, adding more power will make a plane faster but taking weight off a plane won't make it faster since speed is almost entirely determined by thrust against drag not weight. What less weight does provide is better climb rate acceleration plus some other things. These are abstracted into agility in game. So now if you want your plane to go faster you either use a newer airframe with lower drag (higher base speed) or by putting a bigger engine in the existing airframe. Combat widths: Now the next big change, terrain combat widths. This is the change that originally spawned the open beta idea. These changes are generally intended to flatten the efficiencies further for combat widths while also reducing division sizes. There will obviously still be certain numbers that fit better than others but overall these differences should be less extreme.
  • Terrain = CW+Reinforcement Width
  • Desert = 82+49
  • Forest = 76+40
  • Hills = 72+36
  • Jungle = 74+34
  • Marsh = 68+22
  • Mountain = 65+25
  • Plains = 82+49
  • Urban = 86+28
Ship penetration: Finally the last change I want to discuss is the new penetration effect for ships. To put this imply they now reduce damage directly on top of reducing critical chance. The damage reductions are smaller than for land combat but that's because they have a much greater effect on the combat but be careful defeating an armored foe with just small guns should be much harder now. Thresholds and damage are as follows [table] [tr] [th]Pen to Armor Threshhold[/th] [th]Critical Change Factor[/th] [th]Damage Factor[/th] [/tr] [tr] [td]2[/td] [td]2[/td] [td]1[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]1[/td] [td]1[/td] [td]1[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]0.75[/td] [td]0.75[/td] [td]0.9[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]0.5[/td] [td]0.5[/td] [td]0.7[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]0.1[/td] [td]0.1[/td] [td]0.5[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]0[/td] [td]0[/td] [td]0.3[/td] [/tr] [/table] That concludes the run down of the upcoming Summer open beta and it's coming to you tomorrow!. I hope to see you try it out and give feedback on the changes. See you next week for more Arms Against Tyranny content coming your way. It's going to be a pretty one.


[ 2023-07-06 13:02:09 CET ] [ Original post ]

Steam Summer Sale!

Generals! The Steam summer Sale is kicking off, and we've got the deals for you all to get the packs you want or need for up to 70 percent off! Grab a drink, find a lounge chair, and relax down by the beach with us B)

Base Game


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

Expansions


  • 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

Music & Model Packs


  • 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


[ 2023-06-29 23:06:25 CET ] [ Original post ]

Developer Diary | Historical Denmark

Velkommen til Danmarks historiske Dev Diary! As you might have so astutely observed, todays Dev Diary is all about Historical Denmark (and if you didnt catch that, its ok; no one understands Danish anyways, so youre not alone). Denmark has had the great misfortune to be designed by a Swede, namely me - and why would that be such a terrible thing you might ask yourself? Well, let me shed some light on that and give you a bit of context dear reader. Denmark and Sweden have fought the most wars between them than any other countries, so theres some old blood and rivalry here. Which is thrilling to me; I now have the chance to make them as underpowered as I want - muahahahaha! Before we go any further, do keep in mind that everything is still a work in progress and might change before releasing in- oooopsie! Spoilers ;) But every bit of feedback and correction is welcome! Do you think I missed something? Do let me know! Did I misspell something in Danish? Dont even bother - Ill never get it right anyways ;) Denmark is famous for surrendering after merely 2 hours when Germany invaded, so this Dev Diary will be similarly short and sweet. Lets jump straight into it, shall we?
And there you have it folks, thats all from- . . So, this is awkward. Ive been told that this wont do and that Denmark needs at least 2 more focuses. I might be able to throw something together. But before we get there we have other things we gotta talk about.

Historical Context


Lets start with some historical context because its crucial to understand Denmarks situation leading up to the war and why they surrendered so quickly. Denmarks entire foreign policy was based around their perceived biggest threat, which prior to WW2 was Germany (and thereafter the Soviet). This way of viewing the world was shaped by their disastrous war with Prussia and subsequent defeat by them in 1864. From this date onward they pursued a policy of neutrality and did all it could not to anger Germany, lowering military spending and eventually focusing on what would become the welfare state. One of the reasons why they kept this strict neutrality and disarmament was because they were unable to obtain security guarantees from the UK or from a Nordic Alliance once the war was looming on the horizon. The UK was in no position to offer any meaningful support to the Danes (and told them so in no uncertain terms) while the rest of the Nordic nations had widely different security concerns and couldnt unify behind a common policy. The Danes realized that they had no hope to withstand a potential German invasion and didnt, therefore, bother with military spending except to keep a symbolic force to emphasize their sovereignty.

Map changes


Before we delve into what changes are coming to Denmark, lets first look at some maps! My suggestion to simply bundle up all of Denmark into one state and rename it Southern Sweden was sadly downvoted (but just barely!). Instead, Denmark gets a whole bunch of new states (so that any Swedes - and Norwegians too! - can really savor the sweet, sweet sensation of conquering all of Denmark, bit by bit). As you can see, Germany is getting an additional state as well, and the Kiel channel has moved to a more accurate position. In total, Denmark starts out with 7 states now.
Besides that, the Danish Belts have gotten a makeup too

At the Game's Start


With that out of the way, lets take a look at Denmarks starting position in 1936.
The more observant of you might notice that Denmark now starts out as a Disarmed Nation to better reflect their unpreparedness and policy of disarmament. Secondly, you might also have noticed that theres an upcoming election in April of 1936 - which isnt at all the usual 4 years cycle other nations have. Denmark actually has this little quirk where an election has to be held within the next 4 years from the last one, meaning an election can be held after 2 years, or 3 years, or whatnot. In-game, this is represented by Denmark holding elections every 3 years (this will be a great opportunity for you to switch the ruling party - but more on that later), but I digress! Other things some of you might have picked up on is that the non-aligned party is now called Bondepartiet and not Venstre. I would say that this is a more accurate reflection of the political landscape in Denmark during the 1930s, but it also fits better with how elections and politics at large has been reworked for Denmark with Arms Against Tyranny. Whats also noticeable is that the Danes are starting out with 3 new National Spirits, 2 of them are quite bad and the third one is in bad shape. Neglected Military is a reflection of the poor state that the Danish military was in when WW2 broke out, but by completing certain focuses you can improve this spirit and remove it entirely.
The Great Depression hit Denmark slightly later than other places, but it did have a great effect on the country. It led to businesses going bankrupt, farmers foreclosing and skyhigh unemployment. All of this spurred the growth of extremist movements on the political fringes. This is all represented by Economic Crisis, which the player can use to their advantage if they wanna boost Bondepartiet, for example. But like with Neglected Military, you can improve and even remove this spirit through focuses.
The last of the 3 starting spirits is Danish Industrial Capabilities, which also can be improved through focuses, but as you can see is in a pretty rough spot at the start of the game. Oh, that Consumer Goods Factories factor might look quite high, and I know that a few of you are wondering about that. We know this seems high but don't worry it's a new modifier which we will be explaining in a future dev diary.

Balance of Power


Before we move on to advisors and the actual Focus Tree, we need to check out Denmarks Balance of Power since its going to be affected by all of these things. This is where all of the political decisions will be happening, and all of them will affect the balance between Welfare and Warfare. Now, what exactly does Welfare and Warfare actually do? Good question, and Im glad you asked! Lets take a closer look.
The more you spend on Welfare, the more youre pouring into developing your country. This is reflected in population growth, faster research, and the construction of Infrastructure, Civilian Factories, and Railways. On the other hand, this means that you are pulling resources away from military build-up and construction.
If you go all out on Military Spending civilian construction will suffer, but youre going to produce military equipment much faster and deploy troops at a quicker pace.

Advisors


As I mentioned, Advisors will affect the Balance of Power - so you better think it through properly when hiring someone. What they will do is push the Balance of Power in either direction - largely based on their historical leanings.



Politics


Like I previously mentioned, Denmark has a 3-year election cycle now, and the perceptive among you might have noticed a Balance of Power decision called Motion of No Confidence. This all plays into how politics works in Denmark for Arms Against Tyranny. You will be able to select between different democratic parties and leaders now, as well as the Non-aligned, Communist, and Fascist parties. The Motion of No Confidence decision allows you to choose a different country leader based on if their political party meets the right criteria.
Not only can you change your country's leader, but you can also call for a snap election if other political parties have high enough popularity.
If you called for a snap election you get the opportunity to boost the popularity of a political party and give them a higher chance of forming a new government. This is also what happens during the regular elections.

The Focus Tree


Sadly, I wasnt allowed to only make a 2 focuses long tree - even though I argued it was historically accurate! Anyways, without further ado, here it is

The Industrial Branch


Its through the Industrial Branch that you can improve and eventually remove the Economic Crisis spirit, but even before starting out on the Industrial Branch, you have to make a decision that will affect the rest of your game. Will you go for Sign the Kanslergadeforlig or Fortify Our Borders?
Historically, Denmark signed an agreement called the Kanslergadeforlig which was the very beginning of the modern Welfare State they have to this day. This will also unlock Karl Kristian Steincke as an advisor.
Moving down this path will provide civilian factories and building slots, as well as a National Spirit called Danish Produce.
If you on the other hand are more concerned with how flat Denmark is and how its just perfectly suited for, lets say tanks, then you might wanna fortify the borders and receive the Defense Minister Alsing Andersen as an advisor.
This path will yield forts and military factories all over Denmark, as well as the spirit Improved Logistics
But no matter what your first choice is, there are plenty of focuses the 2 paths have in common! The first one is Devalue the Krone, which leads to being able to trade with both the UK and Germany. This is actually something Denmark did during WW1 and leading up to WW2

And with Connect the Islands both paths meet up again and share the same focuses.
You can also get Niels Bohr as an advisor
With Expand the Industries you unlock the decision to develop Greenland, the Faroe Islands, and Bornholm.

You can also improve an Industrial Concern and/or unlock one.



But you can also extract more minerals from Greenland

The intention with the Industrial Branch is to make it flexible so that you can really focus on your overarching strategy and have the branch complement that vision. And speaking of which, lets move on to the military side of things!

Military Branch


I gotta be honest with you all here. I could have put most of this part in the alt-history dev diary since Denmark didnt do most of these things. As Ive already mentioned, Denmark was fearful of angering their bigger, southern neighbor, so they spent as little money on the military as possible. But playing like that makes for a boring WW2 war game! Wanna play a little game? Guess how far Denmark got in the branch below ;)
Youve made a guess? Ready for the answer? They completed Expand Ubdsvbnet. To be fair, they were also like 90% through the Foreign Designs in the Airforce path. But thats it! The rest is me piecing together stuff they did after the war and just finding something to do that kinda makes sense for Denmark. Anyways, Im digressing again Do you remember that Neglected Military spirit I mentioned way back when we started this dev diary (feels like ages to me whos been writing this dev diary for several days now, but for you, its been like what? 5 minutes? 10?)? Yeah, this is where you work to improve it and completely remove it through various focuses, including Stockpile Oil
But lets take a closer look at the Army branch. This is where you receive the Hren spirit and improve it throughout the branch. You will also be able to improve your MIOs here. Its mainly defensive in nature, while the more aggressive stats can be found in the political branches.
The first Focus will see you take your first step in reorganizing the army after almost a century of peace and lack of actual combat experience.
Then you can choose between investing in your MIOs, namely Hrens Tekniske Korps, and Dansk Industry Syndikat

With Hjemmevrnet you get the decision to activate the Home Guard during wars, but also the Hren spirit.

I could go on about each individual focus here, but its mostly about improving Hren, research bonuses, and increasing funds for the various MIOs. Lets instead take a look at what Hren yields after completing these focuses instead!
These stats can be improved even further in the political branches - which will add entirely new modifiers as well. Now, lets turn our attention to the Naval Branch, where youll get the Svrnet spirit. Here you have a few choices to make, depending on where you want to take your navy. You can refit old ships, or modernize the navy. You can try to dominate the Baltic Sea with smaller ships or try to rule the North Sea with carriers and capital ships.
Going with the Refit Old Ships will improve the Danish Industrial Capabilities spirit and unlock two decisions to get access to ships fast.



If you on the other hand Modernize The Navy you will get the Svrnet spirit. This will give you two ship variants in production; one for a Coastal Defense Ship and one for a Destroyer. These variants are actually based on designs the Danish navy had but were abandoned due to budget constraints. There are actually different variations of these variants depending on the tech level.




Towards the end of the branch, you face the second choice you will have to make; do you aim for Baltic Sea Domination or do you have North Sea Ambitions? The Baltic Sea Domination is the more straightforward of the two;
Having completed this focus and the Generalkommandoen in the army branch will open up the Frmandskorpset, which might be helpful for naval invasions
The North Sea Ambitions is a bit more complicated though, since its affected by what choice you made between Refit Old Ships or Modernize the Navy (and I know the tooltip is egregious, but its necessary to show off the effects):


And finishing off this focus will also open up the Torpedofly focus in the Airforce Branch;
Before we leave the Navy Branch and take our first look at how the International Market can interact with the Focus Trees, lets see what the Svrnet can look like after completing the Naval branch. After completing the Baltic Sea Domination:
And after completing North Sea Ambitions;
Now, lets fly over to the Airforce Branch - where youll have to decide between Domestic Designs or Foreign Designs for your aircraft straightaway.
What youll get by completing Domestic Designs is two aircraft variants which are actually based on historical designs Denmark were working on when they got invaded.


But if you on the other hand opt to go for Foreign Designs youll receive something called a Subsidy, which will make you as a buyer pay off your purchase faster. As a seller, youre receiving the full payment with the only difference that the deliveries will go faster. So its kind of a win-win situation. You can read more about the International Market in the this dev diary.
This specific Subsidy is for airplanes, but others can be for tanks, trucks, infantry equipment or what have you. If you look closely youll also realize that this Subsidy is only eligible for airplanes purchased from the Netherlands, The UK, Germany, or Sweden. Thats pretty cool, huh? I know you wanna know more about all of this, and well talk more in-depth about it in an upcoming dev diary, so dont you worry! Anyways, lets move on with the Airforce Branch. The next focus is Unify Flyvevbnet, where youll get the Flyvevbnet spirit. Denmark used to have two different airforces; the Armys and the Navys, but they were eventually unified in the 50s. You dont have to wait that long though!
After that, you improve the Flyvevbnet even further before choosing how you want to specify your Airforce; do you want to focus on fighters, close air support, or bombers? Its really up to you and how you want to play the game. After completing the Airforce branch and having done the Jagerfly focus, the Flyvevbnet spirit would look like this:

Political Path


Now weve come to the Political branch, where well only take a look at a small part of it, and leave the rest for the alt-history dev diary (because this is getting long). The left part of the branch is accessible after completing the Policy of Disarmament, which will see you enhancing your industrial capabilities even more.
And in the end, you'll be able to complete Full Employment
But before getting this far you have to first Reaffirm Neutrality as your very first focus in the political branch. Yeah, yeah Im doing this backward; finishing with the beginning - but theres good response for that! You see, when you have taken Reaffirm Neutrality youll get the Declaration of Neutrality spirit which will give you the option to fight or fold when attacked.
Historically, Denmark surrendered after two hours of the German invasion (even though fighting took place up to four more hours). The Danes had a very different experience as an occupied country from everyone else that got invaded; they got to keep their government and even had elections during the occupation. And thats what youll get too if becoming a puppet while having the Declaration of Neutrality spirit.
And to be honest, this is the true historical path. Let me introduce to you the resistance, or as they say in Denmark; velkommen til modstanden!

Occupation


This is what you have to work with as a subject; the Industrial Branch and the Occupation Branch. But dont think for one moment that youll be a good little puppet that will do your master's bidding. No no, this branch is all about gathering foreign support and building up a Resistance so you can topple your overlord! There are also plenty of International Market Subsidies throughout the branch, to build up your forces even more.
With Align with Foreign Powers youll seek out support that can provide you with weapons and support during the occupation, but once you declare independence youll also be able to join their faction - gaining an ally in your war for freedom.
Historically, Denmark set up an exile force in Sweden. They were training to help in the liberation of Denmark under the guise as military police. This is of course something youll be able to do as well! Having gained a host for your Danish Brigades, youll also get a new division template that you can improve through focuses.

To help you resist your overlord you have the Motstandsbevgelsen spirit which you have to improve to stand a chance against Germany.

Balance of Power Redux


As a subject youll also get a different Balance of Power which will be crucial to regaining your freedom. All of these decisions are unlocked through various focuses and will help you in your struggle against your overlord.
And thats about it for me this time around. Who knew there was so much to say about such a small country? Its barely more than a suburb of Sweden, but there are surprisingly many interesting things going on in Denmark during this time period. I hope you enjoyed the (looong) read! And if you dont want to become a puppet of the Germans - dont fret! There are ways to resist an invasion, but those will have to wait until another time. Farvel!


[ 2023-06-28 13:00:27 CET ] [ Original post ]

Developer Diary | Historical Norway

The year is 1936. After 30 years since gaining their independence from Sweden, things in Norway finally seem to be looking up: Its enormous merchant marine continues to be a steady source of wealth, the meager industrial base is starting to recover from the ravages of the Hard Thirties, and theres finally a majority government, led by Johan Nygaardsvold, who is in the process of enacting sweeping progressive reforms and will bring political stability to this young nation. The wind may seem to be on Norways back, but it is merely the harbinger of the storm to come.
Hey everyone! Im Carlo, Content Designer for Hearts of Iron 4, and in charge of the Norwegian content. Im really excited to present to you how were depicting Norway in this period; Its a fascinating country that played a huge and exciting role during World War II, and Im sure youll all have a lot of fun trying to defend it. Lets get to it. Disclaimer: All of this is Work In Progress and subject to change. As I was saying in the prologue, the political situation of Norway is getting better, but they have let their armed forces languish, and not only for budgetary reasons: You see, Norway had declared themselves neutral, and while Switzerland hoped to stay out of the war by making itself be as annoying to conquer as possible, Norway hoped to achieve the same result with the opposite method, trying to appear so harmless and accommodating that nobody would think of invading. I dont think I need to tell you, dear reader, this plan failed miserably. They made themselves so damn harmless, that when the war started, BOTH sides were making plans to invade preemptively before the other one had a chance to do so, and when it finally happened, they were caught completely off guard. And why did both sides want to keep Norway out of the hands of the other? Well, the main reason I presume you read in Swedens Dev Diary, Narvik was where iron from Sweden was shipped to Germany when the Baltic ports were frozen. The second one is simply that Norway is very well positioned to launch aerial and naval operations against Britain. This is why, if you want to change the course of history and defend democratic Norway against the German threat, it will be a challenge. Here are the starting National Spirits:
Complacent Cabinet is meant to represent the unduly confidence the Nygaardsvold government had in a future smooth sailing, and how unprepared it was for a swift reaction to war. It basically makes it harder for you to switch laws and to change the terrible Theorist you start with. Why is he so bad? Well, to represent the infamous miscommunication that occurred when the cabinet found out about the invasion. TL;DR: The government asked for a Partial Mobilization, but unbeknownst to everyone except Birger Ljunberg, this meant sending the conscription orders by post, a terrible idea when you know the enemy is at the gates. Instead of, you know, telling this to the rest of the cabinet and asking if they were sure, he just went ahead and instructed to send the orders by post [Clownemoji].

Obsolete Armed Forces to represent the sorry state of the Norwegian army at the time, ESPECIALLY the forts. Thats why we added two new modifiers so we can make a countrys forts worse than usual. Dont worry, you can remove this National Spirit later.
The Hard Thirties: AKA country coming out of the great depression starter pack, it makes it slower for you to build and increases your consumer goods usage.
Anti-communist Sentiment increases fascism because there wasnt a massive communist or fascist presence in the country, but the fear towards communism was one avenue fascists used to recruit.
These are just the starting National Spirits, through the Focus Tree you will be able to remove some of them, and add some new ones. Heres the political branch for Historical Norway:
As you can see, most of the starting focuses will be geared towards building up civilian industry and improving the political situation, ignoring military buildup.
In fact, if you want to develop Norway properly, youll have to complete the focus Broken Gun Policies, which will lock you out of most of the military focuses, but gives you access to the central decision system for Historical Norway:
The idea is that you can develop each state individually so you can get civilian benefits out of them, at the cost of military readiness for that state. You can Develop a state up to 3 times, with increasing civilian benefits and harsher military penalties. As I said, Norways focus before the war was civilian development rather than military preparedness, if you started building up the military right away it wouldnt be historical would it?
Dont fret though, once the war starts, youll be able to leverage this development into military benefits to properly defend against the incoming Fascist bully. It wont only cost you development and political power, you will also spend convoys; after all, Norway had one of the largest merchant marines in the world, so shedding it represents the economic cost of shifting towards military power.
When you convert the development of a state into military military effects, the state will go one level down in development and you will get a different benefit based on the development level: At level 1 you will get a dynamic modifier in that state to defend it better. At level 2 you will get a free military factory in that state And in level 3 you get two militia divisions, plus a dynamic modifier for the resistance on that state when it is conquered.


This means that which states you develop, and up to what level, matter a lot if you hope to have a chance against Germany. Now back to the Focus Tree!
Now you might be asking yourself Whats the deal with this Fascist Invasion of Norway focus to the side?, and I say, dont worry about it Nothing to see here.

I told you already, nothing important is happening over there. Here, have this focus with a doggo.
This is the focus Preparing the Return to Norway, and it features Bamse, the San Bernard mascot of the Norwegian Free Forces. He was a crew member of the NoHMS Thorodd, he broke up fights, saved people from drowning and even a stabbing. A true, certified good boy. The focus is meant to Alright, alright. You win.
When the inevitable happens, and Germany decides to invade Norway, two things will happen(Besides getting invaded). First, that focus completes and then you get an event about Quislings historical coup, which gives you three choices: Try your luck. If you trust your preparations then you shouldnt have much trouble fighting against Germany and Norways evil twin. Delay the coup, at a cost that you can reduce depending on Oslos Development level. Youll get the coup without the possibility of delaying it further once you hit more than 50% Surrender Progress, but if you do well enough you wont see it ever again. Or You can take the cowards way out, and betray everything youve been doing so far to fight on the side of the fascists. Congrats! Youre a Quisling!
Look Listen, jokes aside, it happens to the best of us; youre on your ironman campaign, distracted building toaster factories and reorganizing your navy and suddenly you realize youre totally not ready for whats about to come. If it happened to the Norwegian Government in 1940, it can happen to you. With this, you have the option of salvaging your campaign without having to go into exile, and if you prefer to go into exile theres a small sub branch for that too; Norway has both a Historical Democratic and a Historical Fascist focus branches.
Now that the Oslo shuffle is done, lets take a look at the Historical Fascist Branch:
Im saving it for the alt-history dev diary but there are fascist focuses before this one, and they allow you to lay the groundwork for a fascist civil war, where youll be better prepared and potentially have control of more states than just Oslofjord. If youre going fascist from the getgo, or delayed the coup, you can complete this 7 day focus at any time and start playing as fascist (It autocompletes if you switch sides). It also adds the National Spirit Contested Leadership, to represent that Quisling, despite being liked by Hitler and some other inner circle Nazis, was not meant to be the ruler of Norway, it was just a temporary stopgap, and an overeager fascist.
Thats no problem though, because soon enough you get to make this choice between going alt-history by keeping Quisling in power, or continuing the historical path by getting rid of him, replacing him with Josef Terboven, the German administrator of the Reichskommisariat.

The difference between the two, is that Quislings path leans more independent, but lacks the industrial and military cooperation of the Terboven path. Youll have another chance to bring him back later though, which is what happened historically. But you can choose to put Quislings rival, Jonas Lie in power, who will bring Norway closer to Germany, since Quisling wanted to emulate the German Reich but didnt want to be a puppet of the Germans, while Jonas Lie was called at the time Germanys man and mightve been content with being a puppet of the Reich.

You might be wondering, though, why would anyone not take the independent Fascist Norway path, and the answer is that Quisling has terrible modifiers:
And he gets worse:
AND EVEN MORE WORSE:
But hey, at least you get some troops and viking claims!
Besides those two branches, every ideology will have access to the common branches to build up industry and improve the armed forces. They have some light overlap, but in general they are divided between: Rearmament Branch, with general army and industrial focuses; the Independent Norway Branch, with civilian industry and tech; the Airforce branch, with bonuses to all things flying; and finally, the Navy branch, which will help your efforts trying to defend your comically long coastline.
It is important to note, that if youre playing Historical Democratic, you will have the Broken Gun national spirit at some point, which will block you from all of those focuses except for the ones in the Independent Norway branch, so you might be a bit delayed in getting to them if thats the case.
Now, let me go on a tangent for a bit. This is the story of Norways first, and for our period, only tank.
In 1937 the Norwegian government realized that they needed to start thinking about armored warfare, to prepare to fight with tanks, and against tanks, so after some thought, they approached the Swedish company Landsverk to buy a tank. The thing is, they realized tanks were expensive, and way outside their budget, so they just ordered an L-120 Light Tank Chassis, no armor, no turret. Kinda like ordering just the fries and soda, no burger. After it finally arrived, they fitted it with metal sheets as armor, and a turret that was basically a cylinder with a hole for a heavy machine gun. People nicknamed Norways only tank, Rikstanken (The Realms Tank), and Kongstanken (The Kings Tank). The whole thing is even funnier when you learn that tank in Norwegian is the word for thought, so Rikstanken becomes a metaphor for the idea of Norway itself. For comparison, this is what a Landsverk L-120 looks like:
And this is what the Rikstanken looked like:
Granted, thats a particularly bad picture, but I recommend researching a bit more for yourself. It really was a wonderfully bad tank, so bad that they didnt even use it when the country was being invaded. Its ok though, we still love you just the way you are, Rikstanken. Of course I wouldnt be talking about this if there wasnt content for it. By completing the Rikstanken focus, youll start an event chain that will let you buy a single tank from Sweden. Or if you want to go wildly ahistorical, you can spend a little more and buy a bunch of tanks from them, or from the Soviet Union. Another option will be accepting some political influence from Germany or the Soviet Union in exchange for a bunch of tanks, or even starting a tech exchange for developing your own tanks from scratch.

And when you do get that tank, youll be able to enjoy it in all its 3D glory:
Of course, this beauty will be able to tour the whole kingdom, all 11 states:

  • Oslofjord
  • Telemark
  • Opplandene
  • Agder
  • Vestlandet
  • Trndelag
  • Helgeland
  • Nordland
  • Troms
  • Finnmark
And, if you have the boats, Jan Mayen.
With that, I conclude this Dev Diary, feel free to ask any questions. Now go and wishlist Arms Against Tyranny and stay tuned to learn all about Denmarks historical content, it might take you longer to read it than what it took Germany to invade it, but it will surely be an interesting read!


[ 2023-06-21 13:02:22 CET ] [ Original post ]

The Grandest Lan | Tickets available NOW!

Generals!


Word has just reached us from the Requisitions office - The Grandest Lan tickets are now available! Make sure to grab yours to join in on all the action, to view the castle, and to have a great time. Get yours here


[ 2023-06-15 17:10:49 CET ] [ Original post ]

Developer Diary | Historical Sweden

Vlkommen! That is of course not English, but rather Swedish which will be today's dev diary. This DD will talk about the branches for the military and industrial branches, as well as democratic branches. This tree has been a collaboration between me and AveeBee. We have had a longstanding rule in the HoI team that no Swede is allowed to touch a Swedish focus tree, but apparently that rule flew out of the window as long as the Swede in question was supervised by an adult. Normal caveats apply, theres work in progress stuff in here, and things might change before release.

Historical Context


As most of you already know, Sweden was the only Nordic country that was not invaded during WW2, but in a similar way to Switzerland was pressed by both the allies and the axis which led to some dubious concessions, but Sweden remained neutral through it all. While Sweden arguably had the superior military capabilities compared to its Nordic neighbors, it was woefully unprepared for war and was caught with its proverbial pants down on the eve of WW2 with its government preferring to focus on the welfare state rather than its military, something that would change as the war progressed. This will be a major theme for the focus tree in large. As you might have noticed I keep saying Democratic, not Historical. That is of course because historically Sweden did not join any wars. Me and Amy decided early on that we assume that players _will_ want to get into a war sooner or later, (which is after all a key tenet of the game), which is why even under the Democratic paths you will eventually join the war. (of course the AI will have guardrails against this on historical) While there are a lot of historical references to things that actually happened, we are assuming that the player wants to engage in the warfare part sooner or later.

Start


At the start of the focus tree you will have the choice to pick from a total of 4 leaders. Historically this was Axel Pehrsson-Bramstorp which only ruled for a few months until Per-Albin Hansson came back in the 1936 election, called the Summer Government. You can try to keep Per-Albin which will result in a Vote of No Confidence, or you can pick Gsta Bagge which is the right leaning option


Dont worry about losing out on Per-Albin Hansson though! After the summer is over another election will happen, and you can return him to power. If you went through the hassle of having a Fallen Riksdag you get an additional option of appointing Ernst Wigforss as a Per-Albins successor, or if you want you can continue with the leader you have.

Hungershield and Folkhemmet


Before I continue I need to bring up the issue of stability, or rather Hungerskld (Hungershield). During the first world war Sweden was embargoed by the entente due to iron ore trade with Germany, leading to domestic protests, riots and eventually the ousting of the current Swedish government. The Swedish PM at the time, Hjalmar Hammarskjld was nicknamed Hungerskjld, hence the wordplay. At the onset of WW2 the fear of food shortages again loomed large for Sweden, and drove both domestic policies and was a great fear for the populace.
In the game this is represented with stability acting as a shield against such hunger strikes. Being above a % of stability protects the player against those adverse effects, and being below that threshold opens you up to the risk of getting strikes.
Riots can happen if you are at a very low stability. . While they are temporary you will not want to get stuck in an endless cycle of these. There are a few safeguards that we have put in place to make sure that players that temporarily dip under these thresholds will not immediately get these strikes instantly due to a bad RNG roll, but you do not want to stay under the limit for very long. That leads us to another concept, Folkhemmet (The People's Home). While you might know it as the name of communist Sweden, it was actually a set of social-democratic policies that paved the way for the welfare state that Sweden has today. The focus on this welfare state was partially why the government at the time was hesitant to spend a lot of the budget on the military, as these programs were very popular. In game this is represented with the Folkhemmet spirit.
As long as the welfare state is intact it acts as a buffer against the risk of getting strikes, but as you can see it also drastically reduces the military capabilities of Sweden.
As you progress through the focus tree key focuses will start to orient the Swedish industry towards war, but the Folkhemmet shield that is protecting you from strikes will be chipped away.
To demonstrate this is what a fully degraded Folkhemmet looks like at the moment. To counter this there's a mix of things the player can do, such as employing advisors, picking focuses that add stability, picking decisions that add stability and so forth. We dont specifically dictate how you handle this system, but rather hope that players will handle it differently depending on playstyle and how aggressive they want to be. In a nutshell it is a question of when do I rearm and how do I avoid the adverse consequences of those decisions, and make sure you also do not get caught with your pants down. With those main themes explained, let's look at the actual tree

Industrial Branch



This is the entrypoint for the focus tree. The Defense Act is where you pick your leader, and just below it is the industrial branch. As you can see there's a clear divide between the focuses, and that you can mix and match some of them.



These are two examples, and as you might glean the left side is more aligned with social-democratic policies, while the right one is more aligned with right leaning policies. The right side generally leans more towards ratcheting up the defense industry, while the left one focuses more on the internal stability of the state. Putting this into context, if you amass a larger pool of stability from these focuses, you might be able to offset the dip in stability from Folkhemmet, but on the other hand it might take longer to do so.
If you really do not want to deal with this at all you can lean heavily into the right and remove it completely.
You can also leverage your ball-bearing trade (the things that make other things spin). Something that Sweden smuggled to both the axis and allies.

Flashpoints


As the events of history unfolds events will happen that put Sweden into contact with the great powers of the war. These are events that we nicknamed Flashpoints, which are historical contextual events that happened to Sweden during the war.
Here Sweden gets accidentally bombed by the USSR
The USSR can apologize or deny this. In this case they deny it, allowing Sweden to respond
Sending military aid to Finland as a response will escalate tensions with the USSR

If the chain of tensions reaches a boiling point it will boil over, dragging Sweden into the war as well, or not depending on how Stalin responds
This is one example of one of these events where tensions might lead to war.

Military Branch



Scrolling right we find the 3 military branches of the focus tree which will be shared between all the paths of the focus tree
What is a bit special though is that part of the tree is locked behind war support (or military factories if you get that far). Instead of providing stuff like military factories these focuses augment the military directly, think of them as a miniature doctrine tree. The focus behind this war support gate is intended to put some additional pressure on the player to want to get war support up, tying back to the interplay of the Folkhemmet and Hungershield.
These are generally divided into a defensive and offensive play style with the left one being more oriented towards defensive oriented players, and the right one being more oriented towards offensive offensive players. (pictured above is the panic button focus) As you progress through the focuses these spirits grow in strength as you invest more resources into them

While these cornerstone focuses are strong, they require investment in both time, and being gated behind war support. How quick you get to them is decided by how fast you rearm.
You might recognize Bofors in this example which made the popular 40 mm Anti Air gun. In this case Bofors gets a unique trait and funds for the MIO The military branch of the focus tree is where a lot of Folkhemmet is going to be changed via focuses. It also provides some much needed funds for the Swedish MIOs

Navy Branch



Sweden's navy tree is mainly divided into whether you want to contest the Baltic directly via capital ships or if you prefer to go the German route and focus on submarines and light surface fleet for harassment. The top shared part deals mainly in expanding the output of the domestic industry, as well as the option to buy older ships from other countries.
As happened historically, the Italian destroyers might take a roundtrip through the world and end up in Iceland, so be aware :D
Of course we couldnt resist making a Vasa focus, however we hope that it is slightly more successful than its predecessor.
While its a powerful battleship it deploys at 60% complete, so youll need to finish the other 40%.

Winter War



When Finland was invaded by the USSR it reverberated through Sweden. Finland was seen as a first line of defense against the Russian threat, which has been a historic adversary of Sweden. You are given a choice of whether to go the historic route and send volunteers, try and claim the land islands when Finland is weak, or get actively involved in the war. Getting involved in the war will give you a mission of taking Leningrad, and if you or Finland manages to take it the Soviet Union will either be forced to sign a white peace, or face massive unrest. Both Sweden and Finland also get the avatars of their nation to help out, for a while.


If Leningrad is lost the USSR will either be forced to revoke their claim, or face embarrassment.

Democratic Branch


As you probably know Sweden did not enter the war. But in HoI all the preparation and buildup, and later on the war itself is a key component of the core game loop. Aveebee and I decided to take an early design decision to work under the key assumption that players who play Sweden will want to get into the war. Meaning that we have had to modify the historical path to work with the plan that Sweden will enter the war at some point. Of course the historical Swedish AI will not enter the war unless provoked. In practice that means that the historical branch will have focuses related to events that did happen in real life, but they work under the thesis of Sweden eventually getting involved as well.
A lot of refugees from other Nordic countries fled to Sweden and were secretly trained as police forces. Some of these would later help liberate Norway. In game this focus puts these police forces in a separate pool that grows as more Nordic countries capitulate. On the onset of war this banked manpower will be unlocked and transferred into the normal manpower pool. You can also expand the facilities to raise the training cap for
Beep Beep Most important of all is the Per Albin Bus (pictured above). This is a mobile headquarters that the Swedish government planned to run away into the forest with in case of invasion. In game the bus is a state modifier that can be moved to adjacent states, reducing the surrender limit. If the bus gets captured the country leader dies. (We actually got to see this bus when we visited the Army Museum last summer)

You can move the bus as long as you control an adjacent state,which means that you can take Per Albin all the way to Moscow if you really want to for some reason.
Sweden also has access to Rangers, which are special forces that send out undercover troops to sabotage vital infrastructure behind enemy lines. Use it wisely as the casualties of these can be quite high. Very useful to blow up enemy ports in Norway.
As you eventually enter the war by trying to either Save Denmark or Norway Sweden gets a goal to liberate every occupied Nordic country. The more occupied countries the stronger this bonus becomes, with an additional bonus once those countries are liberated.

Nordic Defense Council



If the more careful path of building up your defensive capabilities is a bit too conservative for you there's always the option of forming the Nordic Defense Council. This involves more aggressively tackling the threats around you with the other Nordic countries' help.
It invites every Nordic to become a member state of the council, and you get to pick whether to centralize its command at the cost of its member states not being able to defend themselves as well,
Or decentralize its command into its member states
Here is an example of a centralized command, with Mannerheim and Helge Ljung working side by side
In the end you can opt out of picking either Death or Dishonor, growing stronger the more member states you have.

Late Game Focuses



We also put in some late game focuses, mainly for those that want to continue the campaign after WW2 has concluded. These tie into late game technologies, the new special forces rework and finally dealing with the threat of the iron curtain.
This Lion looks a bit more majestic than the Gripsholm Lion. A frequent on r/badtaxidermy

Advisors, Military and States


As always we have new awesome advisors. Here are the ones available to Sweden.

My favorite one in Sweden is Ebba Margareta, which does not cost anything to hire but can get traits depending on how the player chooses to invest.

We also have the couple Myrdal which feeds off of each other if they are both in the Cabinet.

As for the new generals here they are. Most of their experience came as a result of being in the Finnish civil war.
And the Admirals! Charles de Champs is definitively winning the style competition here.
And these are the new Swedish states! My pet peeve of having Norrbotten and Lappland on the map as two separate entities has finally been solved! (sorry for the weird slicing of the image Sweden has aweird shape). land now also starts demilitarizing at the start of the game (which it still is to this day). And finally, some nice 3D models!




I call this one the Sardine deathtrap (The engine is in the front....)

The Resource redistribution


Finally theres the question of resources. During WW2 Germany was partially reliant on Swedish iron ore, especially before the fall of France. Arguably the reason why the Narvik campaign happened at all was Germany's desire to secure the Gllivare mines, and the allies desire to blow it up (under the pretense of helping Finland). We have tried several ways to model this in game but it has been hard for several reasons. The trade algorithm runs the shortest route capital to capital, while the actual resources are located in the north of Sweden. The algorithm also really prefers land routes, which would go across Denmark, or if by sea through the Baltics and not through Narvik as was historically. Changing this is outside the scope of this expansion and while we tried other adding content driven systems on top of this nothing worked satisfactorily up to this point. I don't rule out some abstraction for Germany controlling Narvik gaining them some IC boost, but currently we decided to sidestep it in another direction, by making Germany a bit more reliant on imports. Germany has in game had more domestic resources than it actually had in game, leading to a problem of it never really having issues with resources, especially steel. Whatever steel it needed was either in Germany proper, or soon to be taken from France, leading to the Free Trade Meta we often see these days. Part of the issue is the abstraction of coke, ore grade, steel mills into the single encompassing iron which makes this hard to properly represent. All in all Sweden provided around 43%, German domestic production 28.2% and France 12.9% to the German war effort between 1933-1943. Having buildings such as steel mills was also outside the scope of this expansion. This resulted in an overall reduction in iron for specific countries, main targets were Germany which overall had poor iron ore quality, and France which Germany will gobble up. Germany starts with 2 civilian factories more than before to use for import as needed. Portugal also got some tungsten shifted to Sweden. Below are the main changes, with no changes in trade law from 1936 starting dates, accounting for starting infrastructure and no equipment lines active. Germany AAT
PRE-AAT
France AAT
PRE-AAT
Portugal AAT
PRE-AAT
SWE AAT
PRE-AAT
These numbers are not final and might change depending on balance and how the AI performs.
Whole Focus Tree Above I don't have any good ways to end this, so I'll just stop by saying-


[ 2023-06-14 13:03:59 CET ] [ Original post ]

Arms Against Tyranny | Historical Finland

Greetings all on this auspicious day, As promised last week, today we have big news as well as an overview of what were working on for the next Hearts of Iron expansion: Arms Against Tyranny, and the accompanying Stella Polaris update. [previewyoutube=hDz7CwLvnIc;full][/previewyoutube] After successfully evading capture and inclusion in numerous HOI expansions, were proud to announce that Finland and the Nordic countries will be setting the theme for the Arms Against Tyranny expansion. This is a region clearly very close to our hearts at Paradox, but also a region with significant involvement in the development of WW2. While the effects of the winter war, occupations, and policy-making of the Nordic countries are well documented on the progress of the war as a whole, domestic histories and perspectives of these countries are often overlooked in favor of more active theaters. Arms Against Tyranny offers us a chance to tell both aspects of these stories without compromising the greater strategic narrative weve come to expect from Hearts of Iron. Over the next several months well be introducing you to a more detailed perspective on each of the constituent parts of AAT, including deep dives into the mechanics youve already seen (International Markets and Military Industrial Organizations). The mechanics weve chosen to include here are ones which we feel augment the fantasy of playing in the Nordic area during this era, though as usual, weve tried to make sure that the expansion brings something for everyone. Below, youll find the store-page overview for whats coming in AAT - however beyond this summary, we will not be answering any questions on the features we havent produced a dev diary for. ************************************ Hearts of Iron IV: Arms Against Tyranny Four Northern democracies are seemingly helpless against nearby predatory dictatorships. Despite their size, Finland, Norway, Denmark, and Sweden have a chance to avoid conquest through clever diplomacy or fierce resistance. Write a new history of the Nordic countries in Arms Against Tyranny, a new expansion for Hearts of Iron IV. This expansion to Paradox Interactives celebrated grand strategy wargame about the tumult of the years around the Second World War adds new focus trees and alternate histories for the northernmost nations of Europe, customization of weapons manufacturers, and new ways to take advantage of neutrality to profit your own citizens. The Winter War Relive the defining moment of Finnish history, defying the odds in a war against a much more powerful Soviet adversary. Though disadvantaged in air and amored forces, Finnish forces have a strong advantage on homeland defence, so you should prepare an army specifically designed for Finlands terrain to fight invaders. Or, if you prefer, write your own history, strengthening Fascist sympathizers who want a Greater Finland or pursuing a socialist path - with or without Soviet support. A Powerful Sweden The richest of the Nordic nations, Sweden is well-suited to a path of vigorous neutrality and to serve as both an arms designer and arms trader. Strong unions risk crippling unstable governments unless you can provide enough work. In a world on fire, Sweden must also upgrade its obsolete forces so it can defend itself. Can the Swedish democracy avoid taking the side of its occupied neighbors, or will the government collapse in favor of monarchist or Fascist alternatives? Norway Relive the historical challenge of a young industrializing nation trying to stay neutral in the face of German aggression or prepare for war by quickly arming to resist the war that is coming to your doorstep. In alternate historical paths, unscrupulous domestic fascists may take advantage of domestic complacency and pursue Nordic union through betrayal, or a Communist revolution can choose to stand with or against Stalins regime. Denmark A long-standing policy of neutrality leaves Denmark unready for a continental war. Pursue the course of domestic harmony through a strong welfare state and agile diplomacy, or throw in with the democratic Allies, rearming for the coming storm. Alternate paths include chasing the dream of a united Scandinavia, reviving the old Kalmar Union. A War Machine of Your Design To make sure you have an industry that matches your ambitions, national manufacturers and weapons designers can specialize their craft, improving the production and research of various items through the course of the war. Military Industrial Organizations will offer new ways to streamline production lines or develop high-performance weapons systems with advantages on the battlefield. Guns for Butter In the new International Market, you can become an arms exporting powerhouse, selling weapons to other nations in return for civilian factory output, increasing your own industrial production at home while fueling the fires of war abroad. This is a new way for rich and advanced neutral nations to stay viable and active in a world war. New Military Options Many updates and changes to the design and organization of military divisions, including customization of special forces units, divisional specializations, and more. New Art and Music New unit art, including Finnish snowmobile brigades, and 10 new songs inspired by the key cultures in Arms Against Tyranny. ************************************ This, however, is not all! I shall hand you over to our most prolific dev-diary artiste to introduce you to our plans for AATs headline nation: Finland! Hei! It is Mano de Zombi to welcome you all to a new Hearts of Iron 4 Dev Diary! With the beautiful Swedish summer approaching, good weather and bright sunny days have finally arrived in the North, and with them comes news about the first country to be revealed for the upcoming DLC Arms Against Tyranny, Finland! As we have been doing in the latest DLCs, we are going to split the Finnish content into two Dev Diaries. Today, we will be talking about the historical and common branches of the Finnish Focus tree, and we will leave the alternative history for a future Dev Diary. As usual, I need to warn you that you are about to see Work In Progress (WIP) content that might not be finalized, balanced, localized or that might contain placeholder art, and it is subject to change before release. Also keep in mind that some of the content might vary if certain previous DLCs are not active. Thanks for your understanding! And with that said, lets get to it!
In 1936, Finland found itself in a complex political, diplomatic, and military situation. Despite being a democratic nation, nationalism and right-wing ideology were on the rise. The proximity to the Soviet Union also made it vulnerable to aggression, and tensions between the two countries were high. On the political front, Finland's government was fairly fragile, with several different parties (most remarkably the Agrarian Party, the National Coalition Party and the Social Democratic Party) vying for power and struggling to work together effectively. Finland's relationships with its neighbors were strained. In 1932, the SovietFinnish Non-Aggression Pact was signed between both countries, and it was reaffirmed for ten years in 1934, but relations between the two countries were definitely not great, leaving Finland in a situation of uncertainty and vulnerability. In terms of military, the Finnish Armed Forces were poorly equipped and trained, with an army that was ill-prepared to defend the country's borders. Despite this, Finland had a long history of military valor and determination, and its soldiers had proven to be fiercely loyal to their country on multiple occasions. So after putting some context into the situation of Finland by 1936, lets see how the country looks like in-game:
As you can see, Finland still starts the game with the Sisu National Spirit. But what is Sisu? I can hear some of you asking, well let me try to explain very briefly: Sisu is a Finnish concept that is used to express the national character of the Finns. It doesnt really have a literal equivalent in English, but could be described as stoicism, tenacity, resilience, unrelenting willpower, hardiness and bravery (among several other qualities). It is used to explain the fierce determination and courage of the Finns in the face of extreme adversity. Just a curiosity, after reading a bit more deep into Sisu, I found out that apparently one can also have bad sisu, meaning that the individual is a hostile and malignant person, and one can also have too much sisu, meaning foolhardiness and stubbornness. But anyhow, now that we have a better idea of what Sisu is, some of you might have noticed that the Sisu National Spirit in this screenshot is significantly weaker than its old version before the DLC. Well fear not, this version of Sisu is not the definitive one, there are five stages for the Sisu National Spirit, and they are tied to the Balance of Power mechanic, this is one of the worst versions of it (a bit more info about why soon), and at its best tier, the Sisu National Spirit is even slightly more powerful than its older version. Finlands country leader has also changed. This is because, after delving into Finnish politics in the 30s and 40s, I realized how unstable the position of Prime Minister was: from 1936 to 1945 Finland saw some 11 different Prime Ministers, with some of them leaving their post to become President of the Republic while others seemed to be fairly irrelevant and last in their position for a very short time. In comparison, Finland had only 5 Presidents of the Republic in the same time period, including some of the most iconic and relevant political figures (like Mannerheim or Ryti) that had a huge impact on Finland's politics and fate. So, I made up my mind and decided to represent these Presidents of Finland as the available country leaders in-game. Worth noting that, even though Finland was historically really, really close to Germany in terms of relations and fascism was big in the country, Finland was considered by most a co-belligerent country to Germany, instead of an actual German ally and member of the Axis. In order to represent this in-game, and prevent certain issues such as having the AI naturally join the Axis, turn Fascist, and also being able to have a separate peace, in the game Finlands historical path is represented by the Non-Aligned ideology. Lets take a look at the first one and see how these country leaders are also tied to the Finnish Balance of Power:
A skilled precision shooter, member of the Fascist Militia Suojeluskunta and staunch anti-communist, Pehr Evind Svinhufvud did not enjoy a huge popularity by 1936, so in the 1937 elections a coalition of centrists (Agrarian and Progressive) and social democrats voted for Kysti Kallio to ensure that Svinhufvud would not be re-elected. Among Svinhufvuds traits, you can see this slightly weird Personal Agenda trait. All Finnish leaders have a Personal Agenda trait, although what this agenda is differs from leader to leader. As you might have guessed, this is directly tied to the Finnish Balance of Power, which is called Public Trust:
The Public Trust balance of power represents the trust of the people in their president, and how this affects the Finns and their means to overcome harsh times. It ties together the balance of power with the Finnish spirit (Sisu) and the Finnish leadership (country leader). As mentioned before, Svinhufvud didnt enjoy that much popularity by 1936, so the Balance of Power starts fairly low in the Low Public Trust side. Low Public Trust will grant small Stability, War Support and Political Power Gain penalties. High Public Trust, on the other hand grants Stability, War Support and Recruitable Population bonuses. Besides this, there are 5 ranges in the Balance of Power, and each of them will provide a version of the Sisu National Spirit, so the higher the Public Trust on your leader, the more powerful Sisu you will get (note that, at its worst, the Sisu National Spirit doesnt give you any penalties, it just become very weak). When any of the items in the country leaders Personal Agenda is fulfilled, the Balance of Power will move towards the appropriate side on a weekly basis. In the case of Svinhufvud, eliminating all communist and democratic support will push the Balance of Power towards High Trust over time, while losing control of a core state will do the opposite. Last but not least, there are some decisions (and focuses) that will help you push the Balance of Power to either side. Some of them will even allow you to replace your leader, like Motion of No Confidence (which costs significantly less the lower the Public Trust is, so good in combination with Organize the Opposition, which will decrease Public Trust). As you might have guessed already, the decision to Form a Military Government, available when at war with a major country, is the way to put Mannerheim in charge of the country.

You will be able to change your Non-Aligned leader not only via Balance of Power decisions, but also via certain events. Svinhufvuds term as President will end in 1937 and you will get an event in which you can decide if you want to re-elect him or not, Kallio will die at some point around late 1940, and if Mannerheim was appointed as President during war, there will be an event allowing him to resign in favor of Paasikivi, for free. You can still keep Mannerheim if you want and make him resign later on, at a cost, but as you will notice when you look at his Personal Agenda, that might not be a great idea. Here you have the different Non-Aligned leaders available to Finland:



And since we are already talking about Finnish characters, lets jump into Finnish advisors, starting with a list of political advisors, most of which need to be unlocked in the Focus Tree. All the political advisors potentially available to a Non-Aligned Finland are shown with colored portraits below:

There are many more advisors but well see them next time since they are exclusive to the alt-history branches. When it comes to military advisors, as you can see below there are some new additions and many new portraits!

When it comes to Unit Leaders, Finland now starts the game with a fair amount of Generals to choose from. As you will see, most of them have a lot of terrain-related traits, and in general a rather high value on their defense skill, this is to represent the adaptability and competency of the Finnish army during the wars, especially utilizing terrain and weather conditions in their favor against drastically larger and better-equipped enemy forces (especially during the defensive Winter War).

The new Veteran Jaeger trait is used to represent officers who, during World War I, volunteered to train in Germany as Jaegers during the Great War and the civil war in Finland (this was one of many means employed by Germany to weaken Russia during the Great War). Jaegers were highly trained, among other skills, in guerrilla warfare and sabotage operations behind enemy lines, and as you can see, in-game the trait provides huge bonuses towards gaining certain traits, including terrain ones, which will help your generals getting the key trait Adaptable, which can in turn really make the difference when defending against a much bigger enemy! Does this still feel like not enough Finnish generals for you? Got you covered, throughout the focus tree you will be able to unlock many more generals:
And even though Finland was nothing close to the mightiest naval power even in the Baltic, Finland now starts with Ragnar Hakola as Admiral and can unlock Svante Sundman as an additional admiral early in the Naval branch, in case you want to go for some sort of naval run with Finland (hey, who am I to judge?).
Regarding Industrial Designers, Finland has now 5 of them, including a new Mining Company that will help with the lack resources:

Now lets take a quick look at the Finnish Military Industrial Organizations and how Finland interacts with the MIO feature. To keep things as short as possible, I wont be going into any details about what an MIO is, (for more information about the feature you can check the MIO Dev corner [url=https://foru). We will take a look at how MIOs look like in-game, so please keep in mind that this is still very much WIP (especially UI) and various things will definitely change before release. Here you have the list of Finnish MIOs, featuring more generalist MIOs for ships, aircraft and tanks (the tank one is actually not historical, but still a possibility if you want to focus on tank development as Finland), and dedicated infantry equipment, guns and motorized MIOs:
All of these MIOs contain several unique traits, some specific to the MIO itself, some specific to Finnish MIOs, most of which will be unlocked by different focuses in the focus tree (will go into some examples later):
MAP CHANGES (States, VPs & railways & Supply hubs, Infra, land) And before getting into the Focus Tree, I need to show you guys some map changes in Finland:
Here you can see that there are several new states, closer to the regional administration during the 30s/40s (which, by the way, changed significantly in some areas in a matter of a few years. Maybe you also noticed that land is now a demilitarized state at game start. A significant number of victory points have been added (most of which are low value), and some VPs, railways and supply hubs have been repositioned to more accurately represent their real location.
There has been some resource adjustment and, most importantly, infrastructure has been drastically reduced in most states, to better represent the real situation of roads and communications in most Finnish regions in the 1930s. Dont worry too much about the infrastructure, since Finland has the means to improve that infrastructure and to deal with low supply areas and winter attrition, so these changes will potentially cause more harm to any enemy forces attempting to invade Finland from the East/North, getting away from their own supply lines.
And finally it is time to take a look at Finlands Focus Tree. Quite modest in size, but hopefully with a good amount of flavor and interesting gameplay mechanics, something a player can enjoy while focusing on the actually important stuff: surviving the war against all odds!
First of all let me tell you that, as some of you might have hoped for, there is a significant amount of short focuses all over the Finnish tree, which will hopefully make it feel more dynamic and engaging. Check out the rest of this DD on the Forum!


[ 2023-06-07 13:00:14 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hearts of Iron 4 7th Anniversary!

Generals!


Today marks the 7th Anniversary of Hearts of Iron 4! It has been a blast to share the game with you all these years, and what better way than to make a video including your moments~ We've all had our hard fought wars, our toughest battles, that one sneaky encirclement to win a war, but we want to hear from all of YOU! What are your favourite moments and memories of HOI4? Make sure to fill out the form below with your answers, screenshots and videos, and we'll make a compilation video celebrating your moments :) Share your moments here https://pdxint.at/43EV3l3


[ 2023-06-06 16:06:37 CET ] [ Original post ]

.--- ..- -. . / --... - ....

GENERALS!


We're intercepting a coded message from our Office of YouTube Intelligence. We need your help to decode it! Head on over to YouTube to help us decode the message


[ 2023-06-01 13:00:32 CET ] [ Original post ]

Developer Corner | Support Companies

Greetings all! Today well be taking a dive into one of the fundamental building blocks of HOI4: division design, and some changes were making to it. This dev corner might be a little less grand than previous dev corners, but division design remains extremely important to the HOI experience, and is a part of the game thats remained more or less untouched since release. Those of you with exceedingly long memories may remember in my early roadmap for Hearts of Iron that I mentioned a desire to have doctrines better affect how the player is incentivized to design their divisions. The first step of making this possible is by adding another dimension of choice to support companies.

Support Company Changes



Heres a look at one of Germanys starting templates. Ordinarily, engineers would grant a bonus of 5 entrenchment at their most basic level: here, were getting 2 (Ed: 2.25 actually well fix that in post).
And here, in a little more detail - is the breakdown of why. Here, Engineers no longer begin by applying a flat bonus of 5 entrenchment - instead, their initial stats will grant a bonus of 0.25 entrenchment per Leg Infantry battalion in their division.
As you can see, this bonus is not applied to the cavalry battalions I have so wisely placed in my infantry division. Well go into the rationale behind this specific change later, but suffice it to say the following: Support companies can now confer multiplicative or additive bonuses to line battalions of specific categories within their own division. While it may seem like a small change, this allows us to better represent the effects of certain doctrinal advancements or technologies, and adds a completely new dimension to consider when choosing support companies.

Changes to Existing Support Companies [very subject to change]


Engineers


As you can see above, Engineers will be changing a bit. Theyll retain the flat entrenchment they gain from tech, but by moving entrenchment more towards a per-battalion balancing value, were able to flatten the efficacy of entrenchment and devalue it slightly for org-wall playstyles. Entrenchment itself is a multiplicative stat of course, so we take care to ensure that the upper end does not move too far ahead of what was previously achievable.

Recon


The neglected child of the support company family is finally getting some new tools. Recon has always been an underperforming support company, and these changes aim to augment the value of tactical reconnaissance on the battlefield. By default, mounted recon, motorized recon, and armored car recon companies will now confer a [10%] soft attack bonus to all battalions matching the Artillery category. Note: were making the choice to stress the benefits of recon on artillery rather than general infantry here for game balance reasons. Light Tank recon will confer a [10%] Hard Attack bonus to all Armored battalions. Recon also gets some other new toys, some of which well cover in doctrines, and others in a later diary on some New Cool Stuff ().

Field Hospital


A slightly left-field modifier here, Field Hospitals now increase the strength (HP) of all infantry battalions within their division by [10%]. This results in proportionally less manpower (& equipment) loss per damage received.

Flame Tanks


These now increase the breakthrough of all infantry battalions by [5%].

Military Police


A support company with low usage outside of specific garrison templates, we wanted to give these slightly more utility within line divisions. These will now increase the base org recovery rate of all infantry battalions by 20%.

Doctrine Changes


Were still working on exactly how these will look, but heres a sample of what we have planned:
Dispersed Support: Signal companies grant 10% defense to all Artillery battalions in division
Airland Battle: Standard recon grants 10% air attack to anti-air battalions in division
Mechanized Wave: Armored Car recon grants 1 max organization to all Leg Infantry battalions in division.
Central Planning: Logistics Company adds 5% defense to all infantry battalions in division As mentioned above we have more planned for these, but this should serve as an indicative sample of what is coming. These changes are intended to add an extra dimension to consider when building division templates, accentuating the value of interdisciplinary coordination. They also give us an opportunity to equalize the value of some underperforming support companies in a slightly more realistic way than flat stats. Of course, the production value of your bonus-granting support companies will be weighted more favorably towards larger divisions - this is something were keeping an eye on, but broadly speaking were happy with this direction. As well as being a significant balance change (and modding tool) these changes were necessary for a new small feature well show off in a future diary. Ill leave you guessing until then ;) Speaking of dev diaries, we will call you to arms next week for something special stay tuned, and save the date! /Arheo


[ 2023-05-31 13:05:28 CET ] [ Original post ]

THE GRANDEST LAN!

Generals!


We've just gotten some fresh Intel on Turbo Larps' NEW event.... the Grandest Lan - HOI4! This year will see HOI & EU at the awesome Czocha Castle in Poland, which boasts stunning views and is rich in history! Sign ups begin on June 15th, so make sure not to miss it. Check out the Trailer HERE


[ 2023-05-25 13:02:57 CET ] [ Original post ]

General Lofi!

Generals!


Don't miss our new General LoFi video over on the HOI YouTube Channel! After all, even the most battle-hardened General needs to take it easy every now and then~ Plus these tracks are bound to help give you a tactical advantage on the battlefield How many references can you find? Make sure to check out The Video


[ 2023-05-23 14:21:25 CET ] [ Original post ]

Patch 1.12.14 Medals Hotfix

Generals! This is a minor hotfix patch regarding a bug we found with BBA's Medal system. ################################## # Bugfix ################################## - Available medal icon no longer shows up if BBA is not owned


[ 2023-05-23 13:05:02 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hearts of Iron YouTube Channel!

Generals!


Word on the front lines is there's something new on the Horizon....Allow us to introduce our new YouTube Channel for everything Hearts of Iron. On this channel you can expect feature breakdowns, trailers, and extra content from the devs! Make sure to check out the Trailer here Make sure to subscribe to the channel Here to not miss out on content!


[ 2023-05-17 13:14:58 CET ] [ Original post ]

Developers' Corner || International Market

Hello there, it's me C0rax back for another dev corner, and some of you may have noticed in our last dev corner I mentioned in the MIO goals we wanted to have MIOs Provide a framework for national specialisms that can be used on the world stage well i'm here to show you that stage and introduce international markets. This is all super WIP, you are going to see WIP mock ups, and some details are still being finalized! Feature Intent & goals

Feature Intent and 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 intended to be 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 buy order).

The Flow


So to start us on how to get to the market. Well we will be replacing the diplomacy menu with the market UI, the diplomacy window was one of the least used parts of the UI and so we want to replace it with something that will get more use. The diplomacy menu is now accessed from within the market menu at the bottom of the market window, you can also still right click on a country on the map to open diplomacy with them directly.
From here we can start buying equipment or selling equipment by clicking on the respective button. Beyond that any currently active contract with other countries will be displayed here so you can easily see their current status. The buy and sell modes look like this;

As you can see we don't currently have access to anyone's market, so let's look at how we can fix that.

Market Access


For market access we need to go to the diplomacy menu for a country where we will find the negotiate market access diplo action, this is what we want in order to send a request. For nations with factions or puppets this market access is given implicitly. This is important since in many cases you don't want those pesky enemies seeing or trying to buy all the amazing equipment you are selling. This is especially important to stop them seeing your latest equipment stats and MIO modifiers. With this only the people you want to see and buy your wares are able to.
So now weve got market access and we can start buying and selling equipment. Since we have access to a market the buy screen will now show the equipment they have put up for sale.

Buying



Let's buy some rifles. To do this we click on the rifles equipment from here we choose how many rifles we want and how fast we want to pay for them and thus receive them. The price per rifle is decided by an IC to CiC conversion rate. This gives you all the information you need like total cost, convoys needed and how long it will take to pay/deliver all equipment
We send of our request and the seller has agreed to the contract
The contract will now appear in our market window as an ongoing contract, it will show all the information you need to know about each contract you have ongoing.

Selling


Now let's look at how we sell our equipment on the market. To start off we need to add equipment to the market. We do this by first clicking sell equipment and then clicking the add to market buttons. From here we can add our equipment from the stockpile to the market. We can choose here how many of every variant we have we wish to put up for sale.
So now we have put up some equipment on the market and it appears in the list. The list shows all of our equipment on the market but not currently sold on the market.
Right on time we got a request to buy some of our equipment, this menu will show you what they are buying, how fast they are paying and how many the resultant deliveries there will be. We will accept this request.
We have accepted the purchase request and now we can see the selling entry in our master list of contracts along with all the information around that contract.
So that brings us to the end of our quick journey through the international market and we brushed over a lot of details so that what the next part will focus on.

Technical Details


Market Access


Market access is a Diplo action to request access to a market and to offer access to your market thus it is a Bilateral relationship. Faction members share market access, as do puppets and overlords.

Market access blockers


- Market access and Contracts are canceled between enemies in war. - Embargoing someone will cancel market access, and all selling/buying contracts with that country. - Capitulation cancels all contracts and if the country is NOT going into exile, it will lose all market access too. - Civil war will change nothing. The original country will have original market accesses and contracts after the start of the civil war. - Making a country puppet will cancel all market access and contracts of that country. - Losing market access to a country will not cancel an ongoing contract with that country. - Puppets can have market access to other countries (and not just to the overlord's market) and trade with them. (this might be based on puppet level) - There will be a scriptable limit on equipment trade for things like US neutrality act etc

Contracts


Purchasing equipment costs CiC. We use a conversion ratio to convert IC value to CiC value. A contract has 2 main variables, CiC cost from equipment and Civ factory allocation for payment. So with this information we can talk about how a contract is structured.
A contract is broken down into payments every 30 days. So every 30 days you will make a payment and receive equipment. The amount of equipment to be delivered is based on the payment rate of the buyer. So the more Civs you assign to a contract the more equipment you can receive per delivery.

Selling


We have a new stockpile called the market stockpile, equipment can be moved from the normal stockpile to the market stockpile. Equipment in the market stockpile can be requested for purchase by any nation we share market access with.

Payment


So payment is handled via a new construction entry for contracts. When you start a contract a new entry will be created in the construction menu for the number of factories you agreed to pay with and for the total CiC of the contract. This construction task has priority over normal construction.

Contract Storage


CiC payment and equipment before being delivered is stored in a Contract storage. At the end of the month the minimum payment/delivery is transferred to each country from the Contract storage. CiC is delivered to the bank while equipment is delivered to the equipment stockpile

The Bank


The bank is a special container for CiC you receive from other countries as payment for a contract it is used in construction by providing bonus CiC to your construction entries. Here is a flow chart to show you how a contract payment works and then how the bank CiC is used in construction.

Cancelation


Either side can request to cancel the contract at any time no more deliveries are made and all payment to the Contract storage is returned to their originator. Things that are not part of this feature: -Trading Ships - Money - Supply/demand pricing Things that we are looking into: - Limited cost of equipment changes (some active choices, some passive)

MIO Addendum


Last dev corner I spoke about MIOs, I did my best to explain and answer questions but I want to add an addendum to the previous dev corner to show some things that should hopefully make some things much clearer. It seems there was some confusion that MIOs were a totally free form design your own company system, this isnt what was intended to be conveyed. MIOs have pre predetermined choices which are designed to offer compromise and strategic choice. So Let's talk about what an MIO looks like in terms of a real MIO I get access to for a country. Im going to show some numbers here but these are just starting values for initial implementation and so don't read into the modifiers or values too much yet. So here we have a Generic Infantry MIO
So the definition for this MIO is Design teams (red arrows show mutually exclusive) INFANTRY OFFENSE DEPARTMENT
INFANTRY QUALITY DEPARTMENT
SUPPORT EQUIPMENT DEPARTMENT

Industrial Manufacturers



As you can see this focuses almost exclusively on improving infantry equipment with small bonuses for support equipment. Generic MIOs are generally focused on one specific equipment providing departments that are generally focused around offensive, defensive and quality/reliability. Here's some more example of generics

Generics can sometimes also have specializations for specific stats that are not normally in the equipment specific ones also such as the aircraft range focuses MIO.
Or pacific fleet MIO
Of course these are generics and that is why they are very simple. They are there to replace the current generic designer set already present so every nation can enjoy some level of customisation for their mios. More major countries might have specific MIOs that are unique to your country and thus offer very different choices to make. These are just some simple ones but they can be much more branched choices with lots of content tie-ins, but we will show those in a later dev diary.

I hope this makes what an MIO looks like as a structure you play with clearer and again I hope to see you in future dev corners. That's all I have for this week, as always please ask questions and comment. I hope to see you in 2 weeks for the next Dev corner where Arheo will introduce you to another feature coming to you in the future


[ 2023-05-16 13:00:39 CET ] [ Original post ]

War Effort - Operation Alpha [1.12.13 Checksum b721]

Generals!


Its time for the final patch of this War Effort Initiative cycle! This patch contains a host of balance changes and fixes as well as language localization for Simplified Chinese! We're going to be winding down the Initiative for the time being as we move onto other lines of development! Furthermore, stay tuned for another message from us later, pertaining to some feature content that we are working on. Now, onto the patch notes!

Localization


-Added Simplified Chinese language support.

Balance


-Lord Halifax now has two leader traits and reduces the requirements with the British Raj when forming the Imperial Federation/Commonwealth of Nations. -If Lord Halifax is used to annex the British Raj as part of the Imperial Federation, India will suffer increased resistance. -Fixed non-MTG ships having incorrect base speeds. -Increased biggest speed and agility factor diff by 1.0, increasing the maximum effect of these stats on air combat.

UI


-Available medals are now present on army screens for Divisional Commanders. -Added a new Hearts of Iron IV YouTube channel link to menus.

Modding


-Added effect remove_civil_war_target.

Bugfix


-Fixed an issue in the Pressure Government event chain for Italy and the Soviets in which the feedback event communicating the target's choice was sent to the target instead of the sender. -Playing as a released country is now persistent over saves in ironman. -Observers now retain the observed country on hotjoin and resynch. -Fixed License Production Access not being restored when reloading a save file. -Democratic Italy can now send volunteers to Spain after completing the Aid for Spanish Republic focus. -Fix for Belgium Congo sometimes flipping to Germany after Belgium capitulates. Introducing the latest edition of the War Effort Map, where a thrilling challenge awaits! Take a look and observe: only one stop remains. Are you up for the task of unraveling its mystery? Keep in mind, appearances can be deceiving.
That's it from us today, as always we appreciate all your feedback! If you encounter any bugs, make sure to create a bug report over on the Forum, and don't forget to join our Discord!


[ 2023-05-16 09:03:04 CET ] [ Original post ]

Publisher Weekend and Players' Choice Bundle!

Generals! The Publisher's Weekend sale is now here, bringing deals across the board for the content you're missing, but also introducing an even better deal with the Players' Choice Barbarossa Bundle, as voted by you all :) This bundle adds an extra 10 percent off on top of the other savings!

Players' Choice Barbarossa Bundle


  • Hearts of Iron IV: No Step Back Additional 10% off
  • Hearts of Iron IV: Sabaton SoundtrackAdditional 10% off
  • Hearts of Iron IV: Axis Armor Pack Additional 10% off

Base Game


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

Expansions


  • 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

Music & Model Packs


  • 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


[ 2023-05-11 17:01:48 CET ] [ Original post ]

War Effort - Operation Alpha [1.12.13 Open Beta]

Hello there, generals! May has arrived, and with it comes a new open beta, this time for Operation Alpha! This patch, as usual, contains balance changes, bug fixes, and something for you awesome modders out there. However, something we have also been working on for a while is language support for Simplified Chinese. This means that all our new Developer Diaries will be translated for Chinese, Japanese, and Russian. And this is just the beginning of what we have planned for our non-English speaking generals! ###########

Localization


########### Added Simplified Chinese language support. ########

Balance


######## Lord Halifax now has two leader traits and reduces the requirements with the British Raj when forming the Imperial Federation/Commonwealth of Nations. If Lord Halifax is used to annex the British Raj as part of the Imperial Federation, India will suffer increased resistance. Fixed non-MTG ships having incorrect base speeds. Increased biggest speed and agility factor diff by 1.0, increasing the maximum effect of these stats on air combat. ######

UI


###### Available medals are now present on army screens for Divisional Commanders. Added a new Hearts of Iron IV YouTube channel link to menus. ##########

Modding


########## Added effect remove_civil_war_target. #########

Bugfix


######### Fixed an issue in the Pressure Government event chain for Italy and the Soviets in which the feedback event communicating the target's choice was sent to the target instead of the sender. Playing as a released country is now persistent over saves in ironman. Observers now retain the observed country on hotjoin and resynch. Fixed License Production Access not being restored when reloading a save file. Democratic Italy can now send volunteers to Spain after completing the Aid for Spanish Republic focus. Fix for Belgium Congo sometimes flipping to Germany after Belgium capitulates. And yes, there is no map update because that will come with the release of this patch! Now, have a lovely weekend, everyone, and we will see you again next week with something even more fun to talk about!


[ 2023-05-05 13:00:56 CET ] [ Original post ]

Player's Choice: The Barbarossa Bundle!

Generals!


The people have spoken and the results are IN! Your votes have been cast and counted, and the top picks of the community are;
  • No Step Back
  • Axis Armor Pack
  • Sabaton Soundtrack
These three will now be put together into what will be called the Player's Choice Barbarossa Bundle! Thanks so much for all your votes once again :)
This choose-your-own bundle is the first of its kind for HOI, but we plan to do more in the future. So if your favourites werent chosen dont worry - theres still a chance to get them bundled next time! Keep your eyes peeled for when this one goes live, it'll be coming soon


[ 2023-05-04 16:03:01 CET ] [ Original post ]

Developer Corner | Military Industrial Orgs.


Greetings all! Today marks the first occasion since the release of By Blood Alone where we take a deeper look into what is coming next. As you may recall from the BBA development cycle, we had an early set of 'Development Corner' diaries, which serve as an opportunity for us to reveal a narrow look at a specific mechanic or design without revealing too much about the wider context of future releases. Today's offering, as well as the next couple of diaries, will be in much the same spirit - you'll just have to wait a little bit longer to get the full picture. Scandalous and polarising, I know. /Arheo Hello there, it's me, C0rax. Now you can get all excited because it's time for some Dev Corners in which we will show you some WIP looks into the new features we have been working on. So without further ado this week we will be looking at

Military Industrial Organisations (MIOs)


This is all very much WIP, you are going to see WIP mock ups, and some details are still being finalised! Feature Intent & goals

Intent:


  • Create a sense of a living organisation the player can interact with rather than a static bonus as with current design companies.
Why is this important you ask? Well previously we had to provide static modifiers and sometimes change them via scripted decisions or focus rewards. 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.

Goals:


  • 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

Military industrial Organisations (MIOs)


So first here is a rough structure of an MIO;

Contains


  • Name Icon Size (Level) funds (XP) Task Capacity Departments

Departments


  • 0-1 Design team
  • 3 departments
  • Max 13 traits each
  • 0-1 Industrial manufacturer
  • 3 departments
  • Max 13 traits each

Each departments contains


  • Name
  • Categorys
  • Trait tree
  • Trait icons

Task Capacity


  • Size determines how many tasks a MIO can handle -Researching -Producing -Designing

Defaults:


  • 2 task Capacity
  • + scripted increases
  • + trait increases
This structure allows us to represent MIOs in a way that expresses the specialisms of the various organisations that designed and produced war materials during the period. You can now represent a company like Bofors AB who designed and produced anti tank, anti air and naval guns seamlessly and expand each of those specialisms as you see fit. Investing in the right MIO is critical to upgrading those specialist departments in order to gain the bonuses you need for specific stats.

Task Capacity:


An MIO of course cant work on a number of infinite simultaneous projects. For this we have task capacity that limits how many things your MIOs can work on balancing. This is an important thing to balance, since producing too much equipment with an MIO will lock you out from using it for research or designing equipment. For ship production this is actually important for producing ships in parallel so you might want to invest in the manufacturing department for task capacity so you can really ramp up your naval production.

Levelling & upgrades


Research cost and Production cost is used to calculate MIO funds that it gains when it is used. An amount of MIO Funds is required to increase your size and pick a new trait.


Skill trees


  • split roughly along the same lines as current design companies.
  • possibility for country unique trees
  • possibility for content prerequisites (national focus or decision locking etc)



Departments and Tasks


  • Industrial manufacturers (IM's)
  • Assigned to production lines (Task)

Skill trees provide production specific bonuses


  • Design teams (DT's)
  • Applied to research (Task)
  • Applied to equipment both via equipment designers and normal variants
  • Skill trees provide Stat bonuses
  • Can be applied retroactively to equipment at cost
  • A move away from pay mana get reward
So that's a lot of high-level structural talk so you understand the core concepts of the MIO Feature and so I'll now show some of the WIP flows of actually using these structures and systems.

Researching





Equipment variants






Production



Well that wraps things up for this week, I Hope you enjoyed it and as always please leave questions and comments below and I will do my best to answer them. Join me in two weeks for another dev corner showing another feature coming to you in the near future.


[ 2023-05-02 13:09:30 CET ] [ Original post ]

Choose Our Next DLC Bundle!

Generals! Following the popularity of our Homeland bundle, we're giving YOU the opportunity to pick our next DLC bundle to go on sale! You'll have the chance to rank Expansions, Music Packs and more! In this survey all we ask is that: 1. You list what you own 2. You rank expansions 3. You rank music packs 4. You rank cosmetics packs

Available to choose from are the following:


Expansions By Blood Alone No Step Back Battle for the Bosporus La Rsistance Man the Guns Waking the Tiger Death or Dishonor Together for Victory Music Packs Radio Pack Eastern Front Music Pack Sabaton Soundtrack Vol. 2 Sabaton Soundtrack Allied Speeches Music Pack Cosmetics Packs Allied Armor Pack Axis Armor Pack Eastern Front Planes Pack That's it for today, happy voting!

Survey link here




[ 2023-04-20 16:08:11 CET ] [ Original post ]

War Effort - Operation Cockpit [1.12.12 - Checksum a266]

Hello Generals, Katten here. Operation Cockpit has arrived! With an additional change to the Anschluss focus in Germany and a message from our Game Designer C0rax explaining the intent behind recent balancing! Below that, as usual, you will find a set of patch notes that is now live. Feel free to give us feedback on these planned changes in this thread, or in our Discord!

The Intent Behind it


The initial intent of hitprofile changes in the naval rebalance started with 1.12.0 was to reduce the effect of speed, this is now complete with the halving of the effect of speed on the calculation. - decreased HIT_PROFILE_SPEED_FACTOR from 2 to 0.5 this will make ships speed affect hit profiles less The final calculation is (visibility*100) / (speed*0.5 +20) with this final piece in place destroyers are roughly being hit at the same rate as pre 1.12.0 but the effect of slower speed ships such as capital ships is much lower resulting in greatly reduced hit rates. 1.12.12 hit profiles
1.11.X hit profiles
For a long time air accidents have been of minimal consequence thus reliability of planes was less valuable than wanted and air accident advisors were of low value. Accidents have now been doubled in occurrence and the amount of aircraft lost per incident is also doubled. This means that reliability modifiers for planes are even more useful and taking that air accident reduction spirit or advisors might be a good idea if you need to conserve your aircraft stocks. Additionally when training as before you get a 1.5x multiplier to accident occurrence when training so keep an eye when training airwings you may have to lose a few aircraft to keep those wings ready for war. Obviously losing more aircraft to accidents reduces your wings experience so we have also increased this so that you can still train your wings in good time despite the increased losses. - Air accident base chance increased from 0.05 to 0.1, accident chance multiplier increased from 0.5 to 1, accident effect multiplier increased from 0.005 to 0.01 ace death chance increased from 0.003 to 0.005 - Air wing XP game from training per day increased from 3 to 7 since Air accidents are more common, air exercises xp adjusted to match - increased supply per transport plane to 0.01 from 0.002 ################################## # Balance ################################## - Canadian Focuses 'National Steel Car' and 'Send in the Zombies' are no longer mutually exclusive. If Great Depression has already been removed, the focus on "War Fuelled Economy" and "Reactivate the Farmers Unity League" will grant a significant temporary construction speed boost. - Canadian focuses regarding the repatriation of Newfoundland are now available to the recently added Communist path - Divisional Commanders: XP requirements for level thresholds and for gaining an aptitude trait have been reduced across the board by 20-50% - Divisional Commanders: XP gain from combat increased by 33% - decreased HIT_PROFILE_SPEED_FACTOR from 2 to 0.5 this will make ships speed affect hit profiles less - Air accident base chance increased from 0.05 to 0.1, accident chance multiplier increased from 0.5 to 1, accident effect multiplier increased from 0.005 to 0.01 ace death chance increased from 0.003 to 0.005 - Air wing XP game from training per day increased from 3 to 7 since Air accidents are more common, air exercises xp adjusted to match - increased supply per transport plane to 0.01 from 0.002 ################################## # UI ################################## - Now the discord and the Instagram tooltips will have correct localization. - Added link to Instagram and Discord to the in-game menu. ################################## # Bugfix ################################## - Fixed the Portuguese Great War tank not appearing in the tech tree without NSB. - Re-introduced many tank icons for most countries that were screwed by No Step Back. Tank icons in the non-NSB generic tree will now appear in the Tank Designer with NSB. - Improved the way country-specific tank icons appear in the tank designer, based on tech. - Turkey will no longer be able to ask again for investment to a country until the country has accepted the portfolio and finishes the decision to invest in Turkey. - Fixed issues with equipment bonuses to Carriers provided by Italian focus Refit Civilian Ships. - Fixed issue with Italian focuses Standardization and Specialization so that they provide bonuses to aircraft as promised. - Fixed issue in which Australian designer Cockatoo Docks and Engineer was not providing any real bonuses to Heavy Cruisers. - Super Heavy Battleship armour now reduces Torpedo critical chance instead of increasing it - Fix for Flying Tigers without BBA - Remove duplicated delimiter in focus-tree tooltips - Fixed wrong positioning of British focus "Embargo The Soviet Union" when hiding obsolete branches and Global Defense focus has been taken. - Fixed disappearing icons in the division designer when NATO symbols are used - Names in trade views are now updated when the country changes ideology - Soviet Marti Class cruiser will now have the minelayer role. - The Linguist trait should now work - Fixed wrong naming of peace conference after load game during the peace conference. - Fixed issues with misplaced focus branches in UK and USA focus trees when the Hide Obsolete Branches custom rule was set as "Show". - Fixed a few Czech Designers having their icons broken when Death or Dishonor DLC was not active. - Fixed a Dutch Designer having its icon broken when Man the Guns DLC was not active. - removed erroneous leader trait XP stats from the engineering school's army spirit. It now grants a global initiative factor - Fixed issues with dynamic textures on DX11 with older drivers / Windows releases - Fixed handling of X1R5G5B5 and A1R5G5B5 textures on DX11 when not supported by graphics drivers or older Windows versions - Added Black Sea cores missing from the Polish Fascist branch after selecting the national focus "Decide Post-War Borders". - Added checks to Hungarian focus "Renew the Rome Protocols" to make sure Austria and Italy exist and are independent. - Made it harder to do the Anschluss swap exploit. - Anschluss fix v2. You now need >40k inf eq in the standing army to do it - Fixed localization for poland.26 event. - Series of bug fixes focused on Interface and Localization. Thank you all for assisting us with your bug reports during this Open beta! And here is the updated map of the War Effort!
/Katten


[ 2023-04-13 13:00:26 CET ] [ Original post ]

War Effort - Operation Cockpit [1.12.12 OPEN BETA]

Hello there Generals! We have begun the final preparations for Operation Cockpit! Below you will find a set of patch notes that are now live on an open beta branch. Feel free to give us feedback on these planned changes in this thread, or in our Discord! ################################## # Balance ################################## - Canadian Focuses 'National Steel Car' and 'Send in the Zombies' are no longer mutually exclusive. If Great Depression has already been removed, the focus on "War Fuelled Economy" and "Reactivate the Farmers Unity League" will grant a significant temporary construction speed boost. - Canadian focuses regarding the repatriation of Newfoundland are now available to the recently added Communist path - Divisional Commanders: XP requirements for level thresholds and for gaining an aptitude trait have been reduced across the board by 20-50% - Divisional Commanders: XP gain from combat increased by 33% - decreased HIT_PROFILE_SPEED_FACTOR from 2 to 0.5 this will make ships speed affect hit profiles less - Air accident base chance increased from 0.05 to 0.1, accident chance multiplier increased from 0.5 to 1, accident effect multiplier increased from 0.005 to 0.01 ace death chance increased from 0.003 to 0.005 - Air wing XP game from training per day increased from 3 to 7 since Air accidents are more common, air exercises XP adjusted to match - increased supply per transport plane to 0.01 from 0.002 ################################## # UI ################################## - Now the discord and the Instagram tooltips will have correct localization. - Added link to Instagram and Discord to the in-game menu. ################################## # Bugfix ################################## - Fixed the Portuguese Great War tank not appearing in the tech tree without NSB. - Re-introduced many tank icons for most countries that were screwed by No Step Back. Tank icons in the non-NSB generic tree will now appear in the Tank Designer with NSB. - Improved the way country-specific tank icons appear in the tank designer, based on tech. - Turkey will no longer be able to ask again for investment to a country until the country has accepted the portfolio and finishes the decision to invest in Turkey. - Fixed issues with equipment bonuses to Carriers provided by Italian focus Refit Civilian Ships. - Fixed issue with Italian focuses Standardization and Specialization so that they provide bonuses to aircraft as promised. - Fixed issue in which Australian designer Cockatoo Docks and Engineer was not providing any real bonuses to Heavy Cruisers. - Super Heavy Battleship armour now reduces Torpedo critical chance instead of increasing it - Fix for Flying Tigers without BBA - Remove duplicated delimiter in focus-tree tooltips - Fixed wrong positioning of British focus "Embargo The Soviet Union" when hiding obsolete branches and Global Defense focus has been taken. - Fixed disappearing icons in the division designer when NATO symbols are used - Names in trade views are now updated when the country changes ideology - Soviet Marti Class cruiser will now have the minelayer role. - The Linguist trait should now work - Fixed wrong naming of peace conference after load game during the peace conference. - Fixed issues with misplaced focus branches in UK and USA focus trees when the Hide Obsolete Branches custom rule was set as "Show". - Fixed a few Czech Designers having their icons broken when Death or Dishonor DLC was not active. - Fixed a Dutch Designer having its icon broken when Man the Guns DLC was not active. - removed erroneous leader trait XP stats from the engineering school's army spirit. It now grants a global initiative factor - Fixed issues with dynamic textures on DX11 with older drivers / Windows releases - Fixed handling of X1R5G5B5 and A1R5G5B5 textures on DX11 when not supported by graphics drivers or older Windows versions - Added Black Sea cores missing from the Polish Fascist branch after selecting the national focus "Decide Post-War Borders". - Added checks to Hungarian focus "Renew the Rome Protocols" to make sure Austria and Italy exist and are independent. - Made it harder to do the Anschluss swap exploit. - Fixed localization for poland.26 event. - Series of bug fixes focused on Interface and Localization. Thank you all for sending in bug reports & suggestions, there is more of this on the horizon, now have an amazing easter! /Katten


[ 2023-04-06 13:00:07 CET ] [ Original post ]

Developer Diary | The Future of Hearts of Iron

Hello there everyone, Im sure you can guess who it is, it's me, C0RAX. So let me clue you in, I know it's been a while since our last update but this one will be worth it, I promise!! We have been working tirelessly to bring you the greatest leap in the history of the hearts of iron franchise(Bit of trivia,its over a decade old). Weve wanted to go above and beyond what the fans expected for a long time so we have a long running project we've kept very close to our chest, the one were here to announce. Ok, without further ado and before you can make all the blocks fall into place on your own, here it is, the future of the franchise: [previewyoutube=WYowG7EKFMM;full][/previewyoutube]


[ 2023-04-01 08:03:43 CET ] [ Original post ]

Spring Sale & HOMELAND Bundle!

Generals! Info from the front lines shows that the Steam Spring Sale is operating massive discounts up to 75% on everything Hearts of Iron! Discounts on top of discounts for you to get the DLCs you want, from the 16th - 23rd! Like the new Homeland Bundle that brings the frontlines to your doorsteps with Battle for the Bosporus and La Rsistance at an even larger discount!

Bundles


  • Hearts of Iron IV: Homeland Bundle Additional 20% off
  • Hearts of Iron IV: Ultimate Bundle Additional 10% off

Base Game


  • Hearts of Iron IV: Cadet Edition 75% off
  • Hearts of Iron IV: Starter Edition 75% off

Expansions


  • Hearts of Iron IV: No Step Back 20% off
  • Hearts of Iron IV: Battle for the Bosporus50% off
  • Hearts of Iron IV: Death or Dishonor 50% off
  • Hearts of Iron IV: Together For Victory 50% off
  • Hearts of Iron IV: Waking the Tiger 50% off
  • Hearts of Iron IV: La Rsistance 50% off
  • Hearts of Iron IV: Man the Guns 50% off

Music & Model Packs


  • Hearts of Iron IV: Eastern Front Music Pack30% off
  • Hearts of Iron IV: Eastern Front Planes Pack30% 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


[ 2023-03-16 15:30:00 CET ] [ Original post ]

War Effort - Operation Pike Patch 1.12.11 [Checksum 92f5]

Generals! Operation Pike is rolling out with plenty of new bug fixes, Modding Support, Balance Tweaks and changes for our Canadian comrades in the North! The patch will be live on Steam today, but the Microsoft patch is unfortunately delayed until March 14th, sorry about that!

Feature


- German, Japanese and British trees will now hide obsolete branches if the related game rule is turned on. - French and USA focus trees will now hide obsolete branches if the related game rule is turned on. - Added a new alt-history branch to Canada's Communist path, allowing further reduction of the Great Depression, wargoals on the United States, and various other benefits, at the cost of being unable to join or create factions

Balance


- Germany now begin with 80 transport planes, from 4

Gameplay


- Tweaked Ethiopian Balance of Power, to decrease risk of country collapse - Made coring decision for Italo-Ethiopian empire available when controlling, rather than owning, states - Made it possible to move capital to Jerusalem after Axum for Ethiopia - Made it possible for Ethiopia to collaborate with Italy as Monarchy as well as Fascist - Improved Regional Supply depots National Spirit for Ethiopia - Made multiple investments at the same time possible for Ethiopia - Added camelry to Sultanate of Aussa

UI


- Now the disabling of construction of railway lines on the map will remove them from construction UI. - Delete-building button should now be visible/usable on UI-scaled clients - Now, if you hover mouse over an invasion arrow, the whole path will be visible even if it is overlapped by another one. - Visual improvement of the create faction window. - Now the army theater groups will show the reinforcement priority.

Modding


- Removed deprecated trigger pc_is_state_outside_influence_for - State level production speed modifiers now have the correct loc keys

Bugfixes


- Changed the "repair_speed_infrastructure_factor" modifier description to accurately reflect its actual effect - Fixed creation of unbuildable plane variants by create_equipment_variant effect. - Focus tree screen will now properly refresh when something changes the display - like when the player chooses a branch and it hides the other ones. - Fixed the exploit of ignoring the special forces cap when changing army templates. - Game rule "Show Obsolete Branches in Focus Tree" no longer requires any DLC. - Motorized rocket artillery fuel usage increased from 0.12 to 1.2 to be in line with Trucks - Fixed the missing description for all none-Italian countries receiving the end News Event for the Fate of Mussolini Event chain - USA no longer hires both communist and fascist advisors without DLCs - Events and focuses which invite all un-faction-ed countries of a specific ideology to a faction will no longer target subjects (this affects Spain and the Soviet Union currently) - Fixed issue in which Italian Aircraft Designer CRDA-CANT would require the wrong Naval Designer to be active. It now requires CRDA Naval Designer as intended. - Octavian Goga will now correctly become country leader on completion of the National Christian Party focus. - The name of peace conferences will appear in the correct language after language changes during peace conferences. - Fixed issue so that now Italian partisan general Ada Gobetti is properly cautious. - Obsolete Soviet AI plan "Alternate" has now been purged. - Build Cost equipment stat modifiers now display the correct color for a bonus (green for negative, red for positive) - Fixed extra word in Alpine Supremacy description - Fixed typo in Bulgarian Re-integration Campaign - Fixed issue with Costanzo Ciano Light Cruiser Class granted by Italian focus Flotta d'Evasione when Man the Guns DLC was not active. - Fixes to Canada's communist's path focuses
As always, we appreciate all the feedback you provide us, and if you encounter any issues with the game, please fill out a Bug Report so we can look into it! And if you haven't already, let us know what you think of By Blood Alone here on Steam or over on the Forums! As always, you all have a great weekend and enjoy your day!


[ 2023-03-09 14:07:31 CET ] [ Original post ]

War Effort - Operation Pike Open Beta [1.12.11] Checksum 66ce

Generals! With the beginnings of March comes a new open beta from our glorious factory! With this patch comes quite a few bugfixes, some gameplay tweaks, added features, and a special addition for our Canadian Comrades! Listed below are all of the changes (which is subject to change where necessary) that are now live on an open beta branch. Feel free to give us feedback on these planned changes in this thread, or in our Discord!

Feature


- German, Japanese and British trees will now hide obsolete branches if the related game rule is turned on. - French and USA focus trees will now hide obsolete branches if the related game rule is turned on. - Added a new alt-history branch to Canada's Communist path, allowing further reduction of the Great Depression, wargoals on the United States, and various other benefits, at the cost of being unable to join or create factions

Balance


- Germany now begin with 80 transport planes, from 4

Gameplay


- tweaked Ethiopian Balance of Power, to decrease risk of country collapse - Made coring decision for Italo-Ethiopian empire available when controlling, rather than owning, states - Made it possible to move capital to Jerusalem after Axum for Ethiopia - Made it possible for Ethiopia to collaborate with Italy as Monarchy as well as Fascist - Improved Regional Supply depots National Spirit for Ethiopia - Made multiple investments at the same time possible for Ethiopia - Added camelry to Sultanate of Aussa

UI


- Now the disabling of construction of railway lines on the map will remove them from construction UI. - Delete-building button should now be visible/usable on UI-scaled clients - Now, if you hover mouse over an invasion arrow, the whole path will be visible even if it is overlapped by another one. - Visual improvement of the create faction window. - Now the army theater groups will show the reinforcement priority.

Modding


- Removed deprecated trigger pc_is_state_outside_influence_for - State level production speed modifiers now have the correct loc keys

Bugfix


- Changed the "repair_speed_infrastructure_factor" modifier description to accurately reflect its actual effect - When adding a production line, initial efficiency is now only set for slots that have an active factory. - Fixed creation of unbuildable plane variants by create_equipment_variant effect. - Focus tree screen will now properly refresh when something changes the display - like when the player chooses a branch and it hides the other ones. - Fixed the exploit of ignoring the special forces cap when changing army templates. - Game rule "Show Obsolete Branches in Focus Tree" no longer requires any DLC. - Motorized rocket artillery fuel usage increased from 0.12 to 1.2 to be in line with Trucks - Fixed the missing description for all none-Italian countries receiving the end News Event for the Fate of Mussolini Event chain - USA no longer hires both communist and fascist advisors without DLCs - Events and focuses which invite all un-faction-ed countries of a specific ideology to a faction will no longer target subjects (this affects Spain and the Soviet Union currently) - Fixed issue in which Italian Aircraft Designer CRDA-CANT would require the wrong Naval Designer to be active. It now requires CRDA Naval Designer as intended. - Octavian Goga will now correctly become country leader on completion of the National Christian Party focus. - The name of peace conferences will appear in the correct language after language changes during peace conferences. - Fixed issue so that now Italian partisan general Ada Gobetti is properly cautious. - Obsolete Soviet AI plan "Alternate" has now been purged. - Build Cost equipment stat modifiers now display the correct color for a bonus (green for negative, red for positive) - Fixed extra word in Alpine Supremacy description - Fixed typo in Bulgarian Re-integration Campaign - Fixed issue with Costanzo Ciano Light Cruiser Class granted by Italian focus Flotta d'Evasione when Man the Guns DLC was not active.
As always, we appreciate your continued feedback, if you have more suggestions make sure to suggest it over on the Forums, where you can also fill out Bug reports for issues you come across. That should be it from us today, make sure to have a great weekend everyone!


[ 2023-03-03 14:07:47 CET ] [ Original post ]

Operation Sabre Patch 1.12.10 Checksum 0f26

Generals!


With Operation Sabre comes plenty of new bugfixes, some attention towards Bulgaria and Romania, and the portions to your Career Profiles we outlined in our Previous Developer Diary Listed below are all the changes, (Unchanged from the Open Beta) we appreciate all of your feedback and look forward the future!

Feature


- For easy and very easy difficulties, AI countries will transfer a part of their Peace Score to the human player(s) - Puppets will transfer a part of their Peace Score to their Overlord (can be disabled with custom game rules) - Faction members will transfer a part of their Peace Score to their Faction Leader (can be disabled with custom game rules) - Countries with a low war participation score will transfer all their Peace Score to other countries (can be disabled with custom game rules) - Make peace score redistribution game rules disabled by default

Balance


- Prussia of the Balkans rebalanced slightly, and more of the modifiers now scale as the spirit is upgraded - Bulgaria now begins with the Mountaineers tech unlocked - Bulgaria: National Railway Lines now take 35 days, from 70. Added two mutually exclusive focuses after this, choosing between exploiting aluminium resources (16 Aluminium) or natural gold deposits (stability + civ) - Integrated designers navy spirit no longer gives double bonus and only gives research bonus for ship modules now - Romania: several new focuses added which enable the possibility to manipulate which country leader will run the fascist party - all countries will now build carrier aircraft if they have carriers, countries with low military factories are less likely to spend too much on fighters - increased carrier aircraft wanted buffer for countries with carriers to 1.5x total deck space

UI


- Fixed various issues with tech tree on different resolutions - Bulgaria's default UI colour (used for allegiance/country unit banners) is now the same as their starting country colour - Main menu Social Media buttons update

AI


- Added some scripted AI desires for land doctrines - Fixed bug in how AI prioritises its construction queue - Stop AI from queueing up more naval bases and railways if they are already waiting to be upgraded - Italy will now be much less active on the French front for the first months of the war, unless France are losing badly, or Germany is under threat - AI will check if it should afford the monthly cost of Improve Relations before attempting it - USA colorado class battleships now obsolete in 1936

Modding


- add is_hired_as_advisor = yes/no trigger - Make has_resources_in_country accept extracted and buildings parameters - Add get_supply_vehicles and get_supply_vehicles_temp effects and triggers to check the number of trucks and trains - Make the following triggers neutral - meaning they won't impact the outcome of the trigger block they are in : log, set_temp_variable, print_variables, round_temp_variable, clamp_temp_variable, subtract_from_temp_variable, multiply_temp_variable, divide_temp_variable, clear_temp_array, add_to_temp_array, remove_from_temp_array, resize_temp_array, find_highest_in_array, find_lowest_in_array

Bugfixes


- Improved requirement tooltips for Mare Nostrum decision. - Random country selection disabled when loading ironman saves - Fixed incorrect dates for 1938 engine and armour techs - Bulgaria's unit names now use the spelling 'Diviziya', from 'Divizija' - Fixed issue in which Germany would get twice the amount of research bonuses via the focus "Treaty with the USSR" - early cruiser hull no longer unlocks cruiser armour - Aircraft Bomb tech now unlocks torpedoes - Fixed incorrect role settings for amphibious drive module - Fixing typo in Adopting Rumantsch country flag in Switzerland - fixed incorrect templates for RO.57 aircraft - Fix the capture and subsequent consequences for operatives when they get spotted on offensive missions - Small fixes to Romanian focus tree additions That should be it for us today! If you encounter any issues with Today's patch, make sure to leave a Bug Report and we appreciate you all enjoying the game :) Also make sure to check out the updated roadmap!


[ 2023-02-16 14:06:27 CET ] [ Original post ]

War Effort - Open Beta & Developer Diary! [1.12.10]

Hello, Ingevar is here with news about Career Profile, if you're just looking for patch notes, scroll down to find them at the bottom, but let's get into things!

More stats and Awards


We were happy to see that a lot of players welcomed new awards and got gold medals including the trickiest ones, so we felt we should expand the list of medals and ribbons a bit. Previously we focused on warfare mostly, but this time we added some that cover economy, production and recruitment aspects of the game. My personal favorite is the new ribbon "Orchestra of Boom": first of all the name! But then also it will require you to design and deploy a division with anti-tank, anti-air, artillery and rocket artillery with a support signal company. Not that hard to do, but very fun to use this division in battle!

Some of the New Medals will deliver a serious challenge even for more experienced players, like "Quality Over Quantity" , which requires you to have several times less casualties than the enemy after inflicting at least 1 million casualties.
We are also adding more statistics to your Career Profile, which can tell a bit more about each player's playstyle.

Awards Display


You can display your awards now! Be a proud general with a couple of the best medals, or go full Brezhnev-mode showcasing every bit you have! We also plan to add more medal shapes and icons so that it's easier to tell on medal apart from another.

Stats in Multiplayer


We will also collect Statistics in Multiplayer now! Awards are still Single Player only, but now you'll be able to see how the player is coping against other humans.

Backgrounds


We wanted to add a bit more customization to your Career Profile, so now you will unlock backgrounds for career points that you earn with Awards. The combination of your nickname, profile picture and the background will form the Badge, which will be visible to other players.

The Badge in Multiplayer Lobby and Chat


One of the Biggest changes we bring is the possibility to view the Career Profiles of other players in the Multiplayer Lobby and chat. Just click on their badge and see their stats and awards! If you don't want to share this valuable intel with others you can always set the visibility of your own profile to "Friends Only" or "Private".

Stats Comparison


When Viewing profiles of other Players you will be able to compare numbers to your own directly.
We are very excited to hear your thoughts and see more gold in your Career Profiles Stay tuned and see you later!

PATCH NOTES


Feature


- For easy and very easy difficulties, AI countries will transfer a part of their Peace Score to the human player(s) - Puppets will transfer a part of their Peace Score to their Overlord (can be disabled with custom game rules) - Faction members will transfer a part of their Peace Score to their Faction Leader (can be disabled with custom game rules) - Countries with a low war participation score will transfer all their Peace Score to other countries (can be disabled with custom game rules) - Make peace score redistribution game rules disabled by default

Balance


- Prussia of the Balkans rebalanced slightly, and more of the modifiers now scale as the spirit is upgraded - Bulgaria now begins with the Mountaineers tech unlocked - Bulgaria: National Railway Lines now take 35 days, from 70. Added two mutually exclusive focuses after this, choosing between exploiting aluminium resources (16 Aluminium) or natural gold deposits (stability + civ) - Integrated designers navy spirit no longer gives double bonus and only gives research bonus for ship modules now - Romania: several new focuses added which enable the possibility to manipulate which country leader will run the fascist party - all countries will now build carrier aircraft if they have carriers, countries with low military factories are less likely to spend too much on fighters - increased carrier aircraft wanted buffer for countries with carriers to 1.5x total deck space

UI


- Fixed various issues with tech tree on different resolutions - Bulgaria's default UI colour (used for allegiance/country unit banners) is now the same as their starting country colour - Main menu Social Media buttons update

AI


- Added some scripted AI desires for land doctrines - Fixed bug in how AI prioritises its construction queue - Stop AI from queueing up more naval bases and railways if they are already waiting to be upgraded - Italy will now be much less active on the French front for the first months of the war, unless France are losing badly, or Germany is under threat - AI will check if it should afford the monthly cost of Improve Relations before attempting it - USA colorado class battleships now obsolete in 1936

Modding


- add is_hired_as_advisor = yes/no trigger - Make has_resources_in_country accept extracted and buildings parameters - Add get_supply_vehicles and get_supply_vehicles_temp effects and triggers to check the number of trucks and trains - Make the following triggers neutral - meaning they won't impact the outcome of the trigger block they are in : log, set_temp_variable, print_variables, round_temp_variable, clamp_temp_variable, subtract_from_temp_variable, multiply_temp_variable, divide_temp_variable, clear_temp_array, add_to_temp_array, remove_from_temp_array, resize_temp_array, find_highest_in_array, find_lowest_in_array

Bugfix


- Improved requirement tooltips for Mare Nostrum decision. - Random country selection disabled when loading ironman saves - Fixed incorrect dates for 1938 engine and armour techs - Bulgaria's unit names now use the spelling 'Diviziya', from 'Divizija' - Fixed issue in which Germany would get twice the amount of research bonuses via the focus "Treaty with the USSR" - early cruiser hull no longer unlocks cruiser armour - Aircraft Bomb tech now unlocks torpedoes - Fixed incorrect role settings for amphibious drive module - Fixing typo in Adopting Rumantsch country flag in Switzerland - fixed incorrect templates for RO.57 aircraft - Fix the capture and subsequent consequences for operatives when they get spotted on offensive missions For more input, make sure to leave a comment on the Forum, and as always, thank you to everyone for being apart of this Community - we appreciate you all and the enormous help that your suggestions and bug reports bring! So let's continue with this war effort to improve the game together!


[ 2023-02-03 14:37:27 CET ] [ Original post ]

1.12.9 Hotfix Patch

Hello there Generals! ################################################################ ######## Hotfix 1.12.9 "Avalanche" ######### ################################################################ ################################## # Bugfix ################################## - In unit history file, if a mod tries to create a ship for a country that does not have the required tech, do not create the ship

Hotfix Information


We have seen a spike in crashes when playing with certain mods since the January patch 1.12.8. This hotfix addresses the issue in code. However, the root cause is found in script, and some less severe errors will still result from it. Modders will need to update their scripting to fully resolve the issue. In 1.12.8 the default behavior of the effect create_equipment_variant changed. By default, when the effect executes, if the equipment type specified in the effect has not yet been unlocked/researched, the variant will not be created. Instead creation is delayed and will occur first when the tech is acquired. When researching a hull, chassis or airframe you get a variant representing the naked hull, chassis or airframe. This variant needs to be the first one created of its type. Otherwise it will cause errors later on. This is why we changed the default behavior of create_equipment_variant. Unfortunately, this means that you cannot depend on create_equipment_variant to always create the variant (by default). For example, if you create a jet fighter variant, and then refer to that variant when executing add_to_stockpile, you might be in trouble. You likely want to add a precondition to only do this if the country has the required tech. Additionally, when using create_equipment_variant in your history files to set up the initial game state, you want to make sure that you unlock techs before creating variants. You should see any issues in the error log when starting a new game. Alternatively, you can add allow_without_tech=yes in create_equipment_variant to have the effect behave as it did before 1.12.8. This should be ok to do for non-modular equipment types, e.g. ships if MTG is deactivated (or NSB for tanks, or BBA for planes), since these types dont have any hull, chassis or airframe variant. Let us know in this thread if you have any questions in regards to this hotfix patch! /Katten


[ 2023-01-25 14:00:26 CET ] [ Original post ]

War Effort - Operation Capital [1.12.8 - Checksum 9d51]

Greetings Generals and Happy New Year!


To continue with the War Effort here are the latest patch notes for Operation Capital, including QoL updates, balance changes and bug fixes. As has been much requested, we've also made changes to the Stalin paranoia system - no need to look over your shoulder about it anymore! Below you can find the patch notes (unchanged from the Open Beta version); Patch 1.12.8 Operation Capital Checksum 9d51

Balance


- Equipment variants created through focuses etc. will be created first when the technology they are based on is researched, if it's missing. - Tank Design: Radio modules curve slightly changed, overall efficacy of radios reduced slightly - Tank Design: Close Support Gun now has 10 piercing, from 12. - Tank Design: Heavy Machine Gun now has 8 soft attack from 5, and 6 piercing from 10 - Tank Design: Secondary Cannon and HMG now have fewer drawbacks but higher production cost. HMG soft attack now 4, from 3, but hard attack removed - Tank Design: Additional Machine guns soft attack reduced to 1, from 2 - Tank Design: Easy Maintenance module now reduces total build cost by 5%, but requires 30 XP, from 10 - Tank Design: Expanded Fuel Tanks now cost 1 IC, from 2 - Tank Design: Sloped Armor now increases armor by 25%, from 20 - Tank Design: Medium One-Man Turret now has 8 breakthrough, from 10, and reduces soft and hard attack by 10%, from 25% - Tank Design: Three-Man Turret now has 24 breakthrough, from 20 - Tank Design: Torsion Bar now grants 15% reliability, from 10% - Tank Design: Interleaved Road Wheels no longer reduces reliability, but has doubled production cost - Tank Design: Welded armor reduced to 30% armor, from 40% - Plane Design: Torpedo Mountings now have 14 naval strike attack from 12, -12 agility from -15, and 6 targeting from 5 - Plane Design: Reduced the lower end of plane engine IC costs; earlier planes should be a little cheaper on the whole - Dive brakes no longer valid for naval bombers, increased naval targeting from dive brakes from 4 to 6 - Dive brakes no longer valid with naval bomber weapons (torpedoes and guided missiles) - Carrier Naval strike multiplier increased, reduced naval strike detection chance from 0.7 to 0.5, reduced carrier disruption factor from 0.8 to 0.6 - Basic Medium chassis now 1938 tech, amphibious tank now unlocked only by 1936 light, tank armour tech dates are now 36,38,41,44, amphibious tank no longer gets medium turrets

UI


- New variants received from auto-upgrades, focuses, events etc. are now highlighted in the production tab like variants received from research. - In research screen for modular equipment (tank, ship, plane), stop showing a diff in stats when there is no design company attached - Improved Tank tech tree layout

AI


- Soviet Union no longer desires to be best buddies with Romania despite being instructed to ignore them for a while - AI weights on hiring advisors now makes more sense. You should see a better split between political advisors & research bureaus, and the AI no longer saves all PP for hiring chiefs at the exclusion of all else. [This has a pretty radical effect on early AI build-up, thus there may be some imbalance in the early game in this open beta - feedback especially welcome] - AI have a higher weight on Captain of Industry advisors pre-1939 - AI military spirit selection is less deterministic

Modding


- Added property allow_without_tech to create_equipment_variant which will create the variant even if the technology it's based on is missing. - Fix the way character variables in script are stored - From now on, any trigger or effect, strictly requiring a country scope, but used in a character scope, will not work anymore - From now on, any trigger or effect, strictly requiring a country scope, but used in all_character, any_character, random_character, every_character, party_leader, characters_list_tooltip, will not work anymore - Correctly retrieve variables stored in character scope for text - Fixed tooltip function of trigger can_be_country_leader when used in country scope or all_character/any_character - Fix add_ideas and activate_advisor effects. When applied to a slot that is already filled, dismiss the currently appointed advisor before hiring the new one. Will fix crash when opening Officer corps after. - In script, interpret correctly when a character token is used in input - Make has_character and can_be_country_leader work with variables and keyword, and not just with a character token - Make is_character work with variables and keyword, and not just with a character token - Align can_be_country_leader on other character trigger and always return false if the character is retired - Fix crash in remove_advisor_role if the character had no matching advisor role - When using a character token as input for a scope, search for the closest encapsuling country scope in order to interpret it correctly - Fix crash when using add_advisor_role on a character with already a role in the same slot. Add a log error if trying to put triggers and on_action in the advisor role in add_advisor_role, those can only work if in database. - Make set_temp_variable accept character token as input - Removed check on unit leader type for add_unit_leader_trait. This check is only relevant for random traits. - Make sure that advisor roles in characters duplicated during civil war keep the same idea_token - Remove check on scope for hidden_effect and effect_tooltip - Added country dynamic variables : country_leader, theorist, army_chief, navy_chief, air_chief, political_advisor, high_command - Make sure all political parties are cleaned up when a character with multiple country leader roles retires - Fix the tooltip for triggers inside a character scope, now the name of the character will correctly prefix the trigger tooltip - Add can_be_fired boolean flag in advisor role block in database. If at 'no', then the advisor can't be fired once hired. Warning modders : completely replaces removal_cost = -1 ! - Add trigger advisor_can_be_fired checking new flag can_be_fired in advisor role block - Add effect set_can_be_fired_in_advisor_role, setting new flag can_be_fired in advisor role block - Fix dynamic variables when using a unit leader scope - Add trigger pc_is_state_claimed - Renamed trigger pc_is_state_outside_influence_for to pc_is_state_outside_influence_for_winner - AI now correctly evaluates the weight of the traits that an advisor has, as well as the advisor entry weights

Art


- Added portraits for political advisors in Spain and Portugal

Bugfix


- Fix all events related to Soviet Paranoia (value was always 0) - Fixed issue where researching a new hull, chassis or airframe would not create the default variant if any variant of that type already existed. - Fixed issue where variants created through focuses etc. would get unexpected modules and upgrades as a result of there being no default variant. - Fixed typo in tooltip for Soviet Merge Plants focuses - Fixed the manpower exploit by repeated splitting & merging of airwings. - Italian Fiat 3000 and Fiat 3000B inter-war tanks will no longer be just hulls in the stockpile and will now show proper inter-war tank 2D icon. - Italian AI should no longer release puppets in Balkans on historical via decisions. - Decaying opinion modifers (for instance from improve relation diplomatic action) will not disappear after loading a save anymore - Fixes to how AI selects target templates for upgrading - Combat log tooltip now shows correct naming for losses breakdown - Admirals can no longer erroneously gain the politically_connected general trait - Fix bug with usage of pc_is_state_outside_influence_for trigger in ai desires - Fixed issue where 'No Councilor' mission would complete right away. - Fixed issue where Democratic Unrest National Spirit in Switzerland wouldn't be removed when declaring the Alpine Protectorate. - AI no longer forgets top-most production line when reducing excessive factories - Fixed Thrust/Weight issues in some plane designs after latest air rebalance - Fixed not considering manpower casualties in the air combat. - Unite Polynesia decision category now shows the appropriate decision category picture. - Stalinist AI should now be more inclined to kill Trotsky. - Cruiser Submarine icon will now be properly shown on the researched technology pop-up. - Fixed Chinese general showing up with blank portrait when Nationalist China integrates Guanxi Clique army.


[ 2023-01-17 14:07:16 CET ] [ Original post ]

War Effort - Operation Capital [1.12.8 OPEN BETA]

Hello there Generals! We have begun the final preparations for Operation Capital, and we now reveal our plans for you all! Below you will find a set of patch notes that are now live on an open beta branch. Feel free to give us feedback on these planned changes in the Discord!
################################## # Balance ################################## - Tank Design: Radio modules curve slightly changed, overall efficacy of radios reduced slightly - Tank Design: Close Support Gun now has 10 piercing, from 12. - Tank Design: Heavy Machine Gun now has 8 soft attack from 5, and 6 piercing from 10 - Tank Design: Secondary Cannon and HMG now have fewer drawbacks but higher production cost. HMG soft attack now 4, from 3, but hard attack removed - Tank Design: Additional Machineguns soft attack reduced to 1, from 2 - Tank Design: Easy Maintenance module now reduces total build cost by 5%, but requires 30 XP, from 10 - Tank Design: Expanded Fuel Tanks now cost 1 IC, from 2 - Tank Design: Sloped Armor now increases armor by 25%, from 20 - Tank Design: Medium One-Man Turret now has 8 breakthrough, from 10, and reduces soft and hard attack by 10%, from 25% - Tank Design: Three-Man Turret now has 24 breakthrough, from 20 - Tank Design: Torsion Bar now grants 15% reliability, from 10% - Tank Design: Interleaved Road Wheels no longer reduces reliability, but has doubled production cost - Tank Design: Welded armor reduced to 30% armor, from 40% - Plane Design: Torpedo Mountings now have 14 naval strike attack from 12, -12 agility from -15, and 6 targeting from 5 - Plane Design: Reduced the lower end of plane engine IC costs; earlier planes should be a little cheaper on the whole ################################## # UI ################################## - In research screen for modular equipment (tank, ship, plane), stop showing a diff in stats when there is no design company attached ################################## # AI ################################## - Soviet Union no longer desires to be best buddies with Romania despite being instructed to ignore them for a while - Ai weights on hiring advisors now makes more sense. You should see a better split between political advisors & research bureaus, and the AI no longer saves all PP for hiring chiefs at the exclusion of all else. [This has a pretty radical effect on early AI build-up, thus there may be some imbalance in the early game in this open beta - feedback especially welcome] - AI have a higher weight on Captain of Industry advisors pre-1939 ################################## # Modding ################################## - Fix the way character variables in script are stored - From now on, any trigger or effect, strictly requiring a country scope, but used in a character scope, will not work anymore - From now on, any trigger or effect, strictly requiring a country scope, but used in all_character, any_character, random_character, every_character, party_leader, characters_list_tooltip, will not work anymore - Correctly retrieve variables stored in character scope for text - Fixed tooltip function of trigger can_be_country_leader when used in country scope or all_character/any_character - Fix add_ideas and activate_advisor effects. When applied to a slot that is already filled, dismiss the currently appointed advisor before hiring the new one. Will fix crash when opening Officer corps after. - In script, interpret correctly when a character token is used in input - Make has_character and can_be_country_leader work with variables and keyword, and not just with a character token - Make is_character work with variables and keyword, and not just with a character token - Align can_be_country_leader on other character trigger and always return false if the character is retired - Fix crash in remove_advisor_role if the character had no matching advisor role - When using a character token as input for a scope, search for the closest encapsuling country scope in order to interpret it correctly - Fix crash when using add_advisor_role on a character with already a role in the same slot. Add a log error if trying to put triggers and on_action in the advisor role in add_advisor_role, those can only work if in database. - Make set_temp_variable accept character token as input - Removed check on unit leader type for add_unit_leader_trait. This check is only relevant for random traits. - Make sure that advisor roles in characters duplicated during civil war keep the same idea_token - Remove check on scope for hidden_effect and effect_tooltip - Added country dynamic variables : country_leader, theorist, army_chief, navy_chief, air_chief, political_advisor, high_command - Make sure all political parties are cleaned up when a character with multiple country leader roles retires - Fix the tooltip for triggers inside a character scope, now the name of the character will correctly prefix the trigger tooltip - add can_be_fired boolean flag in advisor role block in database. If at 'no', then the advisor can't be fired once hired. Warning modders : completely replaces removal_cost = -1 ! - add trigger advisor_can_be_fired checking new flag can_be_fired in advisor role block - add effect set_can_be_fired_in_advisor_role, setting new flag can_be_fired in advisor role block - Fix dynamic variables when using a unit leader scope - Add trigger pc_is_state_claimed - Renamed trigger pc_is_state_outside_influence_for to pc_is_state_outside_influence_for_winner - AI now correctly evaluates the weight of the traits that an advisor has, as well as the advisor entry weights ################################## # Art ################################## - Added portraits for political advisors in Spain and Portugal ################################## # Bugfix ################################## - Fixed typo in tooltip for Soviet Merge Plants focuses - Fixed the manpower exploit by repeated splitting & merging of airwings. - Italian Fiat 3000 and Fiat 3000B inter-war tanks will no longer be just hulls in the stockpile and will now show proper inter-war tank 2D icon. - Italian AI should no longer release puppets i Balkans on historical via decisions. - Decaying opinion modifers (for instance from improve relation diplomatic action) will not disappear after loading a save anymore - Fixes to how AI selects target templates for upgrading - Combat log tooltip now shows correct naming for losses breakdown - Admirals can no longer erroneously gain the politically_connected general trait - Fix bug with usage of pc_is_state_outside_influence_for trigger in ai desires - Fixed issue where 'No Councilor' mission would complete right away. - Fixed issue where Democratic Unrest National Spirit in Switzerland wouldn't be removed when declaring the Alpine Protectorate. - Fixed not considering manpower casualties in the air combat. To end this, we thank you for an amazing year, and keep your eyes peeled for 2023 as we got exciting things on the way for the Hearts of Iron Brand! /Katten


[ 2022-12-22 14:06:00 CET ] [ Original post ]

War Effort - Operation Source [1.12.7 - Checksum b738]

Hello there Generals! The War Effort Continues with Operation Source! Today's operation has set sail with new focuses, balance changes and of course bug fixes! We now sail towards a new operation, which we will be sharing more information about in 2023. But until then, we wish you good fortune in your conquering adventures! You can find the patch notes (unchanged from the Open Beta version) below: ################################## # Balance ################################## - Italian decisions Expand Regional Control in Ethiopian states no longer require any Ethiopian legitimacy value. - Canadian focus 'Dollar-A-Year Men' now grants a national spirit with -33% political advisor cost. The exchange rate of dollars to political power is poor. - Canadian focus 'Bits and Pieces Program' has gained an extra bit and piece, now granting 4% industrial and dockyard output, from 3% - Canadian focuses that grant army experience now grant significantly more of it - Fascist Canada now has the choice to offer concessions to the United Kingdom in return for Labrador and Newfoundland, which will be more likely to be accepted. Tooltips added for conditions leading to higher success chances. - Ships transferred as part of a Peace Conference action no longer have crew included: ship experience is reduced to 25% of what it was before the transfer - Australia has an additional shipyard focus. Each shipyard focus unlocks one of the naval designers, and naval designer traits are rebalanced. - All Australian focuses granting army experience now grant between 5 and 10 times more - Australian focus 'Naval Auxiliary Patrol' now grants 5% core defence factor, from 3%, and 10% naval experience gain (new). Experience gain from naval focuses increased slightly. - Australian Arms Production focus now grants -10% infantry equipment build cost in addition to civilian factory conversion speed. - Added a new focus for Australia, 'Coordinate Central Bureau', which adds 2 signal company research/ahead of time bonuses, and a decryption bonus if La Resistance is owned. - Warscore contribution from lend leasing fuel and equipment roughly tripled. Warscore malus from receiving lendlease remains unchanged for now. - Warscore from capturing a province for the first time increased to 4, from 3, Warscore from IC damage reduced by 20% - Mengkukuo now has a starting core on Ordos. This does not come with free Ixian technology. - Taking occupied states in peace conferences is now considerably cheaper. AI is less likely to contest unoccupied states (though they still will if they have good reasons) - Added one new Hungarian Focus to construct a new flagship, accelerating potential naval growth a bit. Admiral Horthy can now complete his transcendence. - Plane Designer: Engine 2 speed reduced to 480/450, from 530/480 - Hungarian Aluminium production is balanced between Transdanubia and Northern Hungary. Added 1 excavation decision to improve Transdanubian bauxite production, requiring excavation II - Added a late-game resource prospecting decision for tapping the Derna oilfield in North Transylvania. - Added a Hungarian Focus for restarting the shipping industry, adding 3 dockyards in a coastal state - Canadian Focus 'Retool Angus Shops' now grants 2 military factories, from 1 - Canadian Focus 'United Shipyards' now grants 4 dockyards, from 3 - Canadian Focus 'Maritime Colonial Railway' now grants 2 Civilian Factories, from 1 - Canadian Focus 'Defense of Canada Regulations' now takes 35 days, from 70 - Added approximately 40% more German random name possibilities - Added approximately 20% more English random name possibilities - Added a new option when releasing nations. You can now choose to retain states upon which you have cores. Retained cores can still be returned to the puppet through the occupation menu. - Rebalanced values for the "Sky Supplies" career profile medal to make it in line with new transport planes supply capabilities. ################################## # UI ################################## - Fix Career Profile Awards view for mod achievements in case of long texts ################################## # AI ################################## - AI now puts more weight on advisor competence rather than advisor cheapness, contrary to modern business practices. - Fixed bug where AI gave super high score to the max_command_power and uncategorized modifiers while hiring advisors ################################## # Modding ################################## - Make the following triggers neutral - meaning they won't impact the outcome of the trigger block they are in: log, set_temp_variable, print_variables, round_temp_variable, clamp_temp_variable, subtract_from_temp_variable, multiply_temp_variable, divide_temp_variable, clear_temp_array, add_to_temp_array, remove_from_temp_array, resize_temp_array, find_highest_in_array, find_lowest_in_array ################################## # Bugfix ################################## - Fixed unlocalized armoured car technologies when researched via script. - Reorganise Ascari will no longer add Armoured Cars to division templates if La Resistance is not active. - Fixed typo in Balance of Power tooltip when there are no modifiers applied. - Fix checking if a country is at war with someone in your faction. Also fixes add_to_faction effect. - Ethiopian national spirit Aid Ethiopian Communists now shows proper localization - Fixed wrong value for Mobilization Speed in the first range of the Italian Communist side of the Balance of Power - Random seed for the outcome of NKVD decision to assassinate Stalin is now dynamic. Nobody is safe. - New divisions spawned by Italian decision Train Irregulars will now spawn when the decision finishes instead of when the decision starts. - Fixed Issue where Switzerland would not take focuses that required less than Full Cantonal Power - Decreased likelihood Switzerland will join the Allies or Axis late war.

Playing with Mods?


We know mods are a huge part of our community and the game. With that in mind, we've updated our available old builds to include Hearts of Iron IV from before the War Effort initiative started. This means if your favorite mods is for some reason invalid with the initiative patches, you can backdate your game version and still enjoy Hearts of Iron IV your way. [olist]
  • Go to your Steam Library and select your game of choice.
  • Right-click and select Properties.
  • Under the BETAS tab.
  • Select the version you wish to play and wait for Steam launcher to finalize the switch.
  • If the previous step fails, exit the game, right click properties, local files, Verify the integrity of game files and wait for all files to be verified. [/olist]


    [ 2022-12-08 14:06:34 CET ] [ Original post ]

  • War Effort - Operation Tungsten [1.12.6 - Checksum a6ba]

    Greetings all! As I indicated a few weeks ago with the launch of the open beta for 1.12.6, the Hoi4 War Effort initiative is well underway. To recap, this will take the form of a consistent series of monthly updates containing smaller content additions, bugfixes, and quality of life improvements, primarily targeting nations that have older (perhaps outdated) content. Today we're launching the first of these updates to the live branch. You can find the patch notes (unchanged from the Open Beta version) below: ################################## # Balance ################################## - India now has access to a new focus and series of lengthy decisions which allow the offset of the Agrarian Society national spirit - Imperial Associates can now become spymaster of their faction - Manchukuo focus 'Hoankyoku' now grants a free Spy Agency if unbuilt, and a national focus granting +1 free operative slot - Two new one-use war support decisions added, which simulate the effects of radio and film industry propaganda - One new focus added to Romanian air section: 'White Squadron' - Air supply mission cp cost has been reduced by 75% - truce period after kicking a country from faction increased to 60 days from 30 - Hungary's Support Urbanization focus now grants one civilian factory in addition to the three building slots. Institute for Industrial Techniques now requires one of the prerequisites, not both. - Hungarian spirit 'Invite Foreign Investors' now grants 10% research speed in addition to previous effects. - Hungary now receives 2 uses of the 25% doctrine cost reduction from the 'Mobile Corps' spirit, from 1 - Default occupation law is now set to Military Governor, from Civilian Oversight - AI is somewhat less likely to blow the suez canal without reasons - Soviet NKVD advisors are no longer omniscient beings - enemy spy detection chance reduced to 0.2% base from 5% base - Italian 'Air Innovations' focus now grants a 50% research bonus, from 75% - Italian focus 'Reggianes Exports' now grants 1x 50% bonus, from 2x 75% - Italian Focus 'Citta del Aria' now grants 4x 25% bonuses, from 3x 75% research bonuses - Italian focus 'Standardization' now provides 1x 75% research bonus, from 2x 75% - Italian focus 'specialization' now grants 2x 50% research bonuses, from 3x 50% - Italian focus 'Incrociatori Leggeri' now provides 2x interdiction cost reductions, from 3 - Italian focus 'Incrociatori pesanti' now provides 2x 75% cost reductions for fleet in being, from 3x 75% - Italian Cruiser Sub and Midget Sub focuses now grant 1x 50% cost reductions, from 2x 75% cost reductions - Italian focuses 'Navi da Battaglia' and 'Caccia... Cacciatorpprs... never mind' now provide 2x 50% cost reductions, from 2x 75% - Italian focus 'Redirect Alfa Romeo production' now grants 2x50% research bonuses for light aircraft, from 2x 75% - Italian focus 'thermojet research' has been made less powerful - Czech Communist focus 'Communism with a Human Face' now grants 3% Recruitable Population from 2% - Czech focus 'War College' now grants -100% Field Officer Promotion Penalty - Czech focus 'Air is Our Sea' now grants -15% fighter production cost, from -10% - Czech focus 'Equal Access Guarantee' no longer reduces heavy tank production cost, but reduces light tank production cost by 15%, from 5% - Czech Fortification focuses (left side) now grant significantly more army experience (10-30 each, from 5 each) - Czech Hungarian Line and Polish Line focuses now take 35 days to complete, from 70 - Ethiopia: Cost to invite to executive council reduced to 100pp from 150, cost to integrate is now 3% stability, from 150pp - Indian Focus 'Rhani of Jhansi' now provides a commander of level 5, from 3 (with associated skill increases) - Indian focus 'Navy Funding' now provides 50 naval xp, from 20 - Indian focus 'British Army Support' now grants 2 uses of the 100% research bonus for support technology from 1 use, and 30 army experience, from 20 - Indian focus 'Lions of the Great War' now provides 30 army experience. The spirit granted by this focus now also provides 5% war support - approximately 2 million people have been returned to Mozambique - Romanian focuses 'Invest in the IAR' and 'MALAXA' now grant 3 of their respective factory types, from 2 - Romanian focuses 'Ground Support' and 'Air Defense' now grant 2x 50% doctrine cost bonuses, from 2x 25% - Romanian focus 'Air Superiority' now grants 2x 50% cost reduction bonuses, from 2x 25% - Romanian focus 'The Armored Division' now grants 2 armored units, from 1 - Warscore from taking a province for the first time increased by 50% - Garrison Manpower lost per resistance attack reduced slightly - Small Bomb Bay now has -15 agility, from -20. Bomb Locks now have -20 agility from -15 - Several ai modifiers have been added to the 'Protect Czechoslovakia' triggered event in the Hungarian focus tree, and a tooltip has been added to indicate what you can do to make it more likely to succeed - Non-strategic materials module now decreases production cost of airframes by 7.5% - Manchukuo focus 'The Two Emperors' now reduces the Low Legitimacy malus by 20% war support and stability - Slightly reduced manpower requirements again for lower tier occupation laws - Timed peace stackables (resource rights + war reparations) now only cancel when at war with the receiver, rather than when at war with anyone. - The USA now has a significant peace cost reduction for puppeting Japan ################################## # UI ################################## - Hovered state highlighting is now used in construction and deployment mapmodes - You are once again able to click and shift-click to set the priority on production line elements, using the priority frame indicator ################################## # AI ################################## - AI will now pick somewhat more interesting military spirits - Slightly adjusted thresholds for AI using occupation laws, towards a more severe approach - If Czechoslovakia is at war with Germany, Germany should now wait a while before declaring war on Poland - improved air role ratios for countries AI - Gave the AI an extra layer of though process behind taking states in peace conferences. Added several key areas of interest, and reduced their general interest elsewhere. - AI contesting other AIs in peace conferences should now resolve their conflicts based on a combination of relative power and map aesthetics ################################## # Modding ################################## - Added pc_turn trigger for peace conferences ################################## # Bugfix ################################## - Italy can no longer claim territory or the subjugation through decisions of a Balkan country if they are in the same faction - If Italy tries to join the Stresa Front and has any wargoals on a faction member, they will be removed before Italy can join the faction - Prevent CTD for observer when someone hotjoins - Fix crash when putting the focus on an Edit text box and closing the screen by using the Escape key - World Threat will now correctly build and decay from the fabrication of claims - Fixed inconsistencies with BoP impact in Italy when losing/retaking core states. - Switzerland now correctly updates best democratic allies when another country changes governments - Former Presidents of the Swiss Confederation are now available as Councilors again after 1950 - Generic versions of Switzerland generated through Peace Conferences don't inherit Switzerland's systems or Focus Tree anymore. - Indian civil war will no longer give you 0 units if you complete a civil war focus while Free - Herzegovina is now transferred to Croatia if the appropriate event option is selected by Germany - Cairo is now required to form Arabia, and is appropriately cored by the same decision - Forming the ottoman empire without BftB now grants a core on Cairo. Cairo is now required and cored for the respective decisions in BftB - Constantinople and Amasya are now cored by the Form Persia decision - Ticino is now cored by the HRE decision - Forming Byzantium without BftB will now appropriately grant cores on Constantinople and Amasya. Victory in Egypt and Tunis now requires and grants core on Cairo - Forming Macedonia now requires and grants cores on Istanbul, Amasya, Van, and Cairo - Decision alert should now show again if available decisions are present Soon we'll begin an open beta period for our next War Effort patch, so those of you who are keen on getting your hands on changes early - keep your eyes peeled.

    Message from the Team


    One of our primary motivations here is to work with the HOI community in greater depth for these updates. Suggestions are always welcome, ideas considered, and feedback, as always, is requested. While some ideas will always be outside the scope of the work we are doing for the War Effort, or at odds with the direction I see the game going, I'd urge those with strong opinions on how we can improve the game to leave feedback in one of the War Effort threads, or in the suggestions forum. Many items from the suggestions forum have already been appraised, and some implemented - this is a practice we will continue, so long as they make practical sense.

    The War Effort Continues!


    Our recon vehicles have spotted the way forward! We can now see the coming two Operations, but with reconnaissance, things can be quite uncertain so we will work hard on confirming these dates to make sure they are correct being sharing them with you all.


    [ 2022-11-24 09:27:29 CET ] [ Original post ]

    War Effort Patches | Open Beta


    Greetings all!


    Shortly, we'll be releasing the first of our slightly revamped monthly updates in the BBA cycle, which we're terming 'War Effort' patches. This is to distinguish between hotfix material and major updates, and to get everyone accustomed to a certain process and expectation. As per usual, we're going to run a short open beta on these changes before they're pushed to the live build. As you read the patch notes, it may become evident that we're tackling some different stuff to our usual maintenance patches. While the usual bugfixes and balance are present, we're also extending these updates to include the addition of changes to older content. We have not yet settled on a defined scope or cadence for these 'War Effort' updates, but it is our intention to continue providing small upgrades to older country content that we may not revisit for some time, in one way or another. We'll be making selective use of the suggestions forum here, as there are often productive threads on these matters. While the content changes are something we've wanted to tackle for a while, these patches give us a great opportunity to react to the general balance situation with relative speed. What We Want From This To summarise, you can expect monthly updates to contain a variable bucket of the following sort of things: - Bugfixes - Small QoL tweaks and changes - New gameplay perspectives and focuses for some countries with older content - Gameplay balance changes - Career profile balance changes What This Is Not In the spirit of expectation control, there are a few things you can expect these updates not to contain: - Large changes to major systems - Non-fix changes to key calculations (combat, production etc) - Feature level implementation This is partly to ensure that mod support during these small updates remains manageable: we will reserve larger changes for major version iterations. Why Open Beta? The context behind our use of open beta branches is often misunderstood. We use these as an extra step to verify the changes we have made in a public setting, and to give mod teams a chance to adapt to any upcoming changes. An open beta will often transition to the live branch without any intermediate changes - this means we were satisfied with the integrity of the changes we made. We don't use feedback on open betas to get more changes and fixes in, unless there has been a regression from live content introduced in said beta. This does not mean such feedback is of no value; if we consider such feedback valuable and achievable, it may be added to a future monthly update.

    Patch Notes


    Balance


    - India now has access to a new focus and series of lengthy decisions which allow the offset of the Agrarian Society national spirit - Imperial Associates can now become spymaster of their faction - Manchukuo focus 'Hoankyoku' now grants a free Spy Agency if unbuilt, and a national focus granting +1 free operative slot - Two new one-use war support decisions added, which simulate the effects of radio and film industry propaganda - One new focus added to Romanian air section: 'White Squadron' - Air supply mission cp cost has been reduced by 75% - truce period after kicking a country from faction increased to 60 days from 30 - Hungary's Support Urbanization focus now grants one civilian factory in addition to the three building slots. Institute for Industrial Techniques now requires one of the prerequisites, not both. - Hungarian spirit 'Invite Foreign Investors' now grants 10% research speed in addition to previous effects. - Hungary now receives 2 uses of the 25% doctrine cost reduction from the 'Mobile Corps' spirit, from 1 - Default occupation law is now set to Military Governor, from Civilian Oversight - AI is somewhat less likely to blow the suez canal without reasons - Soviet NKVD advisors are no longer omniscient beings - enemy spy detection chance reduced to 0.2% base from 5% base - Italian 'Air Innovations' focus now grants a 50% research bonus, from 75% - Italian focus 'Reggianes Exports' now grants 1x 50% bonus, from 2x 75% - Italian Focus 'Citta del Aria' now grants 4x 25% bonuses, from 3x 75% research bonuses - Italian focus 'Standardization' now provides 1x 75% research bonus, from 2x 75% - Italian focus 'specialization' now grants 2x 50% research bonuses, from 3x 50% - Italian focus 'Incrociatori Leggeri' now provides 2x interdiction cost reductions, from 3 - Italian focus 'Incrociatori pesanti' now provides 2x 75% cost reductions for fleet in being, from 3x 75% - Italian Cruiser Sub and Midget Sub focuses now grant 1x 50% cost reductions, from 2x 75% cost reductions - Italian focuses 'Navi da Battaglia' and 'Caccia... Cacciatorpprs... never mind' now provide 2x 50% cost reductions, from 2x 75% - Italian focus 'Redirect Alfa Romeo production' now grants 2x50% research bonuses for light aircraft, from 2x 75% - Italian focus 'thermojet research' has been made less powerful - Czech Communist focus 'Communism with a Human Face' now grants 3% Recruitable Population from 2% - Czech focus 'War College' now grants -100% Field Officer Promotion Penalty - Czech focus 'Air is Our Sea' now grants -15% fighter production cost, from -10% - Czech focus 'Equal Access Guarantee' no longer reduces heavy tank production cost, but reduces light tank production cost by 15%, from 5% - Czech Fortification focuses (left side) now grant significantly more army experience (10-30 each, from 5 each) - Czech Hungarian Line and Polish Line focuses now take 35 days to complete, from 70 - Ethiopia: Cost to invite to executive council reduced to 100pp from 150, cost to integrate is now 3% stability, from 150pp - Indian Focus 'Rhani of Jhansi' now provides a commander of level 5, from 3 (with associated skill increases) - Indian focus 'Navy Funding' now provides 50 naval xp, from 20 - Indian focus 'British Army Support' now grants 2 uses of the 100% research bonus for support technology from 1 use, and 30 army experience, from 20 - Indian focus 'Lions of the Great War' now provides 30 army experience. The spirit granted by this focus now also provides 5% war support - approximately 2 million people have been returned to Mozambique - Romanian focuses 'Invest in the IAR' and 'MALAXA' now grant 3 of their respective factory types, from 2 - Romanian focuses 'Ground Support' and 'Air Defense' now grant 2x 50% doctrine cost bonuses, from 2x 25% - Romanian focus 'Air Superiority' now grants 2x 50% cost reduction bonuses, from 2x 25% - Romanian focus 'The Armored Division' now grants 2 armored units, from 1 - Warscore from taking a province for the first time increased by 50% - Garrison Manpower lost per resistance attack reduced slightly - Small Bomb Bay now has -15 agility, from -20. Bomb Locks now have -20 agility from -15 - Several ai modifiers have been added to the 'Protect Czechoslovakia' triggered event in the Hungarian focus tree, and a tooltip has been added to indicate what you can do to make it more likely to succeed - Non-strategic materials module now decreases production cost of airframes by 7.5% - Manchukuo focus 'The Two Emperors' now reduces the Low Legitimacy malus by 20% war support and stability - Slightly reduced manpower requirements again for lower tier occupation laws - Timed peace stackables (resource rights + war reparations) now only cancel when at war with the receiver, rather than when at war with anyone. - The USA now has a significant peace cost reduction for puppeting Japan

    UI


    - Hovered state highlighting is now used in construction and deployment mapmodes - You are once again able to click and shift-click to set the priority on production line elements, using the priority frame indicator

    AI


    - AI will now pick somewhat more interesting military spirits - Slightly adjusted thresholds for AI using occupation laws, towards a more severe approach - If Czechoslovakia is at war with Germany, Germany should now wait a while before declaring war on Poland - improved air role ratios for countries AI - Gave the AI an extra layer of though process behind taking states in peace conferences. Added several key areas of interest, and reduced their general interest elsewhere. - AI contesting other AIs in peace conferences should now resolve their conflicts based on a combination of relative power and map aesthetics

    Modding


    - Added pc_turn trigger for peace conferences

    Bugfix


    - Italy can no longer claim territory or the subjugation through decisions of a Balkan country if they are in the same faction - If Italy tries to join the Stresa Front and has any wargoals on a faction member, they will be removed before Italy can join the faction - Prevent CTD for observer when someone hotjoins - Fix crash when putting the focus on an Edit text box and closing the screen by using the Escape key - World Threat will now correctly build and decay from the fabrication of claims - Fixed inconsistencies with BoP impact in Italy when losing/retaking core states. - Switzerland now correctly updates best democratic allies when another country changes governments - Former Presidents of the Swiss Confederation are now available as Councilors again after 1950 - Generic versions of Switzerland generated through Peace Conferences don't inherit Switzerland's systems or Focus Tree anymore. - Indian civil war will no longer give you 0 units if you complete a civil war focus while Free - Herzegovina is now transferred to Croatia if the appropriate event option is selected by Germany - Cairo is now required to form Arabia, and is appropriately cored by the same decision - Forming the ottoman empire without BftB now grants a core on Cairo. Cairo is now required and cored for the respective decisions in BftB - Constantinople and Amasya are now cored by the Form Persia decision - Ticino is now cored by the HRE decision - Forming Byzantium without BftB will now appropriately grant cores on Constantinople and Amasya. Victory in Egypt and Tunis now requires and grants core on Cairo - Forming Macedonia now requires and grants cores on Istanbul, Amasya, Van, and Cairo - Decision alert should now show again if available decisions are present


    [ 2022-11-11 18:43:01 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Avalanche 1.12.5 - By Blood Alone - Checksum 18aa

    Hello there Generals! Another update has arrived, and this is a big one! Today we release 1.12.5, that targets some of your most pressing concerns. But there is more! As we have a plan in the works to release monthly updates for By Blood Alone. So keep your eyes peeled for more information related to that! ################################## # Balance ################################## - Minor tweaks made to further railway/infrastructure focuses that were a bit weak, or were unchanged in the last iteration - Changed certain Italian Balance of Power Decisions from being available only one time to once a year. This should give players more leeway with the whole balancing act - Songgotu Zhanshan is now an economist for MAN to avoid a double Captain of Industry for MAN - Stopped medium and heavy flame tanks from being able to be paradropped. - Reduced values for some modifiers in Swiss National Spirits, including Spirit of Saint Bernard. - Reduced values for the modifiers in swiss Weapons Designer and Popular Dictator traits. - Made it less likely for countries to accept Swiss demands for territories. - Influencing Cantons decision in Switzerland is now slightly more expensive and less likely to succeed. - Cohesion settings should no longer result in unit clumping for the AI, and provide a much more stable frontline situation for all orders with less relocation, but may have slightly more overall movement than before. [GD note: from a design perspective, cohesion now works significantly better than previously; feedback particularly appreciated here] - Changed the Yalta conference to make it better interact with the new Peace Conference Format. - AI peace conference behaviour changed significantly when taking land for themselves. This is now much more distance based, and should result in more cohesive borders. [Iterative change #1] - Peace Conference AI is now slightly more self-aware about contested bids. They will early-out of contests in some cases as an effort to reduce point wastage and to create more cohesive borders. Several defines added to control this behaviour. [Iterative change #2] - Adjusted base org values for ship types - Reduced org bonuses for some ship classes in doctrines - Medium and heavy batteries attack and piercing adjusted, bb and bc armour no longer increases visibility and have higher armour values - Increased xp spend cut off for legacy land equipment upgrade - COMBAT_DAMAGE_SCALE_CARRIER returned to 5 was 1, NAVAL_STRIKE_DAMAGE_TO_STR decreased to 1 from 2, NAVAL_STRIKE_DAMAGE_TO_ORG decreased to 1.5 from 2 - Air combat COMBAT_DAMAGE_SCALE increase from 0.25 to 1 - SHIP_TO_FLEET_ANTI_AIR_RATIO increased from 0.2 to 0.25, ANTI_AIR_POW_ON_INCOMING_AIR_DAMAGE increased from 0.2 to 0.25, ANTI_AIR_MULT_ON_INCOMING_AIR_DAMAGE increased from 0.15 to 0.2 - Removed multiply stats ic cost and AA from Ship AA modules, increased base AA attack to replace them - Reduced base Heavy hull costs slightly,all treaty battleships should now fit within treaty limits - ENG now starts with 36 BB hull researched, nelson class now obsolete at 36 start - Slightly improved Fascist/Neutral approach to beating overseas countries ################################## # Stability & Performance ################################## - Fixed a crash during hot joining on Mac. - Reduced the size of the flags texture so the game works on GPUs with 8k texture limit - Fixed rare CTD during GUI initialization in DX11 - Fix CTD caused by incorrect parsing of persistent AI strategy ################################## # AI ################################## - Improved ENG BB ai templates - AI no longer treats obsolete equipment as best available equipment - AI ENG will now try to build at least some KGV class BB's on time - AI ENG now wants to build slightly higher ratio of BB's ################################## # UI ################################## - Airbase tooltip will now aggregate airwings of the same type, country and mission to make it more readable - Glow effect is now shown when you can afford a BoP decision - The game will now prevent incompatible saves from loading when continuing from the Launcher ################################## # Modding ################################## - Added has_completed_custom_achievement trigger and debug_custom_achievements console command - More configurable AI behaviour in peace conferences (through defines) - Reworked how ai_strategy unit_ratio is used to calculate and set build_airplane values. See common/ai_strategy/documentation.info for details. - Added a list of all active ai_strategy entries to the imgui view ai_strategy. - When retrieving a list of equipment icons or 3D models from the equipment graphic_db to display in the tank or plane designer any duplicate entries will now be removed. ################################## # Bugfix ################################## - Minor loc fix for concessions to monarchies for Switzerland. Used to say "Concessions to Swiss Monarchies", now "Concessions to X country (German)" Monarchies - Added a variable to whichever nation that cedes Bessarabia to Soviet so it shows up correctly in news events - Fixed typos in Guarantee events for Switzerland. - Fixed minor comment in Guarantees event for Switzerland. - Adjusted "Side Active" condition for Balance of Power so it's more accurate. - Added tooltip for Political Advisor Adolf Furrer so it's clear he can unlock an extra Research Slot - Fixed typo in one of the Italo-Ethiopian war events - Improved tooltip in Italian focus All Roads Lead to Rome so that the way wargoal targets are picked is more intuitive. - General Cedillo is now again a leader of the Mexican revolt - The Grand Council of Fascism will now actually oust Kings or Christian Democrats in the form of the National Military Junta, if the Balance of Power is low enough. - Fixed old news event not having a dynamic loc for the USSrs name - Slight loc fix changing 'Embargos' to 'Embargo' in the League of Nations embargo event. - Added conditions for entering peace talks between Italy and Ethiopia, as well as events, and loc, and other things concerning the peace conference. - Fixing missing Modify Government alert for a political advisor can be assigned. - Salvador Abascal now has a portrait if you have MtG enabled - Puyi now gets nationalist symbol correctly - UK shouldn't be able to give Turkey Levant states that they no longer own. - Germany no longer ignores Switzerland after they've stopped being neutral. - Fixed trigger not showing appropriate requirements in Human Torpedo decision. - Suppress the Mafia decision will, no longer show infantry equipment requirements twice. - Italy's Focus 'Negotiate Claims' will be bypassed if certain criteria is met. Certain events will also be skipped, if the criteria isn't met. - Fixed Germany granting territories to Switzerland in Fascist Path - Added extra tooltips for expansion focuses in Switzerland - If France is faction leader, all its allies will join them in the Stresa Front with Italy - If Italy declines Germany's offer to assassinate Mussolini, Germany won't be able to ignore that rejection and go ahead with the assassination anyways. Also, if the Balance of Power is active for Italy, Mussolini's side will be switched out to the King's. - Typo fix for BBA_ethiopia_anti_colonialism_events.4 - Fixed bad texture conversion on DX11 when using R8G8B8_UNORM, R8G8B8_UNORM_sRGB and X1R5G5B5 formats - Ivan Smirnov, Ivar Smilga and Alexander Shlyapnikov now gets released out of prison if they are still alive and hasn't been released yet when completing Return Democracy to the party - You can no longer use the "No Garrison -> Kurdish uprising -> Annex" exploit to fast remove Kurdish separatism faster than normal - Turkish puppets can no longer pick the "invite to alliance" focuses and break free from their overlord that way - Remade some checks that only checked for "puppet" subject type to include all subjects for Turkey - Italy can no longer claim the throne of Montenegro if the controller of said state is at war with Italy. - AI should now respect the equipment_production_min_factories AI strategy even when there is no need for the equipment type - It's no longer possible to see certain Balance of Power Decisions before finishing the required National Focus for Italy - Paradrop orders without enough assigned transport wings now display how many wings are missing on the order instance (map arrow) tooltip. - Scrambled carrier air wings that can perform naval strike or kamikaze missions will prioritise them over air superiority and interception unless they are fighter or interceptor air wings. - Fixed missing localization of equipment categories fighter and CAS, displayed in a naval combat tooltip and probably in a few other places too. - Fixed issue where Vorarlberg wouldn't be a core of the Holy Roman Empire when formed by Germany. - Fixed an instance where the Italian AI would always decline Ethiopian territorial expansions if Ethiopia went up to a satellite via the focus tree - At the end of peace conference, for new puppets, calculate the right type of puppet - Songgotu Zhanshan and Megata Toshiro are once again Manchurian advisors - Tooltips in Northern and Southern Italian designers now specify the need to complete the Focus New Industrialization Program to improve them. - Fixed issue with Italy completing two mutually exclusive focuses when failing on mussolini's missions to conquer North/South Ethiopia and withdrawing from Ethiopia at the same time. - Turkeys join alliances focuses now bypasses if in faction - Fixed missing core in the Siberian union that created a weird gap - Losing non-cores as Italy will now only reduce BoP if the value is below 30% towards the Grand Council. Losing a core will now reduce 15% BoP instead of 20%. - King Vittorio Emanuele III will no longer get the crown of Albania if he abdicated or died. - Pressure government decisions will no longer show up if the target country already has the same ideology and is in faction with the sender. - Focus Topple Amhara Rulers will no longer be available if ideology is not Fascist or Non-Aligned. The Ethiopian characters that become the country leaders of their respective puppet countries will become the leaders of both Fascist and Non-Aligned ideologies. - Added tooltips in Swiss Focus Tree to notify when the Absolute Neutrality and Swiss Citizen Militia Decision Categories are disabled. - If a subject of Yugoslavia controls Dalmatia and Italy demands those states, Yugoslavia will get to decide the fate of those states - not the subject nation. - You can no longer hire several advisors of the same type - Fix potential OOS on hot-joining caused by data on executing air missions never being written to the savegame. - Fix CTD when leaving a game where an air group for whatever reason contains a faulty air wing reference. - Fix potential OOS on hot-joining a second time without restarting the game, caused by erroneous reading of daily port strike limits from the savegame. - Fix OOS involving interception missions targeting an enemy airwing that's passing through a region, where both the enemy's mission region and the interception region updates on the same hourly tick. - Ceding Bessarabia is now properly showing the former owners name in an upcoming news event - Switzerland will now seize the gold reserves of countries it enters war against. - Added bypass for Swiss Focus 'Trade Agreement with Germany' for when Germany is not fascist, and it will not be completed if Switzerland is at war with Germany - Added bypass to the Swiss focus 'Withdraw from the League of Nations' for when the League of Nations has already been disbanded. - Fixed issue where Switzerland would not have a Viable European Fascist to complete Fascist Path. - Set the correct population in the Swiss Plateau state in Switzerland, and adjust the population in other states. - Fixed first loading screen background flipping immediately as GUI is being loaded - Increased AI weight for Japan to abandon the naval treaty in early 1937. - Fix crash on Leader details screen, officer corps tab, when the player clicks on an advisor role to give to a unit leader - Switzerland no longer gets a "Breach of Neutrality" event when the Absolute Neutrality category is not present or when the hostile country is in a faction while not being the faction leader. - Switzerland will not be able to offer trading gold with countries they're at war with. And always remember, if you discover any bugs or if you have suggestions for the game, please do submit it in the forum section dedicated to those areas. /Katten


    [ 2022-11-03 09:17:02 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Avalanche 1.12.4 - By Blood Alone - Checksum f96e

    Hello there Generals! Another update has arrived! Today we release 1.12.4. But we are working on a larger patch that will target some of your concerns about By Blood Alone, and itl have a slightly extended open beta that's opening soon-ish. So keep your eyes peeled for that! ################################################################ ######## Hotfix 1.12.4 "Avalanche" ######### ################################################################ ################################## # Balance ################################## Peace conference: - reduced lend lease warscore gains and losses from fuel to 0.01 warscore per fuel to 0.001 warscore per 100 fuel - reduced lend lease warscore gains and losses from equipment IC from 0.1 warscore per IC to 0.001 - reduced war score per sunk convoy from 10 to 0.05 - reduced war score offset from convoy production from 5 to 0.04 - reduced war score per ship IC sunk from 0.04 to 0.002 - reduced war score per sailor lost when a ship sinks from 0.02 to 0.001 - increased IC value of sunk ships when determining warscore from 0.002 to 0.004 - increased base province value from 0.3 to 2.0 Air Warfare: - Fixed primary role of guided missile for large airframes (now sets naval patrol bomber) - Fixed aircraft naval strike mission module limits (light = 1 slot, medium = 2 slots, large = 3 slots) - 1938 and later air module tech costs are higher - Air engine 4 is now 1944 tech - post 1936 Air weapon tech dates increased - All aircraft electronics module unlocks are one tech later - reduced USA combined bomber offensive range increase - reduced strategic bombing stat for large bomb bays - With BBA uk air focuses give less research bonuses but give doctrine discounts - increased small/medium bomb bay weight - reduced lmg turret weight - Fix incorrect mutliengine thrust for level 2 engines. increased torpedo weight. added speed malus to floats/flying boats - rebalanced lmg and hmg for planes - Fixed primary role of guided missile for large airframes (now sets naval patrol bomber) - Updated air supply to use a better calculation for per aircraft supply amount. Balance of Power: - Removing all the BoP requirements for the alt fascist branches; no other branch has such requirements, and it is very punishing if the player loses a core state to reach to necessary BoP levels to proceed down the alt fascist branch Navy: - Refresh airwing stats when setting a scrambling mission (this should fix the 1 damage 'carrier bug') ################################## # AI ################################## - Reduced the demand of AI nations to build tactical and strategic bombers ################################## # Database ################################## - Hooked up the already existing historical and generic plane variant names to the corresponding BBA plane types, leaving only plane types without a non-BBA equivalent without proper variant names (we'll get there soon). ################################## # Stability & Performance ################################## - Prevent potential CTD when reading a savegame with a faulty persistent AI strategy. - Fixed CTD when disbanding units while paradropping ################################## # Bugfix ################################## - Don't autopause when a hidden event pops up (Aces) - Added requirements to several focuses and fixed the completion rewards for some of them. - Loosen the Laws on Secularism can no longer target the same state more than once. - Romania and Hungary should no longer loose their conquered territory if puppeted after Germany completes Integrate War Economics - Allies should be less likely to kick out Russia from the Triple entente due to generated world tension - Chances of having a brainless Italian AI with no real plan have been reduced to 0. - Fixed CTD when using console command "research all" and then interacting with the Kamikaze module Fixed Explosive Charge as any country other than Japan. - Finland's leader's name will now display properly in the Estonian event '(Finland's leader) Steps Down' - Fixed missing cost for Swiss political party concessions decisions. - Italy is now sending the right events to the UK if the UK is hosting the Ethiopian government in exile and Italy has war with them. Also added conditions to 2 Italian focuses - Event option to complete Italian focus Abyssinian Fiasco should no longer show up if By Blood Alone dlc is not active. - Yugoslavia can now submit to Italy's ultimatum and become a puppet - Improved available and bypass triggers for Italian focuses War with Greece and War With France. - in peace conference, take navy peace action is now correctly unavailable if the victor does not own any naval base prior to the peace conference - Italian decisions Vallo Alpino del Littorio will no longer be visible if the targeted provinces already have max fort level. - Releasing Ostland while at war with SOV should no longer return the Baltic states to SOV - Fixed reduced production when converting old equipment in production lines. - When a player unlocks a mod achievement without having the cloud storage activated, catch the exception that was causing the game to shut down - Characters with Unit Leader roles can now become President in the appropriate focuses - Rolf Henne in Switzerland now gets the correct trait when promoted - Fixed bug that caused an ungodly amount of divisions to escape when a country goes into exile - Added missing Vorarlberg claim if AUS rejects the ancshluss. - You can no longer use the exploit of leaving a minor DEI island free while you gobble up the rest of the resource giving island as Germany and expect Japan to just be fine with it - Fixed instances where Vorarlberg is not included when granting cores. - Franco should now get his old portrait after 1950 again - Fixed portrait for Jonas Cenerius for Lit - Fixed some countries (e.g. Italy) not being able to lend-lease convoys. - Philippe Ptain has returned to lead Vichy France for Non-Lar users - The Balance of Power will now shift towards the country leader, and away from the Grand Council, when reclaiming lost, none core territory. - Japan will now bypass Tripartite Pact focus if Germanya dn Italy is at war with each other - Clear active GiE division deployments for losers in a peace conference - Fix crash when opening the Details tab of diplomacy view when DLC La Resistance is not activated - Battleship generated by Ethiopia's 'Request Soviet Battleship Hulls' focus now has a name. - Anarchist Spain's event to annex Portugal after their civil war will now trigger correctly. - Young man Franco will now become old man Franco after 1950 - Fixed autonomy impact score not getting updated correctly, when closing and opening Start Lend Lease window. - Frankfurter event no longer triggers unless GER is fascist - Austria should no longer give up land to Switzerland if at war with Switzerland - Fixed an instance where the Alpine protectorate would get hardlocked if you did the Alpine conferedation first - Alpine Redoubt now correctly gives forts in Alpine states - Don't display plane airframe names when BBA is not active. - Avoid war score numbers to overflow and become negative when they get too big - Fix opinion modifiers with a fixed time or with a decay. When the end date is reached they are now removed - Airwings will now deal damage in air battles that involve very large numbers of planes. - Variant comparison in the designer view will now take mission adjusters into account. Remember that if you discover any bugs, please do report them in the bug report area on the forum. /Katten


    [ 2022-10-18 08:06:57 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Developer Diary | Post-Release

    Greetings all, Today well be casting an analytical eye over the release of BBA, what players have been up to, and what the immediate plans are going forward. It wouldnt be a traditional post-release diary without looking at what the player-base at large have been getting up to since BBA was launched.
    As youd expect, Italy has been at the forefront of game sessions since BBA released. We were not expecting quite this level of interest however! 45% of 15+ hour accumulated game sessions were played on the Italian tree. By comparison, at the same period after launch, the Soviet Union accounted for 39% of similar length game sessions. Germany (purple) continues to be a popular choice.
    Ethiopia has shot into the first place in terms of minor nations. As expected, Ethiopian game sessions tend to last a shorter time; a combination of losing, having reached player-set goals earlier, and a lot of restarts to maximize efficiency. Were seeing fewer players rolling back to previous versions in order to play TC mods than we usually expect during a post-release period. Everyones favorite targets to nuke remain broadly unchanged from previous releases (major capitals). The one new target country in the list is Mexico, for some reason. Turkeys nuclear industry has seen an upswing, being responsible for 4% of nuclear weapons created and launched. 2% of games are using the newly released Japanese localization! Theres been a noticeable increase in players using normal (64%) rather than easy (10%) or very easy (25% ) difficulty since BBA released. 0.74% of games are played on hard difficulty, and 1.10% on very hard. Prior to release, 28% of games used very easy, with 12% on easy.

    BBA Launch and Reception


    An enormous number of fans are playing the game and weve hit several new records compared to NSB and previous releases. This said, BBA has been an unusual release. In comparison to the points above, weve also seen some dissatisfaction and confusion over certain mechanics. Combined with the excellent and consistent player numbers, this contributes to some difficulty in interpreting the situation. This said, we clearly dont intend to handwave away feedback simply because it does not appear wholly representative.g Thus, it can be difficult to read the room on the key pain points that an entire community defines - what may seem obvious to one player is not always the same for others, and the vocabulary users exercise to express themselves over an issue often differs. It is also worth noting that compared to previous releases, the number of reported issues is actually lower in BBA - were still working on how to interpret this dissonance. Peace conferences have by far been the most frequent talking point amongst the community. After a deep dive, it is clear that there are three main narrative detractors:
    • Genuine bugs (ie: behavior we consider not to be working as designed)
    • Confusion over the rules in the new system
    • Disagreement with the direction of the new implementation of peace conferences
    The majority of legitimate bugs weve identified here are to do with AI behavior. This is something we consider a known issue, and are iterating on improving this. Weve made some fixes in the last few patches, and we have some wider-ranging changes coming soon. In terms of confusion over the new system, this is something we have some longer-term desire to improve. A lot of changes were made to core systems in BBA, for which players had already established a sense of mastery and habit. This extends to both peace conferences and the air system. In retrospect, changing these habits could have been accompanied with clearer onboarding for the new expectations. Thats on me, and well have this in mind for future developments. One of the major misunderstandings were seeing in the wild is to do with ending bidding. Players who are used to the old behavior are ending their participation with bids selected, expecting to be granted the territory theyve bidded upon. In reality, there is nothing stopping the AI or other players from contesting these bids, now without the risk of being re-contested. Were considering mitigation for this behavior. Disagreement with the direction of the new peace conference system is a more nuanced debate, but one which we feel is primarily influenced by the previous two points. On one hand, we have a sizable cadre of players who enjoy the more adversarial nature of the conferences, and on the other hand, there are a range of opinions on how effective this turned out to be. There are several commonly occurring conference comments worth mentioning:
    • Defeated major nations remaining alive at the end of huge peace conferences is not intended to be a normal occurrence.
    • Bordergore from the AI is worse than intended in certain situations - primarily ahistorical PCs involving multiple different-ideology factions.
    • Bordergore created by players is a valid use of the peace conference system. While there are many legitimate concerns over how the AI is acting in some cases, we dont consider it to be a failure of the system to allow the player to balkanize areas of the map if they so choose.
    • Limited points is a solution we are confident in as a necessity to drive a more adversarial conference system. It does, however, require a strong understanding of how bid conflicts are expected to work, and we can do better at telegraphing this in a conference situation. Passing turns for infinite points will not be making a return.
    • It is sometimes impossible to fully annex faraway war participants in smaller wars. This was somewhat intended, however the results of the balance around this are not something we consider satisfactory. There will be changes here.
    • Subjects and minor nations causing trouble have generated some friction. Weve addressed this in the short term with some balance, however we may look into game rules and/or options to allow the player to customize the nature of peace conference resolutions. This is not as trivial as it might sound. While the intended narrative of conferences was always intended to be an adversarial conflict between ideological/major actors in an immediate post-war scenario, many players enjoy having more control over the endgame - as evidenced by the popularity of mods such as Player Led Peace Conferences. Supporting this behavior for mods is something we fully intend to do, and there are some steps we can take to make this easier.
    On the subject of the air system and plane designer, well be working on some improvements to the flavor elements that were somewhat lost during the transition to the new designer interface, as well as tackling bugs as we see them. Theres been a lot of guesswork from the community over what the air combat formula is - much of which has resulted in erroneous conclusions. Well be making sure that the relevant parts of this are more clearly communicated; either in-game or through the wiki for those who want a deeper dive into the numbers. Weve now released two patches for BBA which address many of the most frequently occurring problems. We have more bugfix patches planned in the short term (likely next week for our next iteration), as well as a patch scheduled slightly more distantly with some more impactful changes. In addition to the above, we will be continuing with the practice of monthly recurring patches throughout the BBA lifecycle - as indicated previously, we recognize the importance of ongoing maintenance for HoI. All in all, many of you are continuing to find great enjoyment in BBA, and we fully intend to keep working on the key areas that some of you feel dont meet your standards.

    Read the full diary here



    [ 2022-10-13 13:00:56 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Avalanche 1.12.3 - By Blood Alone - Checksum 6b16

    Hello there Generals! Another update has arrived! Bringing many requested balance changes as well as bug fixes! This patch will go live on steam right now! And itl go live on Microsoft Store next week, so if you update, you will experience issues with crossplay until its updated on both platforms.

    Patch Notes


    Balance


    - Some minor balance fixes for outdated focuses - Minor balance of subpar focuses - Minor balance changes. Railway focuses that only give railways should not also give another bonus as compensation - Increased Air Wing damage bonus from speed advantage - Decreased org loss from air borne air drops from 90% org loss to 60% org loss - More peace conference AI improvements. Ai should now be less willing to perform different actions on the same bucket of states - Main IC cost for planes moved from airframes to engines - Updated hitprofile calulation to include speed base modiers - Shortened a few Ethiopian Industrial focuses to 35 days, and changed the requirements for the Develop Shewa focus. - Updated hitprofile calulation to include speed base modier - Reduced cannon 2 air attack, increased weight of naval attack modules, reduced air defence stat modules - Limited small airframes to 1 anti shipping missile - Naval targeting from weapons is now an average stat, range from drop tanks and armour is now multiplicative - Decreased 4x lmg module weight - Increased the penalty limit for having the Swiss Militias Deployed - Small adjustments to Swiss National Spirits 'Aktion Nationaler Widerstand' and 'Reduced Training Age'. - Modified cost of retaking Vichy territory for France - Adjusted focus unlock times for Fascist Path.

    Stability & Performance


    - Fixed CTD when showing resources with invalid ownership. - Further Peace Conference AI balance changes, unaligned nations will now mostly embrace Empire, and take land for themselves. England now has a slight preference for coastal regions. AI is slightly less keen on multi-puppeting in multi-faction scenarios - Added VRAM usage to the ingame profiler UI - Fixed failure to create DX11 device on Windows 7 without KB 2670838. For the love of god please run windows update. - Reduced VRAM usage by making sure the game will only load the fonts required to display the chosen game language.

    AI


    - Germany no longer feels the need to ships armies to east africa in full view of ENG

    Modding


    - Adding on_peaceconference_started action

    Bugfix


    - Added fallback state targets for a number of Italian focuses building factories in case they are already using all building slots. - Fixed some cases in which Italian focuses would build factories in states without checking for Italian control over them. - Cze AI can now go alt history - Luis Maria Martinzez is now avaiable again - Communist USA can no longer annex the entirety of the Soviet union and be at peace by not joining the call to arms - Moved port close to Hamburg closer to inland so that you can see which province its in - Added images for Ethiopian medals - Added bypasses to several German focuses if Germany is already in a faction and is not the faction leader; they shouldn't be able to invite other countries into the Faction - Fixed issue with Italian Occupation of Ethiopia decision category preventing decisions related to electrify states from showing up if Ethiopia had capitulated before going into exile. - Fix for Republican Spain on historic focuses post civil war has no cores - Fix low probability CTD when a hull, chassis or airframe research completes and multiple equipment variants are auto-upgraded to it. - Fixed bug where decision to form the Holy Roman Empire wasn't granting Ticino. - You can now pick Unite our nations and Finno-estionian supremacy league again - Italy can now negotiate colonial claims with Ethiopia's host nation - Fixed bug where Vojvodina annexed Hungary - Achievement Not Today now shows a previously invisible trigger. - Fixed issue in You Shall Not Pass Achievement making it available regardless of Switzerland winning a defensive war or an offensive one. - Cohesion settings should no longer cause some units to refuse to move to the frontline, however units may relocate somewhat further if they drop behind a swift advance. Incidentally fixed idle unit recognition for army group orders. - The treaty of Brussels now has a description again - Call of Hungary for support as Sweden is no longer listed under the "Support China" category - Charles Lindbergh should have his portrait back - If either France or Luxemburg doesn't exist, the corresponding event won't be sent - Prevent CTD when spawning civil war for country with no valid home area - Fix for Snek on a plane achivement (I am so tired of these sneks) - Fixed missing cost for BB armour 3 - Fixed an instance where the influence future canton decision disappeared forever - Fixed issue where Plutarco Calles would not get Country Leader role in Mexico's focus "Party of the Revolution". - Concessions to Communists, Monarchists and Democrats now have the correct cost. - Added extra checks for influence cantons along with remove effects - The AI can no longer cheat and use spirit of the army/air/navy without No step back - Resolved issue where it would appear as if the idea Swiss Neutrality was removed twice in the Swiss focuses 'Take a Stance' and 'Join France'. - The Chu X-Po now gives reserach bonus regardless of if you have BBA or not - Fixed Strait of Hormuz - Some focuses are now blocked if Militias have been turned into Regular Infantry. - If the pope - or anyone else BUT the King Vittorio III - is country leader, don't make Prince Umberto the new country leader. Also add King Vittorio back as an idea if the Balance of Power is in his favour - Fixed CTD during air update in a region where a state lacks a controller. - Italian Naval Cooperation Program decisions can no longer be taken more than once for the same target country. - Clear the skies should now not give pre-bba fighters - The Queen of battle spirit now correctly gives a 50% chance of gaining an infantry officer trait - Fixed Human Torpedo not deducting the CP cost as promised. - Fixed decisions to Offer Dodecanese Islands for Alliance so that they cannot be taken if Turkey or Greece are already in faction with Italy or are subjects. - One can not suppress the mafia for free. - Fix crash when a country hosting a government in exile loses a war and does not have access to exiled division template anymore - Completing "Unite the Afar" focus when province is controlled by occupying force should no longer cause issues with control. - Fixed Italian National Spirit Gruppi di Difesa della Donna being removed for no reason if the Spanish civil war was over. - Fix for CZE not taking their fascist/communist advisors in alt history - Italian focuses War with France and War with the UK will now properly work with latest strategic region changes. - Prevent supply hub motorization range bonus from going negative when many countries have full motorization set on the same hub. - Fixed Italian Communist leader taking over the country when player chose democratic option in the Italian Civil War after completing focus Defy the Duce. - Italian king Vittorio Emanuele can no longer be crowned king of Albania if he has abdicated or if he is dead. - Added the new Australian states back to the Oceania AI area - Italy can send demands to several countries to demand the Dalmatian coast line - Pacify Ethiopia mission now succeeds if Ethiopian states are controlled by Italian subjects. - Fixed issue where all text in the description for the Swiss Mission 'Building Up Military Readiness' was yellow. - Fixed issue in Swiss Mission 'No confederation councilor' where it wouldn't disappear after centralizing the country. - Fixes issue where country could still threaten Switzerland even after not being a relevant country for Absolute Neutrality. - Fix issue where air-wing equipment tags would not be written to the savegame. Remember that if you discover any bugs, please do report them in the bug report area on the forum. /Katten


    [ 2022-10-06 14:03:43 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Avalanche 1.12.2 - By Blood Alone - Checksum e45c

    Hello there Generals! We are excited to be able to share with you the patch notes for today's patch! This patch was planned for day 7, but we were able to get it to you on steam a bit early, and just in time for the weekend. For those of you who are on the Microsoft Store, the update will be coming out next week! ############## # Patch Notes ############## ################################## # Balance ################################## - increased thrust of late game engines, balance multiengine thrust, Improved SE.100 template engine - Increased Transport plane IC cost 4>20 - Minors and Puppets will now go back to trying to support their faction members with warscore, rather than striking out on their own. Silesia and Kashubia are now considered unlikely tags to be released. - Reduced speed gain from excess thrust - guided anti ship missile module is now unlocked by advanced rocket tech - balance pass on thrust and ic cost for engines - Increased base point calculation for winners in peace conference by 10% of base. This should result in fewer instances where original countries are left around. Several cost modifiers have been altered which should also result in it being slightly less expensive to make full demands in ordinary circumstances. ################################## # AI ################################## - Soviet Union prioritizes upgrading manpower over blowing up railways now ################################## # Modding ################################## - Civil war can get complicated regarding characters. Add keep_all_characters parameter to start_civil_war effect. Target country will keep all characters, none will be transfered to revolter. It's then up to script to do the full dispatch of the characters. ################################## # Bugfix ################################## - Fixed wrong speed modifier calculation in special cases for armies. - GiE templates no longer transferred to new country when releasing or through peace conferences - Changed a leader trait depending if LaR is installed or not - Fixed wrong description for SwapIdeas Effect, when same category of bonuses are defined both in the idea and the idea's trait. - Added a loc string to every language file - Changed Italy's ai strategy, so they shouldn't lose to Yugoslavia. Also rearranged the strategy plan for Balbo slightly - Italy has an ai atrategy that will be able to withstand the Yugoslavian onslaught and push them back and even conquer them - Fix freedom level calculations when creating a new puppet with an autonomous state allowing no other autonomous states than itself - Independence focuses in the Italian Civil War branches now requires Italy to not be at war at all. - Fix the supply consumption stat in the plane designer. It now displays the value for a full air-wing. - Fixed scope issues in remove triggers for several state modifiers. - Fixed issue in which Italian marine 3D models did not have an MG weapon with the latest infantry equipment tech researched. - Fixing missing description for Focus 'Total Defense' in Switzerland. - Fixing initial positioning of Switzerland's Focus Tree - No plane templates without BBA dlc - Added missing Remove Times in Absolute Neutrality Decisions in Switzerland - Removing Political Power Cost from Back channel Negotiations in Switzerland - Changed 'Reclaiming Ethiopia' focus condition so that Ethiopa (or an ally) only needs to control any Ethiopian state to allow the focus - Decision Show of Defensive Force in Switzerland now gives the correct modifier. - Corporatist trait now reduces Democracy instead of increasing Fascism. - Changed Rally Workers Decision so it doesn't increase Communism. - Danzig for guarantees now correctly gives cores on Gdynia again - Fixed icon for Eidgenoissiche F+W in the air designer - Removed a DLC lock requiring NSB for a decision category so that Poland actually gets a reward for completing 2 separate focuses - Fixed an instance where Expand military staff did not show up - List of names for generating Swiss characters expanded. - the Spanish Civil war now ends even if for some reason more than one Spain survives and are at peace with each other - Dismiss council tooltip should now target the incoming president and not the current one - Preventing overflow in war score when lendleasing too much fuel - DFC console command no longer causes countries to capitulate forever, every day that they are alive - Polish general Wincenty Kowalski now uses his new portrait from No Step Back. - LoN non interference correctly removed when Ethiopia get peace - Certain political branches in the Italian Focus Tree will now hide if they are no longer relevant when custom game rule "Show obsolete branches in Focus Tree" is set to "Hide". - Italian Monarchist and Christian Democrat AIs will now be more inclined to ban fascism - Ethiopian states will go to the fascist side of the Italian civil war if Italy is still fighting a war in Ethiopia when the focus Defy the Duce is completed and the civil war starts. - Germany can now invite Poland into its faction after successfully trading Danzig for Slovakia - Added a missing state to Bulgaria's "Dominance of the Black Sea" - Added a national focus to Soviet's historical ai strategy so that it can approach Germany and complete its strategy - Fixed some 3D planes not showing up in-game. - Fixed state of Afar not being included in the arrangement when Italy withdraws from Ethiopia. - Fixed issue where Equipment and Experience would be lost when turning Swiss Citizen Militias into Regular Infantry. - Fix create_operative_leader effect so that triggers with character scope using the resulting operative leaders work properly (ex: can_gain_xp in traits for operatives) - Fixed Balance of Power requirements in Historical Focuses. - Fixed issues with character split in Italian civil wars. - Fixed typo in Swiss Infantry Divisions. - The Italian AI should not push as hard when wanting to discredit Mussolini - Fix crash at the end of peace conference when player is in observer mode - Fixed minor typos in two Italian focuses and in Vittorio Emanuele's National Spirit description. - Italian focus The New Emperor of Ethiopia now grants some ideology support for Non-Aligned. - Iberian countries should no longer be rude and leave the Italian faction after deciding to join it via the Italian focus Iberian Protection. - Italian civil war cosmetic tags Republica Sociale Italiana and Regno del Sud now use the appropriate flags. - Ethiopia can no longer use Arms Purchases decisions when the LoN has become inactive - Adjusted the likelihood for the AI to accept giving territory to Switzerland across all branches. - Adjusted the time it takes for the incompetent Councilor to be assigned, made it so it wouldn't trigger once Switzerland is centralized. - Reduced the Political Power penalty for the incompetent Councilor in Switzerland. - The Balance of Power is now removed once Rudolf Henne takes power in Switzerland. - Removed conditions related to Balance of Power towards the end of the Fascist Branch of the Swiss Focus Tree. - Changed the Spirit of Helvetia Entrenchment Modifier to Entrenchment Factor in Switzerland. - Councilors in Switzerland do not change the Balance of Power when hired after the Balance of Power is no longer relevant. - Fixed bug where Political Advisors couldn't be removed after centralizing Switzerland. - don't send countries into exile in a country that is not major - New Zealand now gets their tac bombers from the NZPAF if they have BBA enabled - Hungary will bypass 'Join the Comintern' focus if they're already in a faction with Soviet - Changed the condition that Yugoslavia only needs to own a state to that they need to control the state to add improvements there - Fixed AI weights for occupation laws. They will now follow resistance levels more appropriately - Italy starts now with a production line for Ca.111 so that the initial wing at half-strength gets eventually fully reinforced - Fixed the event sent to France when Germany integrates Alsace-Lorraine to be sent to the Franco-British Union instead if that exists - correctly end paradrop mission after units are delivered - Flags for democratic Italian Empire updated with correct images - Losers in peace conference reset GiE status and rechecks major status - Gdynia now becomes a German core if ceeded by Poland in Danzig For Slovakia - The capitulation of Germany will now make Republica Sociale Italiana to become free and take over the Axis if they were a German puppet. - The Netherlands now bypasses either "Protect against Britain" or "Germany is the Greater Threat" if its in a faction with the country in question. - Fixed issue where AI Switzerland would not train any Militias. - Fixed issue where AI Switzerland would build a Silo that it doesn't need right away. - Adjusted some AI weights in Switzerland. - Compliance discount for peace actions now applies to all types of peace actions and not just Take States - Fixed issue where Swiss Focus would not show effects after completion. - Foreign countries can now properly get rid of the mafia state modifier in their controlled states. - Fixed Suez canal being locked for antifascist Italy if Fascist Italy was sanctioned by the League of Nations - Officine Mechanice will no longer be visible if BBA dlc is not active. - Fixed minor typo in Italian Tankettes focus - Fixed issue preventing the Italian Blackshirts branch (Security Militias) from being available if BBA was not enabled. - His Holiness will no longer demand Palestine to himself. - Fixed typo in War Escalation tooltip. - Sylvia Pankhurst should now have a portrait without MtG DLC if you are playing as Ethiopia - Added war escalation variable to Ethiopia when BBA is not enabled. Allows war escalation to continue functioning as expected for Italy. - Fixed a few Italian Generals getting generic advisor portraits when promoted. - Fixed broken advisor portrait when promoting Ethiopian General Nasibu Zeamanuel - Added a requirement for capital to be a core state when inviting members to the Organization of African Unity. This prevents countries like Belgium being eligible when they capitulate and move their capital to Africa. - Fixed issue where Germany would not get opinion modifier from Switzerland in Frankfurter case - Italian missions Conquer Northern Ethiopia and Conquer Southern Ethiopia should no longer fail if Ethiopia is defeated and puppeted while active. - Fixed issue in Italian mission Pacify Ethiopia checking for 70% Compliance in Ethiopia instead of the promised 60% - Fixed issue where Show Defensive Force decision in Switzerland deducts its cost at the end and not the beginning. - heavy mg air tech is now correctly located in the tch tree - Fixed issue where Citizen Militia Dynamic Modifiers were not properly removed from Switzerland when Militias are turned into regulars. - Fixed stacking of enemy air superiority modifiers in land combat when multiple countries are at war with the country. - Fixed fullscreen setting triggering weird monitor resolution changes and weird UI selection on DX11 - Fixed issue where player couldn't trigger the emergency president event through decisions. - DX11 should now handle failure to create textures more gracefully. You should still probably update your drivers... - Switzerland: Added a few compliance bonuses in alt ideology branches to compensate for the big loss of compliance every time ideology is changed. - Removed DLC locked sounds for Planes in BBA. Replaced using Base Game sounds. This should fix a common error log in live build - Capitulating England (or other majors) will no longer cause them to go into exile in Canada. They would rather die. Hope you all have a fun time playing the game during the weekend! /Katten


    [ 2022-09-30 11:44:29 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Open Beta & Game Assistance | Hearts of Iron IV: By Blood Alone

    Hello there generals! You might have already seen two forum posts made by our Game Director and Tech Lead, about how to assist you with common issues. I have made this post to cover all of that in one single place, and to also invite you all to our open beta! Open Beta For the open beta, all you have to do is to select the correct branch. You do this by right clicking the game in your library, going into properties, then beta versions and selecting open_beta as the beta branch that you would like to participate in. Then the game will simply update, and then you just launch the game like normal, and poof you are playing in the open beta!
    Do remember that all encountered bugs and issues should be reported through the same bug reporting forum as always. Why arent these fixes on the live version? Were still undergoing comprehensive testing on everything in here, and for stabilitys sake we want to finish that process before going live. We are confident in the majority of the fixes included in this open beta branch, but there is always the possibility of encountering unexpected behaviour - this is worth being aware of before opting in. You are welcome to reply to this thread with issues that pertain explicitly to the fixes mentioned in the open beta patch notes, but for items not mentioned, please use the normal reporting process. ##############

    Read Beta Patch Notes Here


    ############## New DirectX11 Renderer (and how to revert to DX9 if you have issues) As mentioned in the previous dev diary, with the Avalanche update the default renderer is now DirectX11. If you were using DirectX9 previously, the launcher will perform a one-time upgrade to DirectX11 the first time you open it. While we are fairly confident our DX11 renderer works fine (we have been using it internally for a year now), some issues might arise on specific hardware or configurations. If that is your case, please first make a bug report so that we can address those issues! Here's what you can do to try and solve the issue:
    • First, make sure your video drivers are up-to-date. Some GPUs are known to have issues on older drivers with DX11 that might not show on DX9.
    • Second, if you are playing in fullscreen, toggle it to borderless fullscreen.
      • This is known to fix the issue where using DX11 makes the UI click "away" from where your mouse pointer is
    Finally you can try reverting back to the older DX9 renderer by changing the settings in the Paradox Launcher:
    Remember: the upgrade to DX11 was one-time so if you set it back to DX9, it will remain that way until you change it again. Finally, keep an eye on this forum for new patches announcements and the known issues list. Experiencing Issues launching BBA? Please run through this checklist first! Some users are reporting being unable to launch the game, not seeing content in the game at launch, or graphical oddities. Before filing a report, please take the time to confirm that you've run through these steps. It may seem tedious, but the vast majority of reports are fixed by one of these solutions.
    • Confirm that you are not opted in to any rollback branches in Steam or other platforms
    • Change your renderer from DirectX 11 to DirectX 9 or OpenGL. Some hardware can experience issues running DX11, we have more information here. Some users have also reported that using fullscreen windowed mode solved the issue for them.
    • Ensure that you have no mods that do not directly support this game version loaded. This solution accounts for the vast majority of bug reports we receive: outdated, enabled mods can occasionally carry over to new versions without the user being aware.
    • If the above steps do not yield success, you can try clearing your Documents/Paradox Interactive/Hearts of Iron IV/ folder. This will delete save-games and reset user-settings, so take a backup of anything you consider valuable.
    I hope this post has been able to assist you! Hope you all are having a fun time playing By Blood Alone. /Katten


    [ 2022-09-28 19:38:22 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Release! | Hearts of Iron IV: By Blood Alone

    [previewyoutube=QiBAkCUdweY;full][/previewyoutube] Now Live! Patch Notes Here! The future of war hangs in the balance. Take to the skies and pen the annals of history in the latest expansion for Hearts of Iron IV - By Blood Alone Buy it here! If you missed any of our Developer Diaries or By Blood Alone Tutorials, then check this list down below! Developer Diaries 16- Art & Achievements 15- Tech 14- Modding 13- Quality of Life 12- Peace Conference Roundup 11- Division Commanders & Unit Medals 10- Plane Designer 9- Ethiopia #2 8- Switzerland #2 7- Italy #2 6- Ethiopia #1 5- Switzerland #1 4- Italy #1 3- Designer Corner: Naval Rebalance 2- Designer Corner: Air Changes 1- Designer Corner: Peace Conference By Blood Alone Tutorials 4- Naval Changes & Balance of Power 3- Divisional Command 2- Air Changes 1- Peace Conferences


    [ 2022-09-27 16:01:21 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Avalanche 1.12.1 - By Blood Alone - Checksum 45c2

    Greetings all, As is tradition, were releasing the upcoming patch notes for the Avalanche update along with By Blood Alone ahead of the time with release later today. Undoubtedly there may be some missing items here, and well keep a log of anything we missed in an edited spoiler below the main one.

    Read the full Patch Notes Here!


    EDIT Hotfix Checksum: 45c2 In-game version: Avalanche v1.12.1.a74e


    [ 2022-09-27 11:33:48 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Developer Diary | Art & Achievements

    Hello, and welcome to this week's Dev Diary! I am HOIs 2D artist and am the one who makes the little buttons, icons, and whatever gets thrown in my way for you to look at and push on, and today I have gotten the opportunity to talk about my work! So lets start at the beginning, how does a project start, and how and when do artists get involved? Being an artist on a project such as Hearts of Iron is not an easy piece of work. You need to be on your toes and ready to adapt to whatever task your colleagues want help to solve. It usually involves a bit of text and a ton of reference material. And to gather all of these things we use a tool called Miro.
    Its essentially an online whiteboard that can be used however fits you and your team best. On our Miro, we separate the features into columns that give you a quick overview of what we need to complete for the upcoming update. The columns are usually divided into Focus trees and Features that are expected to get art during the project. As the project starts its not uncommon for the Miro to be a bit empty. A lot of the research for what can be used, artwise, is a pretty heavy task to bite into with all copyrighted photos out there. Our amazing content designers spend quite a lot of time on valuable research, sorting out what is necessary for the game to make sense as well as adding flavour to your gameplay. And yes, this takes a fair amount of development time to gather all this valuable information as well as imagery that will communicate the right thing for you when you play HOI. As time goes on, more art tasks will fill up the Miro board. So, for an artist at the beginning of a project, it can range from doing some cleanup work on older icons or portraits, starting to work on loading screens, continuing setting up the Miro board for the DLC to their taste or helping with another project that needs some extra art-hands. But back to BBA and our work there! We already know what kind of art we want to have for each focus tree, it's more the quantity that is a fluctuating number at this point and it's still uncertain how much we can make in-house. I always try to convince my CDs to ask for art to their heart's content because we always prioritise what needs to be done so the things that matter the most get the art it deserves first. When all High Prio art is done, if time allows we continue with Medium and last of course the Low. We also have, for whenever we manage to wrap up art in a timely manner, a special section that is called a wish-list [strike]or Corner of Shame[/strike]. It's essentially Low Prio art but stuff that maybe was more of an afterthought or just forgotten for a Feature or a Tree that would be extra sweet if it got some new shiny textures. Without giving too much away, here's a heavily zoomed-out version of how a Miro board can look like that I as an artist work with. And yes, I was in charge of all the Focus trees and the Plane Designer for this DLC (granted I did not make all the art, we also outsource).
    We use a colour code to communicate what's going on on the board! All of them also have a little stamp on them to mark what Prio it has as well as a text section where CDs write what they want to communicate with the icon they request. As you probably can see, there's quite a lot of information that needs to be shared between the departments before art can be worked on. Its our transparent way to communicate with each other, CDs can see how much I have done and how much I have left. They can also see my schedule on what Ill be working with each day. This means that CDs can also ask to get prioritisation over each other if their Focus tree or Feature requires art sooner rather than later and this is constantly brought up and talked about on our syncs together. Communication is key! Here is an example of how a request turns into an icon (that you may or may not already have seen):
    This is a typical request. It has an in-game name displayed, reference images provided as well as a description of what my CD wants out of the icon. It is also prioritised!
    And this is how it ends up looking! Since we have quite the large art-library by now I can quickly iterate on what type of background works the best as well as reuse different layer styles to make the icon feel cohesive and on-style with the rest. I also made sure to hit all the marks from the requests such as;

    • At least one donkey
    • The donkey should carry (at least) a supply
    • Add wheat bundles without overcrowding the icon.
    When the icon is in either a conceptual phase (putting the requested items together without rendering it further) or simply put together from our art library, I of course share the progress with the CDs so they can have to say their yay or nay. If I hit or missed the mark with the request if we need to re-think the icon in itself or just a 10/10 beautiful icon, ship it! Also, one thing to keep in mind when doing these types of icons is remembering their size. All the things that a CD may want in an icon may not fit in the end or make it more or less unreadable because all the things together will just create noise. That's when we artists step in and take over so to say with simplifying without losing the information that the icon should communicate. This is also a typical request when a CD isnt 100% sure on what would or could look the best and leaves that up for me to figure out:
    Icons are requested the same throughout the art process, so name, description, and prio are all there. It's just that this time I didnt get any reference material and that's perfectly normal! And this is the result!
    • I have the silhouette of Africa
    • Railroad
    • And industry
    • And of course, a background to frame it all on
    Had I added coins to show off investment I would have crowded the icon. We usually have a rule of max three things in one icon to communicate what's necessary. After three it can start to become muddy. Example of adding coins to this icon to communicate investment:
    • Immediately crowded
    • Silhouette of Africa is no longer a focus and is hidden
    • The coins stealing the show

    So the TL;DR of this section is;


    Use good Tools for communication, whatever that may be for you and your team. Be honest and transparent with what's going on, what you need to do your part, and when you need it to estimate the time left on the project. CDs do research, CDs request art, Artist look at the requests/ask questions, Artist make art, Artist share art with CDs and so the circle is complete. Now when you kind of know how artists, or at least I, do work with content and for the project I would also like to share how the loading screen got worked on for BBA! Ahh shit, here we go again. Yes, I was thinking that we could get a little re-cap on how it is to not just make icons and portraits, but also be flexible and knowledgeable enough to pull off a loading screen. We artists are a jack of many trades so to speak and we do need to be able to adapt to a lot of different types of art tasks that need to be done for a project. So, how is a loading screen created? It usually always starts with a prompt or a vision from one of either designers or content designers that are heavily involved in the upcoming DLC. Essentially we want the loading screen/splash screen to communicate something in relation to the DLC, this time we want to focus on Italy and planes. Mostly because Italy has been heavily requested and we want to shine a spotlight on the country as well as showcase the plane designer! The prompt is Italian and American fighters incoming in a dogfight over Italian landscape Cool. Let's go ahead and make some thumbnails then!
    Once again several thumbnails are presented for the others to choose from. Typical hierarchy methods are used here, black = most visually interesting, grey = further away and white/light grey = low focus. The last one, A3+5 was chosen and started to get some more details in a simple greyscale set-up. This time I quickly wanted to take it into colour and started to experiment with what kind of setting looked best.
    After going with a more sunset/evening vibe, because it looks more epic, I started to experiment with the range of those colour schemes as well as trying out some different styles.
    Here you also can see that I had no idea I was painting the wrong plane but that doesn't matter because we are still very early in the process and just trying to find a good mood. I also noticed that the balancing of the image was off since we need to take into consideration the different kinds of resolutions it's gonna sit on. So to solve this I pushed the whole image down and (thankfully) it was just drawing more sky this time!
    (still, the wrong plane, don't worry about it) The render phase is coming up and Im not gonna lie, Im not too excited to draw hard surfaces. But luckily we have a fantastic 3D artist on the team that needs to model some planes for the DLC anyway! He was generous enough to pose the plane for me on top of my background and now it's just painting over them a bit to make them blend into the image and look cohesive.
    (3D render of the planes)
    (3D render on top of WIP background) What's needed now for the next step is to make the planes work together with the background as well as paint more details in the clouds. I also need to add details such as motion blur to make the planes go woosh, which is a dilemma. How much do you paint before the details you put in get lost from said motion blur? Let's find out the hard way Along the way, I also realised what if we tilt the plane some more to have the wing cut through the cloud better. Needless to say, I asked our 3D artist to tilt his model and render a new one which he so kindly did.
    Looks nice But back to figure out the BG again. After some back and forth with rendering in and out clouds as well as doing some touchup to the landscape I think I finally landed on something that I was happy with.
    Adding motion blur, air trails, and a propeller as well as bounce-light and painting in the sky in the plane's window I think I made it work nicely together. And the loading screen is done And now for something completely different! I was thinking that you guys might be tired of reading about the art process now so Im just gonna drop a bunch of art stuff for you at this point. Please, enjoy the small selection of what's to come for BBA! Cute misc icons:
    Focus icons:
    Portraits: Italy:











    Switzerland:





    Ethiopia:





    Achievements for BBA:


    Why yes, we cant forget about the achievements for BBA now can we? We always think about what type of achievement can be done for each DLC. This time around I hope you guys will have a few laughs and also maybe think well that's easy or oh no how? and you get a canton, everybody gets a canton! As Switzerland, have 24 states.
    Im not locked in here with you As Switzerland, declare war on Germany and win.
    Swiss Cheese As Switzerland annex 5 states that are not contiguous with each other or Switzerland.
    You Shall Not Pass As Switzerland, win a defensive war without ever losing Western Swiss Alps, Eastern Swiss Alps or Ticino.
    The Lion that Roared As Ethiopia, without being in a faction, force the Italians to make peace. Again.
    The Lion King As Haile Selassie, declare yourself King of Kings and control Kenya and Tanzania.
    This time for Africa As Ethiopia, found the African Union and have it encompass at least 13 different countries with capitals in Africa.
    Crusader Kings IV Take Jerusalem as Ethiopia and move the capital there.
    The Red Sea As Ethiopia, go communist and take all the states that border the Red Sea.
    Holy, Roman, and an Empire As the Pope, restore Rome.
    Pizza Time! As Italy, occupy New York, Chicago and Hawaii.
    Collect all the Romes As Italy, continue holding onto the First Rome, and gain the second and third Rome.
    Nothing personal, Adolf As Italy, take Austria before the Anschluss and never enter a faction with a fascist Germany (before 1945).
    Not today As communist Italy, save Gramsci from the brink of death, make him the leader of Italy and form the Italian National Union.
    This time it will stick As any Allied Nation (in faction with a democratic Britain), enforce a peace deal on Germany that disarms the Rhineland and makes it a demilitarized zone.
    By Beer Alone As Germany, control Budweis, Tsingtao, and Guinness directly or through a faction member.
    By merit alone Promote a Unit Commander to a general, and reach max level.
    Snakes on a plane As Brazil, capture Rome with paratroopers.

    3D art for BBA:


    Of course, we need to show, last but definitely not least, the 3D art that was made for BBA \o/ (some are still WIP )




    T-posing soldiers o7





    Cute tanks

    Adorable planes


    And with that, Ill wrap up this week's, and last DD for By Blood Alone! Thank you for hanging around for this long, I truly hope you enjoyed getting a peek behind the curtain of a HOI4 production! /CreamGene


    [ 2022-09-21 13:00:41 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Developer Diary | Tech

    Bonjour friends, its your favourite Tech Lead again! Last year already I wrote to you in the final weeks leading to the release of the Barbarossa patch, and we draw close to the go-live of the Avalanche patch, here I appear again.

    Old Platforms Retirement Plan


    Like the future, technology is always in motion. As new platforms arise, olders need to be taken behind the barn and put down. Dont worry, were not talking about Windows 7 (yet ). Despite the release of Windows 11, we have not elected to make a push to Windows 10 since Microsofts support for new tech on older releases is still fairly good. The same cannot be said for Mac and Linux, sadly. And so, starting the new 1.12.0 release, the minimum OS versions will be macOS 10.14 (Mojave) and Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa). You will still be able to play older HoI versions on older operating systems by rolling back to previous branches, but Avalanche will refuse to start. Those updates are done in order to introduce new tech to our games (not just HoI) and ensure that all can be built on the same infrastructure within the studio.

    New Defaults


    Last year we introduced the option to run the game with DirectX11 rather than the venerable DirectX9. After a long period of observation and very few issues observed, we have decided to make it the default. The first time you start the Paradox Launcher on Avalanche, the game will perform a one-time upgrade of your settings from DirectX9 to DirectX11. New installations will also default to DirectX11. If you notice any issue due to this change, first, please make a bug report, and then simply go to the settings page and set the renderer back to DirectX9.
    Visually the game should look absolutely the same, but internally the tools that come with DirectX11 have helped us find a few sneaky graphical bugs that will be fixed in Avalanche, such as weird white squares appearing on the side of some tank models.

    Performance Improvements


    This is I bet the bit most of you were waiting for, the usual question of will the new patch make the game run faster than previous versions?. And Im happy to say the answer is yes. The biggest improvement has been made to the map icons rendering (unit counters, factories, supply hubs, you name it). The number of icons potentially displayed on the map had grown a lot since HoIs release 6 years ago and the historical algorithm wasnt cutting it anymore. For example, here are what the FPS and frame time look like on Avalanche on my work desktop (i7700, NVIDIA GTX 1060, vsync off and 150 fps cap):
    Avalanche default zoom And fully zoomed out:
    Avalanche zoomed out Finally zoomed back in, but with Speed 5:
    Avalanche at speed 5 (If you forgot last years dev diary, you can pop up the ingame profiler by typing imgui show profiler in the debug console). Contrast those numbers with the ones from the current live build (Barbarossa 1.11.13):
    Barbarossa default zoom Note that Barbarossa denotes rendering performance in render time rather than frame time, which is only the GPU part, while Avalanche counts both CPU and GPU rendering time, so the numbers look different.
    Barbarossa zoomed out
    Barbarossa at Speed 5 Since PDS games from HoIs generation tie up rendering and game simulation, this will translate in faster tick speed (on top of a few smaller performance optimizations we added to the simulation itself). Although, to be clear, faster rendering does not translate perfectly in faster game speed. It mostly means a more fluid experience when playing (especially unpaused in Speed 4-5), and then some improvement to the speed of the game simulation. Speaking of which, I have read and seen a bunch of guides to HoI performance over the past months sharing tips & tricks on how to improve the game speed, so let me give you mine: consider disabling VSync in your graphics settings, unless you have a high refresh rate monitor. The way the game simulation waits for rendering to be done to continue, with a slow refresh rate your CPU might end up spending precious time waiting on your monitor VSync which is not ideal. This root of the issue is difficult to address on HoI4 especially with DirectX9, but with DirectX11 becoming the default we will see if there is a way we can address this in the future. No promises though.

    Final Thoughts


    Last year I had some extra French content to show, but Im afraid this patch I was a bit short on time to bring you more. Although if you like Tech and History, I recently wrote a technical presentation on how to crack Enigma on a modern computer, with a focus on bringing the works of Marian Rejewski to light (as he and the Polish Cipher Bureau tend to be left aside in favour of Alan Turing and Bletchley Park in many stories). Theres no recording available yet, but Im scheduled to deliver twice more this year at tech conferences so theyll be on Youtube eventually. Speaking of Poland, have you all found my secret event in Barbarossa yet?
    Thatll be all for today, but Ill be happy to answer your questions, tech or otherwise!


    [ 2022-09-14 13:00:23 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Hearts of Iron IV: By Blood Alone | Feature Highlights | #3

    Today we go to the drawing board and the planning table as we take a look at the Divisional Command changes as well as the Plane designer with Peter Nicholson and Gabriel Blum. Click Here to watch the Features Highlights #3 Pre-Order By Blood Alone today: https://pdxint.at/ByBloodAloneSteam --------------------------------- Follow us on social media: Twitter - https://pdxint.at/HOITwitter Facebook - https://pdxint.at/HOIFB IG - https://pdxint.at/HOIIG Discord - https://pdxint.at/HOIDiscord Forum - https://pdxint.at/HOIForum Steam - https://pdxint.at/HOISteamCommunity --------------------------------- Paradox on YouTube: --------------------------------- ParadoxInteractive - http://youtube.com/ParadoxInteractive Trailers, Feature Breakdowns, Dev Diaries, and more. Paradox Grand Strategy - http://youtube.com/ParadoxGrandStrategy Gameplay of our Grand Strategy Games. CK3, EU4 and HOI4.


    [ 2022-09-13 14:00:11 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Developer Diary | Modding

    Greetings all, Today we have quite a number of items for the dev diary. Well be covering some new additions to the career profile system, followed by some new tools coming for modders in the Avalanche update. To begin with, Ill hand over to our designer on the career profile: Hello! Ingevar here with an update regarding new features coming to the Career Profile. Since the release of Career Profile earlier this year we've been working on the next iteration that will bring more stats, non-ironman achievements, and some profile customization. Let's look at it in detail.

    Playthrough Overview


    When BBA is released, every player will find the playthrough overview available in the ESC menu when playing the game.
    This familiar window will contain some numbers for your current playthrough, including new stats and awards.

    New Stats


    We are adding more stats to track combat efficiency like the amount of offensive and defensive battles, the ratio between them, or the ratio of battles versus encircled divisions. We want these stats to be a better depiction of each player's playstyle and will continue to add more, so if you have any suggestions, please tell us in the comments.

    Stats for Modded Games


    Previously we gathered numbers only from the vanilla version of the game, but now we've added a separate set of data for games played with mods. Both base game and modded games stats are working in single-player games, at least for now. We are looking into making MP counts as well, so stay tuned for future updates on that topic.

    Awards


    Awards are medals and ribbons: new kinds of in-game achievement that don't require you to play in Ironman mode.
    Medals have three grades: bronze, silver, and gold. Each grade is harder to get than the previous one, with the aim that bronze is something you can get just by playing the game, while gold will require a dedicated effort and might not be achieved from the first try even by the most experienced players. Ribbons have no grades, but the difficulty is there for most of them.
    Awards won't work with most mods, cause you can never predict what the mod changes and therefore if the award required any challenge at all. At the same time, we know that mods are an essential part of the HoI experience, so together with the base feature, we're introducing support for modded awards. Any modder will be able to use all existing UIs for creating a list of unique awards that can be tracked, awarded in the game, and then displayed in the Career Profile.

    Profile Customization


    Every grade of medal you get and every ribbon will also award you with some Career Points. Career Points are used to unlock Profile Pictures.
    Some Pictures are unlocked after you get one or two medals, but others will be available only to players who dedicate a substantial amount of effort to getting lots of gold medals.

    Friends


    All this comes together in the last feature I'd like to show today. We're adding a Friends list to the game. You'll be able to find it in the main menu when BBA is out.
    Friends window will have all your friends from Steam or Xbox and for now will only be used as a shortcut to viewing each other's Career Profiles. By default, every profile in the game will be viewable by all your friends, but you can choose to make it private, this option will be available right in the Career Profile window.

    TL;DR


    All these features will be released together with the avalanche update. So any player who has the base game will be able to access Playthrough Overview, Awards, set their Profile Pictures, or view the Friends list. The story of Career Profile just starts here and we plan to add more awards, stats, and profile customization to the game based on the feedback we get from you. Hope you like this when it's out.

    Modding In-Game Achievements


    One of our new features for modders is a system to support custom achievements. The feature aims :
    • to allow mods to define their own achievements
    • to display them and their completion status in-game
    • to save them when a player completes them so that they appear as achieved when starting a new game
    Hard limitations :
    • the achievements will not be displayed on steam (or other stores)
    • no way to know the completion rate among players
    We have joined forces with Red King and their career profile to present those achievements in the prettiest way. Also the new Ribbon system will allow modders to easily illustrate their achievement without any graphic skill ! Of course if you are a master of the 64x64p icon, you can emulate our classic achievement illustration.
    The Awards screen with mod achievements. Icons or ribbons, the choice is yours.
    A sample of script to define achievements Behind the scenes, these achievements are earned and stored based on the games modset. Modifying the modset should clear achievements, but if the modset remains constant, any achievements earned will be persistent to that combination of mods.

    Unit Medals and Units


    Arheo back now to go over some more details on the script accessibility for our new features. As mentioned briefly last week, unit medals are being added in BBA. These are fully scriptable, and take a similar form to regular database objects youll be used to working with. Since the modifiers that can be applied via medals take a different path to regular modifiers, the list of possibilities is somewhat shorter than in other modifier scopes. Weve added a list of options at the top of the medals file, though were open to future suggestions if you find yourselves in need of something new:
    Youll note that the leader modifier is unused in the vanilla game. This modifier will translate over to army generals if the leader is promoted, and exert effects on the entire army. The one_time_effect field will run an effect in the unit scope, though you should be able to scope to a units owner and run effects on a country from this block. Working with units is, as previously mentioned, new to script in the avalanche update. For the time being, only army units are accessible through script, though this may be expanded upon in future updates. The following effects will be available to you: random_country_division every_country_division random_state_division every_state_division reseed_division_commander destroy_unit add_history_entry change_division_template add_unit_medal_to_latest_entry #usually used in combination with add_history_entry, otherwise you may not guarantee a valid entry. add_divisional_commander_xp Combined with the following unit conditions: any_country_division any_state_division division_has_majority_template unit_strength unit_organization is_unit_template_reserves division_has_battalion_in_template

    Balance of Power


    The Balance of Power feature is built in a way that makes it extremely flexible, and therefore probably very useful for modders. Any given country can only have one Balance of Power at any given time - but theres nothing stopping you from having several that you switch between as things evolve. The definition might seem a bit tricky at first, but thats only because it is extremely flexible. It starts like this:
    This example is from Ethiopia - you set the id of the Balance of Power, the starting position, and the two starting sides. The sides are defined further down, and you can replace them with other pre-defined sides using script. This means you can, instead of changing the entire Balance of Power, just replace one, or both, of the sides should you want to do that instead. You also define a decision category as the Balance of Power category, meaning that you can script Balance of Power decisions the same way as you would script normal decisions. The will then appear in the Balance of Power UI. So basically anything you can do with decisions, you can do in the Balance of Power UI Each side is further divided into ranges with a min and max value, and a set of modifiers that are active when you are in this range. Again, the ranges are customizable, so you can have basically as many or as few as you like (within reason).
    As you can see from this example you can also run effects when the range becomes active or when the balance shifts away from it. You can also set/change the graphics of the side as you like:
    What else? Well you have triggers based on the Balance of Power, so you can lock Focuses, decisions, events, or whatever behind the Balance of Power being at a certain level. You can modify the balance either with one off values or with a ticking score. And you can of course remove it altogether. In all I expect to see some wonderful applications of this in mods going forward.

    Peace Conferences


    Peace conference modding has now become somewhat simpler, as well as being more consistent with the rest of the games scripting standards albeit at the cost of some rather verbose dotscoping chains. Peace conferences now primarily work on a per-state basis, with the exception of ships and stacked bids (which due to technical limitations are not very accessible to script).
    Every turn, each state will be subject to two evaluations for the country from whose perspective you are playing or viewing. The first evaluation will define the bidding cost per action type for a state, and the second will define the ai desire to bid on said state. These two values do not correspond, but are affected by each other. In the entry above, this cost multiplier will be applied at point of bidding for a country that is either NOT puppeted, or is bidding for itself, to states which are their cores. You can add categories here which will consolidate their values in the tooltip for that state during a peace conference. This cost multiplier will only work on bids of the take states type, but multipliers can be made to affect any combination of bid types if treated as an array. A state can be subject to multiple cost reductions, which stack multiplicatively. The evaluation of AI desire works in a very similar way:
    Instead of affecting the cost, this affects the ais subsequent evaluation of the cost when deciding what to bid on. Here, the AI is subject to a -75% desire to liberate tags that belong to the is_unlikely_country_tag scripted trigger. In short, it means the AI will prefer not to release certain wacky, wonderful tags. AI desire can also be subject to multiple modifier entries, and these will also stack. The AI evaluates costs with a bucketed per-type approach, rather than simply bidding on the best cost*desire entries. This goes some of the way towards reducing bordergore, and effectively takes a sample of the desire of bids of the same type and target - France for example, would consider all Puppet Switzerland bids to be of the same value to try and avoid leaving holes.

    Debugging Tools


    Weve expanded the options in our imgui during By Blood Alone, and now this handy air region tool will be in your hands:
    You can access this with the console command imgui show air, followed by selecting an air region. This will give you up-to-date information on the details of the wings present in the area and their efficacy. And thats all for this week! Next week there will be a break in dev diaries, but tune in in two weeks for a round up on the technical situation and changes coming in the Avalanche update. /Arheo


    [ 2022-08-31 12:50:12 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Hearts of Iron IV: By Blood Alone | Feature Highlights | #2

    Today we take a dive into the various alternative futures that can unfold in the coming expansion! Explore the focus trees for Italy, Switzerland and Ethiopia with Game Director Peter Nicolson & our Hearts of Iron IV development team. Click Here to watch the Features Highlights #2 Pre-Order By Blood Alone today: https://pdxint.at/ByBloodAloneSteam --------------------------------- Follow us on social media: Twitter - https://pdxint.at/HOITwitter Facebook - https://pdxint.at/HOIFB IG - https://pdxint.at/HOIIG Discord - https://pdxint.at/HOIDiscord Forum - https://pdxint.at/HOIForum Steam - https://pdxint.at/HOISteamCommunity --------------------------------- Paradox on YouTube: --------------------------------- ParadoxInteractive - http://youtube.com/ParadoxInteractive Trailers, Feature Breakdowns, Dev Diaries, and more. Paradox Grand Strategy - http://youtube.com/ParadoxGrandStrategy Gameplay of our Grand Strategy Games. CK3, EU4 and HOI4.


    [ 2022-08-30 14:50:34 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Developer Diary | Quality of Life Improvements

    Greetings all, Due to a misplaced carrier pigeon, todays dev diary will not be on modding changes, but will instead focus on a variety of minor and QoL changes coming in the Avalanche patch accompanying By Blood Alone. This list is by no means exhaustive: well cover the more impactful changes here and still give you plenty of juicy items to discover in the patch notes.

    Armor Piercing


    Those of you who routinely peruse the forums may have noticed me discussing details on our change to the piercing formula, but it serves to draw attention to it here, in a more visible light. In the Avalanche update, were reworking the binary nature of the piercing vs armor calculation to act in a somewhat more realistic way, as well as to make designing your divisions and equipment a little more nuanced.
    Prior to BBA, the damage of divisions making attacks against an armored target would be reduced by 50% if their piercing stat was less than the armor value of the target. In BBA, the thresholds described above will be in play. There have been some minor changes to piercing values on equipment, but we intend to avoid making any major changes here until we see the effect of this change on player habits. Any balance changes will of course be applied in our regular patching schedule. Piercing also plays an important role in naval combat, and we havent forgotten about it here. In naval combat, the piercing vs armor mechanic affects the critical hit chance (simulating penetration hits) of individual naval guns against a target, and weve added the following thresholds:
    Youll notice weve added an extra threshold here. This goes some of the way towards simulating extreme overmatching, and brings a small extra potential bonus for super heavy guns (assuming you hit what youre aiming at). These values can of course be modded, and support the addition of new thresholds for those in need of atypical or more gradual curves.

    Design Comparison


    The ship, tank, and plane designers now have access to an additional tool when designing equipment:
    This comparison window allows you to select a variant to compare against the variant you are designing. The comparison variant does not need to have the same equipment type as the one you are designing, and assists in the creation of specialized variants with a frame of reference. The stats comparison markers are displayed in context to the design you are editing:
    Here, were comparing the German starting heavy tank to the Panzer II light tank. You can select a comparison variant from among any types you own or have licensed or captured, and for owners of La Resistance from among any countries which you have matched the highest corresponding intelligence tier for. In short, this gives you a tool with which to plan your designs in order to counter your opponents equipment.

    War Support


    In Avalanche, were making some significant changes to war support. Over the course of the games lifespan, war support has gradually plummeted in terms of relevance both due to power creep in country content (something were starting to take an active interest in addressing in general), and due to the ease of trading in political power thanks to war propaganda. War support is intended to serve as an abstraction of a populations willingness and capability to engage in the war effort, on a military and civilian level. As such, war support has one important new effect:
    Note we have also improved the tooltip for war support and stability to include the base value plus any changes from events and focuses. While at war, war support has a scaling negative effect on the stability of a country, simulating the dissatisfaction of the civilian population at the predicament they have been placed in. War support is now something you will need to care about during a war, and further changes have been made to accentuate this:
    • All sources of ticking war support (weekly) have been removed or changed into flat bonuses.
    • Taking casualties during war will now contribute to a gradual ticking war support malus replacing the malus that was previously only used by abilities such as Force Attack.
    • The war support malus from strategic bombing has rebalanced to be in line with the above.
    • The war support malus from sunk convoys has been rebalanced to be in line with the above
    The three components described above are now the main sources of reduced war support while at war, and give you a strategic reason to pace offensives and conduct campaigns in an intelligent manner. Infinite war propaganda decisions have now been removed. This was a trivial way to increase war support in the mid-late game, and combined with the availability of political power, resulted in very little meaningful way to reduce a target nations war support. Instead of war propaganda against countries, war support decisions now target one of the three main maluses:
    These decisions will offset the maximum negative trend of each of the three negative components, and gradually increase it to a maximum of zero. In short, war support can no longer be arbitrarily increased outside of focuses, events, and unique decisions - it must instead be managed. As you will note, the base, generic war propaganda decision currently remains, but may only be used to increase war support if below 50%. This is a significant change we will continue to monitor, but we are happy with the results weve seen so far.

    Armored Trains and Logistics Strike


    Since the release of NSB, we (and many of you) felt that the Logistics Strike air mission was too strong. This is, in part, due to an oversight which did not apply state-level AA disruption effects to it - this has been fixed. Correspondingly, a further issue with armored trains has been fixed, meaning that they will once again be vulnerable to damage from Logistics Strike, albeit at a much reduced rate compared to other varieties of train. However, to further balance this out versus the current live version, armored trains have now learned to use their AA guns:
    We previously decided against this approach due to the relatively minor impact that armored train AA had on the grander aviation situation in the war, however thanks to the ministrations of one of our excellent coders, we have arrived at a solution whereby armored trains will only inflict damage to planes actively attacking them on a logistics strike mission. You will be able to track this explicitly in the air region details menu:

    AI Tank Strategy


    You should now notice a somewhat more sensible use of armored divisions by the AI. The AI can now be encouraged to use tank divisions on any particular frontline, and we have added some generic situation triggers to make this happen more regularly. Note this does not yet translate to using tanks in the same sort of pincer-encirclement that players tend to use. This is a notably non-trivial problem to solve, but is on our wishlist for future investigation.

    Allied Logistics


    You will now be able to open the logistics menu for subjects and faction members through the diplomacy menu. This gives you a better real-time view of your allies equipment situation, and helps plan a better lend-lease strategy:
    It goes without saying that any actions usually available through this menu (destroy equipment et al) will be locked for observing countries. While we toyed with the idea of making this available based on intel, this proved to be far too powerful a tool in the wrong hands.


    [ 2022-08-24 13:00:20 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Pre-Order! | Hearts of Iron 4: By Blood Alone

    [previewyoutube=KzPi2mGjP4M;full][/previewyoutube] Coming September 27th 2022! The future of war hangs in the balance. Take to the skies and pen the annals of history in the latest expansion for Hearts of Iron IV - By Blood Alone

    Pre-Order Here!


    Pre-Order Bonus Song [previewyoutube=owKDWl_ZJi0;leftthumb][/previewyoutube]


    [ 2022-08-23 16:05:08 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Barbarossa 1.11.13 - Nakama Crossplay - Checksum d173

    Hello everyone! We just released patch 1.11.13 for "Barbarossa" on Steam and Microsoft Store. The new checksum is d173. This update introduces the possibility to play multiplayer games across stores (such as Steam and Microsoft Store) using the Nakama network solution already in use in other PDS titles. See the FAQ below for more details. Saves made with 1.11.12 are expected to be fully compatible with 1.11.13 and you can continue your previous game. If you discover any bugs in patch 1.11.13, first check the known issues list, and if necessary please report them in the bug report forum as usual. Nakama Crossplay FAQ What is Nakama Crossplay? Nakama is a network solution that is independent of the store you bought the game on (be it Steam or Microsoft Store) and allows you to play with your friends regardless of where they have the game. Does it replace the current network layer? Nakama does replace the current solution (PDX MP) on Microsoft Store, but on Steam it is an optional alternative you have to select when launching the game. By default the game will behave exactly like it did in the previous release on Steam. How does Nakama compare to Steam MP? First and foremost, Nakama allows you to play across game stores, something our current implementation of Steam MP is unable to do. Secondly, it does not rely on direct connection, meaning it makes it impossible for clients to know the real IP address of the host (and vice versa). This comes at the cost of some extra latency, so depending on where the players are located in given MP session you may experience higher ping than with Steam MP. How do I enable Nakama MP? Nakama is always enabled on Microsoft Store. On Steam, you will get prompted to select if you want to start with Steam MP or Nakama MP when launching the game. Starting with the first two options will start the game with Steam MP as usual.
    Once in the game, you can tell which version was used by looking at the bottom of the main menu. The letter (S) or (N) after the checksum tells you whether you are using (S)team or (N)akama.

    Why does the game ask for a Paradox Account to play with Nakama? The matchmaking service needs to be able to identify players across game stores, so we cannot effectively use your Steam or Microsoft Store ID. Instead, we rely on your Paradox Account user to be able to host, view and join other players games. Patch 1.11.13 (d173) - FULL PATCH NOTES ################################################################ ######## Patch 1.11.13 "Barbarossa" ######### ################################################################ ################################## # Free Features and Important ################################## - Nakama MP is now available


    [ 2022-08-23 09:00:02 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Developer Diary | Peace Conference Roundup

    Hello all! I join you to once again talk about peace conferences. This time we have more info on our changes and features that I was not able to go into last time. Most of these are coming as part of By Blood Alone. Previously I talked about mostly the structure of the new Peace Conference system. If you have not read that Dev Diary, I recommend checking that out first. The short version is that we are reworking the old peace system into a new one that features simultaneous and blind turns, all conferences actions being contestable, and limited points to use in the conference. Before we cover new stuff I also want to address some changes to the jargon we introduced last time. We considered changing demands to bids to fit with the new system. The previous dev diary talked at length about bids. We are instead now referring to all of these as demands. Now for some new stuff! Firstly, I would like to show off our nearly complete UI with a comparison to the old UI. Nearly Finished PC UI
    Old PC UI
    In the new system we have expanded the Demands portion to the entire left of the UI while moving all relevant information about victors or beneficiary nations to the right. Part of this was to make the menu more presentable, but another part of this was to handle what is now a more complex system of demands. As part of By Blood Alone, we are adding five new types of demands to the peace conference. Four of these are a new type of Additional Demand which I will go into shortly. The other new demand is Take Navy. This will allow participants in the conference to use their participation points to demand enemy capitol ships as they would a single state. This means that players requesting the same ship will result in a contested claim. When the conference finishes, screen ships will be divided up amongst those who claimed capital ships based upon the ratio of capital ship industrial cost claimed. We attempted to find solutions to allow more precise claiming of non-capital ships, but were unable to arrive at a satisfactory interaction flow or a good way to fit it into the larger peace conference system. Naval Demands being issued for the mighty Scharnhorst
    As mentioned previously, we now have Additional Demands These options all require an underlying demand of puppet or change government to have been applied to a state first. Secondary demands can be applied over the top of a normal demand during the same turn or any subsequent turn. The first secondary demand we have is Demilitirized Zone. this prevents the target nation from placing troops in the selected state. This is a pretty classic part of many historical peace conferences and serves as a way of keeping troops off of borders. DMZ option
    The next two secondary demands are both economic. These are Resource Rights and War Reparations. To make resolving contested demands fit into our system, both of these demands target single states. Resource Rights gives access to the resources in a state. War Reparations gives control of local civilian factories in a state. Both of these last for a period of time the length of which is still TBD. Resource Rights and War Reprations options
    Our final new demand, coming with BBA, is Dismantle Military Industry. This will remove military factories from the targeted state. This can be used to tear down a heavily militarized states mic and help slow down re-militarization postwar. Dismantle Miltiary Option
    Thats all we have for today and I thank you for stopping by. Next week, we will be talking about modding. Stay tuned! o7


    [ 2022-08-17 13:00:11 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Developer Diary | Division Commanders & Unit Medals


    Greetings all! Welcome back to todays feature dev diary on a series of interconnected subsystems being added to the game in By Blood Alone. One of the major points in my first roadmap dev diary was that I felt quite strongly about the inclusion of further roleplay and immersive elements in Hearts of Iron. What Ill be showing off today is intended to fulfill a small part of this bullet point. Those of you with keen memories will recall an early teaser I posted here. Some of you guessed correctly, and in BBA, weve introduced a dynamic system for naming battleplans. For many major nations, battleplan names can be provided through a list of locations, resulting in a historical series of operation tags which will be applied when plans are created:
    Of course, the war does not always proceed historically, and battleplan names can also be generated from several component lists for instances where a historical variant cannot be found. These name lists are fully moddable, and can be unique to countries. In some cases (ie; Soviet Union) a different naming convention can be utilized to represent the somewhat uninventive approach to naming operations that was used in reality:
    Naturally, in the spirit of roleplaying, these operation names can be modified in-game, and you can replace the text with whatever operation name you desire. This will apply to any sub-orders derived from the initial drawn line:
    If unset, naval landing and paradrop orders will have a unique pattern to remain unique. This system however, goes further than a simple naming convention, and ties into another addition being made to BBA.

    Division Commanders


    In BBA, were replacing the standard method of recruiting new generals out of thin air. Instead, every division will be created with a commanding officer upon game start, or when they are trained:
    These are predominantly generated from country-specific namelists, however in some cases we have set these individually for starting divisions. When a new unit is created, they will be provided a randomly generated character name and portrait. To accommodate the increased use of generic portraits for these, well be adding a large quantity of additional generic portraits for owners of BBA. The work involved in creating these is not insignificant, so for now weve limited ourselves in adding portraits to major nations only. Youll be able to get an overview of all division commanders in your army within the officer corps screen:
    In an effort to avoid unnecessary micromanagement, weve made a few important decisions. Division commanders themselves will not directly confer bonuses upon the divisions they command, however the divisions they command will now earn and log a record of important actions they may perform during the natural course of a campaign:
    Important actions such as taking a capital, securing a high-value victory point, and more, constitute actions for which a unit can be awarded a medal. It is expected that over the course of a campaign, many units will qualify for receiving medals, often several - the system is not driven by scarcity, as we do not intend for players to micromanage individual actions, rather to manage the macro-level step of choosing when and what to award their units.
    As mentioned above, division commanders will not explicitly confer bonuses, however the medals awarded for action will. Medals are intended to act as a pp sink for the mid-late game, as we find a lot of players tend to end up with a significant amount of this resource as decisions, advisors and focuses begin to dwindle. Units can receive multiple medals, however the cost for each will increase as more are granted to any given unit, and the effect of stacking specific medals will decrease per instance of the same effect. As you will note above, medals can be specific to countries, and weve included a series of generic medals based on alignment, as well as unique medal sets for each major country. A medals effects will only extend to the unit it belongs to. A medals name and description will in most cases be dynamic depending on what action it was awarded for, and extreme valor while on a specific named operation can also result in receiving a medal for that action. To further streamline the process of awarding medals, you can perform quick actions to do this through the officers entry in the corps screen:
    As mentioned previously, were removing the old method of recruiting generals by means of reaching into the void and plucking out a fully qualified officer. This means that your army generals will now be directly linked to your field of divisional officers, and their capability directly linked to their actions in the field. Divisional officers will store experience based on the experience gain of the unit they are commanding, as well as receiving a lump-sum when a medal is awarded. While active as a divisional officer, this experience will have no meaningful effect, however, when in need of a new army general, you can promote divisional commanders out of their divisional role and directly into their new role as a general. Any medals awarded to the division will be retained by that division, however, the newly created general will keep a reference to their awarded medals as a means of remembering their accomplishments in the line of duty (albeit with no direct effect on their new army - although weve elected to support this behavior for modders should they wish):
    When a divisional officer is promoted this way, the experience they have earned during the course of their field command will be applied to their experience level as a general (up to a maximum cap). Promoting someone with field experience can prove a lot more valuable than hiring another pen-pusher, after all. If they have earned at least a certain quantity (as yet undecided) of field experience, they will also begin with a personality trait corresponding to the type of division they were commanding (armor officer, infantry officer, etc).

    Unit Cohesion


    You will also note that my roadmap included a wish to improve the battle-planner. While this is likely to be a slow, iterative process, BBA heralds the inclusion of a new frontline parameter intended for advanced users.
    The Cohesion parameter can be set on any root frontline order, and will affect how the unit controller places divisions across that frontline. The default setting of Flexible Cohesion functions as you have grown to expect - all units will be evaluated for placement suitability and potentially relocated to fill perceived gaps in frontline cohesion.
    Balanced Cohesion will only successfully evaluate units that are within a defined distance from the target (distances are moddable). In practice, this results in less unit shuffling along frontlines, but should still ensure that frontlines respond to changes in size and shape.
    The final setting, Rigid Cohesion is intended primarily for long defensive lines, and will only successfully evaluate unit positions that are within a very short distance from the target location. In practice this results in relocations only taking place to neighboring provinces, and can result in gaps being created in frontlines if left unattended. It is expected that this setting will be used by players who primarily rely on micromanagement of frontlines. The AI will make use of flexible and balanced cohesion settings depending on the ratio of divisions:frontline length, but will avoid the use of rigid cohesion. It is worth noting that units that are not placed directly on the frontline (having been left behind or recently added to an order instance) will not be subject to the same cohesion restrictions, and will make use of strategic relocation to find themselves a new place on the frontline. Additionally, the cohesion setting will be respected regardless of whether an order is being executed or not.

    Modding


    For those of you interested in modding, the addition of these subsystems also comes with some new tools regarding units. It is now possible to iterate over unit arrays in states and countries by condition, and apply a series of effects, including the awarding of medals, history entries, and other basic parameters such as affecting org, strength, and more. For performance reasons, units do not currently support storing or being stored as variables, though we will monitor the need for, and performance implications of doing this in future (I SEE YOU EaW). Predefined divisions can be set up with lists of historical commanders that they will draw from when their current commander if replaced, should you wish to opt for extreme historical fidelity.
    The visual display ranks of divisional commanders correspond to their gained experience, and are fully customizable, though confer no gameplay effect. Medals themselves can be added to the medal array based on arbitrary conditions, and support a variety of modifiers, not all of which are represented in our vanilla use-cases. Name combinations can also be split from various random lists, if you have a particular penchant for randomly generated names.
    Thats all for now, tune in next week for a second look at how peace conferences are progressing!


    [ 2022-08-10 13:00:13 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Get your PDXCON 2022 tickets now!

    [previewyoutube=zCQzBSLyEnQ;full][/previewyoutube] PDXCON returns to Stockholm this September! Meet the devs, join a massive board game session, attend Paradox games orchestra & play our games!

    Get the tickets while supplies last!




    [ 2022-08-08 12:25:19 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Developer Diary | Plane Designer


    Hello, and welcome back to another Dev Diary for the upcoming By Blood Alone DLC and accompanying Patch 1.12! The team has returned from the summer vacation, and we are now back fixing bugs and tweaking the balancing of the new features and focus trees. Today, we are taking a look at the Plane Designer. As always, any number value that you are going to see in this DD is subject to change. The Plane Designer became a subject of discussion, both inside the team and in the community, almost as soon as we announced that No Step Back would feature a Tank Designer. We felt that it would mesh well with the rework of the Italian focus tree, not least because the Italian aviation industry was very well developed and produced some of the best combat airplanes of the war - hampered mostly, as Italy so often was, by lacking production capacity. We also felt that a Plane Designer would help plug some gaps in the lineup of available aircraft. Over the years, many players have commented on the fact that many nations modified their fighters to also be able to carry bombs, or their tactical bombers to also carry torpedoes. One of the big goals of the Plane Designer was to allow for these types of multi-role aircraft. At the same time, we didnt want to make these multi-role planes too powerful. Instead, a plane design optimized for a single mission should still be more effective than a multi-role plane. Where multi-role planes offer flexibility, optimized designs offer top performance, if you can afford them. The basics of the Plane Designer are probably not a surprise for anyone who is familiar with the Ship or Tank Designers. The base is called an airframe, which roughly corresponds to the hulls and the chassis of the ship and tank designers. The Airframes have a number of module slots, where you can put the modules that give the final design its actual stats. There are three different size classes of airframes: Small, Medium, and Large. Small planes also come in a carrier-capable variant of the airframe. The types of module slots in the Plane Designer are slightly different from the Tank Designer. There are effectively only three types of slots: Engines, Weapons, and Special modules. Engine modules are perhaps the most straightforward of them. Unlike tanks, where this slot dictates what type of engine the tank uses and a separate stat determines what its speed is, engine modules in the plane designer determine the number and power of the engines mounted on the aircraft. These engine modules produce a new stat called Thrust, while all other modules have another new stat called Weight. These two stats are effectively the limiting factor of what and how many modules you can put on the plane. A design is only legal if Weight does not exceed Thrust (some people might point out that the only planes with a Thrust/Weight ratio of 1 or better in reality are modern, high-performance fighter jets, but these people will be summarily ignored). Any excess Thrust is converted into extra speed, which is intended to provide a reason not to fill every module slot. One thing to note here is that jet engines (and rocket engines, for that matter) are part of these engine slots, which means that they are available for all types of planes. This, by necessity, means that Jet Fighters and other jet-powered airplanes are no longer their own unit type - they are now simply fighters with jet engines. Jet fighters will therefore reinforce regular fighter wings, and also that you can now effectively make jet carrier planes, jet CAS, jet heavy fighters etc.with the plane designer. Or Rocket Naval Bombers, one supposes, if you really hate your pilots on a personal level.
    Weapon modules are also fairly self-explanatory. But beyond providing offensive stats like Air Attack, weapon modules fulfill two other major functions. The first is that the weapons define what type of plane a design ends up being. For this the designer has a Primary Weapon Slot. The module in this slot defines the role of the final design, i.e. Fighter, CAS, Naval Bomber etc. This is relevant because the weapon modules also unlock what missions a design has available. That means that the strict separation of mission by type of aircraft will be gone. You can now create fighters that can provide ground support, or Strategic Bombers that can do naval strikes, depending on the modules you put on the plane. There are, of course, some restrictions - strat bombers can never mount the modules necessary to unlock air superiority missions, for example. We still wanted to give you an easy way to classify your designs on a high level and it also makes it a lot easier to tell the AI what a design actually is and how it should be used. Without accounting for doctrines, there are no stat differences between, say, a fighter that has a set of 4 Heavy MGs in the Primary Weapon Slot and bombs in a secondary weapon slot, and a CAS that has the bombs in the primary weapon slot and the MGs in the secondary slot - but one goes into Fighter Airwings and the other goes into CAS Airwings. CAS planes have a large variety of weapons available to them to attack ground targets.
    There is a full list of weapons, the missions they unlock, and what they classify a plane as if mounted in the primary weapon slot, below (stats omitted because balancing is still ongoing):
    While some of these weapons are unlocked in the (reworked) Air Tech Tree, some of them are also found outside of it, in a similar manner as the tank weapons are found in various trees. I will note that the total number of techs in the Air tech tree has actually decreased. A view of the Air Tech tree. It has a total of 28 techs, compared to the old trees 38 techs.
    One notable aspect is that a lot of these modules provide different stats only for specific missions. For true multi-role planes to make sense, we wanted to make sure that building a design with a mixed set of missions didnt make the plane useless in some of them. Hanging bombs off a plane should make it less agile and slower, but a fighter that was able to do CAS missions shouldnt be useless in air superiority missions. Thus, the weight and agility penalties only apply to the fighter if it is actually on a CAS mission, not if it is on an air superiority mission. Modifiers only apply to certain missions. Here, the bombs the Stuka carries make it less agile, but the dive brakes give it better air defense
    Finally, we have the so-called Special module slots. These are effectively a catch-all term of various different items, a list of which you can find below: Armor Plate: Increased Air Defense, reduced range Self-Sealing Fuel Tanks: increased Air Defense, costs Rubber Drop Tanks: increased range (small airframes only) Extra Fuel Tanks: increased range, reduced air defense Dive Brakes: increased air defense, increased naval strike hit chance Radio Navigation I: reduced night penalty, increased strat attack Radio Navigation II: reduced night penalty, increased strat attack Air/Ground Radar: reduced night penalty, increased strat attack, increased naval detection Air/Ground Radar II: reduced night penalty, increased strat attack, increased naval detection Air/Air Radar: reduced night penalty when on intercept mission Air/Air Radar II: reduced night penalty when on intercept mission Floatplane: increased naval spotting (small airframes only) Flying Boat: increased naval spotting (medium+large airframes) LMG Defensive Turret: increased Air attack, reduced agility 2x LMG Defensive Turret: increased Air attack, reduced agility HMG Defense Turret: increased Air attack, reduced agility 2x HMG Defense Turret: increased Air attack, reduced agility Cannon Defense Turret: increased Air attack, reduced agility 2x Cannon Defense Turret: increased Air attack, reduced agility Recon Camera: unlocks recon mission (LaR only) Demining Coil: unlocks demining mission (MtG only) Bomb sights I: increased strat attack Bomb Sights II: increased strat attack Non-Strategic Materials: reduced Aluminum cost, reduced air defense Special Modules are primarily intended to help optimize planes for various missions or give them different niches. The eagle-eyed amongst you have already spotted that planes now have a surface and sub detection stat. Up until now, planes that were active in a sea zone always provided a flat bonus to the spotting speed of any navies active in the seazone. This will now change, with planes having dedicated spotting stats that determine how well they do with helping the navies spot. There are modules, like the Air-Ground Radar and the Flying Boat hull, which give bonuses to naval spotting. Vanilla planes have those stats already baked in, with some being better than others - carrier planes are better than their land-based counterparts, naval bombers are better than fighters etc. To further support this, we are adding two more things: Maritime Patrol Planes as a dedicated unit type and a special Naval Patrol mission for planes with the right modules. Maritime Patrol Planes are built on the Large Airframe, giving them exceptional range. They are able to mount the whole array of naval bomber weapons, but naval strike is really not intended to be their primary role. Maritime Patrol Planes are meant to help with spotting raiders in the deep ocean, where smaller planes with shorter ranges struggle to provide much mission efficiency. You can run naval patrol missions with many different types of planes.
    Finally, lets talk a bit about art! While we already have a large amount of historical art for various plane types, we also wanted to give you more options to visually distinguish your designs, even if it is just to find the plane design more easily in the production menu. For the tank designer, we split up the existing art and recombined it into various combinations to quickly generate a large number of assets. We realized early on that this wouldnt work for the plane designer. So instead, we decided to fill in some gaps in the existing art as well as add some art for a number of prototypes that flew but were historically passed over for mass-production. Here is a partial list of new plane icons coming in BBA. Which ones your favorite?
    We also decided that we wanted to add more 3d art. Much like the tank designer, you can select these assets when you design the plane. We are adding about 80 new 3d models for planes to the DLC, but more on that in the future! Here is just a teaser of some of the new assets coming in the DLC:
    That is about it for this week. We hope that you will enjoy playing with the Plane Designer as much as we enjoyed making it. To end this DevDiary on a personal note: The Plane Designer will be my final contribution to Hearts of Iron 4. After close to 6 years on the project, all the way from the early days on Together for Victory, the time has come for me to leave the company and move on to greener pastures. It has certainly been an eventful and productive couple of years, and there are many things that I am very proud of (and a few that I regret - like adding Austria-Hungary as a joke and then finding out that people love monarchism). Working on the Hearts of Iron series has always been a dream for me, since the day I launched Hearts of Iron 1, almost 20 years ago now. Few people can say that they had an impact on a piece of entertainment that has had a similar impact on themselves. But the thing I am most proud of is the team we have built. Hearts of Iron is in very good hands, and there are years of content still to be released. Im looking forward to it - but, once again, as a player. Weird designs that QA came up with: This single plane outguns an entire tank platoon, unfortunately it cant ever turn:
    And then we restricted the number of bomb bays you can have on a plane:
    6 engines, 8 cannons, 4 cannons in turrets, and a production cost 50% higher than a strategic bomber. Needless to say, this combo is no longer possible:
    When you look at the Spitfire Mark Is armament and wonder: but what ifmore guns?


    [ 2022-08-03 13:00:10 CET ] [ Original post ]

    The Grand Campaign starts tomorrow!

    PDXCON2022 returns to Stockholm this September! Join us on the road to PDXCON2022 with another Grand Campaign! Watch our developers as they play through a customized game of Crusader Kings, Europa Universalis, Hearts of Iron, and Stellaris and follow laws passed by our Community-led Senate. Following the great tradition laid down last year for PDXCON, there may be familiar faces, returning arch-rivals, and maybe some new friends!

    What is a Grand Campaign?


    The story of a Grand Campaign is written in the senate, where Community-formed and led parties propose and vote on laws, that our developers have to follow on stream. This Grand Campaign spans the timeframe of four of our games, spanning several thousand years of alt-human history. Starting in the Crusader Kings era, all the way to Stellaris. In between games, we will transfer elements of one era to the next, so that the entire game is played in the same universe. This year, we've teamed up with some of your favorite modders, to make it that much more entertaining!

    How can I get involved?


    Join the Senate on discord! Parties on discord are still accepting newcomers, and while the bills have been passed for Crusader Kings, there are still around a thousand years of history, and ~40 hours of streams that your laws can directly affect! There will also be quick votes held on discord for in-game events deemed appropriate to pass to the senate by our Game Masters.

    Where can I watch?


    Join us on twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive, starting at 1000 AM CEST (0800 UTC)!

    What is PDXCON?


    PDXCON2022 is an opportunity to meet some of your favorite developers, live in person at our annual Paradox Convention! Join a massive board game session, attend Paradox games orchestra & play our games (potentially including some cool new unreleased content)! Get the tickets while supplies last! ]
    See you there!


    [ 2022-08-02 14:46:19 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Developer Diary | Ethiopia #2

    Hey, AveeBee here. This is my first time writing a development diary for you all, having only joined the Hearts of Iron team earlier this year. However, Id just like to say that its a great honor to get to do this having been a fan of the series for literally decades at this point, (yeah, look it up, Hearts of Iron I came out in 2002, crazy right?) Im really excited to be contributing to this awesome game. With that out of the way, let's once again dive into Ethiopia! As explained in the last Ethiopian dev diary, Ethiopia starts in a dire situation with the Italian invasion of the country well under way and any hope of winning the war rapidly diminishing. Haile Selassie historically left the country to rally support through the League of Nations for stopping Italys illegal invasion. But Haile Selassie wasnt the only one in Ethiopia with ideas on how to end the war
    Lets wind back the clock to early 1936, before Selassie leaves the nation for Geneva. In such desperate times, there are rumblings of discontent with the emperors handling of the conflict. Among the regional aristocrats, there is talk of reaching out to the Italians and switching sides in the hopes of maintaining hereditary titles. Meanwhile, the troops grow ever more disgruntled with officers leading them into defeat after defeat, knowing well that they were only given their ranks by birth right. Behind enemy lines, the fierce anti-fascist Black Lions begin to wonder if their successes and sacrifices are having any impact on the war as the Italians continue to push deeper and deeper into the heart of Ethiopia. With so many disgruntled factions, the slightest nudge can drastically alter the structure of the empire.

    Facist Path


    Let's start by looking at the fascist sympathizing aristocrats. Starting at the top of their focus branch, we have Reach out to the Italians. This focus puts the feelers out to see whether the Italians would be willing to support a coup against Selassie in exchange for letting them maintain some level of control once the dust finally settles. This focus also determines who will be the leader of the revolt against Selassie. As can be seen from the icon, there is a choice of three potential leaders, Haile Selassie Gugsa, Hailu Tekle Haymanot of Gojjam and Abba Jofir of Jimma. Each leader has different strengths and weaknesses and will move the power center of the country to their respective regions, should they succeed in overthrowing the emperor. Unfortunately the portraits for these guys arent complete, yet so I cant show them off today.
    Should the Italians rebuff your attempts to reach out to them, the focus tree will unlock the first section of the historical/imperial branch and the fascist sympathizing aristocrats will have to swallow their ambitions and do as the focus says, Rally around the Emperor. The decision to lock the player in this path in such a scenario is due to the importance of time for Ethiopia as it is immediately at war with Italy. Italys decision to accept the proposal will be weighted on how close they are to defeating Ethiopia and the war escalation levels mentioned in the last Ethiopia dev diary. For instance, if the war is dragging on for Italy, the odds of them accepting the deal will increase. Meanwhile, if Ethiopia is close to capitulating, Italy will be less likely to accept the deal.
    However, if the Italians are receptive to the idea of Ethiopia tearing itself apart, the next two focuses, Sway the Warlords and Expand the Bodyguard will be available. Swaying the warlords will boost the popularity of fascism in Ethiopia and give access to loyalist generals once the current war is won. Meanwhile expanding the bodyguard will guarantee a number of elite divisions will be loyal to their Italian backed leader when the empire inevitably fractures.
    Once the fascists have built their support network up, its time for them to Declare for Italy. Once this focus is taken, the fascist supporters will break away from Ethiopia to become an Italian puppet. Who that puppet is will depend on which leader was chosen to reach out to the Italians. With the backing of the Italians, it wont take long to defeat the diminished forces still loyal to Haile Selassie and finally bring peace to the region.
    Once the civil war is over, what was once Ethiopia will be in tatters and under the yoke of Italian rule, as can be seen by the Victor Emanuel I national spirit and the loss of some territory. But while it might otherwise have been annexed completely into Italy, the former empire retains a semblance of independence under the watchful eye of its new fascist leader. The initial objective after the war is of course rebuilding the damaged infrastructure and generally strengthening the reorganized rump state. There are of course the general economic and military branches explored in the last DD available at this point, however there are also bonuses for rebuilding that are unique to the fascist path too.
    After completing Rebuilding the Country, we have a few options to take. Each of them begins the transition of moving Ethiopia away from a traditional empire and more towards a nation united under a leader with absolute authority. Replace the Abuna allows the removal of Qerellos IV from leadership of the Ethiopian Coptic church and the ability to replace him with someone more loyal to the new order.
    The Victory Parade gives the people of the capital a chance to thank their supposed savior for preventing the destruction of the nation. This also has the added effect of boosting the country leaders stats, depending on who was chosen of course.
    To the left we have Invite Italian Settlers which does exactly what it suggests. This adds the Italian Settlers national spirit to Ethiopia which gives massive boosts to construction and population growth. It also converts two pastoral states into rural states, as new Italian settlements in the countryside begin to take shape. However, this all comes at the cost of reducing Ethiopias effectiveness at fighting the Italians due to their people and culture becoming intermingled with its own.
    This is also the point at which choices must be made over the future of Ethiopia. Will it be a loyal and indispensable subject of Italy? Or will it make schemes in the shadows for the eventual restoration of independence? It might seem like an easy choice, after all, who wants to be a puppet right? However, as mentioned above with Invite Italian Settlers there are advantages to getting cozy with the Italians.
    Lets see what those advantages are by exploring the collaborationist path first. In order to gain the Italians trust, Ethiopias leader will have to secure support from the regional governor of East-Africa, Prince Amedeo. And what better occasion to do so than the feast of Maskal! Trivia time, this meeting actually happened during Italys occupation of Ethiopia as the Italians attempted to secure control of the region by courting the remaining Ras (Ethiopian aristocracy). The Feast of Maskal is a celebration performed by followers of the Ethiopian Orthodox Christian church celebrating the discovery of the True Cross in the 4th century by Queen Eleni. Back to our alternate timeline, as mentioned earlier on, when taking the Sway the Warlords focus a number of military officers will pledge themselves to the new fascist order. Now when taking the Feast of Maskal focus, these officers will become available again. On top of that, the Victor Emanuel I national spirit will also gain some boosts to make him less negative to Ethiopia.
    Following this, we have a number of focuses to take advantage of Italys military experience and sweet, sweet industry for the benefit of Ethiopia. On the economic side, the nation can gain extra civilian industry by Inviting Italian Investors and Adopting the Lira. On the military side, Ethiopia can recruit Italian General Staff to act as advisors or gain some infantry equipment and artillery via the Request Italian Equipment focus. At the neck of this branch, Ethiopia can utilize an array of Italian design companies via the Outsourced Production focus.
    Following this, we have a number of focuses to take advantage of Italys military experience and sweet, sweet industry for the benefit of Ethiopia. On the economic side, the nation can gain extra civilian industry by Inviting Italian Investors and Adopting the Lira. On the military side, Ethiopia can recruit Italian General Staff to act as advisors or gain some infantry equipment and artillery via the Request Italian Equipment focus. At the neck of this branch, Ethiopia can utilize an array of Italian design companies via the Outsourced Production focus.
    But at the very end, the big finale for towing the Italian line is the recognition of Ethiopia as a loyal partner to Italy rather than a simple colony. This culminates in the formation of the Italo-Ethiopian Empire in East-Africa and the unification of what was once two separate crowns. And as a goal for the reformed empire, it also gains the Arranged Expansion idea which will transfer control of conquered lands in the region to Ethiopia.
    So, weve explored what loyalty gets you, now lets see what betrayal gets you! If we go back to the Feast of Maskal focus, you might have noticed it is mutually exclusive with the Negus of Shewa focus. This focus sets Ethiopia on a collision course with Italy by rejecting their influence and rekindling pride in the nation once again. This will cause the Victor Emanuel I national spirit to become detrimental to Ethiopias stability as the people reject the new sovereign. Reinforce Ethiopian Identity builds on this further by increasing support for going to war as the people rekindle their fighting spirit. If the new regime intends to fight the Italians, then they must prepare the military. Luckily, taking the Underground Wargames focus will give the troops a substantial advantage when engaging the Italian military. While the collaborationist branch is focused on integrating into the Italian economy, this branch is more about being the absolute worst subject possible. Options for doing this include Set up a Customs Barrier which allows Ethiopia to make trade with Italy as difficult as humanly possible while still avoiding the Regia Marina resorting to gunboat diplomacy. This protectionist measure will give Ethiopia an economic boost, while reducing Italys colonial gains from its unruly puppet. If that isnt good enough of an insult to the Italians, theres also the option to Contact the Exiles who fled Ethiopia and have them return with foreign weapons for the troops.
    Due to the lack of economic support by following this sub-branch, Ethiopia is going to be much more reliant on foreign aid if it is to succeed in driving Italy out of the country. Luckily, theres usually not a shortage of nations who would like to see Mussolini knocked down a notch or twelve. This can be utilized by Our Enemies Enemy, which allows the other great powers to send military equipment to Ethiopia.
    Another fun way to make the Italians hate you is to raid their depots for equipment and destroy what you cant carry. Sounds fun right? Luckily we have a focus that lets you do exactly that! Raid Italian Depots will trigger a number of raids over the following months which increase Ethiopias stockpile of weapons while increasing Italys supply consumption.
    But, whats a revolt without friends, am I right? Together for Victory allows Ethiopia to reach out to the various resistance groups in East-Africa who are opposed to Italian rule. If conflict breaks out between Ethiopia and Italy, these resistance fighters will take up arms behind enemy lines and join the conflict alongside Ethiopia. Once Italian rule in Ethiopia has been sufficiently weakened and the underground army is ready to leap into action, it is time to declare independence and prepare for the backlash. Negusa Nagast is the focus that allows Ethiopia to do exactly that, but it shouldnt be taken lightly. If Italy is stubborn enough, they may come down hard on this rebellion, but hopefully preparations made earlier will tip the balance in Ethiopias favor. Even if the Italians are too busy dealing with conflicts elsewhere, they may still be in control of land that is rightfully Ethiopian, which leads me to the next focus. Reclaim the Empire allows Ethiopia to regain cores on territory earlier ceded to Italy, once they are back under Ethiopian control. So, the new emperor has made it this far, apparently saving the empire on multiple occasions through various levels of back stabbing and insurrection. But what now? What is there to do for a newly crowned, backstabbing, insurrectionist of an emperor once he has gained his throne? Probably subjugate everything in the vicinity right? Great, because the final focus of this sub-branch, Consolidate East-Africa, gives Ethiopia claims on territory across the region and the ability to core them once conquered.
    The collaborationist and independent fascist paths will hopefully offer a lot of replay-ability as the various choices throughout the two sub-paths make for various different narratives. Since the last dev diary, weve had a lot more great artwork added into the game for focus trees and events. Heres an overview of the fascist branch at the moment, but remember that this is still a work in progress and may be subject to change. Now, you might be thinking, Im fed up with this aristocratic stuff, this aint CK III! Well, fascism isnt the only alternate history path for Ethiopia. Let's wind back the clock again to 1936. As mentioned earlier, there are rumblings from the front and in the streets, its not only the aristocracy that are growing frustrated with Haile Selassies leadership. The people and the troops are questioning the centuries old aristocracy and turning to the likes of the Soviet Union for inspiration.

    Communist Paths


    This branch starts off with the focus Military Communism which will rally the troops on the front line and get them thinking about alternative systems of government. This starting point for the communist path was influenced by the types of movements that sprung up in Africa during the Cold War which often centered around the military acting as a vanguard party to overthrow the old order. In this timeline, were seeing that a little earlier due to the bleak position Ethiopia is in during 1936 and the memory of Russias 1917 October revolution still being fresh in the minds of people during the time period.
    Now, the military isnt the only place where communist influence is spreading during this time period. The Black Lions were an anti-fascist resistance movement in Ethiopia during the Italo-Ethiopian War and some members struggled on even after the country surrendered. While historically the Black Lions were mainly focused on anti-fascism and independence for Ethiopia, a number of members of the Black Lions were supposedly communist leaning. So alongside the spreading of communist thought among the military we also wanted to explore the what if scenario of the Black Lions, with all their skills and organization as resistance fighters, becoming increasingly disillusioned with the imperial system too. Following on from this, we have Defending our Homes which grants defensive bonuses on core territory as the troops become desperate to prevent the destruction of their homeland. We also have Anti-Imperialist Agitation which adds a wave of communist support as more and more people turn their backs on the failing imperial system. In order to progress beyond this point of the branch, Ethiopia needs at least 20% support for the communists. As mentioned earlier, Military Communism is based around the military forcing a communist revolution rather than the types of mass movements that have started them in other countries. But while 20% support may seem low, its worth remembering that the Italians will be steadily chipping away at your territory, so even getting to this threshold can be a real race against time.
    Once there is enough support for the communists, the next focus in the branch In the Name of the People will become available. This focus, as you might expect, triggers a coup against the government of Haile Selassie. The Black Lions and members of the military will arrest the emperor and form a provisional government. At the head of this provisional government is Alemework Beyene, the chairman of the Black Lions. From the offset of this provisional government, relations will be strained between the military communists and the Black Lions. The Black Lions constitution places the political sphere above the military and enshrines the rights of peasants, while those in the military believe they alone can govern Ethiopia in this time of crisis. This instability will be a key issue going forward. Due to the dire situation brought on by the Italian invasion, the two political factions are forced to cooperate. For the time being anyway. During the coup, Black Lion and Red Guards divisions will become available to help maintain a smooth transition of power and to back up the beleaguered troops on the front line. With control of Ethiopia established, the first major decision to make is how to continue the fight against Italy. The Black Lions advocate for A Callout to the World which will set Ethiopia on a course to rally support from anti-fascists across the globe.
    Meanwhile the military communists believe the only real hope of victory lies in gaining the support of the Soviet Union. Lets start by looking at the Soviet sub-branch which starts with Soviet Aid. This focus gives the Soviets the option to support Ethiopia with volunteers and opens the door to future cooperation. The well equipped Soviet divisions and air force make a massive difference in turning the tide against Italy. Following on from this, there are options to request more Soviet material support in the form of rifles, aircraft and armored vehicles. Or theres the option to invite experienced Soviet generals to lead your armies. Of course the downside to this decision is that your own officers are not gaining experience, but sometimes desperate times call for desperate measures. As the country becomes increasingly influenced by the Soviets, Alemework Beyene and the provisional government will be ousted to be replaced with the military administration of Ethiopia.

    With the tide of war shifting and the Italian invasion brought to a halt by the combined efforts of Ethiopia and the Soviet Union, its time to start thinking of a way out of the conflict. This is where the focus Soviet Mediation comes in. This focus will prompt the Soviet Union to demand Italy withdraws to pre-war borders in East-Africa, or suffer the wrath of the Red Army. Theres a game of chicken here though, depending on the strength of both nations, Mussolini may call Stalins bluff and Stalin may back down. Or Mussolini might think Stalin is bluffing and quickly find the Red Army on the march. For Ethiopia, this is somewhat of a win-win scenario however as it is already at war with Italy. So it either gets peace or a strong ally in the ongoing conflict.
    All of this support from the Soviet Union of course doesnt come for free. Uncle Joe is going to want you firmly in the Soviet sphere of influence going forward, which means becoming a puppet. At least for now. Similar to the fascist branch, there are benefits to being a puppet but it doesnt necessarily have to be permanent either...
    With the revolution in Ethiopia finally secure, it is time to start building a glorious workers republic. Luckily, Soviet Engineers are on hand to support reconstruction efforts. Here, we have a few mutually exclusive choices depending on priorities. Taking advantage of being a puppet of course comes at the cost of autonomy but gives access to Soviet design companies and factories via the Mytishchy-Abba Machine Plant and Soviet-Ethiopian Trade Agreement. But theres also the option to push back against Soviet influence by dismissing their advisors and officers from the country as well as pursuing trade agreements with nations beyond the Soviet sphere of influence. While deciding on which course to take there are also focuses to expand Ethiopian influence in the region by liberating the people of the Afar and Djibouti.
    Loyalty to the Soviet cause will allow Ethiopia to Request Soviet Ships to help make the Red Sea a little more red. But, if the Ethiopian military administration has grown disillusioned with Soviet meddling in their affairs, Our Own Path will allow them to declare independence once again. However, the Soviets may not take too kindly to having their investment in Ethiopia thrown back at them.
    Either as an independent socialist republic or a Soviet backed one, East-Africa can be dangerous with all those imperialist powers nearby. Freedom at Gunpoint unlocks decisions for waging liberation wars against the neighboring powers to release their colonial territories. Dont worry though, this doesnt mean successfully marching from Addis Ababa to London in order to liberate Sudan. Once Ethiopia gains enough territory in the nation they are attempting to liberate, they will have the option to request a peace deal with the colonial power. With bigger enemies to deal with closer to home, theyre likely going to cut their losses.
    This system for releasing African nations will come in very useful later on. But first of all, let's take a step back to A Callout to the World. Weve seen how the military communists will lead the country if given a chance, taking it in a more Soviet inspired direction, but what about the Black Lions? Due to the decentralized, anti-fascist and anti-authoritarian values of the organization it seems they would take Ethiopia in a much different direction. Taking the Callout to the World focus will unlock a number of advisors from across the world including socialists and anarchists such as Sylvia Pankhurst and Emma Goldman. Japanese Anarcho-Communism builds upon this further by recruiting the anarcho-communist Iwasa Sakutar and the anarcho-syndicalist Ishikawa Sanshir. Although be aware, these two supposedly really disliked each other, so you wont be able to hire both of them at the same time. Following on from this, a choice must be made between International Brigades which creates a steady stream of manpower and war support for Ethiopia, or The Peoples Army which reforms the military by removing the conservative high-command and its associated penalties.
    With the support of the anarcho-communists of the world, Ethiopia should finally be starting to halt the Italian advance. However, without the support of the League of Nations or a major power, any peace negotiations are going to be limited to essentially a ceasefire with the Italians. But much as we explored in the fascist branch, so long as part of Ethiopia survives, there is hope of restoring it fully someday.
    With an uneasy peace settling in with the Italians, attention can be turned to reforming what remains of the nation into a more economically prosperous and egalitarian society. The decisions made here will determine how far towards anarchism Ethiopia will go. Will it totally decentralize to become an anarcho-communist federation of loosely knit communities? Or will it remain somewhat centralized with a more traditional government to hold the republic together? These decisions will lead to various different leaders, including an anarchist council.
    With Ethiopia reformed under a new political system, its time to start thinking about the enemies around East-Africa. In this sub-branch, the people of Ethiopia wont be rolling into the surrounding areas in tanks to forcibly liberate their neighbors. Instead the African Wildfire focus will allow the revolutionary government of Ethiopia to funnel supplies into the neighboring states to increase resistance against their colonial overlords until they eventually break free on their own. You might have noticed that both sub-branches here offer means of freeing the people of Africa from colonial rule. And thats because of the final section of this branch.

    The African Union


    Both the anarcho-communist and Soviet sub-branches lead to this focus, The Organization of African Unity. In real life, the organization was established in 1963 with its headquarters in Addis Ababa. The organization strove to become a unifying force in African politics and ultimately became the African Union, a union somewhat similar to the European Union that many might be more familiar with. The roots of this pan-Africanism were already spreading in the 1930s and 1940s however.
    Here, we explore those ideas from a more radical perspective. By becoming the founder of the Organization of African Unity, Ethiopia unlocks decisions to invite independent nations in Africa to join it. Each member gets a national spirit to signify their membership.
    Here, we explore those ideas from a more radical perspective. By becoming the founder of the Organization of African Unity, Ethiopia unlocks decisions to invite independent nations in Africa to join it. Each member gets a national spirit to signify their membership.
    Finally, as the various nations begin to pull together, Ethiopias final focus will become available, The African Union. Ethiopia will become the heart of the African Union with a beautiful new flag and the ability to integrate and core the territory of the Organization of African Unities member states. Hopefully it makes sense now why releasing African countries from colonial rule is so important in the run up to this part. While each individual country may be lacking in strength, together they can become a real menace in the Mediterranean and Indian Oceans which leads to really interesting clashes against the Allies and the Axis powers. Depending on the path taken to forming the African Union, the organization can feel very different. When coming at it from the Soviet sub-branch, it will feel a lot more like a Soviet Union of Africa for example.
    Thats all for this week folks. Remember all of this is still a work in progress and may be subject to change. But hopefully this has got you excited for Ethiopias revamped focus tree and its potential for fascinating alternate history. And I hope youre excited for the next development diary two weeks from now which will be on the new plane designer. See you then! Join the forum discussion here!


    [ 2022-07-20 13:18:08 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Hearts of Iron IV: By Blood Alone | Feature Highlights | #1

    Join Game Director Peter Nicholson, UX Designer Peter Johannesson and Game Developers Robert Dotson & Bradley Faithfull-Wright as they detail the coming developments with the avalanche update that accompanies the By Blood Alone expansion. In this video they will cover the changes to Peace Conferences and Naval Combat as well as discuss the reworks to the Air systems. Click Here to watch the Features Highlights #1 Wishlist By Blood Alone today: https://pdxint.at/ByBloodAloneSteam --------------------------------- Follow us on social media: Twitter - https://pdxint.at/HOITwitter Facebook - https://pdxint.at/HOIFB IG - https://pdxint.at/HOIIG Discord - https://pdxint.at/HOIDiscord Forum - https://pdxint.at/HOIForum --------------------------------- Paradox on YouTube: --------------------------------- ParadoxInteractive - http://youtube.com/ParadoxInteractive Trailers, Feature Breakdowns, Dev Diaries, and more. Paradox Grand Strategy - http://youtube.com/ParadoxGrandStrategy Gameplay of our Grand Strategy Games. CK3, EU4 and HOI4.


    [ 2022-07-19 15:10:42 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Developer Diary | Switzerland #2

    The year is 1944, the future (If you live in 1936), you may find yourself in the middle of a war against France, as the Alpine Confederation, with a beautiful flag, the sound of gunfire off in the distance
    You may find yourself behind the wheel of a large army, composed of regular troops, marching through mountains and plains. You may tell yourself, This is not my Guisan, this is not my neutral and democratic Switzerland. And you may ask yourself, how did I get here?
    Hey there, its Carlo again, to update you on the alt-history paths of the Swiss Focus Tree! Now lets go back a bit. To the present, 1936. It all started with the focus Swiss Guiding Principles, which triggered an event for you to proclaim the overall direction of the Balance of Power for the rest of the game. Should Switzerland continue with their policy of devolved power to the Cantons? Or is the current world situation too tense to go business as usual? Picking any will not block you from going one way or the other in the BoP, but it will certainly help getting to where you want to be more easily.
    By keeping the balance of power in the Cantons for enough time, you are able to complete some focuses in the historical path, giving you bonuses to militias and recruitable population, and allowing you to build up a large militia army. You might think its not worth the time considering you want to go alt-history, but youll see the reasoning later. A bit afterwards you can go down the Federal Police Intelligence Department focus, which unlocks a series of focuses that give you bonuses for managing resistance in occupied states (And your own states if they are occupied, just in case), and more importantly, a military sub-branch, to develop your war capabilities further. This sub-branch is shared with the fascist path, but you dont need to go fascist to access it.

    Then Allied Gold, GotthardBund and where things really start to diverge; Press for Vorarlberg. Remember the last Switzerland Dev Diary where I stopped to give historical context? Well this is one of those. In 1919 the very rural Austrian region of Vorarlberg held a referendum to decide if they would join the Swiss Confederation, and the vote actually went towards uniting with Switzerland. Unfortunately for them, neither Austria or Switzerland wanted this to happen. Austria because, well, governments tend to prefer to keep their territory and Switzerland because, among other reasons (Including World War I), they already had a majority of their population speaking German, so they didnt want to increase that gap further. In a Switzerland that seeks to defend their democracy by projecting power and growing in military might, this is not as important, so Vorarlberg is the first stepping stone on their quest to expand. When you complete that focus, an ultimatum is sent to Austria (Or Germany if you let the days go by), demanding that they hand over Vorarlberg, or else. Hopefully it doesnt get to the or else, and if thats the case, congratulations, youre the proud owner of Switzerlands newest canton!
    After this youre confronted with another fork in the road. You can go the fully autocratic way, and Pre-empt Anschluss, allowing you to annex the rest of Austria; or you can go slightly more democratic, with The New Eidgenossenschaft. They both allow Switzerland to expand. With the Preempt Anschluss path, youll be able to core all of the alps, finally becoming the Alpine Empire of your dreams, and if thats not enough for you and youre ready for a real challenge, you can bring the fight to Germany, Italy and France, in the name of Democracy and peace of course. After all, how dare these psychos keep fighting amongst themselves for centuries, someone ought to bring a stop to that.
    Now its not all fun and empires on this side of Vorarlberg, when you go for The New Eidgenossenschaft you find a more civilized form of conquest, with Expand the Federation. Itll unlock decisions to spread democracy in your [strike]future cantons[/strike] neighboring states, and claim them afterwards. If their current owner decides to let you take them peacefully will depend on your military might and how many other states of theirs youve influenced. Unfortunately, this time, France wasnt very keen on you bringing democracy to Rhone, so thats how you find yourself with no other choice than to declare war on them.
    Before going further lets briefly talk about the military branch they share. The focus Switzerland on the Offense, right under GotthardBund, will surely come in handy: Its one of the focuses that allows Switzerland to train regular troops, edit templates, and notably, itll turn all the militias into regular troops, including all their upgrades. Suddenly, your citizens become full time soldiers, just doing their part
    This is why it can be beneficial to beef up your militias before going fully alt-history, you can train cheap troops, with a template you upgrade without spending Army XP, with a large manpower pool that comes with no downsides most of the time, and then they can become regular infantry. Its mutually exclusive with The Neutral Entente focus, which allows you to invite other Neutral and Non-Aligned countries to your faction. Under those two, you get to upgrade your military and even prepare Switzerland for a real navy! After Expand the Confederation and completing some very necessary military focuses, you go Empower the Council, putting the Balance of Power squarely on the council, and getting rid of the Cantons vs Council struggle, this gives you more War Support, Political Power among other things.
    Now that the council has consolidated power, its time to use it and make the president of the council the true leader of the Swiss government, granting some bonuses but more importantly, making the president of the Council Switzerlands Country Leader forever! (These portraits are not ready so not showing it yet) You can continue your war as you are, in either the Eidgenossenschaft or Anschluss branch, but theres a man thats not happy with where Switzerland is at the moment, and thats our guy Henri Guisan. As far as I can tell he was not that much of a radical democrat, after all he was a professional soldier, and those tend to favor rigid hierarchies, but despite that he was also a Swiss patriot who praised the Swiss tradition of Armed Neutrality and Independence, so he would definitely not be happy with a Swiss-led empire, regardless of name. This is why on this timeline, you can nudge him towards a coup, and with his popularity both in the Military and civilian populations, resistance to him is very limited. Of course, as much as he is committed to traditional Swiss values, he is a soldier, and he will finish the fight with his military bonuses as a Country Leader and General, like a Cincinnatus once in a lifetime kind of thing. And thats how we got where we are. The rest is up to you; you can take the war to other countries, or simply finish the war and then complete the focus Return to the Old Switzerland which allows Switzerland to neutrality and democracy. Same as it ever was. Before giving you a taste of the other alt-history paths, I think its important to take a look at the full focus tree (Please note its a work in progress and a lot can change. Also, still waiting on some icons, as you can see).
    Now thats not the only alt-history path for Switzerland. You also have the option of taking a stance to help the Allies win their war against the fascist powers of Europe. After you complete Closer Democratic Ties you have 3 different ways of joining the war as an ally:
    First one is through Join France, which makes Switzerland into a French Puppet and later, into the Second Helvetic Republic, a successor of the Napoleonic Republic I was talking about in the olden days of the first Swiss Dev Diary. The advantage of this path is that Alpine Aspirations allows you to core some alpine states, handy for the peace conference at the end of the war. The middle one, Join the Allies, as it says in the name, allows you to join the United Kingdom as an ally. Its a relatively pain-free way of joining the war, but it also doesnt offer additional rewards. The last one is through the Secret Pact with the Allies focus. You get to this one from a different part of the tree, by completing some focuses on the Buero Ha branch and three focuses directed at supporting the Allies espionage efforts: Support Allied Espionage unlocks a decision that allows Switzerland to give itself and their secret ally (In most cases the leader of the biggest democratic faction) a timed National Spirit with bonuses for espionage. Expand Spy Network gives Switzerland an extra Operative Slot, and increased Intel Network Gain. Share Spy Network unlocks a decision to send an event to your secret ally, and they can choose to get either a Swiss-German, Swiss-Italian or Swiss-French operative, the best part is that you get one too! Then in Secret Pact with the Allies itself, you unlock a decision to support your secret ally, giving them a percentage of your military and civilian production in exchange for Command Power, Army, Air and Navy experience.

    After that you still have more to unlock, and eventually you can choose when to complete Jump into Action and join the war at the most opportune moment. All of these paths have a shared industrial and military branch to get you ready, ending on Weapons of Democracy. Aaaand these are the Democratic-ish paths for Switzerland! Hope you at least enjoyed reading about them. The left-side paths are the ones I thought plausible for Switzerland keeping their democracy (At least for a little bit) while still joining the war. Theyre about Switzerland using its past and tradition to justify joining the war, either against fascism, or as a preemptive defense. While Switzerland in this period did have a fascist movement, it was always very small and on the fringes, for example, there was only one member of parliament elected under a Fascist party; Robert Tobler. This small minority quickly faded once it was obvious to them where it would lead, and especially so after Anschluss. This is why the right side of the focus mountain is not as much a story of Swiss Fascism rising to take over the government, but a scenario where Switzerland sees the power of Fascism rising in Europe and is slowly coerced into reluctantly joining it.
    The start of the fascist side is populated by focuses about events that actually happened, but often did not end up going further, or were historically rejected. Purchase German Planes, Ban the Swiss Communist Party, Withdraw from the League Of Nations, Limited Censorship of the Press, The National Front, and The Petition of the 200 are based on real events, policies or organizations in Switzerland at the time that ended up not affecting the Democratic system of Switzerland enough to topple it, but because this is a fascist path, in this timeline they will have repercussions, and will tighten the grip of fascism over Switzerland.
    Unlike the alt-democratic branch, this ones not as focused on espionage, but instead, focuses on becoming closer to Germany and developing the military industry. After Abandon Neutrality, which does exactly what you think it does, you have a choice between 2 leaders: Robert Tobler and Rolf Henne.
    They were both leaders of The National Front at different points, and while they were both Fascists, they diverged in key ways. Rolf Henne was closer to the German Nazi party and more openly wanted for Switzerland to join Germany, while Robert Todler wanted Switzerland to have its own form of fascism, achieved by working with the government and slowly changing it, without burning down the house. Despite this, they were both directly or indirectly supported by the German Reich.
    Toblers path will lead to a slower and more stable transition to fascism, until you centralize Switzerland and join the Nazis. Hennes path on the other hand allows you to become a German Puppet almost immediately, but with the advantage that you can ask Germany for territory, including Vorarlberg and Austria, and if youre lucky enough, the alps in France and Italy.
    Both of them have access to the Professionalize Militias focus, which is another one of those that convert your militias into professional soldiers, very handy for the conquest of Europe. Besides this, theres a military branch that is shared with the Federal Police Intelligence Department branch, which allows you on one side to mechanize your army, and in the other to improve special forces, planes and ultimately, give you Mountaineer Paratroopers, which give Swiss paratroopers bonuses in mountains. Lastly, theres an elephant in the Dev Diary I would like to address. Many countries in Hearts of Iron feature civil wars when they change political parties, and thats a very cool mechanic because it allows you to have a combat snack before the main course. In Switzerland, thats not the case, when the government changes, it does so progressively but peacefully. The main reasons are: [olist]

  • Switzerland is mostly mountains and forests, leading to a slow and grinding war.
  • A lot of the content centers around building fortifications, and improving defense, because that was Switzerlands focus at the time, and even before that. It wouldve led to an even slower and grindier war.
  • I felt the territory was way too small to have any sort of interesting war in it. [/olist] Those were the reasons we decided not to have government changes through civil war. Oh, and one more thing, I felt like Brandy the St Bernard wouldnt stay for the fascist path, after all Brandy is a good doggo, so we managed to find an evil timeline version, doubt it will make the cut, seeing as my photoshop skills are not up to par.
    Ok Ill end this Dev Diary now before I stop making sense. Come back next time for the Ethiopian Alt-history Dev Diary! I think youre in for a treat.

    Join the discussion!



    [ 2022-07-13 13:01:22 CET ] [ Original post ]

  • Developer Diary | Italy #2

    Buongiorno! And welcome to not only my first post here on the forums, but also to Italys Alternative History Dev Diary! I know that a lot of you folks out there have been looking forward to Italys re-work, and I bet that a bunch of you have already read Mano de Zombis absolutely gigantic Dev Diary for Italys Historical path. (If you havent, it might be worthwhile to do so before continuing here, since he explains new features that will pop up here too.) Well, today its time to look at what could have been if only history had turned out slightly (or sometimes wildly) different. And please remember that all of this is still very much a work in progress; a lot of things might and will change from here until we release in- oooops, no spoilers ;) Due to Steam post limitations and the length of this diary, we can only host the publication on our own forums. To read the article, Click here


    [ 2022-07-06 13:01:21 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Developer Diary | Ethiopia #1

    MAJOR DISCLAIMER - This dev diary is written before the majority of art has been delivered, so it features a lot of placeholder graphics - you have to imagine really cool focus icons, and a lot of characters with hats that are beyond fabulous, for example But we have some cool art coming!
    Work in progress image of Ethiopian Irregular Infantry So, I was asked to write a dev diary about the development of a focus tree and related stuff for Ethiopia. Mainly because I was the one asked to do Ethiopia in the first place*, I guess. It would probably have felt weird to do a dev diary on something else then Anyway, Ethiopia. I wanted to make playing Ethiopia a somewhat different experience than the average game of HoI. It has to be, right? For one, Ethiopia starts at war, which puts some constraints on the design. Also, it is a war that they historically lost. After the initial invasion in October 35 they more or less managed to push the Italians back to their starting positions in what became known as the christmas offensive, but by the time we are entering the scene the Italians were preparing to once again go on the offensive. And historically this time Ethiopia didnt stand a chance. However, in 1942 Ethiopian units such as the Gideon force and the Arbegnoch were fighting alongside the Allies to retake their country. So the design had to feature that as well. But enough of that - lets take a look at Ethiopia and what we did with it for the DLC:

    The Themes


    The theme of the design for Ethiopia was actually twofold. Firstly it is about survival. As mentioned, you start under attack from Italy. Outgunned and outmanned. So initially you will mainly focus on finding a way to survive. There will be a few different options there, some that will be discussed today, and some that will be discussed later. Secondly, it is about modernization. Ethiopia was not industrialized at all, and the army was in many ways still partly feudal; and as such you will need to work hard to improve the country and the armed forces if you are to compete with the rest of the industrialized world.

    Country set up


    Now then, lets take a look at how Ethiopia looks in-game in 1936: First you might have noticed, that Haile Selassie has himself a new trait - with one of the cooler names so far in HoI history
    And the country also starts with a set of national spirits (compared to before where it was severely lacking on that front):
    Not all of which are entirely positive however.

    The map


    One of the first things you will see is that what used to be a single state called Ethiopia is now split up into a bunch of new ones. Some of the extremely large provinces have been split into smaller ones as well, to allow for a more interesting gameplay and more realistic combat and supply-lines. While doing that I also added a few victory points to make the map look a bit more interesting, and to give the players something more concrete to fight over. Finding the right level when doing this is always a bit of a balancing act between gameplay, consistency with other things, and what you would ideally want. Sacrifices were made, but this is what we ended up with:
    Additionally, the Ogaden desert is now classed as - well, yes - desert:

    Starting at War


    As mentioned above, Ethiopia starts at war with Italy. To simplify things a little bit when you start up the game, all units start within their own borders, just like before. It is not too far from the truth as the Christmas offensive of 35 had basically pushed the Italian army back all the way, so I feel it works (even though technically some parts of Tigray and some areas in the south were occupied by Italy at this point in time).
    The thing is, Haile Selassie really hoped the International Community would do something to stop Italy. After all, both nations were part of the League of Nations. We decided against doing a full scale League of Nations feature, so instead it is tied to the Ethiopian focus tree, and a small mechanic that affects both Italy and Ethiopia. (After all the LoN was mainly active before 36, so it makes sense I think) There were numerous reasons why the League didnt act against Italy, who in turn tried to play down their invasion as something of a border dispute in one of their colonies. But the longer Ethiopia holds out and the more Italy commits to the war, the harder it will be for Mussolini to downplay the conflict and for the LoN to turn a blind eye. So to simulate this we have a ticking War Escalation that affects both sides in the war.
    The higher it ticks, the more focuses you unlock for Ethiopia - should you decide to go to the League to plead your case - and additionally both sides will get events that affect their ability to continue the war. Well get back to that stuff further down the line

    Modernizing the Industry


    Before we look at the war and foreign politics part of the tree, we will need to look at the prospect of modernization
    The entire industrial tree for Ethiopia. In 1936, Ethiopia starts without any major industrial capacity. It has 2 military factories, and 2 civilian ones, one of which goes to consumer goods, and one is needed to fulfill trade requirements in order to produce the weapons needed for the war. Some more factories can be acquired through the focus tree, but many focuses are also about different bonuses and removing debuffs etc.
    All Ethiopian states also start with this modifier, which is -30% in all states except for the capital shown here. Develop the Capital Region as well as other focuses in the right-most part will unlock decisions to eventually remove this modifier. Ethiopia doesnt start with a plethora of designers and companies like other countries, but will instead have options to invite off-shoots of companies from other nations through the Invite Foreign Industrialists focus. Also I cannot stress enough how good the 2D art is looking.

    The designers and industrial concerns native to Ethiopia or unlocked through ways other than the Invite Foreign Industrialists focus.

    What about the army?


    The Ethiopian army has been revamped a bit in BBA. It is larger than in vanilla, and it now consists of two main parts, the regular Mehal Sefari and the irregular forces raised and paid for by the various lords and regions of Ethiopia. The irregulars are fast to raise, have some bonuses in certain types of terrain, but are generally weaker than regular units. You have a limited amount of them as well. The fact that Ethiopia has a different system for raising units than other countries is represented by a recruitment law unique to the country. In peacetime it allows for a rather small recruitable population, but in wartime it is increased automatically, but incur penalties to production etc. Playing Ethiopia, you will be given the choice to expand on the irregular system, or instead move towards the more regular system employed by other HoI countries.
    The focuses in this branch will let you specialize your army to some extent, and also helps a little bit if/when you decide that an airforce and/or navy could be good things to have. Here you can see the military branch in all its glory:

    Balance of Power


    Ethiopia will start with an active balance of power, similarly to how Switzerland and Italy have one, which is a connecting thread between the nations in By Blood Alone. Ethiopias BoP will focus on the power of the Mekwanint on one side (the centrally appointed officials) and the Mesafint on the other (the hereditary nobility of Ethiopia). Pushing towards one side or another will bring different benefits as well as penalties, as well as both having potentially catastrophic effects if one side gets absolute power over the other, but more on the details of the BoP system for Ethiopia in its next dev diary!

    The Second Italo-Ethiopian War Branch


    As Italy and Ethiopia start at war, Ethiopia gets a number of (mostly 35 day) focuses to help them customize how they want to run the war. These are all blocked once the war is over one way or the other.
    Should I go or should I stay? The first decision you will need to take when playing as Haile Selassie's Ethiopia is if you want him to stay in Africa and attempt to beat the Italians back the hard way (that is, without any foreign aid, which will be required for certain cult of personality-esque focuses later down in the tree) or if you want to get on the train and go to Switzerland to address the League of Nations and utilize the different focuses tied to them, which all get unlocked through different levels of war escalation.
    If you decide to go for the historical option, and have Haile Selassie leave the country you get access to this subset of the tree:
    The section serves the dual purpose of giving you access to focuses that can help you, if you get the war escalation up high enough, and allowing you to continue the fight in exile, should Ethiopia capitulate while the Emperor is away. The focus chain that starts with Addressing the League of Nations culminates in the International Mediation focus which sees the LoN pressure Italy for a white peace. (Doing this will not be able to gain you any immediate territory from them, so you will have to get to that later in the post war tree) Additionally, the International Brigades focus is very useful, as well as fun and flavorful, as it allows you to send events to LoN members asking for volunteers, making it to where about 4-8 random minors send you a division each, becoming very colorful very quickly.

    Going into exile and Coming back


    After having done the focus Boarding the Train and having found a host nation to flee to, Haile Selassie will go there to continue the fight if and when Ethiopia capitulates to Italy, just like he did historically. Due to the LoN resolution however, he cannot ask his host to join the conflict before completing the focus Reclaiming Ethiopia at the end of the exile branch, and they also cannot ask him to let them join the war. Many of the exile focuses unlock various decisions to do, in order to make a playthrough at least somewhat interesting to a player. Some focuses such as The Patriots and Anti-Italian Propaganda also unlock new unique continuous focuses for Ethiopia to do, such as increasing resistance growth and lowering compliance gain in areas occupied by Italy. This is because the only way for Italy to get rid of you once you have gone into exile is for them to get enough compliance in your states to take a decision that gives them ownership of it, eventually creating the Africa Orientale Italiana to completely erase you if you do not oppose them enough. And as you can see, hiring the Abuna (leader of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church), Qerellos IV will grant you some bonuses which are going to prove very useful when in exile.
    Different host-nations also means different extra focuses (all require a certain level of legitimacy to do).



    As you can see in these images, your focuses and campaign will be quite different depending on what nation you send Haile Selassie off into exile to. (Be aware that you will have to ask the country for permission first, which will be very hard if they do not have good relations with you) Also, can you guess what nations these might be? (Yes, they are very obvious, arent they?)

    Staying to fight


    Now you might be wondering, what happens if I choose to refuse outside help? Well first of all, it is much harder to win. Below you can see the entire pre-peace branch for choosing to stay:
    When getting peace with Italy through this branch however, you can in fact gain territory from them, as long as you control it when you complete the focus Fait Accompli. What makes this branch harder is not only the lack of support from the West, but also the fact that you need to at a bare minimum control all of your core provinces to do the focus that grants you peace with Italy. The focuses here do however give some nice bonuses both to Haile Selassie as a Field Marshal, but also to the troops and generals of Ethiopia. Here is the full war with Italy part of the Haile Selassie focus tree.
    But once the war is done, whats next?
    As you can see here, there are two sub-branches to choose from following the end of the Italo-Ethiopian war ; The King of Kings sub-branch and the Rebuilding the Country sub-branch. The latter one is accessible through any of the war with Italy branches. The King of Kings branch is however only available to you if you managed to win the war without foreign help, cementing Haile Selassie as the true ruler of Ethiopia. Here you can upgrade his ruler trait, and get decisions to restore the long-gone Empire of Axum, gaining cores and wargoals on many of the kingdoms historical claims. You can then also choose between a couple of different end-game options, such as taking advantage of the Rastafari movement, and requesting overlordship of Jamaica from the British to expand your influence in the Americas, or embrace the Solomonic dynastys legacy and attempt to reclaim king Solomons lands from its occupiers, eventually coring it and moving your capital there. However, to do either of those you must have defeated the Italians without going into exile, and built the cult around the Emperor. If you didnt, you still have two choices open to you, which both focus on Africa.

    Some more stuff


    Actually, take a look at these new advisors Ethiopia has before you leave, because they have quite a few:
    And this guy:
    Military Personnel:
    And some Swedes and an American:
    But those arent all the advisors, as some of the ones available to the alt-hist branches are not shown here, but they can be a fun surprise for the next Ethiopia dev-diary. That was all for this time, as I didnt want to make this dev diary as long as the Italian one, but in a couple of weeks Ethiopia will return to showcase its BoP in more detail, as well as its a-historical paths. * Tbh - asked is a bit of an oversimplification. It was decided that Ethiopia would feature in this expansion - I was (figuratively) jumping up and down saying equivalents of pretty please So in the end arheo et.al. caved in and gave it to me

    Join the disacussion!



    [ 2022-06-29 13:01:00 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Developer Diary | Switzerland #1


    Hey everyone! You probably dont know me, but Im Carlo, the Content Designer in charge of Switzerland for BBA. Im very excited to present to you all, the Swiss Focus Tree, our first circular focus tree, allowing Switzerland to go back and forth between the Make Fondue and Stay Neutral focuses. Through the power of Fondue and Chill, plus all that Nazi gold, Switzerland will prevail over its rivals by completely staying out of the war in absolute comfort and safety.
    [Record Scratch Sound] If thats how you imagine Swiss life during World War II, I got news for you buddy, that is far from how it went. Yes, Switzerland is not a country most people associate with World War II games, but that doesnt mean it doesnt have a place in HoI, and in this Dev Diary I hope to bring you to my side of the Alps and show you how interesting and unique Switzerland can be in Hearts of Iron IV. First, its always a good idea to have a bit of historical context. Switzerland was founded in the late Middle Ages and from the start, it was a loose confederation of small territories near the alps (3 at this point). They pledged to help each other militarily and economically. This oath, or Eidgenossenschaft as its lovingly abbreviated, kept growing while always maintaining a decentralized government centered on the cantons, and with a strong military reputation (Despite their current neutrality). Then Napoleon forced Switzerland into a centralized Helvetic Republic, which didnt last long. Swiss Neutrality was established after the fall of Napoleon and of this Helvetic Republic, and then finally, in 1848 they became the Switzerland we know and love after adopting the 1848 Constitution following a short revolution (Revolutions were all the rage that year). So whats the Switzerland we know and love? A country with 4 different populations living as one in a period of rising ethno-nationalism. The oldest continuous democracy in Europe, second in the world only to the United States, and arguably, the most direct democracy in our times, and even more so in the 1930s. Each canton and the confederation itself decide most of their laws through referendums and a limited representative body. If youve ever wondered why the Country Leader of Switzerland is a building, thats not because it gained sentience, but because there is no Swiss President/Dictator/Regent as other countries have; The Swiss confederation is led by the bi-cameral Federal Assembly and a Federal Council of 7, with a mostly ceremonial First among equals Presidential role; only the whole Federal Council can act as the Head of State, not a single member. Switzerland in 1936 is a country gripped by the fear of war breaking out. Thanks to Germany going through Belgium during The Great War, they know that their status as a neutral country is not sacred, and when their two biggest neighbors, the Third Reich and France inevitably clash, theres a real possibility one of them will stomp through Switzerland to avoid the other's defenses. How to avoid this, while keeping Swiss Democracy alive, and being ready in case it actually happens are the main pillars of playing Historical Switzerland in Hearts of Iron IV. So what does the Swiss Focus Tree look like? Well like this:
    Because this ones more of a focus mountain than a focus tree, you always start at the peak, with the center being the historical path, and the sides the two planned alt-history branches, but it always starts with the Swiss Guiding Principles focus. This will initiate the Balance of Power system for Switzerland and trigger an event where you can choose the general direction Switzerland will take. Lets stop to talk a bit about the Swiss version of the Balance of power: If you dont know what the Balance of power is, make sure to read Mano de Zombis amazing and gargantuan Dev Diary.
    Switzerlands path through the Hearts of Iron period will depend heavily on where the power lays. Is the power mostly on the cantons? That means it will go the way it went historically, with local citizen militias and limited council power, which made it hard for the country to ally with a foreign power, but at the same time, prevented a central government from being intimidated into capitulation. If instead, the Balance of Power is in the council, youll be locked out of part of the Historical Path in the middle, but when the BoP closes a door, it opens a window into the two alt-history paths. Thats a topic for my next dev diary though.
    Each side and segment has its advantages too, the more cantonal power, the cheaper assigning advisors will be, and moving it to the council will grant you War Support. Some of the decisions in the other systems will depend on it, and others will affect it, so keeping an eye on it will be vital to your survival. Now lets keep going down the slope. These two focuses will kickstart the rearmament of Switzerland, giving you a National Spirit that will be helpful for you no matter which path you choose and can be upgraded later.

    Switzerland had committed to defending their country both physically and spiritually in 1935; we saw the beginning on the physical part with the rearmament focuses, and now its time to recommit to the spiritual bit. This will unlock the Spirit of Helvetia National Spirit, in its passive mode.

    As you progress through the Historical path, it will change to a defensive stance, an aggressive stance if you go alt-history or it might just stay in the passive stance. Each one also has an at war variation, and different modifiers for the six of them. This is fine
    In case youre wondering who this Helvetia person is, I must take you back to the Helvetic History Hole(tm): Back in Roman Empire times, a tribe called the Helvetii lived in what we now know as the Swiss Plateau, so people since have used the adjective helvetic to define confederations, republics and organizations in and around this area, specially after Napoleon created the Helvetic Republic''. Due to the multilingual nature of Switzerland, its official name in Latin is Confoederatio Helvetica (Yes, thats where the font name comes from) and its internet domain is .CH. From this root, in the 17th century Helvetia is popularized, the personification of Switzerland and the Swiss people, featured in coins, statues, stamps and World War II Grand Strategy games. Thats who Helvetia is. Ok, so far, I havent given you much of a chance to deviate from history, and thats because up to this point, this is a nation very committed to Democracy, Neutrality and Grassroots Defense, and even the alt-history paths will stem from the desire to keep these. Here is where the slope starts to open up:
    Historically, Switzerland fortified their borders with its three biggest neighbors, and the three countries it shares languages with, and with good reason, they all wanted to walk through Switzerland towards their enemy, and thought their shared language would serve as an excuse to annex it, or a possible door to friendly relations and taking them from neutrals to allies. Naturally though, fortifying against a country can be seen as suspicious, and thats why this triggers the start of a very important system: Absolute Neutrality.
    As a small neutral nation, you want to keep a balance between all countries around you so none of them feel like youre favoring one over the other, otherwise, they could use it as a way to argue that youve broken your neutrality, and prompt them to invade. This system keeps track of your biggest neighbors opinion of you, and allows you to appease them or antagonize them; most actions will have repercussions to the other countries' perception of you. If one of the countries considers you in grave violation of your neutrality, and has a very negative opinion of you, itll trigger a timer, at the end of which theyll get a wargoal against you and likely invade Switzerland, so you better scramble and do anything in your power to calm them, or its game over.
    This system is pretty flexible and can keep track of up to 4 majors around Switzerland, and even adjusts if one or more are in a faction. Also, many focuses will have negative and positive effects on this system, and others will require you to reach a certain opinion of them before starting them, so its integrated into how you play as Switzerland.
    After Ban the Swiss Nazi Party (Which does what it says on the tin, plus some negative opinion modifiers), we have the Armed Neutrality branch. This is the central defensive branch of the Swiss tree, and unlocks another system we need to talk about: The Swiss Citizen Militias.
    Going back to the Helvetic History Hole now. Because of Switzerlands political system, theres no centralized government powerful enough to conscript a large standing army, but on account of where Switzerland is located, it needs to have the ability to defend itself, or at least deter other countries from invading. This is why historically, the Swiss Army relied on training their population and giving them the required equipment to keep at home, so when needed, they would take up arms and form local militias. This means that they could have up to 20% of their population ready to be deployed in as quickly as 24 hours to stand up to any invaders. This is why Historical Switzerlands military needed its own system.
    Switzerland will start with a unique Recruitment Law giving it 10% recruitable population, and no negative effects, thats because the enlisted population is still participating in the economy. The downside is that you cannot train regular troops, only some mountaineers, to represent their small professional army, whose purpose was holding out for 24 hours until the civilian militias were ready.
    To make up the bulk of the army, you can train Militias (Italys DD also explains this new battalion type). There is a cap to how many divisions you can train, its a locked template and on top of that, the Dormant Citizen Militias National Spirit makes them very weak, but thats ok, you can deal with these issues by earning, and spending Military Readiness.
    You can find this system in the Decisions panel, and it lets you use Political Power, Command Power and other resources to gain Military Readiness, and then you can spend it to improve the Militias Template, increase the amount you can train, expand the Military Readiness cap, even increase your military production; but most importantly deploying your Citizen Militias, which removes Dormant Citizen Militia and adds Active Citizen Militia, allowing them to perform at their true level, but giving your economy some penalties, which grow the longer you keep them active.
    Back to the Focus tree, under Armed Neutrality youll find three branches; The Promote Guisan Branch, the Frontier Defense Plan Branch and a shared one in between. The Frontier Defense Plan was Switzerlands old strategy of fortifying the borders, and not giving any ground to the enemy, so this sub-branch focuses on improving divisions, and fortifying the borders. Historically, this plan was abandoned when Guisan was promoted to General and Commander-In-Chief.
    Another of the many quirks of the Swiss military and political systems, is that their military ranks only go up to Corps Commander, and there can only be a single General (Who also acts as Commander-In-Chief) when the country is at risk of, or at war. Only 4 people have been assigned this role, and the last was our guy Henri Guisan in 1939, who brought the strategy the Promote Henri Guisan sub-branch focuses on. Broadly speaking, the Rduit National approach consisted in letting the enemy advance through the Swiss Plateau and systematically retreat the armed forces to well fortyfied and supplied forts along the alps. Once there, they could maintain their extremely favorable positions and wreak havoc on the enemy, stuck on the exposed Swiss Plateau. The expectation was not necessarily to liberate the rest of the country, but to make it clear taking Switzerland wouldnt be easy, and thus deterring any invaders. This is why this sub-branch focuses on making it easier for you to hold out in the mountains for as long as possible, and even adds the Gotthard Pass victory point, which becomes the capital once Bern is lost.
    Ok, thats the Armed Neutrality branch done, now on to the rest! Switzerlands neutrality and proximity to the conflict made it a prime stage for espionage, for both the Allies and Axis, so of course, the Swiss government also needed to keep up with it, often collaborating with the Allies, and, sometimes unknowingly, with the Soviet Union through the Lucy Spy ring. On the historical part of this focus tree, you have two ways of getting a free Intelligence Agency: Federal Police Intelligence establishes the agency of the same name, an extension of the existing Federal Police, and gives you a National Spirit with a bonus to counter intelligence, and opens the door SpAb to further counteract foreign intelligence efforts, and other fun militaristic alt-history stuff I wont talk about today.
    On the other side we have Buero Ha, which focuses on building spy networks in other countries and opens up a bunch of defensive, cultural and resistance oriented focuses. Ha History Hole: The Swiss government couldnt risk other countries finding out they were gathering intelligence on them, so to keep it under wraps and have a measure of deniability, they established a covert pseudo-independent intelligence office; Hans Hausamanns Bro Ha (The Ha part comes from his name). It was an office in a hotel in Teufen with a couple of desks, and they gathered and reported on intelligence from different sources, including the Lucy Spy Ring, which deserves its own historical rabbit hole but not today.
    And that, in very broad strokes, is the Swiss Focus Tree, but theres still some important things to talk about. Ive babbled on about Switzerlands unique political system in real life, but now its time to explain how its being represented in HoI4: Switzerland will start with 3 assigned political advisors, and these represent the leading Federal Councilors (Out of the 7 on the real council), plus a President of the Confederation. Each advisor has one of the new traits unique to Switzerland, most of which correspond to the advisors role and/or political position during the period. Each year, starting from 1937, youll get an event prompting you to elect a new president from your active advisors, this advisor will be removed, and retired forever, but for the next year youll get a powerful decision based on the trait they had when they were advisors. After that you better assign a new advisor quickly, or youll suffer the consequences of an empty seat. In total there will be at least 25 Political Advisors to choose from with at least 10 different traits, that I hope will make for an engaging and unique system, and a key to the Alternate paths through its interactions with the Balance of Power. More about that on my next Dev Diary.
    At this point youve probably noticed that the map has changed a bit in and around the Alps, let me explain what weve done: The most important change is that we reshuffled the states in Switzerland, it now has five states: The Swiss Plateau, Western Swiss Alps, Eastern Swiss Alps, Ticino and Jura Mountains (Fun fact, this is where the term Jurassic comes from), theres also some new Victory Points. On top of that, Austria did get something after all, Voralberg, a new state I might talk about in the next Dev Diary.
    The other change you mightve noticed is that a lot of the provinces along the alps now have impassable borders, helping represent how much of an obstacle the alps were in moving troops and attacking (Unless you happen to have elephants), and showcasing one of Switzerlands bargaining chips during this period: the Saint Gotthard Pass. This route was vital as a fast passage between Germany and Italy, and the possibility of its destruction was a major deterrent against Invasion. HoI4s Switzerland now has 2 out of the 3 connections through the alps, making it a more tempting prize for anyone playing one of its neighbors; German command even considered invading Switzerland as a way of retreating from Italy in the late stages of the war.
    And thats about it. If these 2800+ words didnt at least pique your interest in the Swiss Focus tree, well We do have one extra card up our sleeve: Switzerland will feature the first dog in a Focus Icon, also featured as a National Spirit: Brandy the St Bernard. The focus Spirit of Saint Bernard will give bonuses for Field Hospitals, slightly ahistorical, but worth it.
    Hope this Dev Diary helped you understand all the ways the real Switzerland was and continues to be fascinating, and how it serves as a great base for unique gameplay for Hearts of Iron IV, or at the very least provided some mild entertainment and a nice dog picture. And if you wont have to wait too long for another super interesting country, because next week, its Ethiopia time! A country that has always been pivotal to World War II, now gets to have its moment to shine in Hearts of Iron IV. Join the forum discussion here!


    [ 2022-06-22 13:00:21 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Developer Diary | Italy #1

    Formazione Generali! The wait is over. In this gigante developer diary we explore the majority of the Italy focus tree! Of course, well save some secrets for later down the line. Due to Steam post limitations and the length of this diary, we can only host the publication on our own forums. To read the article, Click here


    [ 2022-06-15 13:01:35 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Patch 1.11.12 "Barbarossa"


    Patch 1.11.12 "Barbarossa"


    Checksum: 22d5 Balance: - Improved tank conversion costs for tank modules - Limited Stabilizer tank module to one per vehicle - Armor stat ARMOR_VS_AVERAGE changed from 0.3 to 0.4 to patch piercing - Reduced resource costs of tank upgrades, armor upgrades improved - Reduced high velocity gun piercing - Reduced tech piercing bonus for tank destroyers and motorised AT - Adjusted flame tank terrain modifiers - Recon tank stats are now proportional to unit size (including armor) - Equipment conversion speed bonuses unlocked by tech is no longer applied to tank production lines when NSB is active. Instead the bonus reduces the base cost of the conversion, which now is 90% of the chassis cost up from 20%. The techs will reduce the cost to 50% and 10% respectively. - Motorised equipment is now essential for motorised arty/AT/AA battalions UI: - Changed the icons for the techs Improved Equipment Conversion and Advanced Equipment Conversion to better communicate their effects. Database: - Fixed an issue where the only available 3d model for modern German tanks was an AA vehicle if axis armor pack DLC is enabled Bugfix: - Soviet Atomic Bomb Project focus is now properly tracking the current number of academies built and will now be unlocked when appropriate. - Fixed issue in which Invaders Must Die state modifier was not properly removed after the propaganda campaign finished. - Soviet focus Modernize the Far Eastern Fleet will now grant a different National Spirit if DLC Man the Guns is not active, using modifiers that work without MtG. - Small fix to a Bulgarian news event so that if Bulgaria is already in the Comintern the text makes sense - Turkish focus Align Bulgaria will now get bypassed if Bulgaria is a subject of any country (not only Turkey), so that the rest of the branch does not become inaccessible if Bulgaria is a subject of another country. - Fixed Issue in Soviet decision category Middle Eastern Diplomacy in which there was a non-existent tag being checked against. - Doctrine bonuses to tank max speed will now be taken into account when determining if a tank design's max speed is too low making it invalid. - When calculating total trucks needed at country level, take into account all controlled nodes and not just owned ones. - Added the missing sound effects for alert_doctrine_unlock, alert_officer_corps and alert_losing_trains. - Fixed equipment conversion resource cost calculation to prevent resources from sometimes being counted twice. For the forum discussion!


    [ 2022-06-09 09:24:57 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Announcement | Hearts of Iron 4: By Blood Alone


    Greetings Generals


    The long tradition of HoI anniversary surprises, while slightly delayed, has not been forgotten. Today, we have the pleasure of announcing to you the next milestone in the Hearts of Iron story: By Blood Alone. Over the coming months, well be revealing more on what each of these features consists of, but for now enjoy a snapshot of the future for Hearts of Iron. In By Blood Alone, you will chart the course of Mussolinis regime in Italy or subvert Italys historical path in one of many new alt-historical paths in the new Italian focus tree, driven by the constant involvement in war from the beginning to the end of the game. Choose to take on the task of resisting the Italian colonial occupation as Ethiopia in their new, expansive focus tree. Will you go into exile only to return stronger than ever when the greater conflict ignites, or can you beat the ultimate challenge and evict Italian troops from your land before forging a new path for your country in the prosperous Horn of Africa? Experience the true meaning of building tall by balancing your precarious situation as Switzerland, sandwiched between an ever-growing array of totalitarian regimes. Will you succumb to their pressure, or stand as a shining beacon of democratic ideals in the face of greater odds? Alongside a number of changes to the air warfare system, take advantage of a comprehensive Plane Designer feature, as well as numerous quality of life improvements and new functionality for owners of La Resistance and the intel system. Accompanying the plane designer, well be adding a whopping 67 new 3d plane models including a wide array of new Italian planes as well as going back and adding models to many important planes currently lacking them. In By Blood Alone, you will be able to make use of a variety of new demands in the overhauled peace conference feature. Demand the demilitarization of states, the dismantling of military industry in defeated foes, civilian factory war reparations, and access to resource rights in addition to the expected array of peace conference actions. Of course, we cant forget that navies played an important part of post-war negotiations - augment your victory by partitioning the navies of defeated foes, and put these behemoths of the sea to good use as you look towards the next conflict. Divisional Commanders will now be the bread and butter of your future officer candidates. Grow their skills passively as they perform their duties in command of divisions, reward their actions in combat with country-unique medals, and see their persistent achievements follow them as they are promoted to higher positions over the course of a game. Encounter up to 20 new unit models and associated SFX, 12 new radio-integrated music tracks, and new diplomatic actions as well as many more quality of life and functional improvements to HoI in By Blood Alone. As mentioned above, well be delving much deeper into what each of these features will consist of in the coming weeks and months leading up to release. Stay tuned for more information!

    Teaser Trailer


    Wishlist it here!


    Join the discussion here!



    [ 2022-06-07 14:01:37 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Designer Corner | Naval Rebalance


    Hello there, C0RAX here. Welcome aboard to my dev corner, in this thread I'll be going over the core introduction of the planned changes to naval gameplay.

    Why? The Live System:


    • Good ship design is unintuitive.
    • Combat revolves around exploiting oversights
    • Ahistorical meta

    Goals


    • Clearer design process
    • Meta based upon good structure and multiple key values
    • Making historic choices in naval design and composition work well in game

    Rebalance Overview


    • Tech Tree
    • Ship Designer
    • Hit profiles
    • Spotting
    • Fleet composition

    Tech tree


    The most obvious change is our first port of call today, this is the tech tree. There are a number of changes here that will be explained in further detail further to the aft of the dev corner.
    So firstly the naval tech tree has been split into 2, the naval tab contains hulls and tech directly linked to hulls. Let's take a look at what that looks like.
    As you can see it's much more concise than before, armor techs have been combined so each level will unlock both heavy and cruiser armours and are not linked to any specific hulls. SH armor still remains part of the super heavy battleship. Moving on to the new Naval Support tab.

    Here you will see quite a difference from the old tech tree. Gone are the secondary battery techs as they are now research via the medium gun techs
    Additionally the naval shell upgrades are now part of the gun lines acting as an intermediary tech between new modules. But don't worry about having to research more techs, XP reductions are gone but base research times are down.
    Dual Purpose Guns And let's finally address that big elephant in the room Dual purpose guns now branch off the light gun line. They are a 1939 onward tech, with the UK,USA,Japan & France starting with the Basic dual purpose Battery Researched and historic ships starting equipped with dual purpose Batteries and dual purpose Secondaries. Dual purpose guns lack the piercing of regular guns but make up for it by also providing AA.
    The current values for the dual purpose batteries are not final and are currently aligned with their non AA equivalents.


    Finally we have the 1944 Advanced medium dual purpose battery which packs a punch both to ships and planes, which should you reach it could wreak havoc for enemy aircraft and destroyers alike.
    Hit profiles & damage ("well the front fell off") Quick primer on hit profile in case you don't know what they are. A Hit profile is the calculation used to determine how easy it is to hit a ship. This hit profile is then divided by the accuracy of the weapon type a ship is firing (10 * (Hitprofile/weaponaccuracy)^2). Any other effects that affect hit chances such as weather/time of day are applied to the final value. Currently the live game calculation for a hit profile is the ( (visibility * 100) / speed) . So a ship with a high hit profile will be easier to hit than one with a small hit profile. A change to the hit profile calculation is aimed to reduce the impact of speed on hit chance and should flatten the effect of speed for much slower ships. The current but not final working formula is: ( (visibility * 100) / ( (speed/2) + 15) ) In addition to this there have been some other changes for hit chance New hit chance modifiers that affect hit chance in the same way that weather affects hit chance. The new modifiers replace existing stat modifiers for modules/tech.
    • Radar and fire control increase light and heavy guns hit chance
    • homing torpedoes now increase torpedo hit chance
    • Base critical chance is reduced

    Spotting
    • Spotting is now min capped at 0.01% progress per hour, so you will always spot a task force after 10,000 hours (417 days)
    • Random chance to instantly spot (encounter) equal to your hourly progress, so if you have a 4% hourly progress you also have a 4% chance to encounter a task force.
    • Sub and surface detections for a task force are now listed in the task force information tooltip.

    Fleet Composition First joining an ongoing battle was very painful and making strike forces much less useful this should be much less of an issue with much lower and shorter lived penalties for positioning.
    Additionally SUPREMACY_PER_SHIP_BASE has been reduced from 100>75 so that IC and manpower have a greater impact on naval supremacy.

    Ship Designer


    The ship designer has some of the most major changes to existing ships and modules. Let's go through them by groupings.. Firstly I want to say that you can no longer have both medium cruiser and light cruiser guns on the same design, fitting both will invalidate the design. This will eliminate one of the largest exploits in current ship design and should prevent ships being unintentionally protected by screening. Now we will get into some gritty details of the current value changes for the rebalance. (RED=changed values, BLUE=New values and BLACK=unchanged) Changes to speed,reliability and Production cost.





    Changes to speed for hulls

    On speed it should be much harder to get 40kt ships now - faster ships hover around ~35kt with slower ships being in the 30kt range. Some older ships and submarines remain well below 30kt and will need upgrading if you want their speed to match modern ships. Submarine Visibility
    Now these are the normal changes to modules and ships, but that's not all we have some new modifiers that are replacing or adding to existing modules too. Fire control/Radar

    Torpedoes

    Armor In addition to the new modifiers below for armor a review of armor values and piercing is planned, but I dont have a completed set of changes for that yet so you will have to wait for future announcements on how that looks.

    As always If you have any questions feel free to ask here.

    JOIN THE DISCUSSION



    [ 2022-06-01 13:00:26 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Air Changes | Developer Corner


    Hey Everyone! I am back this week to talk to you a bit about some changes we are making to air management and combat. The first thing I want to get out of the way is that this is not a Man the Guns style rework of combat and management systems. Our focus on air changes have mostly revolved around quality of life and balance changes to existing systems, while largely maintaining the structures people are familiar with (with a couple of exceptions). So, let's get into it! Starting off with a QoL change I am very happy about: Simplified Wing Deployment. Anyone who has experience with managing air wings probably has some complaints about how deploying wings works. The live system requires three clicks in the best case (four if you include choosing a base) to deploy a single wing into an empty airbase. In the worst case this requires more clicks and doing some math for creating a large wing that can later be divided evenly. Now, we are adding quick deploy buttons to the air base UI to allow deployment of a wing in a single click. We are also keeping the old deployment menu for more advanced deployment options. Also, in this menu, we have simplified the flow for deploying single and multiple wings at once. WIP UI design of simplified wing deployment tools. Note the art style here is not indicative of a change in art direction for our UI. In the first image we see the setup that can be done to select fast deploy options from any air base.
    In the second Image we see the newer version of quick deploy within the advanced deployment menu. You now have a set of filters to only show planes of a specific type, and you can now set the reinforce preference on all of the wings you are about to deploy, or individual ones.
    One of the most visible changes to air management, and hopefully a big quality of life improvement for most people, is the addition of Air Groups. The first thing I want to say is this is not Army Groups or Fleets. For now, and the foreseeable future, we are not adding Air Marshals or any sort of mechanical impact to using Air Groups. Air Groups are an organizational structure and nothing more. What it will do is enable the grouping and selection of multiple air wings across multiple locations bases for easier management. These groups will be displayed when in the air map mode so that you do not have to hunt down your wings on the map when you want to interact with them. A very much WIP view of our current air groups
    Of the changes we are making, one of the most notable is moving to standardized/fixed wing sizes. This change comes with a loss of flexibility in some situations and makes managing smaller numbers of airplanes a bit more complicated. However, I think that real air combat in HoI4 is measured in thousands of airplanes and not dozens. We are currently looking at 100 sized wings for most aircraft, with size 10 wings for a few specific equipment types(scout plans, CV planes, ect). This allows us to streamline wing deployment and some other management stuff such as not having AI take up weird percentages of air bases. It also makes balance easier and fixes a few exploit cases. This may take some getting used to but I feel it improves the overall experience of managing large numbers of aircraft. The final change I want to discuss today is an addition to the combat system. We are adding a new mechanic for intercepting planes in regions enroute to their target. In most cases, engaging planes in their target region will still be most effective. But in others, such as when range is a factor, the region being crossed has a bunch of engagement and spotting bonuses, and in a few other cases leaning into combat in an intermediary region can be a good idea. Beyond these more concrete changes we are doing a balance pass on existing air combat mechanics. A lot of this is still too WIP to discuss, but I would like to highlight one of our objectives which is decoupling agility and speed with more impact given to speed in later air superiority fighter designs, but more on that at a later date. As always, I wish you all the best and don't hesitate to tell us how these changes make you feel. Until next time o7

    Join the full discussion!



    [ 2022-05-18 14:01:25 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Patch 1.11.11 "Barbarossa"


    Patch 1.11.11 "Barbarossa"


    Checksum: 8e75 Balance: - Adjusted the ship refitting cost calculation. The base cost is now a percentage of the hull cost, and the cost for any module changes are added on top of that. The same is true for tanks. - Removed path connecting advanced light tank chassis to modern tank chassis research Stability & Performance: - Fixed rare OOS happening when players joined an MP game after playing a different game Modding: - Hot-reloading AI strategy plans will not crash the game. Database: - Changed the starting British Motorized Division template to use motorized - sorry, motorised - recon - Added some bypass conditions to Czech focuses - Unlocked fuel tank module for French cruiser submarines Bugfix: - Only display the ship refitting speed and cost modifiers when MtG is active. - Added Bypass to "Demmand Lithuanian Annexation" if Poland already controls all Lithuanian states except for Memel - Fixed units being unable to convert a move order to a retreat order when attacked - Fixed CTD that could happen during railway gun positioning. For the full patch details & discussion


    [ 2022-05-12 08:19:37 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Development Corner | Peace Conferences


    And we shall have peace...


    Hi folks, Its been a while since our last update on future plans for HoI, but were about ready to show you some of the work weve been doing. Before we begin, Id like to indicate that therell be some differences in how we do this. As Ive previously stated, we want to begin discussion around features and implementation details a little earlier in the process than usual. This means a couple of things. Firstly, while well be showing off some individual features, were not yet ready to give an overview of the entire scope of our next release yet. This will, of course, be coming in the near (ish) future. Secondly, youll be getting an early look at what weve been working on, and this comes with all the caveats you might expect: lots of WIP design, interface, and gameplay. Lastly, for the time being well be producing these design corner style diaries every two weeks, rather than weekly. This is likely to change as we get closer to being complete. Before I hand over, Ill give you a quick run down of the directive for the feature were looking at today: Peace Conferences. Our primary objectives are to:
    • Create a system that appropriately rewards participation.
    • Allow for conflict and conflict resolution within the scope of the conference.
    • Create a limited economy within conferences, where you may have to sacrifice your overall aims in order to secure immediate concerns.
    • Produce more realistic outcomes where the AI is concerned
    And with that, Ill hand over to @Yaboi_bobby to dive into the deeper details! Hey everyone, over the past months we have been working to overhaul the peace conference system. It is no secret that in HoI4 the peace conference system has a number of issues with how it functions. Combining that with the fact that it is a surprisingly hard interface to learn how to use, it is rightly one of our most disliked and complained about features. We have taken a large step away from how the system currently works and I am excited to show what the future holds for peace conferences. The first major departure we made from the old system was shifting from absolute claiming of territory to contestable claiming of territory. In the old PC system once somebody claimed a state, that was it. That claim would be locked in and no one would be able to interact with it further. Now, players may contest other players' interactions in the conference. This doesn't come without cost. Contesting claimed territory will come with a point tax, and every time a contest happens the price of interacting with that state climbs further. This effectively creates a bidding war between all parties invested in a given state. This change should have some interesting outcomes, allow mid and low level participants to have more agency, and give players the tools needed to go after the states that are most important to them for things like achievements and forming new tags. Here Brazil prepares to bid upon Chao Boreal which has already been claimed by Argentina
    Contestable bids help solve some problems, but without further changes many still persist. One of the most obvious issues was how the old system handled turn order. The old system would order countries by participation, and then go in order based upon the number of points held by participants. Where it gets weird is the fact that the order of the list would get updated after each nations turn. This meant that often the top two participants could have enough points when a turn ended that they would simply exchange turns between them and end up completely controlling the conference. This was in some ways a good method to allow two big faction leaders to have majority control after the end of a historical WW2, but is bad in virtually every other case. We did a lot of thinking about turn order and how to structure the turn in general. Slowly we came to the conclusion that any system with a visible turn order, no matter how it was structured, would put people at disadvantage or advantage depending on turn order. This led to the creation of what we have been calling the Blind Bid system. The main concept of the Blind Bid system is that everyone acts simultaneously. The way this functions is that, each turn, every conference participant uses their points to make bids. When every player has finished making their bids, all of the bids are evaluated at once. Bids have a fixed cost much like the current claims do, but now with more modifiers. In any instance where two participants made a bid on the same state, that state is marked as contested and the players involved have the majority of their points spent on the bid refunded. Each time a state is contested, it increases in cost for all subsequent rounds. This effect stacks on a state each turn in which a contested bid happens. The other side of this is uncontested bids. Each turn a bid goes uncontested, it increases in cost for everyone else except for the person who made the bid. This acts to, over the course of several turns, lock in bids as they become too expensive to realistically contest. Brazil and Argentina attempting to resolve a contested bid on Chaco Boreal
    At this point you may be thinking Yeah OK, but I get points each turn, how does the conference end? This leads us to the final major change: limited points. This is pretty self explanatory. Each participant will get a fixed amount of points over the course of the conference based upon war participation score. The way we do this is by distributing a percentage of those points every turn until all points are distributed. Most of the work here comes down to rebalancing war participation and finding what we consider a good point ceiling for a conference. Limited points will mean, in some cases, that loser nations survive more intact than they did previously, but this should not be a common case. In general, we think this creates a fun and somewhat tense conference experience. Beyond the big three changes listed so far we have a number of smaller tweaks, adjustments, and rebalance to overall cost of interactions and participation. However, that topic is not worth going into at this point as it is still very much WiP. So with that I will conclude the first overview of the peace conference rework. We look forward to your feedback, hot takes, and hopefully excitement. Until next time o7

    Join the discussion!



    [ 2022-05-04 13:06:09 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Hearts of Iron - Official Discord

    Generals!


    The frontlines are expanding! Our community is making an operational push onto a new platform! That's right, D(iscord)-Day is upon us!

    JOIN THE CONVERSATION, JOIN THE FIGHT, JOIN THE SERVER




    [ 2022-04-07 13:01:00 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Barbarossa Patch 1.11.10 - Checksum 09ac

    Patch 1.11.10 "Barbarossa"


    Bugfix


    - Added a bypass to the Free French "Form the National Committee" Focus to avoid blocking the player if they don't have 90 Legitimacy - Fixed a problem in British Alternate Strategy Plans when historical focuses are off without a specific strategy plan being selected - Fixed issue where Estonia and Latvia would not follow the historical focuses - Added missing leader tooltip in Soviet focus The Glory of the Red Army. Pavel Rybalko will become a general after completing the focus, and now everyone knows it. - Turkey no longer gets a wargoal on themselves when refusing Balkan Federation demands - Niche Role will now be correctly set correctly when AI designs ships. This also applies to players using "auto design". - Japanese puppets should now get the corrects name - Fixed achievement "Better than Szent Istvan" being impossible to earn due to a an issue with the new character system - Naval battles will no longer count towards combat duration for career profile


    [ 2022-04-07 08:16:48 CET ] [ Original post ]

    A.E.I.O.U | Hearts of Iron IV


    Greetings commanders!


    As youll be aware, it has been a while since our last dev diary, and Im super thrilled to finally release what weve been working on since No Step Back. We take great pride in our attention to gameplay telemetry that we receive from keen HOI4 players from across the globe, and our data wizards regularly furnish us with relevant information with which to steer development of features. After NSB, we were informed of a clear and scientific trend in the data:
    Thats right folks, it turns out that 99.5%* of you exclusively play monarchies. It was quite clear to us that we had a mandate to finally concede to public demand, and add the long-awaited Habsburg branch to the Generic focus tree! *These results were verified by independent election officials. Now, regardless of which nation you hold dear, you too can find and install a local member of the Habsburg dynasty, taking part in the restoration of everyones favourite neighbourhood hegemony.
    After discovering a stray member of the Habsburg dynasty, steer your nation to glory by choosing an appropriate spouse or accidentally inheriting some countries you werent aware existed. No Habsburg tree would be complete without an edifying array of royal marriage candidates, so weve included plenty of historically accurate examples:
    Once you have secured the bloodline, you can, naturally, expand your sights to join your relatives in other countries in vying for the ultimate prize:
    As you might expect, every nation can now join and restore the Holy Roman Empire regardless of where they start. In addition to the usual focus tree content, well be expanding our ambitions somewhat! Well be including three new realistic continuous focuses to the Habsburg branch:
    Ultimately we feel that this adds a great deal to the generic focus tree experience, importantly providing a thoughtful, plausible and historically inspired approach that you can enjoy with nations as far afield as you like. A.E.I.O.U, folks!

    Read the full DD here!



    [ 2022-04-01 12:01:10 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Patch 1.11.9 "Barbarossa"

    Patch 1.11.9 "Barbarossa"


    UI: - Fixed some DX11 and OpenGL UI elements being 1 pixel off by making them incorrectly positioned the same way DX9 does Modding: - The game will no longer show an empty "Modify Government" alert when using hidden ideas Stability & Performance: - Fixed CTD due to AI not being notified when a leader is removed from a country Bugfix: - Fixed adding or removing divisions to a general under a marshal not updating the marshal's abilities' effects - Fixed capping of the reliability value to 100% in the Tech Details view - Fixed a bug where character traits would sometimes duplicate on level up. - Fixed Radio II XP cost for the tank designer being higher than intended - Isoroku Yamamoto will no longer have an extra 'I' in his name - Fixed a rare issue where the Japanese coal liquification focus could fail to add a refinery - Fixes to French career profile translation - Fixed typo in the communist party of Yugoslavia


    [ 2022-03-10 09:38:34 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Patch 1.11.8 "Barbarossa"

    Patch 1.11.8 "Barbarossa"


    - Added an option in the settings menu to disable cloud storage backup of your career profile statistics. - Players that own most major DLCs should no longer see promotions for the DLC Subscription in the main menu. - Fixed potential cloud storage issues for the career profile which could result in your statistics not being backed up. - Fixed a potential desync issue with statistics collection in multiplayer - Fixed the "Civil wars" stat collection for "Battle for the Bosporus" DLC.


    [ 2022-02-24 11:04:12 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Dev Diary - Telemetry and data

    Hello there, the time has come to do a fun dive into what you've been playing the game as a community. So over this diary we are going to look into some of the trends and statistics we seen from our telemetry and see how we use it to gain insights in current player trends when working on HOI4. The wonderful data team have been working to get us all the information we wanted and I hope you enjoy seeing some of their great work. As a forward point, as with any data collection we do not store any personal information or anything that can used to identify players in accordance with GDPR. So first of we will start with something fun, can you guess what this graph is telling us.
    If you guessed this was us spotting the continuous naval production focus exploit being discovered you get a gold star, although it seems some of you are still very much into using the focus. With telemetry we can work to understand our players by seeing how you play and this lets us form an experience players will enjoy. we see this in many ways, for example we can see by player difficulty settings players really shy away from the harder difficulties.
    We can also see how players are reacting to new content, here we can see the soviet union and Poland grow and maintain solid new highs in terms of sessions played. Germany still remains you favourite major to play, and for those of you that like playing minors the PRC seems to be the country to go for.
    Now lets get into some more specific game related data, player play behaviours are something that always interesting to know. You might think you know what most players are doing from discussions on various discussion platforms, streams and videos, however what's even better is knowing for sure what the meta and average player does. For example many people really need to check their infantry equipment stockpile late game
    Seriously players really enjoy making infantry equipment 3
    Alright that's allot of graphs, and we know graphs are not how we get views, so lets take tried and trusted top 5's for spin. We will start with rapid fire round of nukes so. Top 5 target nations:

    • Germany
    • Soviet union
    • Japan
    • USA
    • England
    Top 10 Target provinces:
    • Tokyo
    • London
    • Berlin
    • Hiroshima
    • Moscow
    • Nagasaki
    • Washington
    • Osaka
    • Nagoya
    • Paris
    Top 5 countries nuking:
    • Germany
    • Soviet union
    • USA
    • England
    • Italy
    As we can see players are really not very imaginative with their nuke targets or they share a strange wish to nuke all the same places. Please also let me know why you really like nuking Paris in the comment below. We can now take a trip over to something newer, its that new shiny toy the tank designer. I must say if there was a meta with tank design someone forgot to tell players because the only consistent design trend has been making cheap flame tanks. So here we have your favourite modules for each category over the last month
    How about your favorite Tank role designs, featuring some monster MBT design that players love.
    You guys also have some erm "interesting" collective opinions when it comes to amphibious tanks.
    We have also see that about 10% of you and only about 4% of total designs are made with auto design, this is something that reinforces our desire to improve this element of the designers.
    Alright lets get into some more gritty details. first off we have been seeing how player designs have been changing since release in response to changes in patches and the design meta developing.


    Next up lets see how you've been using those handy preferred tactics, it neck and neck over what players think is the best one for the army.
    But you have a clear favourite for generals.
    But what about all those new focus trees, well lets take a look at how you traverse focus trees. here we look at what exclusive choices you are making when playing with the new focus trees. As a community players will always trend toward the path that lets them expand and be independent so most of the breakdowns are as expected. however its also very useful to know what specific choices players make within these paths.





    Construction now, when to switch to MIL's from CIV's is always an topic for debate. as we can see though the change happens on average quite early with the first year averaging at 13.17 CIV's built. This is consistent over most majors outside SOV, with many being much more extreme than the average.
    Additionally you always need more railways and infrastructure.
    Finally I'll bring us to Division meta. this might be surprising but meta divisions while definitely popular, are not as ubiquitous as online discussion would have you believe.
    As you can see we have the usual suspects of the 10-0's, 7-2's and 14-4's but they are nowhere near dominant in the average game. The situation becomes even less unified once we take support companies into account
    That wraps it up for this Dev Diary, If you have anything specific you're interested in from this brief overview let me know and maybe we can do a deep dive in future.

    For the full diary and discussion click here



    [ 2022-02-23 14:07:34 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Patch 1.11.7 "Barbarossa

    Patch 1.11.7 "Barbarossa"


    - Added a Career Profile where players can view statistics about their playthrough - Added promotion for the new DLC Subscription


    [ 2022-02-17 18:46:17 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Hearts of Iron IV | Subscription Service and Career Profile Update


    Greetings Generals!


    We have two big things to talk about today so let's dive into it. First of all Hearts of Iron 4 is joining other PDX titles, and gaining an additional way to experience our catalog of DLC through a subscription model. If you have any questions about the subscription service, farther down the post there is a FAQ, and well do our best to answer any questions you have in the comments. Second, and unrelated to the subscription service, all players will have access to their Career Profile from the title screen in Hearts of Iron 4. This will track information about your time playing HoI, from this point forward. It will look like this!
    And if you own any DLC (or are currently subscribed), you will be able to see per DLC additional info, as seen here by clicking on the DLC banners at the top.
    The Career Profile is entirely unrelated to the subscription service, so ALL players will have access to these infographics just by playing the game. The Career Profile will be live tomorrow, Wednesday the 16th.

    Subscription Service FAQ


    How do I get the subscription?


    You need to own the base game only, then simply purchase game time from the Steam store page. There is also a button on the title screen that will take you there if you are not currently subscribed.

    What does the subscription include?


    The subscription will give you access to Together for Victory, Death or Dishonor, Waking the Tiger, Man the Guns, La Resistance, Battle for the Bosporus, No Step Back, and cosmetic DLCs. Future releases will be covered in the subscription as well.

    Why a subscription?


    With a plethora of DLC options to choose from, starting out from scratch can be daunting to new players. This is an affordable way for players to experience the entire HoI4 catalog without having to weigh which items they would prefer to purchase. This does not mean it is the only way to get DLC moving forward. The subscription service is entirely optional, and buying DLCs as you have always done is still, and always will be available.

    I already bought a bunch of HoI4 DLC, will this affect me?


    Nope! Nothing will change for you. You still own all your DLC and you still have the option to purchase future DLC.

    What happens if I stop subscribing?


    If you stop subscribing, you will lose access to any content you have not separately purchased.

    I won't be playing HoI for a while, how do I cancel my subscription?


    Canceling is handled through your Steam account. Visit Account Details, where you can cancel a subscription at any time. Your canceled subscription will remain active until the paid plan expires.

    Will my subscription cover future DLC?


    Yes! When new DLC and content packs are released, current subscription owners will have immediate access to them upon release.

    What if I want to buy a DLC?


    That option is still available and always will be. The subscription service is an additional option that some players may find better suited to their situation. It is in addition to, and not instead of, a normal purchase.

    Can I get a refund?


    If a renewable subscription has not been used during the current billing cycle, you may request a refund within 48 hours of the initial purchase or within 48 hours of any automatic renewal. Content is considered used if any games within the subscription have been played during the current billing cycle or if any benefits or discounts included with the subscription have been used, consumed, modified or transferred. More details can be found in Steams refund policy.

    Get the subscription here



    [ 2022-02-15 17:18:27 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Barbarossa Patch 1.11.6 - Checksum: 630e | LIVE | Patch Notes

    Patch 1.11.6 "Barbarossa"


    Balance


    - Flattened tank chassis IC cost, raising earlier chassis by 10-20%, up to no change at later chassis. - Transport planes now cost fuel to run. - Reduced truck damage from logistics strike mission by approx 30%, reduced train damage from logistics strike mission by approx 15%

    Modding


    - Fixed dynamic modifiers not returning localized keys when supplied - set_nationality effect will no longer check if the character is 'available' in the target country before transferring them - set_nationality on characters will no longer cause their owning country to reset to their original country on loading savegame. This addresses several CTDs and some unexpected behaviour

    Stability & Performance


    - Fixed OOS and other subtle issues caused by bad ordering of logistics stockpile in deployment logic - Fixed CTD with mods that fire leaders without giving AI a proper 7 days notice period - Liberal use of diplomatic_relation in script will not longer slowly corrupt memory, triggering random CTD and OOS

    Bugfix


    - Fixed CTD when clicking on provinces with no owner (mods only)


    [ 2022-02-14 09:09:13 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Hearts of Iron IV - 2022 Content Battleplan


    Greetings all!


    As youll no doubt be aware, the launch of the No Step Back expansion last year was the climax of a busy year of development for the HoI team, and it continues to be one of our best received releases to date. Of course, the last year also saw the departure of @podcat as Game Director who was reassigned to Siberia greater things at Paradox. Many of you will also have read the roadmap document that was produced towards the beginning of HoI4 development, and are asking questions as to the veracity of that plan under a new director, and whether I have any different ideas or plans to announce.

    Looking Forwards


    I mentioned at the beginning of my tenure that both @podcat and I see HoI4 in broadly similar terms. This hasnt changed, and you can expect to see many of the parts of the previous roadmap make an appearance at some point in the future. My approach to a Grand Plan, however, may be somewhat different. I have a preference for leaving plenty of space for reactive development (something that served us well on Imperator), and while there are many things that I feel are ripe for future development, I am also keen to leave a lot of space for changing course and acting on community sentiment. There are two main points I want to raise before we get to details, however. Firstly, we intend to up the tempo of our releases a little. This is, of course, an ambition, and not a promise, however it informs some further decisions related to the development of HoI. Namely, that we are considering ways to change how and when we release information on development to you folks. Since faster development is the goal, this also means getting ideas into public view slightly faster, for feedback and conversation. Were not exactly sure how this will look yet, but it is likely that therell be a reorganization of the traditional dev-diary schedule into something that feels less like a milestone delivery. This comes in tandem with a need to shift the communitys expectations on what in development means: getting fans accustomed to seeing placeholders, WIP balance, and half-built systems in early phases, and seeing things develop as time goes on. The last major point here is that we recognize a need to maintain the game as well as to develop it, especially if development pace is picking up. Were still considering how best to achieve this, and Im watching initiatives such as the Custodian team on Stellaris with curiosity. For the time being, what this is likely to manifest as, is the inclusion of older system maintenance into our patch planning - you may start to see patch bulletin features including things such as minor focus tree revamps, as well as attention paid to older systems and expansion content.

    Roadmap


    As mentioned above, the 2020 roadmap for HoI4 included many things which have now either been completed or rendered unnecessary. This leaves several from podcats list which I believe are still important for the future of the game:
    • Improvements to frontline stability (progress in NSB, more to come)
    • Long term goals and strategies to guide ai (progress in NSB)
    • Improving peace conferences
    • Update core national focus trees with alt-history paths and more options (Italy)
    • Wunderwaffen projects
    • More differences between sub-ideologies and government forms
    • More National Focus trees
    • Make defensive warfare more fun
    • Adding mechanics to limit the size of your standing army, particularly post-war etc
    • Have doctrines more strongly affect division designing
    • Strategic and tactical AI improvements
    In addition to these items, I will of course add some of my own personal intentions:

    Great Power Diplomacy


    This is one area that I feel doesnt need much explanation. More diplomatic tools are a clear area for expansion, and a careful look at how this module can be developed without interfering with the overarching global war, is likely to happen.

    Economic Decision Making


    The economic system is very abstracted in HoI, and I do not foresee ever making it a major part of the game loop. This said, there are elements of an industrial economy that I feel could do with being part of decision making in HoI.

    Immersive/Roleplay Elements


    Optional tools for making your mark on a game, and/or development of further building blocks to enhance attachment to a HoI campaign. Bring the simulation to life. And of course, many more that I feel do not need as much of an explanation:
    • Battleplanner improvements
    • Advisors/internal politics improvements
    • Ideological distinctions
    • Multiplayer & social layer improvements & suppor
    t I like to remain as open as possible to the needs of the community, and the inclusion or omission of any particular item above should not be considered set in stone. As we look at how we plan on structuring future communications, there may be some space for a few more dev diaries on what youve all been getting up to in NSB in the near(ish) future! /Arheo


    [ 2022-02-09 13:19:01 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Hearts of Iron IV: Barbarossa Patch 1.11.5 Notes

    ################################################################ ######## Patch 1.11.5 "Barbarossa" ######### ################################################################ ################################## # AI ################################## - Majors will now send volunteers to the Spanish Civil War even without La Resistance - AI will no longer consider enemy lakes to be dangerous - AI has learned the definition of insanity and will now try to avoid attacking in same place if previous invasion failed - AI will be more careful with their attacks if they start running out of manpower - AI now assigns free aces to valid existing wings instead of only when creating new wings - AI is now significantly less likely to release collaboration governments unless they have narrative reasons to do so ################################## # UI ################################## - Supply map mode allows normal interactions with naval unit counters and doesn't hide fleet windows - Fixed ship stats details pages not showing correct supply usage - Fixed UI elements highlighting spurriously when tech template would unlock equipment which isn't included in current DLC profile - Fixed Army and Navy view windows opening on top of each other - Fixed shift+k shortcut for training air/navy - Decision map icons with CP costs no longer overlap unreadably - Fixed rail upgrade buttons sometimes not being generated. Buttons now line up with rails connecting to naval bases. - Fixed Railway Gun supply icon never showing up and being in the wrong place when it did - Fixed naval unit counters not showing low supply icon - Naval battle screen now correctly shows admiral portraits - Fixed operative map icons not getting frame mask applied - Updated equipment conversion and ship refitting tooltips to use accurate language and include the relevant values and modifiers. - Hold units command now applies to all selected units when mixed armies are selected - Supply bottleneck tooltip should now include undersized ports ################################## # Database ################################## - The Race for Germany achievement will no longer fail if the player does not control Luxembourg at the time of German surrender (it's complicated) - Non-NSB tanks will now have their correct fuel usage again. It was fun while it lasted! - Brazil should no longer have access to non-NSB tanks with NSB active ################################## # Modding ################################## - Added on_capitualtion_immediate on_action. This will be executed at the very start of the capitulation process, where on_capitulation is played in the middle of the process, which can bias the triggers result. - Added multiplicative modifier equipment_conversion_ic_cost which reduces conversion IC cost for non-naval equipment edited with the equipment designer (i.e. tanks when NSB is active). - Game will now try to reconcile provinces declared as coastal without bordering a seazone (and vice versa). Check your error log! - Invalid buildings (like naval bases in landlocked provinces) in history setup will now be ignored and reported in error log. - Modifiers declared in advisor character entries should now properly apply and persist between saves - Made set_character_name also work for unit leaders - Fixed a CTD when going over the building state cap with off-map buildings ################################## # Balance ################################## - Blitzkrieg Theorist advisors now have increased base cost - Smooth talking charmer now reduces maintenance cost for improving relations. - Backroom Backstabber no longer grants political power factor, and instead grants subverseive activities cost; drift defence factor buffed to 0.25 - Compassionate Gentlemen now reduce resistance damage to garrisons in addition to monthly opinion gain - Ideological Crusader now grants party popularity stability modifier in addition to old effects - Armaments Organizer now increases supply hub construction -speed- by 10% - Balance changes for armor and varient units - Moved High velocity 2 to antitank_4 tech - Increase mot equipments to 36 for mot AT - Halved motorised breakthrough and armor - Reduced AT gun piercing - Added missing tungsten cost to mot rocket arty - Total rebalance of tanks - Tank weapons now based on turret weight class ################################## # Stability & Performance ################################## - Fixed player/ai list not being properly reset when going back to menu, triggering OOS on new games - Significantly improved game startup time ################################## # Graphics ################################## - Fixed naval fort model luminance problem ################################## # Bugfix ################################## - Fixed issue where Danzig could get stuck with negative modifier when Polish Danzig focuses were getting bypassed. - When loading a save from a lost ironman game, observer mode is loaded and ironman flag should be turned off. - Fixed script parser silently ignoring last line of a file if it didn't contain a newline - Fix positioning of the Expand Polish Intelligence branch when Man the Guns is not active. Without MtG the focus Expand Polish Intelligence will no longer require the player to complete the (MtG DLC-locked) parent focus Prepare for the Inevitable. - Added newline at the end of equipment bonus tooltip - Fixed George VI national spirit showing an advisor portrait instead of the regular national spirit portrait. - Hooked-in several NSB Baltic portraits for generals that were using generic ones. - Fix AI Queueing more railway upgrades than it intended - Fix allied task force local supply draw - fixed a reference to a missing German armor 3d model (this should not alter any 3d assets being displayed, just cleaned up the error log) - Fixed issue where Generals, Field Marshals and Admirals were not being transfered when annexing through Polish and Lithuanian monarchist events. - Made it less likely that The Soviet Union partitions Poland with Lithuania if Lithuania is AI, and even less likely if Poland is controlled by the player. - Spanish generals should again be able to properly pick a side when the Civil War starts - Fixed exploit which allowed circumvention of the building removal cooldown effective while at war. - Adapt assignable trait skilled_staffer so field marshals can also gain xp in that trait. - Air Supply now redistributes supply consumption to the hosting airbase. - Fixed bugs with multiple air supply missions having zero effect." - Soviet focuses will no longer grant tank designs if NSB is not active. - Soviet focuses requiring certain armor tech will now check for the appropriate tech based on NSB being active or not. - German focus Danubian Membership will no longer be bypassed if only one of the countries is gone, a subject, or allied to Germany. It requires all three countries to fulfill one of those conditions in order to get bypassed. - Fixed supply network sometimes reporting no connection when shortest path traveled through an enemy province - Added loc to an unlocalized Estonian country flag - Fixed continous focus exploit which allowed stacking modifiers - In civil war process, when copying unit leaders, use the clone function rather than recreating the unit leader from template (some unit leaders do not have template). Also use the character merge mecanism for those copies too if the revolter country receiving those copies already have the character. - Fixed crash caused by invalid naval invasion order - Railway guns should no longer be able to end up in a naval invasion - Fixed crash caused by invalid province templates in mods during trade route computation - Fixed CTD when playing tutorial videos or opening the ingame browser on DirectX 11 - Fixed Empire of Brazil being so much into Fascism - Fixed inconsistencies with Dutch Wilhelmina national spirit portrait. - Fixed logistics strike mission not taking plane number into account correctly - Soviet focus 'Committee in Exile' focus can now be bypassed if the Civil War is completed - Modifiers from propaganda campaigns are now properly cleared when Soviet Union capitulates. - Emilio Mola will no longer be retired after completing the focus The National-Syndicalist State, he will just drop his country leader roles but will keep his advisor and unit leader roles. - Swapped Soviet armored cars I and II in the tech tree. - Communist support threshold to complete Estonian focus Break the Silence has been increased to be less than 5% (instead of less than 1%) - Fixed several character issues with Spanish Falangists in the focus tree. Emilio Mola and Primo de Rivera should be properly handled now and will no longer be literally killed in order to allow the other to take over as country leader. - Capital supply connection graph will now prioritize shorter sea routes - Supply network now considers convoy availability and tries to prioritize throughput over unconditionally avoiding naval connections - Naval Supply routes now respect blocked region flags. - Fixed Patagonian lake being considered some sort of flooded plain aberration and prevented players from building nuclear reactors on it. - Fixed an issue that made it impossible for players to progress down the Vichy focus tree because a Petain imposter was in charge - German Air Innovations 2 now correctly reduces cost of air doctrines, rather than increasing research speed - Fixed some design company ideas not having bonuses shown on equipment stats page - Steal blueprints operation no longer gives access to locked out mutual exclude branches - Taskforces operating in a blocked naval region can draw supply from naval bases in that region - Characters no longer get traits for other classes of characters from national spirits - Supply Network (and tooltips) now correctly factor in building damage when considering throughput - Issuing a move command to a province the unit is already fighting in no longer resets combat - Non-NSB tanks once again have their correct reliability (80%) across the board - Fix rail construction partial progress not getting saved correctly - The Turkish investment decisions should now actually work - Fix British designers focus for baltics not giving correct air bonuses - Fix crash in any_navy_leader, all_navy_leader, any_army_leader, all_army_leader when there is no general/field marshal or no admiral in a country - Stalinist mission Behead the Snake should now properly kill Trotsky when the player is going opposition. - Changed the Polish Focus 'Request Autonomous Status' so it can be bypassed if Poland is more than autonomous than a reichsprotectorate or integrated puppet. - Fix so that Franco can use Nationalist Infantry Division names in 39 - Fix upgrade costs not being calculated consistently - Fixed issue where event for Poland dismissing Lithuania's claim to its throne is sent to the wrong country. - Fixed issue where Poland's Ignacy Moscicki would have the legacy portrait instead of using the new one from NSB. - Rocket interceptors pilots don't consider themselves too cool for school anymore - Toggling naval region access settings should no longer make captains panic when they reach a blocked zone and get stuck in place - Rumors of TODOs in Soviet Stalinist missions flavor texts turned out to be counter-revolutionary propaganda. There never was any TODOs. - Fix carrier based fighters sometimes not contributing to combat - Fixed CTD when renaming a railway gun variant.


    [ 2022-01-27 09:19:11 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Hearts of Iron IV: Patch 1.11.4 - Barbarossa

    ################################################################ ######## Patch 1.11.4 "Barbarossa" ######### ################################################################ ################################## # Balance ################################## - Reduced compliance gain bonuses in advisor and country leader traits from 0.1 to 0.05. Kamenev will now provide 0.02 compliance bonus as advisor, and 0.05 as country leader. - Reduced weekly stability bonus and replaced weekly war support bonus by a flat one in Stalin's traits. - Slightly reduced weekly War Support and PP gain on Stalinist campaign. Reduced XP gain and Breakthrough bonus on For the Motherland campaign. - Army and Navy Spirit cost adjusted down to 20/35/50 from 25/50/75. Air spirits now all cost 50 air experience. - Naval bases now cost 5000 IC (from 3000), and incur an extra cost of 1000 per additional level. - Air Supply mission fuel costs increased by 50% - Increases hub Max Motorization cost to 80 trucks, from 50 - Democratic government type now confers a bonus of -25% political advisor cost. Several national spirits have been slightly tweaked down to accomodate the possibility of stacking this bonus. - Several historically Allied countries now start with a small amount of Command Power in 1936 (ENG, USA, FRA, HOL) - Relief of Command Army Spirit (democratic only) now reduces Military Advisor PP cost by 50% from 75%, but increases army experience gain factor by 25% - Reduced Dozer Blade entrenchment bonus to 1, from 2 - Several Italian military advisors have had their traits upgraded, pp cost increased, and cp allocation decreased. This change will only be applied to new saves. - Revert " Democratic government type now confers a bonus of -25% political advisor cost. Several national spirits have been slightly tweaked down to accomodate the possibility of stacking this bonus." - Reduced Unternehmen Barbarossa modifier to 10% attack bonus from 15% - Air supply now grants 0.2 supply per plane at 100% mission efficiency, from 1.2 - RK Ostland now releases on controlled territory, not just owned territory. - AA gun 3 now medium weapon, Tanks are now a bit slower, heavys/sh are now more expensive - Removed base equpment conversion modifier, removed conversion modifier from dispersed industry, increased conversion tech time - Modernize Industry national focus (shared baltics) now grants 4 civilian factories, from 5 - Arms Industry National Focus (baltic shared) now grants 4 military factories, from 6 - Arm The Nation national focus (baltic shared) now grants 3 military factories, from 5 - Attract Workers to Capital national focus (baltic shared) now grants 2 civilian factories, from 3 - Defense of our Nation national focus (baltic shared) now grants an additional 10% civilian factory construction speed - reduced CAS ground attack by 2 (approx 20% at tier 1, down to 10% at top tier) - Tank gun techs have moved dates, added SA bonus for SPG - Balance changes to consumer goods bonuses/penalties in the Soviet industrial branch: CG penalty from starting Second Five Year Plan spirit reduced from +10% to +5%. CG bonuses provided by Reorganize the PC of Heavy Industry and Fourth Five Year Plan reduced from -3% to -2%. CG bonus provided by Transformation of Nature reduced from -5% to -3%. - Support tank variants now get -0.95 breakthrough - Increase HA/SA of mutliple tank guns, reduced costs for medium modules, slight increase in medium base speeds - Tank Destroyer brigades are now 2 width (down from 3) - Updated templates for new TD combat width - Removed AA gun component breakthrough modifiers since it is now handled by the battalion - Heavy Tank Destroyer brigades now correctly reduce Breakthrough instead of increasing it - Lowered ground attack values for CAS by 2 points ################################## # Stability & Performance ################################## - Fixed a modder CTD related to scripted mapmodes when accessing intel interfaces - Fixed a corner case where AI defensive line generation would slow the game down to a crawl - Fixed OOS caused by bombing buildings with railway guns present - Assigning railway guns to armies will no longer induce a sudden drop in gamespeed performance - Fixed clients sometimes crashing to desktop when host shutdowns in MP games - Fixed 2 different OOS caused by joining/hosting an MP game after doing another playthrough - Fixed CTD when loading mods with messed up adjacency errors ################################## # UI ################################## - Manually marking equipment variants as non-obsolete updates the alerts - Fix hourly UI update Breaking transitions between officer corps windows - Capital star icon updates when province changes controller - Fix orders group UI not reflecting the motorization state of units after loading a save - Some minor changes to low supply icons and alerts - When selecting the role for a tank design, the stat modifiers of the associated battalion type are now displayed in the role tooltip. A breakdown of battalion, doctrine and tech modifiers for each stat are also displayed in the stats table tooltips. ################################## # AI ################################## - Fix AI rail upgrade issuing redundant upgrade commands - RWG slightly afraid of provinces under attack - Soviet Union will now aim to build a decent civilian factory base before switching to other priorities - Railway guns should now have better positioning - Removed obsolete Soviet AI strategies. Old AI strategy to antagonize Finland is now enabled by the appropriate focus. - stop ENG from build too many civs - fixed templates for ENG to prevent issues with tank design templates - bump ai build prio on disconnected supply nodes - Field strength training threshold also factors in divisions in training. This prevents AI fro stacking up a huge list of divisions that are all out of equipment. - Fix various bugs with how AI checked manpower for exiled divisions in training - Updated German templates to correctly use motorized - Soviet should now not get stuck in a spiral of decision spending when they desperately needs manpower laws - USA should no longer fail to produce a usable infantry template - usa should now prioritize getting a m. tank design working faster - soviet should now avoid justifying on targets where it can push its ultimatum - AI is more conservative about implementing no_garrison law if resistance target will raise too much - Impassable provinces will no longer be seen as land connections by the AI military strategists - Japan slightly less keen to squash China while at war with USA - Fixed template target widths for sov and ger AT divs, reduce ger at div to 1 line AT gun ################################## # Modding ################################## - Can now use decision as target for pp_spend_priority strategy to block spending completely on decisions - Documentation has been updated to reflect Barbarossa changes - Fix remove_ideas_with_trait so that it works with advisors too ################################## # Database ################################## - The Superior Warmachines focus in the Soviet tree is now available for players without NSB ################################## # Bugfix ################################## - Remove German claim on Katowice if Poland cedes Danzig as indicated in the Polish tooltip. - Make sure there is no duplicate of user name in player_countries in save file. This avoids any confusion when determining if the country is human or AI controlled. - The Japanese Torpedo Cruiser focus now displays the correct art when finished - Added missing trigger to the Sabotage Behind Enemy Line focus - Give Inter-War medium and heavy tank designs proper default names. - When a character is added to a country and they are already in the retired character list, remove them from this list. also when setting character in scope, keep the country as well. - Kurdish liberation unit spawned in Atlanta, should be Batman - Fix to make Japan less likely to turn the Russian Provisional Government Fascist after making it a puppet through the Request Imperial Protection focus - Allow field marshals to be assigned the advisor roles of generals - when copying characters, copy also the flags attached to them - Adjusted the changes in Party Popularity in the Portugese focus 'The Return of Duarte' so it matches the tooltip. - Fix is_dynamic_country trigger that was not calling the right function - Fixed incorrect image link in between the seas event - When portraits are invalid, pick a random portrait for live version (keep using placeholder for debug) - Replaced old tech speed bonus effect for doctrines in the generic focus Flexible Navy by the new doctrine cost reduction bonus effect. - Fixed CTD that would sometimes occur in multiplayer when viewing air combat in a region as another player hot joins the game. - AI less hesitant at reassigning divisions (fixes a bunch of bugs) - Estonia and Latvia no longer get negative national spirits from NSB when not using the DLC - Latvia now get the correct country leader when not using the No Step Back DLC - Subject states can now create some of the formables in the Soviet Union - Fixed wrong positioning of dynamic modifiers in the National Spirits tab when using the small version. - Added loc for two non-MTG naval techs that may be granted to Soviets in their focus tree. - Baltic focus Technology Sharing will no longer be bypassed to prevent Baltic countries to get stuck with 4 research slots. Baltic research sharing group will no longer be formed if it already exists. - Trotsky will now enjoy an up-to-date trait for his Army Chief role in Mexico. - Balance changes to Soviet national spirit Desperate Measures to prevent Soviets from insta-deploying divs while active (in combination with Mass Assault Doctrine) - Implemented alternative tooltip in Soviet focus National Academies of Sciences for non-Soviet Soviets. - Soviet generals with new portraits will now use the small version of their new portraits for their advisor roles. - Baltic shared designers no longer appear in their lists without No Step Back - When using auto design in the tank designer the resulting design will now always be valid. - The Polish national focus "Expand the University of Warsaw" will now properly count owned factories. - More stable AI behavior when a naval invasion fails - AI will no longer try invading provinces outside target area - Naval invasion arrow will point to the first targeted province instead of the last - Single-character purges will now use the character list tooltip implemented for larger purges, so that their roles, traits and level are shown in the purge event tooltip. - Remove preferred tactic if it becomes invalid - When designing tanks the AI will not install more modules of the same category than is allowed, which will help the US among others to field tanks. - Soviet focuses Improve the Stalin Line, Far East Fortification and Impregnable Forts will now require full control of at least one of the states in which forts will be built. Protect the White Sea-Baltic Canal focus requires full control of all the relevant states. - Removed obsolete Soviet Alternate plan. Fixed Left Opposition plans never being selected on random. - Manchukuo no longer becomes a Japanese Communist Puppet when the Japanese Civil War starts - Focuses should no longer cancel a few hours before the Soviet Civil War starts - Fixed tooltip in German focus Treaty with the USSR. Germany will now get armor tech bonus regardless of having researched basic medium tanks or not. - Korea now controls provinces when released after Japanese surrender to China. - AI no longer using trade to determine naval access - For characters and parties, do not store the translated name, store the loc keys instead. This avoids OOS when 2 players use different langages. - Zhang Xueling now has the correct portrait when promoted to advisor role - Fixed issue where Estonia couldn't start decisions for marching on Finland if Estonia started their fascist civil war while they were marching on an Estonian state. - For most tank designs the AI will no longer install multiple smoke launchers, secondary turret, or additional machine gun. - No more free Baltic trees after winning civil wars without NSB DLC - Fixed insta-win/lose the Soviet Civil War if DLC No Step Back is not active and both sides in the civil war are communist. - Fixed certain Soviet decisions with did not really cost the intended CP and PP - If a trait for unit leader is already assigned, then do not consider it assignable. This fixes the alert being displayed when the player cannot actually assign new traits. - British Malaya and Dutch East Indies now get the correct leaders from start - Lithuania can no longer get Poland into a Personal Union without Lithuania being fully independent. - Fixed the wrong Bulgarian deomcratic leader appearing with BftB - Fixed missing portrait for mexican advisors Othn P. Blanco Nez de Cceres and Antonio Crdenas Rodrguez - Danzig Decisions are now available without No Step Back - Mexico Characters Dionisio Encina, Valentn Campa and Jess Degollado Guzar now become party leaders when their respective events trigger. - Fixed missing Spanish political advisors and one chief of army when LaR was not active. - Fixed some decisions in Lithuania, Poland and Estonia where it was possible to start them without the required available civilian factories. - Fixed several mismatches in the Tutorial texts in Portuguese and Polish. - Beriya is not Stalin, therefore he can no longer access Stalin's Cult of Personality. - Fixed tooltip in Soviet focus Increase Aircraft Production. The player doesn't need to know about the weird stuff that is going on behind the scenes. - Fixed an issue where units could get stuck in exile - Italy now starts with the appropriate focuses completed in the 1939 bookmark. - Adding missing Loc for POL Danzig resistance modifier. - Changing the name of a State Modifier in SOV so it doesn't get the description from the decision with the same name and show an untranslated loc. - added missing detailed description for supply mapmode. - Trotsky can now be properly assassinated even when the player deactivates the News Events popup - Communist China will now respect their decision to accept the tribute increasement for at least 90 days. - Fixed monarchist decisions in Poland and Lithuania so they cannot make other countries into Personal Unions if they're puppets of another country. - Fixed wrong event being sent back to the Soviet Union resulting in Stalin refusing his own demands. - Spain will no longer conspire against their Soviet overlord after losing their War of Independence. - Adjusted the effect for the Sanation Right irritation so when it's meant to increase over 4 and it's AI Non-historical it just keeps the spirit but when it's the player, a civil war starts. - Changed the Dutch focus Wilhelminism so it bypasses when The Netherlands and Germany are in a faction and both have Non-Aligned Governments. - Changing Neutrality and Fascism drift of Lithuanian advisor from positive to negative to make it match the historical character. - Adjusting Soviet decision 'The Enemy is Treacherous' so it's not visible when the player doesn't have La Resistance. - Added missing focus to the Polish historical AI plan. Danzig or War will now remove POL-LIT guarantee - Adjusting the True Enemy event for the baltic countries so it places forts in the correct provinces. - Fixed Kazim Orbay's multiple problems. - Fixed issue where Lithuania can continue boosting monarchist support in Poland even after they have a king. Other adjustments to these decisions. - Changes to Romanian ideas so they transfer correctly when Poland triggers a civil war in Romania - Made Vapsid Marches in Estonia and Finland not visible after they're completed regardless of ideology. Also adjusted the balance of one of the Estonian marches - Fix of dlc and non-dlc portraits from WTT for MAN and CHI - The Montreux Convention event chain now allows and blocks the appropriate countries depending on the results of the events. - Fix civil war effect posing messages without updating country names - Fix various supply map/volunteer UI issues - Poland now starts with embargoed economy in 1939 as they haven't completed the focus to remove it yet - Fix replacing template companies costing double - Fix Government in Exile supply hubs not connecting to allied supply before they controled enough territory to be assigned a capital - Fix building conversion double counting slot consumption while being built - Made the Polish Decision Categories for dealing with the Peasant Strike, Sanation and Inviting Foreign Motors be available without No Step Back - Leadership of the Axis now remains with the German Reich when civil war starts - Fix AI not assigned requested units to naval invasion armies, which could leave them idle wherever they happened to be standing - Fixed the Wilhelmina idea so it has the correct portrait. - fixed an issue where French and Japanese Heavy tank chassis icons were in the wrong spot in the tech tree - Adjusted the Iron Wolf appeasement decisions in Lithuania so it's not as easy to get locked out of the rest of the branch. - Puppeted Russia can now take Pacify the Rim focus even if they have sold Vladivostok, making it possible to progress to the independence war focus. - Fix river supply connections sometimes getting absurd boosts to supply flow - a number of triggers were broken due to translated character names not registering correctly. These have been fixed. This should only affect non-English players (Russian in particular). - Removed condition from the Bring Old Trotskyists Back focus to stop players from sometimes getting locked out of the Permanent Revolution section of the Left Opposition focus tree. - Improved AI weights for Prospecting decisions. - Baltic AI will no longer reject Soviet ultimatum on historical due to a major country guaranteeing them. - Added missing Soviet focuses to 1939 Bookmark - Focuses and decisions will now work correctly when checking for a character that has a different name spelling in non-english - Volunteers will no longer be lost when returning - Russia can now properly form the Pan-slavic union - The AI will no longer cheat and try to use Military Spirits if No Step Back is not enabled - Fixed issue where exiled characters didn't return after a successful coup - Translate localization key for all character name, not just unit leaders - In the tank designer, the top/default entry in the model selection list is now the expected one for super heavy, modern and amphibious chassis. - The tank model displayed in the tech details view is now of the expected tech level. - Comintern is now dissolved when starting the Soviet civil war - Fix rare crash where logistics strike targetted consumer whose cached status was invalid - Fix PREV (etc) keyword when it references a character. - Super heavy and modern tank designs will now get a proper default icon when playing with NSB active. - Missing glyphs for Turkish and Latvian names are now back. Also fixed non-breaking spaces showing up as '?' in French and Russian translations. - Units in naval transfer will no longer trigger 'low supply' theater alert - Poland is no longer able to complete the April Constitution while being a puppet - Fallback lines now work correctly for volunteers - Yoshiko Kawashima uses correct picture when being a general when having the WTT dlc - Fixed several issues with Soviet and Russian national spirits in the Russian civil war, such as spirits being added to the wrong side, not providing the intended modifiers or being duplicated. - Fixed error spam about missing 3d assets for axis tanks - Fixed issues in Poland and the Baltics where they could annex or puppet a player's country without warning. - Fixed exploit by adding another exploit - Fixed create_country_leader where the created character would have a random name rather than the input one. - With NSB active, equipment conversion is now possible between any tank designs based on the same chassis. It's however not possible to convert tanks to self-propelled variants of a higher tech level as is possible with NSB inactive. - Vehicles like tanks will now be able to draw and refuel during the invasion step while landing - Fix calculation of num_units and num_battle_plans for unit leaders - Fix for focuses being locked for Romanov branch. - Added extra building slots to certain focuses providing factories or dockyards in the Polish, French and Soviet focus trees. - Fixed Georgios Kosmidis not becoming the fascist leader in the appropriate Greek event. - Controlling slovakia will now allow poland to bypass either of the Demand Slovakia focuses - Cag night fighting acronym now correctly capitalized - fix some allied supply issues - Empire of Brazil will no longer embrace fascism. - Democratic Germany focuses no longer invite foreign subjects to faction, causing subjects to lose subject status - Corgis are not people with a mustache and a tie. - Both Australian and New Zealand volunteers National Spirits will now reduce required world tension and required divisions to send volunteers. - Improved triggers for Iberian Summit decisions. - Fixed issue where Polish regent would be retired after capitulation. - Dynamic Modifiers and Weather modifiers now apply to CAS ground attack stats - Fixed news of an Anarchist uprising spreading, despite said uprising not having materialized. Anarchists should now no longer be all talk, no action. - Fixed research exploit - Corrected pre-SCW division counter values in the preparation phase, to properly reflect the reality of unit counts for each side once the SCW begins. - Fixed an OOS when starting a MP game after returning to menu from another game - Added back in the option to rename equipment variants of types lacking upgrades like Artillery and Convoys. - Seek a Defensive Pact with Allies News event no longer has Stalin in it if he is no longer the leader of the Soviet union - Naval spotting speed is no longer scaled by ... naval base repair speed(?), and spotting speed bonuses no longer increase the speed at which you lose a fleet - Fixed missing portraits in Baltics and Poland when playing without No Step Back enabled - The first tank design for each specialized role can now be modified instead of automatically being saved as a new design. - Improved AI weights in Lithuanian fascist characters (Voldemaras and Alantas) and added AI weights to Hungarian communist revolutionary (Laszlo Rajk) so that the AI prioritizes these characters when taking the relevant paths. - Fixed capitulation progress requirement for Poland's 'Prepare for the Inevitable' branch. - Soviet ultimatum decisions will no longer be available if the target country is someone else's subject. - Fixed issue where some focuses would not lead to war with the right country if there was more than one Soviet Union or Stalinist Soviet Union didn't exist. - Fixed issue where Polish Focus 'Demand Lithuania' wouldn't get bypassed when it should've - Fixed one cause of CTD on starting nudger with bad map setup (primarily the case in certain map mods) - Fixed scope where we use character scope only when needed, and country scope otherwise - Fixed long party name (short party name was displayed) - In civil war, when copying retired characters from target country to the revolter, skip characters that are actually active in the revolter country. Avoid having the character in a double state of active and retired at the same time, confusing most effects and triggers. - Austria, Belgium and Switzerland now have correct scripted start stability again - Fixed typo in focus Policy of Individual Security - Lev Trotsky now returns to Soviet Union when completing Return Democracy to the Party. - Fixed Placeholder loc in the tutorial in Polish and Portuguese. - Fixed Command Power tooltip losing the names of advisors affecting it when reloading a savegame - Fixed missing assets for german tanks DLC


    [ 2021-12-14 09:50:41 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Hotfix - Patch 1.11.2 - Armour Packs

    Fixed - Armor 3D units from previous addons showing in the Tank Designer The expected models can now be selected for tank designs Game executable should be properly signed again [url=https://pdxint.at/3HSCUFz] READ IN FULL


    [ 2021-11-25 11:04:20 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Hearts of Iron IV: No Step Back - OUT NOW!

    Greeting Generals! No Step Back is here! With it the Barbarossa patch and a new checksum. 1.11.1 and bf90.


    [previewyoutube=dBJAOYiPsa4;full][/previewyoutube] And if you would like to enjoy is in Russian version (This is the one I like more) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUBQBshRB0c Bellow you will find a brief breakdown of what is included in the free patch, and what is in the DLC, the full patch notes can be found here.
    If you are finding yourself a little in the woods with all the new content, we produced a short series of tutorials to prime you on all the new mechanics you'll have to deal with in No Step Back, you can watch them, here. [previewyoutube=Lqwf0DsoKh0;full][/previewyoutube] And last but not least the Grandest World War Two game has teamed up with the Greatest World War Two YouTube channel, for a glorious Operation Saturn re-enactment! [previewyoutube=8J-7Q6CST1A;full][/previewyoutube]

    Buy it here!



    [ 2021-11-23 16:03:54 CET ] [ Original post ]

    HOI4 Dev Diary - Patch Notes


    An early look at our Patch Notes are available on our forums. Unfortunately, the notes are too large to fit onto steam in this format, an official patch notes post will accompany the release next week. I will also take this opportunity to point out that as is normal for large updates, saved games from earlier versions will not be compatible with No Step Back. An opt-in rollback to the current live version will be provided when No Step Back and the Barbarossa update launch

    [url=https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/hoi4-dev-diary-patch-notes.1498093/?utm_source=stcom-owned&utm_medium=social-owned&utm_content=post&utm_campaign=nsb_hoi_20211117_for_dd] READ THE PATCHNOTES HERE



    [ 2021-11-17 14:00:51 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Dev Diary - Achievements


    Hello, and welcome back to another Dev Diary for Hearts of Iron 4. As we close in on wrapping up this major operation, code-named Barbarossa, before winter falls (the first snow fell in Stockholm this weekend, I am sure itll be fine), today we will talk about the new achievements that will be added with the release of No Step Back. As far as the process is concerned, we usually have an open list of achievement suggestions during the whole DLC development cycle. Near the end of the cycle, we take a vote on what achievements we want to see in the game (after eliminating any that would be technically impossible) and start the process of implementing them and ordering art. For No Step Back, we started with a list of 49 suggestions, and whittled it down to 20 Achievements:
    At least they run on time!: As fascist Italy, have max level railways in all your core states
    Not much fun in Stalingrad: As Germany, capitulate the Soviet Union without taking Stalingrad
    No more Partitions: As Poland, be independent and ensure that both Germany and the USSR are either in your faction or dont exist
    Habsburgs. Habsburgs everywhere: As Poland, install a Habsburg monarch and be in a faction with another Habsburg monarch.
    The Pope? How many Divisions does he have?: As the USSR, take Rome.
    This is going to be LIT: As Lithuania, hold the capitals of all of your neighbours
    It has my name on it: As any Baltic State, conquer the entire shoreline of the Baltic Sea
    This Achievement is Cheesy: As Latvia, form Ostland and occupy Vasterbotten. (n.b.: Vasterbotten is located in Lappland State)
    Esti is Scandi: As Estonia, secure Scandinavia (n.b.: Every state in Scandinavia needs to be controlled by Estonia or a Subject of Estonia)
    Not a step back!: As the Soviet Union never lose 1 core territory to anyone before 1945
    one_step_forward.png One Step Forward: As the Soviet Union, declare war on Poland and Germany before Germany attacks Poland.
    The Soviet Onion: As the Soviet Union, have only puppets as neighbors
    Crusader Kings III: As Poland, crown a Monarch and capture Jerusalem
    The Romanovs laugh last: Restore the Romanovs to the throne and conquer Germany, Hungary, Austria, Czechoslovakia,Turkey, and Bulgaria.
    We dont really like statistics: As the Soviet Union under Stalin, conquer Germany while suffering less than 1 million casualties total
    Race for Germany: As the Soviet Union, capitulate Germany after the Fall of France but before the Allies control one German core state
    Siberian Tiger: As Tannu Tuva, form Siberia
    Just proper gander: As the Soviet Union, activate 30 propaganda campaigns before 1945.
    Around Eurasia in 80 days: Have a railroad from Gibraltar to Singapore
    Poland Peasant Revolution: As Poland, have the Peasants Strike overthrow the government. That's all from us today! Next week, you will get the Patchnotes for 1.11 Barbarossa (unless we are thrown out of position by a sudden enemy counter-attack).

    [url=https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/hoi4-devdiary-no-step-back-achievements.1496940/?utm_source=stcom-owned&utm_medium=social-owned&utm_content=post&utm_campaign=nsb_hoi_20211110_for_dd] Join the forum discussion here



    [ 2021-11-10 14:00:34 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Dev Diary - A Tech Lead's Life


    Hello everyone, it's your favourite (and only) tech lead, The French Paradox! In this diary I'll tell you more about our tech, give some insights into the programmer's job, what we've been up to for the past year (and some change) and offer you a chance to ask any question you may have about tech. Saying old platforms goodbye First, with the upcoming 1.11 patch we will be retiring some old Linux and Mac platforms that aren't maintained by their own developers anymore. This means that starting next update the minimum OS version to run HoI will be Ubuntu 18.04 (on Linux) and macOS 10.11 (El Capitan) on Mac. There shouldn't be much to worry about though, as the previous versions are older than HoI itself at this point and our telemetry shows almost all of you have upgraded long ago. For those on Windows who look anxiously at their aging Windows 7, keep calm and carry on, we have no plans to drop support for it (although as a friendly tech person I'd still suggest you consider upgrading ;)). Why do we make those decisions you may wonder? Two reasons: one maintaining old tech comes with a cost that we would rather spend on improving the game for 99% of the users, and two sometimes it blocks the adoption of new tech that would make our programmers job easier and more efficient. Without going too much into details, the general idea is that we can only use tech that is supported on all platforms, so basically we're only as modern as the oldest thing we support. If you take the case of Linux for example, the previous Ubuntu release was from 2016, meaning HoI could not use anything released since then (and probably a bit before, as Ubuntu LTS releases usually don't ship with the latest shiny goodies). Some time we can work our way around it, but not always. Speaking of new tech...

    DirectX 11


    That's right, the next HoI4 release will join Stellaris and the other more recent PDS games by adding DirectX 11 support. DirectX 9 will still be the default for now, but you will be able to select another renderer in the launcher settings. There shouldn't be any visual difference between DX9 and DX11 (and OpenGL for that matter), we have been working on making sure the experience will be the same. The game should load a bit faster however, especially if you use a lot of mods that bring extra textures and models. Working remotely for more than a year, we also noticed less issues playing with remote desktop and the like, which might not be a big deal for most of you but was quite appreciable for our devs during development. Finally it did help us tweaking & fixing the new railways & trains graphics (as most graphics debugging tools have dropped support for DX9).

    Performance


    We know that performance is always at the heart of every discussion about our games and as a Tech Lead I have been keeping a close eye on it. So far it looks like our release candidate is roughly on par with the current 1.10 patch, performance wise. Why not better, I can already hear you typing? The main reason is that the game on 1.11 is a different beast 1.10 (which itself is quite different from the original 1.0 release). Namely, the supply simulation is now much more deep and complex, and needs to account for all those railways across the world and the fact that now allies can supply each other. While I am writing those words, our compatibility is working hard at running the game on various hardware configurations to give us a more complete picture and perhaps a few suggestion for an updated recommended configuration, as the one you can see on Steam right now dates back from the original release.
    Toying with a 11th generation i9 and a RTX 3090. Will it take off? On the topic of measuring performance, the Barbarossa update will include an ingame profiler that could use to measure how your machine performs. You should be able to spawn it from the console using the magic line imgui show profiler. For example here is the current release candidate on my home i7-10700 with a RTX 2080 SUPER:
    1936 fresh start, speed 5, Direct 11, vsync off
    1943 test save, speed 5, Direct 11, vsync off As you can see this offers a few metrics that can be collecting by toggling the Enable/Disable Collection button at the top. A few things you can get from it:
    • Render time: the average time to render one frame over the last second
    • Render time excluding present: same as previous but excludes the time spent waiting on the GPU to actually present the frame on screen. The difference is usually due to vsync.
    • Frames per second: the FPS count, you know this one
    • Ticks per second: how many in-game hours were simulated over the course of the last second
    • Last tick: the time it took to simulate the last hour or new day/week/month
    • Last 24 ticks average: same as previous but averaged from the last 24 (or less depending on how much time was spent collecting data)
    Next you have a nice graph representation of where (in which system) that time was spent. We use it to quickly eyeball a performance report, especially when external programmer tools are not available (for example when it happens on a non-dev machine). Final tip: if the profiler doesn't show up with the magic console command, try turning it off and on again using imgui off then imgui on.

    A personal pet peeve


    Programmers at PDS are rarely just that. Most of us get involved in the game development by offering insights on design, balance or content, and I am no exception. So now is the time to talk about French Communism. If you remember the French focus tree from La Rsistance, if you go communist you get this guy:
    Maurice Thorez was historically the leader of the Parti Communiste Franais (PCF). If you walk through some cities in France you can even find streets bearing his name still today. But he had one characteristic trait: he was a die-hard Stalinist who followed the Moscow line until his death in 1964. He had a city and an institute named after him in the USSR. On the day the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was signed, he is in vacation in the Alps and the PCF changes its stance on Germany and Poland overnight following Moscow's instructions without asking him. When he comes back, he just shrugs and goes along with it. With that in mind, I felt that it was weird you would keep him as a leader if you do not go for the "Loyalty To Moscow" sub-tree. I did some research in French sources and found a better candidate to replace him. Behold:
    Ren Nicod was a member of the PCF in 1939, but when the party decided to realign itself following the Pact, he and a couple other MPs quit the party and founded the Union Populaire Franaise (UPF) or French Popular Union in English. They denounced the Pact and supported the government's decision to stand with Poland. In Barbarossa if you own La Rsistance and go either Anti-Fascist Coalition or Loyalty to the cause you will get a new party and leader:

    Each branch will give a different flavour of Nicod inspired by his published opinions pieces during the Great War (he both supported in the French Army and lost his hand in the trenches but also denounced the war on ideological grounds and hoped the French and German workers would unite in a common cause). Finally, it turned out to be a bit difficult to find a good portrait for our artists. My initial research in the French National Assembly online database only yielded a low-res blurry picture. But luckily a small French shop decided to sell its stock of old photos on eBay and his mayor portrait was one of the articles. We could have stopped there and used the ad's preview picture as a source, but of course we had to buy and ship to Sweden. So here he is, looking over the HOI corner in our Stockholm office!

    [url=https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/hoi4-dev-diary-a-tech-leads-life.1496472/?utm_source=stcom-owned&utm_medium=social-owned&utm_content=post&utm_campaign=nsb_hoi_20211103_for_dd] Read the full article here



    [ 2021-11-03 14:15:37 CET ] [ Original post ]

    HoI4 Dev Diary - Loading Screen Art and more!


    Greetings, HoI fans. I'm not much of a forum goer, so most of you probably never heard of me, but I am the Art Lead on Hearts of Iron 4. Today I bring you a rather special Dev Diary. This was prepared for you all by our 2D artist on HoI4 and should give you a glimpse into the work that goes into each new loading screen. We hope that you will all find this to be an interesting and enjoyable read. Without further ado, I now hand over to the artist.

    The loading screen for The Krojanty Battle - An artist's journey


    So where does an artist start? First and foremost, to have a tool to gather the most crucial thing to build an epic looking loading screen is a reference board. The tool that our artist uses is called PureRef. It keeps track of your images and is easy to organize and customize. And of course, photoshop to draw in. Cant forget the most important of them all now, can we? So! The tools are in place, the artist is ready and the prompt lands on their desk, saying Polish cavalry attacking resting German soldiers early in the morning. Google time! You may be familiar with the illustration by Jersy Kossak who specialized in painting military scenes. This was one of the first images that our artist found and immediately banked it in their PureRef for later use. The myth, the legend, the Krojanty Battle:
    It's epic and cool but oh so inaccurate. But it is a start! Doing some more research led our artist to a reenacting movie about the battle. Of course still not accurate but a great score for poses, mood and composition. They also only had the trailer/making of available to them but that never stops an artist. Screen grab galore took place, no regrets.
    Epic light in this one ^
    Great references for poses in these^ Of course our artist cant stick to one source. Time to hit google again and this time they found some more reenacting scenes to add to their growing collection.
    More poses and epic looking horses ^ With a PureRef filled to the brim with interesting angles, poses and an interesting mood and light our artist now starts to work on something thats called Thumbnailing. It essentially means that our artist is making quick, easily viewable suggestions for the loading screen depicting a cool looking battle, sketched up with the help and guidance of the reference material they gathered. Fun fact; the word thumbnailing is actually a direct reference to the human thumbnail in size and the word has been used as early as back in the 17th century for small imagery. Kind of gross... kind of accurate, but still. These are the thumbnails that they did for Podcat and Archangel85 to pick from!
    Yes. They are that ugly. Yes they take no time to make, thats the point. There's a bunch of ways to go about thumbnails and our artist usually use grey scale when doing these. Mostly to be able to tell hierarchy in the scene quickly. For example, the darkest parts are the most visually interesting ones where we want you to look first and the lighter ones are secondary and not as important. Here we also see our artist giving us the A-B-C-D options for easier communication with the team. Pro tip here is always be clear on communication with the team to deliver the most accurate representation you can as well as often showing the progress to steer the illustration in the right direction. So the Work In Progress phase begins. The first WIP thatll be shared is the very first clean thumbnail that Podcat and Archangel85 together with our artist went for. They choose to change the direction of motion from left to right because that is the way we read as well as adding another rider in the foreground to give visual depth of the image.
    Next phase in the WIP series is colours! We wanted the illustration to be time accurate, so what do we know? We know that the cavalry attacked early as heck in the morning. We know the German soldiers were camping near a forest. We know that the cavalry came through it. But what kind of feeling was most interesting/epic? Our artist made two colour variants to choose from:
    ^ More time accurate with a cooler tone of morning
    ^ And this one is more romantic/golden hour esque which in the end we went with. This felt more on-style with what we wanted to portray even if the time of day is wrong this feels more HOI. After working some more with what tone and mood of the illustration should lean towards, our artist start to define some more characters. Right now they are just blurs and blobs as well as straight up photos.
    At this stage our artist went in the direction of adding more drama to the background. A new skyline was added with a helping paintover to show direction from HOIs art lead as well as defining the landscape some more. In this stage our artist also started to add some more definition of the soldiers who suddenly got multiplied (in the distance you could hear sad artist noises who realized they had bitten off more than they could perhaps chew). But as we say in Swedish Skam den som ger sig!
    And yes You saw right. Was that gear time period accurate? Were those crates truly used? What's up with those crazy large tents? Why are they even white? How strange So yes. Sad artist noises were once more heard as they realized the finds they had collected in their PureRef were indeed inaccurate for the time period. It dawned on them that they had to re-do some stuff. There's a reason why artists live by kill your darlings. Sad, but oh so true. But also a very good thing to do! Sometimes you just have to realize that the best way to fix something is to start over. Now this was of course not the case. But still a hefty re-paint was in order. Thanks to Jamor who so kindly rallied to our artists aid, gave them proper reference material and managed to steer clear of an embarrassing illustration. So now we are heading somewhere! The noisy background elements were taken out because it was too distracting which wasnt entirely the case up until now. Remember the thumbnailing? Yeah those explosions had suddenly stolen the show which was a big no-no. Let the horses be the stars! And in this stage the character got more defined as well as the background getting more painterly.
    Well, we finally arrived where it really started to come together! It looks epic, the mood is heroic and you can feel the battle about to happen. This was therefore a time to go back to the beginning, to look at how the other loading screens had been made to maintain an equal feeling and style of rendering to this new piece! Grabbing a bunch of older loading screens our artist studied the brush strokes, textures and colours that had been used.
    Aaaan back to the illustration! More textures are now added to mirror the old style as well as adding to the foreground and middle ground as well as details in and around the camp. Some soldiers got new jobs, instead of lying dead someone is now defending the camp and some more soldiers crawl out of the tents. Our artist wanted the feeling of panic to be visible in the camp.
    Here the decision to actually raise the ground a good chunk to balance the whole image better was taken. And at this stage our artist, together with lead artist and art director, checked the values of the image. Arguably this could have been done much earlier in the process but sometimes you simply forget until it bites you in the ass. Luckily tho it was at least caught! For example, the darkest part of the field kitchen was too dark to match where it stood in the field and our artist had to make it lighter in value to push it back where it belonged in the image. Not to get in and be TOO technical about what was happening in this stage, in short, our artist checked the contrasts to make them feel believable. The things at the foreground should be the darkest and as further back you go in the image the lighter in value it is. The example with the field kitchen was that it didnt look believable. The darkest part of it matched the darkest parts of the horse and rider in the foreground and therefore looked off in its position. Flipping a adjustment layer of Black and White on and off helped with a quick overlook of the scene since sometimes colours can deceive. Being able to toggle a grey-scale filter on and off can do wonders and give a new perspective and light to the image.
    The final stretch of last minute fixes, here we go!! Here our artist started to do those last 10% of the image to take it over the finish line! Fun fact, usually the last 10% are referred to as the longest and most tedious part of an illustration. Here they are adding details and more life to all the characters as well as adjusting and fine-tuning the background and the light in the illustration.
    The whole illustration from gathering references to thumbnailing to finally done took approximately 3 weeks, 2 of which were dedicated to be set after each other, while the rest of the remaining days were spread out in between other work our artist had to prioritize. Our artist sure did an amazing job here and can you believe that this was the first time they ever created such a huge piece of art?! Their usual work on HOI is to create the icons and buttons you like to push and glance at as well as a few portraits here and there so this was indeed a challenge for them. But least to say is that they sure had fun (despite some suffering, but let's be honest what is an artist if they're not suffering) and enjoyed the challenge and above all the experience the loading screen delivered, and hopefully youll agree with them that it looks pretty cool. And perhaps well see them take on another loading screen again in the future. But before I let you go, I have a little meme from our artist to you. (artists are artists, not programmers )
    -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Now for something completely different.

    Portraits + Focuses


    Here are a few of the new portraits you can expect to see in No Step Back.
















    There are plenty more where these came from. ;)
    Additionally, here is a peek at some upcoming focus and achievement icons:

    Well... That's all from us for now, folks. We hope you are all as excited about playing No Step Back as we are to have you play it.

    Oh and one last thing:


    The No Step Back feature streams are starting this week, with a first look at the new focus trees in action. The first stream is today (Wed 27th) at 16:00 CEST, during the normal HOI weekly stream slot!

    Read the full diary here



    [ 2021-10-27 13:00:55 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Hearts of Iron IV: No Step Back | Available Nov. 23rd | Pre-order Available NOW!

    From the womb of Mother Russia, Machines are born - But it is in the blood of the People the Union survives! Hearts of Iron IV: No Step Back will release November 23rd, 2021 Do your duty Comrades, And preorder now! https://pdxint.at/3be5rXn [previewyoutube=p26A0H3IoO4;leftthumb][/previewyoutube]


    [ 2021-10-21 15:25:07 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Dev Diary - Modding Changes


    Hello, and welcome back to another Dev Diary for No Step back and 1.11 Barbarossa. Today we will be pulling back the veil a bit and show you how modders can affect and use the new features coming in 1.11. For those of you who do not get unreasonably excited by hearing about new script commands and changes to databases, the long and short of it is this: We made some fundamental changes to the way the game handles some things, which will probably require your favorite mods to spend some time updating. On the flip side, those changes also allow for some exciting possibilities down the line. If you came here hoping for a release date, we must ask you for just a little more patience. We promise the announcement is very close - but not today.

    Characters


    Probably the biggest change is in how we handle people on the backend (or ponies, for that matter - we do not discriminate). In the current live version, the game has no real concept of a person as a distinct thing. It only knows about country leaders, military leaders, political and military advisors, and operatives. Cases where a country leader could also be a general had to be handled manually, leading to lots of exciting bugs when the country leader was removed but the general was forgotten about and other such cases. We have overhauled that side of the game from the ground up with the introduction of characters. This should dramatically reduce the amount of potential zombie generals shambling around, which I am sure the non-zombie population will greatly appreciate. Characters are defined in the common/character folder, and their definitions look like this:
    Every character is defined as a container for different roles they can fulfill, like General (corps_commander), Advisor, country leader etc. Due to technical concerns, Operatives remain their own thing. On the character level itself, things like name and gender are handled. This also means that character names can now be localised and you can refer to a character by ID instead of by name (this helps a lot with character names that have non-english characters in them - turns out this broke some triggers and effects).
    This also means that if a character is removed from play - say, through a purge - they are automatically removed from all roles that they could have, which makes such systems a lot easier to do script-side. It also means that if we wanted to allow Zhukov to become a country leader, we could simply add a country leader role for him in the character file, like this:
    Or we could also add the role later on, via focus, event, decision... like we do here with Beriya:
    hat means there is a lot less confusion and duplication of effort necessary when putting a character into a new role, since stuff like portraits, name etc. are already handled. A broken portrait only needs to be fixed in one place instead of five etc. Once defined, characters are recruited in the country history file in order to be added to the game. As you can see in the first screenshot, you can use visible triggers for unit leaders to ensure they are not shown if you dont want them to be. Characters that can potentially become country leaders are made into country leaders using the promote_character effect, like so:
    This is a clear departure from the practice in the live version of the game, where you would create a new country leader in that effect. The old script with create_country_leader and other such effects should still be working, but obviously you dont get any of the advantages of the unified character system. So lets talk about some more things you can do with it! You can set and check character flags for nefarious purposes:
    You can change the traits of advisors without having to make a whole new advisor:
    You can check if a character is a certain type of character:
    You can save the character as a variable to refer to them later, such as spamming debug messages in the console!

    Tank Designer


    Next, lets talk a bit about how the tank designer works on the backend. It shares a lot of concepts with the ship designer, such as modules and module slots. It does, however, work a little differently in some other, important aspects. While the system pretends that there are only a handful of chassis (light, medium, heavy, super-heavy, amphibious, modern), this is not technically true. Instead, the system maintains a whole host of other, dynamically created chassis. This allows us to make sure that tank designs with the tank destroyer role actually go into tank destroyer battalions etc. However, these dynamic chassis are still generated from the base chassis, so any changes to them will carry over. The roles are enabled and disabled on individual modules:

    For the unlock of new module categories, you can then use this on a module to unlock that category:

    Railways


    Railways function a little differently from other buildings. While they are technically province buildings like forts, they are in reality closer to a building that connects two provinces. A railway line is effectively a series of two-province connections, and the lowest one in the chain determines the level of the railroad connection between two supply hubs. To make it easier to change and maintain the historical railway setup, we have added an option to draw railways into the nudger tool, which you can access by using the nudge command in the console.
    The railway setup is in the supply menu in the nudger, and you can easily add new railway lines to the existing setup in this way. It took me about a week and a half to do the entire 1936 setup, including tracking down reference maps (with a lot of help from some of our testers). If you want to add railways through script, you have the build_railway effect. It gives you a lot of options, with the most basic one being to lay out the path one province at a time:
    This is obviously a little cumbersome for longer railways, especially if you dont really care about the exact path. For that, you have the option to define a start and an end province:
    The game will then automatically generate a path from one end to the other using advanced neural network-based self-learning algorithms that use blockchain (read: I have no idea how it works but this sounds impressive). If finding the province is too much work, or if you want to be somewhat dynamic, you can even use start and end states (also note that you can specify what level of connection should be built):
    Note that you cant mix these, so you cant define a starting province and a target state for example. There are also corresponding triggers like can_build_railway and has_railway_connection:
    The first checks if a railway can be built between two locations, while the other checks if one such connection already exists. Finally, there is has_railway_level, which checks if the specified state has a railway line in it with the specified level:

    Miscellaneous new effects, triggers, modifiers


    In addition to the things described above, we have added a number of useful things that some of you might find useful:
    • Building_cost_factor: a new modifier that affects the construction cost of buildings. This takes the buildings from the 00_buildings file, so it should work with mods that add more buildings.
    • Core_state scope list, allowing you to run effects and triggers on a countrys core states:

    • Add_equipment_to_stockpile effect can now take a variant name to ensure that you add the right kind of equipment.
    Thats all for today, I hope you enjoyed these little insights and we are all excited about what crazy things you will do with the new tools at your disposal.

    Read the full article here



    [ 2021-10-20 13:57:27 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Dev Diary - Officer Corps Recap & AI Improvements


    Hi all, and welcome back to todays developer diary! It can be very easy to get super-focused on details when looking at individual systems or parts of features - something we often tend to do when writing developer diaries. Each week, were going to give you an overview of a core system that weve so far introduced in parts, and will include all of the changes weve made to that system over the course of development, since we first looked at it. In addition to this, well also take a look at some changes coming to the AI in No Step Back, so if thats more your jam, feel free to skip to the end ;D

    Well begin with an overview of the Officer Corps:



    This image represents a near-final take on what the office corps screen will look like. As you can see, the branch chiefs, theorist, and military high command have found their way to the officer corps screen, though for ease of access you may still view and appoint them in the country overview screen like before. This kind of change is the sort of thing that comes up during playtesting - while it made sense to collect similar things together, there was no good reason to change the players flow expectations. The manner in which youll appoint advisors has changed a bit. We decided during the officer corps development process, to make a bigger deal out of the advisor level (specialist, expert, genius) that all non-theorist advisors possess. In addition to adding a flat command power allocation (reduction of max command power) which is reduced by high advisor ranks, political power costs are raised by having a higher rank advisor. Branch advisors now grant daily experience gain, meaning stacking your command cadre well is vitally important to the pre-war development of your military. To add to the choices, doctrines now cost experience rather than being something you spend a research line on:
    For owners of No Step Back, military branches also possess several specialization options in the form of Military Spirits, which are also unlocked with experience:
    We found during development that less was more when it came to creating a tightly balanced set of choices, and weve limited the number of options in each category to around six, with each category being strongly themed around Academy, Military Service, and Command. To add slightly more nuance to choices here, we ensured that several options in each category would be made available based on situational factors - ideology, doctrine branch, and in rare cases, country choice, can all make new choices available. The most important part of cultivating a strong officer corps, is the ability to give your trusted commanders advisory roles. Commander traits earned in active combat can make your characters eligible for specific advisory roles:
    Characters promoted to advisory duties this way will continue to advance their advisory rank as their commander level increases - a highly experienced field commander will grow from specialist to genius over the course of their career. Lastly, we are introducing the preferred tactics weighting system. This allows you to set a national, field marshal, and commander-level preferred tactic, which will weight the chances of picking said tactic in a combat situation. While the national preferred tactic can be switched out for a cost, selecting a preferred tactic for your commanders and field marshals is something that remains a permanent choice, representing their adherence to a particular doctrinal theory. Of course, a host of minor changes accompany the officer corps, including new alerts, better resource tooltips, and adding some of this information into intel ledgers for opponent countries.

    The AI


    And now, on to a topic that is sure not to evoke strong opinions from anybody here: the AI. During the development of La Resistance, work was begun on adding additional tools through an imgui that allow modders and users to see various internal data. In NSB, a significant amount of time was spent adding to this tooling and providing support for future AI development, as well as laying the groundwork for easier iteration on AI behaviour and more.
    One of our new in-game tools for assessing AI font priorities. These tools will be available for modders, who can continue to fine-tune AI for their own needs through the use of strategies and defines. Here, you can see that the AI has evaluated the topmost defense order as desiring a minimum of 7 divisions, an 'ideal' count of 8, and a maximum count of 50. Defense orders tend to fluctuate quite heavily in 'ideal' unit counts: they tend to be quite elastic to make up for units not needed elsewhere. While much of the work done here was investment for the future, weve also made some pretty big changes to the way the AI evaluates where it commits its troops and more. While it can be hard to indicate objective improvements in terms of AI, there are several key areas we aimed to improve for this release: Use of specialized divisions - the AI for assigning armor and special forces to appropriate fronts has received some improvement. The practical upshot of this means you ought to see fewer armor divisions assigned to inappropriate orders (garrisons, pure defensive lines etc), and mountaineers used in frontlines that have the right terrain types.
    Did I mention the AI likes tanks? Unit weight distribution - combined with the new supply system, the AI evaluation of where to put units has been totally overhauled. In practical terms, this is likely to manifest as seeing the AI commit more troops to defend key areas (ports & coasts), care more about the active supply situation on frontlines, and provide something slightly resembling a defense in depth for their own core territory, even during active frontline pushes elsewhere.
    You can see that the AI considers supply carefully when assessing front unit distribution. There are certain circumstances in which the logical supply capacity of a front can be exceeded by the AI - notably when a defensive frontline is facing a numerically superior foe, or when the AI determines that it needs to win a war fast.
    Once Moscow has fallen, the supply situation can get pretty dire as you push east. Naval Invasions - logic for AI naval invasions has seen significant improvement. You should be encountering larger, less frequent naval invasions overall. The Ai will try to take advantage of weak points in coastal defences, and generally be more keen to invade to support theaters. This got so scary we had to turn the new capabilities down several times (of course, these can be tuned back up). Counters - while it can be difficult to determine a right time to switch templates or create a specialized template, weve improved logic for majors utilizing specialized divisions such as Tank Destroyers in relevant circumstances. You should see the AI care a little more about what you throw at it. Buffer Fronts - Several AI strategies now involve the use of buffer fronts. These are specially defined area defense orders which will request a proportion of national divisions to man them. Where these differ from regular garrison orders, is that these fronts will loan their unit distribution counts to nearby fronts or invasion orders. For example, the heatmap below show the distribution of US troops several months prior to Overlord. The troops stationed in Alexandria and the UK are using buffer fronts, which will supply frontlines in europe, in order to avoid having to relocate troops from much further away. Here you can see the (somewhat anachronistic) defense of Greek territory being supplied by the buffer front in Alexandria, which is in turn supplied with divisions from the US mainland (arriving through the Mediterranean).
    The locations and weightings of these are instructional only.

    Read the full Diary



    [ 2021-10-13 13:00:30 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Dev Diary - Poland is not yet lost | No step back AAR


    Welcome to this AAR dev diary!


    Join me as I take on the task of surviving as Poland against both the Soviets and the Germans in the upcoming No Step Back expansion. This diary will function as a sort of compilation of the new features. Normal caveat is that there might be bugs here, and balance are prone to change. It's also a pretty screenshot heavy diary. Without further ado, let's start.

    1936 - The year of housekeeping


    First off let's start with some housekeeping and strategy. I know that Germany will attack first and I cant properly defend against both the USSR and Germany. My plan is to give up eastern Poland when the USSR demands it to buy myself time and take out Germany, then swing around and take back my lost land. Therefore Ill focus my industry buildup on western Poland since I plan on losing eastern Poland, thus limiting my potential losses.
    We start off with the looming peasant strike, which we need to deal with eventually but I like to start out taking care of Danzig first since it gives some easy factories and only takes 35 days. The strike is on a long timer so there is currently no emergency to deal with it from the get-go.
    It is also the path where you can get rid of the Embargoed Economy law which is quite crippling. Since I need to build up compliance it takes some time to get rid off it, so I like to get that ball rolling as quickly as possible. I know that I will need to increase equipment buildup since Poland has lots of borders to cover. I plan on making cheap tanks later on as well just to deal with basic infantry. I am a bit worried about German bombing, both against my troops but also because I know that the AI likes to bomb trains, so I plan to make a token air force just to intercept bombers as well as AA tanks and get AA into my divisions.

    1937 - The year of toaster buildup


    I have started my industrial buildup and in early 1937 I have completed all the must have industrial focuses that I want. There are still quite a handful of very nice focuses to take here, but time is of the essence and I need to deal with the political focuses as well. I am on a very tight deadline.
    The national defense fund is particularly good to kickstart the Polish industry.
    I have also dealt with Danzig and achieved enough compliance to Ban the Nazi party. This will get rid of the crippling trade law. After that I will switch to dealing with internal politics.
    While the industrial buildup was ongoing I was a little sneaky. Krystyna, the gunslinging seducer has quietly infiltrated the Reich with the end goal of preparing a collaboration government to make it easier to capitulate Germany.
    I also started hiring military advisors for additional XP gain. Since historical Poland cant farm XP in Spain, advisors are the next best bet. This reduced my total command power cap, but it's more than worth it. I will need it to unlock doctrines but more importantly, design my tanks.

    Mid 1937 - The April constitution



    It's now mid-1937 and I am starting to deal with the internal politics of Poland. As I do this people will get more and more irritated, and I would rather avoid a civil war, but I dont like spending 100 pp to sideline people.
    Luckily for me most of the focuses in the Sanitation path can be used to modify the left and right irritation (I like to think of it as a big aspirin). There are also some really nice bonus focuses that can only be taken as long as you are dealing with the Sanitation, and then becomes locked out that I want to try and take. You can kinda mix and match which of these bonus focuses you want to take, depending on how much of a rush you are in.
    I get the sense that someone is considerably more annoyed than the other
    At the end of it all I manage to keep everyone relatively happy without too much effort. I managed to pick up some focuses along the way, mostly advisors that will help me later on. It is now December 21st 1938 and I am starting to feel a tingle in the back of my neck. Surely it's just my paranoia. No one is out to get me, surely.

    Early 1939 - Defense prepping


    So, no ones really out to get me, but just in case I start to plan for all eventualities.
    Before I go back and finish up the industrial focuses that I left behind I do a detour to take Plan West, which gives me some hefy temporary construction bonuses for forts.
    At this point I start to look into what type of spirits that I have available to me. Theatre training looks pretty tasty for getting terrain traits much faster, and is relatively cheap. This is a grand battleplan exclusive, but I dont feel that I have enough XP to switch as I currently need it for other stuff, and it's pretty ok for defending.

    Designing a tank fit for Poland


    When all this has been chugging along I have been researching tank modules. As said previously I plan on making a cheap tank that can deal primarily with light infantry. I need to be rather quick to deal with the German enclave in Kningsberg, while also working within the rather modest industry output that Poland has to be able to get out any divisions before the war starts.
    It does not have fancy bells and whistles that other tanks have, but it is relatively cheap. With a Automatic cannon it's also moderately good at taking out infantry, but terrible at going against anything else. This means that I need to focus these tanks on infantry v tank battles and avoid German panzers as much as possible. Armor is also quite low, but as long as the infantry does not pierce it it's fine. I usually prefer welded armor since it provides a good balance between cost and armor. I use Christie suspension and Gasoline Engine to boost the speed of the tank considerably, and a 3 man turret for some extra breakthrough, with a radio to provide some extra breakthrough (gotta have the Poles being able to listen to the latest hits) I am also setting up a separate tank construction for some AA tanks, which is using the same modules, except I am changing it from a Automatic Cannon to a basic anti air gun

    Late 1939 - Not peace in our time?



    Uh oh



    This is how I am currently doing. I have 3 tank divisions in the field, 1 army guarding against attacks in the south, and 1 armies defending central Poland, mainly huddling behind rivers. A full army is preparing to take out Kningsberg and then switch around to face the Germans.
    As the Germans starts to pile in I spring my trap, reducing their supply to buy myself some time
    Early on in the war and I am getting pummeled by CAS and Tacs, and even though my token air force manage to mitigate some damage I am quite happy that I have equipped my divisions with AA
    Early in the war I am getting pushed on some fronts but I am sticking to my original plan, following the railway and sniping the ports.
    Katowice is lost pretty quickly, despite reinforcing it with forts.
    As I push into Memel I realize that my supply is getting awful. I dont want to have to build railways at this stage as my industry is strained already. I try to alleviate the issues by motorizing the node closest to it. It did improve my situation a bit, but not enough to solve it.
    In November there has been some back and forth. The Germans are piling up as I try to make another push against Kningsberg. I also manage to take over and link up a new Supply hub in Allenstein
    A thrust has begun to form, and they are pushing quite hard as well. I need to finish Kningsberg fast. Things are looking a bit bleak, but in the darkness there is a hero ready to rise. It's Romania.
    Romania coming to Polands aid, colorized I convinced my neighbors to join our cause, and there they come, a shining beacon of hope.(A better love story than Twilight)
    With the aid of the Romanian allies I managed to perform a push to take back some land, but in my negligence the Germans sent some medium tanks to Memel and quickly started pushing me back. As feared my automatic cannons could not deal with these tanks, and supply flow deteriorated quickly as supply lines were cut.
    I used some of the XP I gained to add Quick Improvisation. By doing this I got the ability to do several force attacks in a row, finally cutting off Memel from the tanks. They are stranded now. With one last force attack I manage to finish the cornered Memel guard off, stabilizing the front.

    1940 - Death on the Reich


    With the last pockets dealt with and Kningsberg that entire army is free to deal with the German front. Pozna and d will be my 2 first targets since they contain a lot of industry that was lost early in the war. Planning to go on the offensive decide to promote Marian Rukiei, my field marshal, who has now leveled up enough to be able to be an Chief of Army.
    After that I plan my attack. I can see that the railways that supplies the Polish front is largely supplied by 3 points which if cut off, would create 3 breaches that would force the Germans to either fall back or start taking logistical penalties 2 of those are supply hubs which, if I take out, should force the Germans to leave Pozna . I can then go via the sea, taking the ports there for added supply all the way to Berlin. One rail junction to the south is also susceptible to being cut off, close to Brno. I doubt I will be able to take it in the first offensive but if I can I will go for it. For now reclaiming my core territory takes priority so I will go for the two supply hubs.
    Shortly after Hungary is doing what Hungary does and declares war on me, cutting a large portion of my force away from supply. I force deploy my now freed army via rails to respond. While it might have looked bad for a second it has opened up an opportunity elsewhere. I redeploy my tanks
    A coordinated push with my tanks later and Pozna is retaken, a pocket is encircled and the Berlin railway is cut off. Romania is struggling in the south against Hungary. My race-cars sees the opportunity and
    A temporary victory to be sure. The tank is alone and the railway is unguarded. I have some spare units to redeploy and I pray that they will get there in time. Alas the tank was encircled and destroyed, but it did pull enough troops away from the front to allow me to advance and redeploy troops. With overstretched supply lines I stop my advance to allow the railways to be regauged. As I have unlocked some tactics I set mine to Elastic Defense for some extra defense. I would have liked to have Blitz
    But I feel that I dont yet have enough tanks to make do with this tactic. I'll switch it around later
    Through some shenaniganry Germany managed to get a hold of Norway and Sweden. I set a small task force to deal with this. It should be simple as I took every German port, so even though I know that there are German units guarding it, they are basically sitting ducks.
    As expected the Soviet Union finally woke up and on the wrong side at that.
    Although I planned for this already I cant resist leaving them a parting gift As the end of the Third Reich draws near I draft plans for doing after the USSR. The tanks made at the start of the war are now inadequate to go up against the Red army and as such I am drafting new designs
    Tank destroyer with a high velocity gun and a Squeeze-bore adaptor for extra piercing
    Main battle tank with medium canon and wet ammunition storage
    Anti air
    Flamethrower tank (these are support companies, which mainly gives attack boost modifiers to Urban, Jungle, Fort and Forests and are mutually exclusive with engineers)

    1942 - Death throes of the axis


    In the first month of the new year Germany finally capitulated after a series of tank offensives. Supply started to become an issue, first due to lacking trucks for motorization and after a while just due to the sheer amount of troops in the field. The last city to fall was Vienna (I am super happy that I did the initial collaboration government , otherwise I would not have enough victory points.
    The state of the world I grab my tanks to go straight for Hungary and Italy. Obviously I prioritize Hungary first to liberate the Romanians (yes I know I should go for Italy but its not my fault I get emotionally attached easily). Although I am stopped pretty quickly due to the German remnants holding key strategic railways which prevents supply from reaching the new front.
    Once the railways are fixed Italy is a piece of cake to steamroll since they lost most of their troops in Germany.
    The final tally of the war is as follows. The vast majority of casualties inflicted (90%) on me was early in the war from Germany where I struggled the most.
    Post peace conference looks similarish to what it was during the war, with the added wormy southern Slovakia in the middle of it all as a bonus
    The absolute nerve. Its alright we dont need them where we are going I now have time to prepare to retake Eastern Poland

    1943-1946 - Years of the big quiet


    Fast forward a couple of years to rebuild my armies to take on the Soviets. Not much happened in between since the bad man was destroyed. I now have an army of tanks ready, with an army of mechanized to follow up behind them.
    I got the cost of mechanization down to quite low by upgrading its production cost.
    I also produced some Railway guns for support, which now give these effects (as per popular request)
    And this is how my tank template current looks like
    The plan is to follow the Kiev line up to Moscow since its mostly plains.
    I want to avoid the north as much as possible since there is mud and marshes galore, which really makes offensives difficult. I also sent a part of the army to Burgas (Bulgarian coast) in the south (which was why I grabbed that part of Bulgaria to begin with) to make a naval invasion using mulberry harbors into Baku to cut off the oil for the Soviets. I formed the Midzymorze to invite Turkey into my faction since I couldnt get access with my submarines otherwise.
    With everything planned and ready I guess its ok to knock and see if anyone's home?
    I successfully land on the shores near Baku. Some of the divisions land without a port, although that is no problem at the moment since I have mulberry harbors, so I don't have supply issues, but I need to take a port for permanent supply quickly. As you can see I also have transport planes delivering supplies by air, stationed in Turkey which also helps in really bad areas.
    When I land I am met with fiery resistance and although I manage to take a port before the mulberry harbor is destroyed I realize that I will be unable to take Baku immediately. Although an opportunity presents itself as Sevastopol is vulnerable and lightly defended. I take 4 tanks and zoom across the Island, managing to encircle a lot of the Soviet southern front. As the southern front collapses the Soviets are forced to retread from Baku to fill it
    In the meantime a titanic air battle is happening in Eastern Poland. The enemy is trying to bomb my trains, and as the majority of my trains are War Austerity trains that leaves them vulnerable to bombing and disruptions.
    As the caucasus frontline is in shambles I see an opportunity to cut off the entire supply chain. The entire frontline is supplied by just one railway, which I manage to cut off. Effectively forcing the Soviets to retreat towards Stalingrad As the year comes to an end I have pushed quite a bit into the USSR. However I am having a harder and harder time advancing towards Moscow. The city of Bryansk is giving me quite a headache as it's quite well defended and attacking cities from multiple angles is less effective than other terrain. It also has a supply hub that I need in order to advance further, and my lines are quite stretched.
    I stop for a while, build up the railway and then let them eat 2 nukes to the face. After that a breach is formed in the frontline as my tanks push towards Moscow. At its gates fierce fighting commences.
    It does not help that it's January and a lot of the provinces outside Moscow are in deep snow. The red army is pretty exhausted at this point with most of its armor being destroyed. Eventually Moscow falls under a barrage of tanks, fighters and tac bombers. During this Leningrad falls under a combined assault from Sweden by the allies and Rostov is encircled, entrapping a lot of the remaining southern army that defended Stalingrad.

    1947 - The year of please just capitulate


    Even though a lot of the army that defended Stalingrad is dead and the red air force lies in a scrapyard somewhere it is still somewhat tricky to take as the red army still controls a long stretch of the railway. Trying to take Stalingrad head on is still impossible, so I focus on cleaning up the infantry protecting the Stalingrad outskirts. As supply becomes better (relative) I can finally perform the last push and take the city. This puts the USSR quite close to capitulation, and I only need to snipe a few victory points.
    Casualties just before Stalingrad capture and their eventual capitulation. That's that! I tried to show off as many features as possible, and I hope you enjoyed reading through my craziness.. Now I guess there's only one thing to do, as a reward for being a true friend in need

    [url=https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/hoi4-dev-diary-poland-is-not-yet-lost-no-step-back-aar.1493755/?utm_source=stcom-owned&utm_medium=social-owned&utm_content=post&utm_campaign=nsb_hoi_20211006_for_dd] Read the full article here!



    [ 2021-10-06 13:41:43 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Dev Diary: Combat Width & Soviet Feedback


    Greetings all,


    Today we have two important topics to cover, for which we have reinstated @podcat with a battlefield commission, in order to detail our latest efforts to combat the width meta. In addition, Comrades @Bratyn and @Wrongwraith return for a dive into changes to the Soviet Exiles branch of the focus tree, based partly on community feedback.

    Combat Meta


    Hi everyone, @podcat here for a little guest appearance to tell you some more about the combat changes coming with Barbarossa. Back in the Combat and Stats Changes diary we outlined our quest to break down the 40 width meta and try to combat an overall best division. In there we outlined several changes such as varying terrain width without easy multipliers to exploit (meaning you can still make optimums for particular terrains but not all), as well as reduced penalties to going over widths. To expand on this we have changed how targeting and damage spreading works. One way 40 width (and also larger) divisions were stronger than smaller ones was how they could concentrate all of their damage into one target overpowering defense more easily. Targeting is now changed so that divisions will select targets up to its own width (so a 40w can fire on two 20w), but doing so spreads the damage over them relative to their width (and just to be clear, its not just for 40w. This applies to any widths that match up like 30+10 say).
    tis mathematics innit With these changes I can say that I am not really sure what the best meta is anymore. I think there are likely some optimums depending on your opponent and location (when balancing Org versus cost and piercing and such) but what that is I look forward to see you players try to figure out :) We also have one more change that I think will have a pretty big impact. When deciding if a division can reinforce to the battle line inside combat we no longer check in order of the order they joined combat, but instead we will now pick randomly among all waiting divisions with their chance weighted by their reinforce chance. This means that to optimize reinforcing you no longer need to pull micro feats to get the right divisions in order, and can much more safely toss in your newly designed tanks to save the day in an ongoing combat. Also, dont forget your signal companies, they should be more impactful now!

    Soviet Changes


    Hi guys! This is @Bratyn and @Wrongwraith, part of the CD team on the Exiles branch for the Soviet Union. The last month has (other than lots and lots of keyboard-scrubbing...) seen some significant changes to the branch, and while weve kept much of the original design, weve also incorporated feedback from you guys, the community, and did some further iteration of our own on how the tree looks and works. I believe we mentioned last time around that the civil war was hard if you chose to go down this path of the focus tree. Really hard. Realistically hard someone might argue. "Unwinnable", our testers might say. And while that might be to some degree realistic, it isnt that fun. So we decided to make it _slightly_ less hard, while also introducing a few new elements to make the war even more interesting. Among other things, you now use Command Power to recruit units, rather than Political Power. And we have increased the amount of things you can get from countries supporting your cause. We also added a few new focuses.
    As you can see, the main structure of this section is similar to what it was before, with some minor changes. Maybe it should be stated at this point that most focuses are short focuses. The new ones that you can access before the war are these:

    Why do you need these? Well You really, really need to be the one triggering the war, and you want to ensure you have control of as much land and units as you possibly can. So you need to be juggling your PPs and CPs while keeping an eye on the Political Paranoia of the Soviet Union. If Stalin starts the war before you are ready, it will still be very hard to win. And in order to do the latter, you can use the Covert Operations focus to try and divert the attention away from you - by providing fake evidence that e.g. the army is plotting against the state. This will cause an inquiry into army affairs, and this in turn will both damage Stalins army, and lower the Paranoia level temporarily - allowing you to continue with your schemes. The other new focus here is intended to give you a better supply situation when the war breaks out. Fighting through Siberia can be tough. Extra so if you don't have a supply system that supports it. So why not get some more help from the Japanese, right? But I suppose the most interesting thing is this set of Focuses:
    What do they do? Well, they give you different options in how to deal with nations that declared independence during the civil war
    A number of countries can declare independence during the war, especially if it drags on for too long. You then get the choice to see that as an act of war, or as a potential ally (for a while at least). Getting help from minor nations can be a good distraction, and something that can greatly reduce the time you need to fight against the Bolsheviks. However, being the empire -wanna be, you might not want that situation to last forever, hence the post war options.

    This, together with a few other events that can happen during the war, should make the 2nd Russian Civil War winnable for the exiles, although still a challenge.
    Some of the biggest criticism we received from you was the fact that the Western and Eastern expansion branches depended on whether you went down the Tsarist or Fascist branches. And rightly so! It made no sense to arbitrarily lock some of these options behind an ideology choice; a Fascist Russia would certainly have cause to wish to reconquer in the West, and a Tsarist Russia might well have even more reason to exact vengeance upon the Japanese than the Fascists would. Making these two expansion paths available to both branches would, however, mean other focuses were required to continue to offer a unique identity to both of the ideological branches. Some people suggested more focuses geared to creating alliances, and we paired these with certain focuses intended to offer some flavor to the branches. This is the current state of the post-civil-war branches:
    The difference will be immediately apparent. The tree has thickened quite a bit, with over 10 new focuses, and the branches against Sweden, the Baltics, and Finland on one side, and Japan on the other, are now available regardless of the political choice you made, clustered near the center of the branch. Nothing has changed in these focuses, except The Lonely Island, which, if you relied upon Japanese aid too much and thus were puppeted after the end of the civil war, converts into a war for independence focus.
    Lets explore the newly-added focuses. On the Tsarist side, Capital of the Tsars moves the capital to St. Petersburg, and adds a bunch of goodies for the state itself. Reforge the Triple entente does what it says on the tin: reach out to the UK and France to re-establish the old alliance aimed squarely at Germany.
    To emphasize old Tsarist Russias emphasis on being a defender of the Slavs, theres yet another Slavic Commitments focus. If you elected to go down Third Rome, this will still give you an option to send guarantees to the various Slavic powers (along with some other bonuses), after which you may invade Romania (The Fate of Romania) to establish a land connection to the Balkan powers. And finally, The Iron Wall off Russian Resolve gives major bonuses to research and production cost, reliability, and armor for Super Heavy Tanks, incentivizing their use by offsetting the most detrimental aspect of them (their production cost), and thus offering a more unique playstyle for the Tsarists.
    On the Fascist side, Russian Corporate State offers some factories and industrial bonuses. There is a focus to create a Berlin-Moscow Axis, and follow-up focus Japanese Overtures allows for an alternative choice to simply avenging the war of 1905 by going to war with the Japanese: you can invite them into the new Axis and secure Russias flank that way.
    Eastern Expansion is now Fascist-only. After this, there is still the option of meddling in the Americas and, ultimately, declaring war on Canada and the USA for the old Russian colonial possessions on the continent. A second branch can be taken, however, offering wargoals on Afghanistan and Iran, and ultimately leading into Iraq, Turkey (if it hasnt already been taken as the Third Rome), Syria (France), and India.
    These changes should offer a bit more identity to the Exiles branches, while also allowing both to fulfil the basics of recovering Imperial Russian possessions in the West and avenging the war of 1905 in the East. Finally, heres some pictures of certain characters:


    As usual, the tree is still under development, and even what you see here might not match what ends up being released :) See you next week for another dev diary!

    Read the Full Diary here



    [ 2021-09-29 13:16:59 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Dev Diary - Bag of Tricks #3 (The Sequel?)


    Greetings all! Todays dev diary contains the details of a few smaller features coming to the table in No Step Back. In addition, Ill get ahead of the curve here and point out that there will be no diary next week - well be back the week after with more to see.

    Scorched Earth


    One of the enduring tactical practices of the Soviet defense during the German invasion, was the use of scorched earth. In No Step Back, youll be able to spend Command Power on ordering the strategic disabling of railways in the event of a tactical retreat.
    (All visuals WIP!) Enacted on a state level, every railway present receives full damage, and is immediately flagged, making sure that your eager workers do not attempt repairs.
    The pending repairs will show up differently in your construction queue, and wont be worked on. Rather than re-enable these all manually, you can toggle the state of Scorched Earth off on a state, in the same way it was enabled. All affected railways will begin repairing at once. Scorched Earth is a pretty simple mechanic here, but has potentially devastating effects on invaders. In addition to the rail conversion time that exists on captured railway, damaged rail must now be repaired in order to continue supply flow onwards. While we considered extending some effects to factories, we determined that this was likely to affect balance far more than we wanted.

    Preferred Tactics


    We touched on this feature briefly during a previous diary, however, due to some good feedback from the community and from inside the team, weve made some alterations to how it works. Where previously, you set a preferred tactic on a national level, giving a positive chance modifier for that tactic to be chosen in combat, your generals and field marshals will now also possess the ability to earn a favored combat tactic.
    At level 5, youll be prompted to choose a preferred tactic for your generals. This represents their doctrinal school of war - a choice that affects all units under their command. Note here, that we are not removing the national preferred tactic, and that the additive weight will compound from national -> field marshal -> general. To pre-empt the question, you can of course stack all 3 as the same tactic, although this drastically reduces your flexibility, and potentially makes it very easy to be countered. The overall additions granted by preferred tactics, have of course been reduced somewhat to account for this. We wanted to avoid a rock-paper-scissors choice here, and in order to further emulate the core, doctrinal nature of a generals fighting style, we have chosen to make this choice permanent for characters.

    Strategic Redeployment


    As we hinted at, strategic redeployment will now make use of railways in order to simulate more realistic army relocation. This applies a different weighting to the regular pathfinder, resulting in choices that largely look sensible where routes of a similar weight are encountered.
    Here, we take a train followed by a scenic bus-tour in order to avoid the long connection.
    Sometimes it becomes difficult to predict what will be considered 'sensible' in every scenario - there will be edge cases where pretty looking behaviour and logical behaviour do not overlap. Thats all we have for todays diary - just a final reminder that next week there will not be a dev diary - tune back in on the 29th! As usual, Ill be around to answer questions in the thread below! /Arheo

    Read in full here



    [ 2021-09-15 13:00:59 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Dev Diary: Trains #2 - Railway Guns

    Hello there, C0RAX again. Its time again to reveal some more secret information that was hinted at in the last dev diary. Specifically this week will be revolving around the final part of railways and trains. So without any more need for introduction here are our stars of the show today. The railway guns. So to start off I'll go through how you get a railway gun on the map because its a little different to normal land units. First of all you are going to want to research railway guns which comes after armored trains
    Then you can find it in your production tab just like building normal equipment. But unlike other equipment you build, these production lines are limited to 5 factories and the railway gun won't be added to your stockpile.
    Instead, once completed, your brand new railway gun will appear in your capital, in this way they are built similar to capital ships.
    Moving your railway gun is limited to provinces with railways, and so to get to the front you must have a rail connection. Taking into account the rail conversion time when capturing territory is important as you will have to wait for the big guns to be able to help you out.
    You can also attach railway guns to armies just like with planes and they will attempt to place themselves relative to the frontline. If you have several, they will be distributed where possible to support your army. There is also a quick select button on the army to select all railways guns attached to an army should you need to.
    Finally, the last bit of control understanding is range. Railway guns have a range in which they can support and so from any one point are limited in which provinces they can support. This range is shown by hovering over the unit icon.
    On to combat now, here we can see a combat with a supporting railway gun, we have added the useful icon on the combat progress indicator that there is a supporting bombardment. This new icon will also show if there is shore bombardment happening in the combat.
    The combat effects of railway gun bombardment work just like shore bombardment, causing negative combat stat modifiers to those on the receiving end of the big guns. These modifiers affect both soft and hard attack as well as defence values. Notably, these effects do not stack - it becomes more important to spread out your railway artillery than to concentrate it.
    Finally we need to talk about capture and damage, railway guns can be captured via encircling them and damaged by damaging the railway they are placed upon. Now railway guns are the biggest guns by far used on land and so it's important that we have representations of those built by the major powers. So now we look at the unique guns for the major powers. This is the german Schwerer Gustav model you will see when playing as the germans. It's perhaps the most famous railway gun and definitely the biggest and so had to have a part in this feature.
    This is the BL 9.2inch railway gun, a relic of the first world war but these big guns were kept in service until 1945.
    Following that we have the french Canon de 305 another veteran of the first world war.
    Next up is the USAs 8-inch Mk. VI which remarkably first entered service as late as 1941!
    Type 90 240 mm railway gun whose claim to fame is being destroyed by the retreating Japanese in the soviet invasion manchuria.
    And finally the TM-3-12, three of these were made in 1938 and were used in the winter war against finland, unbelievably these where in service until 1999 (a whopping 61 years of service)
    Finally here's a cool clip of the Schwerer Gustav firing in game.

    Read the full Article Here



    [ 2021-09-08 13:00:49 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Dev Diary: Trains and Supply

    Greetings, and welcome back for our last look at the supply system that ships with the Barbarossa update. As you all know, Im British, and in Britain the trains never run on time - I couldnt possibly break with this tradition, hence a completely intentional 10 minute delay on todays diary. Thereve been a couple of changes since we last looked at this, so you may find Ill be reiterating a few aspects that weve already covered in previous diaries, albeit in some cases with a new twist. Trains As indicated in a previous diary, the logistics network that supplies your troops relies on the large-scale relocation of supply using trucks and trains. Whereas trucks serve as an optional last-mile carrier for military supplies, trains make up the backbone of any logistics network that supplies an army which exceeds the local state supply available in its location. The domestic production of trains is something that is unlocked via the technology tree. Many countries will start with the initial (civilian) train technology readily unlocked, however, there are several more options available to you as time progresses (more on this below!).
    Your overall train need for the logistics network is derived from the overall supply usage of the nodes supplying your troops, and the distance factor that supply has to travel in order to reach them. In essence, the more troops you have drawing supply, the more trains you will need to keep supply running. Needless to say, if fewer trains are provided than are required, supply output at point of demand will incur penalties proportional to the magnitude of the shortfall. In one of our previous diaries, we alluded to a number of interactions that could be performed on supply nodes - one of these was a train priority setting. It transpired that this did not fit well with the underlying simulation, and weve removed this setting from nodes. Logistics Strike Of course, a freight-train loaded with supply makes a juicy target for the enemy. In NSB, CAS and bombers are able to perform the new logistics strike mission, which can put a severe strain on an enemys ability to supply their network - actively destroying trains and trucks, as well as damaging railways in the target area. The strategic bombing air mission will also target rail and supply infrastructure, however the logistics strike mission is a much more effective way of neutralizing an enemys fighting capabilities while retaining important industrial infrastructure if you intend to occupy an area for any period of time.
    Train Variants As mentioned above, trains will be a researchable technology with several variants. Trains, unlike regular units, are not controllable - their movement and behaviour is entirely simulated based on the needs of your logistics flow. This said, there are several important statistical aspects to them.
    To begin with, most of your network is likely to be populated by civilian trains. You can construct more of these by co-opting military factories. Further on in your campaign, you can unlock a variant of the civilian train with a significantly reduced construction cost. To combat the strategic mission mentioned above, there is one (or..is it more?) further item in your toolbox for owners of the NSB expansion. Armored trains, while coming with a higher price tag, are much more resistant to destruction from air missions, and can act as an effective deterrent against logistics disruption. Train enthusiasts (we have none of those here, right?) will note that the trains displayed above belong to the soviet union - there is indeed unique art as well as 3d models for several other major nations.



    A highly camouflaged train in action.
    Displayed trains are based on your stockpiled train equipment. This is the german armoured locomotive! Thats all from me for today - Ill hand over here to @YaBoy_Bobby to go over some of the details on supply distribution at a hub level: Hub to Province Supply Distribution We have talked about how trains and rails feed the supply hubs, but not so much about how hubs feed divisions in the field. As hubs are fed from the capital province by a rail network, divisions are fed by hubs over land. Every Hub has an overland range that gives it a collection of provinces that it touches. This range is constant, but the cost of moving over each province is impacted by things like weather, terrain, rivers, and infrastructure. Motorization decreases the penalty for crossing each province, thus increasing the number of provinces a hub will touch and potentially creating greater hub density and thus greater overall supply in an area.
    As has been alluded to with the phrase hub density, a province may be touched by multiple hubs. When multiple hubs touch a province, a ratio is created to determine what percentage of the supply requested each hub is responsible for. Every hub that touches a province lessens the supply burden of other hubs also touching the province. In the final step, Divisions draw supply from hubs, depending upon the relationship between their current province and the hubs that touch that province. When a hub does not have enough supply to meet demands, the lack of supply is distributed evenly across all divisions currently drawing from the hub. In older DDs we talked about a penalty to the amount of supply delivered to a province based upon weather, terrain, and distance. Over the summer we decided to remove this penalty as we found it compounded in a hard to predict way that created bad supply and sometimes penalized having more hubs touching a province in a way that we did not like.


    [ 2021-09-01 14:24:09 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Dev Diary: Bag of Tricks #2


    Greetings all, and welcome back for a slightly less content-focused dev diary than our latter soviet efforts. Today well be covering a couple of smaller additions to be added in NSB, some of which have been hinted at before, followed by a small announcement from project management.

    Weather 2.0


    One of our long-standing goals with the new supply system, was to introduce some changes to the way weather affects the gameplay experience. To give some strategic relevance to weather, weve slowed down the system to modulate between potential weather effects on a less frequent basis. This gives a player some time to react to potentially advantageous/disadvantageous conditions, as well as being somewhat more predictable on a larger scale. In addition to this, weve taken a broad look at the combination of stat effects on ground conditions, temperatures, and weather, in order to mesh more closely with the new supply system, and to give a greater impact on campaigns - especially those conducted in adverse conditions:
    • In addition to Org recovery, weather will now affect org loss from movement, and in extreme cases, supply consumption.
    • While temperature has no new modifier effects, weve taken a pass on temperature data across the world, with the intention of improving accuracy.
    • Ground conditions now also have the potential to affect org loss on moving divisions. This becomes particularly important in muddy/cold conditions such as the eastern front, where the combination of various conditional effects can severely slow an advance.

    New Weather Effects: (WIP)



    New Ground Conditions: (WIP)



    Visually the weather effects have been updated to be easier to spot on the map, with updated particle effects weather will look better than ever. This also makes it clearer when a region is experiencing a weather event so you can react to it faster.

    Equipment Management


    In NSB, were introducing the ability to manage specific equipment usage by division template. This means you can ensure that your elite breakthrough divisions have everything they need, while line divisions have equipment of a lower priority. Please bear in mind that the interface is still a work in progress!
    You can access this new feature in the division designer, where youll have a comprehensive breakdown of all equipment types currently stockpiled.
    Weve provided several broad methods of manipulating equipment usage, in the form of a togglable setting on whether this division template should automatically have newly researched equipment enabled, and a quick method of toggling the usage of foreign equipment. Beyond that, youll be able to toggle categories (such as Infantry Equipment II), all the way down to individual variants.
    Changing these settings will not incur any explicit cost, though youll need to maintain awareness of your production lines when using these settings prodigiously. The update division tooltip, as before, will give you a summary of the scope of your changes, as well as how many divisions are likely to be impacted by this change. Lastly, it is important to note that these settings will affect reinforcement and training only - your existing divisions will not have their weapons immediately confiscated.

    Allied Construction


    Indeed, as hinted at yesterday, were introducing allied construction to the game. This oft-requested feature will allow you to build certain buildings in the territory of members of your faction.
    Unlike subject construction, this will utilize only your own factories, leaving your favored ally to continue with their own constructions as before. We have limited the building types permitted for allied construction to Infrastructure, Railways, Airbases, and Radar, however this setting is easily moddable for those interested in expanding their options. We initially allowed the allied construction of forts, but, well, the office MP proved why that was a terrible idea. For balance reasons, constructions with levels dependent on technology (ie Radar) will be limited by the tech of the recipient country, not the builder.

    Graphical Encircled Unit Icons


    We've taken the opportunity with NSB to add some feedback to one of the more serious situations an army can find itself in - encirclement. Whenever an encircled division is destroyed, a short animation will be played to draw some attention towards it. Of course, this animation also plays if you are the one doing the destroying.

    Changing of the Guard


    Here, Ill hand over to @podcat to cover an upcoming change in the HoI development team. Hi everyone Dan here, I want to let you know that youll be seeing Peter more and more as he is now taking over as game director on Hearts of Iron IV. Looking back I have been working on HOI4 for about 7 years now and before this I worked a few years on HOI3. So it's fair to say that Hearts of Iron will always be close to my heart, but I also feel like it's time for something new to sink my teeth into. Im going to be working with a Secret Project which I can't tell you very much about - except that I am super pumped about it, and that it isn't HOI5. While Im sure the time will come for that, right now we feel that HOI4 still has room to be developed with content and cool stuff. Timing wise it fits well for me. No Step Back was the last expansion step I had penned down back when the original game released in 2016 so it's time for another 5 year plan (heh). It takes the game full circle as with NSB we will have touched on all the major systems in free updates and expansions at least once. It's also a perfect time to get more fresh perspectives to help evolve the game when most of my original ideas and plans have now been done. Of course you will still see me around and I expect Ill be poking around here and there in HOI (one does not simply let go of their baby so easily!), but I am confident in Peter and the team to take the helm and keep steering the ship now, and I am sure No Step Back will be awesome and that you will all love it.
    Et tu, Peter?! Game development is serious business! Peter here - Im honored to have been asked to take the reigns on HoI. Ive been working closely with Dan and the team over the last months, and feel confident that we can keep on building HoI in the right direction. As some of you will be aware, Ive come to HoI by way of Imperator, having previously worked on several PDS projects as a content designer. Prior to that, I had a long and entirely unrelated career in classical music. Historical PDS titles are something Ive been an avid fan of from long before I worked here, and Im super excited to take my experiences forward from Macedonian nation-building to the 20th century. We have many plans for the future of HoI so after NSB is safely out of the door, youll get a chance to see my take on the future of the game. This said, Ill point out that Dan and I are very much aligned on the creative direction of HoI 4, so to pre-empt some questions, a switch in game director does not mean lootboxes, mana, or any radical shift in core design philosophy. What does it mean? Well, itll take time to see that properly. Weve made no secret of the intentions around future dlcs and content (see last PDXcon for more details!), so the best answer I can give you there is that well be doing our utmost to meet this potential roadmap while I begin to put my personal spin on the game. Im more than happy to try and answer broad questions about my thoughts on the future of this excellent game, my industry experiences thus far, or myriad other topics, but please be aware that (beyond what Ive already implied) we will not, as usual, be able to answer qualitative questions on future releases. In general, youll find me present and willing to engage in polite discussion on the forums and other media inasmuch as my time allows, so I expect to begin interacting more with this passionate community in the near future! /Arheo

    For the full Article: Read it here



    [ 2021-08-25 13:00:07 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Dev Diary - Soviet Union: Part Three

    Comrade Bratyn, you have been found guilty of counter-WW2 activity. You have been seen consorting with citizens and even figurehead ideologues of the Imperator team. Undeniable proof of work -by your hand- can be seen in publications by this group of dissidents made over the course of the past year. You do not fool us. We know Drikus is just another alias you use. Your attempts at shirking your duties to the Team will not be tolerated. Discussion of the Classical Period is wholly unacceptable behaviour for a HoI4 citizen; publication of treasonous material is a crime far, far worse. You are hereby stripped of your rank and sentenced to the mines in HoI-beria. Perhaps a years hard labor working on good, proper WW2 material will enable you to see the errors of your ways, and rehabilitate you sufficiently to regain your previous liberties. Comrade Bratyn, I will not welcome you back. You were foolish to think you could ever leave, in the first place.
    Hello everyone, and welcome to the third (yes you read that right) dev diary on the Soviet Union focus tree! And yes, in the words of a famous hero who fought valiantly and sacrificed himself for the defense of Earth some 25 years ago: Hello boys! Im baaaaaaaaaack! Not to worry, though! Unlike Russel, Im not here to destroy the project by dealing catastrophic damage to the superweapon that is this very next DLC that were unleashing upon [strike]a collection of RVs near a remote and officially non-existing military base in Nevada [/strike]the world. That requires backbone, and were not allowed to have one of those here in HoI-beria. It has already been explained in previous DDs that the sheer size of the Soviet tree has meant multiple CDs have been slaving away working proudly on it. This has been doubly the case for the non-Communist branches (which the eagle-eyed among you already noticed in last week's diary must lurk off to the side of the picture you were shown): the collection of CDs that have contributed to these have almost been as numerous and varied as have been the groups comprising the White Movement that inspired the branches... *Laughs nervously, glancing at his rooms locked door* While I initially was given some background features to toil away on, I eventually was drafted into this group of laborers-- *Glances at the silhouettes of guards visible through the window in the door, sweating this time and continuing in an excessively loud voice* ...Erhhh, I-I mean, I volunteered for this honorable task to contribute in some small way to the ever-increasing glory of the HoI4 Team, which has so graciously and mercifully deigned to allow me to prove my unceasing loyalty through my labor! *Sweats profusely* ...I, uh, am also proud to have volunteered as as spokesman for this assembled group of CDs, and tell you all about what weve been doing! *Clears throat raspily* Very well, lets get started.

    The Exiles


    In 1936 the so-called White Movement was in shambles. Despite extensive international support, the Bolsheviks had eventually defeated the loose and diverse anti-Communist coalition (who really only agreed on one point: that the communists must be defeated) that vied for control of the country in the Russian Civil War. With many of their leaders dead, much of the remnants of the Whites fled the country rather than be purged. Many of these fled to Manchuria, which in the early 1930s was invaded and occupied by the Japanese. In the years afterwards these exiles in Manchuria were supported by the Japanese to cause problems for the Soviets across the border (including such intrepid endeavours as erecting a giant neon swastika 3km from the Soviet-Manchurian border). While certainly not the only collection of White exiles in the world, they were the only ones to be in any conceivable position to do any material damage whatsoever to the Soviet state. If an anti-Soviet uprising was to take place, it would therefore likely be in the old White-controlled areas of the Far East and Siberia: far from the tightly-controlled industrial areas of the far west of the Soviet Union, and where Japanese equipment and support would be most forthcoming. Are you up for the challenge of ousting the Bolsheviks after all, guiding the nation through an Electric Boogaloo of Russian civil wars, reinstating the Romanovs, and, finally, returning its former Glory to the Russian Empire?

    The Build-Up


    If so, the only way to affect such a drastic change by the mid-1930s is through civil war. In many ways the build up to the Civil war for the Nationalists and the Tsarists plays similar to the Communist Opposition build ups, albeit with a somewhat different touch. The red army is highly politicized so you will find it harder to actually gain a large following there, and you wont get any support from the NKVD either. But lets look at the pre-civil war part of the tree:
    This part of the branch all revolves around various ways in which to prepare for the civil war: obtaining equipment, units, factories, national spirits, decisions, and even advisors for when the civil war kicks off. At the same time, decisions allow you to spread your influence (starting in the Far East) throughout the Soviet Union, readying states for an uprising to coincide with crossing the border from Manchuria. Despite this preparatory work, however, the Soviets have solidified their power tremendously over the past 20 years, and this war will be a challenge.

    Religion


    One way of preparing for the continuation of the counterrevolution, and undermining communist support, is to gain the support of the church. Some of the Orthodox Churchs bishops (metropolitans) had fled abroad rather than cooperate with such a militant atheist government as Stalins. Others elected to stay, and in 1927 Patriarch Sergy issued a divisive Proclamation on behalf of the Russian Orthodox Church that professed absolute loyalty to the Communist government of the country. Many metropolitans broke communion with him as a result. Despite the proclamation, 1931 still saw the destruction of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow, to make room for a colossal Palace of the Soviets. These are the kinds of decisions that need to be overturned to return faith and religion to the central position that it deserves in Russian society, providing suitable rewards accordingly.

    Eventually, you may begin the war:
    As stated, it will not be easy, and the Soviets enjoy a tremendous military and industrial advantage over you. You will have to make intelligent use of your resources and subversive activities to level the playing field even slightly and make an unlikely victory happen. Luckily, the possibility of foreign aid exists, though even this may not be enough. The final ace in the hole is swallowing your pride and making the Japanese an offer they cannot resist: the elimination of a rival power to their northwest, major territorial gains on the Pacific coast, and even the installation of a subject regime in the power vacuum their rivals collapse would create All this might buy their direct involvement, but the price is very high...

    Consolidation



    Once the civil war has been won, it is now time to consolidate your power, rebuild the war-torn nation, and replace the White provisional government with the more stable will of a Romanov. This calls for the convening of a Zemsky Sobor, who will elect Tsar Vladimir I to this position. These focuses (and some of the later religious branchs focuses) also will also spark the return of many anti-Communist exiles to their homeland. From here, you may continue to embrace either of the two predominant ideological flows that comprise the White Movement:
    The first of these is the Tsarist branch - solidifying the Tsars autocratic control over the country and restoring the Romanov dynasty. This branch seeks to restore the Russian Empires old borders; reconquering the many states that were lost after the Great War, and pushing beyond.
    The second of these is the Fascist branch - turning over power to Rodzaevsky and reducing the Tsarist to a figurehead monarch, like in many nations in the West. Under this leadership, the embarrassments of old will be redressed and avenged; in particular the Empires defeat at the hands of Japan over 30 years prior. This path also focuses on naval build-up in the far east, and even explores bold forays into the Americas
    Finally, a doublet of formable nations exist for these branches. As the Tsarists, it is possible to extol the unity of the Slavic Peoples, and truly take up the role of their Protector. Be strong enough, be liked enough, and Slavic nations under threat will join you willingly. If not, you may take them by force. Regardless of how you unify them: you may form a grand Union of the Slavs if you succeed in this task.

    Alternatively (and open to both branches), you might emphasize the role of the Church in the new nation you have created. Choosing this spiritual path will elevate the Metropolitan of Harbin to leader of the nation, and opens up the ability to claim Russias rightful place as the only true heirs of an empire long gone
    Finally, Ill briefly hand over the word to Comrade @Wrongwraith.

    New Releasables


    As hinted in last week's DD weve also added a few more releasable countries that can become independent in a peace deal or through focuses. So basically all SSRs, ASSRs and some of the Okrugs of the USSR are covered, as well as some other countries that existed before the establishment of the Soviet Union in 1922. To give you an idea, the map can now look like this:
    Some of the releasable countries overlap. For example, the Far Eastern Republic has cores on both Chukotka and Vladivostok as well. The map above shows as many simultaneous countries as possible in the Soviet Union area. And of course this means loads of new flags. Some of you guessed right last week! The flags shown were for an independent communist Karelia and a non-aligned Buryat Republic. And there are loads more, like this one for example:
    In addition, we added a few new formables for those countries, just in case you feel like reforming Idel Ural for example. Now, with that out of the way: that was all from us for today! It should go without saying that the tree is still being actively worked on, and so what you saw here may not represent 100% what is eventually released. I do hope you liked this little peek into whats going on with the not-so-Communist Soviet things! *Attempts to feign a joyful laugh, but then glances nervously at the door again, and adds in an urgent whisper:* I mean it If I dont meet my quota of likes and get a ratio of above 90% for this diary Ill be scrubbing keyboards for a month! Oh - almost forgot - the Soviet Focus Tree behemoth as of currently:

    For the full article, Dev discussion and more content, Read it here!



    [ 2021-08-18 13:00:38 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Dev Diary: Soviet Union Rework - Part 2


    Hello comrades, and welcome back to another DevDiary for No Step Back. After Comrade @ManoDeZombi (as chairman of the People's Commitee for Focus Tree Production) introduced you to the historical and shared branches of the Soviet tree last week, today we will be talking about the Opposition against Stalin.
    The opposition to Stalin during the 30s was diverse and divided. Thus I guess it is fitting that the work on the various paths for the Soviet Union has been divided between several CDs unlike normally, when one tree is designed by one CD. Thus the creation of the CD Soviet. I got the honor of writing this diary, so I shall do my best at covering all the options available for the alternative communist branches. It is also my first dev diary, as I am relatively new to the Content Design team at HoI. Hope you like it! Please note though that at the moment of writing this dev diary, a lot of things are still being worked upon, and copy edits to be done, so there will be changes before release. Even before Lenins death, there was a bitter power struggle within the party. Lenin introduced a ban on factionalism, which Stalin later used to defeat his opponents. But before that happened, several sub groups had formed behind outspoken leaders. Initially the strongest ones were Kamenev and Zinovyev and their so called New Opposition. Their main opponent, back in the early 20s, was Trotsky, leading what came to be known as the Left Opposition. On the other side of the spectrum was the Right Opposition, fronted by Bukharin. Of course, there were other groups as well - as the Workers opposition, and the Decemist faction, and nothing was stable for long as allegiances shifted. Stalin, forming his own faction, aptly called the "center", and using his position as party secretary to his advantage, played the others against each other, gradually gaining total control of the communist party. While all this was happening, the surviving leaders and generals of what had been the disunited white movement were plotting in Manchuria. As communist you will have three main options. One is to stay with the center and keep Stalin as country leader. That option has already been covered, so lets move on. The second option you have is a move to the left.

    Trotsky


    As you can see from the tooltip, if you go down this path, you will end up in a civil war. There was simply no way Stalin would just hand over power to Trotsky or his allies. You have a few things you can do to make life easier for you once the war starts, and to prepare for what comes after.
    You can send trusted advisors abroad, in order to keep them safe from Stalin. Relatively safe anyway, stay clear of ice picks.
    You can tie closer bonds with Smirnov, and his Workers' opposition, who were always close to the left opposition anyway.
    Additionally you can convince a few notable Military Officers to side with you. That will strengthen the ties with the military, making your side stronger in the upcoming civil war. Like e.g. Primakov (portrait is work in progress by the way, just wanted to show you one of the new guys):
    Also, Stalin agitated a lot against what he called wreckers - organized workers doing planned sabotage - associated with the Trotskyists. Whether historically true or not, you can use that tactic against him and actually organize wrecker squads.
    As can be seen from the screenshot above, you can point your finger at the Right opposition, in the hope that Stalins paranoia will hit them, rather than your people. When you feel ready, you complete the Ignite the Flames to start the war - unless of course, Stalins paranoia has forced your hand already. Well return to the Civil War in a sec, but first, let's take a peek at the other end of the alternative Communist Branch:

    Bukharin's side of the Tree:



    If you want to oppose Stalin, but dont feel Trotsky is your guy, you can always go to Bukharin, and the Right Opposition. In order to confuse everyone, this time we have the right to the right of the left... But at least the left is to the right of the center, to keep some chaos (Theres a reason for that though - which you can probably guess from the above, but more of that later). Bukharin was one of Stalins first allies, and he used him to thwart Kamenevs plans. Later he got brushed to the side and accused of plotting against Stalin. When the game starts he is out of favor, out of power, but not entirely out of options. Just like the Left Opposition you can try your luck at removing Stalin by starting a civil war:
    It should be noted though, that the Right opposition will have a much lower support within the military than the Left Opposition has - it is after all Trotskys Red Army - so if push comes to shove you might have to get some help from abroad.
    For example, you can offer Vladivostok to the Japanese, making them more inclined to support you when the war starts.
    Other options include e.g. trading future resource rights in return for Military factories. If you are lucky, some nations might even send a general or two to help you.

    The New Opposition and Common focuses


    But before we delve deeper into the Civil War, lets take a step - not back - but rather to the side. I mentioned theres a reason the left and the right are together in the focus tree and that is of course because, as I said before, alliances shifted all the time, and if you want, you can actually join forces against Stalin. And ally with Zinovyev and Kamenev if you want to do that.
    By choosing the cooperative option, you get access to more advisors and get a higher level of popular support, but you also get penalties due to the many differences of opinion in the party.

    But of course, you dont have to do this, if youd rather work alone, you can always use the other side as scapegoats. Another (very) important part in this part of the focus tree are the focuses intended to help you prepare for the actual war. You can start infiltrating the military, to gain control of a larger part of the Red Army/Navy/Airforce when the war starts, secure more generals and admirals to your cause, or simply divert Stalins attention to the military branch, making him target them instead of your political leaders, weakening his own forces before the actual show of force.
    Similarly you can infiltrate the NKVD. This can be extra useful if you are planning on having the Right Opposition replace Stalin. More on that soon.

    The Civil War Mechanics


    Ok, so lets return to the actual Civil War mechanics: In general, the mechanics are very similar to the Spanish Civil War mechanics, although slightly simplified as the sheer number of Soviet states would make it overwhelming. The first thing you have to do is decide from where you want to start the uprising. Depending on which branch you have selected you will be presented with slightly different options. This is roughly what it will look like for the Left Opposition. (again bear in mind the rather rough appearance of the Decision text etc - it is a work in progress image after all).
    Once you have established a base, which will then be your base during the civil war, you can start infiltrating neighboring states - as long as Stalin hasnt made a crackdown there first. In general it is a good idea to keep the supply situation in mind when planning your civil war. Only controlling states with a poor supply situation will make your attack on the capital much harder.
    When the war finally starts, the states you have infiltrated will be the ones you control, so doing some thinking ahead can be recommended. Note that you cannot infiltrate central Russian states, nor Leningrad. Stalin and his cronies have too tight a grip on those for them to be taken. The Military support focus unlocks a number of decisions that can be taken:
    These will ensure that you get more officers and/or a larger portion of the armed forces when the war starts. However, as with almost anything the opposition does this also affects Stalin's paranoia. The more people you try to sway to your cause, the likelier he is to randomly swing at his opponents, real or believed. You can also, as mentioned before, interact with other countries. Either by offering various concessions or by just doing a fundraising campaign (Left Opposition). So far so good. However, Stalin wont sit idly by while you are preparing to remove him. First of all, as soon as he gets wind of the plot, he will make crackdowns in various states, blocking them from being taken over by the opposition, as can be seen in the next picture, where Mykolaiv is secured by Stalin.
    Additionally, he will use whatever means at his disposal to ensure the loyalty of Generals and admirals. So if you dally too long, you might lose a few key ones - having to fight them rather than having them on your side.
    But perhaps most importantly, Stalin will continue with his own focus tree. And, as those of you who read last week's diary remember: that has effects on the opposition

    So the longer you wait with kicking off the war, the more people Stalin will have had time to purge. So its basically a balancing act. Some purges can be avoided, but it will cost you, and the paranoia will continue to increase. And if it increases too high, there is a risk that Stalin will actually start the war, rather than you. This is not only bad because you dont get to choose the time, it is also bad as you wont get the bonuses that the focuses that kick off the war gives. And sooner or later you have to start that war:
    With for example this guy in charge

    Killing Stalin


    And sooner or later you have to start that war - to be totally honest; that is not entirely true. If you go down the Right Opposition path, you can actually try to remove Stalin in a different way. If you manage to convert the current NKVD chief to your cause, you can attempt to assassinate Stalin instead, and then stage a coup claiming power in the chaos that reigns after that. You have to do this before Stalins ally (and basically 2nd in command) Beriya becomes head of the NKVD, however, or else it will be too late. If you succeed, you will have a window of opportunity in which you can move to replace Stalin's temporary successor with the man of your choice. Thus basically replaying the historical events of 1953, only some 15 or so years earlier. But beware, if the attempt fails, Stalin's paranoia will increase greatly (rightly so this time, I guess) - and that might lead to him launching a full scale war against you, so youd better prepare for that eventuality... Infiltrating the rank and file of the NKVD in addition to getting their chief on your side certainly increases the odds as well.

    After the Civil War


    So you fight the civil war, defeat Stalin. Then what? Well, if you do it as one of the two communist branches, you can still do basically everything that Stalin could - apart from those focuses locked behind the The Centre focus. Not all, but most of the industrial and military focuses are still valid - as are most of the foreign policy ones. But going through all this must surely lead to something else as well, right? And yes it does. For the Left opposition the bottom half (more really) of the tree looks like this:
    You have the Permanent Revolution sub branch that helps you spread world revolution:

    If you have Trotsky as your leader, he also gets an upgraded trait when you go down this route. You can make final call on how to deal with any remaining opposition groups as well (goes for both left and right opposition)
    If you go for the Builder of the Red Army focus ( only available with Trotsky at the helm) you can also have Trotsky assuming command of your field forces.
    Aside from restarting world revolution you will have the decision on how to proceed with what was once the Soviet Union. How far will you decentralize? Either you can go for a fully decentralized state, including giving greater autonomy to the republics, in effect releasing them as puppets and then helping them get stronger:
    Or you work towards giving the Supreme Soviet increased power, basically removing the need for a figurehead leader

    If you are going down the Right opposition path, you will have a similar amount of things to do after the take over, but with a slightly different mix:
    The Back to the NEP sub branch contains various focuses for revamping the Soviet economy, with the goal of turning the country into an economic powerhouse.
    You can also upgrade Tomskys traits, again improving your ability to compete with the USA for example.
    You can also get puppet wargoals and bonuses against non-communist neighbors through the Enemies of the people focus. Like the Left Opposition you can go down the Supreme Soviet path, but you can also choose to keep your current leader and instead go for the For the Common Good sub path.
    This further strengthens your country, and also your allies. Ending with the Socialist Humanism focus:
    And here's a summary of the new leaders you can get through these parts of the Focus tree:








    That was all from me for now. I hope you liked this little peek into whats going on with the not so Stalinist Soviet things! And hopefully I can come back with more details at some later stage. Oh, I almost forgot, the entire Communist Focus Tree:
    There are a few extras, but you'll have to check those out on the forums!

    Read the full article here



    [ 2021-08-11 13:00:48 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Hearts of Iron has joined Instagram!


    Greetings Comrades & Generals!


    We know you're ever watchful for more No Step Back information, and we'll deliver with this weeks dev diary, but for now we wanted to take a moment to talk to you about Operation Zoomer. As of 14:00 BST, August 9th our landing craft invaded our latest Social Media platform - Instagram. Magenta Beach is open. We're under heavy fire and we need reinforcements! Join the Hearts of Iron community team for a whole host of new, community content on our latest platform. We've got bundles of planned content, including special video content, sneak peaks, history bites and behind the scenes info! Who knows, there might be a dev diary tease later today too!

    Join the fight: Hearts of Iron Instagram



    [ 2021-08-09 14:10:30 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Patch 1.10.8 - Multiplayer Hotfix

    Added server visibility settings to Steam MP (Public, Private, Friends) Update MS as well to keep version parity.


    [ 2021-08-05 11:59:34 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Dev Diary - Soviet Union Historical and Common Branches

    ! - Greetings comrades! And welcome to a new Hearts of Iron 4 Dev Diary! I hope that you are all having a great summer, and that you are prepared for a little reading, because today well be talking about the last country left to show for the upcoming expansion, a country that, in the direst of times, did take No Step Back. As you all know, the Soviet Union is huge, and weve had to form our own Content Design Soviet to properly implement all the cool stuff we wanted to represent. So today Ill be talking about my main responsibility, which has been the historical and the common branches for what is one of the most interesting countries in HOI. Id just like to mention a couple of things before we start: First of all, yes, everything well be talking about today will be coming for free with the Barbarossa update, although some content might vary if you dont own some of the previous DLCs. Secondly, our beloved Motherland is still WIP so you might see content, values or even art thats not final and is subject to change before release. You will also see a fair amount of debug decisions that we use in order to test the new systems. And with that said, I suggest you make yourselves comfortable and ready for a long read, and lets get started!
    This country entered World War I as the Russian Empire, but got out of it as Soviet Russia, having lost substantial territory in Eastern Europe as a result of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in 1918, where the Bolsheviks in Petrograd ceded control of Poland, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Finland and other areas to the Central Powers. Since the Allies did not recognize the Bolshevik government, no Soviet Russian representation attended the Peace Conference of 1919 at Versailles, where the former Russian territories previously ceded to Germany became independent states. In December 1922, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was formed. The term soviet means council, and they emerged in the 1905 Revolution as groups or assemblies of Russian workers, soldiers and peasants, in opposition to the Tsar. These soviets disappeared after the (failed) revolution of 1905, but re-emerged under socialist leadership during the revolutions of 1917, which overthrew the Tsar. Through the Soviets, the Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, constituted the political structure of the new regime. Following Lenins death in 1924, Iosif Stalin came to power and soon began to suppress all political opposition inside the Party, starting with Trotsky and his followers, but turning against many of those who supported him in his political struggle shortly after (such as Zinovyev or Bukharin), developing a climate of political paranoia and carrying out the Great Purge, with its massive arrests and extremely harsh repression to citizens, military and even party members. But thats enough history for now, lets take a look at how the Soviet Union looks when you start the game in 1936.
    As you can see, a few things have changed: Initial War Support has been significantly reduced, aiming at making it a bit harder to get to War Economy super early on, something that the Soviet Union was not really ready to do in 1936. Stalin has finally got a trait (and as youll see, this is not the only trait hell be getting). There are far more starting National Spirits than before, we will take a look at them later, but the first two of them you might recognize: Home of the Revolution and Trotskyite Plot?

    We also have a starting advisor, Genrikh Yagoda. He is one of three possible Heads of the NKVD, each one with different characteristics, that you will not be able to manually remove/replace until you get rid of the purges (during which, Yagoda might get purged and be replaced by Yezhov, who can in turn get purged and be replaced by Beriya, as happened historically).
    The advisor roster has been greatly expanded, these are the advisors available to Stalin in the early stages (unless he goes too wild with the purges).
    There is an even longer list of advisors available for the alt-history communists, most of them will be targeted during the purges, but those are for the next dev diary! There have also been some changes to the Generals roster: You will now start the game with the five first Marshals of the Soviet Union. Kulik has been demoted to General (since he was made marshal only in 1940, after having lost 3 of the previous marshals in the purges), and there is a new cavalry-specialized general, Vitaly Primakov, available at game start, although a potential target in the purges (generic portraits mean WIP portraits!).

    Last but not least, we have sent several Soviet generals on leave to a rejuvenation center, as some had portraits from long after the war. But as you can see, they have not yet returned from their trip (traveling up to 30 years back in time might take some... time, after all). Okay, we are now finally ready to take a proper look at the new Soviet focus tree (well, except for the Alt-history branches, those are for the next week).
    Kinda wide and populated, yes? Well, our main goal with this rework was to offer a more flavorful and historically-accurate experience, while presenting the player with an ample variety of options (both historical and not-so-historical-but-still-plausible) to go for in every different area, just as the largest country in the world deserves! In terms of gameplay, there are lots of short focuses in this tree, however you will never be able to complete all the focuses in all branches (unless you play until very, very late in-game). You will have to choose your strategy and pick the focuses and branches that will be key for your success in the campaign.

    Lets start talking about the industrial branch.



    During the first years of Soviet rule, the economic and industrial development basically consisted of recovering the formerly rural-agricultural Russian economy from the devastation of the Civil War. From 1921 to 1928, the USSR pursued the New Economic Policy (replacing the policy of War Communism, which had led to the decline of the national economy). During the time of the NEP parts of the means of production (light industry, food industry, etc.) was largely in private hands, while the state controlled the heavy industry, transport, banks and international trade. However, during the Stalinist era, the primary goal was the establishment of an industrial base in the country, and during the late 1920s measures were taken again against the kulaks, initiating the collapse of the NEP. In 1928 the implementation of the First Five Year Plan began, followed by a forced industrialization and collectivization. As you might guess, the main feature of the Soviet industrial branch is the Five Year Plans: You start with a National Spirit representing the Second Five Year Plan (1933-1937), this plan was characterized by a harsh collectivization and a major advance in industrialization and infrastructure. However, the hectic pace of this industrialization and the lack of qualified personnel often resulted in high accident rates (meaning frequent losses in lives and expensive material) and, overall, low efficiency.
    As you complete focuses on the Five Year Plan branch, your National Spirit will evolve, representing the Third Five Year Plan (1938-1942, the plan was of course ruined in 1941 after Barbarossa). This plan initially emphasized the need of increasing quality in production and resource extraction. However, with tensions in Europe growing at an alarming rate, the plan soon started to gradually focus on defense and military production. This is represented in game by the possibility of specializing your Third Five Year Plan, you can focus on increasing the efficiency of your factories in the long term, or you can shift the focus to start boosting armament production as soon as possible. As you might have noticed, the focuses in the centre are all resource-related.


    As Ive mentioned, the Third Five Year Plan was ruined after Barbarossa, so how is that represented in HOI? Well, all the focuses related to the Third Five Year Plan (the ones inside the red boxes below) will get locked forever once the Soviet Union gets dragged into a war against a major country, meaning that once the Great Patriotic War starts, the Third Five Year Plan goes to hell, forever. You will keep your current national spirit with all its bonuses, but you wont be able to progress any further in this part of the branch.

    But fear not, thats not the end of the Five Year Plans. If you manage to survive and defeat your enemies, and right after the peace conference against the enemy that ruined your five year plan, Restoration and Development will be automatically completed for you, not only granting temporary bonuses for repairing and rebuilding your (potentially) devastated industry and infrastructure, with a cost in consumer goods, but also unlocking access to the Fourth Five Year Plan and the final focuses in the industrial branch. The Fourth Five Year Plan (1946-1950) was focused around the reconstruction and economic development of the country.

    The focuses below the Fourth Five Year Plan are late-game focuses aiming to provide interesting things to do and goals to achieve if you decide to continue playing after the main war (or if you manage to have an independent war against another major while world war 2 is raging elsewhere). The COMECON was an economic organization, founded in 1949 by countries from the Eastern Bloc, and led by the Soviet Union. Once you complete the focus Found the COMECON (presumably earlier than 1949), a small decision system will be unlocked, aimed at aiding your allies (usually at your expense) in order to boost their military and industry so that they keep the pace in the potential wars to come.

    To the right of the Five Year Plan focuses, we have a choice to make: train National Specialists or rely on Foreign Experts. The first will significantly improve the national designers, which are now slightly weaker at game start. The latter will unlock the Gosproyektstroy.

    The Gosproyektstroy was a State Design and Construction Bureau set up in 1930 following an agreement with the "Architect of Detroit" (Albert Kahn), by which American architects became consultors for all industrial construction in the Soviet Union in the early 30s. This is one of many cases in which the USSR concluded agreements with foreign companies, mainly American (Ford, General Electric...) and German (Krupp, Borsig...) to carry out industrialization during the years of the first five-year plan. In HOI, you can bring back the project, represented by a construction designer that will provide no research bonus (youre relying on foreigners, after all) but that can, however, be improved by bringing foreign experts, boosting your production in the long term. Each country will grant different bonuses, Germany will give a bonus to efficiency growth, the USA will grant an efficiency cap bonus and Japan will boost your starting efficiency, for example. All of them will also grant a License Production Cost bonus (atm its shown as that amazing None: +0.75 in the pic below :D).
    The Russian Academy of Sciences, founded in the 1700s, became the highest scientific institution in the Soviet Union after the revolution. National academies appeared throughout the 20th century in the Union republics, and regional branches were created as part of the USSR Academy of Sciences.
    The first focus (The USSR Academy of Sciences) will grant you a research slot and a small bonus (1%) to research speed.The second focus will allow you to build more academies of sciences in the Soviet republics, both in integrated (not-released) republics and in puppeted republics, for an extra 1% research speed each and, if built on a puppeted republic, then it will also boost your puppets research, now thats a win-win if Ive ever seen one.

    Moving on to the Airforce branch.



    During the 1930s, the Soviet government funded missions to break numerous world aviation records. Aviation achievements and records became demonstrations of the USSR's technological progress and Soviet media continuously exalted record-breaking pilots. However, Soviet aviation was far from being in as good a shape as the Soviet media seemed to indicate. It was, in fact, plagued by mismanagement, inefficiency and technologically-deficient equipment, leading to a staggeringly high accident rate (in early 1941, prior to the war, apparently 2-3 planes on average were lost daily due to accidents, which led to the famous flying coffin incident, which sealed Pavel Rychagovs fate during the Great Purge). The Great Purge definitely took its toll on the Soviet Air Force too, newly promoted officers lacked flying and command experience, while older commanders, having witnessed the fate of so many officers during the purges, lacked initiative and efficiency out of fear of being labeled as enemies of the people. In HOI, this terrible situation is represented via the National Spirit Soviet Airforce, which has fairly harsh and frightening penalties to anything related to getting your feet off the ground.
    Throughout the Airforce branch, you will be able to fix most of these penalties and get some bonuses too. You will not be able to remove all of those penalties though, since you will eventually have to choose between production or pilot training: the left part of the branch aims at improving aircraft production (more plains, better plains), while the right is focused on getting skilled aviators from among flying clubs, and training men and women alike to become competent army pilots, culminating with the three all-female aviation regiments formed by Marina Raskova (they come with aces and everything!).
    And its time to talk about the Soviet Navy!
    The Soviet Navy was divided between four operational zones: The Baltic Fleet, the Black Sea Fleet, the Arctic Fleet and the Far East Fleet, with vast distances separating them. By 1941 the Red Fleet possessed few large modern warships, its expansion had focused instead on submarines and light ships, aiming at protecting the countrys coasts and borders from enemy attacks, the naval defense strategy. After the purges (in which many of the advocates of the defense strategy perished), Stalin pushed to turn the maritime strategy into a resolutely offensive one, but the construction of large military vessels was hindered by the war. Anyways, when Operation Barbarossa commenced, German bombers focused on airfields instead of targeting naval bases. The Third Reich didnt need to destroy the Soviet navy, as long as their navy managed to blockade Soviet ships in their ports with mines. In the left part of the tree, you will be able to reinforce the naval bases of any of the four fleets.
    You can then Expand Shipbuilding Plants to get a significant amount of dockyards, based on the naval bases you previously reinforced.
    To the right, the PC of the USSR Navy will grant you The Red Fleet national spirit.
    This national spirit will be further improved in the focuses below, based on your choice between surface or submarine warfare. Most of them will provide some navy experience, tech research bonus and production cost reduction for the appropriate type of ship.
    Long Range Raiders will also unlock Cruiser Submarines tech and add a couple of K-Class submarines to your production line.
    Similarly, Expand the Morskaya Aviatsiya will grant you bonuses for carriers and navy aircraft, while also adding a carrier to your production line.
    And weve made it to the last actual common branch, the Military branch!
    There are three branches here really, one for Military Industry, one for Defense, and one for the Army. Lets start with the Military Industry, to the left.
    Here you will find multiple research and production bonuses, some military factories and some tank templates.


    Development of Tankograd will make it cheaper for you to edit tank templates, while also building military factories in heavily industrialized states in the Urals and to the East.
    Last but not least, lets talk about Merge Tank and Materiel Plants. Did you notice that there were similar focuses in the Air and Navy branches?


    Well, during my research for Soviet designers, I was amazed by the sheer complexity of just keeping track of a single designer candidate during HOIs timeline, since many plants were repeatedly renamed (or re-designated), merged or split into different bureaus (which were also frequently renamed, merged and split themselves). Sometimes plants or entire bureaus were merged into even bigger agencies, and other times a plant would just be merged into a nearby, bigger plant to focus on the R&D aspects of it, for example. Last but not least, we have the evacuation of entire plants from West to East carried out by the Soviets shortly before Barbarossa and of course during the war, which often resulted in more merging, renaming, and repurposing of plants. So, in the face of all this industry reassignment frenzy and plant renaming festival I thought: why not just embrace this chaos and make something out of it for HOI? These focuses will unlock decisions to merge different plants into your active designers, providing them with many different small bonuses. All these plants are real, although not all of them were actually merged into a bureau or into another plant.



    Worth noting that there are also a few new Naval and Tank designers available for the Soviet Union.

    In the Defense Branch you can choose between building a defensive line in the border with Poland (Stalin Line) or in the border with Germany, assuming you have somehow gained control over Eastern Poland (Molotov Line). You can also fortify Moscow and the White Sea-Baltic Canal and the border with Japan and their minions. Impregnable Forts is meant to represent the fearsome coastal batteries around Leningrad and in the Crimea, that caused so much trouble to the Germans during the invasion.
    Further down the tree, we have Leningrad Polytechnical Institute, which will grant you your 5th research slot, The Road of life and the Soviet Atomic Bomb Project.
    The Road of Life were the transport routes across Lake Ladoga (water routes during the period in which the lake is navigable and ice routes in winter) to Leningrad during the Second World War. They were the only Soviet surface routes into the city while it was besieged by the Germans (if you want to know more about the Road of Life, I can recommend watching a fantastic episode centered about the siege of Leningrad, as part of the documentary Soviet Storm - WW2 in the East. I find the whole documentary very interesting and enjoyable, by the way). In-game, this focus represents the desperate yet brave and daring supply methods used by the Soviets in the direst of times. It will become available as soon as one of the key Soviet cities is threatened by enemy troops, and it will provide some bonuses to winter attrition and supply. The Soviet Atomic Bomb Project was the military project, part of the Soviet atomic program for nuclear research and development, aimed at developing nuclear weapons during the war. It was greatly stimulated by the activities and achievements of scientific institutions and military industry of foreign powers such as the German Reich and the United States of America. Initial efforts were hampered by the German invasion and remained largely reliant on the intelligence knowledge gained from the Soviet spy rings working in the USA's Manhattan Project. The focus requires having built at least 7 Academies of Sciences, and it will provide an array of bonuses and tools to infiltrate enemy atomic programs and develop your very own nuclear bombs, including an extra operative slot and a new historical operative.


    Now lets talk about the army branch.



    The Army Branch is one of the most important ones in the tree, and it has a lot of content related to it, so lets focus on the key aspects of it, starting with the initial National Spirits. The Military was highly politicized, making it dangerously inefficient, even though political discussions (and indoctrination) among the troops also had its benefits for the Party. Politicized Military can be improved further down the branch.
    As you can see below, The Red Army has a lot of red modifiers, how fitting, right? Well, no worries, most of the focuses in this branch will deal with those red modifiers, gradually putting your unreliable army in very good shape.
    Once you Strengthen the Mobilization Plan for some manpower and mobilization speed, you will be faced with a decision to make: Restore Cossack Units or opt for Cohesion First. After the Russian Civil War, Cossack troops were disbanded, since many of them sided with the white movement. However, in 1936, the restrictions on conscription of Cossacks for the Red Army were lifted and some cavalry divisions received the status of Cossack Divisions. The wearing of the previously prohibited Cossack uniform was also restored (although it would only last for a few years), and in this uniform walked the Cossack units in their first military parade as part of the Red Army in 1937, and later on at the Victory Parade on June 24, 1945. In-game, Restore Cossack Units will grant you small bonuses to cavalry, a new general and a few divisions, including a new Cossack cavalry template. To be fair, this template is inspired by the composition of cavalry divisions (not necessarily Cossacks) later on, around 1941, but I really wanted to offer the player an interesting cavalry template from which to work on.

    Cohesion First will instead boost your division organization, in exchange for some extra training time.
    The old Rehabilitated Military and Military Reorganization have suffered some changes. Rehabilitated military will be available once you get rid of Stalins Paranoia and the purges (more of this later), and will help you recover some valuable organization. Military Reorganization has now become an actual reorganization, during which you will have to deal with some nasty penalties that will be applied when you start the focus. However, once the focus is completed, not only will you get rid of said penalties, but your national spirit The Red Army will also get useful bonuses to modifying division templates.

    Similarly, Desperate Measures and Lessons of War have also suffered significant changes. Desperate Measures can only be taken while at war against a major power, and will grant a temporary boost to fielding divisions, as well as a set of decisions to help you contain the enemy invasion.

    Lessons of War can only be taken once the national spirit granted by Desperate Measures is gone, representing how, even though the Soviet Union suffered numerous and devastating defeats and military failures during the first years of the war, those fatalities were acknowledged and the military slowly learned their lessons from them. This focus is probably the turning point in which the Red Army leaves behind the terrible state in which it was at the start of the game, to begin the path towards becoming a formidable military force. The focus will not only add key bonuses to The Red Army national spirit, but it will also unlock the famous Order 227 (No Step Back), which will, in turn, unlock decisions to prepare and carry out important Military Offensives.

    In your struggle against the enemies of the people, you will also be able to raise Penal Battalions in the form of divisions entirely composed of convicts. Penal battalions might not be as well-equipped as regular infantry, but they are definitely easier to replenish and overall can perform very good as cheap meatshields, as long as you dont care too much about your manpower (something that is probably not the biggest issue in the Soviet Union).
    Partisan activity in occupied Soviet territory (especially Ukraine and Belarus) was impressively high and played a role perhaps not very decisive but definitely important to the overall war effort. Organization of the Partisans will give you a set of tools to increase partisan activity, disrupt enemy supply and hinder enemy offensives, including a related historical operative and an extra operative slot for him. It will also come with a couple of partisan Generals that can prove to be very useful.

    Once you have carried out the military reorganization and learned your lessons of war, you may choose what to do with your Political Commissars: Keep Commissars Organization means that political commissars will continue playing the role of second commander within the military units. You can instead Swap to Political Advisors, and try to increase efficiency by subordinating political officers to commanding officers, allowing for more freedom in the military command chain while the new role of political advisor focuses more on morale-related functions.

    The Glory of the Red Army will make it easier for you to unlock those last doctrines remaining and field more special forces divisions. It will also unlock a Soviet-specific improved version of the Blitz Tactic, as well as a new General: I read a lot about General Rybalko in various different sources during my research, and I feel that he deserves a place in the Soviet Generals roster.

    Now, lets skip the political branch for a moment and jump to the Internal Affairs branch, a common branch for the communist paths.



    Unfortunately, we've reached steams maximum word count for a Dev Diary; So you'll have to read the rest over on our forums right here: https://pdxint.at/3CalDVz



    [ 2021-08-04 13:00:39 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Hearts of Iron: Humble Bundle


    Take a seat at the table, General. Its time to fight.


    Paradox Interactive has helped build one heck of a tactical bundle! Starting with Hearts of Iron IV: Cadet Edition at its lowest price ever (just $1!), enjoy the full Hearts of Iron IV experience with expansions like Hearts of Iron IV: Battle for the Bosporus, Hearts of Iron IV: Man the Guns, and Hearts of Iron IV: Waking the Tiger. Plus, your purchase helps support a Charity: Water and One Tree Planted!

    Get the bundle here: Humble



    [ 2021-07-21 18:00:46 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Dev Diary: Supply #2


    Greetings all, and welcome to todays dev diary on the huge supply system update coming with the barbarossa update. Before we begin, Ill leave a heads up that this will be the last dev diary before we break for summer, so dont expect anything new until some time in August at the earliest. Since we last talked about supply, a few things have changed. We found that the way truck need could take off and spike was hard to deal with and that watching out so you didn't overload individual supply hubs was a bit too intensive. We also felt that the way the mapmode worked made it very difficult to project how well supply was flowing. The iteration we have now aims at addressing these shortcomings. It's now possible for divisions to supply from multiple hubs. Trucks are now less of a strict necessity, rather something you can assign to hubs to make sure they can project supplies further away. Finally, the mapmode has changed to better show the spread of supply as well as current status for divisions.

    Supply flow


    From each hub connected back to the capital, potential supply is projected outwards - adding up when overlapping. This is represented by the brighter colors below. For each province in distance that supply needs to travel from a hub, there is a reduction in the amount as some is lost. The amount depends on various factors like terrain, crossing rivers etc. The dark purple areas below are reduced to local supply only, and the highlighted red-orange areas indicate locations where there are units suffering from significant supply issues.
    In the picture above, the Ukraine/Caucasus front is mainly struggling because it is overextending before the captured rails have been converted, so a lot of the rail network there is not operating. When a railway is taken over there is a longer cooldown when it gets converted for use by you (representing a combination of repaired damage, gauge-alteration, and general maintenance), and without connected hubs supply wont flow. How much you can output from each hub depends on the level of railways leading back to the supply capital, and the total max there depends on your industrial base (so Luxemburg can not feed as many as soviet union, for example).
    Here, the clock indicates rails that are not yet converted, and the hub icons with red crosses indicate that they do not connect back to your network.

    Motorization


    To increase the range of a hub (perhaps to help supply the front above better) you can choose to improve the motorization level. The horse icon on the right indicates no motorized supply from the node, but you can opt to toggle it to a higher state of motorization. Be careful, as this will cost you trucks which are taken from the stockpile.
    It is also possible to set the motorization level on an army, in which case it will automatically toggle on motorization for hubs that it uses without requiring further interaction from the player.
    There are also some other options on a hub. The star icon lets you move your supply capital to a new location, provided that you have sufficient surrender progress. This lets you get around issues where your capital ends up cut off or surrounded, but also comes with a period of bad supply as the new location is prepared. The blue flag next to it lets you control allied access to the node. This can be a great way to flag to an AI that you do not want them on your front, or to stop them from joining a tight landing situation. The rail icon lets you quickly switch to construction mode and extend rails from there while the green plus will automatically queue up construction for rails to combat any bottlenecks your node may suffer from back towards the capital. The chevron icon lets you prioritize train allocation if you are running low.

    Floating Harbors


    As part of No Step Back, were introducing a new dimension to naval invasions. Floating, or Mulberry harbors can now be constructed once the appropriate research has been completed.
    These weighty and expensive pieces of infrastructure (dont look too close at the numbers above hehe) arent intended for every-day landings, but are instead intended to represent the equipment used in large-scale operations such as the Battle of Normandy.
    Naval invasions utilizing a floating harbor will be represented by harbor apparatus placed parallel province targeted by the invasion, and will immediately create a stocked supply hub at their location:
    Used carefully, one or more mulberry harbors can keep a sizable invading force supplied without requiring the immediate capture of an important enemy harbor. Of course, harbors should remain amongst the first targets of any successful invasion, and the supply hubs created by a floating harbor will be temporary; lasting a matter of weeks or months, depending on the strength of enemy air superiority and other factors. Of course, there is yet more to cover regarding supply, and we'll have another diary on this subject in the future, but I hope you like what you've seen so far and well be seeing you again after summer! Oh, and one last thing - one of the new loading screens for NSB is this awesome polish cavalry, so we figured we should share it as a summer wallpaper for you (fear not, there will be a soviet one eventually!)

    Read in full here: https://pdxint.at/3x9gpGG



    [ 2021-06-30 13:00:15 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Scheduled Downtime


    Attention Players! Our databases will be undergoing scheduled maintenance and upgrades during this time period. This will affect all games and services. You will not be able to log into your Paradox Account during the downtime, and associate features will be disabled. We apologize for the inconvenience and hope to have you back to gaming as soon as possible.


    [ 2021-06-28 11:00:28 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Hearts of Iron IV Dev Diary: Officer Corps 2

    Hello there C0RAX, here! For my first HoI dev diary, Im here to show you the second part of the Officer Corps, a new way of personalising your military that will be included as part of No Step Back and the Barbarossa update. In the last dev diary we explained how we want to allow you to specialise your military branches with the leadership and advisors. Today we bring to you some new features that allow you to customise how your military operates, and act as a further use for the new sources of branch experience that were hinted at last week. You may have been wondering what all those shiny boxes with emblems were for. I'm here to tell you they are the new Officer Corps Spirits. Spirits are a new way to specialise your military, generals and even help your division designs. Each branch has multiple categories for its spirits that affect different aspects of the way they operate. Here I have shown you the spirits of the army which provide bonuses to designing divisions or operating armies. Of course this category has analogs for both the air and navy branches.
    Now we have the more direct combat effect level spirits that let you improve specific parts of your units to best match your strategy. These also let you conduct some historical moves that previously were quite hard such as using your capital ships as surface raiders without screens. And for those keen eyed readers, yes the division spirits provide tactics weight increases if you also have them selected as your preferred tactic which we will get to shortly.

    Finally we have the final category for the army and navy branches, the academy spirits. Previously generating commanders was a purely random chance. Now with the academy spirits you can tailor this toward specific personality traits along with helping you generals progress in a particular direction. For the above image you can also see the new engineer officer personality trait that provides bonuses to xp generation for the engineer trait. This works in tandem with the advisor promotion mentioned last week, and adds another dimension towards tailoring your officer corps from the very beginning.
    With the new spirits some are limited by either your political ideology or doctrines and so you will have to take this into account when deciding the strategy of your officers corps.
    The final part of this week's dev diary brings us to preferred tactics. This new feature provides you with a tool to influence the likelihood of a specific tactic being used in combat allowing you to increase the chance of getting that favorable matchup in battle or possibly the perfect counter. This simulates a doctrinal emphasis on doing battle in a specific way; but can also provide a tool that can be used to counter a strongly themed force.
    The new window will help show you all the tactics you have unlocked from doctrines and see what effect they have on the battle. If you combine this preferred tactic with your division spirit bonus you will double the effectiveness of the tactic preference so unifying your strategic direction will help you get the most out of the officer corps. Well that's all for this week comrades, see you at the front. C0RAX


    [ 2021-06-23 15:30:45 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Dev Diary - Officer Corp


    Greetings all, Arheo here!


    For my first HoI dev diary, Im here to introduce the Officer Corps: a collection of new features that will be included as part of No Step Back and the Barbarossa update. For quite a while, weve wanted to allow for more direct specialization of military branches, as well as tying together various disparate systems such as the high command, generals, military-focused national spirits, and doctrines. To achieve step one of this process, were giving the Officer Corps and associated mechanics a unique national interface:
    (WIP, as usual) Here, the empty advisor portraits at the top of the window are where you can now find your High Command and Military Theorist, and the advisor portraits below this are related to each branch Chief - they have been moved out of the political sub-window accordingly. As well as UI location, there are further changes coming to all military advisors. Where previously, the theorist was the only advisor type that granted daily experience gain, all high command and branch chief will now generate experience appropriate to the branch they represent.
    The Advisor rank (e.g. Expert) indicates both the magnitude of their modifier bonus, and the daily experience you will receive. Were also experimenting with a split political/command power costs to gate the experience ramp-up somewhat, along with some other minor changes to command power. Behind the scenes, weve made a host of changes to the advisor, spirits, and commander systems. Where previously, if we wanted to create a national spirit related to having a certain character in your government, it would be entirely unrelated to having an advisor with the same name, masquerading as the same person - likewise for commanders and advisors masquerading as the same person. This has changed. These are (for the most part) now controlled by characters. This has pretty sweeping connotations for our internal content designers, as well as modders, but importantly also allows us to bring the following new system to the No Step Back release:

    Advisor Promotion


    The introduction of a more connected Officer Corps felt like the perfect time to bring more of a connection to the Generals and Field Marshals that oversee your active forces, and the various military offices that advise your government. In No Step Back, Generals, Admirals or Field Marshals can be assigned an advisory desk duty in addition to their status as a field commander. This will effectively add the character as a new advisor to your roster. The type of advisor available to you is dependent on the skill level and traits of the commander youre promoting (not everyone likes desk duty ;) ), as you can see in the highly WIP interface below:
    Here, Herr Hell can be converted to an Entrenchment specialist as he possesses the Engineer trait, and has skill level 5. Currently, both Military High Command and branch Chief roles are available.

    Experience


    Experience generation in general has been weighted and balanced in order to achieve a more gradual switch from peacetime generation (a strong cadre of advisors, and unit training), through to wartime. Experience generation from combat and battles has been reduced fairly significantly to account for this, as well as capped (separately from other sources). Overall, experience generation will be consistently higher than in previous versions - this was done both to mitigate the introduction of the tank designer (and thereby increased costs), and to account for the other new ways in which you are now able to spend experience, which we shall cover below. The eagle-eyed amongst you noticed in a previous diary that the doctrine branches had been removed from the technology window - they can now be accessed from the officer corps interface, and will function somewhat differently to before. Doctrines will be unlocked directly by spending branch experience, which can still be affected by instanced cost modifiers often found in focus trees and events.
    (There have been no major structural changes to doctrine layouts) There are, in addition to the above, several new and exciting things that branch experience will be used for in NSB, some of which are handily teased in the first screenshot of this diary. Alas, we will be covering what those are and how they might affect your gameplay in a future DD.

    /Arheo


    Read the full article here: https://pdxint.at/3vpJ48J



    [ 2021-06-16 13:00:51 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Dev Diary | Bag of Tricks - Part One

    Another Wednesday means time for another update! Today its time for a "bag of tricks" diary which means its an assortment of smaller features and improvements. Todays selection has several things you guys have asked for for a long time so I hope you will like it!

    Decommissioned templates


    Its now possible to mark templates as old. Much like with equipment they will no longer show in the list.
    Divisions can still use them but get a little warning, and you cant switch to one until it is recommissioned.
    It is also possible to reorganize the list of templates using drag and drop, so you can make sure you keep your horsie boys on top where they belong.

    Army List Controls


    We have also added various controls to the army list. Its now possible to sort and much easier to select

    Colorized infra bonuses


    Infrastructure help you build more effectively. To make it easier to parse where the best states are we went ahead and colorized the bonus indicator

    Lend Lease QoL


    To make it possible to more easily send ALL of your stockpile of something we have now added a button to the lend lease interface to set it to the content of your stockpile. A lot nicer than typing out a number you have to look up steamhappy

    War join spam


    This one has been on my top 5 annoying things since back in 2014 :D When your war causes a lot of nations to get pulled in you get a ton of separate messages. This can be super annoying because just as you fire off your attack you need to deal with popups. No longer. Check out the comparison when declaring on Poland as Germany. in New vs Old:

    That's it for today, see you all next week!


    Read the full article here: https://pdxint.at/3wcRXUs


    [ 2021-06-09 16:34:11 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Patch 1.10.7 "Collie" - Hotfix

    Just a very small hotfix to fix an issue with the 1.10.6 patch released earlier today, ################################################################ ######## Hotfix 1.10.7 "Collie" ######## ################################################################ ################################## # Bugfix ################################## - Bonuses to specific batallion types will apply correctly again


    [ 2021-06-03 16:21:40 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Hearts of Iron IV: 5th Anniversary Bundle

    [previewyoutube=aosYJkNY21A;full][/previewyoutube] For five years, wargamers around the world have been challenged to outbuild and outfight historys most terrible war machines in Hearts of Iron IV, a grand strategy wargame from Paradox Development Studio. Millions of tanks and planes have been built as players fought through an infinite variety of alternate histories set against the backdrop of humanitys greatest struggle. In honor of the fifth anniversary of Hearts of Iron IV, Paradox has announced a new bundle that will give players even more style as they prove that they are the master of modern total war. The Hearts of Iron IV Anniversary Bundle Includes:

    Eastern Front Planes Pack:


    Over 50 new airplane models for nations fighting in central and eastern Europe, including Germany, the Soviet Union, Poland, Romania, Yugoslavia and Hungary. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1579991/Hearts_of_Iron_IV_Eastern_Front_Planes_Pack/

    Eastern Front Music Pack:


    13 new music tracks including the Soviet National Anthem, Lili Marlene and My, Pierwsza Brygada. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1579992/Hearts_of_Iron_IV_Eastern_Front_Music_Pack/ A newly available Immersion Bundle collects the games cosmetic touches that add further visual and audio detail to the game, including:
    • Radio Pack: 35 songs spread across all three factions, as well reproduced music from earlier games in the Hearts of Iron series.
    • Axis Armor Pack: Over 60 armored vehicle models for the German, Japanese and Italian armies, including the StuG III, Japanese experimental heavy tanks and the L-6 light tank.
    • Allied Armor Pack: Over 50 armored vehicle models for the American, Soviet, British, and French armies, including the M7 Priest, the French Renault tank and a host of new tank destroyers.
    • Allied Speeches Pack: Over 70 minutes of speeches from some of the most inspiring moments from the Allied campaign, including MacArthurs celebrated I shall return and Churchills pledge to fight on the beaches.
    Paradox has also updated the Mobilization Bundle to include all of the available Hearts of Iron IV expansions.

    These Hearts of Iron IV compilations are all available at the Paradox and Steam stores.


    https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/20999/Hearts_of_Iron_IV_5th_Anniversary_Bundle/


    [ 2021-06-03 08:06:48 CET ] [ Original post ]

    HOI4 5 Year Anniversary: Patch Notes | Patch 1.10.6 "Collie"

    Patch 1.10.6 "Collie"


    ################################## # Gameplay ################################## - It is no longer possible to swap templates on divisions that are encircled - For garrison reinforcement, check the division's blocked equipments to make sure they are not used - Ethiopia now has the ability to submit a peace deal to Italy if they manage to push the Italians out of East Africa ################################## # Stability & Performance ################################## - Random CTD fix in volunteer GUI - Optimized triggers for Spanish "Ignite Anarchist Uprising" decision - Refactored scripted ai_strategies to be less performance-intensive - Fixed false positive out of sync 56 when mixing Windows and Linux/Mac clients - Fixed CTD when going to menu after console cmd reloadtechnologies - Fixed CTD caused by the transfer of ships currently being refitted from one country to another, e.g. at the start of a civil war. Refitting is now always cancelled when ownership is transferred - Fixed a CTD when a decision expires with the decision UI opened and frame smoothing is enabled - Trying to connect to a badly formed UUID will no longer crash the game while playing with PdxMP ################################## # UI ################################## - Added feedback for naval combat when one side consisted of only convoys - Fixed some incorrect russian localization - Display confirmation popup when kicking or banning a player from lobby - Nation Focus name text now truncates if it is too long - Change Division Template dropdown list for unassigned divisions will no longer be occluded by army containers further down in the list. - Toggling the music player now displays the correct tooltip based on its visibility state - Remove Ship roles gui elements when Man The Guns is not active, since they can never be set. - Resume mission text now hidden in basic spy recruit window - Fix timed events persisting on the alert bar beyond their expiration. - Right-clicking on an air wing's aircraft count/reinforcement limit display now sets the reinforcement limit to the current number of aircraft in the air wing, as stated in the tooltip ################################## # AI ################################## - Turkey should now join the allies in late 1943 or early 1944 - when AI is refitting a ship, make sure it does not choose an obsolete model as target - AI no longer deletes their whole naval production queue at game start - Minor improvement to make the AI slightly less willing to ally back with Bulgaria, after Bulgaria has kicked out the country from the faction for refusing Balkan Unification - Prevented Bulgarian AI from aborting its Historical strategy plan due to undesired reasons. Now the historical plan will only be aborted if Bulgaria is at war with Germany. - Greece AI set to go Communist no longer spends lots of PP in the decision "Go to Paris to Negotiate Investment Talks" constantly - Portuguese Ai should no longer go crazy on ship purchasing decisions - Made ai more inclined to improve relations with neighbors for Bedrock of Balkan Financial Stability focus - Japanese ai will now be cautious about the shanxi border during the marco polo incident - Soviet strategy to keep volunteers out unless china is losing should now has enough score to work as intended - Fixed ai not giving control of states to allies during war ################################## # Modding ################################## - Start date again supports year with 5 digits (for all you future mod bois) - Added optional argument exclude_refitting to transfer_ship effect so that when for example the American civil war is set up ships that are currently being refitted are excluded in the search for ships to transfer to the CSA - add_building_construction effect no longer targets non-land provinces ################################## # Database ################################## - removed "legacy test" fleet name from non-mtg fleet OOBs - added Kurdish, Ukrainian, Georgian, Armenian namelists - Changed nationalities of historical Japanese Operative - the "Carry the revolution West" focus for France will now correctly describe its effects - Added event informing Romania if the Megali Idea is approved, warning them they may soon be dragged into a war with France and/or United Kingdom, and offering them a chance to revoke their guarantee of Turkey - Minor cosmetic update of some companies due to request - Fixed error in navy tech tree where the first heavy shell tech, Armor-Piercing Capped Shell, was intended to be a 1936 tech but was set to be a 1938 tech - Jos Daz now has a working portrait if you do not have the LaR DLC - added Tom Moore (RIP o7) - Changed the "Ban Democratic Party" decision to be consistent with "Ban Fascist Party" and "Ban Communist Party" - The "Expand Civil Support" decision for Democracies should now have sufficient effects - Fixed text issues in the USSR-Greece investment events - America should no longer be called "Loyalists" or "Constitutionalists" when puppeted or released - Brazilian state names have been corrected. The game is now playable. - British Raj now begins with Great War tank technology unlocked - The province of Gyurmi is now correctly named Gyumri - Sao Salvador dropped the Sao - Chernivtsi re-spelled to use ostensibly correct Romanian ################################## # Graphics & Audio ################################## - Show divebombing animation for opposed air missions that still retain enough efficiency - Minor improvements to the BftB loading screen (sadly not additional cats) - Fixed some spy portraits that were too big - Added Portuguese voice-over for La Rsistance owners - Added cooldown for garrison requirement alert sound - added a generic 3d model for bicycles (!!!) - Airplane 3d models in tech view now use same logic as on map so that specialized versions show ################################## # Bugfix ################################## - Fixed a bug where Transylvania was not being included as a Balkan nation - Democratic Reformers all around the globe will no longer check if they're Portuguese or not - Fixed some issues with Bulgarian Fatherland Front Coup being triggered too early and due to some inappropriate conditions - Fixed Fatherland Front Civil War not removing Fatherland Front National Spirit and Decisions from the original tag - Minor fix that should prevent an error triggered due to wrong scope when Bulgarian communist CW starts and the Fatherland Front is added to the appropriate wars. - Fixed a bug by which Bulgaria could purchase equipment that was not researched by the seller. Bulgaria now needs to purchase equipment from a seller that has already researched the equipment tech. Bulgaria no longer needs to research the equipment tech by herself in order to purchase equipment. - fixes to some peace conference error due to wrong scope - fixed an issue where any country at war with the US could remove US cores from states (instead of just CSA) - Fixed issue with War Overview opening the wrong national intel view - Greece can now restore Byzantium if they have the BftB but not the WtT dlc - Fixed localization error in South African event, making it appear like the help request came from the target country - Fixed the Guardians of Kemalism Focus so that it shouldn't be able to randomly pick the same state twice - Fixed Turkish on map decisions for Turkey so that they now cost the indicated amount of Command Power - changed event so that turkey guarantees the Golden Square led Iraq, rather than the non-aligned regime - Fixed Peninsular network of factories focus so that it now gives factories to Balkan Pact countries as well as to Turkey - Changed Greek election to only fire for original Greece, not for spawned civil war countries - South African focus for demanding Madagascar will now appropriately target the controller of the state, instead of France (regardless of whether they control it) - Acquiesce to Fundamentalists decision for Turkey now has a clearer tooltip - Greece will no longer experience a conscription crisis if following the communist path - Anti-Communist Volunteers focus for Japan now allows you to send volunteers as well as applying bonuses. - Invite Japanese Settlers focus for Manchukuo will no longer display incorrect state target if Germany has completed their industrial focus branch - The independence war focus for Manchuria now works - Correct event description now applied to romanian callback event from hungary (DOD_hungary.64) - Fixed missing string in tooltip for Imperalist crises in British colonies - Case Anton decision category now correctly shows up if Vichy France is not a puppet of Germany - Tooltip for Czech subjugation in hungarian events no longer displays two similar lines - the "London Conference" event chain related to Germany demanding Slovenia should no longer result in contradictionary news events and effects - Fix inconsistent war names between world tension summary and war summary - Fixed bug where the "After the capitulation of X we are now the leader of faction Y" popup was shown for all players in multiplayer and not only the new leader - Fixed bug where the "We continue the fight as a Government in Exile" popup after capitulating was shown for all players in multiplayer and not only the player capitulating - Fixed Spain's post-SCW un-cored states causing issues when Spain is annexed before they get around to re-integrating those states. Now, annexing Spain will grant them cores on those states, so Spain can be released as one contiguous whole afterwards. - Remove invalid options for Investment Possibilities decisions - Multiple Fixes to Destroy IMRO decisions both for Bulgaria and for other countries. Decisions now come back after being canceled. Skirmish Against IMRO state modifiers will be properly removed when decisions are canceled. Triggers and tooltips have being fixed/improved. - if Italy initially accepts the invitation to the Megali convention but then attacks Greece, they are now removed from the convention as they are behaving in a disruptive manner - The Greek Monarchist Civil War should now only fire once - Fixed ship refitting not being cancelled when the ship is forced out to sea as a result of the ownership of the naval base changing - Fixed issue where resistance wouldn't start in colony states as the Spanish Civil War ends - The Damascus Diktat now refers to whoever controls Syria rather than always referring to France - Greek fascist generals should now join the right side of the civil war - Nepal should now have access to basic infantry divisions - France should no longer go communist on historical when LaR is disabled - Fixed certain Bulgarian News Events scoping to the wrong tag in loc - Fixed typo in a Bulgarian cosmetic tag adjective breaking loc - fixed targeted variables causing ctd if target is an integer outside of state limits - fixed random seed on turkey random_list decisions - Bulgaria can bypass joining the tripartite pact if they are a subject - Fixed a few missing localization keys - French civil war now has timed decisions for communist -and- fascist civil wars - Themistoklis Sofoulis no longer slowly achieves world domination by accidental democracy - Imperial Subjects can declare war now. - Fascist France can now ally Spain if it is non-aligned and led by Franco - infrastructure tooltip updated - Operatives equipment allocation in Deploy screen no longer shown if you dont have access to that feature from La Resistance - Tweaked values and fixed Loyalty Multiplier which was unintentionally removing days instead of adding them to the Fatherland Front Coup Preparations mission timer. This should significantly reduce the amount of days removed by a single complementary mission. - New decisions UI for Bulgarian and Greek Internal Faction systems - the French "Reach out to Spain" focus should now have (and show) an effect if Franco is the country leader of Spain in an unaligned government - Fix puppeted states not being allowed to declare war even when the correct rules param is set - Fixed an issue where Turkey could end up kicking itself out of their own faction (doh)


    [ 2021-06-02 14:15:30 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Dev Diary | 5th Anniversary


    Hi and welcome to another dev diary! It is almost time for the Hearts of Iron 5 year anniversary so we will take a short break from No Step Back, and celebrate that with some streams as well as new 3d model and radio packs, as well as a free update. Without further ado, let's dig in!


    Eastern Front Planes Pack


    Various planes of different types for Germany, Soviet, Poland, Hungary, Romania and Yugoslavia. 54 planes in total! Weve also added a new animation to CAS attacks to make them look a whole lot cooler on the battlefield (and so my, and clearly all other adults of sound minds' favourite: the Ju-87G - can shine).






    Eastern Front Music Pack


    A new radio pack themed around the countries fighting on the eastern front (although not necessarily eastern front songs). 13 tracks in total with tunes like The Soviet National Anthem, Lili Marlene and My, Pierwsza Brygada and others. Give it a listen below for samples while you continue reading :) [previewyoutube=Nlbvg7lHFrQ;full][/previewyoutube]

    Free Update 1.10.6 "Collie"


    For the anniversary we also have a free update. We have mainly focused on bugfixing in older content, with an extra focus around BFTB but there are other goodies in there as well. Some personal highlights:
    • Ethiopia can now peace out Italy if they push them out
    • You can now control the equipment of garrison templates like with other templates
    • Fixed incorrect naval battle reports with convoys on one side
    • Jos Daz portrait should hopefully now work in all combinations of DLCs, alternate universes etc and stop haunting my nightmares
    • Added Tom Moore as a military leader for Britain. Complete with a jungle trait to reflect his service in Burma and India in the 1940s. Captain Sir Tom Moore passed away at an age of 100 back in February due to COVID. With the team being filled with fans of history and from UK (or both) we wanted to take this opportunity to honor him in some small way.
    • Added Portuguese unit voice-over for La Rsistance owners!
    All of this should be released/in store tomorrow! Aiming for before lunch, but you never know when the winds blow across the internet. We also have some other cool stuff planned around the anniversary Stream next wednesday looking back at 5 years of HOI with some Q&A 5 year anniversary multiplayer next week - We will tell you more soon(tm)

    See you all next week!


    Read the full article here: https://pdxint.at/3fYe9L8


    [ 2021-06-02 13:00:48 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Dev Diary - PDXCON Recap and Team update

    Hi everyone! We need some recovery time after PdxCon before we talk about more new stuff so today I figured we would recap stuff from PdxCon as well as talk about some team and studio topics. I am happy to say that we announced the name of the next big expansion - No Step Back!



    No Step Back


    We finally announced the name of the next expansion at PdxCon! (I accidentally wrote it on twitter last week but apparently nobody had time to spot that hehe). No Step Back will launch together with the 1.11 Barbarossa update and the mission statement is to focus on Soviet, the eastern front and refreshing land warfare and logistics! This is a huge undertaking that changes a lot of key components of the game, especially the AI. This has been a major reason for waiting with Soviet. We needed to build up both ai stability and get a new partisan system in place and have time to rework supply etc etc, so its the culmination of a long plan towards this goal and its nice to see it coming together. No Step Back - Teaser Trailer This wasnt a full reveal - we will be showing off and announcing more features as the dev diaries come online. We also showed some more up to date visuals on the ongoing work on the (wip) supply system:
    There will be some more in depth looks on this again. We are currently working on how motorization functions as part of it but it's roughly as presented before with a focus on connecting supply hubs using railways and convoys to project supply, with motorization improving the process. The mapmode is starting to really come around and is much easier to play with compared to the one we showed in the initial early look diary (just don't look too close on the red - lack of supply color above, I grabbed it from a bug report where stuff was intentionally made extra bad for those units to test but I felt it showed off the state well).
    placeholder train graphics as our proper models aren't in the game just yet, but doesn't it look cozy? :) We also teased some pictures of the railways and trains, as well as confirming that there will be railway guns as a new unit type. They function a lot like naval bombardment support and are intended to help break tough defended positions (probably cities/railway hubs). More on those in a dedicated train porn diary in the future :p

    Soviet tree wise we do not wanna show off too much yet. It will have its dedicated diaries (plural) and its one of our more ambitions trees yet, both in size and in player choices. Soviet is after Germany the nation thats most important to get right for a ww2 game, and compared to Germany a lot more complex. Here is a little teaser (are those icons placeholder or is it a shaved marx?), feel free to speculate what choices hide outside the screen...
    (yes I know center is on the left. Trust me it makes sense. You are crazy I am not crazy!)

    PdxCon Recap - Statistics


    Let's start off with some yearly statistics updates! We keep trending up on active players. This years record peak was 899k players in a month which is crazy!
    Majors vs Minor nation picking keeps slowly converging towards an even split:
    Modding wise here are the latest numbers for the biggest total conversion mods:
    • Road to 56 - 10%
    • Kaiserreich - 6%
    • Millenium Dawn - 3%
    • The New Order - 2.9%
    • Old World Blues - 2.2%
    • The Great War - 2.2%
    • Cold War: Iron Curtain - 1.2%

    Future Roadmap and thoughts


    We also talked about the future of Hearts of Iron after No Step Back and onwards, because we don't plan to stop any time soon on expanding the game.
    • Yes, we will be reworking Italy in the future :)
    • As games get older the harder it is to do large paid mechanics changes and HOI is starting to approach that stage now. Our current thoughts (that could totally change) is to focus more towards smaller DLCs like country packs, patches and free updates long term as this lets us focus on whats best for the game and get more flavor in.
    • Speaking of country packs. Battle for Bosporus or Death or Dishonor is what we are thinking here. We want to focus on themes and specific regions here. At the moment the top contenders we think about are Scandinavia, Middle East and South America (so big its maybe two though), but we got more ideas. Game development is hard and no plan truly survives contact with the enemy etc so we will see, but this is our intent :)
    • With a more focus on content and free updating we will be able to tackle big pain points like peace conferences as well is our goal.
    • We also want to try and help onboarding for new players. HOI4 is a hugely complex game and the tutorial is really not what it could with. But we also have other improvement ideas here.
    To be clear, none of this is promises because plans change, and I cant say exactly when these things happen - my goal is to keep you in the loop with how we think about things :) If you want to watch the pdxcon panel here are some bookmarks to the twitch stream (I am told there will be youtube clips available in the future too):

    Reinforcements!


    We have some cool team stuff happening, I will hand over the mic to @Arheo
    Greetings all! Fresh from the Elysian fields, several of us previously from the Imperator: Rome team have swapped our gladii for KV-1s and have integrated with team HOI to create the ultimate combined arms, bear mounted (..thanks, Dan) division. On a personal note, Im thrilled to be joining HOI - it remains one of my all-time PDS favorites. The opportunity to give so much attention to such a short yet critical period of history is rarely afforded elsewhere. I have a great interest in the simulation of socio-political/economic causality behind the global narrative HOI provides, but find myself most at home micromanaging an ever-diminishing frontline in Russia now with trains. The ex-Imperator folks bring with them a wealth of knowledge which Im certain can be put to good use here - we have spent a long time reacting, consulting, and working with our community to build a better game - something which I look forward to doing with the passionate fans of the HoI community as well.

    Join the Army?


    Hi, I'm @Birken . I'm the technical director of Studio Gold and have been with Paradox since the release of Hearts of Iron III. We're expanding the programming department in Studio Gold to better support the development of Hearts of Iron and future projects. Right now I'm looking for a Manager to help me develop our department as well as programmers that want to work with us to keep on building on Hearts of Iron and other GsG titles. Please checkout the following job ads if you think it could be something for you. Programmer Manager Game Programmer Senior Game Programmer

    Thats it for today, see you all next week!


    Read the full article here: https://pdxint.at/2QTrvjn


    [ 2021-05-26 13:33:54 CET ] [ Original post ]

    PDXCON Remixed: The Spanish Gambit | Community Challenge


    The Spanish Gambit


    Hearts of Iron team members Drikus Kuiper Content Design Lead - PDS, Daniel Sjberg Senior QA - PDS & Josh Bassett Community Manager have attempted 'The Spanish Gambit' - win the Spanish Civil War in as few days as possible as the Republicans.

    Their time:


    30th July, 1937


    Think you can do better? Head over to the PDXCON discord and submit your attempts on the PDXCON discord and assign yourself the HOI role! We'll see you there: discord.gg/pdxcon


    [ 2021-05-21 12:00:41 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Dev Diary: Baltic States | Part Two


    Hello everyone and welcome back to another dev diary for Barbarossa where today Im going to be diving into the unique branches for the Baltic states.


    I would like to open up by showing the state rework I neglected to show last week, so here they are! The new Baltic States'... states.

    ESTONIA


    Starting with Estonia, we have two starting focuses: Rally the Nation or the Era of Silence. Historically, the Era of Silence was a time in Estonian history where Konstantin Pts suspended all elections in Estonia out of fear of the fascist Vaps Movement.
    While going down this path, the Vaps will gradually grow more and more agitated, and the player must use a series of focuses and decisions to prevent the nation from fracturing into a civil war. Once the Vaps are dealt with, Pts stands ready to prepare the nation for the inevitable wars to come.
    A banker and economist, Pts has access to some powerful bonuses to the Estonian economy and internal stability.
    Since his dictatorship was underpinned by the fear of fascists and communists, the threat both pose must be pushed into irrelevancy if an Estonian player wishes to restore democracy in their nation.
    However, the dictatorship can be maintained by pushing not only communism and fascism into irrelevancy, but also democratic support.
    Rally the Nation has the player take control of the Vaps in a series of decisions much similar to Britains fascist marches, whereby the Vaps must rally public support for their movement and overthrow the government. This culminates in a march on Tallinn and taking over in a civil war.
    From here, its a race against time to bolster the military and ready the nation for war. As a movement made mostly of veterans societies, the Vaps have access to some powerful military bonuses and free units.
    On top of that, the Vaps held close connections to the far-right veterans in Finland and as such, once they have taken over Estonia, they stand ready to give official support to the Finns to do the same in their own country by organizing marches through Finland.
    Once this is done, Estonia is at a crossroads for where her identity lies. She may lean into her Scandinavian identity and conquer the Nordic countries, or she may lean into the Finno-Ugric identity and prepare for a war against Russia.
    If Estonia successfully conquers the Nordics and completes the Estonia is Scandinavia focus, she will gain access to the old Nordic League decision from Waking the Tiger.
    Leaning into the Ugric identity however will allow Estonia to form the new Empire of Finno-Ugra out of the Finnic identities living in Scandinavia and Russia.
    *****************************************************

    LATVIA


    Next up we have Latvias political focus, beginning with Krlis Ulmanis historical decision to suspend the constitution of Latvia.
    The focus tree is split into the military and civilian governments, which may or may not merge into one depending on your choices.
    Historically, Ulmanis assigned the marshal of Latvia to be his Prime Minister, replacing Kviesis of the Farmers Party. Choosing to do so will allow the player to vastly improve their military industry.
    Marshal Balodis became so influential in Latvia that many believed the nation to be a diarchy between Ulmanis and Balodis, despite this not being the case. However, the player will be able to make this perception a reality and establish Balodis as dictator of Latvia, rather than keep Ulmanis rule.
    Instead of assigning Balodis as PM, Ulmanis may also choose to renew Kviesis as prime-minister, adopting a more open attitude towards the former Saeima members, giving bonuses to the civilian economy.
    Similar to the marshal branch, at the end here Ulmanis may either restore public elections and empower Fricis Menders, or he may integrate the Farmers Party into his own; strengthening the dictatorship.
    Next we have the military side of the Latvian government. Latvia may choose to either suppress the fascist Thunder Cross movement, or collaborate with them.
    Suppressing them will allow Latvia to empower paramilitaries and organizations more aligned with the government, such as the Aizsargi, eventually allowing women to serve in the Womens Aizsargi.
    Unlike Estonia, Latvia has the ability to court the fascist Prkonkrusts group without having them take over the government. However, this is a delicate balancing act because if the Prkonkrusts grow too powerful too quickly, Latvia will be split into a civil war, so collaborate with them with caution.
    If the player can keep the Prkonkrusts in check for long enough, they can complete the Anti-German Propaganda focus, pacifying the Prkonkrusts for good while utilising their bonuses.
    However, Latvia may also have the Prkonkrusts supercede Ulmanis government and take over the nation peacefully, unlocking powerful focuses to help them conquer the Baltics.

    On top of that, Gustavs Celmi viewed Christianity as a weak and foreign religion, and instead stated that Dievturba neopaganism be adopted as Latvias state religion. If the player goes anti-German, the Dievturba national spirit is upgraded as you progress down your fascist focus branches, eventually becoming quite a powerful boon to your nation.
    Going pro-German however will allow Latvia to adopt the mantle of RK-Ostland, serving their German masters by occupying the Baltics and Belarus.
    *****************************************************

    LITHUANA


    Lastly, we have Lithuanias national focus tree, and similar to Latvias, most everything is interconnected.
    Just like Latvia, Smetona can choose to appoint either a military prime minister as they did historically, or assign Vladas Mironas, a priest turned politician.
    No matter which they choose, Lithuania must fulfil Smetonas ambition of empowering the Presidency and elevating the President above party politics. What this will mean for a Lithuanian player is that party popularity will have no impact at all on the nations stability, and they will instead gain a flat amount of stability as a base.
    Over on the right here we have some of Lithuanias external politics. Lithuania may attempt to seek peace and eventually mutual guarantees with their old enemies in Poland, or they may sign the Soviet Mutual Assistance pact, ensuring that Vilnius be returned to Lithuania upon completion of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.
    Lithuania may also center their politics by suppressing communist and fascist supporters in their nation, eventually allowing them to focus their efforts on their true enemy, be that Germany or the USSR.
    Over on the left, we have focuses for dealing with Augustinas Voldemaras. Voldemaras was once Smetonas Prime Minister, but in 1936 the Iron Wolf leader was in a Lithuanian prison. Lithuania may exile him, granting access to their usual political focuses, or free him, allowing the nation to slowly turn to fascism.
    In the fascist branch of the Lithuanian tree, Lithuania is able to go on a war-path to restore the old borders of Greater Lithuania. Opposing the Germans will also allow Lithuania to lay claim to Lower Lithuania, AKA Knigsberg.
    A fascist Lithuania that manages to either occupy Poland or align them will be able to restore things to the way they once were: with a large dominant Lithuania and a small submissive Poland on their border.
    But Lithuania does not have to assign a Prime Minister at all. A fourth option is open to Smetona, and that is inviting the son of the duly elected King of Lithuania: Mindaugas III.
    And here we have the beautiful Karl Gero von Urach portrait I teased in last week's diary! Big thank you to @Indyclone77 for sourcing the reference picture from the Landesarchiv Baden-Wrttemberg for us!
    Should Lithuania choose to elect a king, the player will gain access to the same claiming mini-game as Poland but inverted, allowing for a Commonwealth in which Lithuania is the senior partner.
    Should both Poland and Lithuania choose to go monarchist, the two nations will be allowed to decide how they wish to move forward. They may reject the other and go to war, or they may unite into a Commonwealth faction and stand as friends. ***************************************************** There are also a number of shared focuses in the unique branches as well. Any Baltic State may choose to form the Baltic Entente faction, and if they become democratic, they may also turn this alliance into an economic union. By completing focuses to draw the states closer together, the democratic Baltic state may be able to unite people of the region into one nation
    Similar to Poland, all three Baltic states have a small exiled government branch, granting them access to some offmap factories and weekly manpower.
    The Baltics may also choose to do as they did historically: granting basing rights to either the Soviets or Germany, and eventually submitting to their occupation. Should the Baltics submit to Soviet occupation, they will switch to their shared communist branch.

    Thats all for this week! Don't forget to tune into PdxCon '21 on Friday and Saturday, there is a bunch of interesting HOI4 stuff there as potentially some reveals!


    Full Article: https://pdxint.at/3owsceA


    [ 2021-05-19 13:00:19 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Dev Diary - Baltic States | Part One


    Hello and welcome to another dev diary for the Barbarossa patch! Today Im back with you to talk about not one, not two, but three new focus trees coming with the upcoming expansion: Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia!



    The Baltic States were in a difficult position in the build-up to world war 2; only recently liberated from Russian and German rule and less than 20 years on from a bloody struggle against both imperialist powers. In the 30s, each of the states had established authoritarian rule in fear of German and Soviet invasions, and a player hoping to survive as a Baltic state must take some extreme measures to overcome these overwhelming odds... The Baltic States, like the Chinese, will share some branches of their focus tree while other branches will be unique to each country. This week I am going to talk about the shared branches; the industrial branch and the communist political branch.
    Starting up with the industrial branch, each Baltic state was in something of a similar situation economically; relying heavily on foreign investment and equipment for their industry and armed forces. As such, each Baltic state may decide if they wish to put their faith in the democratic nations to supply their economy, or the Axis powers to fuel the war machine.
    The other common issue facing the Baltics was that they had previously been occupied by the Soviets and Germany, and their industry was sorely lacking. So, the Balts can attract workers to their capital and begin their rearmament and develop their research sector.
    Lastly, by modernising their industry, the Baltic states may become much more self-sufficient and end their reliance on foreign powers to fuel their war machine. They may expand raw resource production in their nation, which for Estonia and Latvia means the development of their on-map resources. Lithuania however was uniquely very reliant on its agriculture, and thus starts the game with a variant of the Agrarian Society national spirit which can be slowly turned into a great benefit via their industrial tree.
    Next up, each of the Baltic States had recently endured bloody struggles against the USSR, so popular support for communism was vanishingly low. A Baltic state hoping to overthrow the government and establish an independent communist state must do so through war.
    The Balts can either choose to rely on the Soviet intervention or attempt to reconcile relations with the Baltic lower classes and try to maintain their independence while establishing communism on their own.
    Once the revolution is done and your nation is communist, the player will have the option to re-establish the Lithuania-Belarus SSR. In the case you sided with the Soviets, the USSR will grant you their half of Belarus with the rest coming either through war or the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.
    If you are independent however, Belarus must be acquired through adversarial means. The Baltic state must propagandise support for unification in Belarus similar to the Spanish Civil War garrison control system. When time runs out, Belarus will be released and fight a civil war; the victor will be annexed into either the victorious Baltic nation or the USSR.
    The Baltic nation will also be able to try to convert their neighbours to communism through a propaganda war. No matter which path the Baltic player takes to establish socialism across the Baltics; they will be able to form the United Baltic SSR.
    From there, they may use their newfound strength against Scandinavia and Poland and achieve communism across the entire Baltic Sea.
    Thats all for the Baltic States this week, next week I will be talking about the entirely unique political trees for each Baltic state. ****************************************************************** Something worth bringing up here is we did make some changes to the Polish tree since we last talked about it. Firstly, I do just want to show off some of the new focus icons we got since I wrote those dev diaries and I feel like our artists have done a really great job. There are more, but I don't want to spoil all of them just yet! img]https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images/9948323/813b8df0afcb3a3f28ee7bfa2d99be3dd753c2df.png[/img] We originally planned to have Poland get an off-map reactor to essentially get them control of 1 nuke during play as an exile nation. This to reflect their role in the nuclear project, but we were already a bit on the fence on if this was too immersion breaking for the gameplay purpose, and it seemed many of you thought so too so we removed the off-map reactor and moved the focus to the industry branch.
    Next, I managed to find time to implement Karl Albrecht von Habsburg as an option for monarchist Poland. He has his own branch which involves pressing the Habsburg claim on Czechoslovakia.

    Claiming Czechoslovakia uses the same decision system as claiming Lithuania for the Commonwealth branch, and once the two nations are united, the ambition of West-Slavic unification is realised and the new nation may declare itself protector of the western Slavic peoples living in Germany.
    Karl Albrecht I was known for the service he provided to the Polish army, and its unlikely that willingness to serve would vanish upon becoming King. So, as Soldier-King, he will gain a plethora of unique personality traits as well as becoming a field marshal.
    With Hungary aligning itself with Polands enemies, Karl Albrecht can demand that Horthy step down in favour of Otto von Habsburg and force Hungary down their Habsburg path, diplomatically aligning them with Habsburg Poland.
    Galicia-Lodomeria represented Habsburg rule over Poland and as such, Karl Albrecht may restore the Diet of Galicia which as well as giving the Royal Sejm national spirit, moves the nations capital to Krakow. While this centralises the capital between Poland and Czechoslovakia and surrounds the capital in defensible hills, the old Polish capital is also very close to the German border and may prove an easy target
    I feel I should also clarify the mechanics behind electing a monarch. When the Fulfil the 5th of November Act focus is complete, candidates come forward and present themselves to be King. So while it would make little sense for the regency council to reach out and invite candidates like Pavel Bermondt-Avalov to be King, Pavel is certainly the type to try and present himself for King.
    The final thing I'd like to mention is that during testing we noticed that it was quite a chore to scroll back and forth between the Polish tree with it being so wide, so I implemented a system where the Polish tree automatically compacts itself when you've chosen a political path.

    Thats all for this week, next week we will be covering the paths unique to each Baltic state and for now Ill leave you with this teaser.



    Read the full article: https://pdxint.at/3hse2JY


    [ 2021-05-12 13:00:55 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Road to PDXCON: Grand Campaign - Hearts of Iron [7th May 12:00 CEST]

    Join the Hearts of Iron team, The Grand Campaign cast and our Discord senate for the third leg of our story!


    The story has unfolded and the Dual Monarchy stands at the precipice of a World War. In this modded, community built scenario a cast of Developers and Paradox Staff must lead our nation to victory in a world wide conflict! Acting as our Senate, you can influence how each campaign unfolds. Want to see a more military focused nation, or one that values the power of diplomacy or trade? By debating and voting inside the Senate, you can shape the course of our nation through all four grand strategy games. You can take your seat in the senate by heading over to the discord here: https://discord.gg/pdxcon Each leg of the journey will also have a knock on effect on the next, crafting a completely unique gamestate by the time we reach our Stellaris endgame. You have the power to not only shape history, but the universe! The Event will be broadcast live on the Paradox Interactive Twitch Channel at the times below:

    The Dates:


    [olist]
  • Crusader Kings III: 21st April 12:00-22:00 CEST
  • Europa Universalis IV: 28th April 12:00-22:00 CEST
  • Hearts of Iron IV: 7th May 12:00 - 22:00 CEST
  • Stellaris: 15th-16th May 12:00 - 20:00 CEST [/olist]

    Were looking forward to bringing hours of grand strategy gameplay to you as we forge our own story, together!




    [ 2021-05-06 13:00:49 CET ] [ Original post ]

  • Dev Diary: Combat & Stat Changes


    Hi everyone and welcome back to another dev diary! Today is about various changes that affect combat and units. With the Barbarossa update we want to shake up the meta a bit and also change a few stats and other aspects to make using the tank designer more interesting and rewarding.

    High Command bonus changes


    For a long time now unit bonuses from high command have confused people. Most expect that they apply to battalions, when in fact they apply only if their target unit type was the majority type, which was basically a weighted type count. They also could overlap, so infantry, mountaineers and artillery would apply to the same units letting you stack stuff in ways that was never intended and quite unintuitive.
    This system has now changed, and divisions get bonuses based on their composition, this is a straight up ratio based on the number of non-support battalions of each type, so a 2x artillery 3x infantry division will be 40% artillery 60% infantry. Battalions are always classified as a single type for this (even though some are scripted with multiple types) based on this priority: cavalry > armor > artillery > motorized > mechanized > infantry The exceptions being rocket & special forces, which both act as an addition, so if the 3 infantry divisions in the example above were mountain units, then the division would also be 60% special forces and if the 2 artillery are nebelwerfers it'd also be 40% rocket. When counting the battalions of armies (ie when we have an actual unit and not only a division template), battalions that lack equipment will count as less, so a Light Tank battalion with only half it's tanks will count as 0.5 battalions (and not count at all if without tanks). The total sum of the compositions will still end up 100% (unless every battalion is without equipment).
    To make it easier to see this we now have an indicator in the division windows showing the breakdown.

    Combat Width


    As a part of our efforts to shake up the 40/20 width meta, we have made changes to the combat width of province terrain. Province widths now range from 75 to 96. Plains have a new base combat width of 90, while Mountains have a new combat width of 75. Most of these widths will not divide into each other easily, hopefully moving the ideal width away from multiples of 10. Urban provinces are now the widest with a width of 96. But this does not mean they will be the easiest provinces to overwhelm. Mountains, marshes, and urban provinces now have reinforcement widths of of province width instead of . This should hopefully give these provinces a slight defensive buff, while allowing us to open up pushing power in the more open tiles.
    In conjunction with these changes, we have also been looking at reducing the overstacking penalty. We hope that this will alleviate some of the need to have divisions that are the perfect width for a given province. But at the same time, smaller countries should now be able to specialize their division width to suit their home terrain more appropriately. Breakdown (numbers not final etc etc) Plains
    • Standard 90
    • Reinforce 45
    Desert
    • Standard 90
    • Reinforce 45
    Forest
    • Standard 84
    • Reinforce 42
    Jungle
    • Standard 84
    • Reinforce 42
    Hills
    • Standard 80
    • Reinforce 40
    Marsh
    • Standard 78
    • Reinforce 26
    Urban
    • Standard 96
    • Reinforce.32
    Mountain
    • Standard 75
    • Reinforce 25
    One of the major things that make larger divisions like 40 width armor hit disproportionally harder than smaller ones is also how targeting and damage works inside combat in relation to the enemies defense. Essentially the larger divisions make more efficient use of concentrated damage as it punches through defense. To solve this we are doing a few things. First of all we are weighting the targeting towards wider divisions being more likely targets and also when picking targets to try and match it to have wider divisions spread damage over smaller rather than always concentrating it. They will probably still hit harder, but combined with width changes and other downsides of larger divisions it should make it less clear cut. However, this part isnt quite done yet though so Ill cover it again in more detail in one of the bag of tricks diaries in the future when i see how it pans out, but I figured it needed to be mentioned now ;) That said though, to wet your appetites here is a little tease from a debug mapmode in development...

    Armor and Piercing


    Currently the effects of having stronger armor than the enemy can pierce, or being able to pierce an enemies armor are binary and give fixed bonuses. This meant that there wasn't really any benefit to have more armor than you needed to stop the enemies piercing, and also that being a single point of piercing under enemy armor was just as bad as having no piercing. So things were quite binary. With the tank designer coming we wanted to make it feel like your investments in upgrades were always worth it, so we are changing armor and piercing to have more gradual effects. Armor > Piercing
    • Unit takes half damage (as it currently works)
    Armor < Piercing and Amor > 0.75 * Piercing
    • Take damage between half damage to normal damage by difference in value
    Armor < 0.75 * Piercing
    • The unit takes normal damage
    Lets break this down with an example:
    • A panzer division has an armor value of 52
    • Its being attacked by an infantry division with some anti-tank guns. Their piercing is 60
    • If this was the old system this armor would be worthless and not reduce damage at all
    • Now because its close enough (between 60 and 45), so you get roughly half of the normal effect around 25% reduction of damage.

    Reliability


    For the tank designer it was important that reliability was more impactful if it was to be a good tradeoff with other aspects of design, so we needed to change it up (lest @CraniumMuppets 0% reliability tank monsters would take over the world). Now it will not just affect rate of loss in attrition but various other aspects:
    • Reliability affects losses from attrition like before
    • Reliability now affects org regain when moving, and also makes any weather related org effects more impactful when low
    • Lower reliability scales up all impacts from weather so if facing extreme weather a unit with low reliability equipment will suffer more of those weather effects
    • At the end of combat units with better reliability will be able to get back a certain amount of tanks etc to simulate that simple more reliable constructions would work better for battlefield repair and be less fragile when taking damage. So it's a bit like capturing enemy equipment in combat - but in reverse :cool:

    Our goal is that this creates interesting tradeoffs when designing equipment and will make you have to consider if its worth switching a strategy focused on speed and firepower towards reliability when operating in bad weather and tough areas like the Russian winter or in northern africa or jungles. Oh, and I figured now might be a good time to point out that there will be a future diary on weather changes and other cool related stuff, so these changes aren't completely in isolation. But one step at a time :) But before we go, a few words about the studio...

    Studio Gold


    Hello everyone, my name is Thomas, but perhaps better known as @Besuchov here on the forums. As you saw here we have recently reorganized ourselves a little, moving from a big centralized Stockholm studio to splitting ourselves into Red, Green and Gold. This is mainly an internal org shift to make sure we keep our growing organization firmly focused around making good games. You shouldn't notice too many differences in the short term, we are still PDS making GSG on the Clausewitz engine, but it does mean that we can align each studio to the particular games. Since you will hear the studio names every once in a while, I just wanted to say who I am and what the studio is responsible for. My role is Studio Manager, which means I'm accountable for the long term success of Studio Gold and working with things like management, staffing, and long term plans. Studio Gold has as its main focus Hearts of Iron (but we may or may not have some secret other stuff as well). Directly making the games though, that's still the job of Podcat and the team, but I intend to do my best to create an environment where we have the best chances to make great games together. For me this is coming full circle at Paradox. I started as a programmer in 2004 and one of my first tasks was to work on Hearts of Iron 2. Since then I've done various things including being lead programmer for Hearts of Iron 3 (and Victoria 2), Project Lead for EU4 and more recently Studio Manager for PDS. Next to EU, HOI is my favorite game and I'm delighted to be back in a place where I can focus on fewer games and where that game is Hearts of Iron. You will see more of me in the future even though I will mostly take a backseat to the team working on the game.

    Thats all, see you all again next week for more dev diary goodness!


    Read the full article here: https://pdxint.at/3vJu32o


    [ 2021-05-05 13:00:37 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Dev Diary: Tank Designer


    Hello, and welcome back to another DevDiary about content coming in the 1.11 Barbarossa patch and its accompanying DLC. As always, keep in mind that the things shown in this DevDiary are still under development, so the numbers and UI might change before release. Ever since we revealed the ship designer in Man the Guns, people have been asking about a similar system for tanks. We did, however, want to improve a bit on the ship designer. In particular, we felt that the ship designer was encouraging too many generalist designs. Part of the problem is that ships have a very long lead time before they become available, so it is difficult to iterate on the designs in a timely fashion. When your ship takes two years to build, you cant really specialize it too much, because you cant always accurately predict the situation in two years. Thankfully, tanks require a somewhat smaller investment (although our QA certainly has tried to make designs that rival ships in cost), so you see a new tank design in the frontlines much sooner than a new ship, allowing you to react to new situations much faster. Another thing is that ships usually had trade-offs between different capabilities, in the sense that the space (or module slot) taken up by a torpedo launcher could also be taken up by an AA gun, making the ship better against one or the other type of enemy. But rarely did you want a ship that had no AA or no way to defend itself against surface targets, so you always wanted some AA and some ship attack. Tanks, on the other hand, dont usually have trade-offs in the same way. You dont usually design a tank, wondering if you should put on another AA gun or a second gun against surface targets (unless, of course, you are German and it's 1944). But Tanks still have trade-offs in their design, and we wanted to represent those. Traditionally, tank design revolves around three aspects: Mobility, Firepower, and Protection. A well-armored tank is slow, a fast tank cant carry a big gun, and a big gun requires a large tank, which is difficult to armor. During the war, different nations tried different approaches, and learned different lessons from their observations - it is no surprise that the last German tanks of the war were heavily-armored vehicles carrying massive guns, but the first post-war design was the comparatively lightly armored but well-armed and quite nimble Leopard 1. So we wanted to make you think about these three aspects, and have it be a trade-off between them. However, in a grand strategy game, other aspects also matter more than in the typical comparison of tank designs - the best tank in the world is useless if it breaks down on the way to the battlefield (Panther fans take note), and it is even more useless if you cant afford it. So we wanted cost and reliability to also matter when designing a tank or armored vehicle. In contrast to ships, we wanted to make you think more about specializing your designs to fill a certain niche, and optimize it towards a specific role. While you will probably still want to have a somewhat middle-of-the-road design for your main production medium tank (one might call it the Sherman), there is a place for more specialized designs as well. As part of this approach, we will be making changes to the reliability system and the armor system. The details will be forthcoming in a future dev diary (together with other combat changes), but the broad strokes are that reliability will not just affect the rate of attrition, and that the armor system will become less binary. As part of these changes, we also decided to give mechanized equipment some upgrades, so that it can keep up with tanks.
    Under the new system, reliability is meant to represent both the likelihood that a given piece of equipment breaks down as well as the likelihood that it suffers catastrophic damage when hit and the effort necessary to repair it. In effect, reliability also represents the carrying capacity of a given chassis, so you effectively have a reliability budget for every chassis to work with. The more armor you put on it, the bigger the weapon etc., the more reliability drops. Heavier or more advanced tank chassis generally have more reliability (over 100% on the base chassis in some cases). But enough of the basics, lets talk about what you really want to know: Whats the Kampfwagenkanone Zweiundvierzig in game terms? Is the weird hybrid-electric drive of the Elefant represented? Do we get to set the exact angle of the front armor or just the thickness? Much like ships, tanks are based on a hull (called a chassis) and a number of modules that define the actual stats of the final design. These modules act a little different from the way the ship designer works. While the main armament is fairly self-evident, other modules represent something like design features. These features are meant to be distinct enough that even someone who does not have an in-depth understanding of armor development during the war can at least understand that different armor types are good for different things.
    Instead of scripting in a gigantic list of armor types with different thickness, armor is represented by a thickness and a production method: Riveted Armor is the cheapest kind, but also the weakest. Cast Armor is the strongest, but also the most expensive. Welded Armor is a compromise between the two extremes, making it the most cost-efficient (arguments can be made either way between cast and welded armor since welding does require specialized equipment and training). Armor thickness is changed through something much like the old, vanilla upgrade system, with up to 20 different levels. You start with being able to put up to 5 levels of armor (roughly equivalent to 50 mm of armor) on a tank, but research allows you to put more on. Higher levels of armor protection require more resources, such as steel and eventually chromium. There is no limit to the amount of armor you can put on a chassis as such - if you want to make a light tank with the armor protection of a Tiger, you can (its called a Panzer I Ausf. F). The amount of armor upgrades on the vehicle translates to an actual armor value based on the type of armor you have selected, so 5 levels of riveted armor are still weaker than 5 levels of cast armor - but much cheaper.
    Engine types are also meant to be simple to understand. Gasoline Engines are faster than Diesels for the same weight, but Diesels are more reliable. Beyond that, Electric hybrid engines are a very situational pick. We originally intended for them to be a joke pick - costly, unreliable, fuel inefficient - but on some further reading, the rationale behind them was that they offered better mobility in broken terrain. In game, this is represented by a small bonus to breakthrough and defense. Finally, there are gas turbines, which are unlocked from jet engine research. They are the fastest engine option, but take up a lot of fuel. Like armor, engines also have an upgrade system where you can set the level of engine power (up to 20). It should be noted that the speed of most historical designs is going to be lower than the stated max speed of the vehicle they are based on. This is because we represent the operational speed of a vehicle, i.e. how far the vehicle can get in 24 hours - tanks dont drive around all day at maximum speed, they have to stop for refuelling, resting the crew, basic maintenance etc. Turrets are split between different kinds and are meant to represent things like crew ergonomics. Early in the war, a lot of countries had tanks with one or two-man turrets, and one advantage the Germans had was having a commander who could direct the rest of the crew without also having to service the main gun. This is represented by bonuses to breakthrough with different turrets. A special type is the fixed superstructure. Main guns are differentiated by size (small, medium, large, super-heavy), which correspond roughly with the weight classes of tanks. Light tanks can only carry small weapons etc. - unless they have a fixed superstructure, which enables them to carry guns one size bigger, allowing you to mount a medium gun on a light tank chassis. Having a fixed superstructure also adds bonuses to defense while giving a penalty to breakthrough, making it a good option for vehicles meant to defend.
    Suspensions affect mainly reliability and speed. The most basic kind is the Bogie suspension, which adds some reliability, while Christie suspension adds quite a bit of speed. Torsion Bar suspension adds more reliability than Bogies, but is more expensive. Interleaved Roadwheels - as seen on the later German tanks - add some breakthrough, but have reliability problems (the overlapping wheels add some protection and redundancy against fire coming from the side, but are difficult to repair and maintain). Light Chassis can also select wheeled and half-track suspensions, which make the vehicle itself quite a bit cheaper, but also drop reliability.
    The main weapon has probably the biggest impact on the offensive stats of the vehicle. There are a lot of different options to choose from, but we have tried to give every weapon type its own niche, with realistic drawbacks and advantages, so for example the High-velocity tank guns (like the KwK 42 or the American 76mm) have worse soft attack but very good piercing and hard attack, while howitzers have very poor hard attack and piercing, but spectacular soft attack. This means that for example the early German tanks do struggle a bit against the French, which have pretty heavy armor (but suffer in other regards, mostly because of their one-man turrets). As you can see, we made an effort to not have a giant tech tree this time. The tech tree for the new chassis is about the same size as the old armor tech tree, and the other modules are unlocked primarily through the artillery tab.
    Finally, every chassis has 4 slots for Special Modules. These can include radios, which give bonuses to breakthrough and defense; secondary turrets for all your T-35 needs; smoke launchers; extra ammunition storage and wet ammo storage. Deciding whether or not a tank uses sloped armor also happens in this area. Perhaps most intriguing is the Amphibious Drive, which allows you to designate a design as an amphibious tank for the purpose of amphibious tank battalions (MtG owners only). Designating designs for certain roles ensures that they are used in those subunits. Some roles require certain characteristics - for example, you cant have an AA tank that uses a fixed superstructure. But it is completely possible to make both the German tank destroyers with fixed superstructures and the American ones with turrets and have them go to tank destroyer units. The weight class of the chassis determines the weight class of the final design, so a design on the heavy chassis that is designated as a tank destroyer is treated as a heavy tank destroyer. This also means we can represent vehicles that changed roles during the war more easily, so you can have your StuG III equivalent with a high-soft attack gun go to your armored artillery battalions in the early war, but then switch out the gun to something with better piercing and have it work as a tank destroyer afterwards. Since we want you to optimize designs for different purposes, we also wanted to make sure that you can easily decide where a certain tank design ends up. So for example, you can follow the British approach of having fast cruiser tanks to use in armored divisions, and slower infantry tanks that go to support your infantry divisions. To do this, you tag a design with a symbol. You can then quickly select from a list of symbols in the division designer to make the division only pull equipment tagged as such. Equipment that isnt tagged (such as lend-lease and captured foreign equipment, or equipment not tagged at all) will still be used for divisions that dont have a specific tag requirement set. We also took another look at what automation features were necessary for people who dont want to spend a lot of time fine-tuning their tank designs (weird and alien though that thought may be to most of us). We do, of course, have the usual auto-design functionality. It takes the design the AI would use and offers it for approval. This has gotten some love, and there should now be some national flavor in how the AI designs its tanks. It also takes the overall situation into account, so tanks will be up-armored during the war and so on. Beyond that, we also have added an auto-upgrade function, which keeps a given design current as you research new guns, chassis etc. You can either click on a design you made in the past and upgrade it with a single click to the newest components (so a Radio I becomes a Radio II etc.), or click a checkbox to do so automatically. You don't have to pay XP for an automatic design upgrade, but you won't get thicker armor or a better engine that way. Still, we think that the combination of auto-design and auto-upgrade allows players to interact with the system as much or as little as they like.
    To make the tank designs more visually distinct in the production view, we have added about 1000 new 2d icons to use for them, mostly stemming from combining parts of existing tanks in new ways (the gun of Tank A with the turret of Tank B etc.). The historical icons are, of course, still available. You can select the icon while making the design, as well as the 3d asset used to represent the vehicle on the map.

    Thats all from us today for this feature. Before closing, I would like to note a few things on the subject of giving feedback. When I first started at Paradox, the direct line between community and developers was a major plus for me, because I liked the idea of talking to the community without having to run every post past three different marketing departments first. However, this kind of direct community access comes at a heavy cost for us. As many of you have noticed, we have gotten a little sparse in these forums in the last few months, or even years. The reason for this is that often we do face a debate culture that is not enjoyable to take part in, where it is taken as a given that the devs are either lazy or incompetent and where everything we do is viewed through that lens. Not only is it incredibly demoralizing to spend months of your life creating something, only to see the people you made it for tear it to shreds, it is also a debate that gives no one anything. We arent paid to wade through pages of abuse to find a few nuggets of useful feedback, and so that feedback is not acted on. A lot of you have access to sources in languages we dont speak or have studied some detail that we werent aware of. Such feedback is very useful - just a few weeks ago someone sent me a plan of the Turkish railways in 1936 taken from an old Turkish book, so I was able to use that to update the Turkish railway setup at game start. Were not looking for fawning adoration (although we will certainly accept it) or a forum in which our decisions cant be discussed with a critical eye. We want to have your feedback, but there is no point to it if it cant be delivered with a minimum of respect for each other. If you want to have a forum where developers are willing to go and answer your questions, then it is also your responsibility to build a place where we feel welcome, and where we can disagree in a productive and professional manner. It costs you nothing to assume that we were acting in good faith. None of us wake up in the morning and go to work in order to do a bad job. Extra Secret Spoiler: here are some tank designs QA has made over the past few months while we were developing this. Please note that the numbers on the screenshots are several versions out of date and that the issues pointed out in these shots have been fixed since then.

    [For the full list go to the full diary here]



    [ 2021-04-28 13:00:07 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Dev Diary: Poland Focus Tree Rework | Part 2/2


    Hello folks and welcome back to the Poland dev-diary extravaganza! This week, I am going to continue covering the changes coming to Poland in 1.11 Barbarossa and the unannounced DLC.Today well be covering the DLC content.
    So, Im going to start here with something a bunch of you predicted last week; you can indeed play as the Peasants Strike! A Poland with ambitions to restore democracy or embrace the communist revolution must first build an organized peasant militia from the rabble of disorganized farmers!
    No matter how many or few states join you in the strike, the rebellious state will be in a delicate balancing act between democrats and socialists. Your first step towards revolution is to sway the Front Morges to take up the peasants cause, the Morges being an alliance of political parties supported by a select few Polish generals including Sikorski.
    Each focus you do in this initial block will add 5 support to either communism or democracy, with a total of 50% or more being needed for one to assert dominance over the other and take control of the government.
    Similar to the Spanish Civil War, the Peasants Strike will be on a tight schedule, taking up to a year before the revolution happens. Poland will at first be able to add agricultural states to the strike, but by expanding the strike to factory workers, Poland will also be able to bring states from Polands industrial heartland into the revolution.
    Along with contesting for popular support, gaining military support will be vital for the movement. Using decisions, certain field marshals and generals will be swayed to your cause and gain the Peasant Sympathiser trait, ensuring that they will join your side when the war begins.
    Poland will begin with socialist politician Stanisaw Mikoajczyk as country leader, but those who wish to see the return of Wincenty Witos will be able to bring him back to leadership via event.
    Once the civil war is won, Poland will be in a vulnerable state. Recuperating manpower and resources after a civil war will place Poland in a precarious position, so some concessions and outreach for foreign assistance may be needed.
    A communist Poland will have two options: they may be bold and elect an anti-Stalinist candidate as Chairman, or they may elect the Soviet-aligned Wadysaw Gomuka. However, aligning with the Soviets will come at the cost of ceding Eastern Poland, but will unlock a few focuses for dealing with the USSR.
    With democracy, Poland may take advantage of the Front Morges ambitions for closer relations with the French and create the Morges Pact, a sort-of Poland-led Little Entente. Going down this route will allow Poland access to the Between the Seas branch we talked about last week.
    Anti-Soviet communists will be able to denounce both Capitalism and Fascism, diplomatically isolating this peoples republic, but allowing for new expansion options and military bonuses against the empires of this world. In doing so, they will gain a powerful attack and defence bonus against major powers.
    Both democrats and anti-Soviet communists will also be able to declare the destruction of fascism a greater cause than the spread of socialism and align themselves with the British Empire. Doing so will allow Poland to renew her interests in colonialism and attempt to purchase colonies from Allied powers. By officially recognising the Maritime and Colonial League, Poland can purchase Madagascar, Palestine, and more. If any of your purchases are successful, Poland will have somewhere to build their forces in exile, should the front back home fail.
    No matter which option you pick, either conquering or building alliances with the Baltic States will allow you to create a new kind of Commonwealth: the Commonwealth of Socialist Republics.
    Moving on to the next branch, we have the Regency Council: Polands attempt to restore the monarchy. The Act of the Fifth of November was the promise of the Central Powers to release a Kingdom of Poland from the occupied territories of the Russian Empire, but the Regency Council of the newly formed Kingdom of Poland failed to crown a King before Jzef Pisudski declared the Second Polish Republic.
    With the Regency Council assembled, Poland will be able to choose from one of three claimants, each with their own complete political path. There were countless claimants and candidates for the Polish throne so it was impossible for me to make content for them all, so we have: The Hohenzollern, The Commonwealth Claimant, and the Cossack-King to choose from!
    The Commonwealth Claimant is perhaps the most obvious: Polands preferred candidate for King was Friedrich Christian. Christian was preferred due to Polands long connection with the houses of Saxony, and with a claimant so supported by the Poles, you are able to claim the throne of Lithuania without the need for warfare.
    Through decisions, Poland can trend monarchist sentiment up in Lithuania, and when it reaches high enough, they may either enter a civil war or peacefully take over the government. When either case has happened, Poland can annex the Lithuanian Kingdom and begin integrating the industries of their two nations and preparing for war with the Soviets and Germans: restoring the old borders of the Commonwealth and then some!
    Poland and Romania enjoyed close relations at the start of HoIs timeframe, and with the throne of Poland empty, Poland may throw herself into the complex mess of Romanian politics by electing a Romanian King.
    With King Michael on the throne of Poland, the Kingdoms will be able to unite under the right circumstances. Either by Polish interference or by Romania completing King Michaels Coup, Romania and Poland will be united, bringing their armies together and becoming a powerful wall between the Axis and the Comintern.
    This Intermarium nation may seek Balkan Domination and a restoration of Poland-Hungary, or (as with the Commonwealth) it may seek to maintain its alignment with the Allies. Finally, we have the most unlikely candidate for the throne: Pavel Bermondt-Avalov.
    A warlord, a cossack, and a Georgian Prince, Pavel led an interesting life of conquest and warfare. In the interwar period, Pavel and his Bermontian host invaded Lithuania and Latvia for reasons historians are still unsure of, but his ambition for Baltic domination makes him the ideal candidate for militarizing the Polish state into action and dominating the Baltics and Czechoslovakia.
    When done conquering the Baltics, Pavel will be able to either turn his militarized Polish Kingdom against the Germans and asser Polands claims in Silesia and Pomerania or, as a National Socialist, Pavel may wish to seek alignment with the Germans, which brings us on to the fascist branch.
    Poland was home to a multitude of fascist and nationalist movements: the most notable of which are the Endecja (or National Democracy) and the Falanga. The Sanation historically made dealings with both of these groups, and as such, if you want either Endecja or Falanga to take control, you must collaborate with the Sanation until you are able to supplant them. When either Endecja or Falanga have taken over the government, they will have a choice to either stand firm with Polish nationalism or make concessions to the Germans and attempt to seek an alliance.
    Aligning with the Germans will not place you on equal grounds, and it is not as easy as it once was. Germany will refuse to ally with Poland unless Danzig and Poznan are surrendered and Poland becomes a German subject. Unlike Czechoslovakia though, the Poles will be able to break their shackles and tear the Reich apart from within. With either Pavel, Piasecki, or Dmowski in control, Poland will be presented with a ladder of focuses enabling them to either gain powerful bonuses from the Germans or plot with the Underground State to overthrow their current masters.
    Going for independence will allow Poland to switch sides and stab Germany in the back, whereas remaining loyal will enable Poland to gain some cores in the USSR in a sort-of reverse Yalta Conference.
    However, a Falanga or Endecja that does not bow to the Germans will be able to lean into the Polish Catholic identity and form the Falangist International: a faction devoted to the perseverance of Falangist ideals.
    Once the Spanish Civil War is done with, if either the Carlists, Nationalists, or Falangists come out on top, Poland will be able to bring them into their own faction and from there, they will be able to expand that faction to other nations where Falangism was present such as: Mexico, the Netherlands, and much of Latin America. They will have access to decisions to boost fascism in those nations, and with a certain percentage achieved, those nations will be invited to join the Falangist International. These focuses invite multiple nations at once, so the faction can grow very large very quickly.
    Similar to the Sanation path, the Polish fascists must choose between allying with Lithuania or attempting to reclaim the legacy of the Commonwealth, but choose wisely. Without allying Lithuania, this Poland will be unable to progress down the Between the Seas path, severely limiting their factions ability to expand. Thats about it for the political paths, so Ill wrap this one up by talking about a feature we havent touched in quite some time: Governments in Exile.
    Unlike France and the Netherlands, Poland does not by default have a vast colonial empire to which they may retreat when things fall apart back home, so Poland will be entirely reliant on the support and goodwill of their allies and the network of resistance fighters in the Polish Underground State.
    In exile, the Polish government went through a number of Prime Ministers and Presidents before landing on something the Allies were satisfied with. If Poland is following a historical route and is exiled in a Democratic nation like Britain or France, they will demand the resignation of the Sanation leaders, and from there, Poland may pick from one of three new leaders, each with a unique personality enabling them to gain manpower while in exile.
    On top of that, they will gain access to Irena Anders as a political adviser, granting more legitimacy, stability, and exiled manpower.
    In the exile focus tree, Poland can gain a number of offmap factories and dockyards, and bonuses to their ace generation and an increase in special forces cap. Poland will never muster a major army while exiled, but with these bonuses, Poland will still be able to keep fighting on with a small but specialised force.
    Owners of La Resistance will gain access to a slew of agency bonuses including an increase to their spy capacity, free agency upgrades via focus, and the new Warsaw Uprising operation.
    Completing the operation will trigger the Warsaw Uprising sooner than the game mechanics usually allow. With 50% resistance or higher in Polish states, the uprising can be started, but time this well as you can only complete this operation once. A well-timed uprising can shatter the German army and leave them short on supply as they attempt Operation Barbarossa. Poland was also vital to assisting in decrypting the enigma machine, so they also gain access to the Mastermind Codebreaker advisor: Marian Rejewski.
    The old Cyclometer and Bombe focuses have been moved into the espionage branch, but I noted that without any territory left, a bonus to atomic research was fairly useless to Poland. So, when the Atomic Research focus is done, Poland gains an offmap nuclear reactor that will give roughly one nuke per year... Try not to think too hard about it. There were a lot of interesting alternate-history scenarios for Poland to explore and new possibilities came up during my research and implementation. Though I didnt represent everything in game (such as the proposed Japan-Polish alliance), Poland is a treasure-trove of alternate history scenarios if only you can find a way to survive. Thats all for this week, and that wraps up the two week Poland extravaganza!


    [ 2021-04-21 13:01:01 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Dev Diary: Poland Focus Tree Rework | Part 1/2


    Hello everybody and welcome to another dev diary for the upcoming Barbarossa patch and yet to be announced DLC. Today Im going to be talking about the first focus tree which is a rework of Poland. Poland was first added as a free DLC on release for everyone titled "United and Ready" so as such what you see in this diary will be free for everyone once Barbarossa drops. Next diary we will continue on to cover the DLC parts of the focus tree, because the tree is a bit too large to cover in one go. Enjoy! Poland is interesting because it is a hugely popular minor (it's roughly as popular as Spain and more popular than Greece). Yet it has a very difficult position sandwiched between Soviet and Germany, which tend to scare people off. Perhaps it's the challenge, or its critical role in WW2, or just the large amount of Polish HOI4 fans, you tell me.
    So, if we load up the tree we can see not only Ignacy Mocickis beautiful new portrait, but an entirely new tree.
    Lets start with the industrial branch. In the old tree, the player would have to dredge through a lot of low-value research bonuses to get just a few extra factories, so many of those old focuses have been expanded with extra factories and bonuses. But, this branch is not just about getting free factories, Poland is on a tight schedule and must use her time well if she has ambitions of outlasting the Reich.
    Many industry focuses for Poland grant powerful but temporary bonuses towards consumer goods and construction speed so time the funding of your armement well to maximize the bonuses youll get.
    Poland was a nation with many problems in 1936, and one such problem was that their rail networks were disparate and disconnected; largely due to the fact that Poland had only a few decades prior been part of three different nations. Among many problems this caused for Poland, it also disrupted their agricultural supply networks, which resulted in the Peasants Strike of 1937.
    Beginning as mere whispers among the peasantry, if Poland fails to join the supply networks and enact major agricultural reform, they will be faced with a nasty peasants strike, damaging their stability, industry, and populace. Though on a tight schedule, Poland may pacify the countryside to delay this uprising, but until reform is enacted, the peasants will remain restless.
    Failing to enact reform entirely will result in a massive populist uprising, and a civil war is the last thing Poland needs. If Poland is to survive the Reich and the USSR, she must be united and ready.
    Moving on to another issue Poland had in the 30s; we have the Free City of Danzig! Danzig/Gdansk was in a unique and complicated position in this period. The city was simultaneously free and owned by no-one, an official Polish protectorate, and an international city partially run by the League of Nations. So representing Danzig/Gdansk as an on-map tag in 36 felt not quite right, so instead the city is demilitarized and Poland is incapable of accessing any of their factories, resources, or manpower.
    When the Nazi party took power in the city, it strangled Polish trade, so Poland begins the game with the Embargoed Economy trade law, similar to Undisturbed Isolation in the US but not nearly as harsh. To remove the Embargoed Economy, Poland must either develop a new trade port in Gdynia, gain a new port through conquest, or clamp down on Danzig.

    Attempting to seize control of Danzig will cause the city to begin a resistance, and Poland can fight that resistance through decisions and the usual resistance/compliance mechanics. With enough compliance, Poland will be able to ban the Nazi party and take permanent control of the city; ending the resistance, gaining access to all of Danzigs resources, manpower, and industry, and finally being able to remove the embargoed economy.
    Failing to bring Danzig under control will result in the city rising up against you and appearing as a tag on the map. Failing to stamp out this uprising in time will cause the city to defect to the Reich.
    Failing to bring Danzig under control will result in the city rising up against you and appearing as a tag on the map. Failing to stamp out this uprising in time will cause the city to defect to the Reich.
    Historically, Poland believed the USSR to be the greater threat and didnt begin preparing Plan West until just two years before invasion. But, with the power of hindsight, the player can start either plan immediately after completing the Prepare for the Next War focus, and accumulate forts and construction bonuses along the border.
    However, until Plan West has been completed, Plan East cannot be begun and vice versa, but when complete, no further focuses from the branch may be taken.
    Finally, probably the part of the tree that has received the most love; the historical Polish political focus branch. Poland was not the united stable regime we had previously seen on release. Along with impending threats outside their borders, Poland was (like most dictatorships) plagued with infighting and factionalism.
    The dictatorship was divided between the Castle lead by Ignacy Mocicki, the Sanation Right lead by Edward Rydz-migy, and the Sanation Left led by Walery Sawek.
    Each branch of the Sanation has a series of focuses that can be completed for various bonuses and the player does not have to commit to one faction or the other right away. Rather, you can form your government with a multitude of policies from each of the three factions, but the longer you spend forming your government, the less time you have for other things like industry and plans East and West.
    Historical Poland will also have access to the April Constitution, the binding document of the Dictatorship. Though it begins weak, through collaboration with Sanations Left and Right, the Constitution will become a powerful bonus to Poland's politics. With all power consolidated in the President, you'll be able to change your laws and your cabinet with ease.
    Time isnt your only opponent here though, each of the two factions will expect Mocicki to appease them by enacting their policies and giving them power. Every focus of the Left you complete will make the Right more irritated and vice versa. On top of that, both factions will passively gain irritation over time so spend too long without taking a side and you risk losing both to civil wars.
    Historically, Mocicki maintained control of the government until wartime, at which point it was agreed migy would take control, but Poland failed to last long enough for this to take effect. However, if the player has appointed either migy or Sawek as Chairman of Poland, the Sanation Right/Left can supercede the Castle and become the majority controller of the government. This enables some light alt-history within the historical branch, as well as unlocking new diplomatic options for Poland.
    Available to all three factions of the dictatorship is the Align With the West branch, which allows Poland to join the Allies as they were able to in their old tree.
    In the 30s, Lithuania was technically at war with Poland until the 1938 Polish ultimatum to Lithuania in which Poland demanded an end to the cold war over Vilnius. As well as being able to gain cooperation and eventually an alliance with Lithuania, Poland may also demand Lithuanias annexation which can result in occupying Lithuania without the need for war, but take this focus with caution as it extends your frontline with the Axis.
    Also, the Romanian Bridgehead Strategy has now been moved to the diplomatic branch and allows Poland to bring Romania into the allies. Historically, Poland and Lithuania had an alliance prior to the war, and Poland can pursue this alliance closer, bringing Romanian guns to the Polish front.
    The Sanation Right exclusively has access to Polish Revanchism which has now been expanded into its own full branch. As well as being able to demand the annexation of Lithuania, the Right can pursue both a restored Commonwealth and fulfil the ambition of the PolishCzechoslovak confederation.
    Lastly, the Sanation Left has access to an expanded Baltic Alliance path, allowing them to gain alliances with the Baltic states, Czechoslovakia, and Romania, and unlocking the newly expanded Between the Seas branch!
    (It's worth mentioning at this point that most focus icons are placeholder) No matter which path Poland is pursuing, as long as Poland is not in a faction already, they will be able to realize the Intermarium ambition and create an alliance from sea-to-sea! All they need to do is be considered a major or be a faction leader already, and have a large army. At this point, Poland can be considered a real contender for a major alliance of their own.
    The old Between Seas focus was not really between seas so much as it was just a Baltic alliance, but now the first nation to be invited to the faction is Romania. After Romania has made their decision, the alliance can spread any direction; north into Scandinavia and the Baltics, and south into the Balkans. Though unlikely, an Italian alliance is not out of the question for Poland here, but some significant change in policy for either nation would be necessary to tempt the Italians away from the Axis.

    Thats all for this one, next week well be talking about Polands DLC-locked alternate history branches!


    Read the article here: https://pdxint.at/2OL91QS


    [ 2021-04-14 13:00:31 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Road to PDXCON: Grand Campaign


    The journey to PDXCON begins: Introducing the Grand Campaign! 4 games, 4 weeks and 5 days of play!


    Join the teams of Crusader Kings III, Europa Universalis IV, Hearts of Iron IV and Stellaris for the largest event this side of PDXCON Remixed. In a tale that takes us from 867A.D to the distant future, you, the Paradox Community, will have a deciding say on events that unfold! Acting as our Senate, you can influence how each campaign unfolds. Want to see a more military focused nation, or one that values the power of diplomacy or trade? By debating and voting inside the Senate, you can shape the course of our nation through all four grand strategy games. You can take your seat in the senate by heading over to the discord here: https://discord.gg/pdxcon Each leg of the journey will also have a knock on effect on the next, crafting a completely unique gamestate by the time we reach our Stellaris endgame. You have the power to not only shape history, but the universe! The Event will be broadcast live on the Paradox Interactive Twitch Channel at the times below.

    The Dates:


    [olist]
  • Crusader Kings III: 21st April 12:00-22:00 CEST
  • Europa Universalis IV: 28th April 12:00-22:00 CEST
  • Hearts of Iron IV: 7th May 12:00 - 22:00 CEST
  • Stellaris: 15th-16th May 12:00 - 20:00 CEST [/olist]

    Were looking forward to bringing hours of grand strategy gameplay to you as we forge our own story, together!



    [ 2021-04-12 15:00:40 CET ] [ Original post ]

  • Dev Diary: Supply - A First Look


    (Reposted from yesterday due to an error) Hi everyone and welcome back to regular weekly dev diaries (if you don't count the april fools one last week). I know you are all super excited to hear what we have been up to since Battle for the Bosporus. The answers to that are going to take a few dev diaries to cover, so I figured I would start with a timeline for you:

    • We recently released 1.10.4 to fix various multiplayer exploits going on, but seems an important case was not detected at the time so we are working on a 1.10.5 to address that soon.
    • Pdxcon is coming up in May so expect to hear some more details there.
    • The yearly anniversary is coming in June so expect some cool stuff and a patch.
    • We are however spending most of our time on the 1.11 Barbarossa update as well as the unannounced expansion that will be released together with it. That's what we will spend most of our diaries on, as well as today!
    Barbarossa and the unannounced DLC will focus on the Eastern Front and the core of Hearts of Iron, which is warfare - particularly land warfare. Historically the Eastern Front was without doubt the most important front for World War II. It was the largest confrontation in history and is where Hitlers expansion was first stopped and pushed back signaling the eventual doom of the axis powers. There are several areas we want to improve here. Weather does not feel impactful enough, while historically it had a massive impact. Logistics currently doesnt have much player interaction and is mostly something you have to deal with only when problems appear, and finally the combat and division meta has been stable (with an emphasis on large divisions) for a long time - something we hope we can shake up. As you can imagine, these are all things that affect the game on a deeper level and take a lot of work to get right. Today, Ill give you guys a bit of an overview on the supply aspect, but fair warning: its early days and stuff may still change here before were done. Ill probably spend 3+ diaries on supply over the course of the development to cover everything, but I figured it would be nice to hear about the overarching ideas. The old system worked by having discrete supply areas pathing back to the players capital and keeping track of the bottlenecks. To simplify a bit ;) - those bottlenecks then decided how many units could fit into areas near the front without penalties. The areas themselves were unintuitive to players and required you to check multiple mapmodes to see if you stepped over an edge etc. I do like bottleneck systems though, because feedback is usually immediate, but it suffered from not having much scaling cost as distances increased, so it was hard to use it to limit snowballing. As I mentioned it was also a system you didn't care too much about until you had problems, while historically, logistics was a vital part of planning a campaign. This led to combining the issue with another gripe of ours - that the way fronts moved in WW2 often followed important railroads, but don't really in HOI4. We came to the conclusion that we should try and make a system focused on railways and with a truck based component as a way to get more out of it when away from the rails.
    In our new system, supply flows from the capital (the total amount available depends on your total industrial base) through railways, where the level of the railway acts as a bottleneck. To transport more, you need a higher level railway (or a bigger port if it goes over water) so the railways are the current bottlenecks in a way. Depending on how much supply is transported you need a certain amount of trains for the rails to perform. Trains are a new equipment type that we will dig into in a future diary (well actually, several types ;P) An important part of railways is that they are capturable, so as you push into enemy territory you will want to make sure to hold vital railways and capture railway hubs to supply your troops. There is a conversion time here to model the fact that there was usually some repair or re-gauging that needed to happen for attackers.

    Mapmodes are still quite WIP ;) Rivers also had a huge importance on the eastern front for transport and supply so they will work essentially like basic railroads now, where you need to control both sides of their banks to use them to ship supplies around.
    Supply is drawn from what we call Supply Hubs now, which are either cities, naval bases, or manually constructed stations along the rails, which have to be linked into the network. Air supply works a bit differently but we will talk about this in the future along with some other supply additions... The flow of supply from a Hub to a division depends on the terrain/weather etc, and ideally you want to have available trucks here (which is to say, motorized equipment) to increase the amount of supply you get as well as range. Cost of trucks and trains and losses to attrition and bad weather will be a limiting factor on your logistics.
    Overall, this creates a system where it's strategically sound to fight over railways, prepare for large offensives, to try and bleed each other's logistics capability and to force care when advancing in bad terrain and weather. The result is a much more fun, historical and immersive Eastern Front as well as adding a new layer of invasion planning in the rest of the world. See you all next week for the next diary! You can find the forum post here: https://pdxint.at/3dQGUZk


    [ 2021-04-08 12:15:39 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Dev Diary | HEARTS OF MALTA!


    Malta focus tree


    Hello everyone! So this is a first for me, my brand own dev diary! Well... in fact, I am in a bit of an odd situation. I fell asleep one day in the office about a year ago and no one came in the next morning. The building was put in lockdown during COVID so I havent been able to get out and I cannot contact anyone from the team. I am running low on cash and the only way I can afford to eat is by having uber eats delivered takeout via drones, so I need you to buy this otherwise I have to resort to hunting spiders in the office. First of a bit of a backstory since this might come as a surprise for some of you, it sure did for me. At first I thought it was a data anomaly but I have to finally admit...that it's not. Ever since Malta was introduced as a playable nation in MtG we have seen a steady increase in players who are real hardcore about playing the island state. In fact most of you reading this are, 84% in fact.
    Why are you all so crazy about Malta? I have no idea and I am no data guy but to me this signal is pretty clear and I can no longer ignore it. As such I have decided to completely shift gear from our 5 year plan to a huge Malta focus tree. You heard it right here folks, I am finally delivering what you want and no longer will you be bound by your shackles of torment! Obviously I cannot detail everything in one single dev diary. I need to hurry up to check out my spider traps for food, but there are some new unique features that are implemented specifically for Malta, so broad strokes will be covered in this diary, with more in depth path walkthroughs next time!

    Economy 2.0


    Malta now begins as a proper colony of the UK ingame instead of being annexed by them. While the domestic industry will be limited by physical size the country can establish shipping lanes between other countries which trades sandstone. This was a brilliant invention of mine where I realized that Malta was pretty much completely void of industry and needed something that everyone wanted!
    Everyone? Yup, to make sure Malta gets the proper starting economy every construction and building you make now will require sandstone, which you have a monopoly on. It will therefore be very important to establish close ties with Malta, or your industry will hit a (sand) stone wall. As more shipping lanes are established and countries buy more of your sandstone you get IC output in return. More sandstone can be mined via events, focuses, decisions and by scuttling your own houses to mine their stone, at the cost of taking a stability hit. Beware though, if you push your trade routes to everyone at once too fast you risk getting the worst malus of all, tourists. They will arrive in great hordes and block your island, making deploying divisions impossible, and slowly erode all your precious sandstone as they walk around to take in the islands sights.
    With the power of blockchain technology and adaptive AI I have tied the amount of tourists arriving to real world tourism data, so you better get all achievements before summer!

    Repeatable focus sets and building vertically


    As you know, Malta has limited land resources and while land reclamation is possible it is quite expensive to do so. Luckily we have the solution - instead of building horizontally we are building vertically! Malta will be able to build several different levels of its country, like a skyscraper. Every level has a set amount of construction slots allotted to them and the player can construct buildings in these slots using the IC gained from the precious sandstone trade. Every new level also requires more and more sandstone, so the player will need to balance foreign trade and plopping another piece of tower onto the Maltese masterpiece.
    Graphical representation of Malta getting its first layer of new ground Every level also has a special set of focuses, and I am very proud to let you know that every level up until level 3000 has a unique set of focuses. After that, every level has a randomly generated set of focuses up until int.max (2,147,483,647). If anyone ever reaches that level I know that you are cheating and the game will therefore erase your system32 folder. As you build more and more levels the lower levels become impossible to bomb by the enemy, as it is protected by the level above it, like a roof.
    Of course it gradually becomes harder and harder to build vertically, so every new set of focuses completed will take more and more sandstone. I hope that this will please all of you that like to hunt achievements, eventually you will be able to literally have enough levels to reach the moon! (yes I did the math on how many levels you would need to reach it)

    A Corsair state


    Some of you will gain quite a wealth via the sandstone trade. If you reach a certain threshold before the fall of France you will be given the opportunity to straight out buy the French fleet instead of it being sunk and scuttled. This unlocks the first alt-history branch, as you are now a minor powerhouse and with your newly gained armada you will get the choice to transcend into what every HoI player has ever wanted - a pirate state! A pirate state is a new type of country in which you will transcend beyond the confinement of merely existing as a country with borders and cities, you are now a ruler of the high seas. Your fleet now serves as your main hubs of recruiting, building and handling politics. Even if the enemy should capture Malta itself you will not capitulate. Instead your capitulation is tied to the brethren court.
    Your admirals are now part of this brethren court, with each admiral of your navy serving as a military leader. If all ships in their task force get completely destroyed, you lose the game and capitulate. You can no longer change the admirals of your navy, and naval composition is done automatically depending on the whims of the court itself and the traits of the brethren (A brethren with a submarine fanatic trait will only use submarines for example). Here you can see your specific brethrens traits, how much loyalty they have towards you, how much loot they have and you can even build some industry that travels with your ships. You can also transport divisions in these task forces which act as raiders if they are close to land. While you can no longer edit your fleets, every year the brethren court meets in a secret location. If one court member fails to attend in time he or she can be ousted by another one of your admirals, which can lead to wide scale mutinies. Here you can use saved loot to bribe other leaders of your court to reshuffle ships, oust brethrens or create new task forces if need be. As corsairs you capture ships instead of destroying them in combat. When you would normally enter a naval battle you now enter a boarding battle where your crew tries to capture the enemy ships. If you have diver divisions you can also try and capture submarines. If a crew's loyalty drops below a certain threshold they will rebel and take a part of the fleet away and form their own pirate coven .This uses a very complex algorithm designed by me which follows no loot -> :( = mutiny

    A note from Podcat, Game Director


    So hi everyone, this diary is something that actually alerted us to CraniumMuppet being locked into the office. When we found him he was passed out under a desk where he seemed to have created some kind of weird court with the local wildlife. He seems a bit confused and groggy but should make a full recovery.
    An accurate representation of the office when we found CraniumMuppet

    So anyways, look forward to next week when we will start dev diaries for 1.11 Barbarossa and the next unannounced DLC. See you all then!


    You can read the full article here: https://pdxint.at/39AzaJk


    [ 2021-04-01 10:00:42 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Livestream: An Introduction to Germany - 1330 CET Tomorrow!


    Join Community Manager Josh in our latest weekly stream series! Whether you're a novice or a returning player, this could be the perfect series for you! In this series we'll explain how to play Germany in single player, with a focus on tips, tricks, what to dos and explaining mechanics! Stuck on a certain aspect of the game? Join us in Twitch chat to ask your questions live! This series is perfect for those of you wishing to finally take a dive into the Hearts of Iron experience, or for those of you who just want to chill and watch a World War unfold! This series streams weekly on Wednesdays at 1:30pm CET over on the [url=pdxint.at/2OECevD]Paradox Interactive Twitch Channel Set a reminder to tune in to the stream over on the right! If you missed it, Catch week one of Introduction to Germany here: Week One


    [ 2021-03-23 17:56:13 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Midweek Madness: Free to Play + Deep Discounts!


    Midweek Madness is upon us! Along with this week's Multiplayer Event, we've got a variety of deals and discounts for you to sink your teeth into.
    First up, Battle for the Bosporus is on sale for the very first time! We've got a discount of -33% on our latest country pack. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1348660/Expansion__Hearts_of_Iron_IV_Battle_for_the_Bosporus/
    But we're not done there- if you've got a friend who you'd like to get into playing Hearts of Iron now is the perfect time- the base game is absolutely free to play for a limited time! If your recruited friend likes what they see, they can pick the base game up for a whopping -75% off! https://store.steampowered.com/app/394360/Hearts_of_Iron_IV/
    And if that really wasn't enough, we've also got -50% discounts on every other Hearts of Iron IV expansion All of this is live until March 12, so dive right in!
    Remember as well to tune in to our Masters of the Mediterranean multiplayer event tomorrow, 1800-2200 CET, live on our twitch channel: https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/394360/view/3035961090223292808


    [ 2021-03-09 18:23:58 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Masters of the Mediterranean - Multiplayer Event 10 + 11 March

    [previewyoutube=28dZOo0EQfI;full][/previewyoutube] Rome. Egypt. Byzantium. The Mediterranean has known many masters. Now the great powers of the atomic age look to seize this jewel for themselves. Join the Hearts of Iron team for a multiplayer clash over who can call themselves truly 'the Masters of the Mediterranean'. We'll be live 1800-2200 CET on the 10th and 11th March over on our twitch, bringing you all the action as it happens. Make sure you set a reminder for the stream with the button on the right! In this two-day event, a team of Content Creators will attempt to defend their Mediterranean powerbase at all costs. Challenging them will be Hearts of Iron developers, coming at them from all corners of the world as some of the most powerful nations.
    Spearheading the 'Mediterranean Entente' will be: Bokoen - Portugal Mordred Viking - Greece dankus_memecus - Turkey Feedback Gaming - Spain Alex the Rambler - Bulgaria
    Pitted against them are the Major Powers, determined to see the Mediterranean as their own 'Mare Nostrum'. Daniel (Senior QA) - Imperial Germany Robert (Game Designer) - Japan Drikus (Content Design Lead) - Kings Party United Kingdom Olle (Programmer) - Trotsky's Soviet Union
    Victory in this contest will be determined by the control of certain 'Super Victory Points'; strategic areas considered vital to control of the Mediterranean and her sea lanes. Each state highlighted above has been given a points value - and whoever controls the most at the end of the two-day event will take home the title of 'Masters of the Mediterranean'.
    We'll be casting the event live on our twitch channel, hosted by Count Cristo and our very own Community Manager Josh. You can watch the event live at 1800-2200 on 10 + 11 March at https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive We look forward to seeing you there!


    [ 2021-03-08 17:05:06 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Live Stream: I Swear I'm Not a Byzantophile!


    Join us once again on Wednesday for another episode of 'I Swear I'm Not a Byzantophile!' Having overrun Romania but, inadvertently given parts of Greece to Bulgaria, Josh and Daniel will be looking to take the fight to the major powers in their quest to paint the map purple. Join us at 13:30 CET tomorrow, Wednesday 10th February over on our twitch Remember, you can set a reminder in steam with the button on the right.


    [ 2021-02-09 10:17:22 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Patch 1.10.4 - Multiplayer Security Fix


    Hello everyone, Patch 1.10.4 of the "Collie" update is now live and should be downloading through Steam and Microsoft Store as we speak. The new checksum is 8878. This update aims to resolve various security issues reported by the multiplayer community. ################################################################ ######## Patch 1.10.4 "Collie" ######### ################################################################ ################################## # Stability & Performance ################################## - Fixed a security flaw in networking where a user could bypass lobby password protection - Added extra checks to block clients with empty or blank username from joining a game - Fixed a security flaw in networking where a user could kick/ban other players without being the host Saves made with 1.10.3 are expected to be fully compatible with 1.10.4 and you can continue your previous game. As always, if you have an older save you can finish it by rolling back to an older patch. If you discover any bugs in patch 1.10.4, please report them in the bug report forum as usual.


    [ 2021-02-03 11:11:10 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Live Stream: I Swear I'm Not A Byzantophile


    It's 2021 and we're back with a new weekly stream series! Kicking things off in the new year is a playthrough as Greece, for the 'I Swear I'm Not a Byzantophile' achievement. We'll be playing as Greece, reviving the Byzantine Empire and bringing as many former Imperial territories back into the fold as we can. Join us over on Twitch today at 13:30 CET for the first installment!


    [ 2021-01-27 10:54:54 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Dev Diary: New Year Update


    Today's Dev Diary by Podcat 2021? Damn, we are in the future now boys and girls! I wanted to write this diary because it feels like it's been a really long time since we chatted. Well I guess it wasnt that long actually but 2020 has definitely made everything feel like its taken forever. 2020 has probably been the most challenging year so far for the team since release. The COVID-19 situation really messes with your wellbeing, even if your life normally is chilling inside with your cat and computer games so I hope you are all taking care of yourselves. Looking back I think we overestimated direct impacts to work efficiency and absolutely underestimated impacts to mental health and general well being - things that are also incredibly important for doing a good job and being productive, as well as helping to onboard new members to a team. We have absolutely been impacted, and as a result I want to be pretty clear that you should not expect the next big expansion to drop before summer this year, which is what I was planning before COVID hit us right after La Resistance dropped. I know a lot of you have been asking about dates for diaries to start up and for us to show stuff again, but you are going to have to wait a bit longer for that. I can say though that the expansion we are brewing up is gonna be pretty sweet I think and focus on a lot of things people have been wishing for :) So, given that there was no PDXCON last year, where I normally do this, I felt I should take this opportunity to drop some statistics on you all

    Player Counts


    With COVID keeping us all inside we and I suspect a lot of the rest of the gaming industry has seen a lot more players than normal playing. I know personally I have gotten a lot more gaming in. It's going to be interesting to see if there is a dip once our lives go back to normal again (whenever that may be).

    Top Mods


    I am just highlighting the biggest total conversion mods here, and % numbers are based off daily player numbers.
    I think the standout here is TNO having jumped up in popularity quite rapidly during the year so congrats to the team behind that! Also feel free to chime in in comments if you think we have any other big up and coming mod to keep eyes on! Road to 56 and KR keeping their top spots from before, and I also want to say that I am really inspired and impressed by the cool video and other transmedia content the KR team is putting out. Im eager to see if any other mod teams do similar stuff in the future :cool: [previewyoutube=5XuCQCC9q68;full][/previewyoutube]

    Top 20 played nations


    Counting most sessions > 5h Germany - 17.9% Italy - 7.4% Soviet - 7.7% France - 5.5% Turkey - 5.1% Britain - 4.7% USA - 4.6% Japan - 3.9% Hungary - 3.7% Spain - 3.2% Greece - 3.0% Romania - 2.0% China - 1.9% PRC - 1.9% Bulgaria - 1.8% Yugoslavia - 1.7% Netherlands - 1.5% Portugal - 1.5% Mexico - 1.4% Czechoslovakia - 1.2% I think it's really cool to see Turkey this high. It was always popular but with Battle for the Bosporus it jumped up overall 60%. Greece and Bulgaria also more than doubled in popularity. While I got you all gathered here reading, I also want to make sure to highlight here that there was an accidental released update of the launcher and that the launcher team is working on reverting that as quickly as they can as it introduced some bugs. Read about it here. I also want to say that we have received increasing amounts of reports of people using cheat tools to mess with multiplayer games over christmas, and we are looking into it. See you all later, and to be clear this is not the start of regular diaries just yet. You'll have to be patient a bit longer on that front.


    [ 2021-01-20 15:04:51 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Hearts of Iron IV + World of Warships Bundle!


    Hello everyone! This weekend, from today until the 22nd of December, we've created a bundle along with our friends over at World of Warships! The bundle includes:

    • World of Warships (free-to-play)
    • World of Warships Exclusive Starter Pack
    • Hearts of Iron IV
    • Expansion - Hearts of Iron IV: Man the Guns
    You can get all this content from both games at 50% discount- so if you've been looking for new WW2-themed games to play, look no further! https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/18244/World_of_Warships__Hearts_of_Iron_IV/

    Stream


    To mark this collaboration between ourselves and World of Warships, we'll be having a stream together tomorrow Friday 18th December at 1400 CET! We'll be playing both World of Warships and Hearts of Iron back-to-back, so it will be a great opportunity to see both games in action alongside one another. Make sure to tune in over on our twitch tomorrow at 14:00 CET! : https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive


    [ 2020-12-17 18:28:45 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Live Stream: Putting The Band Back Together


    World War Wednesday continues! We'll continue Putting The Band Back Together in tomorrow's stream, live 1330-1500 CET! With Monarchs safely back on the thrones of Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire, war against the western powers is imminent. Our hosts' first target will be Italy, with German medium tanks and Austro-Hungarian fighters ready to be unleashed.
    Make sure you set a reminder for the stream and tune in at 1330 CET tomorrow!


    [ 2020-12-01 13:35:26 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Patch 1.10.3 Changelog (Big Sur fix)

    Hello everyone! Patch 1.10.3 of the "Collie" update is now live and should be downloading through Steam and Microsoft Store as we speak. The new checksum is aa89. This update aims to address a compatibility issue with the recent release of macOS 11.0 "Big Sur". Saves made with 1.10.0, 1.10.1 and 1.10.2 are expected to be fully compatible with 1.10.3 and you can continue your previous game without risk. Should you still have an older saved game (from 1.9 "Husky" or 1.8 "Fork"), it will not be compatible with 1.10.3, even if the game does not report it as such. This is sadly an issue we could not fix in this patch without painful side effects (see the known issues page). As always, if you have an older save you can finish it by rolling back to an older patch. If you discover any bugs in patch 1.10.3, please report them in the bug report forum as usual. ################################################################ ######## Patch 1.103 "Collie" ######### ################################################################ ################################## # Stability & Performance ################################## - Fixed compatibility issue with macOS 11.0 (Big Sur)


    [ 2020-11-26 09:21:50 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Weekly Stream: Getting The Band Back Together


    The Weekly Streams Return! Yes we're back with a new weekly stream series- for the next five or so weeks, we'll be 'Putting The Band Back Together'; reforming the central powers of Imperial Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire, with a view to avenging defeat in the Great War. We'll be streaming for 90 minutes each week, from 1330-1500 CET on Wednesday's, starting tomorrow 18th November! We've got Community Manager Josh, Game Designer Robert and our resident salt king Da9L taking on the world together. Be sure to set a reminder over on the right and tune in over on our twitch channel: https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive


    [ 2020-11-17 16:56:45 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Patch 1.10.2 - Changelog


    Hello everyone! Patch 1.10.2 of the "Collie" update is now live and should be downloading through Steam and Microsoft Store as we speak. The new checksum is f82d. This update brings a number of bug fixes and balance changes to the 1.10.1 release of last month (see changelog below for details). Saves made with 1.10.1 are expected to be fully compatible with 1.10.2 and you can continue your previous game without risk. Should you still have an older saved game (from 1.9 "Husky" or 1.8 "Fork"), it will not be compatible with 1.10.2, even if the game does not report it as such. This is sadly an issue we could not fix in this patch without painful side effects (see the known issues page). As always, if you have an older save you can finish it by rolling back to an older patch. If you discover any bugs in patch 1.10.2, please report them in the bug report forum as usual. ################################################################ ######## Patch 1.10.2 "Collie" ######### ################################################################ ################################## # Features ################################## - Foreign Ship Designers for Bulgaria and Purchase Ships decisions for Soviets. - Acquire Modern Tools focus now actually gives an industry research bonus to invest in moderns tools. - New Military High Command Advisor for Communist Bulgaria. - If Impending Zveno Coup mission is active, most of Zveno-related internal faction decisions will add a certain amount of days to the coup mission timer. - Tim Buck now has a unique portrait - Acquire Modern Tools, Follow the Stalinist Doctrine, Balkan Federation of Socialist Republics, A Balkan Confederation, Join the Allies, The Fate of the Balkans, Sign the Tripartite Pact are now 35-days focuses - Delayed formation of the Fatherland Front and Fatherland Front civil war. - Added Italian Materiel Designer. Replaced pitiful Italian Tank designer trait by a better one for Bulgarian foreign version of it. Naval designers are now unlocked by Naval Cooperation Agreements decisions, which become available after completing focus A Black Sea Fleet. - Readjusted Turkish and Greek 1939 unit history files to add air force and Turkish tank division, added unique Greek and Turkish airplane names ################################## # Balance ################################## - Time required to complete the focus Spanish Coup has been reduced to 35 days to match its communist counterpart. - Made the Finnish Him achievement more consistent. Players now need to hold Moscow as Finland and have at least 15% war participation when the Soviet Union capitulates, without being in a faction - added fifth research slot at the end of Turkey's industrial branch - Reduced Turkish focus completion times across the board by 175 days and reduced an additional 35 or 70 days for every path, shifted the Armed Forces decisions to be more accessible, added more player agency to Kurdish pacification decisions so they didn't feel like an endless sink, swapped cost for said decisions from political power to command power, added incentive for Turkish radicals to justify their own wars, reduced amount of Turkish geniuses in high command, rebalanced Clodius to greatly reduce the odds of getting upwards of six military factories - Integrate Faction and Destroy Faction decisions no longer gives any ideology boost/debuff. - National Military Academy now is a 35-days focus. - The focuses The Peoples Republic of Bulgaria, Legislative Elections and Depose the Tsar now require 40% support for the appropriate ideology instead of 50%. - PP penalty from National spirit Democratic Opposition Voicing Protests has been reduced from -50% to -25%. This NS will be added as a timed national spirit like other generic ideology drift national spirits. - Reduced PP penalty in national spirit Democratic Opposition Voicing Protests from -25% to -20% - Focus The Peoples Republic of Bulgaria no longer requires faction loyalty from the Agrarians. Focus Legislative Elections no longer requires faction loyalty from the Broad Socialists. - The Spanish Struggle and Support the Spanish Coup no longer have manpower requirement. - reduced all instances where bulgaria generates WT from 5 to 1 - decrease bulgarian WT reduction from macedonian organizations from 5 to 1 - slightly increased germain infantry equipment production factors - Focus Crush the Communists is now a 35-days focus ################################## # Stability & Performance ################################## - Fixed CTD when loading a save where operatives were performing the control trade mission - Fix CTD when mousing hover autonomy alert after becoming independent - Fixed CTD when annexing a country with rocket sites ################################## # AI ################################## - the AI will now be more likely to bring back the Kaiser in non-historical mode (WTT only) - Adjusted Bulgarian AI strategy to focus on internal affairs, building civs and improving relations for an extra year. - AI Improvements to make Bulgaria join the war earlier - Improved AI weights in Ultimatum to Albania so that there are more factors now influencing the decision of Albania ################################## # UI ################################## - Added missing characters to hoi4_24header.fnt to unify the support turkish characters ################################## # Modding ################################## - added bypass_if_unavailable = yes option for focuses - added state highlighting for on_map_area for decision categories - added error log when a trigger/effect that was supposed to go in {} is not - limit inside on_research_complete is now deprecated, use on_research_complete_limit outside of on_research_complete instead - Add new effect to remove war goals of a specified type targetting a nation - Add Is leading volunteer group trigger - Added variable party_popularity_100 which is a variant of party_popularity where the value is multiplied by 100 as to allow script to have as much precision as code when manipulating party popularity - Add is_leading_volunteer_group_with_original_country trigger - Added optional parameter keep_political_leader to start_civil_war effect which controls if the party leader of the revolting ideology will join the revolter as its leader. ################################## # Audio ################################## - Sounds for the Bulgarian light and heavy planes (reused and renamed the medium asset) - Mixed planes for final ################################## # Bugfix ################################## - Yugoslavian communist coup targets will automatically join Yugoslavia's faction if the original tag is at war - this prevents the target from joining other factions due to common enemies. - game rules interface now follows the database order while listing game rules - Bulgarian Military Cooperation Agreements decisions can no longer be activated if there is another decision of this type already ongoing. - Bulgarian Aircraft Agreements decisions can no longer be activated if there is another decision of this type already ongoing. - Removed minimum loyalty requirement for Fund Faction decisions, which could lead to blocking the player from interacting any more with the factions, due to loyalty being modified by events/focuses after having legalized a faction. - Fixed the editor crashing on start due to the limit of the number of texture - Tooltip about Yugoslavia signing the Tripartite Pact is now more clear. - Changed the localization for Yugoslavia in the Gathering Storm to correctly refer to the State of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes - Yugoslavia should no longer lose national spirits on a civil war - Late-stage peasant councils are no longer temporary - Fixed Bulgarian generals Hadzhipetkov and Boydev disappearing in January 4th 1936. - Yugoslavia can no longer gain cores on the entirety of Europe - Fixed 3 instances of the Regency council created with a wrong sub-ideology, leading to the Regency Council being added to the wrong ideology. - The "One Nation under Atatrk" achievement will no longer be given for just starting the game under certain circumstances. Already awarded achievements will be kept. - Spanish Falangist AI strategy path will now pick "Sin Paquito" focus, and follow down the expected Falangist branch - Bulgaria on the Three Seas focus will now take 70 days to complete. - Fixed missing localization from Romania dividing Yugoslavia - Romania will now be informed that their focus enables them to divide Yugoslavia - Dividing Yugoslavia now uses the proper icons - Losing an airfield will properly evacuate planes again, if possible - Yugoslavian industry focuses will now improve member states instead of Serbian states where possible. - Removes mutual exclusivity for King Michael's Coup and relocated it under Force Abdication - Romania can no longer change sides to a country of the same ideology as their current faction (cannot jump from Axis to Co-Prosperity Sphere, Little Entente to Allies, etc.) - fixed incorrect airplane models are being displayed on map when a country has a cosmetic tag that had plane models - fixed bad romeance achievement not firing correctly - the Byzanthine namelists are now available for Byzantium in the BFTB version (still available for WTT Byzantium) - Improved triggers to fix certain cases where Bulgaria could not access Foreign Agreements and Purchase Foreign Equipment decisions. - Yugoslavia will now complete granting its subjects independence on the Devolution strategy plan - States with Pre-Arranged Bulgarian Territorial Expansion state modifier will no longer be transferred to Bulgaria if the owner has a core on those states. - Decision Pressure to Lift Arms Restrictions will no longer be available until after the players has failed on negotiating Bulgarian rearmament or has completed focus Support Macedonian Organizations. - Player can no longer get Bulgarian Army national spirit via National Military Academy, after having completed Prussia of the Balkans (which provides a national spirit that replaces Bulgarian Army). - Kurdish state decisions will no longer be visible if Kurdistan is a puppet of Turkey or anybody else, integrate decisions have been split up to give player more agency and reduce potential edge-cases - Removed AI weight towards garrisoning in Bulgarian AI strategy, so that it no longer prioritizes garrisoning cities instead of defending its borders during a war. - Zveno coup can now be properly stopped by either destroying/integrating the Zveno, completing focus Fatherland Front or having the Fatherland Front formed and working against the player. - Leaders are now properly assigned to each side. No more zombie Boris coming back from the grave, no more country leaders mysteriously disappearing from the original tag. - Cleaned-up ultra-messy tooltip for Impending Zveno Coup decision. Now it is short and easy to read. - Kimon Georgiev will remain in original Bulgaria if he has been appointed as an advisor or country leader before the civil war starts - Several focuses in the Bulgarian FT are now locked if Bulgaria is a puppet. Note that puppet Bulgaria can still complete the focuses to "approach" a country, but will not be able to progress any further in the branch. - Germany now has a new infantry model after bringing back the Kaiser (WTT only) - fixed some startup errors regarding Camels for people without BFTB and Pikelhauben for people without WTT - Fixed Bulgaria not able to send volunteers to the Spanish civil war without La Resistance active. - The decision chain to Cooperate with IMRO no longer gets blocked if the player controls all Macedonian states. - Boris can no longer die after having been removed as a political leader. - Fixed achievement Balkan Problem Solved being unlocked by just completing focus The Unification of the Balkans and getting cores in the Balkans. Now it will require Bulgaria to actually control those cores. - Yugoslavia will no longer be informed that they have married themselves. - Fixed national spirit Balkan Federation Project Propaganda instantly disappearing if the country targeted is in faction with Bulgaria. - The event triggered by Carry the Revolution Abroad focus, which invites communist nations to Bulgaria's faction, now triggers the appropriate event back to Bulgaria if the country refuses the invitation. - Fixed misleading tooltip in Carry the Revolution Abroad description. - The state modifier Skirmishes against the IMRO will be removed from Macedonia, Central Macedonia and Thrace, if active, when any of these states fall under Bulgarian control. - Fixed a few edge cases in which the decision chain to destroy a faction could get blocked forever. - Romania will no longer be able to divide Yugoslavia if they are a puppet - Divide Yugoslavia focus will now give a wargoal if Yugoslavia is already a puppet - Nations being invited to divide Yugoslavia will now be given a tooltip informing them of the decision to make claims - Divide Yugoslavia will now bypass if Yugoslavia either does not exist or is already a Romanian puppet - Yugoslavia will no longer be able to be divided if it has already been divided - Divide Yugoslavia no longer has missing localization - Fixed Portuguese focus Arsenal do Alfeite not providing any naval bases as promised in its tooltip. - Germany will now get a wargoal on Yugoslavia if Prince Paul is deposed. - French Basque Country now has a slot for an airport - Prussia of the Balkans no longer weakens new generals and admirals by providing +2 LVL. Instead, it now grants +1 Attack and Defense to generals and admirals. - Both sides of the Yugoslavia civil war should now keep the appropriate national spirits. - French Basque Country airport is now in the correct province. - The Soviets claiming the straits will now add a claim on Istanbul - Ultimatum to Greece as the Soviet Union will now require owning Istanbul - fixed an issue where the Collaborative Civil Works focus for Turkey instantly bypassed - siding with the EEE in the Greek Civil War will now actually start a civil war - fixed broken meta_effect & meta_trigger - the Greek debt to the IFC decision category should no longer disappear completely for a month when making a large payment - Added custom+historical Greek and Turkish tank names, added historical+custom Turkish jet names, and added interwar bombers for Turkey as a starting tech - Bulgarian wargoals on its puppets are now removed after subjugating them via Fate of The Balkans decisions. - Support the Spanish Coup will now promote a general who actually fought in the SCW when the civil war ends. - Decision "Prepare Bulgarian occupation" now also adds a positive state modifier to Bulgarian-occupied Macedonian states.


    [ 2020-11-12 09:18:36 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Dev Diary: Telemetry

    Hello all, and welcome back to another DevDiary! Last week, we released Battle for the Bosporus (some of you may remember it). Given that we took the number 1 top-seller spot on steam within an hour of launch, and without pre-orders, I daresay that the idea of a country pack has been a success. Now, lets look at some Telemetry we got from the first couple of days after release! For starters, we are seeing a big increase in people playing the new countries that is not at all surprising. After release, Germany still leads the list of most-played countries, but its overall margin has shrunk quite a bit over the years. After the games initial release, some 40% of games were played as Germany, now it is less than 20%. In second place is, unsurprisingly, Turkey with 16%, followed by Greece at just under 10% and the Soviet Union at 7.4 %. Bulgaria comes in a hair below it at 7% of total games played. Next, lets look at the focuses everyone has been picking! About a third of players in Turkey opted to bring back the Sultan, compared to 48% who decided to remain a republic and engage with the big three factions. 12% opted to form their own faction and integrate the Balkans. Of the players who opted to join the world war, most chose to join the Axis, while only a small handful managed to get the old Central Powers back together. Only about 11% managed to bring back Camelry, showing that perhaps the age of the Camel in warfare has passed. In Greece, it appears that monarchy is in crisis, with 73% opting to bring back the exiled republicans, although more than two thirds then decided to compromise with the monarchists in what can only be described as a disgusting lack of principles. Unfulfilled with merely supporting a simple king, a total of 43% then continued to revive the double-headed eagle in an attempt to restore the Byzantine Emperor. May we remind people that we have recently released an entire game where you can play as the Byzantine Emperor from the start? Just putting that out there. In Bulgaria, it appears that Monarchy is decidedly back in fashion as about two thirds decided to give power to the Tsar. A similar number then allowed the Tsar to form the government, before later having to choose between strengthening the royal dictatorship or arranging for an unfortunate accident for Tsar Boris. The vast majority decided to plot against the Tsar, showing that once again HoI players have the right mindset to play CKIII. The vast majority then decided to back the old Tsar Ferdinand I - perhaps unsurprisingly, considering that the alternative is a literal child. On the other side of the divide, there is a clear preference for the Balkan Federation of Socialist Republics, which was picked about 7 times as often as the alternative. Perhaps people just dont like Stalin? For more than 10% of games, this ends with the Balkans fully unified. We did also get a lot of feedback from you guys about bugs and other issues that we are going to address in the coming weeks. Like we did before, we will be having an open beta coming soon with a number of bug fixes and some changes to address some of the more widespread concerns raised, such as the time you spend addressing political issues in the Turkish focus tree. We expect that patch to become available for the main branch at a later date. More info on what is in the open beta and how to access it will come when the beta becomes available. DevDiaries will be taking a small break as we continue work on the next DLC and Patch Barbarossa. More info on those will come when we resume. We dont expect this break to be nearly as long as the one between La Resistance and Battle for the Bosporus, but 2020 has been a year full of unexpected events, so we cant give you a firm promise on when they will return.


    [ 2020-10-21 09:54:40 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Battle for the Bosporus: Available Now

    Steer Your Path Through Dangerous Waters in Battle for the Bosporus


    STOCKHOLM - 15 October 2020 - The fascist powers are to the west. The Russian bear to the north. And the coasts of Egypt and the Levant belong to France and Britain. The independent nations of the eastern Mediterranean live in a dangerous neighborhood . What can Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey do to secure their own safety while the world around them is at war? Seize the reins of power in Hearts of Iron IV: Battle for the Bosporus, available now. Battle for the Bosporus is a new country pack for Paradox Development Studios best-selling strategy wargame about World War II. Armchair generals will find new national focus trees for three nations that border the strategic waterways of the Black and Aegean Seas. Pursue alternate histories alongside major powers in a strong faction, or control your own destiny, free from meddling imperial giants. [previewyoutube=mwq1aWZouDM;full][/previewyoutube] Features of Battle for the Bosporus include:
    • National Focus Tree for Bulgaria: Balance the factions in a divided land or reclaim territory lost in 1919. Follow the historical alliance with Germany or resist the German pressures on Tsar Boris, standing up for a free Bulgaria.
    • National Focus Tree for Greece: Riven by political division, Greek neutrality is maintained by the controversial Metaxas. Build a strong relationship with the Allies under the guidance of King George II, follow arch-conservatives into fascism or restore the glories of Greek Empire in the east.
    • National Focus Tree for Turkey: Robbed of its empire in the last war, what future is there for Turkey in a new one? Continue or halt the reforms of Kemalism, stand as the protector of the Balkans in a new regional faction, restore the Sultan to the throne or found a new Islamic state.
    • New Music Tracks
    • New 3D Unit Models for Balkan and Turkish Armies
    • Unique voice overs for Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey
    Hearts of Iron IV: Battle for the Bosporus is available now for a suggested retail price of $9.99/7.19/9.99 https://store.steampowered.com/app/1348660/Hearts_of_Iron_IV_Battle_for_the_Bosporus/


    [ 2020-10-15 12:03:11 CET ] [ Original post ]

    1.10 'Collie' Update - Changelog

    Hello everyone! Release 1.10.1 "Collie" is now live with its new features and bugfixes. The patch should be downloading through Steam as we speak. The expected checksum is dd56. If you wonder if you missed patch 1.10.0, don't worry, you didn't! It was only released internally and to our beta testers, but the timetable allowed us to skip ahead and go live with 1.10.1 directly which includes a few fixes for issues found during beta. Please note that 1.10 will not be save game compatible with 1.9.3. If you want to finish off any ongoing ironman games, please remain on 1.9.3 for now. Here are instructions on how you revert patch levels. As always please make sure that any mods you are using are updated for 1.10, or your game might not run properly. [url=https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/forums/hearts-of-iron-4-bug-reports.951/]If you discover any bugs in patch 1.10.1, please report them in the bug report forum as usual.

    Update 1.10 'Collie' Changelog


    #################################### # Battle for the Bosporus Country Pack #################################### - New Focus Tree for Greece - New Focus Tree for Turkey - New Focus Tree for Bulgaria #################################### # Features #################################### - Reworked Focus Tree for Yugoslavia (Death or Dishonor) - Reworked and tweaked the starting position for Romania (Death or Dishonor) - added a number of new releaseable nations to the game - The Heavy Cruiser 3d Asset Pack has been merged into the base game - added a special infantry model with Pickelhaube for Unaligned Germany (Waking the Tiger) ################################## # Bugfix ################################## - Fixed a bug where Serbia was using the incorrect country colours. - Banning Communism or Fascism should now also remove foreign communist/fascist influence national spirits. - fixed foreign equipments not showing up under stockpiles ui - Yugoslavia may now complete industry focuses if the owner of the province is their subject - fixed enemy ship count now showing up in strategic region ui - added some missing descriptions of special ship hulls (MtG only) - Fixed some mods being erroneously removed at game start - The external actor on the losing side of a civil war no longer get their units wiped if they were in the winner's territory as long as the civil war did not become a full blown out war - Yugoslavia will now lose the Anti-German Military spirit if the military has already instigated a coup. - Rocket sites will now properly delete remaining stock when captured and not crash the game further down the line - fixed a missing national spirit icon in the French tree - fixed some issues with AI operative assignments that was trying to make them assign same operative multiple times - Fixed operative being stuck on rescue mission when there are no operative left to rescue - Added a nudger generated file to the list of files to backup and remove by the Clear Cache action - Added missing "do nothing" option to an event - Set ROM starting ruling party to non-aligned - Updated Institute Royal Monarchy focus to start with 65% Non-Aligned support - Fixed a typo in wtt_events_l_english.yml for Germany Anti-Soviet Pact news pop-up - removed Italian_generic_land_4 soldier and added Britain_generic_land_6 soldier instead. - new hat for error dog - added portrait to vanilla GER ################################## # Balance ################################## - naval supremacy is now scaled to a percentage depending on enemy intel level instead of getting reduced to 0% at low intel - Germany can no longer annex Yugoslavia with a single focus and no input from the Yugoslavian player under certain circumstances ################################## # Stability & Performance ################################## - improved performance of national focus gui when there are focuses with many prerequisites or expensive allowed triggers - Fixed OOS triggered by displaying the description of some focuses and event effects - Improved performance of CPoliticalMinister that was evaluating decision with an ai_factor of zero - Fixed CTD when interacting with the army portraits while merging armies - Fixed CTD in AI code - Added allowed trigger for ai strategy plans - Fixed CTD related to carrier air missions - Fixed OOS caused by localized state name - Fixed CTD caused by effect from history trying to access the not yet initialized graphical map ################################## # Modding ################################## - add the modifiers navy_leader_start_level, navy_leader_start_attack_level, navy_leader_start_defense_level, navy_leader_start_maneuvering_level, navy_leader_start_coordination_level to match the sames for army_leader. - Fixed has_dlc trigger to return false when the name of the dlc is not known - Added support for nesting localization strings, i.e. use a localization key within another localization string, enabling strings like "Unlock $nukes$ in the $technology$ screen" where 'nukes' and 'technology' are localization keys. - Added support for dollar signs in localization strings. Normally a dollar sign denotes the start or end of a variable. With this change "$$" will produce a single dollar sign in the resulting string. - add_equipment_to_stockpile effect now accepts variables as producer - added faction_leader scope change - added custom_modifier_tooltip support for dynamic modifiers - added add_victory_points/set_victory_points effects - Added console command Audio.PlayEffect to play a scripted sound effect at will - added can_be_produced trigger to equipments so they can be blocked for certain countries for production - Added the ability to specify a variable refering to an idea for triggers and effect has_idea, add_ideas, remove_ideas, swap_ideas, add_timed_idea and modify_timed_idea - Added support for the triggers is_enemy, is_friend and is_neutral to adjacency rules to enable script to determine which rule to use. Evaluation order is documented in adjacency_rules.txt. - Added global.province_controllers game variable array that returns an array containing the controller for each province, where array index is mapped to province ID. For example global.province_controllers^4135 returns the controller of Gibraltar. - Added equipment buildable trigger ################################## # Database ################################## - Added a series of decisions for Yugoslavia to promote a communist uprising in Bulgaria, Albania, and other Balkan nations - Added General entry for Constantin Sanatescu - Hooked Iraqi fascist leader into vanilla - Added Kurdistan tag, history, and leaders


    [ 2020-10-15 12:02:55 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Battle for the Bosporus Release Stream


    Make sure you join us for the release stream of Battle for the Bosporus, at 1300 CEST tomorrow, 15th October! Count down the minutes with us and be the very first to know when the Country Pack is live. You can set a reminder for the stream with the button on the right, and while you're waiting why not check out today's Dev Diary? https://steamcommunity.com/games/394360/announcements/detail/2903092217422207550

    Tune in over on our Twitch channel at 1300 CEST tomorrow! https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive



    [ 2020-10-14 10:12:33 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Dev Diary: 1.10 Changelog


    As release is almost upon us tomorrow, I want to say that I hope you will enjoy Battle for the Bosporus! Today I will be showing the changelog, mention some cool stuff we are giving out for free and also talk about an onboarding experiment we will be running soon so lets jump in!

    Changelog


    Click here to view the full changelog for the 1.10 Update

    Heavy Cruiser Pack now free for all!



    When we stopped selling the Colonel Edition and moved most of the cosmetics there to new armor packs instead we had nowhere to put our Heavy Cruiser pack and we figured it would just be a nice thing to give it away to everyone for this update - so thats what we did! It will now be baked in. The pack contains the following ships 3d models : France - Algrie USA - Baltimore UK - Exeter Soviet - Kirov Japan - Mogami German - Prinz Eugen Italy - Trieste Class

    Onboarding Experiments


    Hearts of Iron is not a game known for how easy it is for new players to get into it... and that is probably not going to change ;D But we do feel like we could do a lot better job at helping new players out here. We have a lot of ideas around improving the pretty basic tutorial, more context help and helping you see changes in patches and such that we dream of doing, but much of this is still in some far away potential future. Right now though we have gotten help from our awesome experiment group at Paradox Arctic in testing some stuff on you all. Well some of you at least... See we are doing this as a test to compare how the changes affect new players so the system will automatically enable it only for certain people next week, so do not worry if you see stuff your friends aren't or the other way around. So what have we actually done? We have integrated little short video clips tied to alerts and such to help illustrate how to deal with them. These are also accessible from the main menu for browsing. Do note that this is not some full coverage of features yet, but we hope it will be enough to see if there is any impact on new player behaviors and if it works out there is a good chance we will record and add more in the future if we roll it out for everyone. Here are some pictures of how it looks:


    So see you all tomorrow for the release and for some followup diary the week after :) Oh and because you will ask. The release is aimed to go out in the afternoon tomorrow, but hey its 2020 so I don't dare give you any exact times ;D - Our release stream will be beginning at 1300 CEST, here's all the details! https://steamcommunity.com/games/394360/announcements/detail/2903092217422367989


    [ 2020-10-14 10:02:56 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Dev Diary: Art and Achievements


    Hello, and welcome back to another Dev Diary for Battle for the Bosporus. We are coming up on the home stretch, and this week we are going to talk about the art, music and achievements for Battle for the Bosporus and the free update 1.10 Collie.
    In my personal and entirely unbiased opinion, the art department has really outdone themselves in this expansion. See for yourself: National Spirit Icons:
    Design Companies:
    Focus Icons:


    After some feedback in last week's diary, we also changed some of the focus icons we have shown off for Yugoslavia:


    Portraits:

    Some absolutely spectacular beards on display here. As part of the free update, Edwin Barclay, President of Liberia, now has his own portrait:
    Game finally literally playable. The DLC also comes with a set of tech icons for the three new nations, plus some 3d art to go along with it. I quite like the Battlecruiser, the ex-German SMS Moltke, which will be a unique model for Turkey.






    And finally, we have the addition of Camels to our long lineup of tools with which to wage war. While we showed off Camelry as a unit for Turkey, it is also available for a number of other countries that historically operated Camel units during the games timeframe, such as the British garrison in Somalia or the French colonial forces.
    Turns out NATO doesnt seem to have a proper counter for Camelry (an oversight on our part, Im sure), so we made our own.
    The DLC also includes three new music tracks. You can listen to one of them (Final Frontier) here: [previewyoutube=A6iOBKU9d48;full][/previewyoutube]

    Finnish him: As Finland, defeat the Soviet Union without joining a faction.
    I captured the Bosphorus and all I got was this lousy achievement: As Greece or Bulgaria, own both sides of the Bosporus. As Turkey, subjugate both Greece & Bulgaria.
    Istanbul is Constantinople. Again. - As Greece, capture Istanbul and rename it to Constantinople.
    Peters Pride: As Peter II of Yugoslavia, overthrow your uncle and become King.
    This is Madness!: As Greece, fulfill the Megali Idea and then form Greater Greece.
    Nobodys Business but the Turks: Restore the Ottoman Sultanate.
    ] House of Kurds: As Kurdistan, hold all of your cores.
    Hellenic Civility: Win the Greek Civil War before 1937.
    Hoofin It: Unite Arabia with thirty camelry divisions.
    Were Putting the Band Back Together: As Turkey, be in a faction with Germany and Austria-Hungary.
    Draculas Revenge: As Yugoslavia, establish the autonomous region of Transylvania and have it own all Romanian cores.
    Prussia of the Balkans: As Bulgaria capitulate Turkey while also controlling the rest of the Balkans, including Greece.
    Balkan Problem Solved: As Communist Bulgaria, form the United Balkan Federation and own all Balkan states as cores.
    Totally Not Cool, Bromania: As Romania, change sides in the war and capitulate a former ally.
    Freedom or Death: As Greece, liberate Albania while being at war with Italy.
    Now This is Getting Childish: As Yugoslavia or Bulgaria, be at war while both countries are ruled by a child.
    Hardly Anything Svres: As the Ottoman Empire, hold the capitals of France, the United Kingdom, Italy, and Japan.
    One Nation Under Atatrk, Indivisible: As non-aligned Turkey, have zero negative state modifiers.
    Master Puppeteer: As Bulgaria, complete the focus The Fate of the Balkans while having 5 or more Balkan puppets. Thats all for today. See you next week with the full changelog and some info on a new experiment we are running to make the game more accessible.


    [ 2020-10-07 13:06:38 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Dev Diary: Yugoslavia and Romania


    Hello and welcome to a developer diary for the 1.10 Collie patch! This is the patch that will be released alongside Battle for the Bosporus. Today were going to be focusing on some content coming with the patch that will add new content for owners of the Death or Dishonor expansion. Everything that follows will be accessible to DoD owners and will not be unlocked by purchasing Battle for the Bosporus. Some of you may already know this from the leaked screenshot on the Steam store, but Yugoslavia will be getting a light rework coming free with the patch for any owners of Death or Dishonor.
    When I originally joined full-time on the project, I was given a list of common complaints from the community regarding the content in Death or Dishonor. Most of these issues were trivial, but none had a longer list of complaints than Yugoslavia so it seemed right that instead of attempting to stitch together a series of minimal low-visibility fixes, it would be best to do a partial rework of the Yugoslavia tree. This is not quite to the scale of previous major reworks, however. The first draft of changes began as something I worked on out of my free time, so I wanted to keep scope low and avoid creating too much extra work on top of the existing BftB content while improving the overall quality of the Yugoslavia tree to give players more options to explore both history and alt-history.
    Lets begin with the communist focuses, which have seen a little change. For a long time, Yugoslavia was able to branch off and make its own faction with itself, Bulgaria, and Albania but the chances of getting those nations to become Communist in a regular playthrough was pretty dang low. So, Yugoslavia now gains access to a series of decisions to steadily support a peasants uprising in both Bulgaria and Albania, creating a viable way to bring them into the Pan-Slavic Workers Congress.
    Once done, Yugoslavia will gain access to a whole slew of new focuses with their faction reorganizing into the Pan-Balkan Workers Congress. Romania, Turkey, Greece, and Hugnary are all valid targets for peasant uprisings, so if you ever wanted to see the Balkans start wearing purple, Tito now has all the tools to do it.
    Next, well take a look at the old monarchist focuses and how overall the decisions you made were pretty objectively one good decision and one bad. What I really liked about Yugoslavia was the fact that you were constantly making decisions with every focus you pick, following this kind of ladder-design, but with the new tree, I wanted to take that a step further and create some more meaningful and involved choices.
    At the very start of their focus tree, Yugoslavia has a choice to either pursue Evolution or Limited Self-Government. Evolution is basically the old Yugoslavia design, where you attempt to stomp out nationalism in your country by whatever means you see fit.
    # First, establishing the Banate of Croatia no longer makes Croatia a puppet and instead gives Yugoslavia a temporary softer version of Croatian Opposition, but choosing to Crush the Ustase is now a much more involved process and can result in Croatian Nationalism being removed entirely. Crushing the Ustase is a series of decisions tied to two missions. One mission will make the Ustase rise up in an independence war, and the other will peacefully stamp them out. Players have access to a number of decisions to either delay the uprising or speed up the peaceful removal of the Ustase and itll take a lot of close attention to keep Yugoslavia in one piece while stamping out nationalism.
    For the next two focuses, Yugoslavia has the option to both play appeasement to Italy and Bulgaria while also permanently removing some of their problems. The old focuses do what they always have, but now the negative spirit gained only lasts for a few years, but giving up the territories to these powers will now grant a significant increase in opinion while removing the spirits completely.
    Now is as good a time as any to bring up the reworked Yugoslavian states! The goal of this state rework was to facilitate for both modern Balkan borders for the sake of releasables and historical occupation zones.
    But instead of doing all that work to maintain the union, Yugoslavia can choose instead to grant self-government to its constituent parts, permanently removing the negative spirits at the cost of losing all of its territory besides Serbia proper. Throughout this path, Yugoslavia will get to choose exactly how it wants to devolve itself; should the two Banovinas of Croatia be individually independent or should they be merged into one? Should the contested territory of Vojvodina be fortified against the Hungarians, given up to them as an act of appeasement, or granted self-government? The ladder design here is more of a choice of how chaotic you want the Balkans to be than a strategic decision. Personally, I enjoy achieving peak-Balkans and granting autonomy to everyone.
    Once done tearing itself apart, Yugoslavia can attempt to reintegrate its constituent parts, or grant full independence to the Balkans, replacing Yugoslavia with a military alliance backed up by a hefty number of free units shared between each of the Balkan nations. Going down the route of independence, the Balkans will have more than double the number of troops Yugoslavia begins the game with, so breaking yourself apart may not be such a bad decision with the Axis breathing down your neck.
    Prince Paul is no longer the blank slate he was in the old Yugoslavia design and trying to keep him in power means attempting to align yourself with the Axis. Just like before though, both Britain and the Yugoslavian military are deeply opposed to an Axis alliance, and attempting to do so may lead to a coup.
    However, should the coup fail and Paul remains in power, the regency will hardly be a regency after they rejected the right of the legitimate heir to take the throne, so perhaps a new King will be needed to guide Yugoslavia in its dark future
    Joining the Allies brings its own set of difficulties, besides the distance of your friends in the West. King Peter is a mere 12 years old in 1936 and if you attempt to end the regency too early, you will be saddled with a monarch woefully unprepared for rulership.
    Given a few years however, King Peter matures into the legitimate heir of the Yugoslav throne and may marry himself into a little more than just the Allies.
    The Royal Wedding focus allows King Peter to marry himself to many of the major Princesses in Europe and who is available adapts dynamically based on the current state of the world. If the Kaiser returns, Yugoslavia will be able to marry a German princess, similarly they may marry a Spanish princess should the Carlists win the Spanish Civil War. Their choice will then inform the outcome of the focus The Royal Alliance, which can bring Yugoslavia into a faction with whomever they chose to marry, with Princess Alexandra of Greece resulting in a historic Yugoslav entry to the Allies.
    Yugoslavia is not the only Death or Dishonor country getting new content, however. Romania will now have the ability to change sides midway through the war via a decision following a government coup.
    On top of that, the Divide Yugoslavia focus is now a game of bidding and demanding from the powers Romania chooses to invite to the dogpile. Similar to the SCW garrison system, each nation can make up to three bids on a Yugoslav state before being locked in as the controller. When each state is claimed, Romania may push the button and issue their demands to Yugoslavia. This can lead to some interesting looking Balkans.
    There are more changes coming to Romania, but for that I will hand you over to our Producer. Hi everyone, Vash here with some of the changes Ive made for Romania. Back in February, one of our forum members, Zeprion, made some suggestions for Romania that we unfortunately couldnt get to in time for La Resistance. While I still didnt have the chance to get through the full list, I was able to make a few changes that Im happy to talk about! Previously, you may have noticed that the political parties and leaders in 1936 were swapped. Historically, the ruling party in 1936 was Democratic PNL, with Gheorghe Ttrescu as the leader. Armand Calimanescu was also the leader of Non-Aligned FRN. This has now been fixed, and they both have the correct party affiliations. This also means that Romania now starts off in 1936 as Democratic instead of Non-Aligned. Weve also done some balancing on the back end to account for this change.

    Next up, we also switched the starting fascist leader to Octavian Goga, who was the leader of the National Christian Party (Partidul Naional Cretin). That means weve also switched the starting fascism party to the PNC.
    What this means for the player is that upon taking the Iron Guard focus, Ion Antonescu will become the figure head for the fascist party and the party will be renamed from the PNC to Garda de Fier.

    Another important historical fact that Zeprion brought up was that King Michaels Coup was not against his father, but against the fascist Iron Guard. Weve now relocated this focus to the bottom of the fascist tree.
    This now gives the player three options to choose from. You can either stage the coup and appoint King Michael as the leader of the Democratic Party under a constitutional monarchy, force King Carols abdication and replace him with the leader of the most popular party, or Handle the King and allow King Carol to stay in power since he has changed his ways for the better. Weve also updated the state priorities for some of our building focuses to ensure they dont give infrastructure bonuses to states you may have given up prior to the start of the war such as Bukovina, Bessarabia, and Northern Transylvania. And last but not least, weve given Constantin Sanatescu a bit of an upgrade! Previously he was only available as an Army Chief with a defensive bonus, but he is now available as a General as well.
    Thats it for all the Romania changes for now. Thanks again to Zeprion for all the feedback, and I hope everyone enjoyed this weeks Dev Diary!


    [ 2020-09-30 11:18:02 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Turkey Preview Stream - 24th September @ 1400 CEST


    Following on from the announcement of Hearts of Iron IV: Battle for the Bosporus, we can now announce the first preview stream for the expansion!
    We'll be showing off the new Turkey focus tree tomorrow, on September 24th at 14:00 CEST Bring all of your questions about Turkey and we'll do our best to answer them and give you a glimpse at what it will be like playing as them after October 15th! We'll be live on our twitch channel: https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive https://steamcommunity.com/games/394360/announcements/detail/2790500324268164434 https://store.steampowered.com/app/1348660/Hearts_of_Iron_IV_Battle_for_the_Bosporus/


    [ 2020-09-23 12:21:01 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Protect the Straits in Hearts of Iron IV: Battle for the Bosporus

    STOCKHOLM - 23 September 2020 - For centuries, the Bosporus and Dardanelles have been key to strategy in the Mediterranean. A gate that joins the Black Sea and the Mediterranean, a short crossing that divides Europe from Asia. In the middle of a world crisis, this strait is an attractive target for any great power that seeks to dominate the region. Is neutrality even possible when war arrives on your doorstep? Hearts of Iron IV: Battle for the Bosporus is a new country pack for Paradox Development Studios best-selling grand strategy wargame. New events and decision paths let you take control of the destinies of Bulgaria, Greece or Turkey through years of uncertainty and conflict. Is it possible for these middle powers to steer a path between factions that will demand their support? [previewyoutube=XL5FIpg_2B4;full][/previewyoutube] Features of Battle for the Bosporus include:

    • National Focus Tree for Bulgaria: Balance the factions in a divided land or reclaim territory lost in 1919. Follow the historical alliance with Germany or resist the German pressures on Tsar Boris, standing up for a free Bulgaria.
    • National Focus Tree for Greece: Riven by political division, Greek neutrality is maintained by the controversial Metaxas. Build a strong relationship with the Allies under the guidance of King George II, follow arch-conservatives into fascism or restore the glories of Greek Empire in the east.
    • National Focus Tree for Turkey: Robbed of its empire in the last war, what future is there for Turkey in a new one? Continue or halt the reforms of Kemalism, stand as the protector of the Balkans in a new regional faction, restore the Sultan to the throne or found a new Islamic state.
    • New Music Tracks
    • New 3D Unit Models for Balkan and Turkish Armies
    • Unique voice overs for Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey
    Hearts of Iron IV: Battle for the Bosporus will be available on 15 October 2020 for a suggested retail price of $9.99/7.19/9.99 https://store.steampowered.com/app/1348660


    [ 2020-09-23 12:04:29 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Dev Diary: Turkey


    Greetings, salutations, and merhaba - we now return to your regularly scheduled programming with the reveal of Turkey! Its going to be a long one, so settle in with a dish of kfte and a glass of rak and then lets get into it!
    So, lets address the obvious - Turkey did not formally enter the Second World War until 1945, and never participated in any active fighting, yet as a nation they consistently held the dubious honour of being able to fundamentally alter the wars trajectory with their own participation throughout almost the entire conflict. They were courted by every alliance but maintained and leveraged their position of strength so that they could maintain their neutrality while still winning all the favours of courtship from the Allies, the Comintern, and the Axis. The other factor in considering Turkey for a rework was well, a lot of people love to play it. Turkey, to this day, remains the most played non-reworked minor in Hearts of Iron IV! So, it was very important that playing Turkey felt like playing a country with a potentially winning hand, but in a scenario where if they lost theyd lose everything.
    The Turks had some prior experience with wars where theyd have everything to gain by winning, and everything to lose by failing. When the Ottoman Empire exploded, the Entente imposed one of their signature devastating treaties on the Turkish people by carving up the new Ottoman state into a small rump state in Anatolia. This state of affairs didnt sit too well with many of the Turkish people, so an alliance of revolutionaries set to work - the most prominent of which was the legendary Mustafa Kemal Atatrk (more on him in a bit!). The Turkish revolutionaries repulsed the Entente and the encroaching Greeks (who we discussed two weeks ago), and cast down the Ottoman Sultanate in favour of the nascent Republic of Turkey. Of course, Turkey was not totally let off the hook as a former Central Powers member, but compared to their former comrades-in-arms the Turkish Republic got off relatively light!
    By Hearts of Iron IVs start, the Republic of Turkey was a mere twelve years old! Atatrks Republican Peoples Party (the CHP) wasted no time in reforming Turkish society top-to-bottom in order to modernise and westernise (to a degree) the entire nation. Mustafa Kemal Atatrk, Turkeys messianic founding father, was dedicated to the concept of a liberal democratic Turkish state but that doesnt mean every Kemalist figure was. Kemalism was the unique ideology of Mustafa Kemal Atatrk and the framework through which the entire Turkish state was supposed to be moulded, but even though Atatrks own views were unshakeable Kemalism itself was very flexible as an ideology. Kemalism, all at once, had elements of socialism, western liberalism, and Italian fascism - and these elements could be enhanced or obliterated at the snap of the Atatrks finger. It could be (and has been) argued that it was the dynamism of Kemalism that shielded the Republic of Turkey from the worst of the Great Depression.
    Turkey would remain a one-party state under the CHP until May of 1950, where under the leadership of smet nn the Kemalists received a thumping in the elections and gave the conservatives a majority until they were couped out by the Kemalist officers. However, there were attempts to hold multi-party elections during Atatrks lifetime - but when these opposition parties were inevitably taken over by Islamic Conservatives the opposition parties would be banned and the elections called off. Now, I love my history but I do not belabour my points for the sheer fun of it - Turkeys very recent history all plays a part in the Turkish rework, which we should waste no more time in getting into.
    Compared to many of the Balkan nations, Turkeys position looks surprisingly stable - but that strength is very tenuous. The Kemalist system of governance seems infallible with Mustafa Kemal Atatrk in charge, but once the Father of the Turks passes away things consistently become much more uncertain. Lets have a look at what makes Turkeys position so fragile, and why a Turkish government might have good cause not to rush headlong into war
    Something the recently collapsed Ottoman Empire left behind for the Turkish people as a little present was its insurmountable debt. The Ottoman Public Debt Administration was restructured into the Debt Council: an organisation chaired by Entente victors. However, Turkey was not Greece - the Allies had very little interest in bullying Turkey to the point of alienation, and the whole situation is much easier for Turkey to deal with in general. The Debt Council, as one of the only controlling interests in the Turkish economy, occupies Turkeys starting Industrial Concern as an unremovable spirit. Is it crippling? No, but youre probably going to want to reorganise the entire entity into a more distinctly Turkish entity so you can actually get rid of it!
    Even though the elite of the Turkish armed forces was in an excellent state, the army was absolutely ruined after the exceptionally brutal and hard-fought War of Independence. With a centrally managed economy, Turkey has had to be particularly picky with how it allocated its resources during its intricate processes of nation-building. With Atatrks mantra of Peace at Home, Peace in the World, the armed forces - and the army in particular - has fallen a little behind the curve compared to the rest of the world. But dont count the Turkish Armed Forces out just yet, because as the 1920s proved the Turkish forces can show their greatest qualities in a time of crisis.
    The best of the Turkish Armed Forces can be found in its dedicated, experienced, and loyal officer corps. Well theyre loyal most of the time it really does depend on just how committed you are to the ideals and principles of Kemalism! Stay true to the vision of Mustafa Kemal Atatrk and youll enjoy some healthy buffs, but straying from the path may lead to some adverse effects for your country
    Speaking of adverse effects, lets look at Turkeys unique internal situation. The verdict: its not good. Kurdish rebels to the east, hardcore traditionalists in the hinterlands, and Kemalists in the west and north. Turkey is not fractured along ideological lines like Bulgaria and Greece, rather its divisions are all of an ethnic or religious element. Whats more, these divisions are not drawn along party lines, but rather by geography. So, lets take a look at Turkeys own faction system.
    But before we do that, lets just take a quick detour to look at the reworked states and provinces for Turkey! State lines and categories have been corrected to be closer to the real deal, and those unsightly mega-states have been carved up into smaller states. Istanbul is now also a separate state, so any would-be conqueror who wants their own occupied Regime of the Straits can now make that a reality without taking all of Edirne with it! Whats more, the Turkish provinces have been corrected to be closer to reality: in short, the centre of Turkey is no longer one gigantic desert! It should be noted, this relationship - the one between a developer and a player - its a give-and-take relationship. I know this might be contentious to some people, but for DLC owners none of the Kurdish core states in Turkey will start as a core of Turkey. So lets talk about that, lets look at the Kurdish role in the faction system.
    But before we do that, lets just take a quick detour to look at the reworked states and provinces for Turkey! State lines and categories have been corrected to be closer to the real deal, and those unsightly mega-states have been carved up into smaller states. Istanbul is now also a separate state, so any would-be conqueror who wants their own occupied Regime of the Straits can now make that a reality without taking all of Edirne with it! Whats more, the Turkish provinces have been corrected to be closer to reality: in short, the centre of Turkey is no longer one gigantic desert! It should be noted, this relationship - the one between a developer and a player - its a give-and-take relationship. I know this might be contentious to some people, but for DLC owners none of the Kurdish core states in Turkey will start as a core of Turkey. So lets talk about that, lets look at the Kurdish role in the faction system.
    I dont think its much of a stretch to say that the quest for Kurdish statehood inside of Turkey is a somewhat controversial issue. The thing is its always been pretty controversial. There were a number of Kurdish rebellions between the Republic of Turkeys foundation and the beginning of Hearts of Iron IV, and there was another rebellion that took place during Hearts of Iron IVs timeframe. Instead of hard-scripting that event, I wanted to make it more dynamic, and the new resistance mechanic introduced in La Rsistance seemed an excellent medium to interact with in this regard. Kurdish state modifiers ensure that governing Kurdish areas feels like a constant tug-of-war between the national government and the people in the states. The modifiers can scale up, getting worse in their intensity, or they can be brought down to the point where they cease to be a problem. Many of the ahistorical paths encourage the whittling down of resistance and the building up of compliance for the purposes of getting a core on the states, but I hope for reasons that dont need to be explicitly stated its understandable why the historical path focuses more on the placation of these states rather than their coring.
    Remember how I mentioned the give-and-take relationship? Heres some more of that take. Yes, Turkey is treated to an abundance of redrawn and recategorised states, but many of them also have an issue with the government. One of the most divisive elements of Kemalism was its staunch and unfaltering commitment to secularism and separating religion from state. Funnily enough, not all of the Turkish people were so hot on the idea of Islam being split from their government and being stowed into their private affairs. Traditionalist modifiers, like the Kurdish modifiers, scale: and they can get worse or they can get better. If your government isnt a Kemalist government, they can get WAY better! But that might not necessarily be a strat to depend on, because if we take a look over at the Kemalist states
    Yeah, theyre really good. Kemalist modifiers arent plentiful, and spreading them can be an expensive affair, but the Kemalist modifiers can be found in most of Turkeys most urbanised and industrialised regions of the country. It creates the desired effect that the player, even though they can build anywhere in the country, is encouraged (like the historical government) to invest in these richer regions due to the added boons and ease of access. Kemalist regions also give additional recruitable population to help offset the loss of those Kurdish non-cores.
    Not every state starts aligned on game start, and the player might find themself in a race against time to apply as many of their own state modifiers as possible while the A.I. applies opposing state modifiers. But enough about these peripheral features, lets get to the meat of the rework: the focus tree! I know, I know, I took my time getting here but were in it now!
    Turkey was in a very unique situation in 1936, and I really wanted the player to feel like they were playing a pivotal part in Turkeys nation-building process. All the paths are there: two non-aligned paths, two fascist paths, two democratic paths, and a communist path. Lets dissect it a little!
    The tree is broken up in a way that should feel rather interconnected, and thats because of Turkeys unique political situation. All the paths in the political tree save for one are not about conjuring a fascist party out of the thin air or a magical communist revolution, but about redefining what the ideology of Kemalism is and what it means for the state. On the left, you can see the liberal and democratic paths - tied in with Turkeys little industry tree which for the most part is actually built into the decision tab. In the centre are Turkeys historical action focuses, and yes - Hatay is a state that has been added to the game! To the right you have the wide-sweeping authoritarian government forms, in which youll find the historical path starting down from Peace at Home.
    Everything starts with the Montreux Convention, which kicks off an event chain where Britain, Turkey, and the Soviet Union start a quarrel over the Bosporus and permissions to them. Try to be deft with your approach, and do not underestimate the Bolshevik hunger for your Turkish Straits - it may just come to war
    Survive the first crisis, and you can side with Cell Bayar and his liberal-democratic minded ilk by integrating the Bank and its political sponsors into your government, or maintain the one-party state by continuing the state economic policy of Etatism as sponsored by future historical president smet nn. Etatism is a powerful boon that can help rapidly industrialise the mostly empty Turkish state, but if you try to juggle your centrally managed economy with a war economy you might find that you get more than you bargained for.
    Here we have the two likeliest successors to the Kemalist legacy after the Father of the Turks passes away: smet nn and Fevzi akmak. smet nns left-wing non-aligned path is accessible through Peace at Home where you try to juggle and appease all sides while never making anybody truly happy. Fevzi akmaks right-wing non-aligned path is accessible through Reinvigorate Turkish Nationalism, and focuses on appeasing the Traditionalists without totally shirking your Kemalist ideology. Fevzi akmak can additionally take the role as a Francisco Franco-like fascist dictator through Fatherland First!
    Next, weve got the more radical Kemalist candidates: Recep Peker and evket Sreyya Aydemir. The fascist and communist paths are not about fully tilting Turkey into any particular ideological mould, but rather about remodelling Kemalism along their more radical lines. To that end, both paths are free to intervene in the Spanish Civil War, and put a focus on clamping down on Traditionalist sedition while uplifting the Kurdish people into a position where they are equals in the Turkish state.
    On the other end of the tree, we have the democratic path featuring Cell Bayar, whos batting for the Kemalists, and Adnan Menderes, whos pitching for the Conservatives. Once you open up the floodgates of a free and fair election, there is no going back.
    So, the election goes down and either the Kemalists are provided a democratic mandate to rule, or their reign is cut short by Menderes and his Demokrat Parti. If the latter course of events takes place, then what youve done is essentially fast-tracked Turkish history, and you shouldnt expect the end result to differ too much from reality. One should be weary of old ghosts returning to haunt the state when you pander to their views and topple their enemies
    So, youve established your state of choice and now its time to stop looking inwardly and time to start looking at the rest of the world at lar- [Troy GIF on fire] Alright, so the worlds in a bit of trouble! Looks like the whole Peace in the World aspect of Kemalism isnt working out so hot, and maybe its time to directly intervene in matters. Or alternatively why not just bask in the love of your secret admirers in Berlin, London, Rome, and Moscow? The foreign policy branch lets you play the historical route of letting things play out until 1945 without getting involved (which the historical A.I. should do), or you can beeline straight for your faction of choice so you can jump into the action!
    Some of the favours you can garner from your gallant sponsors are pretty neat, and can be very useful to a Turkish state trying to build up to preparedness for total war. Every faction path has a way for Turkey to expand either peacefully or through more traditional means. Join up with the Allies, and see if they might be willing to sponsor your hegemonic aims in the Middle East (I know, how uncharacteristic of Turkey). Join the Axis and cause chaos in the Middle East by sponsoring the Golden Squares coup in Iraq, or ready your troops for the long winter march to Moscow through the Caucasus. Align with the Comintern and ditch your phoney Turkish socialism for some honest-to-Stalin Turkish Bolshevism by lifting the Turkish Communist Partys exile! Or perhaps the normal factions arent cutting it, perhaps a more independent route is warranted. Well, you can do that too - form the Covenant of the Mediterranean with Italy, or invite Republican Spain to the Anti-Bolshevik Accord.
    Or cut the major powers out of the picture entirely for a truly independent route. Under a Kemalist government, the player will be free to continue the governments long-standing foreign policy aims of a stable and free Balkans. Extend the Balkan Pact into a formal Balkan Entente, and stand tall as the paragon of the Balkans - ready to stand up to any threats whether they come from the north, east, south, or west. Although, perhaps you dont want to play the good guy maybe youre invested in this to cause a little chaos...
    ...well, we have you covered. Of course, no Turkish rework was going to be complete without some sort of Ottoman restoration path. Yes, topple the Kemalists in the election and you can wager theyll use their clout in the military to try and take you down, and when they do thats when the Faustian Bargain can be struck.
    Root the Kemalists out of their cities one-by-one and prepare the weakened nation for the return of the Sultan. The glorious Sultan: the one who will restore the Empire, the one who shall conquer the world, the one who shall make the Western Imperialist hounds kneel to kiss his royal scepter, th-
    -oh, he was actually a pretty gentle guy. Well, thats okay - because his court is absolutely clogged with vengeful former exiles who have been restored to the Ottoman Sultanate frothing for a second chance to right the humiliating end of the Great War which saw their prestige and identity annihilated.
    Should they exist, you can get the old band back together and link up with the Central Powers! If they dont but the Austro-Hungarians do, then you can still reform the Central Powers. If youre alone, thats alright, press the Austro-Hungarian claim for them and cause some mayhem in the southern Balkans in their name. When the Sultanate has been cemented, the option to make a bid to reclaim your empire and the title of Caliph will become available once again. But conquering territory in the Middle East is thirsty work! That place is real hot, and theres so much sand! Good news, weve got you covered.
    Introducing the camelry unit! Theyre more reliable and resource efficient than cavalry, but theyre slower, tougher to train, and they cost more equipment. Cavalry is also good in a variety of environments, while Camelry is great in a select few environments but not so good in most others. However, with an even higher level of suppression than cavalry they make fantastic garrisons in a pinch. Well, thats about everyth-
    Oh no, wait, theres more! Hearts of Iron IV can be an unpredictable game, you never know which way it might go! The world post-WW2 might be left in a state unpalatable to your senses, so following any branch to the end in the Reconfigure Turkish Foreign Policy lets you take on the role of a rogue state trying to serve its own interests against the wills of the major powers. Mind you, a sudden heel turn in Turkish foreign policy isnt always going to be received positively by every major faction leader, and you might find yourself thrown out on your ass if you cause too much of a ruckus.
    Of course, if youre going to play the role of a rogue state then why not go all the way and become the ultimate pariah state? Well, thats all for this week! Before signing off, Id love to give a special thanks to our beta testers for all their hard work testing the pack, Indyclone77 for his help with many of the art assets (including the portrait double-ups in this diary!), and withche.07 for his prolific Turkish suggestions forum thread! Farewell, and see you soon for the first stream!


    [ 2020-09-23 09:02:41 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Dev Diary: Bulgaria

    Today's Development Diary by ManoDeZombi
    - Hi everyone! And welcome to a new Hearts of Iron 4 Dev Diary! Today well be talking about the second country in the upcoming DLC, which Ive been working on after La Resistance. A country that didnt make it into DoD because by that time the team considered that they lacked the appropriate tools to depict both its multiple internal conflicts and its complex diplomatic relations. And as many of you had already guessed, the country in question is... Bulgaria!
    As a defeated member of the Central Powers, Bulgaria suffered severe territorial losses, army restrictions and economic sanctions after the Great War, which led to a period of great instability and depression in the country. In May 1934, the military organization Zveno carried out a coup detat and formed a new government, led by Kimon Georgiev, which dissolved the National Assembly, banned political parties and dealt a critical blow to the Macedonian revolutionary organization IMRO. However, the Tsar forced Georgiev to resign in January 1935, appointed new puppet ministers and managed to seize full control over the country, imposing an authoritarian regime that benefited greatly from the measures imposed by the Zveno. In 1936 Bulgarian society was split between different political and military organizations and social movements, most of them illegal thanks to the Zveno and the Tsar. Bulgarian international relations were not in better shape, the IMRO, one of the most important Macedonian revolutionary organizations, carried out numerous fights and terrorist acts during the 1920s in both Yugoslavia and Greece, frequently operating from Bulgaria, and culminating in the 1930s with several assassinations including King Alexander I of Yugoslavia and the French Foreign Minister Louis Barthou. The actions taken by the Zveno to eradicate the IMRO helped improve Bulgarias image in the Balkans, but relations with its neighbors and with the countries of the Entente were still very cold. In contrast, a very welcoming Third Reich helped Bulgaria overcome its sorry economic situation and seemed to offer a very promising future for Bulgaria.... Now lets see how this turbulent country looks in HOI4 when you start a new game:
    Bulgaria will start the game with Tsar Boris as the country leader, who will provide nice bonuses for non-aligned support and a flat penalty to war support (he seemed to be very reluctant to join the war after all, agreeing only to declare war on the allies later in 1941, probably believing that it would be nothing more than a symbolic act How wrong he was!). To be fair, the title Tsar Unifier historically came with the Bulgarian occupation of previously lost territories in Greece, Yugoslavia and Romania, but I think the title fits pretty well with Boriss modifiers. Now lets take a look at the Bulgarian National Spirits, from left to right:

    The Treaty of Neuilly-sur-Seine, signed after the Bulgarian defeat in the Great War, required Bulgaria to pay huge amounts in war reparations and forced the country to cede various territories, including western Thrace, cutting off Bulgarian access to the Aegean, and a significant area on the western border, very close to Sofia. It is no wonder why this treaty was known in Bulgaria as the Second National Catastrophe...
    In addition to the sanctions above, the Treaty of Neuilly imposed very severe restrictions on the Bulgarian army, not only drastically limiting the amount of troops and forbidding the acquisition of modern equipment, but also prohibiting any military maneuvers and even stipulating the number of rifles that the Bulgarian security forces could use.
    The Zveno dealt a major blow to the IMRO in 1934, but there were still many people that considered themselves Bulgarian Macedonians. In-game you can attempt to re-ignite this sentiment to your own benefit, or you can appease your neighbors and major European democracies by rooting out any remaining revolutionary cells in Bulgaria. I know, theres a lot of red in these three national spirits, not very inviting, huh...? Well fear not, for as you progress throughout the focus tree you will be provided with the tools you need to get rid of them, so we will be talking about them again later in the diary. One last thing before we move on, did you notice that guy occupying a political advisor slot in the picture above? Well, since you will be seeing his face every time you start a new game with Bulgaria, let me introduce you to Georgi Kyoseivanov, Prime Minister of Bulgaria in 1936, who was not seen as a very competent leader, but more as a puppet of Tsar Boris, a prime minister who did not dare to defy the Tsars Regime and who was forced to resign and become ambassador to Switzerland in 1940. Even the Germans might ask you (as happened historically) to replace him with someone more suitable.
    Looking at his modifiers, you can see a pretty poor PP bonus, and a pretty decent weekly stability boost. Do you remember that -0.30% stability from IMRO National Spirit? Well, so as long as you do not mess with the Tsar, you will have this guy working on countering that malus. But if you dont plan on getting along with the Bulgarian monarchy, then you should plan ahead for this important stability boost that you will lose, especially if the IMRO penalty is still active. Alright, now that we know about the situation in Bulgaria at the start of the game, lets have our first glance at the new Focus Tree!
    As you can see, there are two main branches, and as most of you have probably already guessed, the one on the left focuses on the industry and military, while the one on the right focuses on political affairs, but note that you will also find plenty of industrial, military and research stuff within the latter. Lets start with the industrial branch, on the left:
    A very important decision that youll have to face when playing Bulgaria is how you want to develop your industry:

    • Relying on foreign investors leads to faster industrialization, being able to ask certain major powers to make industrial investments and build some civilian factories in Bulgaria.
    • Investing in your domestic industry, on the other hand, leads to slower industrialization, where you'll have to sacrifice some Consumer Goods to get progressively better bonuses in production and building speed, eventually removing that CG penalty and getting a fairly powerful national spirit by mid-to-late game.
    Different industrial Designers will be unlocked based on your approach, national vs foreign. National designers are slightly weaker at first, but will be improved once you complete Utmost Optimization focus:
    The small sub-branch to the right is more focused on getting some extra resources, a matter in which Bulgaria was really lacking at the time I see you thinking Uranium Prospecting Bulgaria? What a waste! Well, you may be right, but do not worry, if you feel that Bulgaria will not be able to get the most out of this focus, you can always sign a treaty with an allied major country granting them the associated National Spirit in exchange for a bonus in consumer goods, thats what I call teamwork!
    Then we have the military sub branches, within them youll find not only military factories and research bonuses, but powerful national spirits, valious XP and very appealing designers:
    But before you can enjoy all that, you must get rid of the army restrictions imposed by the Treaty of Neuilly sur Seine, and how will you do that? Here is the answer:
    Historically, despite the fact that Bulgaria acquired some military equipment during the 30s, the country (unlike others) generally complied with the military limitations imposed by the Treaty of Neuilly-sur-Seine. However, the Bulgarian government (or more accurately, governments) protested on several occasions and called for these restrictions to be lifted, arguing that the League of Nations could not protect Bulgaria against the rising powers and their threatening territorial ambitions in the Balkans But it was not until Bulgaria strengthened diplomatic relations with its neighbors, and fearing that the Germans might exert too much influence over the country, that the United Kingdom eventually pressured France and the Balkan Entente to allow the Bulgarian rearmament. In-game, this focus will unlock some decisions allowing you to pressure the British to lift your army restrictions. If you behave politely in your neighborhood, they may be more inclined to accept, but in case the British government does not listen to reason, you can always look for new friends elsewhere, friends who can back you up if you decide to flout the treaty.
    Once you have removed that disgusting National Spirit, you will be able to start working on your military industry for real. Similar to the industrial branch, here you will be presented with foreign vs national designers, and likewise, national designers will be weaker at first, but will be upgraded once you complete Prussia of the Balkans focus, which by the way will also grant you one of the most powerful National Spirits:
    It may seem too powerful I know, but keep in mind that Bulgaria will have to spend some precious time (and PP) in dealing with those army restrictions before progressing on this branch and even start producing any big toys for the army! Now lets take a look at the Naval sub-branch:
    If Bulgaria wants to participate in naval conflicts, it must first develop its shipbuilding industry, which it can do in two stages, the first one leading to the construction of infrastructures and facilities to start the production of small warships and defend the Bulgarian coast in the Black Sea, and the second one focused on the expansion to the Aegean and the building of more powerful, capital ships.
    This last part of the branch is kind of an experiment of mine. Once Bulgaria has developed its military industry and asserted its supremacy on the Bosporus (which is no small feat), the country will be in a position from which it could seek to consolidate its dominance in the various seas that, many centuries ago, bathed the coasts of the former Bulgarian Empires. And weve made it to the political tree! Lets start with the uppermost focuses, which will allow me to introduce you to the Bulgarian internal factions system:
    Once you complete either Power to the Tsar or Oppose the Royal Dictatorship you will be presented with a new decision category where you can interact with the different Bulgarian internal factions represented in-game. These organizations were not actual political parties by 1936, since they were either banned political parties (Broad Socialists and Agrarian Union), a far-right paramilitary movement (National Social Movement) or a soon-to-be-dissolved political and military organization (Zveno).
    You can interact with these factions in two ways: Cooperation or Oppression, each of them unlocking a decision chain that will lead to either the integration of the faction into your government or its utter destruction. If a faction has a low Loyalty value towards the government it will eventually cause some trouble by triggering a dissident event, ranging from industrial strikes and disturbing far-right demonstrations to the Zveno plotting against the government and leading (if not addressed in time) to a military coup. So if you are not planning on getting along with any of these factions, it could be worth rooting them out before they start making noise. The oppression chain is the shortest but, apart from getting rid of a potential nuisance it does not offer any other big rewards. The cooperation chain, while being more expensive and time-consuming to complete, will grant some benefits in the form of new advisors: Each faction has its own political advisor available only once you are about to integrate the organization into your government. Additionally, cooperating with the Zveno will unlock a handful of military advisors.
    You will be able to cooperate or oppress these factions based on the Focus path you take, but save for a few exceptions (communists were probably not very eager to cooperate with the national social movement) you will be able to choose how to interact with each faction. The upper half of the political tree has plenty of focuses that (besides other effects) will have an impact on these factions as well as provide you with precious PP so that you can keep taking more decisions. And before going through the different ideologies, lets talk about the IMRO, because regardless of your ideology, you will have to deal with them eventually:
    Publicly condemning the IMRO and investing resources in rooting out any remaining active cells in Bulgaria will help you in developing good diplomatic relations with the Allies and, of course, with your neighbors. Through a few decisions, you will be able to reduce the penalties of the IMRO National Spirit and eventually remove it completely. If, on the contrary, you choose to support Macedonian Revolutionary Organizations in Bulgaria, you will be able to remove some of the penalties from IMRO National Spirit, but not all. However by cooperating with the IMRO you will increase Bulgarian popularity in Macedonian states, adding useful state modifiers that will take effect once you control them, and even creating resistance in Macedonian states controlled by others.

    And we are finally ready to talk about the political branches now! Lets start with the communists!
    As I mentioned before, many of the focuses in the upper half of the branch will have a small impact on the internal factions and will provide you with some Political Power. Overthrow the Tsar (just like its counterparts in other branches) can be taken fairly early, but be warned, if your stability is not high enough when you complete this focus, you might find yourself in the middle of a civil war, which might not be the ideal situation for Bulgaria once the major powers begin to make their moves in the Balkans In case of a peaceful abolition of the monarchy, the incompetent Georgi Kyoseivanov will be put in charge, so you might want to complete The Peoples Republic of Bulgaria as soon as possible and form a communist government. After that, you can approach the Soviet Union or Yugoslavia (or both of them) and attempt to sign a treaty with them. You will see similar focuses to approach different countries in the other branches, and as long as you dont join a faction (or you join theirs) you will be able to approach both countries. Approaching major countries will also unlock decisions to purchase different types of military equipment from them.
    And back to the communist branch:
    As you can see, approaching each of those countries leads to different faction sub-branches. On the left we have the Stalinist branch, which is focused on cooperating with the Soviet Union, strengthening your army and your military industry and spreading the Stalinist doctrine within the Balkans. On the right we have a branch mostly focused on the Balkans, leading to the formation of the Balkan Federation of Socialist Republics (an old project revisited several times, but never realized). Throughout this branch you will be able to influence Balkan countries and entice them to join your faction.
    Balkan Trade Union Secretariat and United, We Shall Prevail! will grant economic and military boosts not only to Bulgaria, but to every other Balkan country in the faction too. The Unification of the Balkans is the last step in the Balkan Federation Dream, unifying the territories and peoples of the Balkans under a centralized government, giving your Balkan allies the option to choose between being annexed by you or not (players can also choose to become puppets).
    If you go through the Democratic Branch you will be able to choose to follow a more socialist approach, abolishing the Bulgarian monarchy and forming a popular Bloc, or you can seek the cooperation of the Tsar, following more liberal policies.
    As you can see, even if you cooperate with the Tsar, you will be able to remove him from charge eventually, via Plot Against Boris focus, which will unlock some decisions leading to the assassination of the Tsar. We will talk a little bit more about this later. Once you complete Legislative Elections and become Democratic, you can start working on developing good relations with Greece and the UK.
    Similar to the communsit branch, approaching the major nation leads to joining its major faction, granting access to focuses offering, among other things, important military bonuses against Communist and Fascist nations. Assert our Claims will grant you cores on any historically claimed state under your control (those former Bulgarian territories lost during the wars in the 1910s) and allow you to claim any neighboring enemy states. And just like the communist branch, approaching the Balkan country (that being Greece) leads to the formation of a Balkan faction, this time the Balkan Confederation which, as you can see, shares its focuses with its communist counterpart. However, different decisions make for a slightly different way of influencing your neighbors. Organize a Balkan Summit will add a timed National Spirit to all Balkan countries, boosting democratic support and acceptance of democratic diplomacy. Industrial Investments and Capital Injection will boost democratic in the target country (and leave it more exposed to your ideology influence) while also providing them with some benefits.
    Last of all, Free Balkan States, accessible from both democratic faction branches, may be an interesting alternative to United Balkan Federation, guaranteeing every independent democratic and non-aligned Balkan countries, creating a war goal against the rest, and providing Bulgaria with a powerful National Spirit that escalates based on the number of countries guaranteed.
    Now let me to talk about both the Monarchist and Fascist branches together, since their paths are very intertwined:
    One of your short-term goals when going through either of these paths will probably be to complete Bulgarian Irredentism as soon as possible, since this focus will ignite an irredentist sentiment in Bulgaria, replacing Second National Catastrophe spirit and turning its former weekly stability penalty into a weekly war support bonus:
    Fascist Bulgaria can choose between deposing the Tsar or forming a pro-fascist (yet monarchist) youth organization. International relations will focus on Germany and Italy in both paths, while the monarchists will also be able to approach the UK and access the Allies branch. Strengthening relations with Germany will unlock a decision to negotiate Bulgarian territorial claims in the Balkans with the Germans (yes, before actually choosing a side).
    If Germany recognizes Bulgarian territorial claims, a state modifier will be applied to the appropriate states:

    And yes, you can combine this with the state modifier provided by the IMRO, so that when Macedonian territories are transferred to Bulgaria, you will benefit from some nice resistance & compliance bonuses right away! Back to Plot Against Boris, which is available through both the Democratic and Monarchist branches But it will also be automatically completed if Boris dies of natural causes throughout the game, replacing its name and description to fit the new context, and allowing you to go further in that branch (assuming you havent already abolished the monarchy).

    So once Boris is dead you can choose to form a Regency Council, and there can be several versions of it: First of all, depending on your ideology, you can form a pro-allies (democratic), pro-axis (fascist) or independent (non-aligned) regency council. Additionally, you will keep your former country leader as the head of the council, meaning that it will inherit his trait together with the Regency Councils specific trait.

    But maybe you think that the best person to rule Bulgaria is none other than Boris's father and former Tsar, Ferdinand I. Ferdinand developed a great interest in Byzantium (as did his son) and it is said that he dreamed of the formation of a New Byzantium... Anyways, he definitely was a belligerent ruler who seeked to expand Bulgarian borders and who led the country into multiple wars during the 1910s (most of which didnt end very well for his country), and was finally forced to abdicate in favor of his son after the defeat of Bulgaria in the Great War as part of the Central Powers.
    Regarding the factions available to both Monarchist and Fascist Bulgaria, lets start talking about the Axis branch:
    After Signing the Tripartite Pact you can choose the militaristic, aggressive Total War focus, by which you will join all wars against the enemies of your faction leader. On the contrary, Peaceful Development leads to a more subtle path that will allow you to ask for control over neighboring Balkan States occupied by an ally. In addition to this, Bulgarisation of the Balkans will grant you cores on certain historical claims if they are controlled by Bulgaria, and also unlock decisions to core other occupied Balkan states.
    As some of you would have surely guessed, this is the Bulgarian historical path. After having signed the Tripartite Pact early in 1941, Bulgaria did not participate in the German invasion of Yugoslavia and Greece, but instead played the role of peacekeepers, taking control over certain pre-arranged territories and relieving Axis troops to be sent to other fronts, only declaring a symbolic war on the allies several months later. Bulgaria then started a Bulgarisation campaign in the occupation zones under its control, attempting to strengthen Bulgarian territorial claims on these regions after an Axis victory in the war. As the final focuses on this branch, Restore the Bulgarian Patriarchate will grant powerful compliance, stability and political power bonuses while Third Bulgarian Empire will, among other things, set a new cosmetic tag for Bulgaria.
    Last but not least, we have the Fate of the Balkans branch, available through not only the Fascist and Monarchist paths, but also the Democratic one (again, assuming you have not abolished the monarchy).
    Completing The Fate of the Balkans focus will create a Bulgarian faction and unlock decisions to influence and coerce Balkan nations to join your alliance. Once a country has joined the faction, you can demand its submission and puppet them (the more you influence a country, the more likely it is to give in).
    Toppling Giants will give you wargoals and significant attack and defense bonuses against major European neighbors, while Guardians of the Balkans will grant very nice combat bonuses on core territory and construction speed for military buildings not only to you, but also to your Balkan puppets, as a slightly weaker version. As you can see, this is a fairly harsh and independent path focused on subjugating the Balkans and defending them from foreign invaders, which will not be easy, but Im sure youll be up for a challenge! Now allow to me give you one last piece of advice before saying goodbye: Choose your allies and your wars wisely when playing as Bulgaria, because if you or your faction mates arent doing very well in the wars, you can end up in a very delicate situation, just like the one faced by Bogdan Filov and his government in September 1944
    (By the way, big kudos to our freelance artist Indyclone for his magnificent event pictures!) Aaaaand that was all from me! I hope you enjoyed the dev diary and make sure to stay tuned for the next one!


    [ 2020-09-16 12:03:28 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Dev Diary: Greece

    Hey all! After a long break over the summer, we are back with our regularly-scheduled dev diaries! Before we delve into todays main topic, let me give you some info on what we will be doing next and how this dev diary fits into the overall scheme of things. Way back in 2017, we released Death or Dishonor, something we called a Country Pack at the time. Back then, the community was mainly asking for big new flashy mechanics and revamps of game systems, so the initial reaction from the community was pretty mixed. In hindsight perhaps we shouldn't have been surprised :D. These days though we are bombarded with requests of more, better and bigger focus trees, and people are wondering if it's going to take 10 years to add trees to everyone? As a Content Designer, it has been very rewarding to see the community get more excited to see focus trees! So we have decided to bring back the idea of a Country Pack, a smaller expansion that focuses on a specific part of the world and covering 3-4 minor nations. But at the same time, we didnt want to put the entire team on it while there were still other parts of the game we wanted to work on such as adding an intelligence system. The idea is that this will let us increase how many focus trees and flavor we add while still being able to deliver big juicy features in larger expansions. The approach we took was to recruit a freelancer to work on the focus trees while the rest of the team in Stockholm worked on the next big DLC, which would eventually become La Resistance. Today we are going to show you the first of the new focus trees coming in the next country pack, and in the coming weeks we will share more information on what other countries get focus trees in the pack, as well as what other content will accompany the release. As always, the country pack will be accompanied by a patch that will fix some bugs as well. We think that this approach allows us to get more content to you faster, without taking resources away from the main team, which continues to work on the next big DLC. You will get more information on what that DLC contains after the country pack releases later this year (disclaimer: it is 2020 and fate can be fickle). Ill now hand you over to the man of the hour: Freelance CD Busby, working from Australia! Gday, my name is Busby and I am the Freelance Content Designer who was responsible for putting together Greece and another soon-to-be-revealed mystery nation! Freelance Content Designer, I hear you ask, how does that differ from your standard run-of-the-mill Content Designer? Well, with COVID-19, those lines have certainly blurred; nominally, it means that I work remotely of the core team so I can focus on getting this pack out to you while they all collaborate on the next big expansion! Of course, I didnt work alone, and youll be hearing from a familiar face who worked with me on this next week! Before kicking things off, I just want to say as someone who used to read Hearts of Iron IV Dev Diaries on my lunch break in high school that it is an absolute privilege and an honour to be presenting you all with one of my very own! So, without further ado: Greece!
    Greece was a very interesting challenge to tackle, they are well known for repulsing the Italian invasion of their nation and then successfully launching a counter-offensive of their own, which culminated in the Capture of Klisura Pass. So, it was important that Greece be able to play defensively, but it would also have been thoughtless to neglect what might be one of the worlds richest histories that shared in some of the grandest of accomplishments. Greece has been the beating heart of many historical empires, so they had to be capable of reaching their historical heights but without neglecting the many challenges that faced them at the time.
    To say that Greece is in a challenging position in 1936 would be a great understatement. The Hellenic Armed Forces are the one positive in a sea of negatives, and even theyre woefully underequipped. Greeces economic and political issues are represented through their starting national spirits:

    • I am going to start first with Greeces broadly encompassing Political Instability spirit. Greece was mired in political uncertainty throughout the entirety of the Great War, and although they were finally able to rally around the prolific political leader and vocal republican Eleftherios Venizelos for a time, this newfound stability was not to last. Greece decisively lost the Greco-Turkish War that immediately followed the Great War, and this loss sent shockwaves throughout the entire political scene: there were many coups, a dictatorship, and finally the Second Hellenic Republic came to a bitter end by November of 1935. In 1936, the country remains divided among those who believe in the institution of the monarchy, and those who are followers of the liberal democratic ideologue Eleftherios Venizelos.
    • The restoration of the monarchy turned the Greek political situation on its head: King George II, exiled in 1923, is back on his throne while Eleftherios Venizelos hides in exile after being forced to flee the country in 1935. The status of King George II serves as the hook for every political path in the focus tree, but that will be addressed shortly. For now, understand that King George IIs status as monarch of the Kingdom of Greece is precarious to say the least.
    • The next four spirits are related to Greeces economic situation, which is not in a good state. Greece is buried underneath the tremendous debt it has accumulated over the past few decades, and this is represented through Greeces Debt to the International Finance Commission spirit. If Greece wishes to free itself from the burdens of its debt, it will have to satisfy the three great powers holding the Greek economy hostage, and those would be the usual suspects: France, the United Kingdom, and the Kingdom of Italy.
    • Greeces colossal debt is only the start of Greeces economic woes: Greece remains one of the only mostly agrarian economies in all of Europe by the game start, and this has spawned two issues: 1). Greeces economy and working class are centered around their agricultural sector rather than the nations industrial output, and 2). Greeces agrarian economy has led to a dependence on foreign nations to supply their heavy industry for Greeces construction needs. Greeces industrial paths are focussed on nullifying these issues while also rapidly modernising the country so Greece is able to still compete with its neighbours.
    • But its not all bad for Greece, for they have a continental guardian angel to assist with their crippling economic hardship Germany! Yes, the Schachtplan, a clever mechanism that gives the Germans a higher degree of control over the countrys finances and natural resources, but when youre struggling as hard as Greece you take any form of reprieve you can get - even if it is ultimately serving German hegemonic aims in Europe.
    Now, I know these debuffs seem rough - perhaps even discouraging - but every negative national spirit can be removed or mitigated through Greeces focus tree, which you can see here!
    We shall be going through the focus tree from right-to-left, like an old Japanese novel!
    Greece can often find itself wanting for manpower so most Greek games arent going to be about amassing large armies but rather about fielding a smaller, professional army. The same applies to Greeces navy and air force, but with the right sponsor whos to say Greece couldnt put one of its decommissioned battleships back into action? Each armed forces branch offers at least one permanent national modifier that helps ensure Greece can set up a successful defensive game even if it cant muster the manpower or equipment for a large army. The Hellenic Academy Battleplans should help quite a great deal in this!
    Greece can preemptively draw up defensive plans against the major powers of Europe as well as its smaller but no less threatening neighbours. These temporary boosts to defense, and even to attack in some cases, should ensure Greece can successfully hold any frontline so long as they arent being faced with an overwhelming force - very much like real life! Next, lets look at how you can get your industrial base to match the level of excellence of your armed forces.
    Greeces industrial path is your one-stop shop to access the means of eliminating those pesky national spirits that Greece starts with. The first focus, which is 35 days, unlocks the ability to chip away at that pesky Debt to the I.F.C. through decisions.
    Greece immediately unlocks the ability to make small debt repayments after finishing the first industrial focus, and other options can be unlocked along the way. The forced industrialisation path, for example, offers a faster route to getting rid of the Debt to the I.F.C. spirit by unlocking large debt repayments - and while they are more resource intensive than small debt repayments, they can clear a debt away very quickly. Of course, if Greece happens to fall under the influence of a regime that doesnt quite play by the established rules of the liberal democratic world then there will of course be other roads opened up to circumvent the nasty capitalist plot to ruin the Greek economy!
    Greeces two branching paths in the industrial path allow the player to choose how the Greek economy modernises: they can either double-down on their service economy and use Greeces large commodity export sector to enrich the nation using the means of the outside world, or they can force their farmers off their farms and into the cities so Greece can be brought fully into the twentieth century. As the path progresses, the effects of the Foreign Monopolies spirit will be lessened and lessened until finally they can be abolished or co-opted to the benefit of the Greek state. Greek national companies, which require the Foreign Monopolies to be banished, apply better modifiers but the foreign companies are cheaper and ultimately easier to attain.
    Next up are the investment focuses: the middle ground between the industrial branches and the political tree. Investment is a nifty way to spend any spare political power in the pursuit of free factories courtesy of your ally or sponsor. It would be wise to show restraint, however, for the sponsoring country will take on a pretty hefty penalty while they prepare to fulfill any pledges theyve made to Greece.
    Ah, and now we get to the real meat of the tree: the politics. The first big choice of the game comes in the very first month via either a focus or decision, where the player will have to decide whether to place the king under arrest to prevent him from meddling in the election or allow him to forcibly establish a governmental mandate for the monarchists.
    Lets start with the historical path, where the monarchists win their election and the king appoints former officer and arch-enemy of the republicans Ioannis Metaxas as prime minister and soon-to-be-dictator.
    The Metaxist path is all about trying to maintain your neutrality for as long as possible so you can take all the Metaxist focuses which provide some tremendous national buffs that all go away the moment Greece enters a faction. The exception is if the player reaches the end of the Metaxist branch by finishing Reviving the Spartan Warrior Spirit before they join a faction. Of course, the player doesnt have to wait that long - they can go straight to the Allied path on the left or transform Greece from a quasi-fascist dictatorship into a full-blown fascist regime.
    The aim of the fascists is not only to bring themselves closer to the Axis, but to pressure Turkey into joining the war as an equal ally and partner. To achieve this aim, the player can choose to either appoint George Mercouris or Ioannis Metaxas as their fascist dictator. Of course, theres always the chance negotiations could be sabotaged, giving the Greek player the opportunity to act counter to Germanys wishes by forcing the Axis into a conflict with the Turkish regional power. Perhaps that might not be so bad, because while Metaxas is fixated on crafting his Third Hellenic Civilization Mercouris has a decidedly fixated obsession with the First Hellenic Civilization But lets return to Metaxas, because even though he was a Germanophile it must be said that not every member of the Axis has Greeces best interests at heart.
    Strange times call for strange bedfellows, and despite Metaxas fascist leanings he is free to align Greece up with its historical allies in the Mediterranean: the British Empire. Once the overtures have been made, Greece will be free to get down to the business of Cyprus and the facilitation of a change in administration of the island. But Metaxas isnt the only possible would-be Allies member in the Kings administration
    ...so lets talk about the Anglophilic King George II himself! Perhaps Metaxas just isnt going to cut it for Greece, perhaps what Greece really needs is a strong monarch who can serve as a beacon of stability and hope for the Greek people! Of course, the people arent going to see it like that - in fact many of them are going to really hate the governments guts.
    Years of instability and infighting shall culminate in a triumphant civil war between the monarchists and the republicans! Its perhaps not the most delicate solution, but a good civil war really does have the habit of ironing out a nation in contempt of itself. Take on King George II as your absolute monarch and assist the British in scourging fascism from Europe, or alternatively perhaps a good bit of that fascism has already been purged away and the Central Powers have been reborn. Well, in that case link up with your royalist brethren and fight together to protect the divine right of kings!
    Political Instability keeps coming up as a concept, so lets look at the spirit. Greece is divided into four factions: the Monarchists, the Republicans, the Communists, and the Fascists. Theyre all pretty hateful of each other, but there was also a common consensus that Greece needed to be strong and united in the face of a global catastrophe (like a World War). Not every leader saw it that way, *cough* Metaxas *cough*, so there will be three primary ways of dealing with political instability. First, to progress the spirit and lower its debuffs it's necessary for progress to be made down the political tree - every ideology has its own unique Political Instability spirit but although the modifiers change the universal principle remains the same.
    The player can choose between smashing a faction and negating the negative debuffs applied to the nation by having a hostile faction, or they can go the longer and more expensive route of co-opting a faction and making them an ally. Generally, the more allied factions the better because more allies means more manpower and more ministers, but sometimes the resources required to commit to such an act would be better spent elsewhere preparing for external threats rather than internal ones.
    Speaking of factions, how about some insight into the most incongruous of factions - the communists! Communism, being allied with the concept of republicanism, requires the Venezelists to seize the election. Once that is done, they can choose to ally together with the communists so that a Third Hellenic Republic can be reborn. However, as you can imagine the communists arent really content with anything short of well full-blown communism.
    Of all the branches, the communist one perhaps adds the most in terms of industrial potential for Greece: while all those other sucker ideologies focus on culture and heritage, the communists focus on more material achievements. Although, would it really be a communist branch without a doctrinal split near the end?
    Take the nation under the wing of the uncompromising revolutionary Markos Vafeiadis, and assist Josip Broz Tito in his ascent to power in Yugoslavia as you prepare to tackle the fascist menace in Europe. Or perhaps youre a little more loose with your Marxist morals; perhaps Stalinism doesnt seem so bad after all! Chairman Nikos Zachariadis is your man!
    Why waste precious resources fighting fascism when you can leave that to the capitalists! Your objective, like your theory, is based on practicalism and not idealism. Orders from Moscow dictate that the Bosporus must be taken at any cost. To fulfill Stalins whims, a crisis must be started - one border conflict shall escalate into another, and before the world knows it Southern Europe will be red from Corfu to Kars!
    ...well, that might be all fine and dandy for everybody whose favourite colour is red, but weve got one last path to discuss! Yes, yes, the so often spurned democratic path - but even though this path comes last it is certainly not least! Few parties were as influential in Greeces history between 1910 and 1936 as Eleftherios Venizelos Liberal Party, and it was important to me that the player felt some weight playing as these titans of Greek politics. Although, if the Venezelists were titans then Venizelos himself was a colossus. This is reflected in his Ethnarch trait, which provides some much needed manpower and stability - but utilise him while you have him, for he is not long for this world!
    Something that sets Greeces liberal democratic party apart from many others is that warmongering is a core part of their doctrine. The Venezelists were staunch believers in the Megali Idea - the irredentist dream of a Greater Greece incorporating many parts of modern day Turkey. The Venezelists made a grand attempt to fulfill the Megali Idea after the Great War it led to the Greco-Turkish War which, to put it mildly, did not end well for the Greeks. They were decisively defeated by the Turkish Kemalists, and the Hellenic Republic fell apart shortly afterwards. When you restore the Venezelists, you inherit their shattered legacy - the only way to restore the reputation of Venezelism is to couple yourself with the monarchists, fulfill the Megali Idea, and avenge the terrible loss the Greek nation endured. But not everybody in Greece believes the Venezelists deserve a second chance
    Enter, stage left: a new breed of fascist, Ethniki Enosis Ellados. The EEE collapsed in 1935 due to infighting, but with the reemergence of the Venezelists they have found new purpose: to unite the millions of Greeks who were exiled from their homes in Anatolia after the Greco-Turkish War, and to oust the government that led them into defeat last time. The EEE is a no half measures movement, to them the Megali Idea is not worthy of the paper it was written on - when it comes to reclaiming territory from Turkey, it must be all or nothing. Playing as the Venezelists, the EEE are going to be a serious thorn in the side of any government trying to effectively unite the country, and before the Megali Idea can be addressed the EEE must be dealt with. Theres a particularly famous and talented young man who was also an exile from Anatolia, and it might be expedient to encourage him to form a counter-movement to thwart the nascent EEE. Or perhaps the player wants to see the EEE in government, well, the option to take them into a coalition is certainly available - although the consequences of this course of action will be on your head Once the EEE are out of the way, it will be time to call on the original Treaty of Svres signatories so that a frank discussion on the future of the Turkish state can be had. The end result of a particularly fruitful Heraklion Convention is truly a sight to behold.
    But should the Venezelists fail should their legacy be trashed once again, and their leaders thrown out of office well, that could be a truly dark day for Europe indeed
    Thats all for this week, so thank you for reading! Make sure to stay tuned for another Dev Diary next week!


    [ 2020-09-09 17:51:03 CET ] [ Original post ]

    The results are in! - Community Achievement Contest

    The results of the achievement contest are in!


    Over the last couple of weeks we've been running a contest for the Hearts of Iron community to suggest and vote on a new achievement to be added to the game. Voting has been open for a little over a week, and we had more than 31,000 votes cast on the shortlist of 10 achievement suggestions. Here's the placings from 4th-10th:
    In third place, with 5,506 votes is 'I am the Senate'! The goal here was to achieve 100% support in both the Senate and the House as democratic USA.
    In second place, with 5,765 votes is 'The chad Chad' This achievement required you to take all of Africa as Chad.
    Which means, with 6,343 votes, the winner of the contest is 'Finnish Him!' The challenge here is to conquer all of the Soviet Union as Finland, without joining a faction. We'll be adding this one into the game with our next major update
    As the winning achievement, we'll be adding 'Finnish Him!' into the game with our next major update. Let us know what you think the best strategies will be for accomplishing it!


    [ 2020-07-07 15:45:33 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Cast your vote! - Community Achievement Contest


    Ever wanted to have some input into what we pick as an achievement for Hearts of Iron IV? This is your chance! Over this week we asked for suggestions on social media for new achievements. Having received around 400 submissions, we've distilled these down to a shortlist of just 10. The choice of which one gets added into the game at our next major update is now yours! Click here to cast your vote or read on below to see the details of all the achievements on the shortlist.
    Tordenskjold would be proud: As Denmark or Norway sink the pride of the fleet of a major power
    Quick Revolution: As the Soviet Union, put Trotsky in power and make all major nations communist before 1945
    Better Late Than Never: As Monarchist England, conquer Normandy, Aquitaine, and Paris
    Finnish Him: As Finland, conquer the Soviet Union without joining a faction
    Finding Old Zealand: As New Zealand, conquer Zeeland
    Afri-Khan: Conquer all of Africa as Tannu Tuva or Mongolia
    I am the senate: As Democratic US, have 100% control in the house and senate
    All the Romes under Romania: As Romania, control Rome, Istanbul and Moscow
    The chad Chad: As Chad, conquer all of Africa
    The French Prince of Belair(us): As any Monarchist France, own and control all cores of Belarus You can click here to cast your vote!


    [ 2020-06-26 12:04:23 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Chain of Command: Devs. HOI Community; Live 1800-2000 CEST, 10-12 June


    Chain of Command: Devs vs. the HOI4 Community: 1800-2000 CEST, 10/11/12 June

    Everything you need to know


    Tomorrow at 1800-2000 will be the first session of a special kind of Three Day War: It's the Devs vs. the Hearts of Iron IV community at large, spearheaded by four content creators. Each team will be playing entirely within one nation: Imperial Germany for the Devs, and Democratic Britain for the Community team. We've taken the 'democratic' element literally, electing a Virtual 'House of Commons' from across the HOI community to vote on and discuss the strategy for the UK. Some actions will be decided by what the house wants, not just the four players. Read on below to find out about what the 'Virtual House of Commons' has been up to in preparation for the event. There will be a two-hour session of the event streamed each day from June 10th - June 12, live over on our Twitch channel. https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive

    Make sure you sent a reminder on the right of this page so you don't miss any of the action!



    The Developer team is led by Kaiser Bratyn; he and his three supporting characters will be out to stop the community team in their tracks.
    Playing the game for the HOI Community team is Taureor, Feedback Gaming, Mordred Viking, and PrussianPrince. They are supported by the 'Virtual House of Commons'; an assembly of 32 people drawn from Mod communities, content creators and elected from steam and our social channels. They sat for the first time on Sunday, divided quickly into rival parties and began debating. https://twitter.com/HOI_Game/status/1269993038136344579 One of the first actions for the vHoC was to choose one of the content creators to take overall charge and become 'Prime Minister'. In a close fought battle, Taureor was victorious with support from the larger Commonwealth First Party.
    The vHoC has since been busy debating and approving strategy, binding the hands of the players to enact their will. We'll show more of what has been happening at the start of the stream tomorrow.


    [ 2020-06-09 15:35:13 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Results Published! - Virtual Election Day for Devs v. Community Livestream


    Update: The Polls have closed and the results are in!
    We can certify that SwedishKaiser, Dankuser, Spartacus, Coffee Monster, Acy, Matius, Joseph, and Toastyman, are duly elected to serve as Members of (virtual) Parliament for the Steam constituency. Congratulations to the winners and commiserations to those who didn't make it. We will be in touch with the winners shortly to invite them to the Discord. --- Yesterday's Election Details [vote closed] It's election day for the 'virtual House of Commons', as part of our chain-of-command multiplayer event next week! If you missed the information about this event a few days ago, we're having a group of ordinary HOI players from across the community take part in advising and voting on strategy for the community team (made up of YouTubers and Streamers) via Discord. Click here to see full event info Below is the shortlist of candidates from all the applications we got on Steam. You can find a link to vote at the bottom. There will be eight representatives elected from Steam.

    The candidate shortlist and their Election Addresses


    Acy


    Hi, first of all thanks for the event. I am excited to my bones right now. Secondly, the reason i want to participate is simply because i love everything related to ww2 and games, guess what merges both :) . I have bought the game not so long ago ( before that i thought it would be boring, but here we are ), and in a short time period i mastered the art if i dare to say. I have watched almost all of youtube content of hoi4. Another reason for me to participate to this event is feedbackgaming(dave), and taureor. I love the way those guys play and i think i have some ideas or tactics of the game myself. Finally, i am filming some videos in my home language ( i think there is a lack of turkish content ) and will soon post those to youtube.

    Dankuser


    I have 2.3k + hours on HOI4, both in vanilla and just about every mod. Several hundred of those hours have been in competitive MP. I've gotten many (but not all) of the achievements, including Dont Die for Your Country, Last for a Thousand Years, Crusader Kings, Crusader Kings 2, and I Swear Im Not a Byzantophile. So if you need a level 10 field marshall, I'm your guy. Also, always remember that: Giraffes are heartless creatures, and that no enemy bomber can reach the Ruhr.

    Lonewonder


    I would like to take part because i have played this game ALOT and just wish that I could have fun with this and have the best of times for a game that introduce me to paradox games and all the fun that these games have and meet alot of good people through these games. I would be good because through the countless hours i put into this game and many of games of yours and the tactics are good from the beginnings of learning the game to being very good at the game it would just mean alot to do this.

    johnkop4


    Dear Paradox Games and its fans, The upcoming election is an event of great importance. The community has the ability to elect the new prime minister. Instead of giving your vote on the famous plutocratic youtubers who play HOI4 you can invest it on someone like me. A simple man who has gotten tired of the oligarchy that dominates in every election. I'm the voice of the people and will make a better future for all of us.

    Sitarik


    I Sitarik Should be voted for a part in the house of commons due to my extreme lack of intelligence. That was a joke. I should be elected into the house of commons because of my knowledge of democratic Britain and more specifically both the Air and Infantry aspects of it. A big part about being elected is also being respectful which I think is important, while you can disagree, you should not rage about the argument at hand. I Sitarik, should be elected to be apart of the House of commons to help our great leaders determine the best course of action in both assessing and acting on action taken by the imperial German Reich.

    O Sabotador


    I am a hoi4 player that just wants to have fun playing the game and sometimes i like to watch more competitive sessions, i have played this game for 900 hours and is one of my favorite games of all time and for sure the most liked of the strategy genre for me. I am from Brazil and all my kinsmans are germans, including me. I think i could help the community set up a nice and fun game that everyone could watch and Germany has been by far the country i played most so i think i understand and know how a one's game as it goes and the best strategies for one's to take at determined moments. The main reason i want to participate on this is, besides making choices and voting to set up a fun and interesting game for everyone to watch, because i think Hoi4 has been and important part of my life and i am sure that i would contribute to the ""Virtual House of Commons"""

    Fernando Borja


    Hearts of Iron 4 has been probably my favorite game since I bought it, and since the quarantine started here in Mexico I have started to play more of it and the other paradox games and to take part in any thing that paradox organizes would mean the world to me and the fact that its HOI4 would make it that more special. I probably aren't the best candidate as I am sure that so many people with hundreds more hours in this game will apply but I have played many hours of multiplayer (with strangers as none of my friends own this game) and I am kind of a history buff and do know the mechanics well. Thank-you for the consideration, Fernando Borja

    Brexdz


    Hello. I am Brexdz and i would be a good part in this election due to my cooperation. I am taking a law degree and i know a lot about parliament and would like to be on the United Kingdom side please. I am a good leader and i a good listener so i will be good for parliament, thank you for reading. May the odds be with you. Sincerely Brexdz

    Hurtman11


    I would be a good member of the Virtual House of Commons because I am a strong proponent of an aggressive foreign policy. Not only must we be able to gain allies diplomatically but we must also be willing to step up militarily to the growing menace that is Nazi Germany. With me I will vote to never give an inch to Germany and will fight tooth and nail to get an aggressive Prime Minister who will also not give an inch.

    Toastyman


    I have extensive hours playing Hearts of Iron 4, around 1,200 at the time of me writing this. I have earn many of the hardest achievements in the game, with my most recent achievement run being with Great Britain and earning the Imperial Federation achievement. I usually play as either France or Britain so this competition would be right up my knowledge of expertise. I also play almost every other paradox strategy game extensively when I am not playing Hearts of Iron. I have plenty of free time and I will be sure to commit all of it to the cause. Put simply, I've spent way too much time in this game and studying World War 2 in general (21th century history major) to not apply. A vote for me is a vote for victory!

    Pepto


    I see the dark times ahead, Europe will be under fascist domination without my guidance, I will lead us through the great policy of appeasement! We will lead the Germans into a passive state by letting them reunite their lands, and with this, Europe will remain at peace. I am also ready to be a member of the house after my time being the mayor in a small town in northern England, the national government needs my help and my help exclusively.

    NatePlaysVG


    My friends, war is descending upon Europe. With the fascists in Germany and Italy, the communists in Russia, and even the threat of Japan in the east, we need a strong leader who can help us out of these dark times. With your support, I will take part of this Virtual House of Commons, and help give us this leader that I speak of, as well as a representative you can trust who will vote to keep our great nation safe. With 757 hours and growing in HOI4 and many more in other Paradox games (including 867 in EU4), I believe I would be a fine candidate for the job. With my experience in government, now showing to be extensive, I'm sure you can understand how I am very qualified for the position. Some of you may question what my stances are, what policies I will lean towards, or even how aggressive I will be to the fascist or communist threats. In short, I am not a warmonger, but I will not stand down when a threat to our great nation is presented. I will not support the expansion of threats to our nation, but I will do my best to prevent a war if possible. British blood should not be needlessly spilled, but if we allow the threats to our freedom to grow unchecked, we will surely lose more than only blood. My friends, war is descending upon Europe, and only you, with a vote for me, have the chance to stop it.

    Alexander Riches


    With over a thousand hours in Hearts of Iron 4 and complete dedication to the title since I pre-ordered it, I believe I would serve wonderfully in this House of Commons. I know how to play the United Kingdom quite well if I do say so myself and it would be a wonderful opportunity to work alongside those that make the community so great. Vote for me and I will ensure all of my policies reflect a strong and prosperous Empire to withstand the test of time. Much love from the eldest dominion; Canada. I look forward to serving King and Country!

    SojiKat


    I think I would be a good candidate for the House of Commons because I will keep our country steadfast and unrelenting in the fight to come. I would make decisions for the people, and to let people understand that we are not a nation to be fooled with. We must listen to the people, and if we do not listen to the people. We are not a government for the people and it will be changed if need be.

    CloverPercival


    Greetings, I am writing this address as I seek to be elected to the Virtual House of Commons, one of the mains reasons I seek to take part in this election is due to my vast knowledge of the british administration and my ability to apply and assist with my knowledge to the VHoC is immense, I do believe that over everyone else I would be a better option than most due to my past experience and skills with virtual house's of commons and virtual house's of lords and I do believe that I would serve the administration the best with my time in the VHoC. Thank you.

    Coffee Monster


    This will be my first ever time participating in a community event and I would love to join and create an amazing in game story for everyone involved. I, at the moment have 3,585 hours in Hearts of Iron 4 though I have limited multiplayer experience I will do my best to stand for my nations ideals and lead, alongside my peers, our nation to ultimate victory over our foes! (Also, I really like to RP) "My fellow countrymen, I fear that the world is moving toward the edge of a second great war. Though peace is preferable than war, forces outside out control will force us into one, if we don't take action we would risk our annihilation via the means our future foes. If you elect me I, Coffee Monster, shall take every action necessary to prepare our nation for war. I understand it is a harrowing thought, war, every single one of us has lost someone or known someone who has lost a loved one in the Great War, the 'War to End all Wars' they called it. We all know that title is false even after the deaths of tens of millions, even before the ink dried on the Treaty of Versailles, man took up arms against man. Peace is a spectacular thing and I understand that many would like to believe it will continue forever more, but the peace that was won back in Nineteen-Eighteen is a fragile one. Already the cracks are showing. We must prepare for war, for it will come for us weather we like it or not. Vote for me Coffee Monster and I shall fight for you in the House of Commons, I shall fight to protect you from foreign aggression, for through Overwhelming Firepower we shall defeat our foes, we shall drown our enemies in bullets, bombs, and shells. Vote for me and I shall do my best to keep your boy in the field alive, for every one of our men's lives is precious. Vote for Coffee Monster the man who will keep our boys in the front safe!"

    Matius


    I believe in only three things: democracy, myself, and memes. As two of those are already inseparable parts of this event, that being democracy and a liberal sprinkling of memes, I feel that it is my duty to add the third component into the mix. This is why I'm running for a seat in the House of Virtual Commons - because I'm a selfish bastard, but also because I am a man of ideals, ideals that need to be heard. As a citizen of Poland and a low-key Poland main, I do not believe in the common definition of victory. You don't win when you kill your enemy and take their clay. Rather, victory is achieved when you either die with honour, or live long enough to put on a good show. Victory is when you create a fun and memorable game for the other players, or, in the case of a live event, for the audience - You. But that is no easy task. It requires a careful proportion of healthy competitiveness and a strong gentlemanly spirit from all the people involved. A certain degree of seriousness contrasted by pure, undistilled memery. All of those, when balanced correctly, create fun. In moments when that balance is threatened as a direct cause of tryharding, I elect to make my vote count. Because it is my core belief that nothing, not even the threat of an imminent Sealion, is an excuse for foregoing fun, honour, and the spirit of the good show. And also memes. 'Tis the DNA of the soul, after all.

    HOLC2000


    The only things I have to offer are blood, tears, sweat, and toil. I can help with all I can in this crucial moment, I will give my all and if that's not enough then I will give even more. We have all the odds against us, we are against the code masters, the people that have built this world, but fear not because we will fight them in France, we will fight them in north Africa, in the Atlantic and we will fight them right where it hits them the most. We must win so that we can finally prove to them who the real masters of this game are, the gods who built this world or the people who live every day in it. WHO IS WITH ME?

    Fisto_16


    Hoi 4 is my favourite pc game and I really like this idea about chain of command and that is why I would like to participate.I have spend over 1,200 hours playing this game so I think I could be helpful to the community and to the Virtual House of Commons. I hope we will all have fun watching or participating.

    Joseph


    I have ~1,300 hours on HOI4. I've played multiplayer and singleplayer continually since the original release. I know how minor nations mechanics work, and I've played every single minor nation in the game, and know how they can be advantageous to a player. I also know most of the functions of naval combat after Man the Guns DLC, and would love the give the community an edge when defeating the Devs. I haven't been on multiplayer for a while. However, I have always kept up with news regarding the game and players who discover new exploits/meta tactics. I may not be the best player, but I know some things about multiplayer that may be able to help the community destroy the Devs. I hope I am elected to help our HOI4 community, or atleast to watch in the end. Good luck to everyone, and thank you for considering me.

    BassBoostedEgo


    I would love the opportunity to serve the HOI Community as it would prove to be a politically intriguing experience. I believe that I would be experienced and balanced in my approach to working with other Virtual Members of Parliament in the struggle globally due to my lengthy gameplay of HOI 4 (over 300 hours), and a wider understanding of military and political conflict. I know that as a community we can achieve significant success and I would be a willing and able candidate to do so.

    DanielOrr


    I wish to take part as a member of the House of Commons to aid the United Kingdom in its role as the global peacekeeper and defender of nations which cannot defend themselves against those who would see them conquered. I have studied naval gunnery and tactical history in-depth and promote that in order for the UK to keep her place in the sun, we must grasp new naval technologies fully and prepare, that no cost is too great to defend the world from Tyranny.

    Potato


    Ladies and Gentlemen of this green and pleasant land, I come before you today to humbly ask for your support in the forthcoming election to such a Great British institution that is the House of Commons. With the mandate you give me I will be sure to lend my wisdom and support in this most trying time to His Majesty's Government so that we might all prevail against the dastardly Hun. Once again the Kaiser has brought misery to the continent and as upstanding citizens of the British Empire it is our duty to ensure that all German ambitions above their station are curtailed, a resurgent Germany is a threat that cannot be ignored. If you elect me I will advocate for an aggressive policy of containment that leaves no cards off the table when it comes to dealing with the German threat. A vote for me is a vote for the Empire and lasting British security. God Save the King!

    SimplyJohn


    I have good experience whit Hearts of Iron, having played it for now over 2100 hours, I have a strong will to lead our team and our country to victory against the Germans and to be a contributor towards a standing democracy in the face of the upcoming world war, I will help guide our brave generals towards a better future for Britain, democracy, and a better world. Vote now, you wont regret it.

    Revilo_333


    Hello good people at paradox ! I would absolutely love to take part in the Virtual House of Commons because Hearts of iron IV is by far my favourite game to play. I'm always looking for more ways to have fun with the game and this seems like a brilliant opportunity to do so. As for my 'qualifications' It's easily my most played game with over 1830 fun filled hours spent blitzing through Belgium and ambling across Africa. I have also just completed a historical campaign as Britain so should to be well suited to the task. I'm a rational thinker but not averse to pulling of a risky encirclement. Thanks for reading my address, Looking forward to smashing the Kaiser and his chums.

    Spartacus


    My fellow citizens, in front of us are dire times that will require a lot of sacrifices and tough decisions so we must choose the people that can make us emerge victorious. I am bringing my name to the ballots because I believe I am one of those people. I believe in this nation and I believe that the people understand the need for strong leadership. So I assure you that my stance against the fascists will be tough. NO APPEASEMENT! NO SURRENDER! Vote for a better future! Vote for Spartacus!

    SwedishKaiser


    I have over 10k hours on HOI4.

    doughnuts


    I am seeking your vote to be an MP because I want to represent you, the distinguished and refined public. As a veteran of HoI III and IV I have seen the horrors that can befall people such as you when the nation is run without regard for the baking industry. As a talking pastry I am passionate for ensuring the rights of all forms of breads, cakes, pies and assorted baked goods are protected during times of war. As an MP I will spend every baking hour fighting for your right to take a break from the blood and tears of war and enjoy a nice relaxing glazed doughnut. Vote for me and I will ensure our nation rises to glory like a rustic loaf of sourdough!

    How To Vote


    You can vote for your representative using this google form.


    You can vote for eight candidates, and the eight with the most votes will be elected. Voting will close at 1400 CEST on Saturday 6th June.


    [ 2020-06-05 12:05:47 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Patch 1.9.3 now Live: Balance and Bugfixing


    1.9.3 "Husky" is now live and downloadable through Steam. Checksum is a7a4. We should be compatible with 1.9.2, but if you for some reason want to remain on 1.9.2 or older Here are instructions for reverting to patches since 1.5.4, or special instructions for 1.5.3 and earlier. Please make sure that any mods you are using are updated for 1.9.3, or your game might not run properly (seriously) If you discover any bugs in patch 1.9.3, please report them in the bug report forum as usual. For the ones who were on the beta and experienced performance issues with the latest update, things should be back to normal now. ################################################################ ######## Hotfix 1.9.3 "Husky" ######## ################################################################ ################################## # Balance ################################## - decreased suppression value of SP-Art battalions - decreased suppression value of SP-AA battalions - decreased suppression value of SP-AT battalions - decreased research cost on destroyer hulls - decreased research cost on depth charge technologies - increased research cost on 1940 and 1944 submarine hulls - increased research cost on torpedo module upgrades - decreased research cost of naval munitions upgrades for light and heavy guns - decreased research cost of armor schemes - increased the cost of initial radar tech, lowered cost on all other radar techs - decreased IC cost of all ship heavy batteries - increased damage of all heavy ship batteries - increased piercing of all medium ship batteries - increased damage of all medium ship batteries - Carrier planes no longer take area coverage penalties on their targeted/ground missions - Increased carrier hull surface detection base from 20 to 26 - Added a cooldown timer after naval transfers are engaged at sea and escape to avoid stun-locking issues with many small fleets. The cooldown depends on the screening efficiency of the defenders so a defended convoy will have a longer cooldown the better defended it is - Added an extra speed boost to convoys retreat speed when screened - Effective carrier plane advantage in naval combat now gives penalties to positioning for the other side - Increased air-to-air damage factor in carrier battles from 5 to 6 - increase air attack targeting scoring for carriers to make them more likely targets for other carriers - increased naval hit penalty from 10% to 20% in heavy rain - reduced carrier traffic penalty from 100% to 80% in heavy rain - Reduce heavy gun target signature from 90 to 80 and increased light gun target signature from 40 to 45 to make heavy guns a bit more versatile and light guns a bit slower at picking off screens - Patrol convoy raiding and convoy escort missions now rely on local navy position for air superiority rather than average of air zones to stop high air superiority in a zone from saving the ships from spotting in another. ################################## # Stability & Performance ################################## - Fixed OOS related to asking an operative to resume their mission after the operation they are assigned to completes - Fixed OOS linked to technologies not being properly reset between games - Fixed OOS triggered by a country asking for manpower after a civil war - Prevented crash when trying to respond to faction invite from a faction that no longer exists - fixed a ctd that happens when a non-existing capitulated country checks for uncapitulation ################################## # Modding ################################## - Added play_song and scoped_play_song effects - added on_war_relation_added on action (scope is attacker, from is defender) - Made targeting weights for air-to-ship in naval combat moddable. See NAVAL_COMBAT_AIR_*_TARGET_SCORE defines. ################################## # Bugfix ################################## - Updated the forum link in main menu to match the new forum - Bulgaria will no longer start with Flexible Navy focus completed in 1939


    [ 2020-06-04 08:18:17 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Dev Diary: 4th Anniversary + Patch 1.9.3


    Today's Dev Diary by Podcat Hi everyone! This week is Hearts of Iron IVs 4th anniversary. Ive got some cool data to share with you, new armor and radio packs as well as patch for you to celebrate! All of this releases tomorrow :)

    A Look Back & Cool Numbers


    It's crazy how Hearts of Iron keeps growing. I personally started with playing HOI2, and worked on HOI3 as a coder and game director on HOI4, and while people still call it a niche experience for WW2 buffs, it has also grown to be so much more (or us WW2 nerds are more numerous than we think :D). Around La Rsistance release we clocked a new record on monthly players of 899k (the 1000 of you that didn't log in that month are responsible for my OCD flaring up!). HOI4 is quite unique in how stable the growth is. Most games that aren't multiplayer or the like usually has big dips between releases. I think the two big factors that keeps us so stable is the replayability as well as the amazing mods that keep updating giving people new stuff to play with continuously :) Here is what the curve has looked like over the years:
    I also took a look at country popularity between the last year and the release year. These are the top 10 nations currently with comparison to 2016:
    Most see relative reductions here because we have in general made a lot more nations playable with more focus trees and other improvements (in 2016 Poland had Hungary's spot while now its pushed below both Spain and Hungary). There are a couple of obvious increases who all seem to come from focus tree changes also :)

    Allied Armor Pack


    Tomorrow we also release the followup to last years Axis Armor Pack, this time for the allies. This includes 45 armored vehicles for USA, UK, France and Soviets. On top of this we also add in 32 tanks from the Colonel Edition for those nations also for a total of 77 :) This is one of the reasons that we stopped selling the Colonel Edition last month - it was making it messy to buy cosmetic packs and we didn't want to split stuff up further. To make sure previous colonel edition players don't feel like they get as much, and also because its been such a great year for HOI4, we will be giving the whole pack for free to all those who had the colonel edition. Enjoy! (the observant players may remember that there is some ships in the colonel edition also, people who have that will keep them but they are not included in this armor pack. We will sort those boat boys out in the future). Below are some examples of vehicles included:

    Allied Speeches


    People seemed to like the radio addition last year, but this year we wanted to test something a bit different and more tied to gameplay. We have added 70 minutes of speeches from allied leaders and commanders, set them to music and trigger them based on ingame events. So for example when Japan declares war on USA you will be able to hear Roosevelt deliver his "a date which will live in infamy" speech. Here is a sample using one of Churchill's more famous speeches to give you an feeling for how it will sound: [previewyoutube=YR2c-uRQjmY;full][/previewyoutube] Its a great feeling when they kick in and adds some really nice historical flavor :) Note also that they are playable like any other tracks should you want to.

    1.9.3 Patch


    For this patch we wanted to focus on naval issues and improvements as we didn't touch that very much for La Rsistance. To summarize the most important changes: Naval tech rebalance It's best to check the changelog for details here, but our goal has been to make tech investments into more efficient submarines more expensive and sub countering and investments into capital ships cheaper. Convoys and stun-locking A very annoying strategy in multiple and sometimes in SP has been being able to essentially stun lock an enemies transports of troops in place at sea by lots of small naval engagements with submarines. Even if well screened they still need to wait to retreat and then would get caught again and again, sometimes taking months to get across the atlantic. To deal with this we have increased the retreat speed bonuses from being well screened and also implemented a cooldown system. This system will give transports a cooldown after being caught where they can not be re-spotted again. The length of it depends on the length of their path as well as how well screened they are. For an unscreened vessel they will be caught pretty quickly in more interceptions while a properly screened one can continue on until the invasion beach if its not too far. Carriers and other naval changes Carriers in the pacific really struggle with the large air zones and the weather penalties. It didn't make sense to us to apply the area size penalties to a mobile base with so few planes, so now any mission targeting a specific location (port strike, CAS etc) for planes stationed on a carrier will not have this penalty. On top of this it didn't make sense to have carriers planes suffer a 100% penalty from bad weather when land based ones had a much smaller one. While I doubt any planes could take off during a really bad storm, it makes little sense when we only really have one level of weather here to make it so brutal, so this penalty has been reduced to 80%. We also felt that if the weather is truly this bad guns really should be struggling more than they do as well as doubled that penalty to 20% to close the gap. Carriers now also help the fleet overall. The side with the carrier plane advantage in the battle will penalize positioning of the other side, similar a bit in spirit to the effects of air superiority on land. We also made light guns a bit worse and buffed targeting and power of bigger guns to try and strengthen mixed fleets. We have also increased the base detection abilities of carriers a bit to better model how important they were for spotting enemies at sea. Another thing of note is that we have fixed an annoying interaction between air superiority and naval spotting. Because air superiority applies on average on the zones a task force was operating you could shield them with planes in a zone they were not even in, which might be somewhere your enemy couldn't even reach and contest. Now it will be looking at the specific area they are in instead. Out Of Syncs Telemetry was telling us that the vast majority of out of syncs were happening in the first half of 1936, and for weeks we simply could not reproduce this inhouse, but recently we had a breakthrough. We found some data related to technologies that was not properly reset when entering a new game and this is hopefully the core reason for this. We will be looking at telemetry data to hopefully see the OOS frequency take a nose dive, because this stuff is truly hard for us to test fully ourselves, but we are optimistic! Full Patch Notes: ################################################################ ######## Hotfix 1.9.3 "Husky" ######## ################################################################ ################################## # Balance ################################## - decreased suppression value of SP-Art battalions - decreased suppression value of SP-AA battalions - decreased suppression value of SP-AT battalions - decreased research cost on destroyer hulls - decreased research cost on depth charge technologies - increased research cost on 1940 and 1944 submarine hulls - increased research cost on torpedo module upgrades - decreased research cost of naval munitions upgrades for light and heavy guns - decreased research cost of armor schemes - increased the cost of initial radar tech, lowered cost on all other radar techs - decreased IC cost of all ship heavy batteries - increased damage of all heavy ship batteries - increased piercing of all medium ship batteries - increased damage of all medium ship batteries - Carrier planes no longer take area coverage penalties on their targeted/ground missions - Increased carrier hull surface detection base from 20 to 26 - Added a cooldown timer after naval transfers are engaged at sea and escape to avoid stun-locking issues with many small fleets. The cooldown depends on the screening efficiency of the defenders so a defended convoy will have a longer cooldown the better defended it is - Added an extra speed boost to convoys retreat speed when screened - Effective carrier plane advantage in naval combat now gives penalties to positioning for the other side - Increased air-to-air damage factor in carrier battles from 5 to 6 - increase air attack targeting scoring for carriers to make them more likely targets for other carriers - increased naval hit penalty from 10% to 20% in heavy rain - reduced carrier traffic penalty from 100% to 80% in heavy rain - Reduce heavy gun target signature from 90 to 80 and increased light gun target signature from 40 to 45 to make heavy guns a bit more versatile and light guns a bit slower at picking off screens - Patrol convoy raiding and convoy escort missions now rely on local navy position for air superiority rather than average of air zones to stop high air superiority in a zone from saving the ships from spotting in another. ################################## # Stability & Performance ################################## - Fixed OOS related to asking an operative to resume their mission after the operation they are assigned to completes - Fixed OOS linked to technologies not being properly reset between games - Fixed OOS triggered by a country asking for manpower after a civil war - Prevented crash when trying to respond to faction invite from a faction that no longer exists - fixed a ctd that happens when a non-existing capitulated country checks for uncapitulation ################################## # Modding ################################## - Added play_song and scoped_play_song effects - added on_war_relation_added on action (scope is attacker, from is defender) - Made targeting weights for air-to-ship in naval combat moddable. See NAVAL_COMBAT_AIR_*_TARGET_SCORE defines. ################################## # Bugfix ################################## - Updated the forum link in main menu to match the new forum - Bulgaria will no longer start with Flexible Navy focus completed in 1939

    So what are we up to now?


    We have been wanting to shorten the time between content update for a while and are going to take a serious stab at it now. That means that we are currently working on two things at once in parallel actually. In the pipe we have 1.10 Collie as well as 1.11 Barbarossa. That's about as much information as I can give you right now. We are not yet ready to start dev diaries on Collie but look forward to it some time after summer vacation. We have some massively awesome stuff planned and I think you are all gonna like it (if people wanna see the roadmap, it was last updated in this dev diary). As part of the anniversary we are also doing a really cool new take on the 3-day war stream with influencers vs devs and... democracy?
    Check out full event details here!


    [ 2020-06-03 09:33:52 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Your Team Needs You! - Devs vs. Hearts of Iron Community Livestream


    Chain of Command Multiplayer - Developers vs. The Hearts of Iron Community It's Hearts of Iron IV's 4th anniversary on June 6th, and to celebrate we're holding a multiplayer event for the ages. From June 10-12 a team of four heroic content creators, backed by the wider Hearts of Iron community, will do battle with a team of four of the most dastardly devs around. For the first time in an official multiplayer event, you can participate, helping to shape the community teams strategy and choosing its leader. Read on to find out how. It's going to be a chain-of-command stream, meaning that all each team will be playing one nation; Democratic UK for the Community team, and Imperial Germany for the Devs.

    The Developers won't just be playing against the four players controlling Britain, but also a 'Virtual House of Commons' made up of ordinary Hearts of Iron players from all kinds of different communities. The Virtual House of Commons will, via Discord, choose which of the four players will become 'Prime Minister', discuss and vote on strategy, war declarations and other major decisions, and if they are unhappy with how the game goes... vote to sack the Prime Minister and appoint another. How You Can Take Part In order to take part in the Virtual House of Commons, you'll need to be either be nominated by one of the participating Hearts of Iron Communities, or win election on Hearts of Iron's official communities, like Facebook, Twitter, the Paradox Forums and here on Steam. If you would like to be a part of this, you can nominate yourself using this form: https://pdxint.at/2XTSLxr You'll be asked to write a little bit about your prowess at HOI and how you'd be good if chosen, and then we will create a shortlist of candidates from the entries to be voted on by the Hearts of Iron community on Steam. The election will take place on June 5th 2020, for 24 hours. We'll do another Steam post with a voting link then. If elected, you'll be able to join a Discord server and take part in votes and discussions from Sunday 7th June, through to the end of the event on Thursday 12th June. We don't anticipate this will take up a lot of time, but obviously that depends on what the house wants to discuss and vote on! Good luck if you choose to stand!


    [ 2020-06-02 14:02:02 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Live Stream: A Beginner Learns HOI


    Join Fiona and Daniel once again at 14:00 CEST for the penultimate episode of our tutorial stream series. Tune in over on twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive


    [ 2020-05-06 11:33:20 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Patch 1.9.2: Bugfixes and Balance


    1.9.2 "Husky" is now live and downloadable through Steam. Checksum is a73d. We should be compatible with 1.9.1, but if you for some reason want to remain on 1.9.1 or older Here are instructions for reverting to patches since 1.5.4, or [url=https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/changes-to-playing-previous-versions-of-pds-titles.1120883/]special instructions for 1.5.3 and earlier. Please make sure that any mods you are using are updated for 1.9.2, or your game might not run properly (seriously) If you discover any bugs in patch 1.9.2, please report them in the bug report forum as usual. For the ones who were on the beta and experienced performance issues with the latest update, things should be back to normal now. ############################################################### ######## Hotfix 1.9.2 "Husky" ######## ################################################################ ################################## # Bugfix ################################## - The Bell Tolls for Us achievement should now trigger when winning the civil war. - the bonuses for collaboration governments are no longer reversed so the special outcome ends up worse, also adjusted levels according to actual old default - both outcomes on civilian tech stealing no longer gives max bonus - Our Chief Weapon is Surprise will no longer check how many operatives you have and will correctly only check if you have done 5 coups. - fixed an issue where the British Raj could end up with no recruitable manpower if they went down the swaraj focus path (TfV only) - Countries should no longer leave the Latin Bloc formed by Spain after a day - fixed an issue with Carlist spain losing its 3d models after reinstating the monarchy - fixed an issue with the Spanish unique 3d tank model not appearing correctly - fixed some issues with coordinated strike that was making them with naval bombings - Fix AI constantly cancelling sending expeditionary units for a player and ai - Fixed issue with cores and resistance during and after SCW. - Korea should now correctly be released if Manchukuo breaks free from japan and forces a peace settlement with them - fixed an issue with army training xp generation - Fixed operative resuming their mission after an operation being able to run their mission in a quiet network - it is now possible to recruit local agents in countries occupied by a third party - Tech stealing can no longer unlock mutually exclusive techs and will let you unlock techs with less than 50% progress on them directly also - Hinder NKVD Interference focus will be canceled if The Stalinist Doctrine is completed, fixing an edge case where player could unlock both sub-branches. - Soviet now retains the old behaviour of sending volunteers to spain - Fix end of civil war events no longer firing (initially reported on German Civil war) - Tech stealing text now matches what you always get rather than sometimes being random - Fixed an issue with the Iberian union not getting the correct 3d model ################################## # Balance ################################## - added mil factory to china that was incorrectly set up in 1.9.1 - capture cypher operation now gives between 30-50% decrypt and requires a bit lower network. - Lowered operation duration for infiltrate Army/Navy/Air from 90 to 75 - Lowered boost resistance operation duration to 50 days from 60 - Lowered duration on targetted sabotage from 120 to 90 days - sabotage operation now also increases damage done rather than just aiding in targetting - lowered chance for agent capture and increased chance for harm and hiding to reduce the amount of rescue missions needed - reduced cost increase for repeating tech steal operation from a target - reduced cost increase for repeating sabotage operation on a target - Increased weights for equipment unlocks a bit from tech stealing operation - Carrier planes no longer suffer the range coverage penalty during coordinated strikes - Spain will not get resistance from the states until the SCW is completely over, meaning that the second uprising has been triggered/avoided. This is also applied if a Spanish faction defeats the other Spanish tags before her second uprising happens, since the SCW will not end until the second uprising has been dealt with. - if France backs down during the Sudeten Crisis, French guarantees on Yugoslavia will also be removed (no one believes you anymore France) - French guarantees on Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia are now cancelled if France goes with Britain ################################## # AI ################################## - AI japan will no longer make Marianas a collaboration regime, similarly with Czechoslovakia which is a bit too complex to represent well with the AI here - AI Spanish Factions will now surrender if they do not control any state in the Iberian Peninsula, but own other territories outside of it (preventing the player from needing to execute naval invasions to win the SCW) ################################## # UI ################################## - The coordinated strike operation now has proper effect descriptions explaining what it does - removed a unlocalized debug tooltip when planning operations ################################## # Database ################################## - Removed tooltip in News Events showing up after defeating the other faction/s in the SCW before the second uprising. Added tooltip in News Events showing up after actually wining the SCW. - Fixed an issue where, under specific circumstances in some edge cases, Gibraltar cores/claims could be lost. ################################## # Stability & Performance ################################## - Fixed OOS related to different language settings between the host and client - Fixed OOS due to differing ship name in combat result - Fixed OOS when joining a MP that has not LaR with a client that has LaR enable while comming back from a game with active operatives - Added basic land and naval combat details to hourly OOS checks - Fixed save game formatting of AI strategies for managing production of army roles, to use text instead of unstable numeric IDs - Enabled the abort on map error for when game files are modified in the installation directory - Fixed CTD when showing the leaderboard before going back to the main menu - Fix a CTD on related to clearing strategic air data and processing air activity - Fixed OOS caused by a client that has been kicked from or lost connection to their last game when the client has different DLC settings than the new host - Reduced the hourly tick cost of checking for out-of-syncs by calculating checksum only for existing countries, and only for technologies actively being researched. - Fixed a crash that could happen when assigning operative to an operation - Fixed OOS in naval combat when convoys are sunk in a MP with at least one client using a different language than the host - Fixed OOS when a player asks an AI for a lend lease - Fixed OOS caused by differing name of the airbase airwings participating in naval combat are coming from when a client has a different language setting than the host


    [ 2020-05-06 08:19:19 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Dev Diary 1.9.2 Beta + The Future


    Hi everyone I hope you are enjoying 1.9.1 and La Resistance. Today will be a smaller diary to let you know that we are putting out a beta for 1.9.2, and also to fill you in on what the plan is now moving forward into next expansion work. 1.9.2 Beta Since we came back from easter we have been working hard on nailing down some stubborn out of sync bugs. Some of those still elude us so the quest continues but we have also gotten some other things dealt with. 1.9.2 Changelog (so far!) ################################## # Balance ################################## - added mil factory to china that was incorrectly set up in 1.9.1 ################################## # Bugfix ################################## - Soviet now retains the old behaviour of sending volunteers to spain - Fix end of civil war events no longer firing (initially reported on German Civil war) ################################## # Stability & Performance ################################## - Fixed OOS related to different language settings between the host and client - Fixed OOS due to differing ship name in combat result - Fixed OOS when joining a MP that has not LaR with a client that has LaR enable while comming back from a game with active operatives - Added basic land and naval combat details to hourly OOS checks - Fixed save game formatting of AI strategies for managing production of army roles, to use text instead of unstable numeric IDs - Enabled the abort on map error for when game files are modified in the installation directory - Fixed CTD when showing the leaderboard before going back to the main menu - Fix a CTD on related to clearing strategic air data and processing air activity The beta patch thread is over here and includes info on how to opt into it :) We have no release date on this yet, but its not planned to be a giant mega patch like 1.9.1. The goal is to deal with the OOS issues and mop up anything major we missed. Future Working from home during the corona pandemic has started to feel more and more normal for us although I really miss hanging out with co-workers at the pub or the like. We are very fortunate to be able to work on at home and not be impacted as heavily as other companies. Paradox has also been super supportive and sending us dinners from local restaurants (gotta make sure they are still there when we go back to work!) and the like. As for development we are still fixing some stuff but the team is transitioning over to working on the next expansion now. That means that this will be the last dev diary for a while. We will let you know when they kick off again when we know :) If you want to follow work on 1.9.2 keep an eye on the beta thread. That said expect to hear from us from time to time during the work period :). Stay safe inside your panzers everyone!


    [ 2020-04-15 11:01:33 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Live: An Absolute Beginner Learns Hearts of Iron


    In this week's 'World War Work From Home', our tutorial streams enter their third week. If you're new to the game or can't wrap your head around a certain mechanic, then this might be the stream for you! Tune in at 14:00 CEST at: https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive


    [ 2020-04-15 10:56:52 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Dev Diary: 1.9.1 Patch + Roadmap Update

    Today's Development Diary by Podcat
    Hi everyone and surprise! We just released 1.9.1 to make sure you guys get all the fixes by easter. We are currently investigating some out of sync MP issues that are proven to be incredibly stubborn to nail down, so a 1.9.2 is planned after 1.9.1 to address that. Otherwise 1.9.1 has shaped up to be one of the bigger patches we have done with tons of fixes and I want to thank everyone who has helped out by reporting bugs and testing the open beta. Today I also want to share another update to the roadmap like we usually do to the end of a patch cycle. Its both grown in some entries as well as had a couple checked off as of La Resistance. 1.9.1 Patch
    This weeks update to the patch is a mix of bugfixes and balance. We noticed that after fixing various ai problems and tweaking balance that Germany and Japan was performing way too good again, so we've tightened up effects from resistance in occupation a bit more compared to last week and given china and soviets some more factories as well as made soviet build a better air force to meet the german air power. This should push back the war winning point further again and give a more average breakdown between soviet&german european victories. With this we think its good to go so you guys can play with all these fixes over easter. For those who have been following every week, these are the changes since last beta update: ################################## # Balance ################################## - Medium Aircraft Designers now affect scout planes - Added 4 civ factories to USSR - added 1 mil and 2 civ factory to china - changed one civ to 1 mil for PRC - increased manpower damage from resistance from 1.5% to 1.8% - reduced compliance gain a little bit ################################## # AI ################################## - soviet will now build less naval bombers and a bit more fighters ################################## # Bugfix ################################## - Fixed issue with Spanish cores at the end of the SCW. Now the SCW winner will get resistance in the initial states of the "major" (SPD/SPA) Spanish enemy, until they get cored via decisions. - Fixed annexation effects not being triggered after defeating non-anarchist Portugal. - French Coup operations should now correctly display their potential outcomes - fixed air mission icons in intel ledger air map mode having wrong frame - Fixed a typo in Belarusian spelling and cleaned up spacing. - The Chinese "Communist threat defeated" event is now suppressed after firing once until a new Communist infiltration is detected (WtT only) - fixed remove_unit_leader effect not working correctly in some cases - Fixed "Expand Garrison Control in Burgos" decision not increasing garrison control for the Republicans - Fix instigate workers revolution britain not working properly - fixed arguments not being passed to effects when using the effect console command ################################## # Stability & Performance ################################## - Fixed CTD on Windows caused by the assumption of the presence of the popcnt instruction - Fixed a CTD caused by missing pie chart UI element in the diplomacy view - Fixed CTD while loading a save game for some mods ################################## # UI ################################## - Specified Cyrillic script fallback fonts for an old fonts used in a limited number of places, most notably the Autosaving message. - Fixed untranslated OK and CANCEL buttons in various confirmation dialogs. ################################## # Modding ################################## - added MAX_NUMBER_OF_TEXTURES define which can be increased for mods that had more than previously hardcoded 10k texture limit ################################## # Database ################################## - Improved French intervention in SCW so that now France, if fighting in the SCW, will be at war with any new Spanish tag spawned. - Any Spanish tag revived by a foreign ally will now declare war on any foreign country allied to any other Spanish tag. - Chinese decision to move the capital to Beijing/Nanjing will no longer be available for subjects. This change fixes the issue with Portuguese China moving their capital and making the achievement "Go ahead, Macau my Day" impossible to complete. - Pierre Laval now starts out as the French starting leader - Prevented Monarchist France from being able to join the Spanish Civil War on the Anarchist side. - Portuguese "Volunteers in the War" National Spirits will be removed when the SCW is over - Added advisor portrait for Agustin Munoz Grandes To view the full patchnotes for 1.9.1, click here

    The five year plan


    As I said last time we did this, its not actually a five year plan, but I want to share with you some form of roadmap on what to expect in the future as well as follow up what we have been up to. The list below has been posted before and added to, and stuff that is crossed off we now consider handled (although we might of course return to some items again). Just to be super clear, this is not any form of exhaustive or final list and unless we have already done it we can't promise anythings. Priorities change etc. The point of this is to give you an idea of things we would like to do. The order of things is also not in any kind of priority order, or order we would do them.
      [strike]
    • Improve flavor and immersion with naming of things in the game. No more Infantry Division Type 1 etc.
    • A Chain of Command system allowing field marshals to command generals
    • Every starting nation has a custom portrait for historical leaders
    • A way for players to take dynamic decisions, quickly. Something that fits between events and national focuses.
    • Changing National Unity to something that matters during most of the game rather than when you are losing only
    • Rework how wars work with respect to merging etc as its a big source of problems
    • Add the ability to clean up your equipment stockpile from old stuff
    • Allow greater access to resources through improving infrastructure
    • More player control over naval warfare and fleet battle behaviour
    • Improved naval combat
    • Improve balance, feedback and mechanics for submarine warfare
    • Properly represent fuel in some way in the game
    • More player control over rules. HOI is played in many different ways and say competitive MP and single player rulesets often clash
    • A more robust and expansive mapmode system. Having a player mapmode in MP would be helpful etc
    • Spies and espionage
    • An occupation system that isnt tied only to wars and where core vs non-core isn't so binary for access to things.[/strike]
    • Improvements to frontline stability
    • A logistics system with more actual player involvement (now you only care once stuff has gone very badly)
    • Long term goals and strategies to guide ai rather than random vs historical focus lists, visible to players
    • Improving peace conferences
    • Update core national focus trees with alt-history paths and more options ([strike]Germany[/strike], Italy, [strike]USA, United Kingdom[/strike], Soviet, [strike]France, Japan[/strike], Poland)
    • Wunderwaffen projects
    • More differences between sub-ideologies and government forms
    • More National Focus trees. (Among most interesting: China, South America, Scandinavia, Spain, Turkey, Iran, Greece)
    • Make defensive warfare more fun
    • Adding mechanics to limit the size of your standing army, particularly post-war etc
    • Have doctrines more strongly affect division designing to get away from cookie cutter solutions and too ahistorical gamey setups
    • More usage of drag and drop and QoL like this. For example controlling template lists.
    • Rebalance ministers and ideas to give more interesting choices.
    • Improve weather mechanics
    • Strategic and tactical AI improvements
    (bold ones were added this update. Striked out ones are done) You'll notice that some of these are small and some of them are huge. I can't really talk too much details about this stuff though. That is stuff we will do once/if it makes it to dev diaries with feature highlights and has been implemented. Now is also a good time to get your friends into HOI4 as Daniel is doing a learn to play stream (part 2) at 14:00 CEST here. See you all next week!


    [ 2020-04-08 13:35:24 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Patch 1.9.1: New Releasables, Art, Balance Tweaks and More!


    It's Patch time! Over the last few weeks we've been running an extensive Beta patch to add some extra content as well as balance and bugfix changes introduced in 1.9. 1.9.1 "Husky" is now live and downloadable through Steam, with a slew of fixes and improvements to 1.9.1. Checksum is 6d23. We should be compatible with 1.9.0, but if you for some reason want to remain on 1.9.0 or older Here are instructions for reverting to patches since 1.5.4. Please make sure that any mods you are using are updated for 1.9.1, or your game might not run properly (seriously) If you discover any bugs in patch 1.9.1, please report them in the bug report forum as usual. The full patchlog is too long to copy into steam, so to see its entirety, click here


    [ 2020-04-08 12:21:06 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Live: An Absolute Beginner Learns Hearts of Iron


    In this week's 'World War Work From Home', we're continuing our tutorial series which began last week. We'll be covering all the basics, including national focuses, research choices, template and ship designs, and much more. We'll be running this tutorial for a few weeks to make sure we can fit all the important bits in. If you're new to the game or can't wrap your head around a certain mechanic, then this might be the stream for you! Tune in at 14:00 CEST at: https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive


    [ 2020-04-08 11:57:26 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Dev Diary: Beta Patch Update 4

    Today's Development Diary by Podcat
    Hi guys, another week another patch update. We are now focusing on stabilizing it and preparing it for release once its gone through testing. A cool thing we have added this week is new 3d models for Spain and Portugal. All the different civil war sides in Spain now look different. Here is a fancy render of what they look like in detail:
    (pardon the german guns for the renders tho ;D) Check out the changelog since last week: ################################## # Balance ################################## - neutral government can do collaborations now - If Britain or France decide to abandon Czechoslovakia or Yugoslavia in their respective event chains, any guarantees they have made to those countries are revoked ################################## # Bugfix ################################## - fixed civil war flags not being cleared when country is annexed by an effect and causing script issues - fixed some occupation modifiers wrongly being applied after loading a save game - impassable terrains no longer has resistance - fixed some issues with resources that was causing inconsistencies with the last added resource type - "Give up Baleares" and "Refuse to Give up Baleares" events are now fired to Italy instead of Spain. - fixed china uprising decision not working in some cases - France should no longer abandon all bonds of fellowship by leaving their faction if they decide to support the Czechs together with Britain, because IT IS NOT THIS DAY - The EU should now correctly gain cores on Belgium and the Netherlands, Byzanthium and Imperium Romanum now also both gain cores on new states that were previously missing - Airwing duplication now also copies missions as well as the "auto turn off" training setting - fixed some bugs that was changing resistance country (by cancelling and recreating resistance) not working - Evade Blockade decisions will now be properly removed after a country capitulates. - Germany and Soviet air volunteers can fight each other in the civil war - Fix a case where carrier combat disruption was not working - Gibraltar will not generate resistance to any Spanish nation if it is transferred during the SCW. ################################## # Stability & Performance ################################## - fixed a bug that was leaking memory in decision scripted guis - fixed a ctd that happens when you have invalid color characters - fixed a ctd that can happen when loading a save that has gie with units in naval transfer - fixed a crash that happens when saving when a border war ordergroup is invalid - fixed a ctd that happens during peace conf when the game tries getting tooltip for a deleted action ################################## # UI & Graphics ################################## - Added text-to-speech (Win/Mac) and speech-to-text (Win) to the multiplayer chat - Added large font support and visual message notification to the multiplayer chat - Added new 3D models for the various Spanish sides and Portuguese units in La Rsistance - Fixed overflow of resource icons in the state view - added 'lack of fuel' icon for combat view for the divisions that are lacking fuel ################################## # AI ################################## - Soviets are discouraged from sending volunteers to western Europe - neutral ai countries won't create collaborations unless it is past 1944 and they are at peace - ai will not create single state collaborations - The US should now declare war on Vichy france closer to the historical date - ITA now no longer invades NOR until FRA falls ################################## # Modding ################################## - added army_ledger navy_ledger air_ledger civilian_ledger tokens for parent_window_token scripted gui entries - added state modifiers for building & repair speed for specific building types (example state_production_speed_infrastructure_factor state_repair_speed_infrastructure_factor) - added is_impassable trigger - added support for highlight_state_targets for decisions which is a script target that can be used for highlighting states. should give improved performance if used instead of highlight_states - decision scripted guis now supports dirty var as well. - event effects now accepts variables as its duration entries - Enabled 3D mesh lookup based on a country's cosmetic tag before checking its true tag. ################################## # Database ################################## - fixed an issue where France would start out with too low war support if Man The Guns was not active - Vichy France is now informed if any colonial territories are taken over by Free France - Several new Spanish advisors are now at the service of the different Spanish factions. POUM will also receive a field marshal and two generals upon completion of Masters of Our Own Fate focus. - Brazilian Fascist party will become an Anti-Monarchist Coalition when Portugal completes the focus Monarchist Uprising in Brazil. - Added general Jose Asensio Torrado to the Spanish roster, so he can finally show up his cool portrait. - Fixed missing portrait for Spanish general in vanilla. - Fixed unlocalized option in one of the Spanish civil war news events. - Spanish Election of 1936 events will now get the current Spanish leader, Niceto Alcala-Zamora. - Updated BLR division names to use Belarusian instead of Russian. - Added in decision category art for generic formable nations. - The UK will now prioritize giving Gibraltar, if possible, to SPD, then SPA, then SPB and, only if no other Spanish tag exists, to SPC when they complete "Withdraw from Contested Territories" focus. ################################## # Audio ################################## - Fix sound effect for light armour fire. Now it has more DAKKA If you want to see past changes and full changelog, check out the Beta Patch thread here as well as info on how to start playing on it. To highlight some changes: We have restricted collaboration regimes further for AI, but opened it up more for players and fixed various issues with guarantee and event chains. We have also added support for accessibility features in multiplayer, like increased font sizes, notifications and text to speech support:
    See you next week where I plan to do a bit of a roadmap update!


    [ 2020-04-01 13:29:48 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Paradox COVID-19 Response Fundraiser featuring Hearts of Iron IV


    Paradox COVID-19 Response Fundraiser In order to support the global response to COVID-19, Hearts of Iron is taking part in a fundraising sale on Steam, with deep discounts on Hearts of Iron IV alongside other Paradox titles. All proceeds from the promotion are being donated to the COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund for WHO. https://store.steampowered.com/app/394360/Hearts_of_Iron_IV/ As well as Hearts of Iron IV, there are also discounts on Surviving Mars, Cities Skylines, Age of Wonders Planetfall, BATTLETECH, Shadowrun, Tyranny, Pillars of Eternity, and Knights of Pen and Paper 2. You can click through to see the full list of discounts with this link: https://store.steampowered.com/publisher/paradoxinteractive/list/58320
    The sale will last four days, from 19:00 CEST on March 31st, to 19:00 CEST on April 3rd.


    [ 2020-03-31 17:31:48 CET ] [ Original post ]

    An Absolute Beginner Learns Hearts of Iron IV [14:00 CEST, 1st April]


    In this week's 'World War Work From Home', our resident Hearts of Iron IV expert Da9L will be starting teaching the game to an absolute beginner. We'll be covering all the basics, including national focuses, research choices, template and ship designs, and much more. We'll be running this tutorial for a few weeks to make sure we can fit all the important bits in. If you're new to the game or can't wrap your head around a certain mechanic, then this might be the stream for you! Tune in at 14:00 CEST on April 1st at: https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive


    [ 2020-03-31 14:35:13 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Dev Diary: Beta Patch 3

    [url=https://pdxint.at/33J5cPa ]Today's Development Diary by Podcat
    Hi everyone! We are still in quarantine at home working on the patch, so time for another update! Its a meaty chunk of balance fixes, bugfixes and mod support. Also there are some special highlights after I recommend to read up on as we are looking for feedback there. So, without further ado... ################################## # Balance ################################## - operations will now higher cost as you execute same operation on same targets (default is 15%. rescue operation is still 0%. Some exceptions are 25%) - neutral countries no longer allowed to create collaborations - compliance is now halved (instead of factored by 75%) when a state controller is changed - destroying the counter-revolution now prevents France from descending into another civil war against the fascists from low stability again - Danzig and Memel are no longer required for forming Poland-Lithuania - Memel is no longer required for forming the United Baltic States - Political violence can no longer return to France if France has capitulated - unprepared offensive modifier in SCW now also affect CAS impacts - Decrease Base manpower lost in resistance attack to 1.5% from 2.5% - Along with Niceto Alcal-Zamora as a leader, the Republicans will now, after the 1936 elections, receive a National Spirit reducing their political power income. Along with Zamora's trait and various tweaks and adjustments made to the political power gained through events and Republican focuses, this should make the flow of Garrison Control fighting before the SCW much more natural. Now, Nationalists get an initial advantage and a 'head start', but if the Republicans correctly focus on delaying the civil war initially, they will be rewarded and eventually be able to take more states back from the Nationalists than if they focus on taking states from the very start. Delaying the civil war should therefore be more enticing as a strategy. - Increased tech stealing bonuses to 300% from 200% - Increased tech stealing extra bonus outcomes to also give either 1 or 2 year ahead of time bonuses also - Tech stealing can now unlock techs, uses weights on tech picking to prefer more up to date and equipment for a more rewarding bonus ################################## # Stability & Performance ################################## - Fixed CTD on Windows related to flag atlas texture update - Fix performance issue when creating dynamic tags from targeted decisions. ################################## # UI ################################## - French Focuses bypassed by not having an inefficient economy now correctly display that fact - fixed is_on_continent trigger tooltip being reversed - Fix units when retreating towards a tile while in multiple combats has a wrong arrow visually - Clear all province colors when switching to root out resistance map mode - Unified achievements tooltips during game setup and in-game so that the in-game button shows the same details as game setup. - Corrected achievement UI to be disabled when not logged in with necessary accounts, with explanation added to tooltip. - fixed "Expand Influence in state" decisions increasing the influence over max and causing ui to show wrong decision icons - Fixed Communal Autarky focus showing an effect tooltip twice. ################################## # AI ################################## - fixed ai not taking zero cost decisions if it has negative pp - ai will be less reluctant to create collaborations if it already has some - GER now will try to put more armor to low countries instead of france border - Ai now able to send volunteer airwings again (optimization broke it in 1.8.1) ################################## # Modding ################################## - scripted effects with names that start with "d_" (example d_test_effect) now will be available as a console command) example usages are in zzz_debug_effects.txt - added mtth database that allows mean_time_to_happen/ai_will_do structure as if they were variables - added script profile scopes for ideas - fixed country_resource_cost modifiers for real - Fixed occurences of limit in an else effect not being reported as an error - added dirty = var_name for scripted windows. if this variable name is set, the game will check if the value of that variable is changed before updating scripted windows to see if it needs to update the gui. by default guis are updated every hour/with every command. now if a change has been made that would affect the scripted gui, you can just change/increase a variable to force an update and improve performance - Errors that cause the invalid map data error are now preffixed with MAP_ERROR - release release_puppet release_autonomy effects no longer changes the controller if the state is controlled by a non-ally country. - you can specify a list of effects under spawn_civil_war effect now, which will be executed under new civil war country - added release_on_controlled release_puppet_on_controlled effects that also works if on your controlled states ################################## # Database ################################## - fixed a missing Czech airwing name - Spanish focus "Demand French North Africa" now also gives Algerian Desert. - Portugal will not be able to complete "Intervention in Spain" or "Nationalist Intervention" if it is in a faction with Spain. - Free French coup in territory operations should now only be available against the country actually occupying that territory - Spanish POUM will no longer share the same game rules as Anarchist Spain. They will be able to join factions, boost ideology and puppet nations. - fixed a number of edge cases in the Munich conference logic (and probably introduced a number of new edge cases, happy hunting!) - Tito should no longer be able to serve as chief of army if he is dead - Added Niceto Niceto Alcal-Zamora as the initial leader of Spain in 1936, along with an event to replace him with Manuel Azaa in April 1936. ################################## # Bugfix ################################## - Fix targeted legitimacy daily decision not giving 0.05 legitimacy - fixed propaganda against warmonger decision not having lower cost against neighbors - Fix Missing localization tag for synthetic refineries when hovering over state resources - Fix steal naval blueprint removing civilian instead of a navy infiltration token - invalid operations (target is now ally etc) are now cancelled even if they are prepared - France should now only be able to invite a country once into the non-intervention committee - fixed two incorrect tags in a French focus - fixed an issue preventing Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck from being recruited - Wilno will now become a core when forming the United Baltic States or Poland Lithuania - Nationalist Spain will no longer be offered to move their capital to Madrid if their capital is already Madrid - Carlist Spain should now have access to a naval advisor - Solved issue with the end of SCW news event having multiple event options - fixed missing text in the Italian focus Develop the Benghasi Oil Fields - Mexico should no longer be able to send shipments to Spain if the war is over - Tooltip for Alan Turing should now make more sense - it is no longer possible to run an operation to capture cyphers if the target country is already fully decrypted - fixed not properly creating collaborations in some cases involving states that are controlled but not owned - Fixed an exploit that allows you to control another country that was being controlled Back in the previous Game - fixed missing icon and description for a hidden tech - fixed activate_targeted_decision & remove_targeted_decision not working properly for some cases of state targeted decisions - Dynamic tag equipment and tech names fallback to original/base country tag - Fixed scope so that Navarra, if owned by the Carlists, will become their capital during Fascist Crackdown and Carlist Uprising events. - Fix saving and reloading remove research bonus already applied to a research. - fixed a rare case where a recently freed collaboration government could peacefully annex the original country if both existed at the same time - fixed a case where countries not joining peace conferences when there are multiple different wars the enemy is in - fixed a rare case where Italy would not correctly join the Allies if France was already part of the Allies and Italy agreed to join the Stresa Front - Fixed the Paradox account initialization to detect the active session passed to the game from the launcher. - fixed Reichskommissariat Ukraine not properly puppeting Ukraina - Fixed an issue with tech stealing operation where players with MTG could be stealing old useless techs Some highlights we wanted to make sure to highlight and where we are interested in feedback: Peace conferences We are now more inclusive in peace conferences to try and stop issues where you might be left out and someone steals territory from you. This means that you can actually get peace conferences with enemies on each side cutting up a 3rd side before getting back to their war. Peace conferences have a lot of edge cases so try to be observant for anything we might have broken with this behaviour change. Tech Stealing Operation We wanted to make this more attractive so have been beefing it up. You can now get full unlocks and the system is more weighted towards late game techs (so you can try and nab that Tiger tank instead of a great war tank). Its still a random system (remember to pick the right operation targeting the branch of tech you want, they get unlocked by infiltration of that branch) but should be a lot more rewarding now so let us know how it feels now! Collaboration puppets We have made AI more reluctant to release a lot and fixed some performance issues here. See you next week for more updates!


    [ 2020-03-25 14:59:40 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Live Stream: Apres Moi Le Deluge Mod Spotlight


    Tune in to https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive at 14:00 CET for this week's stream. We'll be doing a spotlight of the Apres Moi Le Deluge mod, and answering any questions you have as always!


    [ 2020-03-25 12:52:40 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Dev Diary: Beta Patch Update II

    Today's Development Diary by Podcat
    Hi everyone, as the coronavirus apocalypse grips sweden the HOI dev team have reverted to to our baser instincts... no longer chained to our desks our programmers roam the streets stealing gasoline and lines of code from weaker gangs of programmers. The content designers have started worshipping stacks of photocopies of Rommel's "Infantry Attacks", and QA are now hunting bugs using spiked clubs. Ok, not quite ;) But the team, as well as all of paradox, is currently working from home to help limit COVID-19 spread, also as many have pointed out.. less meetings and less pants! its a win-win situation :) Today, like last week we have another update on the Beta patch.

    Updates since last week


    ################################## # Features ################################## - Operatives can be disbanded to free up operative slots and recruit different operatives ################################## # Balance ################################## - Increased minimum surrender limit to for a country to 20% - Decrease Base manpower lost in resistance attack to 2.5% from 3% - Increased compliance decay to give cap of 90% compliance to non democracies. - Changed compliance loss on state changing hands to 25% from 10% - Decreased fielded manpower requirement from German "Demand Sudetenland" to 725000 from 750000 - Improved Resistance Suppression when using "Brutal Oppression" from 65% to 75% - Decreased compliance from collab regime operation to 20% from 30% on normal result and 50% to 40% on excelent result - changing ideology now halves compliance - Reduced the Compliance requirements for the Anarchist coring decisions to 50%, down from 60%. - Increased the cost of Concessions to the Anarchists decision to 150 PP to bring it more in line with its intended purpose as an 'emergency' delay rather than a permanent one, and also made it require either of the Nationalist factions to exist. This means that once those are defeated, there is no stopping the Anarchist uprising anymore. - operative gained from faction members now is reduced for counties that lacks industry ################################## # Stability & Performance ################################## - Prevent CTD when attempting to display the airwings of an airbase the player does not have access to - Fixed abort to trigger on more cases where invalid map data is detected - Fixed CTD on invalid naval terrain type for a strategic region - Fixed CTD on invalid state definition - Fixed CTD that could happen when re-ordering ship names - Fixed CTD when displaying the tooltip of the join faction diplomatic action - Fixed CTD when a autonomy_state has not been correctly loaded - fixed unnamed gui objects possibly causing crashes and added an errorlog - Blocked execution of white_peace before game start, along with error log explanation, instead of CTD. ################################## # UI & Graphics ################################## - Fix infinite production of ships not assigning names properly in the UI - Ensured the Abdication Crisis timed mission will now appear at the top of its decision category, for convenience. - Fixed the Boost Ideology window to work with more than 4 ideologies - The list of aces to pick from is now sorted to have compatible and free aces at the top - Releasing puppet no longer creates a new operative slot that disappears again after unpausing - fixed some graphical issues with frontlines - fixed operative nationality flags not properly positioned when there are more than 2 - Reduced excessive digits in percentages in various occupation tooltips - improved operative slot tooltips to see where you are gaining your slots from - During peace conference, collaboration events are delayed until after and non-news events are hidden ################################## # AI ################################## - allies no longer ask SOV for military access - fixed ai not upgrading templates of existing units - fixed some issues that resulted in ai preferring producing earlier ships - ai ITA no longer releases Libya as a collaboration government - ai will try not to pick closed economy laws if it has large allies ################################## # Modding ################################## - fixed accessing variables using other variables not working ( such as var_name:var_name2 ) - added seed = var support for scripted locs random list & random list effect - laws/ministers can be now modded to use list view instead by adding use_list_view = yes to their idea group - fixed country_resource_cost_ modifiers not applying correctly - fixed state resource cost modifiers not showing in tooltip if there were no other resources - country total resources can go below zero now - The game no longer aborts due to map errors if launched in debug mode, to allow access to the Nudger - The game now displays a pop up when reaching the main menu if it detected invalid map data when launched in debug mode - added on_operative_recruited & on_operative_created on actions - fixed invalid error logs with tag aliases - added army_experience navy_experience air_experience country variables ################################## # Database ################################## - Renamed Elastic Defense focus to Rebuild the Lines of Torres Vedras for better flavor. - Fixed "Catalonian Occupation Zone" to properly refer to a "Catalan Occupation Zone", instead. - Fixed decision requirements in the Abdication Crisis timed mission. - fixed a number of issues with the French Legitimist Monarchist branch - Fixed flavor text in the Spanish Independence War news event - fixed some issues with Japan's head of intelligence advisor - dismantling the Maginot Line now removes the "Protected by the Maginot Line" national spirit. The Extending the Maginot Line Focus now requires this spirit. - fixed an issue with Yugoslavian Fighter/Bomber competition event chain having unlocalized strings - Added missing name for Concessions to the Anarchists decision. - Fixed Soviet Union seizing Spanish gold reserves even if the gold was never relocated. - The French "Economic Devolution" focus now displays the correct effects after it is taken ################################## # Bugfix ################################## - Renamed Franco's old portrait to prevent it from being used unintentionally by the game. - Units now correctly divide units into fallback orders that originate in friendly territory and pass through neutral territory. - fixed another illusive gentleman being available when the first one is taken - army templates with >10 terrain adjusters will now create a scrollbar in template editor guis so all can be visible - Random generated female aces now get properly gender flagged - Made ideas database loading more resilient to script error - fixed a case where you can steal ships - fixed sometimes not getting used factories back when canceling an operation - Made the distribution of states for the Carlist and Anarchist uprisings more reasonable, especially when finishing the SCW early and therefore owning a lot of states before rising up as the Anarchists. - Requesting Foreign Manpower Garrison support no longer overflows. - Fixed an issue where territory wasn't assigned properly in the Japan surrender to China - fixed a rare edge case where Communist China could attempt to infiltrate itself - Lina Odena is now properly considered female when being referred to in text. Also updated her name to have the proper diacritics. - fixed usa fascist party popularity being set incorrectly after civil war - annexed countries will be removed from wars now - fixed access relations getting cancelled after a while - fixed factory tooltips in country occupation view - fixed collaboration government not having a proper name in some cases If you want to see past changes and full changelog, check out the Beta Patch thread here as well as info on how to start playing on it. Its pretty stable. Some highlights Due to popular demand its now possible to fire spies and put someone else in their slot.
    The operative will be put back in the pool and you need to wait for a timer to get the slot back to recruit someone else (or get a previously recruited agent back). We noticed that the code we had put in to stop people from loading broken mod maps also stopped modders from using the ingame nudger tool to fix those issues. That has now been fixed in this update and it will let people access the nudger again as well as making the warnings clearer. We have also added more detailed logging to help people fix their problems. On top of a popup we also have this info when attempting to enter single player.


    [ 2020-03-18 12:30:04 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Dev Diary: 1.9.1 Beta Patch Update

    Today's Development Diary by Bratyn
    Hi everyone, and welcome to another Beta Patch Update dev diary for Hearts of Iron 4 - La Rsistance! The team has been hard at work fixing all manner of bugs, and today will see another update to the Beta Patch. The work is far from over, however, and you'll be able to expect continued regular updates to the Beta in the weeks ahead :) I will first give the word to @bcareil, who will talk a little bit about error notifications for mod-users: -- We have noticed that a significant portion of our crashes occurred due to people running outdated mods with 1.9.1. Most of them were caused by invalid map data (e.g. provinces without strategic region). Since those kind of issues will always crash the game sooner or later, we put in place some measures to try to fix the situation where it was possible (by adding the province to the same strategic region as one of its neighbor). If we fail to get the map into a working state, the game will abort with an error message. Note that these measure are, for the time being, rather experimental and will not necessarily fire every time they should. We will refine them until the release of 1.9.1 so that they do not conflict with any mod while still preventing starting the game in an inconsistent state. The error message looks like this:
    -- Alright, back to me! I'll spend most of the rest of this Dev Diary delving into some of the more significant balance fixes and adjustments I've made to the Spanish Focus Trees, but for those of you who just want to see the patchnotes, they're right here: ################################## # Balance ################################## - France now starts with basic heavy tanks unlocked - France now has engineer companies attached to leg and motorized infantry divisions as well as light mechanized divisions in the 1936 start - France can no longer gain up to 7 research slots by cleverly losing a war - Death Before Surrender now is a timed spirit that lasts for 900 days. This means that, if the Civil War starts the earliest it can start, the spirit will be removed at the beginning of 1939, thus simulating a collapse of morale and speeding up the conclusion of the Civil War if it is still in progress. - Anarchist divisions now spawn with only 25% equipment (unless the player/AI went down the Anarchists branch). This should make Anarchist Spain's starting position much weaker. - 20% Reduction to Strengthen the Regime focus requirements (80k MP instead of 100k, 800 infantry eq. and 800 support eq. instead of 1k each) ################################## # Stability & Performance ################################## - Fixed CTD that can occur when a carrier ship is tranferred between countries - Added mitigation when loading a save that has invalid access rules for carrier - Fixed CTD on missing static modifier definition - Fixed CTD when define NIntel::MAP_INTEL_VISIBILITY_CUTOFFS was illformed - improved performance slightly by making some adjustments to triggers (courtesy of Yard1) - fixed some performance issues with naval invasion ai - The game will now abort if the map contains invalid data - Fixed CTD when accessing the airwings of a carrier that has been acquired through the annexation of a puppet - Fixed CTD caused by event that would kill country leaders or a country that had none - Fixed CTD when evaluating event target with an invalid state id - Fixed CTD when an airbase with air volunteers was destroyed - Fixed CTD that can be caused by some moded ship equipment type - Fixed CTD caused by a task force located in a province with no sea access - Fixed CTD that could happen when releasing a country - fixed a ctd when \n at the end of definition.csv is forgotten ################################## # AI ################################## - Spanish AI will now be less disinclined to take certain advisors. - German AI should now research 1940 fighters (after 1940 due to balance concerns) ################################## # Modding ################################## - it is possible to specify name & icon in create_intelligence_agency effect now - added state_resource_cost_steel (and others) modifier that will add a resource cost for state (they can reduce state resources below zero and unaffected by transfer ratio) - added country_resource_steel & country_resource_cost_steel (and others) which can be used in country scope to add/remove resources to country (added ones are affected by production modifiers) - added max_planning_factor modifier - added error log for non-existing game rule option for has_game_rule trigger - fixed script triggers not producing correct tooltip for scripted_trigger = no - fixed some tooltip issues with for_each_scope_loop effect and all_of_scopes & any_of_scopes triggers - specific ideologies can now be disabled for random country leaders by setting can_be_randomly_selected = no - updated documentation files - Made random_list property log to log to in-game console while in debug mode - added exclude_dlc support for game rules & options ################################## # Database ################################## - The Republican tree for Spain (POUM, Stalinists, and Democrats) has received various balancing tweaks and additional industry focuses, to make post-Civil War gameplay more enjoyable. - Added a few new Carlist focuses to slightly improve their industrial situation after the civil war. - Relocate Government to Batavia focus now also adds 70 compliance to Indonesian states. - It is now no longer possible to avoid the Carlist/Anarchist uprisings by ending the Spanish Civil War before their timers expire. The timers will now continue until expiring, and, if the opposing faction (Republicans or Nationalists) has been defeated already, a new civil war will begin with the Carlists or the Anarchists (Franco can avoid this by taking the Fuse the Parties focus, as normal). New news events and descriptions for existing events have been added for these situations. The Civil War will now only be considered 'ended' when all factions have been defeated, or Franco takes the Fuse the Parties focus. - France now has the correct heavy battery and secondary battery unlocked in 1936 (MtG only) - Slightly adjusted A Great Spain and The Popular Front focus placement to be more central. - Increased the strength of the focuses contained within the Expand Soviet Aid branch, to make these more useful and worth the repercussions. Also made them impact Communism support more. - Reduced surrender limit offset (mninimum surrender limit) for Republican and Anarchist Spain in the Death Before Surrender spirit to 5%, down from 15%. - Added an additional 5% neutrality support to both Safeguard the Freedom of Worship and Integrate the Requets, making it easier for Francoist Spain to remain below 40% fascism support, in case they want to join the Allies. - Changed the country names for Galicia and added party names for Spanish releasables ################################## # Bugfix ################################## - disabled anarchist ideology for randomly generated neutral country leaders - Chinese Warlords should be able to become Communist - Communists in the Government now also completes Increase Arms Production, allowing them to move down the Stalinist branch even if they started out as Republicans. - War propaganda mission can now always be taken as long as there is intelligence network strength on targeted state - British Coerce Spain focus no longer influences Anarchist Spain. - Fixed a DLC check issue with base game only lend lease - fixed historical unit leaders getting their genders randomly assigned if not specified - fixed an oos due to random variables - Allows Portugal to remove the Unstable Republic national spirit when taking focuses 'Join the Axis' and 'Honor Anglo-Portuguese Alliance' - The Stalinist Doctrine and Anti-Fascist Unity are now only 35 days, making it possible for the Stalinists to reach Anti-Fascist Unity before the Anarchists rise up. - fixed a broken trigger in the Expand the Burma Road decision. - 1939 Spain start will now correctly have cores on historically Nationalist territory, and resistance will be correctly initialized on Republican states, allowing for re-coring via the decision system, as intended. Also removed cores of a superfluous Nationalist Spain tag. - Fixed issues with the Spanish Civil War ending news events giving seemingly randomized combinations of titles and event texts. They should now properly reflect the SCW ending situation. - fixed intel network max planning penalty not applying to enemy - Fixed the Fascist Referendum decision incorrectly being available for the Carlists. Also made requirements more stringent for the Referendum decisions for all other Spanish factions. - fixed two game rules not working (Volunteers freely available and Hungary set to go Communist) - Taking any focus that removes or reduces 'autonomy' in Galicia, Pais Vasco, or Catalunya, while not controlling some of these states, will now remove or reduce 'autonomy' of these states when you take control of them. - Updated Belarusian division names with proper spellings - Fixed an issue where formable nations decisions category was using an incorrect asset - Galicia should now have appropriate historical party leaders - If Portugal joins the SCW, but their allied Spanish faction is defeated, this faction will now be recreated when Portugal wins, rather than result in a peace conference upon conclusion of the SCW. - fixed an issue that prevented Vichy Produce Airplane Parts spirit from correctly applying to Germany - Fixed Bulgarian Ships using generic Portuguese names for Submarines and Destroyers. - Fixed an earlier fix for Expand Soviet Aid. It should now only bypass when having taken The Stalinist Doctrine and the civil war has ended, instead of always. - The "Join the French" focus in the Dutch focus tree now takes new French focuses into account - fixed some declare war pop up description issues - France can no longer start border wars over her colonies if at war with the controller of those colonies - Fixed an issue where, when the SCW starts, the other side did not have any cores on any of the Spanish states.Now both sides (Nationalists and Republicans) should have cores on all Spanish states upon the start of the SCW. - Fixed an issue where Spanish Civil War factions did not have their cores initialized correctly, resulting in erroneous minimum surrender limit calculation. This resulted in Republican Spain having a surrender limit or 40%, rather than the intended limit of 15%. Together with the adjustment to the minimum surrender limit in the Death Before Surrender spirit for the Republicans, this should mean Republican Spain is much more difficult to capitulate now. - The Iberian Pact is now bypassed if Portugal is already in a faction. - Updated Portuguese Anarchism and Regional Defense Council of Iberia bypass and available triggers. Portuguese Anarchism should now bypass if you own their European states, ensuring you cannot get stuck on this focus as long as you do. Regional Defense Council of Iberia requires ownership of these same states. - Ensured the Independence War news event for Spain shows the correct localization (it was referring to the wrong nation). - Reworked AI weights on Limited Self-Rule and Lusotropicalism. Portugal AI will not choose Limited Self-Rule while ruling party is non-aligned or fascist. - Prevent Nationalist Spain from joining factions on historical mode. - Portuguese dynamic tags will get Portuguese Focus Tree after wining civil war. - Swapped Porto and Guarda Region Type. - Adjusted Portuguese population in Lisbon, Beja and Santarem states. - Portugal AI will accept to Restore the Iberian Union if it is a puppet of Carlist Spain. - Fixed Portuguese and Brazilian infantry division name to Diviso de Infantaria. - Fixed bug with Purchase Ships decision, checking for the wrong DD technologies if MTG was active (which could lead to Portugal getting Basic Destroyers regardless of ITA/ENG DD hull research). - "Continue the Public Works" and "Roads, Bridges and Dams" will add an extra building slot and infrastructure in Santarem. "A New Industry" and "Textile Industry" will add an extra civilian factory in Santarem. - Swapped Alfredo da Silva's and Duarte Pacheco's advisor traits. - Portuguese puppets will not get opinion penalty with Portugal upon completion of The Fifth Empire focus. - Join the Comintern, Join the Allies, Honor Anglo-Portuguese Alliance, Join the Axis and The Royal Iberian Alliance focuses now require Portugal to not be in a faction and will get canceled if so. - Completing Estado Novo focus will now lock Alvaro Cunhal as political advisor. - Fixed issue with the chance of ships revolting during Navy Mutiny event.

    Spanish Focus Tree Balance Changes


    This will also be my final dev diary for HoI4, as Im moving to join the Imperator: Rome team and helping them in their future endeavours :) My final contributions to HoI have focused on fixing, balancing, and slightly expanding the Spanish focus trees after the release of LaR. I'll continue to help my able colleagues (some of whom are fresh reinforcements to the team!) to continue this work until the patch comes out of beta (and long afterwards!). The most visible changes to the Spanish focus trees pertain to a handy feedback thread written by @Iskulya. This pointed out a number of shortcomings to some of the Spanish branches, and Ive made attempts to address some of these. A central complaint was that many of the branches did not have sufficient industrial build-up post-SCW to make the game interesting at this time. To this end, Ive added a number of focuses to most of the branches, with the notable exception of the Falangist and Francoist paths (which already had a good mix of industry focuses), and the Anarchist path (which also did not need this as it was designed as a long-term snowball industrial path rather than an instant-payoff one).
    A new minor Carlist branch now adds civ and mil industry, as well as some more infrastructure and reducing the Recovering From the Civil War spirit by one more step. An additional focus after Encourage Local Industrialization has been added to once again add more infrastructure, but also open up access to the resource prospecting decisions that the Falange, Franco, and the Anarchists already had access to.
    As it currently stands, only paths that obtain help from economic superpowers (or the Anarchists) are able to completely remove the Recovering From the Civil War spirit. It used to only be available to the Francoists (if they join the Allies), or the Anarchists, but with the new updates this has been expanded to also include the Stalinists and the Democrats, if they rely on Soviet Recovery Aid. Without this, the best any branch can achieve is now to reduce the spirit by two steps, and thereby significantly reduce its effects. Reducing it twice also removes the AI modifier that makes Spain not want to join factions, so Spains that went down these paths and reduced the spirit twice will still end up joining factions on non-historical mode. This is true for the following branches:
    • Falange
    • Carlists
    • POUM
    • Democratic Republic (which elects not to rely upon Soviet Aid)

    The POUM-Stalinist shared branch has been fleshed out with some more mil industry, as well as a focus that reduces the Recovering From the Civil War spirit and opens up the resource prospecting decisions. In addition, taking the Communists in the Government focus in the Democratic path will now also bypass this Increase Arms Production focus, allowing for a Democratic-turned-Communist Spain to properly continue down the Stalinist finisher branch.
    The Democratic branch for Spain has received the biggest re-work. A new focus after Engineering Advances adds 4 more civ factories, giving a bit of a better industrial base from which to grow. New focuses have been added after Prepare for the Next War add further mil factories, as well as opening up resource prospecting decisions. Finally, a focus in the War of Independence branch, which requires either the Allies or the Axis (depending on who you reached out to) having accepted your requests in the previous focuses, which reduces the Recovering From the Civil War spirit and adds further civ and mil factories. It is still intended that the Democrats have the hardest time getting rid of the Recovering From the Civil War spirit, but these additions should greatly improve their post-SCW industrial situation. Concerns were also mentioned regarding the low stability the Democratic path results in - additional stability boosts throughout the tree should now help with this. Further criticism focused on the Expand Soviet Aid branch and how these focuses were not good enough to off-set the penalty of being puppeted after the SCW. To this end, these have all been greatly buffed.
    The focuses are now universally 35 days, and provide very strong bonuses for focuses of that duration. Several now provide instant industry, while others give other bonuses such as army experience, war support, and tech bonuses. They all do increase communist support, now, however. Either as drift added into their spirits (unchanged from before), or as an instant boost (new). Some criticism that I disagreed with was that the Democrats should be rewarded if they manage to win the SCW without expanding Soviet aid, and it was insinuated that there should be other focuses that buff the nation that would be available in this eventuality. In my view, the simple fact that you are not puppeted after conclusion of the SCW, and do not have to wage a war of Independence against one of the worlds leading superpowers, is reward enough. The design was always meant to emphasize choice of an easier time during the SCW or more freedom after it. Additional adjustments have been made to the Spanish Civil War as a whole, as well. Some of you may have seen FeedBackGamings video in which he meets my challenge and finishes the SCW within two months (in one week, to be exact). I do not feel any changes are warranted to the Garrison Control system, as FeedBackGaming simply made extraordinarily intelligent use of the system, and I feel that a player should be rewarded for making smart choices in where to contest and where not to. In addition, finishing the SCW so quickly is not always a benefit, as you miss out on tremendous amounts of Army XP and many focuses that you could have taken otherwise. However, the video did illustrate many issues inherent in finishing the SCW so quickly, and these were not intended. Ill list a couple of things I changed and adjusted, both for balance, and just as bugfixes. I felt that Republican Spain too easily surrendered in the SCW, and after some investigation it appeared that there was an underlying issue resulting in their minimum surrender limit being much higher than intended (40% instead of 15%). I fixed this issue, and also reduced the minimum surrender limit (for the Republican side only), which is set in the Death Before Surrender spirit, to 5%. This means that they will continue to fight much longer now (you have to take almost all of their VPs to make them surrender). To better time the end of the SCW, the Death Before Surrender spirit has now been made timed rather than permanent, and it expires at the earliest in early 1939. This simulates a collapse in morale due to the protracted fighting, and at the same time makes it much more likely that the SCW will end in 1939 if it is still raging at that point.
    Furthermore, if the player (or AI) is not going down the Anarchist path (in which case they simply receive a portion of the already-existing Spanish divisions rather than spawning new ones), the Anarchist divisions that are spawned when they rise up are only given 25% equipment initially, rather than 100%. This should make the Anarchist rebellion much weaker in these situations. The biggest change is a complete overhaul in how the SCW end is handled. The change essentially boils down to this: the timer missions counting down to the Carlist/Anarchist uprisings no longer stop if the other side in the Civil War is defeated. The reason for this is two-fold: fluff-wise it makes no sense for a fragmented alliance to suddenly set aside their differences when their shared enemy is defeated (rather: in-fighting would get much worse), and doing it this way solves a lot of issues that cropped up as a result of finishing the SCW much faster than expected. The change itself sounds relatively minor, but it affects a lot of different things.
    First off, if you defeat the other faction before the Anarchists/Carlists rise up, you are greeted by the above news event, instead of the SCW ends news event.
    This event does not end the SCW, and so focuses that rely on the SCW being in progress can still be taken. The actual SCW ends news event can then be triggered by either one of two ways: either defeat the opposing faction when the civil war resumes, or, as the Francoists, reach the Fuse the Parties focus before the Carlists rise up (shown above).
    Much of the localization for these events has been rewritten to make sense with the new situations that can arise, and some outright new events have been added as well.
    Other than a series of other bugfixes, the final thing worth mentioning is that a total of 10% additional non-aligned support has been added to Francoist focuses, making it slightly easier to remain non-aligned after the SCW has ended, and therefore making it easier to join the Allies if you so choose. Careful selection of your advisors is still warranted, though, as many of them come with fascism drift! All the changes mentioned above are in the Beta Patch as of right now. That brings me to the end of today's Dev Diary. Its been a great pleasure to work on a game I like as much as HoI4 for the past 3 years, and I have no doubt you all will enjoy whats in store for the game in the future ;) Thanks for the past few years, everyone, and youll find me on the Imperator forums! :)


    [ 2020-03-11 14:00:54 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Live at 14:00 CET - Hearts of Iron for Beginners Stream


    Just started playing Hearts of Iron, or got a question about how something works? Make sure you tune in to twitch at 14:00 CET today- we'll be hosting a beginners tutorial stream, up to date for the 1.9 update! Tune in here: https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive


    [ 2020-03-11 12:08:40 CET ] [ Original post ]

    1.9.1 BETA Patch Available Now


    Hello everyone! We've been hard at work fixing issues and tweaking some of the mechanics released in 1.9 and the La Resistance expansion, and now have a big patch available in beta. If you have experienced any kind of bug, crash or glitch in 1.9, it will be worth trying 1.9.1 out, as there is a good chance that your issue has been fixed. We've also added a quality-of-life feature for your airforce, that we talked about in yesterday's Dev Diary, allowing you to choose whether an airwing should be reinforced by older aircraft, newer aircraft or no aircraft at all. See the full changelog for 1.9.1 here Our plan at the moment is to update the beta with the latest fixes and tweaks each week, before pushing the patch live around the middle of April. This means that until then, the default patch will continue to be 1.9.0, while 1.9.1 is opt-in through the Steam Beta's tab in the library.

    How to Download the 1.9.1 Beta


    1. Right-click on Hearts of Iron IV in your Steam Library, and left-click the 'properties' option in the dialog box.
    2. Once the properties window has opened, navigate to the 'betas' tab, second from the right.
    3. In the betas tab, click on the drop down box and select the 1.9.1 beta. It will then automatically queue for download.
    4. Play the game!

    Frequently Asked Questions


    Is 1.9.1 'hot code'? It is, yes. Being a beta means that its not been tested to the same level a released patch will be. You should be cautious about playing ironman saves on 1.9.1, in case you run into any unexpected issues that could cause you to lose progress. Will my 1.9.0 save games be compatible with 1.9.1? They should be, yes. We always aim for saves to be compatible between minor patches, but we can't promise that will be true in every single case. If a save is important, back it up by making a copy before loading it in 1.9.1. Will mods that have been updated to 1.9.0 be compatible with 1.9.1? This will depend on what precise changes have been made by a mod in question, but in most cases the answer will be yes. The changes in 1.9.1 are centered on fixing issues and tweaking values, not changing mechanics. Why aren't you just setting 1.9.1 as the default patch? By taking some time before we set 1.9.1 as the live patch, it gives the opportunity to do more testing and fix more bugs, so that when the patch is released its bigger and better than it would be otherwise. Having an open beta for several weeks also gives us more opportunity to tweak the balance of mechanics based on feedback, and be more flexible about making minor improvements here and there. How often is the 1.9.1 beta going to be updated? We're going to update the beta around once a week. As with the change from 1.9.0 to 1.9.1, these updates to 1.9.1 should not break your save games or mods.


    [ 2020-03-05 15:03:06 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Dev Diary: Post Release and Statistics

    [url=https://pdxint.at/2TmDbti ]Today's Development Diary by Podcat:
    Hi everyone, I hope you are all having fun with La Rsistance! This weekend had a new active users record for HOI4 and its great to see this happen for a game thats been out now for quite a while with a very growing community still :) Since release we have been busy working on bugs reported, talking to you guys on different communities and enjoying watching influencers stream the game :)

    Statistics


    Who doesn't love statistics?! After each release we like to dig into data and check what the most popular focus branches and nations are. Portugal Stats As it could be expected, the Monarchist path is the players favorite for Portugal, with almost 60% of the players supporting A Royal Wedding. The most popular paths after that are the Fascist one at 15% (The Fifth Empire being the favorite choice, but with a slight advantage) and the Communist one at 10.5%. Democratic and Historical Salazarist paths are far less popular (roughly 7% and 4.5% respectively). Regarding the Spanish Civil War, 21% of the players Supported a Spanish Monarchy (aka Carlists). That being 1/3 of the total Monarchist players. It is worth noting that Carlists might not spawn, so Im sure a lot more people were eager to support the Spanish Monarchists! 19% supported the Spanish Nationalists (but only 11% Sent Assistance, actually joining the war), 10.5% supported the Spanish Republic and roughly 7% of the players kept Strict Neutrality and let the Spaniards manage by themselves. Involvement in Spanish Civil War: 10.3% supported the Spanish Republic 18.8% supported the Spanish Nationalists (10.7% Sent Assistance, actually joining the war) 21.1% supported the Carlists, but only 13.8% actually Joined the Carlist Fight 6.8% kept Strict Neutrality After supporting the Nationalists: - 4.4% followed historical path - 14.8% went Fascist France Stats For France, we have a number of surprising, and some not so surprising, observations. As it turns out, our community is evidently made up of unrepentant Monarchists. The monarchist branch as a whole was played by roughly 45% of playthroughs, compared to communists and fascists at 9% and 8%, respectively. About a quarter of playthroughs stuck with the republic. Of the people who decided to restore yet another monarchy (when did HoI become Monarchy Simulator 2020? Dan edit: with DoD ;) ), a whooping 84% decided to side with his Imperial Majesty, Emperor Napoleon VI. Its about 5 times as many people than the people who played the communist branch in total. Im not bitter. The new Vichy and Free French trees have seen very little play in the past week - about as many people played either of them as decided to form the Latin Entente. Special mention goes to the 200-odd people who decided to continue on as Vichy and then decided to stop without giving Petain special powers: we see you. Of the people who went fascist, about two thirds formed the Latin Entente. Of the communists, about 60% did not compromise on their revolutionary ideals by allying with Moscow or forming an anti-fascist coalition. It appears that there is still some revolutionary spirit left in France! Spain Stats For Spain, there is almost exactly a 50-50 split between Republicans and Nationalists playthroughs. For Nationalists, 40% chooses the Carlists, and 30% equally between Falange and Francoists. For the Republicans: a whopping 70% choose to go Anarchist, and the remainder is split between 6% POUM (Independent Communist), 11% Stalinist Communist, and 13% Democratic. Of these combined Stalinist and Democratic runs, over half (56%) Expand Soviet Aid. The vast majority of Democratic players (84%) thereafter do Oppose the Communists, rather than be a loyal subject of the Soviets, but almost none (13%) take Subvert Soviet Control, seeming to indicate that the vast majority of players who select Maintain the Second Republic finish the Civil War without Expanding Soviet Aid, and therefore never need to wage a war of independence. But for those who do, the vast majority (85%) have trouble stomaching accepting aid from those who helped their enemies during the SCW, and so in their war of independence against the Soviets they seek help from the Allies, rather than the Axis. Republicans and Stalinists are far more inclined to let the Anarchist uprising happen rather than crack down on them, with only ~15% selecting the Crush the Revolution focus. Anarchists and Independent Communists, however, select the Masters of Our Own Fate focus in over 50% of the games. For Nationalists there is a similar discrepancy (though less extreme), with about 50% of Carlist players selecting the No Compromise on Carlist Ideals focus, but only 37% of Falange players selecting Eliminate the Carlists. It would also seem that Anarchist tenacity knows no bounds, with 80% of players making it all the way to the very end of the focus tree ;)

    Open Beta Patch


    To make sure the 1.9.1 patch is as stable as possible we will be running an open opt-in beta for anyone to take part in. We had our first update on friday and it fixes a lot of reported issues. Today is the second update of it. The plan is that 1.9.1 goes live mid-April so look forward to more beta updates until then. See the full updated patchlog on the forums: https://pdxint.at/2TmDbti The thread for the beta patch is here: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...usky-1-9-1-beta-hotfix-checksum-8eaf.1342931/ This beta also includes a cool little QoL thing we couldnt finish in time for the release, to help with airwing management and tedium of controlling airplane equipment in them. Here is a breakdown of how it works:
    • You can now duplicate selected air wings as long as there is some planes in stockpile they can use. This copies settings etc so you will only need to access the reorg window fairly rarely.
    • You can set reinforcement rules for air wings in the reorg window With 4 settings to pick from: - Reserves - will only use equipment marked outdated - Regular - doesnt care, uses anything and acts like old air wings did - Elite - only uses up to date equipment - Specialized - Will never add plane variants not in the wing already giving you 100% control.
    • Foreign planes will look at your equipment for reference for the auto updating. If for some reason you want to use a foreign variant and have disabled your own of same tech level you should set up specialized wings to consume those.

    Make sure to let us know how you like it! As promised we are also working on some art. We only just started so its not in the beta yet, but here is a sneak peak of a Portugese general:
    See you all next week with another update, and if you or a friend is wondering about how stuff works in the new expansion I recommend checking out some of the tutorial videos we made here. Later today at 16:00CET we will also have a stream where Daniel and Bjrn will show some patch stuff. I'm home sick but will try to hang out on the chat a bit!


    [ 2020-03-04 13:15:33 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Live at 16:00 CET - 1.9.1 Beta Patch Stream


    Don't forget to tune in to today's Heart of Iron IV stream! We're going to be talking about today's Dev Diary (out in a few hours) and the 1.9.1 hotfix patch that has been available in BETA since Friday. NOTE: We aren't pushing the hotfix live today Expect to hear about what is being fixed and worked on at the moment, and how we intend to develop the patch going forwards. Tune in at 16:00 CET: https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive


    [ 2020-03-04 10:43:00 CET ] [ Original post ]

    La Rsistance is Now Available!

    STOCKHOLM - 25 February 2020 - Conquest is never easy, but the 20th Century brings new challenges. More infrastructure means more opportunities for disruption. Radio links saboteurs and freedom fighters across occupied territory. It is never hard to find willing collaborators, but it takes a lot of work to put them in place. Direct resisters, special agents, and quislings can all be found in Hearts of Iron IV: La Rsistance. La Rsistance is the newest expansion to Paradoxs best-selling grand strategy wargame about the Second World War. In La Rsistance, your nation has new resources at its disposal. At the center of the game is the Intelligence Agency that lets you train and deploy spies to undertake special missions cracking codes, stealing secrets and assisting resistance activities in the occupied lands of your conquered allies. [previewyoutube=RYaFqkrY6YQ;full][/previewyoutube] Features of Hearts of Iron IV: La Rsistance include:

    • New Focus Trees for France: New National Focuses for Free France and the Vichy Regime, as well as an option for conservatives to restore the old French Monarchy.
    • More in-Depth Spanish Campaign: New National Focuses for Republican and Nationalist Spain, including an expanded Spanish Civil War that can spiral into a wider conflict.
    • Portuguese National Focuses: New unique focus tree for Portugal. Restore Portuguese naval power, strengthen the overseas empire or intervene in the Civil War next door.
    • Espionage: Use your Intelligence Agency to train spies to specialize in certain types of information warfare and send them on special operations, or develop passive resistance to enemy espionage.
    • Support Resistance: Use your agents to assist allied resistance movements, giving them what they need to damage the enemy.
    • Collaboration Governments: Use your agents to prepare the ground for collaborators to fill the void once youve conquered your target.
    • Code Cracking: Decrypt enemy communications to gain short term battlefield advantages.
    • Recon units: Scout planes can provide useful information on nearby areas while armored cars help in detecting and suppressing resistance activities.
    • New music tracks
    As usual, the expansion is accompanied by the release of a significant update available to all Hearts of Iron IV players. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1158100/Expansion__Hearts_of_Iron_IV_La_Rsistance/


    [ 2020-02-25 09:05:17 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Free 1.9 "Husky" Update is Now Live! (And not save game compatible!)

    Hello! 1.9 Husky is now live including tons of bugfixes, improvements and new features. The patch should be downloading through Steam as we speak. Please note that 1.9 will not be save game compatible with 1.8.2. If you want to finish off any ongoing ironman games, please remain on 1.8.2 for now. Here are instructions on how you revert patch levels. Please make sure that any mods you are using are updated for 1.9, or your game might not run properly (seriously) Unfortunately we won't be able to collect bug reports from Steam. If you experience issues, please visit our official forum or submit a ticket to our support.
    Changelog: ################################## # Free Features and Important ################################## - Revamped Resistance system with offmap garrisons - Added zooming feature for focus trees - Added search functionality and filters for focus trees - new recon support companies - Neutral ideology can now be externally boosted - MEFO bills will now auto-renew and player can decide ahead of time if they want to opt out - New mapmodes for resistance & Compliance - Licensing now requires permission to be seen - New Spanish Fragmentation game rule, Spain Fragmented: Galicia, the Basque Country, and Catalonia will exist as independent states at game start - New Spanish Fragmentation game rule, 11th of November: splits Spain into Castille, Aragon, Navarra, Galicia, and the Emirate of Granada at game start. - New Oceania Colonization Status game rule, Oceania Decolonised: all releasable nations in Oceania will be independent at game start - New Oceania Colonization Status game rule, Polynesian Empire: all Polynesian nations will be united into a single state at game start with extra factories and dockyards. - New country tags in Oceania: Tahiti, the Mariana Federation, the Federated States of Micronesia, the Solomon Islands, Samoa, and Hawaii. - Error dog has a new change of clothes ################################## # Balance ################################## - xp gained on air wings in combat now scale with actual amount of planes in combat - air superiority formula now linear instead of square with respect to planes. e.g plane amounts matter less - Air superiority now scales from 0 to max penalty for enemy from the 50/50 state rather than giving the side with >1% advantage most of the benefit right away - Various industry buildup focuses for romania now prioritize better or historical states for their location - improved penetration of all medium ship guns - Frequency of tactics picking in combat is now doubled - Entering close combat tactic phase is now a lot less likely unless in urban fighting - Superior Firepower tech soft attack bonus changed from 20% to 10% - Shock and Awe tech soft attack gets an additional 5% soft attack to all fighting battalions - Mobile Defense tech defense bonus changed from 20% to 10% - lowered requirements for support rocket artillery equipment to be in line with normal artillery equipment/mechanized.txt - removed hardness modifier from mech and added those benefits into base stats - increased armor on amph tank 1 from 10 to 20 - increased armor on amph tank 2 from 60 to 80 - reduced effectiveness of heavy armor amphibious assault from 20% to 10% - reduced effectiveness of medium armor amphibious assault from 30% to 20% - Researches can no longer claim two different research bonuses at the same time if they only have one of ahead of time and research bonuses each - Made the lack of fuel penalty on torpedoes -80% rather than -50% - Australia can now take the Advisory War Council focus if at war - Tech bonuses in the Italian Focus tree now apply to categories rather than specific techs (thanks xMer!) - Rebalanced carrier fighter disruption and fixed bugs with its calculation - lowered base mil factory output by 10% - Increased Panzerschiff HP from 100 to 220 to make them more inline with heavy cruisers - CSA can now core multiple territories at once - Japan now gains wargoals on Indochina if France rejects Japanese demands - Czech war college bonus improved - lowered screen ratio for navies from 4 to 3 - added a suppression value of 3 to all tanks - Austria Hungary now gets -40% tension needed for justification - changed IC cost of infantry equipment 0 to 0.43 - lowered IC cost of infantry equipment 2 to 0.58 - lowered IC cost of infantry equipment 3 to 0.69 - increased malus from "war to end all wars" UK spirit to 30% to account for extra manpower from colonies - lowered manpower requirement on germanys Anchluss focus slightly - reduced air wing experience gain from 2nd and 3rd level reformer air chief - reduced ship experience gains from naval combat by ~20% - increased bombing reduction from 12% to 15% for dispersed industry 1 - decreased bombing reduction from 12% to 10% for dispersed industry 2, 3, 4, and 5 - reduced loss in stability from no further appeasement branch of UK focuses from losses of 15 stability to losses of 10 stability - reduced experience gains for airwings to 5% from 10% in air doctrines Plus bugfixes - click here for extended changelog!


    [ 2020-02-25 08:09:06 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Live at 09:00 CET - La Resistance Release Stream


    The release of La Resistance is upon us! Tune in to a special release stream at 09:00 CET February 25th, for some chaotic spanish multiplayer and the release of the expansion! We'll be live over at: https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive


    [ 2020-02-24 22:44:06 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Dev Diary: 1.9 Patchnotes and Modding Updates

    [url=https://pdxint.at/2P84LIj]Today's Development Diary by Podcat
    Hi guys! Here is the promised bonus dev diary. First up is the full changelog, and after that we will be going through all the new stuff we have for modders.

    1.9 'Husky' Patchlog


    See the full patch log here: https://pdxint.at/2P84LIj

    Modding


    1.9.0 will include a lot of tools/improvements that will hopefully help modders developing their awesome mods. Bug fixes and small improvements are too many to list here and can be found in the patch log but we will be listing more major stuff in this dev diary.

    More effects, triggers and game variables and more variable support


    We added quite a bit new effects/triggers and game variables with new free patch. Full list can be found in in the patch notes or the documentation files that are generated by game. In addition to those new scripting tools, we also added more variable support to existing effects/triggers. And now hoi4 scripting language supports storing tokens as a variable. For example you can do the following:
    Here we are storing token infantry_equipment in a temporary variable named to and later we are using this stored token in add_equipment_to_stockpile effect. At the moment following objects can be stored in variables and all effects/triggers should be able to accept such variables ideology/ideology groups equipment types operation We have plans for adding support for more, feel free to have suggestions for other types of tokens if you thing they would be useful. We are also adding a better documentation support for our scripting language. Following html files are output of our new script documentation tools: Effect Documentation Trigger Documentation Modifier Documentation [url=https://common-assets.paradoxplaza.com/hoi4-devdiary/dynamic_variables_documentation.html]Dynamic Variables Documentation

    History Logger


    "History Logger" is a tool that we developed to observe AI gameplay and now it is available for public as well. More details available on AI dev diary
    You can see some examples using following links: https://common-assets.paradoxplaza.com/hoi4-devdiary/history_viewer.html?zip=1.zip https://common-assets.paradoxplaza.com/hoi4-devdiary/history_viewer.html?zip=2.zip We hope that it will help people that makes overhaul mods or AI mods. To use it you need to run game you need to lunch the game with "-hands_off" option which make game automatically start up on observing country defined NGame::HANDS_OFF_START_TAG (Or you can manually start the game and run console command "history_logger"). During the run, the game will collect data and dump it on every month under "documents/user/Hearts of Iron IV/history_dump" folder. Once you believe the game collected enough data, you can zip the contents of that folder and load it to game\tools\history_viewer\history_viewer.html file. The hands off will also output the test conditions that you want to satisfy. You add more conditions to game\tests if you want and they will be reported as a success or fail under user\Documents\Paradox Interactive\Hearts of Iron IV\logs\tests

    Crash Logging


    The game will run the last executed script or last loaded script/history/save line if something goes wrong during script execution or save game loading and the game crashes. Which hopefully will give you more information on why it crashes and avoid the problem until we solve the crash itself.
    This information is only stored if the game is launched using "-crash_data_log" option (it does have a performance hit so I would suggest not to enable it during regular development). The crash will be outputted to user\Documents\Paradox Interactive\Hearts of Iron IV\crashes\...\meta.yml which should give you the file & line info If the game is crashing while loading a save game, I would suggest changing save_as_binary to no under user\Documents\Paradox Interactive\Hearts of Iron IV\settings.txt so you can see the contents of the save in a text format. And of course please make a bug report if you encounter crashes so we can actually fix them.

    Country Tag Aliases


    We are adding an aliasing system for country tags. These aliases will work just like a country tag (they are a 3 letter tags that can be used in most places you can use a country tag) but during game play they can be mapped to different countries. For example:
    SPD, VIC and MOT are country tag aliases. SPD maps to a country with original tag of SPR (which is a real tag) and has country flag SPR_carlist_spain_flag. When a script calls
    It will find the correct SPR and add the political power to that country. In addition to original tag/trigger combination you can also map a country tag alias to a variable, event target or a scoring system. In previous example MOT is a country tag alias that maps to variable generic_operation_target which is set differently for each country in another part of the script.

    Country Scorers


    We added a scoring system to our scripting language. Examples can be found under game\common\scorers\country Here you can score countries using a bunch of triggers and modifiers and then use that scoring entry to in effects such get_sorted_scored_countries and get_highest_scored_country. This system is also used by various AI implementation. For example operation AI is fully scripted and uses this scoring system for picking targets. Decryption AI also uses this scoring system for finding a decryption target.

    Modifier Definition


    It is now possible to add custom modifiers using scripting language. These new modifiers are stored under game\common\modifier_definitions Once such modifier is defined, it can be used in things that awards a country/state/leader modifiers. It will show up in the modifier tooltips and you can access the value of that modifier in effects or triggers using "modifier@modifier_token" under country/state scopes leader_modifier/unit_modifier under unit leader scopes

    Control + Alt + Click to open script files


    You can use control + alt + click in debug mode to open script files for things like focuses, ideas, decisions, events, researches and spirits
    Here is an example of editing an existing focus. As you can see we also improved reloading so focus tree is no longer scrolled to default position when you change a focus!

    More AI strategies


    We added a lot of new strategies to override/alter the behavior of AI. It will be possible to create AI strategies to make AI request more units for specific fronts or make AI force activate/not-activate its plans, change aggressiveness etc. These strategies helped us quite a lot for making Allies invading Axis more successfully in Europe.

    Moddable Game Speed


    This was asked for by a bunch of modders working on MP mods. It is now possible to mod game speed by changing values of NGame::GAME_SPEED_SECONDS

    Modding Operations


    The Operations system was designed to be very scriptable and can be modded extensively to make new operations. At the basic level, an Operation is made up of three Operation Phases. In the Vanilla implementation, these phases are pulled randomly from three separate pools: one each for infiltration, execution, and exfiltration. You are by no means restricted to doing that, though (and there are exceptions - for example, fake intel operations dont require infiltration or exfiltration).
    Each phase has its own set of requirements that decides whether that phase is even available (so for example you cant get the submarine infiltration method if the target country is landlocked). Every phase can also have equipment requirements, which will be drawn automatically from the stockpile. For expensive equipment like transport planes, you can set the equipment to be returned at the end of an operation.
    For some phases, we use industry cost, which is rendered as a number of factories for a number of days. The probability of a phase being selected is determined by a base value that can be modified much like ai_chances in events etc. Each phase has three localisations associated with it: A plan, an outcome, and an extra outcome if the operation fails. It further has two images it needs: one picture for the overview at the top and another, smaller one for the phase icon on the map. With the Phases done, lets get into how operations actually look like in script:

    It looks a lot more scary than it really is. Going from the top:
    This is mostly Gui stuff and shouldnt be a big mystery for modders. The Icon is the picture shown in the Agency view. Map_icon is the icon that is shown on the map when an operation is available. Name and desc are the name and description localization strings. Priority determines where in the list of available operations this operation is displayed.
    Days is the duration of the operation once it starts. The preparation phase is determined entirely by gathering the required resources. Network strength is the strength of the network in the target country. Operatives is the number of operatives necessary to start the operation. This also means the operation is not available until the country has at least that many operatives. This can make testing more advanced operations that require 3 or more operatives a bit tricky. The visible = {} trigger works much like you are familiar with from decisions and ideas. If it evaluates true, the operation is visible. Not shown are allowed = {} and available = {} triggers. Allowed = {} is checked to see if an operation should ever be available for a country. This is particularly useful if you want to have an operation that is only for certain countries (like the Heavy Water Raid only being available for countries other than Germany). Available = {} checks if the operation can be taken (if it is visible). This is useful if you want the player to know that an operation might be possible before it actually is (by making the visible = {} trigger less strict than the available = {} trigger).
    Selection_target limits the amount of available targets that the operation can be conducted against (FROM is always the target country, FROM.FROM is the target state if there is one, ROOT is the country that starts the operation). This is mostly useful to keep the game from checking against every possible tag or for every state on the map, which hurts performance. Selection_target_state is a trigger that defines what kind of state can be selected for an operation (in this example, the state has to have some resistance). In combination with selection_target, this means that in this example you can only select states in the target country that have resistance.
    Equipment is a separate category that determines what equipment is needed for an operation. As said above, equipment can also be tied to operation phases, but using this parameter is useful for establishing a baseline cost that is independent of what phase is being selected by the game. Required_tokens is checking for tokens that the country has. In Vanilla, tokens are only granted from other operations, but they could theoretically also be gained through focuses, events, or decisions. They dont really serve a purpose in and off themselves, but they are useful for forcing the player to complete an operation before they can execute another, making the two connected.
    Risk_chance determines how likely it is that things go wrong for your agents. In the example, it is set to 20%. If the RNG decides that your agents are going to have a very bad day, it runs an on_action called on_operative_detected_during_operation, which decides the relative probability of various outcomes (captured, killed, injured, forced into hiding). Experience is the experience gained by operatives assigned to the mission. Outcome_chance is the probability that you gain only the base outcome.This value paradoxically means that the lower it is, the more likely that the player gains an extra reward. If you want an operation that can fail, you can just make the base outcome bad, in which case outcome_chance would be the failure chance. Outcome_modifiers specifies modifiers that affect the outcome. These modifiers are set elsewhere, like Agency upgrades, national spirits, ideas and ministers etc. Depending on the sum of these modifiers, the base outcome is more or less likely (making the bonus outcome more or less likely in turn since the operation always rolls an outcome).
    • Possible modifiers include:
    • Outcome_modifiers (modify outcome chance)
    • Risk_modifiers (modify the risk chance)
    • Cost_modifiers (modify the cost in equipment)
    A particularly neat feature is that operations can define entire modifiers by themselves, which makes this system very flexible. In other areas, you need to have a modifier be defined in code, while here, you can just define a modifier by giving it a name in the operation. You can then refer to that modifier by name when you add it to a minister, a technology, or a national spirit.
    This is where the magic happens. Outcome_execute is essentially just a field to run an effect (not much different from, say, a decision or a focus in that sense). Outcome_extra_execute is another effect field. Outcome_chance is what decides whether the operation runs outcome_execute or outcome_extra_execute when it finishes (outcome_chance is the chance that it runs outcome_execute instead of outcome_extra_execute). In this example, a simple random_list takes over if the game rolls a bonus, to determine how big the bonus is. You can do a lot of cool stuff here - an operation that can lower stability in an enemy nation could, for example, have a small chance to start a civil war under some circumstances. If you want to have the operation always have the same outcome, put the effect it should run into outcome_extra_execute and set outcome_chance to 0. Outcome_potential is essentially just there to generate a tooltip for the expected outcome of the operation before it is run. As you can see, it is the same as outcome_execute, to show the player the minimum they can expect to gain from running the operation.
    This is the part that sets up how the phases are selected. Every phase has a base probability, and as you can see, that probability can be modified. As a special treat the operation pictured above contains a bug that I only noticed while I was writing this. See if you can find it!


    [ 2020-02-21 14:59:46 CET ] [ Original post ]

    La Resistance Stream - Live at 16:00 CET


    Don't forget to tune in to the final La Resistance stream before release! We'll be continuing last weeks playthrough as Germany, over on twitch. Live at 16:00 CET: https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive


    [ 2020-02-19 14:29:14 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Dev Diary: AI and Feature Updates

    Today's Development Diary by Podcat
    Hi everyone! From the time we show off features in dev diaries and release a lot happens. Usually its just bugfixing and work behind the scenes, but sometimes it can be bigger changes too. So today we will pick out some stuff thats changed since you last read about it. But first, but not least, lets talk a bit about AI development!

    AI Updates


    When we started with 1.9 'Husky' and La Rsistance there were 2 main things we wanted to achieve. First we wanted to nerf germany (without actually nerfing them) by giving resistance more teeth. This worked pretty well, as after we had made the new resistance system Germany would consistently collapse to large polish uprisings behind its lines and needed to be expanded how to manage all that as well as control its equipment production better. Resistance is now constantly hurting garrisons and you don't pre-build garrisons, so stockpiling and not rushing units is more important. The second thing is also related to Germany (its ww2 after all). For HOI (no matter the version really) we have always strived for a balance where Germany defeats the Soviet Union if the allies do not take pressure off by invading. This ensures that all of the big sides need to be active and if played by a player you need to step up. Now before we jump to the 10 pages of comments discussing if this is a realistic target... It is, for gameplay I think. History wise I am personally convinced that the Soviets would have beaten Germany on their own. It just would have taken a lot longer and been much costlier, and there isnt much point in playing the UK or USA if Soviets will just take care of Germany on their own (now now, please keep reading the rest of the diary before we start arguing what-ifs :p). Anyways, in 1.7 the allies seldom pulled off invasions well enough, and pretty much only if they got lucky in italy or punched up through greece or something like that. Firstly we have made a bunch of improvements and bugfixes to wierf parts of the invasion logic for the AI that makes them perform better. The biggest impacts came from limiting the AI from shipping troops back and forth across the globe and simply getting them to buffer up its forces in specific allied territories. USA specifically here will now station troops ahead of time in UK so that when its time to do invasions they are already in the neighborhood. We have also improved prioritization of different fronts to make sure AI gets the importance of Europe and when landings have been made successfully. One of our most important tools when working on high level AI stuff and history tuning is the "History Logger". This is a tool that we developed to observe AI gameplay. When enabled, it collects & dumps data on how game progressed during a particular run and its output looks something like this when run through a web interface:
    Other than showing country borders, it can also show many other other details for a selected country such as diplomacy status, army/navy mission/air mission positions, orders, taken decisions/focuses/ideas, executed operations/operative missions and many other things. On top of that, the things are logged using log effect will also appear in these logs so you can have custom logs in your effects if you want. Here is an example from USA:
    The lines are invasion orders and red heat map is the army of USA. You can already see that USA successfully invaded southern France and has invasion plans for Northern France and Denmark. And here is an example to things that are logged. Logs are filtered by country tag ENG and "operation" and here we see all operations that are executed by England.
    We use this tool every day in our nightly automated tests. Everyday we run a bunch of AI only runs with history logger is enabled and at the end the day we get an email like this:
    Our nightly tests inform us if the game is crashed or not, if there are some tests that are failed and if there are performance issues. In this particular example in one of the machines Germany was not able to beat France. When we check history logger output for that particular run we see the following:
    (Green: Germany. Red: Enemies. Blue:Allies. Yellow: Potential Enemies. Heat map is the army position for Germany.) In this run we see that Germany is attacking low countries way too early, before Poland falls and the front north west front is prepared. This allows France & England to be better prepared and push through. The fix was to add extra safety checks (we had broken some old ones too in an unrelated change a while back) for how the AI wants to feel prepared for this push. This tool will be included so modders can take advantage of it which we think is going to be super good for anyone doing balance, ai or total conversion mods. There will be more info on that as well as some more details and info on how to set up the tests in the friday diary :)

    Espionage Changes


    We have done some changes to operative recruitment. Rather than being a timer on actual operatives recruitment time the system now is tied to the actual slots you have
    This was needed because the old system was pretty confusing in practice, and giving more operatives from events, or historical operatives would really mess with the progression of the system so UK could gear up its agency way too fast. Operations have also had a bunch of changes. The more visible one is the addition of the Outlook indicator
    This breaks down risks and the potential for better rewards on an operation. Both can be affected by agency upgrades and Operative traits. A 10% risk means that there is 10% something goes wrong. This usually means that the operatives will need to go into hiding for a while to avoid local investigations, or have suffered an injury, or more rarely, have been captured, killed or turned to the other side. When operations end you'll get to find out as risk trigger generally when trying to extract from the operation area. We have also added some new ministers for nations. Having an Illusive Gentleman will be a good choice for those who want to go all in on making the strongest Agency possible
    You can also see that UK will get access to all programmers hero Alan Turing if they develop a cryptology department. He is more of a UK special though.

    Portugal Changes


    Hello everyone, Mano de Zombi here! As many of you have already noticed, there have been some changes to the Portuguese Focus Tree since my last DD before Christmas, and today Id like to talk a little bit about them. Lets begin with the National Spirit Unstable Republic:
    The previous stability penalty (a flat 10%) has been changed to a -0.5% weekly stability penalty. Salazars trait has also been changed from a flat stability bonus to a 0.5% weekly bonus. As you can see, one stability modifier counters the other. The reason behind this is that while Salazar is in power, his Unstable Republic will be roughly under control. Stability might not increase but it will not decrease either (after all, even with some difficulties, Salazar historically managed to keep the Republic under control for decades). But once you start tweaking your politics, you can find yourself in a tough situation where low stability might not be easily recovered, putting your country on the brink of civil war before changing your government. More on this later in the diary. Now lets take a look at the final focus tree:
    As you can see, there are some new focuses (12 to be precise), for a total of 122. During Christmas I worked on a design for the historical Salazarist branch, as well as a bit of reworking and additions to other branches. Big kudos to Pedro, the original FT designer, who helped me a lot and provided me with incredibly useful documentation! The Military branch looked quite small so we decided to include three more focuses. This branch has also seen some changes, so lets take a quick look:
    Army Organization, Metropolitan Army and Corpo do Estado Maior will each grant some Army XP. In addition to that, Army Reorganization will remove Unstable Army National Spirit and add a small stability penalty(-5%). To the left, Metropolitan Army also grants two research bonuses, followed by a production bonus under Standardization. The defensive focuses have not been touched, you must still choose between heavy fortifications in Lisbon or a light fortification line along the coast. Finally, Portugal has two focuses that provide research bonuses for special forces. Tropas Paraquedistas is based on the Parachute Rifle Battalion, a group of 12 Timorese soldiers trained in Australia during World War II to be launched in the rearguard of the Japanese forces occupying Portuguese Timor; as you can guess, this focus gives a research bonus for Paratroopers. Regimento de Comandos is a reference to the (later) historical Portuguese Commando Regiment (a special forces unit prepared for counter-guerrilla operations) formed in the early 60s, as a consequence of the Ultramar War; it will provide two research bonuses for special forces, as well as a National Spirit that will slightly increase your special forces limit. To the right, we have Corpo de Estado Maior, which improves army leaders and makes them cheaper, followed by Staff Wargames and its two research bonuses for land doctrine. Finally, Field Maneuvers will add more Army XP and an additional research bonus for land doctrine. A final note on this, if you support a Spanish faction during the Spanish Civil War, you can access a focus that also gives you some research bonuses (different bonuses depending on the faction you support):


    Moving on to the political branch, you can see that some focuses have changed names. This is to clarify that they are related to the Spanish Civil War:
    You may also notice that Securing the Free World is now available only through Allow Free Elections (aka Democratic path). This focus will guarantee the independence of every European minor country with a democratic/non-aligned government and not in a faction, as well as allowing you to create your own faction. It makes sense to have it as a democratic focus, since Communists have their own ways to deal with factions.
    I would also like to clarify the requirements for the following focuses: Protect Chinese Civilians: Will grant a wargoal against the owner of Guangzhou, the state surrounding Macau. This focus is available by completing either The Popular Front Bloc, They Need our Help or Allow Free Elections. Intervention in Spain: This focus grants a wargoal against Spain if their ideology does not match Portugals. It is available only through They Need our Help and Allow Free Elections.
    Regarding the change of ideology, throughout the different political branches (be it Communist, Democratic, Fascist or even Monarchist) you will always find something like this:
    As you can read in the lower red tooltip, if you attempt to change your government through the Focus Tree, you better make sure that stability is high enough, otherwise you could find yourself in the middle of a messy and unexpected Civil War (hmm This sounds familiar to me). You will find something similar in the following focuses:


    Now lets talk about the historical path (cool new icons in the branch courtesy of our freelance artist @Indyclone77, who also made all the Portuguese Focus and National Spirit icons, event pictures, and plenty of other 2D assets... Big kudos to him!). We have added a new sub-branch by which Salazar will slowly strengthen his regime, eventually turning Portugal into a powerful nation, capable of dealing with great powers late-game:
    The National Spirit Estado Novo represents the Salazar regime and has several levels now, being improved by different focuses along the branch. You get it when you complete Estado Novo focus, providing a small bonus in consumer goods and civilian factory construction speed.
    Strengthen the Regime represents Salazar dealing with all kinds of dissidents (historically, Communists were specially persecuted and oppressed, but there were also other groups, such as fascist-syndicalists). You will have to invest some manpower and equipment to strengthen the secret police, but you will get some Non-Aligned support, and your Estado Novo will get small bonuses. Upon completion of Appease Monarchists you will get the support of most monarchists and will unlock a couple of Monarchist-related advisors (shared with the Monarchist branch). Historically, Salazars strategy was to co-opt the Monarchy supporters into the government and leave the restoration of the Monarchy open for the future. Among other benefits, this focus will add a small daily PP and a weekly stability bonus to Estado Novo. Concordat with the Holy See: The Concordat of 1940 was an agreement between Portugal and the Vatican, which basically prevented the Church from interfering in the political affairs of Portugal. In-game, you will get a nice amount of PP and Estado Novo will get a bit more daily PP and weekly stability. National Gold Reserves: During the War, Portugal played an important economic role (it was more complex than the simple they sold tungsten to Germany, but I'll leave that for another day). In-game this focus will give Portugal a National Spirit with some economic bonuses, as well as better trade relations with Germany and the United Kingdom. Keep in mind: you have to be at peace to complete this focus! By completing Honor Anglo-Portuguese Alliance Portugal will join the Allies, gaining access to the focuses shared with the Democratic Path. Proudly Alone is the final focus improving Estado Novo and finally removing Unstable Republic. From here Portugal can choose to leave behind the historical approach and go into the offensive against Japan or any major or neighboring Communist nation.
    Last but not least, The Capital of Espionage focus: There were countless agents and plots in Lisbon during the war, from double agents and traitors who cooperated with former enemies to spies who gathered information on trans-Atlantic shipments for the Germans. This is represented in-game with the following National Spirit:
    Regarding Refuse the Naval Blockade focus, it is now available not only through the Fascist path after National Syndicalism, but also through the Monarchist path after Return of Duarte. Now the Kingdom of Portugal can take revenge on the United Kingdom and finally connect its Angolan and Mozambican colonies (Mapa Cor-de-Rosa).
    For those of you concerned about not seeing any custom tech sprites during the streaming a couple of weeks ago, I can confirm that there are Portuguese tech sprites, but unfortunately they were not hooked-in on the build we used for the streaming.
    And thats all from me, as you can see Portugal has gone through a lot of work during the last months and I hope you enjoy playing the different paths once the DLC is released! For the next dev diary you won't have to wait a whole week as on Friday we will be showing off a bunch of stuff for modders as well as post the full 1.9 patchlog in preparation for La Rsistance release next week. Don't miss the stream today where we will continue our playthrough as Germany. Tonight we also have an AMA on reddit where you can pop in and ask us questions.


    [ 2020-02-19 14:07:54 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Dev Diary: British Spymaster AAR

    Today's Development Diary by YaBoy_Bobby
    Join me as I recount some of the highlights from my recent prerelease testing playthrough of LaR in this After Action Report (AAR) where played I as the UK. Phase 1: The buildup When playing the UK in singleplayer I dont really like trying to hold France, as I feel doing so kinda ruins the pacing of a historical playthrough. So I spent all my time from game start only building civilian factories with about 85% of my mills making aircraft. I also began establishing my intel agency in late 1937. I focused on improving my intel generation and code-cracking ability first so I could give some force multiplication to my rather small army.
    Phase 2: Naval Dominance and Focused Defense At the start of hostilities, I began cracking Germanys encryption and used my airforce in the Mediterranean in conjunction with a large part of my navy. I figured it wasnt worth sacrificing too much air strength against Germany in France at this point. I had just switched to building military factories from only building civilian factories, so I could not afford to use my more limited airforce recklessly. I also set up the majority of my operatives to set up intel networks in Germany. I attempted to recruit mostly seducer trait operatives as they have a lower chance of being caught. In the process, I got some interesting seduction experts.
    Most of my rather small army was deployed in Egypt to hold the Suez. With air superiority and an intel advantage over the Italians, Holding Egypt was a great success. I was able to recruit the famous Nancy Wake and I decided to send her on a Roman holiday to help me get more intel on Italy since I would be fighting them in Africa for the foreseeable future.
    Phase 3: Battle of Malta After the Italian navy was largely defeated, I infiltrated the Italian airforce to help get a more clear idea of how close I was to breaking it. At this point, the Italian airforce started port striking my Mediterranean Fleet in Malta. After looking at their plane counts in the intel ledger, I built up some radar in Malta and deployed the airforce to intercept the Italians in the region. Baiting them to bomb my exposed, and no longer as useful, fleet worked as phase one of my plan to break the axis airforce.
    Meanwhile, In Germany and occupied France, my intel networks had become rather strong and were providing good info on the state of the axis. I had at this point also infiltrated the German civilian govt and army to open up further options for operations and to get a more clear picture of their strengths. By late 1940 I had broken both the German and Italian ciphers and had weakened both the German and Italian airforces by fighting in favorable conditions where I had a large radar advantage combined with my passive cracked crypto advantage. Having enemy ciphers broken increases interception efficiency as well as adds to air detection. Phase 4: Battle of Greece At the end of 1940, Greece was invaded by Italy and Germany. By this point, I had a significant intel advantage, was close to matching axis airpower, and had a large and equipped Free French volunteer force. I decided I would turtle southern Greece as long as I could and brutalize the axis in the air in the process. I scrambled a large part of my North African forces to Greece and deployed the majority of my airpower. At one point my defensive line was nearly broken. I was able to save it by activating my broken ciphers on Germany, giving myself a temporary 30 day combat. Before the buff expired I was able to get some extra forces in and save Greece.
    By mid-1941 I had overtaken the axis in the air and southern Greece looked more and more secure. I decided it was time to start boosting resistance in France and laying the groundwork for eventual liberation. I also was well on my way to cracking the new Italian and German ciphers.
    Once the ciphers were cracked again and my tac bombers were no longer needed in Greece, I decided to start harassing the Germans with a strategic bombing campaign in their homeland. With my Intel levels, I was able to track how my bombing campaign was impacting Germany. I had also begun targetting resource-rich areas in France with targeted sabotage operations to further put stress on the German war machine.
    Phase 5: Yugoslavian Uprising Over the course of the next year, America and Vichy joined the war and a fight for North Africa broke out again. With Intel and Air advantage pushing Vichy France back was pretty easy. During the North Africa campaign, I noticed that Croatia was barely keeping occupied Yugoslavia under control. So I sent some of my Operatives to support the resistance there, pushing it over the edge and causing a full-scale uprising. Many of the Axis forces in northern Greece were then cut off and annihilated.
    After a great victory in Yugoslavia, I dedicated my operatives to building a massive spy network across all of Germany. This resulted in several captured Operatives, as they are more likely to be discovered in large and powerful networks, but I decided it was worth it to keep my intel on Germany maxed and the mainland set up for my Arrival. Phase 6: La Resistance and D-Day By mid-1942 the French Resistance, due in no small part to my support, had become disruptive. It was not fully rising up in rebellion but was strong enough to disable strategic redeploy in northern France and was providing constant attrition to local Axis forces. This combined with local spy network buffs, general intel advantage, air superiority, and ongoing fighting on the eastern front made securing my beachhead in France very smooth.
    After setting up a plan to drive the Germans out of France, I once again fully utilized my code-cracking for a 30day buff and battle planned the Germans back into their homeland. By late 42 The Axis was all but broken and crumbling on all fronts. The combined Allied air, land, and intelligence efforts proved to be too much and everyone was Home for Christmas of 42. I hope you all enjoyed my war story! See you next time.


    [ 2020-02-12 18:05:33 CET ] [ Original post ]

    LIVE at 16:00 CET - La Resistance Preview Stream


    Make sure to tune in to today's La Resistance preview stream. We'll be playing as Germany with the full suite of new mechanics available, to show how all the new things fit in to a normal game. Live at 16:00 CET over on twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive


    [ 2020-02-12 14:27:37 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Patch 1.8.2: Security Fix


    Hi Everyone, We've just released a tiny patch to resolve a security issue tied to the way LUA libraries were loaded for mods. Savegames should be unaffected but as always- back up before loading them! [url=https://pdxint.at/2SooGU4] Full patch notes can be found here


    [ 2020-02-07 13:18:08 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Stream: Portugal New Focus Tree


    Don't forget to tune in to today's World War Wednesday, where Portugal and its new focus tree will be showcased to you all. We'll be live over on Twitch at 16:00 CET If you missed last week's stream, it can be found here: [previewyoutube=edUL6Hh8EEQ;leftthumb][/previewyoutube]


    [ 2020-02-05 13:41:03 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Dev Diary: Achievements!

    Today's Development Diary by Podcat
    Hi everyone! Release of La Rsistance is closing in and we are busy fixing, testing and polishing. Today its time to present all the new achievements we are adding, so that the achievement hunters among you can start planning :) Without further ado, here is all 20 of them (I apologize in advance for all the young whippersnappers who wont get the movie and tv show references ;) ): One King, Two Crowns
    As Bourbon Spain, hold all Spanish and French core states. We will Rock you
    As Spain, own Gibraltar. Well, I didn't vote for you
    Win the Spanish Civil War as the anarchists. ...our chief weapon is surprise
    As Spain, have at least 5 spies and stage 5 coups against other nations. Die, Perfidious Albion!
    As Fascist France or Vichy France, occupy all of Great Britain. Second Times the Charm
    As France, occupy Moscow while Napoleon VI is your country leader. Tour de France
    Occupy all of mainland France while having at least 20 fully equipped Bicycle regiments. Go ahead, Macau my day
    As Portugal, create a collaboration government in Macau and have it own all Chinese states. BFFs
    As Portugal, join the same faction as Great Britain. Warszawo, walcz!
    Stage the Warsaw uprising and succeed. Play it, Sam
    Have a spy network of at least 50% strength in Casablanca. Spies Trade
    As India, become the spymaster for the Allies. You Will Never Kill Me Alive
    Have one of your spies take a Suicide Pill. Why Die For Danzig
    As Germany, have France turn fascist while at war with Poland. I SEE EVERYTHING
    Get over 90% intel in each category on a major without using code cracking Shaken, not stirred
    Successfully stage a coup in any nation using a spy with the Seducer trait. Listen very carefully, I shall say this only once
    Have a French and British spy work together on the same Operation Man of a thousand faces, every one the same
    Have the same spies be captured twice (so needs to be successfully rescued) Turing Complete
    Fully decrypt all nations in the axis Dont die for your country
    The challenge from PdxCon 2019 - As Germany in 1939, occupy all of Poland and France without taking more than 475 in casualties. No paradrops allowed! - See you all next week when we will be doing an AAR writeup of what its like playing as a spymaster of your faction. Also, don't miss out on our stream at 16:00CET today if you want to see LaR in action.


    [ 2020-02-05 13:10:44 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Livestream: Anarchist Spain Part 2

    Don't forget to tune in to our Twitch for part 2 of the showcase of Anarchist Spain! Live at 16:00 CET: https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive Here's last week's action [previewyoutube=EVGVgIhOkeU;full][/previewyoutube]


    [ 2020-01-29 14:37:39 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Dev Diary: La Rsistance Music and Art

    Today's Development Diary by Podact
    Hi everyone and welcome back to another dev diary for La Rsistance. Today its time to cover the art and music part of the expansion plus showcasing some of our new historical operatives. I will also be sharing the rest of the diary schedule until release. Enjoy! Music Let's start here so you can listen to some samples while you read! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYVHAQ7ExSs For La Rsistance we got 4 new tracks: Imperterrita - Our Spanish theme song. Really good buildup tune that I think will also fit well to the spanish civil war. A Storm Coming - Kinda classic HOI4 axis-y march tune we use at war and for nations going fascist. Libert, galit, Fraternit - Our french theme song. A great song for democracies with plenty of drums. Cloak and Dagger - The spy tune. We play this when players are doing sneaky stuff. It's a pretty slow tension/thriller tune.
    As you can see we try to cover new themes and theaters for each song so the game will not just play differently but also sound different with the new expansion :) Art Hi! We are artists on Hearts of Iron team, Irene and Albina and we want to tell you a bit about the production of 2D assets.. Since we are focusing on France, Spain and Portugal in this expansion, we have added portraits of generals, admirals and political leaders from these countries. These portraits were created by a number of different artists including us, Celine and Ahmed. Here is some picked favorites:
    Two of them are illustrations of Military Junta and The Anarchist Commune, two committees that represented opponent parties in the Spanish civil war. It was challenging and interesting to work with leader portraits that are a bit unusual!
    Our new feature - spies. We have made a lot of portraits of them. Male and female operatives of different nationalities, ages (and attitudes :p). You can see that the operatives share some outfit details, like glasses, suits and so on. In order to create the amount of portraits needed for this expansion we tried a new system of 2D modular portraits. As the system was new we took a bit of a risk but we feel it paid off in the end. Some of the biggest challenges were to create elements in the same camera angle and lighting conditions so they could be switched easily. In the end it turned out to be really fun to play with this character creator!
    When it comes to unit models we already showed off both our armored cars and scout planes, so click those links if you wanna see more than the below sample:
    For spain we also have a new light tank model as well as a plane model (the nationalists had their own licensed version of the German Bf109)

    Historical Operatives


    As part of La Resistance, we wanted to highlight some of the most famous agents that were active during the period. There are quite a few of them, but here is a list of personal favorites: Otto Skorzeny:
    Perhaps the most famous German small-unit leader of the war, Skorzeny was involved most famously in the German raid to liberate Mussolini (also available as a historical operation under the right circumstances!). Beyond that, he was involved in a number of other operations. Jeannie Rousseau:
    A French woman who gathered intelligence on the German V-weapon program through work in a French company supplying war material to Germany. Her reports led to the Allies becoming aware of the V-2 development taking place in Peenemnde and the allied air effort to destroy the site. She was later captured, but survived the war. Dusko Popov:
    A triple agent working for MI6, the Abwehr, as well as the Yugoslavian government-in-exile, he fed misinformation about D-Day to his German handlers, who were completely convinced that he was working for them. In between, he apparently chased a lot of tail and his lifestyle served as inspiration for Flemings James Bond (not to be confused with James Boned, who is inspired by Daniel). Josephine Baker:
    An American-born Frenchwoman, she would use her considerable fame as an entertainer to gain access to high-ranking diplomats and relayed secret information she overheard at parties to the French intelligence service. She smuggled notes about German troop movements written in invisible ink on her notation or pinned in her underwear. Nancy Wake:
    A native of New Zealand, the Fall of France found her, unfortunately, in France. She quickly began organizing an escape network for shot-down allied pilots before the Gestapo closed in on her and her husband. While she narrowly managed to escape to Spain, her husband was not so lucky. She later returned to France to organize the resistance, taking part in an unsuccessful uprising of the Marquis.

    Upcoming diaries


    As release approaches the dev diary content is getting pretty locked in so I figured I might as well show you the schedule so you know when topics will pop up (and so you can stop asking me for when we talk about AI and bugfixing seriously guys it's pretty much always the last 2 diaries ;D). Here goes: 4/2 - Achievements 5/2 - Spymaster AAR 12/2 - AI & Feature changes 19/2 - Full Patchlog, Balance & Bugfixes 25/2 - Release!!! That's it for today, dont miss our stream at 16:00CET where yet again the anarchists will take over and continue showing Spain.


    [ 2020-01-29 14:29:18 CET ] [ Original post ]

    La Rsistance: Arriving on February 25th


    STOCKHOLM - 23 January 2020 - The codes have been cracked and your agents are ready to move. The enemy will do their best to uncover your mission, but youve been preparing for this day for months. You will expose the collaborators and bring the vengeance of the oppressed to the very doorstep of the occupier. You are La Rsistance. And the date of the operation has been set. Paradox Development Studio is ready to announce that La Rsistance, the next expansion to Hearts of Iron IV, will be available for all generals and spymasters on February 25, 2020. Hearts of Iron IV, Paradoxs best-selling strategy wargame about World War II, will now be supplemented by an expansion that highlights the challenge of governing unruly conquests and the power of well-placed spies. Features of Hearts of Iron IV: La Rsistance include:

    • New Focus Trees for France: New National Focuses for Free France and the Vichy Regime, as well as an option for conservatives to restore the old French Monarchy.
    • More in Depth Spanish Campaign: New National Focuses for Republican and Nationalist Spain, including an expanded Spanish Civil War that can spiral into a wider conflict.
    • Portuguese National Focuses: New unique focus tree for Portugal. Restore Portuguese naval power, strengthen the overseas empire or intervene in the Civil War next door.
    • Espionage: Use your Intelligence Agency to train spies to specialize in certain types of information warfare and send them on special operations, or develop passive resistance to enemy espionage.
    • Support Resistance: Use your agents to assist allied resistance movements, giving them what they need to damage the enemy.
    • Collaboration Governments: Use your agents to prepare the ground for collaborators to fill the void once youve conquered your target.
    • Code Cracking: Decrypt enemy communications to gain short term battlefield advantages.
    • Recon units: Scout planes can provide useful information on nearby areas while armored cars help in detecting and suppressing resistance activities.
    https://store.steampowered.com/app/1158100/Expansion__Hearts_of_Iron_IV_La_Rsistance/


    [ 2020-01-23 18:32:58 CET ] [ Original post ]

    16:00 CET - Anarchist Spain Preview Stream


    Join Da9L, Bratyn, and Jojo at 16:00 CET today for another preview stream of La Resistance, this week looking at Anarchist Spain! Tune in: https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive


    [ 2020-01-22 14:04:59 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Dev Diary: Formable and Releaseable Nations

    Today's Development Diary by Meka66
    Hello everyone and welcome to another dev diary for La Resistance! I should begin by introducing myself: I am Meka, I joined Paradox just a few months ago as a Content Designer. Some of you may be aware of me due to my work on Theocracies and Burgundy over on EUIV, but now I'm here to show what mischief I've been up to in my time on Hearts of Iron. Man the Guns saw the creation of a lot of new tags, making some countries balkanisable, and almost all of the world decolonisable. Waking the Tiger saw the introduction of formable tags, a mechanic that until now has not been further utilised. However, with La Resistance, a whole slew of new releasable tags will be added to the game along with two new formable nations.
    Starting with releasable tags, Man the Guns allowed most of the world to be decolonised, but Oceania was mostly left unloved with only one nation being added to the continent, leaving the rest of the disparate islands untouched and still under colonial rule. However, I have added 6 new releasable tags and one formable for the region. The Kingdom of Hawaii was only annexed by the United States 38 years before the start of Hearts of Iron and can be released along with most of the USs pacific holdings.
    Tahiti
    Samoa
    The Federated States of Micronesia
    The Solomon Islands
    The Mariana Federation
    These disparate islands may struggle to survive on their own, and so a nation who holds enough of the Polynesian Triangle will be able to unite all Pacific peoples into a single state known as Polynesia. This state will be formable by any nation listed above plus New Zealand. Unlike other formable tags, this nation can be created by dominions meaning New Zealand does not necessarily have to leave the Allies in order to form this tag.
    But perhaps players wish to live out an alternate history where the Naha Prophecy was fulfilled and Kamehameha united the Pacific several years earlier. With the Polynesian Empire game rule, Hawaii will begin the game having already conquered the entirety of the Polynesian Islands and built up a fair-sized industry.

    The ability to form Polynesia is a free feature, as are the releasable tags. Along with adding these releasable nations, I did also touch up the old fragmentation game options to make the world fully split into different continents. The UK now surrenders its African, Asian, and American islands to its former colonies, Portugal surrenders Timor to Indonesia, and a few other small changes like that. Also, armies standing around in former colonial territories is now a thing of the past and nations will now only have armies stationed in territories where they have access.
    Iberia is a focal point of La Resistance and as such, a few releasable tags have been added to the subcontinent as well. Catalonia
    The Basque Country
    Galicia [imghttps://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images/9948323/7594ee915821a5a3d3667bec8c83ed3a28bacee3.png[/img] Spain can of course be fractured from the start of the game by selecting the appropriate option in the game menu. However, I noticed Catalonia, the Basque Country, and Galicia simply werent enough to make Iberia look shattered so I took the liberty of adding an 11th of November game rule, and I will leave it for you all to speculate what that option does. When it comes to the second formable, one must be opportunistic and take full advantage of the instability in Spain and Portugal. The Moorish people once reigned sovereign over all of Iberia, and owners of La Resistance will be able to restore the long-dead state of Al-Andalus.
    Andalusia was once an Islamic Sultanate that ruled from the Iberian peninsula and a beacon of the Islamic world. Through struggles with the Catholic kingdoms in the medieval era, the Andalusians would slowly be pushed out of Iberia, ending with the conquest of the Emirate of Granada in 1520. However, the Moorish people continue to exist to this day in Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, and Algeria, many of whom are descendants from Moorish refugees fleeing the Spanish Reconquista. Andalusia will be formable by any of the North African countries; Morocco, Tunisia, Western Sahara, Algeria, or Libya. In order to form this tag, one must occupy a large portion of both Spain and Portugals southern states and forming the tag grants cores on the entirety of the Iberian subcontinent.
    But that isnt the end of Andalusia. Similar to Byzantiums triumph decisions, Andalusia will be able to sweep across the Mediterranean and beyond, restoring their old claims and titles.
    If a player can enact all decisions relating to the Andalusian conquests of North Africa and the Med, they will be able to press on for Egypt and Arabia and declare themselves the Umayyad Caliphate reborn, granting cores on the Arabian Peninsula.
    Upon doing so, Andalusia will unlock their final set of decisions, allowing them to restore the entire former claims and titles of the Umayyad Caliphate, effectively reuinifying the Islamic world.
    As we have expanded the scope of Hearts of Iron, some old bits of content started to become outdated and lead to some annoying bugs, which I have dedicated some time to fixing. One key thing I have improved is the way that the British Raj interacts with different game options and Britain doing strange things. From now on, the Raj will be able to freely pursue their focus tree even if Britain forces them into independence, with some focuses bypassing, and others no longer requiring the Raj to be a subject.
    That's it for today- make sure you join Da9L, Bratyn and Jojo at 16:00CET on twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive as they have a closer look at Anarchist Spain!


    [ 2020-01-22 13:10:54 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Dev Diary: Bag Of Tricks

    Today's Dev Diary by Podcat
    Hi everyone! The team is now back from the holidays and polishing on La Resistance. Today its time for a classic bag of tricks diary covering various small changes. The theme is quality of life here. MEFO Bills Ever forgotten to renew MEFO bills as Germany? Yeah me neither! But just in case someone does we got you covered. Now you can opt out or back in if you changed your mind, at any point during each cycle.
    Construction queue We have changed the default behaviour for the construction queue. Now when adding say a new factory construction it will be placed just below the last non-repair entry (rather than at the bottom). This removes a lot of extra work with having to reprioritize things and still allows you to put specific repair jobs at the top of the queue with no issues. There are also new shortcuts in those rare situations where you might prefer sending to end of queue directly.
    Exercise auto stop Exercise now has 2 setting states so that you can either keep the old behaviour (keep training past max level and get XP) or hold shift when activating it and it will automatically stop when hitting the max level. This also works for ships and planes and its a nice relief not to have to babysit exercises when you arent after XP.
    Decision Notifiers Since we added decisions in Waking the Tiger the amount has been growing and we have been using them in more and more cool and creative ways. This has meant that the number of choices have gone up and some stuff has needed to change to make sure notifications are actually helpful for you. Firstly we have made notification numbers more visible and clear for both decisions and the espionage agency. Secondly its now possible to right click the decisions button to reset the available count. This means that after that only new ones will show up in the count. They can of course be switched on/off individually like before but if you are like me this saves a ton of clicking, and now it will impact what the notifiers show unlike before where it was only tied to separate alerts.
    Allied Naval Invasion Alerts Invasion alerts can be critically important for you to notice if an enemy is about to make a successful landing somewhere and you need to react. Previously it was difficult to help out nearby allies as alert were only for your own controlled shores. Now we have 2 new alerts mirroring the old ones for allies so you can bail out Mussolini when he's in a pinch ;)
    Civil War Surprises During a normal war you have time to set up your plans and get units into place fast, but in civil wars this is not so. With the spanish civil war in focus this expansion we wanted to make sure we made this less stressful for players, so now if any civil war happens the AI will wait a short while to activate its plans giving a human player time to organize or pause if they want. Its not a long break but its enough where it feels a lot more comfortable to play against now. Zoomable & Searchable Focus Trees We already went into this in detail back here. But since then we have improved the UI to make filtering better and set it up for old trees as well to make finding things easier. This below is for Mexico and lets you highlight stuff related to rebellions and church authority as special filters on top of the regular filters:
    Thats its for this week! Today we are also starting up streaming again. Me and Daniel (mah leaks) are going to show off as much as we can of the Espionage system at 16:00CET. See you then! https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive


    [ 2020-01-15 14:44:48 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Live (16:00 CET): Espionage Preview Stream


    Live today at 16:00 CET: Podcat and Da9L show off the new espionage system in all its glory! Tune in here: https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive


    [ 2020-01-15 12:05:49 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Dev Diary: Portugal Focus Tree


    Today's Development Diary by ManoDeZombi Ol everyone and welcome to another dev diary for La Resistance! Let me begin by introducing myself: My name is Manuel, Im from Spain and I joined Paradox as a Content Designer for HOI a couple of months ago (just on time to attend PDXCON, yeah!). Ive been working on the implementation of Portugal for La Resistance. The original design of the focus tree was made by Portuguese professor Pedro Santos. He came with what I consider to be a really interesting idea, where the political branch of the tree has multiple possible interactions with the Spanish Civil War. While I worked on Portuguese Events and Decisions, the whole tree was implemented by our producer, Vachon (big kudos to her!). We tweaked the design of the Focus Tree a little bit, specifically the communist branch, which we felt was a bit dull compared to others, and the SCW-related branches to make them properly interact with Spain. Now Im the one who will polish the tree and will attempt to get rid of all those lovely bugs our great Betas are reporting. Talking about Betas, our freelance artist @Indyclone77 is the one to blame for all the wonderful Portuguese event pictures and new icons you are about to see in the focus tree and national spirits, he has done an amazing job not only in making all that cool art, but also in providing crucial feedback during the development, so big kudos to him as well! Before going on, please note that balancing is still a work in progress, so there may be changes in what you are about to see. So Id like to start talking about the National Spirits Portugal will start with in 1936:

    • Unreliable Army: Representing the poor state of the Portuguese army during the period of the First Republic, which historically led to a major reorganization in 1937, it provides some penalties to Division Organization, Recruitable Population Factor, War Support and Division Attack, so you want to get rid of this before entering any conflict (probably not the best idea to join the Spanish Civil War only to see how your disgusting Spanish enemies defeat your unprepared troops and occupy your precious mainland in a blink...).
    • Unstable Republic: During its 16 years, the First Portuguese Republic saw the inauguration of nine presidents and 44 cabinet reorganizations. Even during the Ditadura Militar there were several failed coup attempts. In 1933, after Salazars creation of the Estado Novo and the new Constitution approved in a referendum, Portugals stability slowly increased (maybe the censorship system and the different police forces that repressed all kinds of dissidents also helped a little bit with that). So another no-good spirit applying penalties to your Daily Political Power Gain, Stability and Construction Speed. You will be able to remove it through the different political branches, and you will probably want to do it ASAP.

    Now lets look at the Portugese Focus Tree and talk about the different paths a player can choose from:
    See an enlarged version of this image on the forums As you can see, the general structure varies a little bit from the standards of other trees, where you have clear separate branches for industry, military forces and politics. Lets start with the colonial branch, shall we? Through the first focuses, Portugal will receive big bonuses to non-core manpower that will prove really useful in the early stages, since Portugals initial manpower is really low. The player can then choose between integrating the African colonies (which will also provide some extra manpower), or allowing them to form their own governments and puppeting them (something that will be appreciated by other democracies in the world). There is also a sub-branch that joins the industrial one, developing industry and infrastructure in the African colonies.
    Regarding Industry, by continuing the public works initiated by Salazars regime around the early 30s, Portugal will gain access to the first focus that will provide her first extra research slot (take into consideration that Portugal starts with only two research slots, so it seems just fair for her to get an early focus to fix that). The player can also choose between a fast development of the civilian industry receiving more factories or, with a slower approach, invest in future development getting some nice bonuses to industry research and construction speed. Portugal can also improve infrastructure and resource extraction industries on the mainland and, of course, there is a focus representing the construction of dams, something Iberian dictators liked very much to do. And then we have the military industry sub-branch, where the player can get (much needed) military factories and some useful bonuses to production and research for aircraft, vehicles and artillery. Make sure you dont miss the extra research slot hidden between all these industrial focuses!
    The first focus on the Naval Branch will unlock decisions to buy ships from either The United Kingdom or Italy. If they accept to build your ships (make sure you have good relations with them before activating the decision!), you will then be presented with three different options to choose from.

    The central and left sub-branches focus on Convoy protection and submarine warfare, providing a number of research bonuses for destroyers and submarine warfare, as well as adding a couple of dockyards to boost your naval production. These sub-branches then merge, eventually leading to a focus that unlocks Portugals third and last research slot (for a total of five). The right side of the naval branch is focused on the production of the big ships, as well as fortifying the vulnerable Portuguese possessions in the Atlantic Ocean and Asia.
    The Army Branch, although fairly small (dont worry, you will find more military focuses under the Political Branch), will help Portugal to get its army in shape for the conflicts to come. The first focus removes that nasty Unreliable Army National Spirit and leads to some research and production bonuses in the next focuses. Finally, you will have to choose between building heavy fortifications in Lisbon, or creating a light fortification line along the coast.
    Now, lets take a general look at the whole Political Branch before getting deeper into each of the sub-branches:

    In the right, we have the cautious approach to the Spanish Civil War. Here you wont be able to join the SCW until you have swapped to a communist government. Its a much slower approach, but after the war, you can pick different focuses to interact with foreign countries, including one that will grant you a war goal against Spain, in case their ideology is no longer desirable for you.
    If you go with Strict Neutrality you wont be able to interact in the SCW, but you will gain some nice boosts to your industry, production and Democracy support via the British, as well as some recurrent decisions to purchase equipment from them.


    In case you go with Estado Novo, you will have to choose between Strict Neutrality (mentioned above), Support the Nationalists and the Monarchist branch. Support the Nationalists, as its Republican counterpart, will allow you to support Nationalist Spain and send volunteers in the Spanish Civil War. You can join the SCW against the Republic in further focuses, and also intervene in Spain after the civil war if the Spanish government does not match your ideology. National Syndicalism will pave the way to become Fascist, leading to some interesting focuses: You can either join the Axis, or claim that Portugal will be the nation that finally unites the entire world under the same rule, ideology and faith (this will provide a powerful National Spirit, but it will also annoy some people around the globe). Refuse the Naval Blockade unlocks a decision for countries at war with the United Kingdom, by which they will use some of your convoys to carry supplies where they cannot reach, increasing their War Support and, of course, diverting the production of one of their factories to meet your needs.

    In the case of a Carlist Uprising happening during the Spanish Civil War, you can support your Monarchist friends in Spain and join the war against all those disgusting Communists, Socialists, Anarchists and Fascists (a lot of people to deal with in the Iberian Peninsula).
    And thats all from me, I hope you enjoyed the dev diary and make sure to stay tuned for the next one. Anyways, we wish you all a merry Christmas and very happy New Year. See you all in 2020!


    [ 2019-12-18 16:41:23 CET ] [ Original post ]

    La Rsistance - Showing off the French Focus Tree(s) Part 2


    Tune in to twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive on Wednesday @16:00CET for part 2 of our in-depth look on what is coming for France in our upcoming expansion: La Rsistance. If you missed missed part 1, or any other previous streams, come check out our Paradox Grand Strategy Youtube Channel.


    [ 2019-12-17 09:43:53 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Dev Diary: Intelligence


    Today's Development Diary by Podcat Hi everyone! Next to last dev diary before christmas, and today we are going to talk about intel. We have been talking about ways to get intel a bit in previous diaries, like code cracking, scout planes and spies but not really talked about the system as a whole. So lets get to it! Before intel was based essentially on comparing two nations crypto tech levels and it was a flat value covering everything. To make this more interesting we are splitting it into 4 separate values: Civilian/Industry Intel, Army Intel, Navy Intel, Air Intel. These affect what you can see in our new intel ledger, that replaces the little intel bit in the diplomacy interface from before for people with La Resistance:
    Each of the tabs cover each type of intel (here we have civilian/industry selected), and they also come with mapmode information. As an example in the one above we aggregate building values as you zoom out (if you zoom in you see the same by state). This can help you when figuring out where to bomb or where and what kind of sabotage can be most effective. The more intel you have the more information is displayed, we break down the levels in a tooltip per category:
    So right now I can see how many army techs have been researched, but not specifically which. That requires 70% but then you can look at their tech tree. If I had 5% more I could see roughly how many of each division template the other nation had. At the moment I can only see that they exist but no real info about what they contain. The army intel tab also lets you get a breakdown of the enemy stockpile of equipment. Naval and air are similar:

    Naval intel mapmode is quite powerful and at high intel levels will let you see where the enemy is placing certain missions
    Intel can come from many different sources, for example: - Spy networks - Infiltrated spy assets - Captured enemy spies - Radar - Broken Ciphers - Scout planes - Fighting the enemy in land combat - Fighting the enemy in air combat - Fighting the enemy in naval combat And probably some I forgot. Each source has a max it can contribute and may affect different intel values in different ways. For example if you have a spy network over the enemies coast, or scout naval areas with traffic you will get more naval intel. Each source also decays over time so its important to actively do things to keep your intel levels current and make sure you combine many sources to get as much intel as possible. Here I have multiple sources:
    Do note that the biggest chunk here is me doing some quick events with rewards of intel to cheat my way to quick screenshots ;). Also note that simply being democratic and having open trade laws make hiding the civilian part of your intel hard. Knowing what kind of build strategy, templates, tech and stockpile an enemy has can be very useful allowing you to counter and attack them in the best way possible, but there is also direct advantage from relative intel which replaces the crypto level comparison from before.
    See you next week for more cool stuff, and don't forget to tune into twitch at 16:00CET where we will be showing of France for the first time (aka watch Daniel accidentally leak stuff).


    [ 2019-12-11 13:43:13 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Preview Stream: France Rework


    Make sure you tune in to our second preview stream for La Resistance, which will be focusing on the rework of France's National Focus Tree. Live at 16:00 CET here: https://twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive


    [ 2019-12-11 13:10:50 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Dev Diary: Recon Planes and Code Cracking


    Today's Development Diary by Podcat Hi everyone! Today we are going to start talking about changes to Intel and present some of the tools you will have at your disposal for gaining it in La Rsistance. We will also go back to the Agency and talk about code cracking. Scout Planes Scout planes is a great way of gaining intel on your enemies. This is a new plane type that comes in two tech levels
    These new planes are not capable of fighting or giving air superiority, but they have a new mission Air Recon which can also be performed in peace time. This mission will give you intel on nations under its area of operation, or their navy if covering trafficked naval regions. It also does spotting of ships and divisions so its a great way to figure out what the enemy is up to.
    Other planes types can not do the air recon mission, although in war time other planes will be gaining you intel as well during regular operations. Code Cracking One of the things in WW2 that has always fascinated me was the allied efforts to break the axis codes, particularly the work done at Bletchley Park. When reading about this work you usually are told about the tough choices that had to be made, because after the enigma codes had been cracked and german messages could be read the allies were forced to only use this knowledge in limited ways. If they had not it would have tipped off the Germans that they knew and made the whole thing moot. Basically, to save the punch for when it was most needed. This is something I wanted to make sure that we captured when we started designing the new code cracking system. To interact with code cracking etc you need to form a new department in your Agency. Under it are upgrades both for creating and breaking enemy ciphers.
    The higher your decryption power the faster you can break enemy codes and the higher your crypto strength the tougher you in turn are to break.
    In the above screenshot I have cracked Germany's current cipher. If they end up upgradign to a higher level I would lose some progress and have to continue the work. The 25 shown is your total decryption power and will be shared among all active projects. Right now Denmark is the only active one so gets the full attention and fastest possible code breaking. Having a cracked code gives you some passive bonuses that are not possible for the enemy to see and confirm, such as air interception. To take full advantage you will need to commit and fully activate. Doing that gives you 30 days of full intel on the enemy as well as an assortment of other bonuses.
    A perfect time to use it when launching naval invasions or starting fighting somewhere because when activated the enemy will know and ciphers will reset within 30 days. After this time you will need to crack their code again,, which probably will have had its strength upgraded. Outside of just having a bunch of mathematicians working day and night on breaking the enemy codes you can also help them out though clandestine operations
    This diary showed you more ways of gaining intel, next week we will be getting into the details about the intel changes. See you then!


    [ 2019-12-04 13:14:05 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Updated Garrison and Resistance Mechanics - twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive

    At long last we're back with streams! Every Wednesday at 16:00CET we'll showcase our upcoming expansion: La Rsistance for you.
    Tune in to twitch, or you can watch it later on our Grand Strategy Youtube Channel!


    [ 2019-12-04 11:43:39 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Dev Diary: Collaboration and Coups

    Today's Development Diary By Podcat
    Hi guys! Today we are going to be talking about collaboration, compliance and also coups as we missed covering them in last weeks dev diary about operations. Coups Lets start off with coups. These are now an operation and needs to be set up by your agents.
    Its possible to say where you want the coup to originate, which adds some nice strategic power to it (such as targeting colonial areas that are harder to recover etc). There are several ways to make a coup more successful, and in reverse protect yourself. A coup needs low stability, political support for the couping ideology and agents need to have prepared a network, infiltrated the government and built up the coup. So as an attacker you will want to mess with these things in advance (say by using spy missions and operations). And of course as the target, you want to keep these values up to stay safe, as well as making sure your nation counterespionage is up to the task. We have also changed the behaviour of the resulting wars a bit so when a side wins against the other planes and ships will switch hands instead of being lost. This could often be a reason to launch small coups with no hope just to mess with the enemies navies. Collaboration Collaborators work similar, but opposite to Governments in Exile. They are created by an operation where agents are sent in to convert and/or support local collaborators.
    This is an operation you can run more than once (although cost and time goes up every time), and for each one you will strengthen the collaborators. Foreign Collaboration governments are tracked (much like GiE) from your country screen.
    The higher the value of collaborators present the easier it will be to make the nation capitulate which can be important in cases where you need to move in fast. You also unlocks levels of compliance in the new resistance and compliance system which will be transferred to regular compliance once the target nation is capitulated. This can be useful for giving you a head start on managing a lot of occupied areas by laying some groundwork before you even attack.
    Speaking of compliance, we never really went into detail on how that worked before, so lets take a look now. If you need to read up on the changes coming to the resistance system as a whole though check out the dev diary here. There are several levels of compliance "unlocks". These happen on a national level for the occupied nation.
    The first unlock is Informants. Secret police working in the province have established a network of snitches and collaborators. This gives an increase to defense against enemy operatives in the occupied nation. The next unlock is Local Police Force. At this level, enough locals have been trained and are loyal enough to police their country for the occupiers. As a result, local garrison needs are now reduced. The third unlock is Reorganized Workforce. At this point, Life is returning to some level of normalcy and people are able to go about their daily lives and perform their normal jobs. This compliance unlock adds access to another 10% of factories and resources across the occupied nation. Volunteer Program is the fourth compliance unlock. This represents locals volunteering to serve in their occupiers military and adds 10% of the population as fit for service. The final unlock is A New Regime. At this highest level it is possible to create a new subject type Collaboration Government directly. This frees you up from policing it and ensures that it sticks to you in any peace deal you win. Getting high compliance can be a lot of effort in war time and it can be a very good idea to make sure you have collaborators in place before invasions.
    Collaboration governments will mirror your map color as well to show how closely aligned they are.
    See you all next week when we will look at some intel gathering tools


    [ 2019-11-27 13:45:32 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Dev Diary: Operations

    Today's Development Diary by Podcat
    Welcome to another dev diary for La Resistance. Today we are back talking espionage, namely Operations. These are like big impact missions that may require multiple agents as well as resources and preparation time. I also have some other stuff to cover. - Update on the new launcher As some of you may have noticed the launcher release got a big bumpier than we had liked. While we had fixed several issues since the stellaris launcher it seemed that HOI4 had a share of unique issues also :/ Ive looked at telemetry and it seems like mod use is mostly back to pre-launcher-release so it seems most players are back on board with mods, but there are still reports of issues. We released a 1.8.1 hotfix for some issues at the end of last week and we are working on a few things on the game side since. I have been chatting with the team working on the launcher and they will have a launcher bugfix patch out next week (the new launcher updates without us having to update the game or bump version number). While they are mainly looking at bugs at the moment, they are also working on some UI improvements for mod navigation that should be ready during next month. - Operations Operations all require at least one agent to perform, and some require more than one (in fact some powerful ones require more than you might have as a non-spymaster, making their access more limited). They also all need some level of network to have been built up in preparation.
    Operations all need preparation before they can be launched. This is usually produced equipment, agents or a cost in industry over time. We use this last one as an abstract representation of funneling economy into bribes, making or creating counterfeit cash etc where military equipment makes no sense.
    In this example we are using the local resistance to saboutage resource extraction and we need to supply the operation with 250 support equipment You can here also set the operation to just launch when ready if you do not care about timing, or if you want it to keep repeating. Once preparation is done an operation can have multiple phases. The most common is 3 - Infiltration, performing the job and exfiltration. We have a pretty cool system for this where phases can be mixed and matched and have different costs associated with them. For example if your operatives need to paradrop into location at night it may require transport planes, but if its a neutral border perhaps only some economic bribing is needed to slip in. Operations can take quite a while to perform and will lock up your operatives during this. Operatives can also have traits that affect both chance of better outcomes as well as making them cheaper/faster. The more times you perform an operation against a target the more difficult it gets. This kind of auto balancing simulates that the enemy will plug holes in their security based on how you have previously broken through. There are two main types of operations: Gatekeeper ones that give you infiltrated assets, which in turn allow you access to other, more powerful operations. Infiltration These are all gatekeeper operations with added benefits.
    (note that this resistance contact ones lets you specify a target state. Some operations target nations, some take states and others strategic regions) Infiltrate Army - Gets you an asset inside the enemy armed forces. Gets you more info on their armies, techs etc. Infiltrate Air Force - Gets you an asset inside the enemy air force. Gets you extra intel on their air forces, air techs etc. Infiltrate Civilian Government - Gets you an asset in the enemies government. Gives more intel on their production, buildings etc. Make Resistance Contacts - Get a local contact in the underground resistance. This helps boost resistance growth.
    Other operations Several of these require some form of infiltration to be in place first. Often they will need resistance networks, a certain amount network cover and other limiters also. Steal Blueprints - Depending on the outcome and what kind of infiltration you have done you can get research speed bonuses, ahead of time or full unlocks of technologies. Targeted Sabotage - Use your contacts in local resistance and strengthen and focus sabotage in an area Boost Resistance - Strengthen the local resistance Capture Ciphers - The old steal the enigma trick ;) Capture clues to the enemies cryptos and gain progress on cracking them. Requires that you have a crypto department. Coordinated Strike - Allow setting up air strikes and launching a surprise attack. This will let us simulate things like Pearl Harbor and the devastation that the germans wrought on soviet air forces on the start of Barbarossa. Your agents prepare an area that will see a strong intial strike. You need to set up your air force missions before and when the operation triggers the strike will happen (and war declared if you are a nation allowed to do this). It works for port strikes and strategic bombing. Plant False Intel - This lets you create fake troops to trick the enemy. These troops will look like regular divisions to the enemy, although they will disappear into thin air if the enemy gains full intel or end up in combat with them. They dont consume supplies and are not able to capture territory. Fake troops work an all of your non-allies, but a nation needs to be picked where to seed the false information. [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_S._Patton#Phantom_Army]Bonus point if you do this and put Patton in charge of them ;)
    Rescue captured operative - Its bound to happen that one of your Operatives get captured while out on mission. If this happens they will be leaking intel to the enemy, but you will have the option to mount a rescue operation and get them out to safety. There are also some things we will wait until next week to reveal... Historical operations We also wanted to give you the opportunity to recreate some of the more famous operations in the war. While the generic operations already cover a lot of work done by, for example, allied agents working with the resistance in France and Yugoslavia, there were a few very famous ones that didnt really fit. Most of these are less inspirations for spy movies and more about Daring Commando Raids (). For example, if Germany occupies the Telemark region in Norway, they can now take a decision to begin heavy water production. The decision runs for a fairly long time, and if it completes, the Germans get a bonus to nuclear research. Historically the heavy water was fairly useless for actually building a reactor or even a nuclear bomb, but we decided that if the Germans managed to get it, they would realize that and end up pursuing a better approach.
    However, any country with an intelligence agency in a war with Germany can try to sabotage the production plant if there is a certain level of resistance in Telemark. This is to allow the German player to successfully defend by keeping resistance low in the area. Historically, the British had to execute several operations to deny the Germans the heavy water. The most successful was Operation Gunnerside, which completely demolished the plant through the use of explosives planted by a small Commando unit, and which now serves as the basis for our Historical Operation. There are a handful of other historically-inspired operations, including the German raids to capture or kill Tito and to liberate Mussolini.


    [ 2019-11-20 16:12:45 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Launcher Hotfix 1.8.1 LIVE

    Hotfix has arrived. 1.8.1 "Fork" is now live and downloadable through Steam. Checksum is aa59. This hotfix consists of a couple quick display setting fixes and a fix for the Paradox Account login popup that should not have appeared when using the Steam matchmaking service. Simultaneously but separately, the launcher team is working on the feedback received regarding various launcher behavior itself. And we will continue to investigate the critical issues that have been reported but not addressed in this hotfix. Please make sure to disable any outdated mods in case you have problems running the game! 1.8.1 Fork - Patch notes ################################## # Bugfix ################################## - Prevented the Paradox Account login window from popping up when entering the multiplayer lobby when not using the Paradox matchmaking service. - Fixed refresh rate settings from launcher so that they are applied. - Changed default display mode in new launcher to borderless fullscreen from exclusive fullscreen when launched for the first time, to restore behavior from the previous launcher.


    [ 2019-11-14 16:18:54 CET ] [ Original post ]

    The 1.8 "Fork" Update is now LIVE!

    1.8.0 "Fork" is now live and downloadable through Steam. The last four digits of the checksum are 3241 (the new launcher displays a much longer full checksum; the in-game version will still show just the four digits). Since 1.8.0 does not contain any major game mechanic changes, it should be save game compatible with 1.7.1. But if you for some reason want to remain on 1.7.1 or older,here are instructions for reverting to patches since 1.5.4, or special instructions for 1.5.3 and earlier. Please make sure that any mods you are using are updated for 1.8.0, or your game might not run properly (seriously). Due to a few complications that we only noticed very recently, mods will not be properly shown in the new launcher the first time you run. But if you launch the game and run to the full menu, exit, and then relaunch, they should show up correctly. See this thread for more information. If you discover any bugs in patch 1.8.0, please report them in the bug report forum as usual. ################################################################ ######## Patch 1.8.0 "Fork" ######## ################################################################ ################################## # Feature & General ################################## - Added new Launcher - Added "/mute " and "/unmute " chat commands ################################## # Balance ################################## - Reduced number of destroyers needed to cover convoy routes from 1 destroyer per 5 convoys to 1 destroyer per 10 convoys - Convoys can no longer detect convoys as that just drags down the average detection when escorted - The amount of convoys in a sub battle is now based on the length of the route, so longer = fewer in a battle - Reduced total possible torpedo reveal chance reduction to 60% from 70% by reducing wolfpack by 5% and commander trait by 5% - Slightly reduced sub reveal chance when firing torpedos to account for convoys no longer contributing to detection averages - Slightly reduced passive sub reveal chance in combat to account for convoys no longer contributing to detection averages - Added 2 sub detection to radar 4 to make t4 subs not so hard to detect when matched up against modern destroyers - Aluminium Company of Canada focus now gets an additional 14 Aluminium - upgraded t4 radar to have sub detection from 10 to 14 - upgraded t3 radar to have sub detection from 5 to 6 - increased IC cost for t3 sub hull from 270 to 320 - increased IC cost for t4 sub hull from 300 to 450 - increased IC cost for cruiser sub hull from 370 to 390 - increased number of convoys covered by each destroyer on escort from 10 to 12 - Lowered t3 and t4 submarine torpedo damage from 23 to 22 and 30 to 28 respectively - slightly increased the speed penalty on depth charges ################################## # Bugfix ################################## - Fixed a civil war revolter not getting correct focus tree - Fixed escaping or sunk convoys from inadvertently affecting damage calculations for the remaining convoys. - Fixed Diminishing Returns now applying to party popularity changes. - Fixed lend-lease sender having its convoy sunk instead of the receiver in naval combats - Prevented subjects from giving units to their overlord as part of a request for expeditionary forces if those units are volunteers or expeditionaries from another country. ################################## # UI & Database ################################## - The open music player button in settings now has proper size - Music Player now has proper spelling in tooltip/settings button - Fixes for Japanese various names (ships, divisions etc). - Fixed full name for Canadian general Percival John Montague. ################################## # Modding ################################## - Added define to allow scaling of ship part of sub detection inside combats - Enabled some console commands that had previously been developer-only but which did not really need to be locked. - add_mines - release (country) - debug (toggle miscellaneous in-game debug utilities) - debug_smooth (toggle within-game-tick frame rendering) - instant_prepare (division preparation) - reload_textures - tag_color (set country color) ################################## # Stability & Performance ################################## - Fixed a crash when removing certain unit leader traits. - Added checks to prevent CTD in cases where AI had sent invalid expeditionary forces - Optimized game rule checks by finding the game rule in the game rule database more efficiently. - Prevented a crash if a script tries to make a non-existing country declare war on another country. - Fixed CTD on invalid set_politics usage by failing to set ruling_party, made it write an error instead. - Fixed pointer truncation in 64bits in ProtectedMemoryAllocate - Fixed crash reporter to correctly indicate if the program is built for a 64-bit architecture. - Fixed a CTD related to expeditionary forces that could lock in saves - Fixed game crashing in weird ways if a mod tries reusing an id


    [ 2019-11-13 15:25:05 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Dev Diary: Sub Balance + New Launcher

    Today's Development Diary by Podcat
    As Wednesday is upon us so is a new dev diary! Next week we will be back with more espionage, but today is about a small surprise patch as well as improved Focus tree navigation. 1.8 Fork Fork you say? I thought you said 1.8 was going to be Husky? Due to technical requirements having to do with updating to the new paradox launcher we had to jump a big number other than going to 1.7.2 like we had planned. This means that 1.9 will instead be Husky which is the big update coming together with La Resistance. [url=https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/hoi4-dev-diary-1-8-patch-wut-focus-tree-navigation.1279837/]To read the full changelog for the patch, click here. To summarize, the big points here are: Stability, submarine balance and a new launcher Submarine balance Later tier 3 and 4 subs were simply too good compared to destroyers designed to hunt them. They have been nerfed a bit and increased in cost and destroyer upgrades improved. Large empires should now also have a bit easier time as we better control the amount of convoys in each battle and have fixed a bug where convoys would actively hurt the sub detection abilities of their escorts making it really tough in big battles.
    New launcher We much like Imperator, EU4 and Stellaris have now also moved to the new launcher. Since wargamers are a traditional bunch you might be asking why a new launcher is happening. There are several reasons:

  • Platform independence. We want to be able to exist on multiple platforms eventually and the current one is limited and not really capable of doing it very well.
  • The old one is really limited in how we can communicate with you. Now we can link to multiple news post for example.
  • It frees up the dev team (us). We never really had the time to work on the launcher and as the place setting up mods and such there have been a ton of requests for features (such as mod groupings and presets) that we just never have the time to do. With a dedicated team working on a unified launcher across pdx games they will have more time for stuff like this and we can worry about the game itself. I have great hopes for lots of cool improvements in the future and make sure to let them know in comments what kind of features you would like to see.
  • We got a neat continue button now directly in launcher so you can save time getting back on your previous session ;)
    [url=https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/new-launcher-for-hearts-of-iron-iv-on-the-13th-of-november.1273707/]Go here to read details about the launcher changes and what the mean for modders and player. The tl;dr for players though is that you need to start the game, run it to the main menu and then quit and restart. Without this your mods wont show up. This will clean up old mod configuration and prep everything. Mods will still show out of date until modders have updated the supported version, but we haven't made any changes that will break them so 1.7.1 mods should still be ok, despite them saying they arent - so no panic ;) If you do have issues please post about them in the above linked thread about the launcher rather in here (its still cool to discuss the launcher here though). The patch itself releases later today (late afternoon). That is all about the patch, lets move on to highlight some neat stuff coming in 1.9 'Husky'... Focus Tree Navigation As our focus trees have gotten larger finding things in them or simply exploring them has gotten harder. To solve this we are adding several things to the national focus screen (btw UI here is still a bit WIP and may change)
    • Zoom - You can now zoom in and out to the mouse pointer much like on the map. Its a nice way to get around on big trees (*squints at the spanish focus tree*)
    • Filters - toggling various filters can let you easily spot where industry is located, or things related to particular national spirits you are trying to get rid of or modify. These are tagged manually on focuses so its something modders will be able to use also.
    • Free Search - on top of filters we also have full free search. It goes through tooltips automatically and picks out focuses. This is a more advanced and powerful version of Filters and quite nice for finding specific things fast when you know what you are looking for.

    This is me searching for industry related stuff in the Chinese tree. It also shows some of our default filters on the right. Several nations have special filters to help highlight specific mechanics. So China has "Inflation" as a filter, the commonwealth nations have a filter to help spot affecting independence etc. We hope this is going to make getting into new focus trees a lot easier! Here is an example of zooming out about half way on China:
    If I place my mouse pointer somewhere I can still see tooltips and zooming will zoom to the cursor. See you all next week for another diary!


    [ 2019-11-13 11:44:20 CET ] [ Original post ]

  • New Launcher on November 13th

    We are presenting you with a new startup menu (or launcher some call it) for Hearts of Iron IV. The reason for doing this is to create a base on which we can continue to develop features and enrich your experience in many ways. Important! The first time you start Hearts of Iron IV after this update, all mods will be disabled. Steam Workshop mods will show an error about something looking wrong with the downloaded files. Any local mods not associated with Steam will not appear in the list at all. Boot up the game completely, exit and start again, and then all your mods should appear as normal, both Steam Workshop mods and local mods. We apologize for the inconvenience, but it was a necessary step. For additional information, questions or to report issues with it, please visit our official forum here! You can also seek assistance for technical issues by submitting a ticket through support.paradoxplaza.com


    [ 2019-11-12 18:06:08 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Dev Diary: The Intelligence Agency

    Hi everyone! Today we will start going through the Espionage features announced at PDXCON in greater detail. First off is the hub of everything - Your Intelligence Agency. The Agency The Agency is something you need to construct on game start if you plan to involve yourself in the shadow war that will be running now. We recommend at least an investment in defence eventually to help protect yourself even if you do not plan to dedicate resources to offensive operations. Notice that I said construct? The Agency will take up several of your factories for a while to be created. Civilian factories is the closest we have to a money budget so we felt this was the most appropriate cost to use. When you decide to make the agency you are free to name it (a historical name will be suggested) and you can also pick from a mix of historical logos as well as generic made up ones (surprise - a lot of agencies did not advertise themselves to heavily).
    In the Agency you can recruit Operatives (more about them and what they can do in a future diary), work on cryptology (also a topic of a future diary) and upgrade the different branches of the agency as well as update training or develop new gadgets to help your Operatives. Branch Upgrades Just like the creation of an agency it will cost you some industry time to develop its capabilities. The time is always the same, but the cost itself can vary with how powerful the option is.
    Lets have some examples of the many options:

    • Naval Department - This is one of the basic branches that improves your intelligence gathering in that field. It will ensure that you get the most out of any naval intel you get.
    • Passive Defense - This boosts your agencies counterintelligence rating which together with Operatives help you defend against enemy Operatives.
    • Invisible Ink - Improved ways of sneaking intel back through letters or other ways through writing. It means your Operatives will be generating more intel when active somewhere.
    • Suicide Pills - Captured Operatives will now have a final way out limiting leaks of intel to the enemy
    • Diplomatic Training - Operatives learn to operate among high society and politics and would no longer dream of ordering their Martinis stirred. This one helps with missions such as diplomatic pressure and control of foreign trade (yup.. future diary)
    • Cryptology Department - this sets up a department of math wizards and crossword puzzlers. Why shall be covered in a future diary ;)
    The Spy Master If you have enough upgrades and are in a faction you can become the factions Spy Master.
    This is the logical path for people who want to lean heavily into espionage to get the most of it. There can only be one spy master per faction and the main advantage of being a spy master is that it will let you run a lot more Operatives (depending on the size of your faction). We felt it was mostly historical that only the really big nations truly invested in this, but the most important reason was balance. A lot of spy systems in games fall down on the fact that people can spam you with agents so you either end up super annoyed or the system needs to be toned down to where its no longer impactful and fun. In a historical HOI game given this rule, we have then set us up with 3 potentially powerful agencies: Allies, Axis and Comintern. See you all next week when we take a look at further espionage topics :)


    [ 2019-10-30 14:03:39 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Dev Diary: Back from PDXCON!

    Read today's Dev Diary by Podcat
    Hi everyone! We are now back from PdxCon (most of us) and landing in our new offices, so brace for a ton of pictures! Oh and we announced the new expansion! If you haven't see the trailer <3 start there: [previewyoutube=rH0atlfbfzw;leftthumb][/previewyoutube] PdxCon 2019 PdxCon this year was imo one of the best ones so far. It was held in the Funkhaus Berlin. This place was super cool, and was basically the center of all radio and recording for DDR from the 50s until the german reunification.
    We had announcements (among them CK3 and La Rsistance!), LAN parties, presentations and Q&A sessions with fans as well as a scramble-for-africa multiplayer game on sunday. Most of all though it was super fun to chat with fans and modding groups (several ones were there!)
    WW2.. in hot pink!
    A very humble picture of Bratyn on a throne ;D
    HOI boardgame preview
    Animals in the audience? In our booth we ran a challenge which we plan to be an achivement for LaR, just like we did with 30min of Hel last year. It was called "Don't Die for your Country" and was to capitulate France and Poland as Germany with as few of your own casualties as possible (and no using paratroopers). The final score was 475 casualties :O
    Voigt was the winner, and you can read about how he did it here. We had a ton of fun and basically just crashed when we got home ;D it felt a lot like coming home from a music festival :) La Rsistance So 'ere we go... Our next expansion is now announced: La Rsistance! Its main theme is Espionage and Resistance and the main country focuses are France, both sides of the Spanish Civil War as well as Portugal. We will be starting off by going through espionage in the coming weeks in details For more info check out the announce post and there will probably be uploads of videos from PDXCon and my talks popping up on youtube in the near future. also here is a fresh unused screenshot to wet your appetites...
    New Office We have a new office, and it is INSANELY COOL. Me and Daniel have been cruising around and checking it out this morning. Here are some highlights:
    Meeting rooms with battleplans and maps!
    armed artists...
    Mugshot-wall for employees :)
    WILD ANIMALS
    Toilets with inspirational quotes o_O
    Aliens
    A space wall where you can literally sit and stare into space...
    Casual meeting areas :)
    Extra big meeting rooms
    The Bar :)
    And finally our awesome lobby Thats it for today. See you again next week when we will start digging into the new LaR features!


    [ 2019-10-23 15:27:56 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Stream: World War PDXCON

    Tune in to The Paradox Twitch Channel at 17:00CEST tonight to watch some prominent streamers clash in a World War in a 4+ Hour Streaming Session - LIVE from PDXCON 2019 in Berlin! Each team will be manned with one developer Captain that will not play themselves, but instead help their team achieve greatness by offering assistance with synchronization as well as tips for those participants that are not as experienced.



    The stream will as usual be available as VOD on our Twitch Channel, and uploaded to YouTube next week


    [ 2019-10-20 14:20:40 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Hearts of Iron IV: La Rsistance Announced

    BERLIN - 19 October 2019 - The quickest way to kill an enemy is to do it from within. Learn its secrets. Sabotage its industry. break its codes. Strike at vulnerable points behind the front lines. Send agents to build a network of informants and a secret army that will rise against the occupiers. Resistance is never futile. Paradox Development Studios is happy to announce Hearts of Iron IV: La Rsistance, an expansion to the best-selling grand strategy wargame. La Rsistance introduces a new espionage system to the game, and also increases the range of interactions and options with resistance movements in occupied territory. [previewyoutube=rH0atlfbfzw;full][/previewyoutube] Features of Hearts of Iron IV: La Rsistance includes:

    • New Focus Trees for France: New National Focuses for Free France and the Vichy Regime, as well as an option for conservatives to restore the old French Monarchy.
    • More In-Depth Spanish Civil War: New National Focuses for Republican and Nationalist Spain, as well as an expanded Spanish Civil War that can spiral into a wider conflict..
    • Portuguese Focuses: Navigate the pressure of the World War, or involve yourself in the Spanish Conflict with the new Focus Tree for Portugal (updated point)
    • Espionage: Use you Intelligence Agency to train spies to specialize in certain types of information warfare and develop passive resistance to enemy espionage, then send them on special operations.
    • Support Resistance: Use your agents to assist allied resistance movements, giving them what they need to damage the enemy.
    • Collaboration Governments: Use your agents to prepare the ground for collaborators to fill the void once youve conquered your target.
    • Code Cracking: Decrypt enemy communications to gain short term battlefield advantages.
    • Recon units: Scout planes can provide useful information on nearby areas while armored cars help in detecting and suppressing resistance activities
    As usual, La Rsistance will be accompanied by a significant free update to Hearts of Iron IV, available to all players. This update will include a reworking of the resistance system, interface improvements to battleplans and air operations, and many other quality of life improvements.


    [ 2019-10-19 08:36:35 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Dev Diary: PDXCON and Office Move!

    Today's Dev Diary by Podcat
    Hi everyone! Today will be a short dev diary because we are preparing for PdxCon and also moving office at the same time. Its not chaotic at all :D PdxCon this year is in Berlin, and there is going to be lots of cool reveals, beers and pretzels! We will be announcing our expansion (the trailer is <3 guys) and talk about most of the details in it. Here are some of the HOI highlights:

    • The big Announcement Show starting at 10am CEST over at twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive
    • I do a talk on HOI, HOI community, expansion and the future
    • We have a both with a new challenge (so make sure you have done 30 minutes of Hel) because the winners record this year on the new one will be a new achivement :)
    • @Bratyn and @Archangel85 are holding a talk about content design and focus trees
    • We have a competitive HOI4 MP stream with streamers and devs on Sunday the 20th at 5pm CEST - (twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive)
    • Most importantly you get to hang out with us and look at cool paradox stuff. The other games have a lot of cool things to announce also.. :)
    A lot of this will be streamed as well if you cant make it to Berlin :)
    Probably last day I get to say hi to the old office sign! We are also moving offices. The company is always growing and me being an old hand feel like we move about every year ;D but I guess it has been a few years now since the last move ;) This means we will have proper space to work (its super cramped at the moment), and more importantly.. more space to play boardgames ;) This is currently what most peoples desks look like:
    Next week I will do a diary to talk a bit about PdxCon and summarize all the new announcements and stuff for those that couldn't be there and after that we will dig into the details of the announced features. We wont have a stream next week because the studio wont be ready, but we plan to start those up soon so we can show you guys what we have been working on. Look forward to it!


    [ 2019-10-16 12:06:21 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Dev Diary: Armored Cars

    Today's Dev Diary by Podcat
    Hi everyone and welcome to another dev diary. The team is working hard towards PdxCon that is coming up next week and we are looking forward to pretzels, beer, and of course meeting you guys! Today we will be talking about Armored Cars! I have often been asked why HOI4 doesn't have them, and today you get to find out why now is the time time :) Resistance Suppression Part of the reason we are finally adding armored cars is that they go hand in hand with resistance suppression. Since its inception, the armored car has been a useful tool against lightly armed and armored opponents. As explained previously, Garrisons will work as a shield against resistance activity. If adequate, the garrison will absorb the vast amount of resistance attacks that would otherwise sabotage industry or resource extraction. Armored vehicles will be especially suited to this role as hardness will give damage reduction to attacks made by the resistance. In addition to being more resilient and preserving manpower, armored cars will come with a higher suppression stat and a better ratio of suppression to deployed manpower. Armored cars will generally not be as protective as light tanks, but will have a great amount of manpower protection for their cost. All of these things combine to make armored cars a good option for resistance suppression when manpower is more of a concern than some extra production cost. Horses will still have an edge when it comes to suppression vs production cost, however.

    • Hardness to prevent losses
    • High suppression value
    • Cheap production cost compared to other armored vehicles
    • Higher cost still than just horseboys
    Main battalion Combat Role Fighting on the frontlines as the main battle force is not a typical role for an armored car. In HoI4 it will be no different. In most situations, the armored car will be outclassed or simply not appropriate for the terrain. However, in a few cases, armored cars should work fairly well as main battle units. In WW2 armored cars saw a good deal of combat in the deserts of Northern Africa and the Middle East. Their decreased supply needs, ability to move quickly in desert environments, and excellent capability in fighting poorly equipped enemies made them perform rather well in those theaters. In HoI4, armored cars will work similarly. They will provide increased protection and breakthrough over say motorized or infantry while coming cheaper than light tanks. They will also be the fastest land unit in the game in the right terrain. These factors should make them dangerous opponents in secondary and tertiary theaters of combat.
    Combat and Intel We have split the recon support company into several now so that it can be tailored to the division type you have, and the speed it needs to move at because now the speed on the recon company will be limiting the whole division. Meaning that if you scout your trucks with cavalry they will need to move at cavalry speed. We have:
    • Cavalry Recon Detachment - regular horsey boys you are used to. Cheap, but not that fast.
    • Motorized Recon Company - Motorized, so jeeps and light vehicles. Fast but weak
    • Light Armored Recon Company - Armored cars
    • Armored Recon Company - Light tanks
    • Armored cars is a good sweet spot of capability, speed and armor while light tanks help keep your hardness and armor up in tougher divisions.
    Recon companies give you an edge when picking tactics in combat, and that remains the same. We have on the other hand been rebalancing tactics to make recon more worthwhile. Tactics are now rerolled twice as often and we have lowered the frequency of certain phases like close combat quite a bit (unless fighting in urban terrain). Recon companies now also do one more thing, they let you generate more intel in combat. More intel you say? What is this? As part of this update we will be redoing how intel works, but we will be going into that in detail in the future. For now all I can say is that there will be several ways to acquire intel (where fighting is one) and that relative intel will be replacing the straight up combat bonus from having crypto techs. Armored cars looks really cool, so here are some renders for the new models for you to enjoy:
    Ingame tech wise armored cars depend on motorized, so to use the recon companies you need both that and to have unlocked the recon support companies.
    Armored cars will be coming with the DLC while basic intel changes and the other recon companies are available for all with the Husky update. Next week is PdxCon and we are also moving offices, so Ive set my alarm clock on Maximum chaos! but I think we should be able to give you a bit of an update diary anyways :) Seeya then!


    [ 2019-10-09 14:29:26 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Dev Diary: Republican Spain Focus Tree

    Today's Development Diary, by Bratyn
    Hola everyone, and welcome to yet another dev diary on the upcoming DLC for HoI4, where well be talking about the second entirely new focus tree: Republican Spain. Last week we talked a little bit about the design intent for Spain as a whole - so today we will move straight on to the interesting stuff ;) Obligatory Disclaimer: This is still a work-in-progress, and much of the art, systems and balancing is/are not yet finished! You guys know the drill :) Republican Spain Starting Situation
    The full Republican Spain focus tree The starting position for Republican Spain is, naturally, the same as that for the Nationalists. They begin with the same 4 spirits, signifying the influence of Carlism, the Militarys disloyalty, and the political violence and strikes that are escalating in the initial half of 1936 (see our previous dev diary for more information on these)
    The same initial choice is present at the start of the game, but instead of selecting A Great Spain, we will now go with The Popular Front.
    The Popular Front was a loose alliance of political parties that were only really united in their opposition of Fascism. The idea of a Popular Front was formulated by Stalin in the mid-1930s, suggesting that the rapid growth of Fascism required a more unified response than Communism alone could provide. Effectively, it gave permission to subordinate Communist parties to band together with less extreme socialist parties, and even outright bourgeois parties, solely to combat Fascism in national politics. In Spain, the Popular Front that opposed the Fascist/Traditionalist CEDA (Spanish Confederation of Autonomous Rights - sometimes called the Nationalist Front) consisted of a variety of liberal, socialist, and communist parties, the most important of which (for the purposes of this diary) are the Communist Party of Spain (PCE), Workers Party of Marxist Unification (POUM), and the Republican Left (IR). This coalition was also supported by regional nationalists and the Anarchist Trade Unions CNT/FAI. This coalition paid off, and despite massive resources and an overwhelming election campaign by the CEDA, the Popular Front won the 1936 Spanish elections. This victory was to be short-lived, however. Unbeknownst to the Republicans, in the aftermath of the failed elections the CEDA would hand over their sizeable campaign chest to the plotting military leaders to finance a rebellion, and political violence from both sides would escalate in the coming months. As with the Nationalist side, this is represented by various decisions and missions. The sole distinction is the change in perspective. As all state garrisons are initially fully controlled by the Republican side anyway (they all begin with a Nationalist control of None), the garrison control decisions are unavailable until the Nationalist side has begun contesting Republican control in any location. From that point on, it becomes possible to attempt to flip them back.
    A second point that sets the Republicans apart from their Nationalist adversaries are the nature of their focuses. The full pre-Civil War path for the Nationalists has a total duration of 210 days to complete, which means that, as long as a player continuously takes focuses, they are guaranteed to finish the whole path before the civil can start, even at the soonest start date. Not so for the Republicans. Republican pre-Civil War focuses (after the initial choice) last twice as long as their adversaries, resulting in a total duration of 385 days to fully complete this path (therefore requiring the civil war to be delayed until after January 20, 1937). This should immediately make it obvious why it is advantageous for the Nationalists to begin the civil war as soon as possible - this will ensure the Republicans will only have time to complete their first two focuses. And as the impact of the Republican focuses progressively increases, this vastly weakens the initial position for the Republicans, relative to the Nationalists.

    • Securing the Guardia de Asalto or Guardia Civil gives either a few trained units, or double the number of untrained units (respectively) at the start of the civil war. Whichever the player chooses, the Nationalists get the opposite reward.
    • Train the Union Youth gives 5 trained units at the start of the civil war, as well as other bonuses.
    • Enlarging the Weapon Caches refers to the weapon caches that were secreted away ever since the Asturias Miners Revolt, and lie ready for use to this day. It is the first focus that will not be available to the Republicans if the Nationalists manage to achieve their goal of starting the civil war near its historical start date. While normally the equipment is split 50-50 between the two sides at the start of the civil war, this focus sways this to (currently) 80-20 in favor of the Republicans.
    • Distribute Arms to the People refers to various calls from prominent politicians and groups for the government to start issuing weapons to regular citizens, as it began to become obvious that the Military could not be trusted. This focus gives 10 untrained divisions at the start of the civil war, as well as other bonuses.
    • Disband the Army is the finishing focus in the Republicans preparations for the civil war. It is the nuclear option, where the government outright disbands the entire army and attempts to purge it of disloyal elements. However, though it will hand the initiative to the government, the various plotting leaders will not go easily and, likely will elect to rise up rather than be imprisoned. Accordingly, this focus will immediately start the civil war when completed. While the civil war normally has a flat 50-50 distribution of the nations pre-Civil War armed forces between the two sides, this focus increases this to (currently) an 80-20 split in favor of the Republicans. It also provides a large chunk of Political Power. However, with the loyalty of the military so severely tainted, the government will immediately disband their portion of this pre-Civil War military. This is something that occurs regardless of whether you take the focus or not (if the focus is not taken, this step is taken in the Civil War start event - regardless of when it starts), and so the focus mainly serves to greatly weaken the Nationalist sides starting position.

    As the Civil War starts, the Republican side begins with all states that do not have Total Nationalist garrison control. However, states where the Nationalists have more control than the Republicans will spawn more Nationalist troops, making it likely that these will be lost soon afterwards. In addition, the Carlism Spirit is no longer relevant for the Republicans from this point on, and is removed, while a new Spirit Disbanded Army is added (again, regardless of whether Disband the Army as a focus is taken or not), representing the (quite frankly) disastrous impact the disbanding of the army historically had on the first months of the Republican war effort. Various focuses in the different branches diminish and remove this Spirit. Beyond this, the same Offensives decisions are available to the Republicans, as are available to the Nationalists (see more information about this again in our previous dev diary). The Republican faction begins the civil war as Democratic, but as a whole it is even more internally divided than the Nationalists. Not three, but four different Republican factions vie for control of post-Civil War Spain, and this fight for supremacy will likely result into internal fracturing and outright violence even during the Civil War. Republican (Democratic) Branch The Second Republic at the start of the Civil War struggled to defend itself against the rebellion, while also maintaining cohesion and singularity of purpose within the faction itself. On the one hand, the communist and anarchist militias that supported the Popular Front played a key role in preventing the outright success of the initial coup attempt in the first place, and they were invaluable to the Republican war effort in the opening months of the Civil War, when the government was in the process of recreating a new army after disbanding the old. On the other hand, these groups also had wildly differing viewpoints on how the post-Civil War society should be structured, and idealism and fanaticism on all sides could easily bloom into violence. Historically, major influence came from the Soviet Union, which provided the Republic with much-needed weapons and equipment, but also meddled extensively in internal affairs, attempting to root out any Communists who might be critical of Stalins leadership. Ultimately, this would serve to completely undermine the war effort, resulting in the virtual elimination of two of the Fronts four (broadly-speaking) distinct groups as active participants in the Civil War, not by Nationalist doing, but by their own hands.
    One of the major issues facing the Democratic government of the Second Republic involves the recreation of a proper army, reducing reliance on idealistic and undisciplined militias that is represented in the Disbanded Army Spirit. Others deal with stemming the flow of the Nationalist advance, fortifying the various cities and towns in their path, and especially fortifying the Republican foothold in the Basque Country (if this is controlled at the Civil Wars start). But above all, the single biggest threat facing the government in the short term is the inevitable uprising of the Anarchist and Independent Communist militias (always represented as Anarchists if this uprising occurs from the Democratic/Stalinist perspective), as Stalinist meddling and manipulations will eventually break down all remnants of trust within these groups and the government. This uprising may be delayed through the Anti-Fascist Unity focus and the decisions it unlocks, but these can only delay it somewhat, and never prevent it. They are only intended as a desperate measure if you really cannot afford the uprising right then. Just as with the Falangist and Carlists paths we discussed last week, a focus Crush the Revolution exists that will immediately trigger the civil-war-within-the-civil-war and provide a temporary combat bonus against them.
    Together with Relocate the Gold Reserves, crushing the Anarchists and Independent Communists is a requirement for opening up the possibility of much larger Soviet aid than initially offered. This aid consists of various combat modifiers, tech bonuses, increased Volunteer caps for the Soviet Union, construction bonuses, and even tech sharing. It also opens up for a powerful Soviet Aid post-Civil War recovery branch. While powerful, as all this aid comes at a price, however Stalinist control over the government will increase, and while moving the Gold Reserves abroad may keep them out of the hands of the Nationalists, it will not keep them safe from foreign seizure Going down this path will result in the Second Republic being puppeted by the Soviet Union upon the conclusion of the civil war, and they will be unlikely to release their control over the country willingly
    Regardless of whether the player decides to pursue this aid, they will need to manage the influence of the Stalinists on their own government. It is possible to maintain true to the Democratic principles on which the Second Republic was based, but this will come at the cost of combat penalties that may well prove to be problematic during the Civil War - the Communists were an integral part of the anti-Fascist fight, after all. However, staying true to your Democratic foundations will allow you to eventually subvert Soviet control even if you pursued Soviet aid previously and were puppeted as a result. This finally opens up into a branch where, now that the Fascists have been defeated, Spain may fight a final War of Independence against the Communists and the Soviet Union, to finally earn their deserved freedom. In this, they may either seek membership of the Allies, or strike a pragmatic Deal with the Devil and request military aid from those who have experience in fighting the Soviets - the very same people who opposed them during the Civil War: Germany and Italy.
    It is also possible to give in to the Stalinist pressure, and focus on defeating Fascism, even at the cost of Democratic principles. If this option is selected, the government will switch to Communist, and a future War of Independence becomes unavailable. Instead, it will become possible to Appeal for Increased Autonomy (on the Stalinist side), becoming a full-fledged member of the Comintern rather than a puppet. Finally, remaining focuses for the Democratic branch focus on rebuilding their army and navy, and preparing for a global Anti-Fascist Crusade.
    Stalinist (Communist) Branch The Stalinist Communists were the Communist Party of Spain (PCE), and are referred to as such because of their loyalty to the Stalinist Communist doctrine. Their branch shares a start with that of the other Communist faction that we will deal with later, but splits up already within a handful of focuses. Historically, they shared the outlook of the Government, in that both it and the Stalinists were more concerned with defeating the Fascists and maintaining the cohesion of their coalition rather than pushing for a social revolution as the other groups did. In the Focus Tree this is represented by many points of contact between the two branches.
    Main points of interest during the civil war for the Stalinists branch relate to Stalins Popular Front strategy. Rather than alienate other classes, these must be incorporated into the fight against Fascism first, and re-educated later, when the frontlines have stabilized. A notable exception to this is the clergy, as anti-clericalism is a core component of the Republics values. Church riches must instead be confiscated and used to finance the fight against the Nationalists, even if this will send the clergy into the arms of the Nationalists. Next, concessions must be obtained from the Republican government, at first with ministerial positions, but soon enough full control of the war effort must be demanded. And finally, just as with the Democratic branch, the recalcitrant independently-minded Anarchists and Communists must be eliminated for the good of the Republican cause as a whole.
    For the Stalinists, Soviet Aid is much more of a no-brainer. Yes, you will get puppeted, but many of your strongest focuses tie in with this branch anyway, and there is always the Appeal for Increase Autonomy. Post-Civil War, the branch focuses heavily on fortifying the country, strengthening it as a bulwark from which to wage a two-front war with the Fascist nations lodged between Spain and the Soviet Union, should it come to that. Finally, focuses allow for the conquest of Portugal, the supporting of French Communists, and exacting vengeance on all nations who dared send Volunteers to the Nationalists during the Civil War.
    Independent Communist (Communist) Branch The Independent Communists represent the POUM, a second Communist party in Spain that broke with both the Trotskyist and Stalinist Communist doctrines, opposing the latter heavily, and was a member of the International Revolutionary Marxist Centre, also called the London Bureau (nicknamed the 3 International); a grouping of similar independently-minded Communist parties from various countries. Notably, in the Civil War George Orwell would fight with POUM militias, and the way the Stalinists undermined, manipulated, and repressed the party would greatly impact his thinking and later writings. Historically, this repression culminated in the May Days, a period of 5 days in May 1937 where actual street fighting occurred between the Stalinist Communists and the Government on the one hand, and the POUM and Anarchists on the other. After this, the Anarchists would be increasingly divided internally and its influence on the Civil War would wane, and the POUM would soon be outlawed altogether.
    As the POUM, the major antagonist, other than the Nationalists, are the Stalinists. Early on steps must be taken to curtail Stalinist influence and interference, maintaining the partys independence and putting a stop to the indiscriminate political assassinations perpetrated by the NKVD. International Brigades provides a steadily ticking manpower pool for the duration of the Civil War, aiding their cause somewhat. Unlike the Stalinists, the purpose of the POUM is social revolution, and so the Class War must be pursued. The fact that the Government opposes this and increasingly attempts to crack down on them means that eventually the step must be taken to Seize the Gold Reserves and use these to finance a full-blown uprising along with the Anarchists, to enable the Revolution to flourish.
    Post-Civil War parts of the tree focus on industrial and military improvements, as well as the formation of a Peoples Fleet. Some industrial focuses are shared with the Anarchists, and some with the Stalinists. Unify the London Bureau will create a unique faction and invite all Communist nations that are not in a faction (or are Soviet Union or a Communist Mexico led by Trotsky). Further focuses generate wargoals against Fascist nations in Europe, nations led by Stalin or Trotsky, and finally the focuses to conquer Portugal and Avenge Foreign Interference are shared with the Stalinists.
    Anarchist (Unaligned) Branch The Anarchists are the final available branch for the Republican side. This branch represents the various autonomous communes that rose up in the area of Aragon and Catalonia during the civil war, and in which the fight against Fascism was most clearly accompanied by the Spanish Revolution. These communes organized themselves under a single Regional Defense Council of Aragon, and in the territory controlled by them collectivization of the workplace became a common theme. However, the independence with which they conducted themselves was a perpetual thorn in the eyes of the government and the Stalinists, and, as with the POUM, the May Days saw their influence severely curtailed. As Anarchist society is inherently incompatible with the way Nation-States are represented in HoI4, weve had to get creative with their representation. A key part of this ties in with the concept of the Regional Defense Council, as historically used by the Anarchists during the civil war.
    The initial action points for the Anarchists involve the collectivization of all aspects of society - seizing the means of production, giving workers autonomy and self-management, seizing public transport, and increasing communal farming. Rather than recreate an army, like the other branches focus on, the Anarchist focus on arming the people themselves, preferring to rely on self-organized militias. Just like the Communists, they also gain access to the International Brigades Spirit. Eventually, though, the government will crack down on the Revolution, but, as with the Independent Communists, the player will be able to take a focus to launch the uprising from their side instead, gaining a temporary combat bonus.
    Once complete gender equality has been achieved through Mujeres Libres and the uprising has been started, either through government crack-down or through taking the focus Masters of Our Own Fate, the pivotal focus All Must Bear the Torch becomes available. This has a number of effects that impact the playstyle of the Anarchists:
    • The economic law is changed to a unique law Collectivized Society, which is slightly superior to War Economy, but also has (at first glance) significant bonuses to factory and dockyard output. It will not be possible to change away from this.
    • Trade law is changed to Closed Economy, and it will not be possible to change away from this.
    • The Anarchist Society Spirit that is first applied in the Regional Defense Council of Aragon focus, and which is continuously improved upon throughout the branch, gains a whopping (currently) 5% recruitable population. However, it also now gives a base -15% stability and -1% weekly stability.
    • Autonomous State modifiers are removed from all states that have this.
    The end result of this is that an Anarchist Spain will be perpetually stuck at 0% stability. However, any negative effects they might experience from this are disabled or compensated for, with the sole exception of Political Power gain. The massive production speed bonuses inherent in the Collectivized Society economic law are purely intended to compensate for the -50% production bonus that is applied due to having 0% stability. Bad effects relating to low stability, such as Strikes, will not occur when playing as the Anarchists. This all comes at a cost, however: every single other nation on the face of the planet will hate you. Initially, during the civil war itself, this is only noticed by the fact that no nation will want to aid you, and will instead support hostile Spanish factions against you. However, once the civil war ends, this will result in major powers taking steps to actively quell the Anarchist Revolution - with nations receiving AI modifiers to act in a hostile manner towards the Regional Defense Council. As the Anarchists, you stand alone against the world.
    The next part of the tree focuses on defending against this coming threat. Focuses will revolutionize military thinking, give combat bonuses to defense on core territory, and greatly increase War Support. A side branch will allow the Anarchist revolution to spill over the Portuguese border, when the Anarchists share a border with them. The Portuguese Anarchism focus creates a civil war in Portugal, puppeting the Anarchist tag it creates, and annexing them once the Portuguese civil war has ended. Once this is complete, and the Spanish Civil War itself is also won, a new Regional Defense Council may be called into being: the Regional Defense Council of Iberia. This will core all Portuguese states, as well.
    Finally, the finisher focuses focus greatly on preparing the Communes militarily for the Inevitable Counterblow. The success of the Revolution is a threat to the very way of life of the rest of the world, and they cannot let this stand. When they are done fighting among one another, they will come after you (and possibly even before). But the Defense Council does not need to sit on its hands and wait for this to happen. Anarchism Knows No Borders provides a spirit that increases War Support even further, but also drastically increases justification time for War Goals. Plant the Seeds of Revolution allows for creating uprisings of Anarchists troops behind enemy lines, under your control. And finally, Global Defense Council will rename the country once again, illustrating its nature as an entity that has spread far beyond the confines of the Iberian peninsula. In addition, it allows for dynamically coring controlled hostile land in which Compliance has been raised to a sufficiently high level, as they simply reorganize into their own autonomous communes and join under the umbrella of the Defense Council.
    Playing as the Anarchists will pose significant challenges, as you are effectively expected to take on the entire world alone, with a (at least initially) limited economic powerbase. However, it also provides significant rewards for a player that manages to succeed and push their enemies back, dynamically growing their powerbase much more efficiently than other countries can.
    Unfortunately, all Anarchist military commanders were on short-notice leave from the frontlines, and so were unavailable for screenshots Finally, we have a picture of both focus trees as they are presented to the player when they first load up the game as Spain, before they have taken any choices of who to support:
    We hope youll join us next week for another HoI4 dev diary!


    [ 2019-10-02 13:39:16 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Dev Diary: Nationalist Spain Focus Tree


    Today we announce a massive rework of Spain and its civil war, and go into detail on the new Nationalist Spain focus tree [url= https://pdxint.at/2l6NtQ0] Click here to read today's Development Diary by Bratyn


    [ 2019-09-25 13:58:50 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Dev Diary: Nationalist Spain Focus Tree


    Today we announce a massive rework of Spain and its civil war, and go into detail on the new Nationalist Spain focus tree Click here to read today's Development Diary by Bratyn


    [ 2019-09-25 13:56:00 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Policing and Garrison Rework

    Today's Dev Diary takes a look at the Policing and Garrison Rework - no more 'shuffling around horseybois' as YaBoy_Bobby puts it - more strategy less micro! Read all about it here: https://pdxint.at/2kreOMs


    [ 2019-09-18 16:27:31 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Dev Diary: Vichy and Free France


    Were not done with France yet! In today's Dev Diary, we show off unique Focus Trees for Vichy and Free France, along with a better representation of their geopolitical situations. Click here to read the Development Diary by Archangel


    [ 2019-09-11 10:58:38 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Dev Diary: Resistance and Compliance


    NEW DEV DIARY In todays bumper Dev Diary, we show off the big changes to Resistance and Occupation mechanics, and the new concept of Compliance. [url=https://pdxint.at/2lx5aIi ]Click here to read the Development Diary by YaBoy_Bobby


    [ 2019-09-04 15:08:36 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Dev Diary: France Rework


    Today Archangel talks us through the reworked and greatly-expanded French national focus tree, which deepen and better reflect the political decision making in 1930s France. Click here to view today's Development Diary by Archangel


    [ 2019-08-28 14:57:57 CET ] [ Original post ]

    1.7.1 "Hydra" now live!

    1.7.1 "Hydra" now live! The 1.7.1 Hydra patch is now out of Beta and fully live! Check out the full patchnotes here: https://pdxint.at/2X3JwIw


    [ 2019-06-26 08:18:02 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Dev Diary: Bugfixing for 1.7.1

    In the first Dev Diary after the launch of 1.7, Podcat lets us know about some nasty bugs the team is working on fixing for a 1.7.1 Hotfix.
    Click here to read today's Development Diary by Podcat


    [ 2019-06-12 13:54:06 CET ] [ Original post ]

    3 Year Anniversary!

    In today's HOI4 Dev Diary Podcat takes a stroll back through the history of HOI4 and looks forward to the future! Including an extensive Q&A session with community questions today's DD is not one to miss! Check it out: https://pdxint.at/2ZcVT6T


    [ 2019-06-05 13:43:14 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Three Year Bundle: Axis Armor and Radio Packs Now Available


    Hearts of Iron Radio Pack Drown out the hum of machinery and whine of bomber engines with the soothing sounds of new martial music brought to you by Paradox and its composing partners. This DLC pack adds unique radio stations for each of the three major factions in Hearts of Iron IV (Allies, Axis and Comintern) and gives access to free music updates as well. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1086481/Hearts_of_Iron_IV_Radio_Pack/ The Hearts of Iron Radio Pack gives access to:

    • Faction Radio Channels: A total of 35 new songs spread across three faction specific radio channels, each with their own unique look and design.
    [quote]In addition the free 1.7 'Hydra' update improves music for everyone:
    • Free Access to Older Hearts of Iron Tracks: The scores for Hearts of Iron II and Hearts of Iron III will be freely available to all Hearts of Iron players, letting you experience the soundscapes of veterans who have gone before.
    • Free refit of older music add-ons: If you own any of our older music packs, like the Sabaton music pack, those will now be redesigned to resemble radio stations like the newer music, to give you a smoother user experience within the game.
    [/quote] Hearts of Iron IV Axis Armor Pack Push through the plains of the Low Countries or the jungles of Burma in style with new 3D unit models of Axis armor units. A total of 53 new armor models are in this pack which, added to the eight tanks available in the German Tank Pack, gives the forces of fascist militarism 61 different armor designs you can see in-game. As a free bonus - the Axis Armor Pack also includes eight German tank models, previously only available in the Hearts of Iron IV: Colonel edition, such as the King Tiger and the Maus super heavy tank. After all, you cant have Axis Armor without German tanks. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1086480/Hearts_of_Iron_IV_Axis_Armor_Pack/ The Axis Armor Pack includes:
    • 19 German Armor Models: A range of tank destroyers, self propelled artillery and self propelled anti-air vehicles, including the Stug III, the Wespe and the Elefant heavy tank destroyer.
    • 22 Japanese Armor Models: A range of every armor type, with seven different Japanese tank designs like the experimental heavy O-I tank that never went into production and a number of tank destroyers.
    • 12 Italian Armor Models: A roster of Semovente tank destroyers and the always outmatched L6 tank highlight this list of Italian armor from the war.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfgWdcFwnYk Buy the Bundle Here!


    [ 2019-06-04 13:24:08 CET ] [ Original post ]

    1.7 Hydra Update is Live!

    The 1.7 patch is here! Bugfixes, re-balancing some parts of naval warfare, and adding lots of new music as part of the HOI Classics radio station! Click here to read the 1.7 'Hydra' Patch Notes


    [ 2019-06-04 13:09:21 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Paradox Grand Strategy Sale Now Live!

    The Paradox Grand Strategy sale is underway! Hearts of Iron IV, our sister Grand Strategy games and most of our DLCs are on sale over on steam right now! Go take a look: https://pdxint.at/2XgBCwy


    [ 2019-05-30 18:29:20 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Dev Diary: Axis Armor + Radio Packs!

    In todays Dev Diary Podcat takes us through some more updates to the upcoming 1.7 patch, and introduces us to the upcoming new Axis Armor and Radio packs! These two will include new 3D and 2D models of Axis vehicles, and new songs for you to listen to while playing.
    Click Here to Read Today's Development Diary by Podcat


    [ 2019-05-29 15:04:38 CET ] [ Original post ]

    LAST CHANCE to get 20% OFF your ticket to PDXCON 2019 this week!

    Don't miss your chance to secure your spot at PDXCON this year at 20% OFF! The discount will end on the 31st of May so if you already know that you're joining us the time to act is now! Buy tickets here: https://pdxint.at/2JZG0fG


    [ 2019-05-24 10:28:42 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Dev Diary: Technical and Naval Balance Updates!

    In todays Dev Diary, Podcat takes us through what moving to 64-bit will mean for HOI4, and details some changes to naval balance coming in 1.7!
    Click here to read today's Development Diary by Podcat!


    [ 2019-05-22 15:35:37 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Dev Diary - News from the Eastern Front!

    Dev Diaries have returned! This week Podcat talks us through the work the team have been doing for the upcoming 1.7 'Hydra' update, including AI improvements and the move to 64-bit.
    Click here to read this week's development diary by Podcat!


    [ 2019-05-15 16:04:47 CET ] [ Original post ]

    PDXCON 2019 Tickets Available Now!


    Be the first to witness new game reveals, mega games, seminars and of course LOTS of good strategy gaming! Get 20% OFF all through May as an Early Bird! Tickets will be going fast! Achtung Berlin! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-v1OM9Dcrec Buy your tickets here!


    [ 2019-05-07 14:56:20 CET ] [ Original post ]

    PDXCON 2019 Ticket Info!


    PDXCON2019 is coming and we couldnt be more excited to meet our community at the event - which takes place on October 18th - 20th, 2019. Tickets go on sale on May 7th, but weve got a secret to tell you If you head over to the PDXCON 2019 website at https://pdxcon.paradoxplaza.com/ you can sign up to the mailing list. Anyone that signs up will be given 8 HOURS early access before the public availability of the tickets to buy before everyone else! Sign up now and keep your eyes on the news well be sending out because tickets will sell out.


    [ 2019-04-18 15:26:55 CET ] [ Original post ]

    1.6.2 and Future Roadmap

    In today's Dev Diary, Podcat shows off the full patch notes for 1.6.2 and talks about future plans for Hearts of Iron IV
    Click here to read the development diary by Podcat [quote]Useful links Hearts of Iron Wiki Hearts of Iron Development Diary Archive


    [ 2019-04-03 12:06:39 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Patch 1.6.2 Ironclad is Live

    1.6.2 "Ironclad" is now live and downloadable through Steam. Checksum is 6f7d. We should be compatible with 1.6.1, but if you for some reason want to remain on 1.6.1 or older Here are instructions for reverting to patches since 1.5.4, or special instructions for 1.5.3 and earlier.
    Please make sure that any mods you are using are updated for 1.6.2, or your game might not run properly (seriously) If you discover any bugs in patch 1.6.2, please report them in the bug report forum as usual. [Quote] ################################################################ ######## Patch 1.6.2 "Ironclad" ######## ################################################################ ################################## # Feature ################################## - Convoy and mine missions will work with islands of regions now. The fleet will be distributed in between disconnected groups of regions and each task force will be only able to do missions within the connected regions to which it is assigned. - Added an explanatory event to the naval treaty system that informs countries not at war that they are no longer bound by the Naval Treaty if two other majors are at war. - Changed how naval supremacy is being calculated. Now it depends on the size of the ships in the task force, and how effective it is on a region. A fleet that is assigned more regions than it can handle will get lower supremacies. Mission type also affects supremacy of a fleet. ################################## # Bugfix ################################## - Fixed AI factor not getting properly taken into acount for ideas when some have a cost of 0pp - Moved the IJsselmeer lake province from Holland state to Friesland state, so that losing control of it no longer prevents flooding of the Dutch defense lines. - Added bypass to Dutch focus Curtail Colonial Autonomy, and made the national spirits added by it be timed rather than permanent. - The Charles II Lifestyle idea now has an effect - fixed convoy combat alerts not being visible for defender - fixed convoy combats are appearing as regular combats before they are removed - All parties must end will now correctly switch out ideas - Fixed crash and infinite loop when a localized unit name was missing or did not include the required substitution elements. - The political events firing above 60% support of an ideology without having a ruling party of that ideology should no longer fire if you are also above 70% support of that ideology. This should prevent event-spam when only one event should suffice. - fixed super heavy ship model is not being selected properly - Added bypass so that Italy can no longer be 'stolen' by Britain when the latter takes the Secure the Italian Alliance while Italy is puppeted by someone else. - Reserve taskforces now consume fuel while moving. - Add the capital ship indicator on a carrier ship icon. - Motorized equipment for Netherlands and the new WtT countries should now display their specific 2d art, rather than the generic one. - Fixed crash when previewing 3D models via the -editor launch option, by checking whether the game idler exists when initializing shader constants. - Don't display tooltip "Armies Cannot move to the enemy territory in strategic redeployment mode" if the target is not enemy territory. - Fixed issue where various Pacific provinces weren't assigned a continent, causing the Melanesian Federation (FIJ) to not display any portraits for the country's leaders. - Fixed Continental Intervention news event to no longer have overlapping title, to only have one option for the UK, and altered the focus to no longer give a wargoal on countries the UK is in a faction with. - Fix canceling docking rights - Wilhelminist Netherlands, when creating a German civil war after taking the first German state, will no longer cause the Kaiser to also suffer from 'Pro-Kaiser Defectors'. - Cripps' Mission should no longer almost always bypass, resulting in Two-Nation Theory simply adding another Marginalized Muslim Community idea rather than adjusting the existing one. - Dutch Develop the South focus now correctly checks the southern states for available building slots, rather than the Holland state. - fixed a bug in the US fascist civil war that spawned a number of units for the revolter side - Reset DLC when exiting out of a game setup lobby, in case some DLC were temporarily enabled due to a multiplayer host owning them. - Adjusted British AI values and French historical strategy plan abort trigger to prevent situations where Britain gets into the fascist civil war unintentionally because they are dragged into the Czechoslovak war (they they shouldn't be caring about that anymore anyway). - The Naval Funding focus for the RAJ will now provide a useful bonus for players with MtG - fixed a number of issues with starting naval techs for various countries - Creating a Pan-North-American State no longer unintentionally awards the William Wallis achievement. - Fixed issues with ship XP. Tooltip now works and it has scriptable modifiers. Carriers also get a new bonus to sortie efficiency - Wim Schermerhorn portrait (if HOL somehow manages to go Non-Aligned without selecting the The Only Man in the Dutch Government focus) is now displayed correctly. - AI Britain will now actually select the "Trade Unions Referendum" to flip to communist. - Added localization to the "USA_civil_war_fired_democrats" flag required in the To Arms in Dixie! achievement. - Poland should now correctly have sufficient faith in their French allies to be -less- willing to cede Danzig without a fight, rather than -more- willing, when allied with them. - "Bypass the Philippines" now gives a bonus to transport techs, making it actually useful for players with MtG - AA tech fixed to not add defense to bombing in states without AA - Fixed dispersed industry to only gives bombing defense for industry buildings - Improved the stacking defense behavior of dispersed industry and AA tech - Lend Leasing Convoys always free now - Set faction leaders as major nations instantly, preventing a faction from temporarily only having minors and losing wars early - Fixed an issue that allowed the US to send Britain destroyers while at war with Britain - Getting into the US fascist civil war should no longer remove the associated national spirits - Ceylon FOB, Reclaim the Jewel in the Crown, Appeal to Imperial Loyalists, and Bring the Dominions Back into the Fold should now all bypass if all subjects have been prevented from leaving Britain after Britain switched to Fascism, using the decisions granted by the Move to Secure the Dominions focus. - Added a bypass for Motion of No Confidence, in case Churchill is already leader. - Mexico will no longer load the Mexican focus tree after a civil war, if the player does not have Man the Guns. - Fixed Awake and Angry and Battlecry achievements. - fixed a number of liberation events that would not fire due to checking for the wrong state ownership - South Georgia is now also transferred to Argentina when returning contested territories. - Ensured Case Anton properly triggers, and that the Scuttle the Fleet decision actually destroys the fleet. Also eliminated the PP cost for the Scuttle the Fleet decision, so that the AI will always take it unless you prevent them from doing so, as intended. - Made sure Ataturk can no longer lead armies from beyond the grave in 1939, and added idea portrait for Mannerheim - Made Dominion Development focuses be available when the Dominion in Britain's faction is the civil war faction, and not the original tag. - fixed some game data not being cleared when a dynamic tag is reused - The Canadian Corridor focus should no longer be available if you already control the states in question - Fixed an issue where the US would continue to demand territories in the Americas from countries that had already handed over territory or against which it has war goals - Various specific traits have been removed from the 'random pool', ensuring random country leaders cannot spawn with them anymore. - Made it possible (and much more likely) for Chamberlain to resign -before- the fall of France. The event can now be triggered by any Low Country or France having any surrender progress. - the Canadian communist strategy plan should now be correctly labeled - Stopped overzealous propaganda ministers from causing diplomatic crises by riling up the populace against allied nations, all for the purpose of passing war economy legislature just a little bit sooner (and more cheaply). - Fixes for Korean communist small flags. - Added claims to the correct French states for German Carte Blanche for Alsace and French Colonies focus. - US Liberty Ship national spirit should now apply correctly - Canadian Degaussing national spirit will now apply correctly - Decolonization now peaces out subjects when they leave UK's faction. - Adjusted A Change in Course to now have negative ideology drift for democratic support, rather than giving positive drift for the other ideologies, to prevent weird situations where it'd end up resulting in a negative drift for one of the other ideologies. - British Raj now has the proper Marginalized Muslim Community spirit applied if Pakistan is liberated via the British Decolonization focus tree, or civil war. - France should no longer be able to form a faction with a non-existing Czechoslovakia through the Little Entente Focus. The Focus will still be available, but will just form a new faction. Focuses further down the line will not be affected. - fixed some buggy behavior with foreign division templates regarding duplication and deployment - AI can now accept a fuel incoming lend lease. - Fixed taken states not being colored properly during a peace conference - Fixed some decisions on a revolter country disapearing after loading a save - Correctly change leader trait icons in army badge when switching between leaders where one has exile leader traits and the other does not. - fixed naval mission assignment not working correctly with taskforces on repairs - fixed an issue where countries occupying Manchuria would get reports about finding communist sleeper cells while allied with communist china - fixed anniversary pack not being loaded - review fixes - Fixed newly created ships teleporting to the task force set as their deployment target - Fixed auto balance task force not working - Fix fuel lend lease. It was full of minor bugs. - Selecting a decolonized Asia in the game rules will now also grant independence to Malaya. - Fixed new Maltese fascist flag not showing up properly. - fixed two instances in US events giving incorrect amounts of party popularity - fixed ai sending invalid commands with foreign templates - Fixed Expose the Belly of the Bear events not being sent out, as well as having incorrect requirement triggers. - fixed a way to create invalid paradrop orders and fixed a ctd that is caused by that - Converted Battleship and Converted Cruiser Hulls use now the right 3D model as the best match in the Ship Designer. - Fixed ships from reserve not reinforcing if the reserve task force has at least one ship repairing - locked the Silver Legion special template gained during the Fascist US civil war - fixed some localization issues with dynamic modifiers - fixed stability & war support values not giving all bonuses in some cases - fixed some scripted diplomatic action issued that broke actions that requires acceptance - moved lights of Los Angeles to correct province position - Abdicating after getting "King's Support Forms" will now correctly remove the beneficial spirit granted by that event. - fixed a original_tag problem related to reusing of dynamic tags - Now display correct naval supremacy in naval invasion tooltip. - fixed a ctd while loading saves - De Gaulle will no longer be incorrectly removed as Free France's leader. - Added Halifax to the bypass conditions of Motion of No Confidence. - Added certain stipulations for Coerce Spain and Coerce Greece focuses. - Only one Rebuild the Nation decision will now be available if you switch ideology using a civil war. - Alliance with Germany now requires Germany to be fascist only. - The number of factories displayed in war overview is now consistent with the number in topbar. - Fixed an effect that was deleting a division template without deleting all divisions using that template, specifically volunteers and expeditionary forces, leading to potential memory problems and crashes. - Fixed the game generating a definition.csv file that would override the original in case the later was missing some entries - Mexico without Man the Guns enabled (and therefore with no ability to nationalize the oil fields) will now have control over its own oil from the start of the game. - Fixed airwing name not being loaded from save - Fixed DOD unique motorized icons to correctly shop up in the production tab. - Fixed reserve fleet getting merged on daily tick if in the same naval base - Fixed ship name from history file not being taking into account in some circumstances when adding a production line for it - Highlight now fit the size of dockyard grid. - Fragmenting Yugoslavia in the game setup rules should no longer result in Yugoslav units permanently being present on the map with no possibility of getting rid of them. - Selecting Asia Decolonized game rule will now correctly grant independence to the Philippines. - Fixed mods in the userfiles overriding definition.csv getting it renamed and ignored - Fixed event option text for "Mexican Entry Into the " event. - Fix troubles with Taskforce composition editor reinforcements that didn't work properly. - Fixed task forces being able to refit in the middle of the sea - You can now remove ships form a selection with shift+click. - Corrected Putting the Raid on the Medway to Shame achievement to no longer be awarded if the UK gets into the Fascist civil war. - Corrected art for Netherlands design companies not showing up on produced equipment. - Improve equipment distribution according to priority. - Fixed negative amount of convoy on modifying a lend lease that has been raided - Fixed invalid description for the low convoy escort and convoy raiding efficiency description ################################## # Balance ################################## - Ships designs can no longer go slower than 1kn - Reduced Japanese Torpedo Cruiser Hull sub detection to be more inline with regular cruiser hulls (before adding modules) - Allying with the Silver Shirts can now be taken with 10% popularity of fascists, but requires a fascist demagogue in government - taking Neutrality Act or Limited Intervention now locks you out of the communist or fascists paths (and vice versa), as was originally intended - It is now possible to complete the branch starting with "Adjusted Compensation Act" without being democratic - if the countdown to the fascist civil war started from more than 30% fascist support (as opposed to taking both Ally with the Silver Shirts and Voter Registration Act), the countdown is now 280 days (up from 180 days) - if the "Recruit the Free Corps" focus is finished when the civil war begins, the Free Corps will now automatically appear (this should also help the AI) - Free Corps unit template now 9x INF (up from 5x INF) - states that side with the Loyalists in the US fascist civil war will now spawn local volunteers - Expand the USMC focus now gives research bonuses to Marines II and Marines III - reduced sub and surface detection values for vanilla ships to be more in line with MtG values - rebalanced the speed of destroyers, light cruisers, and battleships in vanilla to be more in line with MtG ships - changed a number of stat inconsistencies in vanilla ship models - the War Powers Act in the US tree now allows the US to form its own faction - Reduced the effectiveness of GiE legitimacy gain decisions to one-quarter of what they were. - fixed ships are going faster than intended - Split ground and naval AA defines, and reverted the ground AA chance to hit back to its original value, so that ground AA is no longer overpowered. - increased hit chance of torpedo - doubled hit chance of depth charges - tripped depth charge damage - halved light gun attack of convoys - lowered AA attack of convoys by 75% - lowered IC cost on radar and sonar for all tech levels - added taking sub visibility into account for naval strike - reduced the impact of deep ocean on destroyer, light cruisers, and subs - a/b/c/d and e/f/g/h British destroyers now start the game with sonar 1 - reduced snorkel 1 to a 10% visibility reduction and snorkel 2 to a 20% visibility reduction - naval mission efficiency will now go even lower if you don't have enough ships/taskforces for the assigned regions - Nationalist Spain will not lose the "recovering from the Civil War" national spirit in historical focus mode, thus preventing them from joining the war - Atlantic Fleet Designer now adds 10% HP to Carriers - Armor upgrade for Carriers now adds 1% HP per level (non-MtG only) - research companies research bonus 10% to 15% - doctrine ministers research bonus 7% to 10% and 10% to 15% - electron mechanical engineering research bonus 2% to 3% - mechanical computer research bonus 3% to 4% - computing machine research bonus 3% to 5% - improved computing machine research bonus 5% to 8% - advanced computing machine research bonus 5 to 8% - focus: give refuge to scientist research bonus 3% to 5% - Japanese Ultimate Battleship Focus now provides a free Super Heavy Battleship template and two ships of that template in various stages of completion for owners of MtG - reduced fuel consumption in defensive combat (being in combat while not moving) to 1x - fuel flow through supply chunks that has reduced supply flow due to "Control of incoming edge provinces" will now ignore 50% of that penalty - Protected against ping-ponging Soviet AI strategy when surrender level Germany is around 10%. ...and more![/quote] The patchnotes are too long to fit in here, so please read the original post for a complete list. You can find it here!


    [ 2019-04-03 12:04:09 CET ] [ Original post ]

    1.6.2 Open Beta Patch

    For some updates on the upcoming 1.6.2 patch, including the addition of new field marshals, check out todays dev diary!
    Click here to read the development diary by Andy Galney [quote]Useful links Hearts of Iron Wiki Hearts of Iron Development Diary Archive


    [ 2019-03-20 13:40:42 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Patch 1.6.1 Live Now!

    We just release patch 1.6.1 which adds UI improvements, bugfixes, balance adjustments and more.
    We will not be able to collect bug reports from Steam. If you discover problems with the patch, please post these in our official bug report forum here! You can also submit a ticket to our support! [quote] 1.6.1 Patchnotes: ################################## # Feature and Important ################################## - New task force composition editor interface with much nicer flow - Added a reserve button to Fleet bottom bar. - Unlocking new ship hulls will now provide a variant with the same modules as on the best equipment variant of the previous ship hull level, to the extent possible, and hide the empty hull as obsolete in that case. - ctrl b now toggles strategic deployment for selected units - key k now toggles air training (kamikaze is moved to ctrl b) - FM won't be able to activate abilities if it is already active for all child groups - Taskforces with automatic split on will split into multiple taskforces if there is no naval base that can repair all ships at once - Sinking enemy ships will now award war participation ################################## # Bugfix ################################## - Underpaid, Undersexed, and Under Eisenhower achievement now correctly requires a 1936 start date. - Fixed an issue where several British focuses were bypassed and canceled at the same time. - Removed duplicate "Remove country leader" in Towards Indian Independence focus. - Fixed an issue where you could not take 'War on Pacifism" decisions to get rid of national spirit if you had above 80% war support. - fixed an issue where Manchukuo could demand Japan become their puppet while still being a subject of Japan. - Cave to the Germans, Maintain Trade Neutrality, and Cave to the British focuses can no longer be bypassed while one of the other mutually exclusive paths are in progress (thereby unlocking multiple political paths). - The United Kingdom can now progress to the end of the Decolonisation tree, even if India has already declared independence. - MacArthur will no longer lead the Loyalists while also fighting as a field marshal for the Constitutionalists. - Canada will no longer be subject to continued British communist pressure after Britain accepts the USA's demand to stand down. - Anti-German Speech decision now correctly checks whether any German civil war faction is fascist, and does not show duplicate decisions in case Germany is in a civil war. - fixed an issue with Reichskommissariats Ostland and Ukraine behaving weirdly - 'Expose the Belly of the Bear' will no longer cancel if some of the criteria is true. - The focus 'Expand the MLD' will now automatically bypass if the Netherlands or its subject does not control Java. - Australia can now invite King Edward VIII to Australia if they decide to stand by the King in the event of him pushing his marriage forwards. The focus can now also be bypassed if Australia becomes fully independent and is not in the Allies. - Fixed Secure the Dominions decisions still being visible if you secured them via civil war instead. - The subject of a country can't stay at war anymore if its overlord capitulate (if no faction) - Fixed a single port being naval strikes multiple times within the same tick creating confusion - all units of an army will be assigned to newly created garrison orders now - During peace conference, you can now satellite a subject even if its overlord is annexed or puppeted. - joining a faction now cancels received guarantees - Lithuania's 'Move Capital to Vilnius' decision can only be taken once. - End of the British Civil War will no longer cause Canada to rename whichever faction it is in to Commonwealth of Nations if they went ahistorical. - fixed tutorial 10 not advancing if no units are selected - Unintended dynamic tag victors of the UK, Mexico, and USA civil war(s) now load their original focus trees upon victory. - fixed submarine models not being shown in naval combat - You can now move a repairing taskforce from a naval base to another without canceling repairing. - Fixed attache not working when the recipient has less than 100PP and 50CP - German Integrate War Economies focus now sends events rather than applying effects immediately, giving players a chance to decline to avoid being puppeted. - Decolonize Asia game rule now releases Korea, Manchukuo, and Mengkukuo, and transfers other continental states to China. - Heavy cruisers are now considered as capital ships in the production line. - the nation building decisions now correctly add a national spirit to execute their effect - Fixed Treading the Narrow Path achievement to correctly not be awarded if you lost one of your starting states. - Fixed easter egg event to now be possible to fire. - George VI national spirit is now properly removed when finishing The Fate of the Royal Family focus. - You can now train colonial divisions using colonial manpower, even if master doesn't have manpower. - The Imperial Federation focus should now be available even if you don't own Together for Victory - Focuses and events relating to the Imperial Federation now takes into account various combinations of DLCs the player may or may not own. - fixed repair queue reordering not working - Removed faction requirement of Dutch Strength over Blood focus. - Made it impossible to begin the Abdication event chain if you have also gone down a mutually-exclusive branch that would prevent you from resolving the negative effects from that event chain (such as Fallen Government) by selecting the King's Party focus, or vice-versa. - Winning the Blackshirt civil war will now reimburse one George V king to the player. - the gun upgrade for ships now increases light and heavy attack for players without MtG - Resolved the hash conflict that resulted in the oddly specific case of Macedonia, puppeted by Chad, receiving a news event option text as a country name ("This messes with our plans...") - Re-enabled releasing Egypt as UK, but only when in Ironman mode (for the Freegypt achievement). - German focus Break the Anglo-French Colonial Hegemony now correctly gives a claim on Cameroon instead of Gabon, and on Rwanda and Burundi, as well as wargoals on these nations if they exist, or on Belgium if it still owns Rwanda and/or Burundi. - British Decolonization focuses are now available as long as you control one of the required states, and bypass if you don't own any. Dutch Decolonization focus is similarly bypassed if you don't own any of the areas or control them as subjects. - fixed an issue where the Loyalists in the fascist Civil War would not get the correct flag - Honor the Confederacy focus is now correctly available for unaligned US - South Africa Secure Interests in Africa focus now takes into account new tags. - Fixed Battlecry and Awake and Angry being completed immediately upon unpause. - fixed a trigger in election events that had the date reversed - Prevented puppetting the original faction leaders from awarding the Assuming Direct Control achievement. - Merging an active and reserve taskforce will now always merge into active - Don't remove unit from province when transfert ownership (when a GiE is reinstalled for example) - Fixed ship design filter by sub unit resetting when a new equipment was added to the list - Achievement fix for Pride and Prejudice - fixed an issue with continuing the game past 1948 when going for achivements - Made Tora Tora Tora mission reward for Japan appear correctly as a completion reward, rather than a failure penalty. - Imperial Federation can now be achieved even if you annexed some of the Dominions, as long as you control all of their cores. Imperial Conference proposals will also correctly unlock once all involved parties have responded, taking into account that some may not exist anymore. - Fixed a single state misbehaving when releasing Reichskommissariat Ostland while at peace - Fixed light cruiser battery 4 module having less light attack than previous module - UK theorist J.F.C. Fuller now properly gives 7% doctrine research bonus. - Fixed the Dutch military tree to no longer be incorrectly hidden if you don't own DOD. Instead, it correctly only hides a single focus. - ENG Decolonizing while having finished Three Nation Solution will grant RAJ the improved Muslim Community Marginalized trait. Also, TFV trees will now take into account the possibility of having been decolonized by Britain, and, if they are still in a faction with ENG, allow them to take focuses that would otherwise require them to still be a subject. - Ensured that it is no longer possible to 'game the system' by, as a Dominion, promising loyalty to the king in the event for the Abdication Crisis, only to subsequently go down the independence path in a TfV focus tree. Promising loyalty now locks you into the pro-Britain path of the tree. - HOL focus Colonial Shipbuilding now only requires control, rather than total control, of the relevant states. This should make it more possible to be taken once at war with Japan. - Fixed carrier deck size not being updated after refitting - The Naval treaty should no longer be removed if Japan goes to war with China specifically - British decolonization tree now takes into account not owning TfV. - Double-clicking on enemy task force icons no longer lets you select their fleets and disband them - Fixed reconquered and re-puppeted dominions declaring independence from Fascist Britain a second time. - De Gaulle should no longer be able to play 4D chess and rule both Vichy France and Free France. - Trotsky should no longer be able to lead an uprising in the Soviet Union while also ruling Mexico. - Added new states in West Africa to correctly be owned by Vichy France upon formation. - Prevented various strange AI behaviours from occurring, such as Stalin allying Trotskyite Mexico. - McArthur should no longer be able to lead armies on the Democratic side of the US civil war, while leading the Fascist side. De Gaulle should now no longer be available as a general for Vichy France. - Updated Waking the Tiger DLC to pull in portrait fixes that were missed earlier. - Fixed country neighbors not properly rebuilt on controller changes and triggers like any_neighbour_country etc not working properly in some cases - It is now possible to build torpedo cruisers without Man the Guns again - Fixed 3D model viewer entities making noises in Germany - Repair naval bases will now be scored based on actual path rather than map distance while searching for naval bases to repair - Fixed the deficit of a task force in regard to its reinforcement target being miscalculated in some cases leading to no reinforcement until at least one ship of the missing kind join the task force. - Fixed a bug where the ships in surplus would be miscalculated leading to a infinite loop of a ship detaching to be assigned to reserve on one tick and joining back on the next one. - Fixed requested expeditionaries not being assigned to fallback orders ################################## # AI ################################## - Fixed an issue where the AI could get stuck and stop production of non-convoy ships if Man the Guns was not enabled - AI will now correctly always reject requests to integrate exiled navies if they have more than 75 ships, and will also always accept if they have fewer than 25 ships. - Added AI strategies to certain UK and Netherlands focus tree paths to avoid making weird allies. - AI now use correctly all their dockyards - ai will build units considering ally & subject supply chunks as well, added a strat for JAP since it will be fighting mostly on subjects - AI is not a bit less reluctant to cancel convoy defense missions now if it is trading for fuel - AI will assign more screens to convoy missions if it is being raided a lot - AI will prio mine sweeping more if it has mines assigned next to owned regions - US and ENG AI should now be able to build a specialized anti-submarine destroyer design for convoy work - the US AI will now be granted the correct advisors from script when set to go fascist/communist - US AI will now not take resource decisions unless it has political power to spare - AI now takes convoy losses and mine threat into account when designing ships and building counters. Losses to convoys also increase desire of AI to build more convoys ################################## # UI ################################## - Fixed occasionally incorrect rendering of national focus tree lines. - reformulated subtracting factories from production line tooltip to be more consistent with the way the English language has developed since 1912 - Added more grandiose language into the Second American Civil War victory event texts for both sides. - Added tooltip text for fascist mobilization of National Guard. - Added custom tooltip to Anti-Bolshevist Aid focus to prevent the United States from appearing like it plans to send weapons to itself. - Removed unnecessary space between the title and article of the American fascist victory news event. - Made civil war victory event title dynamic so the event reads appropriately even if you are still non-aligned. - Mexico will now receive the event notifying it of its acceptance into a faction instead of its faction sponsor getting the acceptance event instead. - Shortened Commonwealth of Nations formation event text so that it no longer overlaps with the selectable event button. - fixed a number of inconsistencies in the German Loc - Disabled all air mission buttons for air wings on a carrier in port - All countries in Europe now have fascist, communist, and democratic political party names. - Added text icon for Legitimacy. - minor grammar fixing and removal of redundant text - added an explanatory tooltip to a US decision - Generic Air Theorists now have proper localisation. - Always display mission efficiency of the relevant mission on the naval mission map icon - scroll bar works again on right side theatre view now - achievement tooltip at start of the game now mentions "most achievements are disabled" on 39 start - Fixed duplicate pop-ups on some diplomatic action when handled by AI - Display correct type and number of ships in naval overview - it is possible to request expeditionaries for fallback orders now - Corrected tooltip for the Shadow Scheme focus to no longer refer to defensive wars only. - Fixed the tooltip of the Japanese decision 'Demand Indochina' - fixed taskforces on never repair setting having inconsistent guis about which ships are being repaired - US warplan focuses should now correctly display the effects of the decisions they unlock - Rename ship designer save button to match division designer - fixed a small typo in a news event - fixed a typo in a technology - Fixed event option text for Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson death news event for countries other than UK itself. - Fixed move window refering to ships by hull type. Now refering to them by sub unit name. - Fixed hook to proper module icon for DP secondary batteries in ship designer - Changed theater icon for moving to combat to be the same as the text icon going_to_combat - Fixed a cropping issue with one of the achievement images - Made decision progress bar on map a bit bigger so it is more visible - Adjusted colors on mapmode buttons - Added Capital Ship icon to heavy and carrier ship hulls technologies - Improved the fuel consumption feedback for navies - Added the ship role icon and task force insignia to the detailed ship entry - detailed ship entries now show the current ship activity and clicking on the ship open the history if there are new entries - Added custom icons for game rules for foreign policy, covert actions and gameplay rules - Clarified some tooltips related to patrol and strike force missions - Enabling automatic reinforcement on a task force will now set the requirements to the current fleet composition if they would have been zero (e.g. when a task force has been initialized from history files). - Aligned GiE flag on ships - Changing the task force insignia no longer disable "use fleet's color" - Stop fuel flickering when near 0 - added a different icon for convoy combat alerts and on map battles to make it easier to see the difference - Carriers are now displayed as capital ships in ship designer. - Various russian loc fixes - Naval Mines now have an improved tooltip showing you how much damage you are doing to others - Enabled changed the naval access of all selected strategic region at once using the lower-left region window controls. - Fixed a missing event picture in a French event - Changed coloring of strategic navy map mode to improve visibility of assigned regions - Selecting ships and right clicking on taskforce icons now will assign ships to those taskforces - Selecting task force and right clicking on another task force in the theater view will ask if you want to merge task forces - Panning to armies and task forces in the theater view made consistent with a double-click, instead of when selecting with single click (army) or when right clicking (navy) - Fixed selecting a ship model closing ship model viewer - Fixed 3D model selector using wrong visual levels - Fixed Unaligned Gambia flag to correctly display. - Fixed a visual bug in the task force composition editor where the current fulfillment would not be properly computed and displayed when matching any role icon - Add a button to remove strategic regions for fleets, matching the army behavior ################################## # Modding ################################## - changing context in effects will not copy random anymore - fixed manpower trigger for big values - fixed unordered names not working with fallback system - fixed selected scripted gui contexts not working with visible trigger - fixed a visibility glitch with scripted guis - fixed an issue where admirals with a maneuvering skill of 3 gained 75% positioning as opposed to 7.5% - Add start_experience_factor for ships and airwings - adding game variables for some ai strategies and attitudes - added ability to call scripted loc on variables [?var.ScriptedLocName] - added support for attaching a scripted gui to another scripted gui - fixed is_target_of_coup checking for wrong country - Added some date trigger validation to catch inappropriate usage of D.M.Y format when Y.M.D is expected. - added on_sent & reject effects for scripted diplo actions - random now works better with scripted guis - Added a bunch of profiler scopes - meta effects/triggers now have a debug variable for printing actual string - Added triggers for mine and convoy threats ################################## # Balance ################################## - The ability of a general couldn't be cumulative anymore with the same at the marshal level. - Cruiser submarines can now mount extra fuel tanks - Punitive subroutines activated against exploiters deleting their entire army just before certain civil wars... Beware! - Added civil war divisions to Fascist UK civil war - AI Germany should be slightly more likely to win the German Civil War. - fixed port strikes not killing some ships but leaving at 0 health - fixed subs running away from other subs - activating women in the workforce and then moving away from total mobilization will now remove the manpower buff from women in the workforce - removed duplicate effect in direct/indirect support focuses in Australian Focus Tree - US isolation economic law now also affects naval dockyard building speed - Removed first super heavy BB research bonus from Japanese focus tree for MtG players, replaced with 50 naval XP - Leader XP gain now only from units outside reserves in combat - We now use battalions rather than divisions to calculate XP scaling for commanders to avoid 1 bat exploits - XP gain rate in combat now scaled by the lowest of yours and enemy strength - overall Xp gain spead from combat increased to compensate for above changes - US random congress events now differentiate better between Senate and House, which should counteract situations where one chamber supports the government to the hilt while the other has no majority - reduced naval XP generation by a large amount. increased impact of ratio of ships. This will make smaller ships generate a bit more XP, also made manpower more have impact overall - the Jgernotprogram decision can now only be taken once, its effect has been reduced to 90 days and taking the decision costs 5% war support and 5% stability - added a total of 20 naval XP to the RAJ focus tree - To take into account the vast influx of new tags, The Puppetmaster achievement now requires 50 subjects, up from 25. - Limited Intervention now increases the PP cost of economic and recruitment laws by 100% - Limited Intervention no longer puts the US on civilian economy but allows the country to switch out of undisturbed isolation - Finishing the Great Depression reductions in the Communist Branch now requires a communist in government and will incur heavy opposition if at low communist support - added a repeatable decision for the fascist side in the US fascist civil war that raises a number of militia divisions - starting the US fascist civil war should now retain popularity for fascism and switch non-fascist support to neutrality - Reduced bonus to Tank and Tank Destroyer Production cost in US focus tree from 25 to 10 % - removed fuel consumption from rockets - added fuel output reduction of 0.6 to undisturbed isolation - added fuel output reduction of 0.5 to isolation - added fuel output reduction of 0.25 to early mobilization - added fuel output reduction of 0.1 to partial mobilization - Super Heavy BB hull now slightly faster - In historical mode, the British or US AI will not strongly challenge a Japanese or Italian naval buildup through the Naval Treaty System - Doubled repair speed for ships in naval bases ################################## # Database ################################## - fixed a missing portrait in the Mexico tree - Removed Guns for the Anti-Bolshevik War decisions from the Support China category and moved them to the Foreign Policy category. - Monarchist Hungary now correctly receives a claim on the new state of Katowice through the Reclaim the Empire focus. - Fixed medium and large flags for communist Cameroon that were not showing up in-game due to being incorrectly sized. - New Zealand Prime Minister Michael Joseph Savage should now pass away on the correct date and then be replaced by Peter Fraser. - Fixed the Tisa river properly flowing into the Danube - Marco Polo Bridge Incident tooltip now mentions Qingdao - Fixed democratic Cambodia flag to no longer be a copy of Cameroon's - Improve Serbian Railway Network focus now also provides infrastructure to West Banat - fixed an issue with the British RAJ getting the wrong portraits if the anniversary pack is installed - unlocked cruiser submarines for Japan from 1936 start - fixed a number of cruiser and carrier hulls not improving reliability with higher levels - Added 5 new German advisors that are available after taking Oppose Hitler, Revive the Kaiserreich, or Re-Establish Free Elections, if the player has the Waking the Tiger DLC. - Corrected Albanian communist leader and democratic reformer; implemented leader portraits for Kazakhstan. - The US focus tree now has further explanatory tooltips for Honor the Confederacy, Invite Foreign Support, Focus on Europe/Asia - fixed an issue in the Soviet Focus Tree where it gave a techbonus that did not work with the MtG naval focus tree - Switched around the names for Unaligned and Democratic Curacao, so that the more recognizeable name "Netherlands Antilles" is the 'default' Democratic name, with the less recognizeable "ABC Republic" becoming the name for Unaligned Curacao. - Adjusted Imperial Federation news event pictures to include New Zealand, British Africa, and various other colonial possessions in the Middle East, South and Central America and Southeast Asia. - Fixed an issue withthe data format of the CSA flag, the historical one should now load - Adjusted Fascist Dutch flag - Moved province 9494 from state Lublin to state Krakow to improve Austro-Hungarian borders. - Included Alliance with Germany in the list of optional prerequisites for the British Pre-Empt the Ideological Threat focus. - Fixed an incorrect unit location for the Spanish civil war events - Adjusted Fascist name for Malta to no longer reflect the modern-day name of the Order, which has instead been used as the Unaligned name. ################################## # Stability & Performance ################################## - Fix CTD in a unit tooltip - CTD fix in mods where no ai roles for equipment are defined - Avoided CTD when army icons do not have corresponding entries in gfx files, providing info in the error log instead. - Fixed a CTD when an ally is called into war, non-aggression pacts are being assessed, and a war relation with an alleged enemy cannot be found. - Cleared the country refresh flag when clearing game state, potentially avoiding an out-of-sync when joining a multiplayer game after leaving a different game session. - Random CTD fixes - fixed a ctd with built in profiler - fixed having no airwing modifiers crashing the game (do plz add tho modders) - fixed having no ai focus list crashing the game (do plz add tho modders) - fixed a ctd with scripted diplomatic actions - Improved OOS checks to use proper checksums instead of basic addition and occasional multiplication which can sometimes miss out-of-syncs, added resources consumed and technology status as new categories checked, and fixed localization from some previous OOS code rearrangement. - Minor performance improvements to the tag trigger when the tag is not a variable - Game startup speedup by improving map generation - Game startup speedup by skipping some duplicate gamestate resets - Avoid computing the gradient borders when reseting the game as they can be computed later on - Made decisions update threaded for the warmup tick on game start - Improved the performance of gradient border generation - performance improvements when using huge number of variables (hi mods) - optimization for checksum calc of variables - Fixed a crash while transferring carrier ships with multiple air wings of same type in civil wars[/quote] Go to original post here!


    [ 2019-03-13 11:30:39 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Man the Guns - Post Release

    Man the Guns is released as well as the 1.6 Ironclad update, but no rest for the wicked! We are already working on the 1.6.1 patch, so let's have a look at that
    Click here to read the development diary by podcat [quote]Useful links Hearts of Iron Wiki Hearts of Iron Development Diary Archive


    [ 2019-03-06 16:09:37 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Hearts of Iron IV: Man the Guns is now available!


    STOCKHOLM - 28 February 2019 - Victory in Western Europe and East Asia were won through the decisive application of industrial naval power. The Atlantic convoys kept Britain supplied until overwhelming force could be applied to Fortress Europe, and American shipyards produced capital ships for the Pacific War at an unprecedented pace. Are you a savvy enough admiral to master the intricacies of naval war? Will you repeat or rewrite history? Test your seaborne skills in Hearts of Iron IV: Man the Guns, available now at major online retailers for $19.99. Man the Guns is the newest naval themed expansion to Hearts of Iron IV, the popular World War II strategy wargame from Paradox Development Studio. Man the Guns comes with an armada of improvements to the naval game, including a new ship design mode, refitting older designs, fuel considerations and strategic convoy routes. Man the Guns also improves play for major democracies like the United States, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, with all new alternate history paths and the mobilization of the American Congress. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GtnWCyKZ30 Features of Hearts of Iron IV: Man the Guns include:

    • New Alternate American History: Use the American Congress to push for reform, at the risk of plunging the nation into another civil war.
    • New Alternate British History: Push for early decolonization of the British Empire or restore the ancient privileges of the monarchy.
    • Ship Design: Research new components and refit older vessels to take advantage of new knowledge. Outfit your submarines with snorkels or improved stealth.
    • Admiral Traits and Skills - Tailor and level up your Admirals with new traits and skills.
    • Governments in Exile: Welcome a government in exile to your democracy, boosting their legitimacy in return for more manpower and elite troops fighting to free their homeland.
    • Other National Focuses: New national focuses for The Netherlands and Mexico.
    • Naval Mines: Protect your coasts from invasion or assault with anti-ship mines, or clear a path through enemy mines before you make the big push.
    • Shipping route controls - plot new routes for your shipping and navies by marking areas you want to avoid.
    • Naval Treaties: Struggle to keep the peace by following internationally agreed upon rules, or creatively defy the world consensus by exceeding your limits.
    • Amphibious Landing Vehicles: Add power to your beach landing by researching and producing specialized combat vehicles for your marines.
    • New Music: Original music composed specifically for the Man the Guns expansion.
    As usual, the Man the Guns expansion is accompanied by a major free update (1.6 Ironclad) that improves the game for all Hearts of Iron IV owners. This update includes fuel as a major resource and a new Rules screen that allows you to customize your World War experience. https://steamcommunity.com/games/394360/announcements/detail/1814293102938163272 https://store.steampowered.com/app/815460/Expansion__Hearts_of_Iron_IV_Man_the_Guns/


    [ 2019-02-28 17:01:44 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Update 1.6: Ironclad is now live!

    As usual, the changelog is too long to fit in one announcement. So to see the full changelog, please go to our official forum!
    Please note that 1.6 will not be save game compatible with 1.5.4. If you want to finish off any ongoing ironman games, please remain on 1.5.4 for now. Here is instructions on how you revert patch levels. ################################## # Free Features and Important ################################## - Fuel is now a resource required by most moving things with an engine and produced from oil and synthetic refineries and can be stored in the new silo building - New naval combat that uses different distance and role boxes for ships as well as a whole new spotting phase on the map for locating and chasing down targets - New naval missions and many interfaces for controlling ships who are now organized into Task Forces within a fleet - Ships and planes can now be trained, both for Naval XP and for personal experience level - Naval production is revamped, ships can be named before they are launched and the ship calss dictates how many dockyards can be assigned to its construction at max - Ship repair is no longer free but requires dockyards. A new interface lets you control this from the production screen - Naval zones now have terrain which has effects on combat, movement etc. Fjords/Archipelagos, Shallow seas, Deep Oceans, Arctic waters and shark infested areas. - Some technologies (like doctrines) can now be boosted by spending XP, in response their default time has been increased somewhat - The effects of raiding on your trades and transports now has a scaling war support penalty on your nation - Decisions now exist on map also making state picking a lot easier to navigate - Admirals new have 4 new stats rather than skill level: Attack, Defense, Manouvering and Coordination - Admirals now have personality traits - Added ability to cancel national focus. Up to 10 days progress will be saved. - New customizable gameplay rules available for single and multi player including the ability to direct ai nations. - 21 new Achievements - Naval invasions are no longer limited to one per starting port - Justifying wargoals are now cheaper vs nations that assist enemies - Naval battle reports will now automatically decay and go away based on importance - added a repeatable decision for Austria-Hungary to lower the autonomy of CZE if CZE decides to become a puppet - Added new decision for Lithuania to rename West Wilno state and Wilno victory point to Vilnius. - Added Dismantle Czechoslovakian Forts decision for Germany - Democratic King Hungary can now call in Sweden into its wars through a decision - Added 70 new releasable nations ################################## # Bugfix ################################## - Azores lease return event will now only fire once. - "Align Hungary/Romania" focuses can no longer be taken when at war with them. - Reichskommissariat decisions now only cause a civil war if the targeted nation is not fascist. - Fixed naval base capacity being miscalculated when loading a savegame - Vichy France event will no longer fire if a human player not in a faction with Germany controls European French states. - Australia can now send a delegation to Communist China if a warlord has taken over leadership of the Communists - Manchukuo can no longer offer vassalization to a warlord who has taken over leadership of China - Rekindle Imperial Sentiment now bypasses if Austria-Hungary is already in the Central Powers. - fixed an issue where Japan might be blocked from striking the southern resource area if the DEI or Malaya had changed hands previously - German Plan Z mission will no longer claim it will fail when it will, in fact, succeed - Fixed an issue where Czechoslovakia could protest rearmament of Hungary despite being Hungary's puppet - Fixed set autonomy effect (from example focuses) allowing a state to puppet itself - The Indian Assam Oil focus should now correctly require ownership of Assam state instead of Mandalay - chinese warlords that are puppets will not join the United Front unless their overlord has joined the united front - fixed an issue that only triggered a news event if Japan was at war with itself - democratic Japan returning Manchuria now correctly returns inner Mongolia - fixed an issue where the Soviet union would retain a claim on Petsamo after the peacedeal in the winter war leading to a second war within a short time - Country name is now updated immediately when ruling party is changed through set_rule script effect or the set_ruling_party console command. - Fixed a case where you could take the same decisions multiple times when the game is busy - fixed pinging not working when the country is enemy of host - fixed an issue where focuses that set countries free in a focus tree did not actually set that country free - disabled decision to blow Panama and Suez Canals if unable to rebuild them due to DLC locks (because that would...blow) - added bypasses for 'Treaty With Lithuania' if LIT is annexed or in another faction - fixed being able to disband enemy units in civil war if they were already selected before war - Japan should no longer get an event for a wargoal against China if already at war with China - Divisions being in the middle of naval transports will now correctly revalidate route if it becomes impassable. - Fixed a case where nations that click Done with score left in peace conferences sometimes would give much greater amount of points to its faction members - Austria-Hungary decisions now also add the Banat as a core - Fate of Czechoslovakia event now checks if Poland exists before giving it Zaolzie - Country colors now properly refresh when a cosmetic tag changes (for example effects from focuses). - Fixed Ljubljana Award transferring an island in the Indian Ocean instead of Greece's Central Macedonia - Romania's Divide Yugoslavia events now produce less border gore - Yugoslavia will still receive Germany's demand for Slovenia even if France no longer exists - Demand Slovenia is now bypassed in more circumstances - The Death of Rudolf Hess will now only fire if Adolf Hitler is in power - Correctly locked the German democratic advisor behind the "Re-establish Free Elections" focus, if the player has Waking the Tiger active - Germany's Atlantikwall NF can only be taken if they control one of the (non-German) states which receive forts in the effects - Fixed so Austria can no longer be annexed by Germany if they formed the Austro-Hungarian Empire, or are a major. - Fixed an issue for Soviet where winning a civil war would reset the focus tree - Naval strikes and port strikes are now properly affected by disruption on the way to their targets - Made Case Anton only available when at war. - fixed an issue with Destroyer for Bases event claiming wrong number of ships transferred - Atlantikwall now also builds forts in allied nations. - Fixed negative amount of equipment being sometimes distributed to e.g. staged coups - Give back convoys when naval transferring troops are teleported to land. - fixed an issue where revolters in a civil war may be unable to resolve a low stability crisis because they are locked out of the resolution events (leading to them eventually falling to communism) - fixed new puppets not joining faction of master after peace conference - fixed an issue with the Australian South-West Pacific Initiative focus that could lead to a non-existing country joining the faction - the news event about Hungary demanding Southern Slovakia should no longer pretend that Hungary is claiming territory from itself - fixed not being able to build buildings on a newly released puppet - Fixed potential convoy duplication when starting a naval transfer, which would lead to more convoys than should exist, and inconsistent used/available convoy counts. - The Balkan Powderkeg achievement now is correctly awarded upon declaring war on any member of the opposite faction (Allies or Axis). - Fixed some rare issues with convoy counts becoming inconsistent when a naval transfer is canceled, due to assuming that the division initially owns no convoys, and assuming that the division belongs to the same country as the naval transfer. - Added bonus score for deciding who to capitulate to if they hold the capital state - Tension from anschluss events now directly apply so player cant wait around on events to mess with tension - the industrial land appropriation decision should now select states a little smarter, preferring high infrastructure states to low infrastructure states - Disabled Ironman Observer Mode ( Achievements Possible ) - Fixed history issues with Italy being at war with Ethiopia in the 39 start despite them not existing - Further adjustments to Vichy France events - Made unit transfer not use manhattan distances for more accurate paths - some tweaks to wanted units of post-invasion fronts - Added allow triggers to decisions that are only supposed to happen for 1 country - fixed an issue with a Hungarian Focus always bypassing - Many tweaks to german and soviet buildup as well as japan and china. - Various major nations with focus tree-spawned civil wars will now allocate the nation's original civil war if the rebelling side ends up winning, to prevent these from being stuck with the generic focus tree. These nations include: -Germany -Japan -British Raj -South Africa -Soviet Union ################################## # AI ################################## - Central Powers now invites Austria-Hungary and Monarchist Italy, even if they are not AI. - Corrected broken AI behavior when FIELD_MARSHAL_ARMIES_CAP was set to the special value of zero meaning no cap, fixing a game freeze and out-of-memory CTD. - Fixed a bunch of problems in the air AI - fixed ai miscounting existing exp forces while evaluating new exp force requests - fixed some trade issues with ai - fixed incorrect will do modifier in SOV focus "SOV_war_with_uk" - increase AI 'will do' factor on RAJ Provincial elections focus for ahistorical play - fixed bug where ai would cancel trades - China will now tend to refuse ceding land to Japan in the Marco Polo Bridge Incident on historical mode, unless China is at war - fixed ai not promoting leaders - National focuses that create a new faction now require that the country is not a subject - Japanese Join Comintern NF now requires that you are at peace with the USSR and not a subject - Decisions to increase stability not available at 100% stability - fixed an issue where the AI was a little too happy to appropriate land during war time - Improved AI evaluation of research bonuses (aka, its not 100% backwards anymore) - Made AI France in historical mode never select the Franco-British Union (De Gaulle would be proud!) - a high faction join limiter modifier now has the same effect on asking to join as well as being asked to join a faction - Chinese AI will now tend to reject Japan's peace proposal if Japan is at war with lots of major powers - fixes/improvements with ai following up naval invasions - the Ai should now execute the Xian incident more reliably - fixed ai committing more planes to a region than intended in case of having extra planes - reduced the amount of CAS and TAC that germany is building slightly - AI Iran and Iraq will now have more open trade laws because of their oil - germany builds a lot more civs and builds some synth refineries in '38 - Changed americans to build more DDs and less BBs, also slightly less light cruisers compared to DDs - Increased German air production - increased likelihood that Germany will research improved rubber production for synth refineries - Fixed various overflow issues in ai_strategy - improved carrier plane production and assigments for ai - ai now is a bit less reluctant to cover allied regions from naval invasions - improved Japanese AI idea picking - some improvements with ai naval invasions and ai unit assignments - improvements to convoy raid evaulation - AI will now be more careful with its fleets if numerically inferior. AI will also prefer repairing more often if inferior - added checks for consider_weak strategy also to war declare logic. Japan should now go for the US throat even when it might not make perfect sense - AI should no longer use industrial land appropriation if it has any decent state (> 5 infrastructure) that still has free building slots - the US and SOV AI should now be a little more eager to develop medium armor templates - Ai now blocked from researching subtechs if already researching next base level (i.e. not researching basic medium tank destroyers while researching improved medium tank) - Made ai care more about actual raiding locations and adjusted numbers so some areas actually fall outside of ai interestes for raiding/escort - AI Japan will no longer underestimate the chinese once the war has actually begun - Lowered the scoe of researching doctrines for ai depending on how many are actively being done - Added new strategies to keep AI japan from overdoing its escorting when there are no credible naval threats - Japanese historical AI should now pick spiritual mobilization and national defense state earlier - research AI should now take amount of planes it already has into account when researching new planes - i.e. a country with lots of CAS planes will try to upgrade them - Major AIs told that jet planes exist - adjusted japans target templates for infantry to cover fronts better - Japan will now consider GXC less good for invasions to limit their use of smaller invasions with a high risk of failure - Ai should no longer produce more carrier fighters beyond its buffer - fixed issues where ai template logic could get stuck in a loop by moving last fail checks to role instead. - tweaked japanese template strategy for garrisons, and also lowered armor target a bit - Ai is now more careful about switching equipment to new versions with no stockpile in war time - Japan now puts less production on light tanks before it has a real industry - ai will now consider if a guarantee concerns an offensive action or not when managing its fronts. - Japan now boosts relations less - ai that is executing an aggressive plan now gets a bonus to aggressiveness so it can continue to execute it - fixed some issues with ai plan executing - Japan now warned that going against philipines will make the allies its enemy most likely - tweaked aggression settings on plans. ai now a bit less aggressive to not open itself to encirclements - soviet now less keen on sending volunteers unless china is doing badly - fascists at war now need better overall status before its ok with spending a lot of PP on relation boosting - Ai now more careful with naval transfers around UK - german ai now focus less on TAC and more on fighters - Romanian AI will now try to improve relations with Germany in preparation of axis joining attempt - added some ai strategies to focus ai on recently invaded areas - made ai prefer land routes over naval routes a bit more for trades - Ai can now trade for partial resources (eg less than 8) depending on how many factories it has - Germany will now care less about light tanks early which should net it more medium armor later instead - Germany will prefer more suppression garrisons after Poland falls and will have higher priority to research military police for them - Japan should now weigh the invasion tech higher if its at war with USA or china is down - Romania will now go free trade and focus more on oil focuses after it joins the axis - AI will now be more likely to enable women in the workforce if low on manpower - germany will now be more careful around total economic mobilization - ai now are less reluctant to trade with countries that have dangerous convoy routes - US AI should now pick fascist demagogue/communist revolutionary if required for their focus tree - ai will now need better front relative strength to go for aggressive stance - made the default suppression template a bit bigger and also targets correct width - Germany will prefer more infantry/manpower focused doctrines in mobile warfare - ai will now only use top prio plane assignment if its enemy main target home area - ai will no longer waste air superiority missions where it planned to put bombers but lacked bombers - lowered fighter amount ai thinks it needs to disrupt enemy bombers - Brazil will now go free trade later in the game to alleviate some of the rubber lack if japan takes it all for itself - Romanian ai will now try to build up a better infrastructure towards soviets to help with future invading - Several research weight tweaks to help germany pick better stuff - USA will prioritize hawaii more as a way to cover pacific - German AI told, again, that Sweden is not dangerous and doesn't need to be invaded - Germany should now build a bit more support equipment - soviet will now prioritize quantity over quality on inf equipment - soviet will avoid decisions that take its political power instead of saving up for manpower laws - sov ai more careful with prospecting decisions and manpower laws - more soviet fixes so they dont waste PP on other stuff than manpower when under pressure - soviet will now make a bit more artillery - lowered score for soviet naval ideas to keep focus on the whole german situation - improved AI priorities for crypto techs - Ai now evaluates front strenth more accurately - added slightly smarter AI for evaluating requesting expeditionary forces - Several improvements to AI ship building logic. It can now work with roles just like for divisions - Used higher precision numbers for AI equipment priority calculations as a brute-force method to avoid overflows from unpredictable scripted values, and simplified the logic for how AI determines best equipment for each role. - Tweaked AI strategies to better balance GER, SOV, and JAP. - Fixes for AI not respecting max number of factories on a production line. - air ai now needs 25% of provinces to be controlled by enemy to consider a region has is shared between him and enemy when prioritizing - AI improvements for keeping naval invasions consistent on save & load - ai naval invasion order unit assignment improvements - main enemy of a country now gets a prio while assigning airplanes for combat zones - added a strat for usa to focus less on defense if there are no nearby wars - AI better at evaluating efficiency loss on production lines - Lots of AI tech prioritiy changes to make AI research more good naval stuff and to prioritize the right other techs for most winningest results - Lots of changes and improvements to naval ai - reduced the massive boner the AI had for infantry weapons III - AI should no longer prioritize naval doctrines quite as much, and will dynamically attempt to catch up in air doctrine research if it is sufficiently behind land doctrines - Fixed so Venezuela no longer demands Curacao on historical focus - Made Romania not declare war on Bulgaria if Bulgaria joined the axis but Romania hasn't (yet), if it's historical mode. - slightly reduced AI weight to research better infantry weapons for small industrial bases - historical German AI plan now has attack on Soviet union closer to historical date ################################## # UI ################################## - Trait flavor descriptions now use proper lore text - Tooltip for checkign number of subjects now show correct - Polish-Lithuania decision now says "Poland and Lithuania" instead of "ourselves and Lithuania" since Lithuania is also able to take the decision - Added a colon and space to localisations for hot/cold acclimatisation - Spelling is hard :( (aclimatizes -> acclimatizes) - Fixed flag for colonial troops not showing up when adding their templates - Fixed modifier for acclimatization not showing as % - Faction names in certain news events are now referred to in their proper definite form when a country capitulates. - Fixed comma issue in equipment bonus tooltip for ideas - fixed an issue where Italian focuses would fire the wrong faction join events - added a missing description for a Romanian focus - fixed a couple gui issues with strategic bomber targetting gui - Now a proper mouse cursor is displayed when mouse over the naval port with selected divisions and it's impossible to naval transfer to that location. - fixed typo in Japan focus 'Found our Faction' - Change some localisations of Naval Factories to Naval Dockyards, and changed some Less Thans to Fewer Thans - Polish Socialist Party -> Communist Party of Poland - Adjusted Shogi icons for Japanese subjects. - Fixed typo in "germany.104.a" - Fixed typo in "news.210.d" - Fixed tooltip on the Reduce Autonomy button to show the proper Political Power cost, instead of the cost for increasing autonomy. - Improved the formatting of the random effect tooltip to indent properly, not include brackets, and allow a numeric formatting of the chance value. - AI will now take into account a variety of factors when invited to join an alliance via event, such as relations, wars and majors - Subjects in peace conferences are now referred to as Subjects, rather than puppets. - selection fixes to observe mode - Consolidation button now check only the selected divisions templates, not all divisions in the army. - Fixed missing localization string in the pop-up window shown to the recipient of a modified license production agreement - Toned down the selection glow in theaters a bit - Right Clicking is now an possible on nation/territory release to go to the location on map - Remade naval, tactical and strategic bomber unit category icons to make them more distinguishable - Autonomy states now have 2 decimals in their numbers - Fixed icon for unsynced cloud save item. - Added browser navigation buttons to launcher legal notices browser. - Account creation adjustments, removed unnecessary fields, added marketing permission checkbox, rearrange UI, and implemented auto-login in after successful account creation. - Clicking armies in naval view now changes mapmode to land mapmode - Archetype Icons for AirTypes on Request Lend Lease now showing their proper image where before there was empty space - Fixed some issues with new SOV infatry equipment tech icons - changed SAF decisions to liberate countries to display a progress bar - Split custom difficulty into separate window together with new custom game rules - Game will now publish playing status on steam to your friends, opt out with show_game_status=no in settings - Fixed various typos in the terrain map tooltips - Added missing tool tip for Privacy Policy button in main menu. - UI rescaled for decisions so there is a little bit more space for decision name localisation. - added a notification event for the US if Britain accepts Destroyers for Bases agreement - In construction map mode, when building land or coastal forts, the more useful map icons are shown (air bases, naval bases, VPs) to help decide on placement. - h button now puts armies on hold even when multiple of them is selected - naval production now displays end date instead of production speed - its now possible to plan more than one invasion out of the same port - Tooltips from effects where we diff modifiers now properly display diffs of non-diff flagged modifiers o_O Read full changelog here!


    [ 2019-02-28 16:50:09 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Hearts of Iron IV: Man the Guns - Features Breakdown, ep.2

    It's less than 24 hours to go to the release of Man the Guns. Let's take a moment and listen to the silky voice of Game Director Dan Lind as he talks about Naval and Fuel Mechanics in this second feature highlight video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R57qHxEUO3I https://store.steampowered.com/app/815460/Expansion__Hearts_of_Iron_IV_Man_the_Guns/


    [ 2019-02-27 19:05:25 CET ] [ Original post ]

    1.6 Ironclad - Coming Tomorrow

    It's just a little over 24 hours before we release the free 1.6 Ironclad update alongside our new expansion: Man the Guns. Let's have a closer look at what this update brings to the game
    Click here to read the development diary by podcat [quote]Useful links Hearts of Iron Wiki Hearts of Iron Development Diary Archive


    [ 2019-02-27 14:00:44 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Hearts of Iron IV: Man the Guns - Features Breakdown, ep.1

    We're almost there! Less than a week to go before the release of Man the Guns on February 28th. In this video, Game Director Dan Lind takes you through some of the key features of the expansion. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0mVGyRp_nY https://store.steampowered.com/app/815460/Expansion__Hearts_of_Iron_IV_Man_the_Guns/


    [ 2019-02-22 16:55:18 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Man the Guns MEGA RECAP

    The date to man the guns, February 28, is drawing ever closer. And as such, let's spend this week looking back at what we've talked about so far to ensure you are up to speed with what's going to happen
    Click here to read the development diary by podcat Don't miss our reddit IAmA tomorrow at 20:00CET! [quote]Useful links Hearts of Iron Wiki Hearts of Iron Development Diary Archive


    [ 2019-02-20 13:26:00 CET ] [ Original post ]

    AI Plans

    With the free 1.6 'Ironclad' update releasing together with Man the Guns, we've added Custom Game Rules which allows you to pick a certain path for AI nations to go down
    Click here to read the development diary by Archangel85 [quote]Useful links Hearts of Iron Wiki Hearts of Iron Development Diary Archive


    [ 2019-02-13 11:03:24 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Man the Guns available on February 28th 2019


    STOCKHOLM - 07 February 2019 - The great democracies of the world face unprecedented challenges on their legitimacy. Fascists and Communists pressure freedom loving nations on every side. Will they hasten war against the forces of tyranny or follow a path to authoritarianism? Are they safe beyond the seas that have historically provided ample protection? What path will you choose? Make your mark on history in Hearts of Iron IV: Man the Guns on 28 February, 2019. Man the Guns is the newest expansion for Paradox Development Studios best-selling grand strategy wargame Hearts of Iron IV. It brings new detail to the naval game as well as adding a host of new gameplay options for major democratic powers including new political focus trees and governments in exile. Man the Guns can be pre-ordered from major online retailers for $19.99. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jv733KLEV8 Features of Hearts of Iron IV: Man the Guns include:

    • Major Alternate Paths: Revive the Old Confederacy as the United States and provoke a new civil war, or hasten decolonization of the British Empire.
    • Ship Design: Research new components and refit older vessels to take advantage of new knowledge. Outfit your submarines with snorkels or improved stealth.
    • Admiral Traits and Skills - Tailor and level up your Admirals with new traits and skills.
    • Governments in Exile: Welcome a government in exile to your democracy, boosting their legitimacy in return for more manpower and elite troops fighting to free their homeland.
    • Other National Focuses: New national focuses for The Netherlands and Mexico.
    • Naval Mines: Protect your coasts from invasion or assault with anti-ship mines, or clear a path through enemy mines before you make the big push.
    • Shipping route controls - plot new routes for your shipping and navies by marking areas you want to avoid.
    • Naval Treaties: Struggle to keep the peace by following internationally agreed upon rules, or creatively defy the world consensus by exceeding your limits.
    • Amphibious Landing Vehicles: Add power to your beach landing by researching and producing specialized combat vehicles for your marines.
    • New Music: Original music composed specifically for the Man the Guns expansion.
    https://store.steampowered.com/app/815460/Expansion__Hearts_of_Iron_IV_Man_the_Guns/ As is standard with all Paradox grand strategy expansions, Man the Guns will launch with a major free update, with this one including new naval aspects, training of pilots and sailors and the much requested Fuel resource to better simulate the constraints of extended supply lines. [quote]FAQ Is Man the Guns included in the expansion pass? - Yes it is When do I get my pre-order bonus? - On February 28th, when the game releases[/quote]


    [ 2019-02-07 17:01:49 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Man the Guns Achievements!

    Man the Guns is drawing ever closer (you will get the exact date very soon, we promise) and of course a new expansion means a number of new achievements!
    Click here to read the development diary by Bratyn [quote]Useful links Hearts of Iron Wiki Hearts of Iron Development Diary Archive


    [ 2019-02-06 12:11:18 CET ] [ Original post ]

    The Imperial Japanese Navy (AAR)

    Archangel has been engaged in naval warfare playing a game against Niall. This week he will share his tale to give you a feel of the new Naval Warfare features of Man the Guns
    Click here to read the development diary by Archangel [quote]Useful links Hearts of Iron Wiki Hearts of Iron Development Diary Archive


    [ 2019-01-30 14:00:42 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Tech Changes

    This week we'll have a look at the new tech tree changes and how we tweaked the research time mechanics to make sure you are able to utilize all these new things
    Click here to read the development diary by Archangel85 [quote]Useful links Hearts of Iron Wiki Hearts of Iron Development Diary Archive


    [ 2019-01-16 13:11:14 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Fuel Review and Motorized Artillery

    Welcome into 2019, let's kick things off with a look at the highly anticipated new fuel system and how that enables the possibility of motorized artillery
    Click here to read the latest DD from Archangel85 [quote]Useful links Hearts of Iron Wiki Hearts of Iron Development Diary Archive


    [ 2019-01-09 13:20:57 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Merry Christmas!

    The year is nearing an end, and the team will take a short holiday with their families. But first, let's have a small recap of this year
    Click here to read the latest Dev Diary by podcat [quote]Useful links Hearts of Iron Wiki Hearts of Iron Development Diary Archive


    [ 2018-12-19 13:29:17 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Subs and Convoy Raiding

    Let me introduce you to our new Game Designer YaBoy_Bobby. And let YaBoy_Bobby introduce you to our improved submarine warfare and convoy raiding!
    Click here to read the latest Dev Diary by YaBoy_Bobby [quote]Useful links Hearts of Iron Wiki Hearts of Iron Development Diary Archive


    [ 2018-12-12 17:03:23 CET ] [ Original post ]

    New Naval Combat

    One day late, we give you this week's development diary. Today podcat will take us through changes to Naval Combat coming in the free 1.6 Ironclad update accompanying our next expansion: Man the Guns
    Click here to read the latest Dev Diary by podcat [quote]Useful links Hearts of Iron Wiki Hearts of Iron Development Diary Archive


    [ 2018-12-06 12:43:42 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Bag of Tricks #3

    Let's have an update on some of the things the HoI4 Content Design team has fixed or adjusted since showing off the new focus trees
    Click here to read the latest Dev Diary from Bratyn [quote]Useful links Hearts of Iron Wiki Hearts of Iron Development Diary Archive


    [ 2018-11-28 14:02:55 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Dev Diary - Naval Rework #1

    Here is the first development diary in a series that will showcase the changes to the naval system. Today we will look at new mission types and changes to the naval interface!
    Click here to read the development diary by Archangel85 [quote]Useful links Hearts of Iron Wiki Hearts of Iron Development Diary Archive


    [ 2018-11-21 16:11:13 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Naval Treaties and Ship Refits!

    Welcome to another development diary for Man the Guns! Today we will look at Naval Treaties and Ship Refits!
    Click to read the full Dev Diary by Archangel85 [quote]Useful links Hearts of Iron Wiki Hearts of Iron Development Diary Archive


    [ 2018-11-14 14:55:07 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Ship Designer

    This week's Development Diary will have a look at one of podcats absolute favorite features from Man the Guns - Click here to read the development diary by podcat
    Click here to read the development diary by podcat [quote]Useful links Hearts of Iron Wiki Hearts of Iron Development Diary Archive


    [ 2018-11-07 14:35:25 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Dev Diary - Mexico

    New development diary! Today we will discuss Mexico! In Man the Guns, you will get the chance to reform this nation and turn it into a power strong enough to enter World War II.
    Click the image to read the development diary by podcat [quote]Useful links Official Website Hearts of Iron Wiki Hearts of Iron Development Diary Archive


    [ 2018-10-24 14:56:07 CET ] [ Original post ]

    HOI4 Dev Diary - Naval Changes #1 - Overview

    Here is today's development diary! The first of a series covering changes to naval combat and naval gameplay.
    Click here to read the development diary by podcat [quote]Useful links Official Website Hearts of Iron Wiki Hearts of Iron Development Diary Archive


    [ 2018-10-17 16:20:40 CET ] [ Original post ]

    HOI4 Dev Diary - Naval Terrain

    New development diary! The sea in HOI4 has previously generally been either ocean or ocean in range of enemy land based aircraft, and otherwise mattered little. Thats about to change!
    Click here to read the development diary by podcat [quote]Useful links Official Website Hearts of Iron Wiki Hearts of Iron Development Diary Archive


    [ 2018-10-10 17:18:53 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Amphibious Vehicles and Research

    It is time for a new development diary! Today we will take a look at Amphibious Vehicles and Research Changes!
    Click here to read the full development diary by podcat! [quote]Useful links Official Website Hearts of Iron Wiki Hearts of Iron Development Diary Archive


    [ 2018-10-03 14:33:39 CET ] [ Original post ]

    HoI4 Dev Diary - Je Maintiendrai: Netherlands Focus Tree

    Another meaty development diary for Man the Guns! Today we will take a look at the first nation that will receive an all-new focus tree in this expansion! Netherlands!
    Click here to read the dev diary by Bratyn [quote]Useful links Official Website Hearts of Iron Wiki Hearts of Iron Development Diary Archive


    [ 2018-09-26 16:19:07 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Changes to Playing Previous Versions of the Game

    Previously you were able to revert back to earlier versions of Paradox Development Studios (PDS) games at will on Steam. These specific versions predate the enactment of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) - hence they are not compliant with the new policy. In order to continue our endeavor to reach full GDPR compliance, we have designed a new system regarding the access to earlier versions of PDS titles: from the 1st of October 2018 onward all previous versions of PDS titles will be locked under a Steam password. After 1st October, you will need to log into the Paradox Plaza website with your Paradox Account to access the codes for previous branches of each game that you own. This will, however, require you to link your Steam account to your Paradox Account. In an effort to comply with the GDPR, this is something we need to put behind the Paradox logins as it requires agreement to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use to adhere to the GDPR guidelines. To get the codes for previous versions:

    • Go to https://accounts.paradoxplaza.com/games and log in (or create) your Paradox Account.
    • You will have to link your Steam and Paradox accounts to see your games - where your codes will be listed.
    • To link your Steam and Paradox Accounts: simply go to the Settings tab. Under Steam account click connect (you will then be redirected to Steam to confirm your action).
    • With that done the Games tab on Paradox Plaza will show the list of codes needed to revert to previous versions.
    • See below to revert to older versions under passlock.
    How to switch to old branch versions:
    • Go to your Steam Library and select your game of choice.
    • Right-click and select Properties.
    • Under the "BETAS" tab.
    • Enter the relevant code retrieved from Paradox Plaza and click "CHECK CODE".
    • Select the version you wish to play and wait for Steam launcher to finalize the switch.
    • If the previous step fails, exit the game, right click properties, local files, Verify integrity of game files and wait for all files to be verified.
    For FAQs and further discussion on this subject, please visit the main thread for these changes on our forum at this link: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/1120883/


    [ 2018-09-24 14:57:47 CET ] [ Original post ]

    HOI4 Dev Diary - Naval Production, Repair and Damage

    Ahoy! New development diary! Today we will have a closer look at big changes brought to naval production and repair as well as the new critical hits system for ships!
    Click here to read the Dev Diary by podcat [quote]Useful links Official Website Hearts of Iron Wiki Hearts of Iron Development Diary Archive


    [ 2018-09-12 15:12:42 CET ] [ Original post ]

    HOI4 Dev Diary - Modding and Traits


    Today's Development Diary is a big one. We'll be showing off the new admiral traits in Man the Guns, as well as some of the new modding toys to play with in Man the Guns and Ironclad. Click here to read the latest Dev Diary by Podcat


    [ 2018-09-05 15:27:58 CET ] [ Original post ]

    HoI 4 - Dev Diary: America Rework


    In this week's Dev Diary we take a deeper look at USA, one of the major nations that are getting a rework in Man the Guns. Check out the new paths and possibilities here. Click here to read the latest Dev Diary by Archangel85


    [ 2018-08-29 12:56:15 CET ] [ Original post ]

    HOI4 Dev Diary - Mines and Minesweeping


    Historically hundreds of thousands of mines were laid during WW2, with Man the Guns you will be able to do so in Hearts of Iron too. Today's Dev Diary is about mines and mine sweeping. Click here to read the latest Dev Diary by Podcat [quote]Useful links Official Website Hearts of Iron Wiki


    [ 2018-08-23 12:40:26 CET ] [ Original post ]

    HOI4 Dev Diary - Naval Access


    The latest Dev Diary is out! Today we continue showing off features in Man the Guns, the topics for today concern Naval Access. Click here to read the latest Dev Diary by Podcat [quote]Useful links Official Website Hearts of Iron Wiki Hearts of Iron Development Diary Archive


    [ 2018-08-15 14:39:50 CET ] [ Original post ]

    HOI4 Dev Diary - MTG - Bag of Tricks


    Today’s Dev Diary is a bag of tricks covering several smaller features from Man the Guns and the 1.6 Ironclad free update - Click here to read the latest Dev Diary by Podcat Click here to read the latest Dev Diary by Podcat [quote]Useful links Official Website Hearts of Iron Wiki Hearts of Iron Development Diary Archive


    [ 2018-08-08 14:33:19 CET ] [ Original post ]

    HOI4 Dev Diary - Custom Gameplay Rules

    After two weeks of hiatus development diaries are back! Today we will talk about something we have been thinking about adding for a really long time: Custom Gameplay Rules.
    Click here to read the latest Dev Diary by podcat [quote]Useful links Official Website Hearts of Iron Wiki Hearts of Iron Development Diary Archive


    [ 2018-08-01 12:29:16 CET ] [ Original post ]

    A Post-Colonial World: Map Changes and New Tags

    Brand new development diary! This week we will delve into map and tag changes brought forth by the new decolonization path for the United Kingdom, which was introduced in last week’s development diary!
    Click here to read the lastest Dev Diary by Bratyn [quote]Useful links Hearts of Iron IV Wiki [/quote]


    [ 2018-07-11 10:24:51 CET ] [ Original post ]

    HoI4 Dev Diary - God Save the King: British Focus Tree Rework

    Here comes the first development diary of July for Hearts of Iron IV! Today, Content Designer Drikus Kuiper (a.k.a. Bratyn) delves into the reworks brought to the British Focus Tree!
    Click here to read the lastest Dev Diary by Bratyn [quote]Useful links Hearts of Iron IV Wiki [/quote]


    [ 2018-07-04 14:14:04 CET ] [ Original post ]

    HOI4 Dev Diary - Fuel


    Dev Diarys are back again! We are kicking it off with more detail on an anticipated new feature: Fuel. Learn more on what the upcoming Ironclad update and Man the Guns expansion will bring - Read the latest Dev Diary by Podcat Click here for more information


    [ 2018-06-27 12:33:18 CET ] [ Original post ]

    HOI4 Dev Diary - Man the Guns and PDXCon


    After a crazy weekend at PDXCon the team is back in action! Read game director Dan's recap of the weekend and check out some of the cool news around the Man The Guns-announcement Click to read the latest Dev Diary by Podcat [quote]Useful links Hearts of Iron IV Wiki [/quote]


    [ 2018-05-23 13:47:04 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Hearts of Iron IV announces new expansion Man the Guns


    Two thirds of the earth’s surface is covered by water, and free access to the nautical highways is essential to empire. In wartime, these highways are contested waters and you, or an ally, must be able to regulate that traffic. Carriers, convoys and battle cruisers -- these are the weapons of the sea. Your enemy is over the horizon. It is time to Man the Guns! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6MvE5AhmuQ Man the Guns is the newest expansion to the best-selling grand strategy wargame, Hearts of Iron IV. Paradox Development Studio will have more to say in coming weeks, but, for now, our intelligence agents have been cleared to forward the following information: Man the Guns adds greater depth to the naval side of the war, including the ability to design your warships in more detail. Add armor or heavier guns through a modular design. You can also refit older ships so that they are more in line with the latest technology. Man the Guns also introduces new options for the democratic nations, including new paths for the United States and other great free nations. Explore alternate histories or fully mobilize the arsenal of democracy. There are many more details to reveal, but, at the moment, these are state secrets. And, as usual, Man the Guns will accompanied by a large, free update available to everyone who owns Hearts of Iron IV. Read more on the store page.


    [ 2018-05-19 09:33:23 CET ] [ Original post ]

    1.5.3 Hotfix released - Available now!


    We have just released another hotfix for HOI4 including bugfixes and some optimizations that should affect mod performance Click to read the full changelog over at the Paradox Forum.


    [ 2018-04-19 10:06:48 CET ] [ Original post ]

    HOI4 Dev Diary - 1.5.2, Future Roadmap and Ironclad


    Curious about what the HOI4 team is up to next? Check out this week's Dev Diary for a future roadmap, as well as the patchlog for the just released 1.5.2 patch. Click to read the latest Dev Diary by Podcat [quote]Useful links Official Website Hearts of Iron IV Wiki Hearts of Iron IV Development Diary Archive


    [ 2018-04-11 14:29:55 CET ] [ Original post ]

    HOI4 Dev Diary - 1.5.2 Update #3 and Telemetry!


    In todays Dev Diary Podcat will be talking some more about the continued post release work and share some cool numbers we have gotten from our telemetry system about how people play. Click to read the latest Dev Diary by podcat [quote]Useful links Official Website Hearts of Iron IV Wiki Hearts of Iron IV Development Diary Archive


    [ 2018-04-04 16:23:27 CET ] [ Original post ]

    1.5.2 Update #2 and Modding Goodies


    The 1.5.2 Patch for Cornflakes is still in the works. Today's dev diary is an update on some of the fixes that are being added, as well as a look on the new modding tools for the upcoming patch Click to read the latest Dev Diary by Podcat [quote]Useful links Official Website Hearts of Iron IV Wiki Hearts of Iron IV Development Diary Archive


    [ 2018-03-28 15:03:58 CET ] [ Original post ]

    HOI4 Dev Diary - 1.5.2 Update #1


    With the 1.5.1 patch released last week the team has now started on 1.5.2. Today won't really be a big diary, but we figured we could highlight some of the changes we are working on every week Click to read the latest Dev Diary by Podcat [quote]Useful links Official Website Hearts of Iron IV Wiki Hearts of Iron IV Development Diary Archive


    [ 2018-03-21 14:32:53 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Patch 1.5.1 Cornflakes Live


    Today we're pushing out a minor 1.5.1 patch for Hearts of Iron, taking care of some bugs and issues. Check out the patchlog in the forums here.


    [ 2018-03-15 17:50:01 CET ] [ Original post ]

    HOI4 Dev Diary - Tiger post-release


    Last week we released Waking the Tiger. In todays Dev Diary we will be giving an update on the coming patch, what we are up to and share some delicious statistics. Click to read the latest Dev Diary by Podcat [quote]Useful links Official Website Hearts of Iron IV Wiki Hearts of Iron IV Development Diary Archive


    [ 2018-03-14 17:20:30 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Waking the Tiger is LIVE!


    War on All Fronts! Waking the Tiger Now Available!


    Major Hearts of Iron IV expansion launches today Are you ready to beat back the imperialist aggression of the world’s bullies? We are happy to announce the release of Waking the Tiger, an expansion to Hearts of Iron IV that makes major improvements to many aspects of the game, while drawing players’ attention to the Chinese Front. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtdlAjzcQ5w Hearts of Iron IV: Waking the Tiger includes:
    • Chinese National Focuses: Divided and under threat, China has great reserves of manpower and diplomatic flexibility
    • Chain of Command: Unite your armies under a field marshal who can take advantage of the many skills of the generals under his direction.
    • Decisions and Missions: Historical decisions and national missions give you new places to spend Political Power, as you deal with domestic politics or start special projects.
    • Commanders’ Traits and Abilities: Commanders’’ traits can now unlock powerful Command Power abilities, allowing great flexibility and creativity.
    • Updated Axis Focus Trees: Alternate historical paths for the German Reich and Imperial Japan, including parliamentary rule in Japan and the return of the Kaiser to Germany.
    • Acclimatization: Over time, troops will learn how to survive in the desert or harsh winters, giving these veterans an edge on the battlefield.
    • And More: Capturing battlefield equipment, and a revitalized air war system that has room for Volunteer air wings.
    1.5 Cornflakes Update As usual, the expansion will be released alongside a major game update, 1.5 Cornflakes, freely available to all Hearts of Iron IV players. Read more about Cornflakes here. Hearts of Iron IV: Waking the Tiger is available now for a suggested retail price of $19.99.


    [ 2018-03-08 14:02:50 CET ] [ Original post ]

    HOI4 Dev Diary - Pre-Release and International Women's Day

    Since tomorrow is both release day and International Women’s Day we felt today could be a cool day to highlight some of the ways we are featuring women in Waking the Tiger.
    Click to read the latest Dev Diary by Podcat [quote]Useful links Official Website Hearts of Iron IV Wiki Hearts of Iron IV Development Diary Archive


    [ 2018-03-07 14:05:20 CET ] [ Original post ]

    HOI4 Waking the Tiger and 1.5 Cornflakes Patchlog


    The time for the Waking the Tiger and 1.5 Cornflakes Patchlog has finally come. And it is long! Click to read the latest Dev Diary by Podcat [quote]Useful links Official Website Hearts of Iron IV Wiki Hearts of Iron IV Development Diary Archive


    [ 2018-03-06 17:30:50 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Recap Episode - See all the great things coming in Waking The Tiger Cornflakes!


    Due to popular demand, today we are going to try to cover everything coming in Waking the Tiger and the 1.5 Cornflakes update Click to read the latest Dev Diary by Podcat [quote]Useful links Official Website Hearts of Iron IV Wiki Hearts of Iron IV Development Diary Archive


    [ 2018-03-01 10:09:46 CET ] [ Original post ]

    HOI4 Dev Diary - Performance and AI


    Groogy have been drafted from the EU4-team to fight in the trenches together with the HOI4 team for a month and give some support on AI and performance. Click to read the latest Dev Diary by Groogy [quote]Useful links Official Website Hearts of Iron IV Wiki Hearts of Iron IV Development Diary Archive


    [ 2018-02-21 16:22:10 CET ] [ Original post ]

    HoI 4 Dev Diary - Formable Nations and Achievements


    We are on the home stretch, with only two more issues to go before release! The team is working very hard to squash the last bugs and tweak the almost-possibly-partially-final values.Today, we will talk about Achievements and Formable Nations. Check this weeks Dev Diary out. Click to read the latest Dev Diary by Archangel85 [quote]Useful links Official Website Hearts of Iron IV Wiki Hearts of Iron IV Development Diary Archive


    [ 2018-02-14 12:34:32 CET ] [ Original post ]

    HOI4 Dev Diary - Naval Updates


    While Waking the Tiger and Cornflakes were not supposed to focus on the naval part of the game, the dev team actually ended up doing a few things anyways. Read more about the changes here Click to read the latest Dev Diary by podcat [quote]Useful links Official Website Hearts of Iron IV Wiki Hearts of Iron IV Development Diary Archive


    [ 2018-02-07 15:06:56 CET ] [ Original post ]

    HOI4 Dev Diary - Sound, Music and Art for Tiger


    Today is a dev diary of sights and sounds. We’ll be showing off some of the new art, music and sounds for Waking the Tiger. Click to read the latest Dev Diary by podcat [quote]Useful links Official Website Hearts of Iron IV Wiki Hearts of Iron IV Development Diary Archive


    [ 2018-01-31 13:55:23 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Waking the Tiger is coming on the 8th of March!


    Waking the Tiger is the next expansion for Hearts of Iron IV, Paradox Development Studio’s best-selling World War II grand strategy wargame. With new focus trees, revised battle systems and new alternate historical paths for the major Axis powers, Waking the Tiger will shake idle generals from their slumber: See the first in our series of feature videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-Jg57aaLuE&feature=youtu.be Hearts of Iron IV: Waking the Tiger includes: Chinese National Focuses: Divided and under threat, China has great reserves of manpower and diplomatic flexibility Chain of Command: Unite your armies under a field marshal who can take advantage of the many skills of the generals under his direction. Decisions and Missions: Historical decisions and national missions give you new places to spend Political Power, as you deal with domestic politics or start special projects. General Traits and Abilities: Generals’ traits can now unlock powerful Command Power abilities, allowing great flexibility and creativity. Updated Axis Focus Trees: Alternate historical paths for the German Reich and Imperial Japan, including parliamentary rule in Japan and the return of the Kaiser to Germany. Acclimatization: Over time, troops will learn how to survive in the desert or harsh winters, giving these veterans an edge on the battlefield. And More: Capturing battlefield equipment, and a revitalized air war system that has room for Volunteer air wings. Hearts of Iron IV: Waking the Tiger will be available on March 8, 2018, and, as usual, the release will be accompanied by a free major update for all Hearts of Iron players. Read more on the Paradox Forums: Click here.


    [ 2018-01-30 14:02:44 CET ] [ Original post ]

    HOI4 Dev Diary - War Changes and Game Difficulty


    The Dev Diary is back, this time with some more info about changes to how wars work as well as some very interesting telemetry data on game difficulty. Click to read the latest Dev Diary by Podcat [quote]Useful links Official Website Hearts of Iron IV Wiki Hearts of Iron IV Development Diary Archive


    [ 2018-01-24 15:11:09 CET ] [ Original post ]

    HoI4 Dev Diary - Manchukuo


    In today's Dev Diary you'll learn more about the upcoming changes to Manchukuo coming with Waking the Tiger, and the free Cornflakes update. As usual, read it in the forum and let us know what you think. Read the latest Development Diary from Archangel85 here!


    [ 2018-01-17 14:04:13 CET ] [ Original post ]

    HOI4 Dev Diary - Bag of Tricks #3


    Today it's time for another Bag of Tricks diary, sharing some more tasty tidbits of upcoming changes. Check it out! Click to read the latest Dev Diary by podcat [quote]Useful links Official Website Hearts of Iron IV Wiki Hearts of Iron IV Development Diary Archive


    [ 2018-01-10 15:15:44 CET ] [ Original post ]

    HoI 4 Dev Diary - Japan Rework


    Welcome to the first dev diary of 2018, where Archangel85 tells us more about the rework of Japan for the upcoming expansion and update Click to read the latest Dev Diary by Archangel85 [quote]Useful links Official Website Hearts of Iron IV Wiki Hearts of Iron IV Development Diary Archive


    [ 2018-01-03 14:25:01 CET ] [ Original post ]

    HOI4 Dev Diary - Holiday Special: German Divisional Name lists


    Today we have a special guest diary from Jamor of the Stellaris team, on the new updated German divisional name list. Click to read the latest Dev Diary by Jamor [quote]Useful links Official Website Hearts of Iron IV Wiki Hearts of Iron IV Development Diary Archive


    [ 2017-12-27 17:17:02 CET ] [ Original post ]

    HOI4 Dev Diary - Christmas Modding


    In today's huge Dev Diary the team is sharing some great news aimed towards all you modders out there. Dig in! Click to read the latest Dev Diary by podcat and Havebeard [quote]Useful links Official Website Hearts of Iron IV Wiki Hearts of Iron IV Development Diary Archive


    [ 2017-12-20 14:19:32 CET ] [ Original post ]

    HoI 4 Dev Diary - Border Wars: The Last Warlord


    Read todays Dev Diary to get a look at the the makeover the Chinese warlords will be getting. Click to read the latest Dev Diary by podcat [quote]Useful links Official Website Hearts of Iron IV Wiki Hearts of Iron IV Development Diary Archive


    [ 2017-12-13 16:50:30 CET ] [ Original post ]

    HOI4 Dev Diary - Acclimatization and Special Forces


    In today's Dev Diary Game Director podcat is talking about a feature that he's been wanting to add for a long time - troop acclimatization. Click to read the latest Dev Diary by podcat [quote]Useful links Official Website Hearts of Iron IV Wiki Hearts of Iron IV Development Diary Archive


    [ 2017-12-06 14:05:55 CET ] [ Original post ]

    HoI 4 Dev Diary - Leaders, abilities and Traits


    Read todays Dev Diary to learn more about military leaders and how they will be able to grow and be tailored to your needs! Click to read the latest Dev Diary by podcat [quote]Useful links Official Website Hearts of Iron IV Wiki Hearts of Iron IV Development Diary Archive


    [ 2017-11-29 17:33:31 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Hearts of Iron IV Dev Diary: Communist China


    Today, we are taking a look at Mao Zedong, and the country recently renamed to “Communist China”. As a little treat, we will also show you how crazy you can really get with the new decision system (spoiler alert: pretty crazy). Click to read the latest Dev Diary by Archangel85 [quote]Useful links Official Website Hearts of Iron IV Wiki Hearts of Iron IV Development Diary Archive


    [ 2017-11-22 15:24:28 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Dev Diary: Nationalist China


    With Waking the Tiger announced, read the first dev diary focused on one of the nations getting a rework, the Chinese Nationalists. Click to read the latest Dev Diary by Archangel85 [quote]Useful links Official Website Hearts of Iron IV Wiki Hearts of Iron IV Development Diary Archive


    [ 2017-11-15 17:01:07 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Hearts Of Iron IV gets new expansion “Waking the Tiger”


    Earn Your Stripes in Hearts of Iron IV: Waking the Tiger


    STOCKHOLM - 15 November 2017 The Chinese Republic replaced the tottering empire only decades earlier, and is unprepared for its greatest challenge. China is ideologically divided as well, providing an appetizing target for aggressive neighbors. But the Chinese people are resilient and can unite to protect their homeland. In Hearts of Iron IV: Waking the Tiger, Paradox Development Studio focuses on the Chinese front - the first front of the Second World War. Here, Japan turned its imperialist appetites before the other great powers got involved. New National Focuses dedicated to Nationalist and Communist China guide you through alternate histories that could save or unite the Chinese nation. But under whose guidance? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBeLSGr3EVs Hearts of Iron IV: Waking the Tiger will be available soon on major digital distribution channels for the suggested retail price of $19.99 and is available for pre-order now. Features in Hearts of Iron IV: Waking the Tiger include:
    • Chinese National Focuses: Divided and under threat, China has great reserves of manpower and diplomatic flexibility
    • Chain of Command: Unite your armies under a field marshal who can take advantage of the many skills of the generals under his direction.
    • Decisions and Missions: Historical decisions and national missions give your new places to spend Political Power, as you deal with domestic politics or start special projects.
    • General Traits and Abilities: Generals’ traits can now unlock powerful Command Power abilities, allowing great flexibility and creativity.
    • Updated Japanese Focus Tree: More attention to the Asian campaign and alternate history paths, including restoring Civilian Government or allying with the feared Soviets.
    • Updated German Focus Tree: New possible histories for the German Reich, including the chance to replace Hitler with the exiled Kaiser, or lead a democratic Germany against Stalin.
    • Acclimatization: Over time, troops will learn how to survive in the desert or harsh winters, giving these veterans an edge on the battlefield.
    • And More: Capturing battlefield equipment, and a revitalized air war system that has room for Volunteer air wings.
    As usual, Waking the Tiger will also be accompanied by a free patch - 1.5 Cornflakes.


    [ 2017-11-15 15:45:35 CET ] [ Original post ]

    HOI4 Dev Diary - Decisive Action

    In today’s dev diary we will finally be taking a look at that mysterious new icon we’ve been mercilessly teasing you with.
    Click the image to read the latest Dev Diary by Bratyn [quote]Useful links Official Website Hearts of Iron IV Wiki Hearts of Iron IV Development Diary Archive


    [ 2017-11-10 13:23:36 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Airplanes and Lootboxes

    Today’s diary is sort of a logical continuation on the 1.4 'Oak' updated where we did a full revamp on the air interfaces and much of the underlying combat mechanics. So lets dive into some more air stuff!
    Click here to read the latest Dev Diary from podcat [quote]Useful links Official Website Hearts of Iron IV Wiki Hearts of Iron IV Development Diary Archive


    [ 2017-11-01 15:13:28 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Bag of Tricks #2

    First of all, apologies for posting this to Steam one day late. Let's have another look at more improvements, mainly to the UI, coming in the 1.5 Cornflakes update and the upcoming expansion
    Click here to read the latest Dev Diary from podcat [quote]Useful links Official Website Hearts of Iron IV Wiki Hearts of Iron IV Development Diary Archive


    [ 2017-10-26 08:49:47 CET ] [ Original post ]

    A New Germany

    On public request, we will revisit some major powers in the upcoming expansion and free update. Let's take a look at what changes will be coming to Germany
    Click here to read the latest Dev Diary from Bratyn [quote]Useful links Official Website Hearts of Iron IV Wiki Hearts of Iron IV Development Diary Archive


    [ 2017-10-18 11:40:47 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Bag of Tricks #1

    We have been covering several big features in the diaries leading up to here, so now it's time to also look at some smaller features from our "bag of tricks"
    Click the image to read the latest Dev Diary from podcat [quote]Useful links Official Website Hearts of Iron IV Wiki Hearts of Iron IV Development Diary Archive


    [ 2017-10-11 14:02:08 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Division Namelists

    A very subtle detail that I'm sure most of our fans have missed is that some of the division names in the game are occasionally not entirely historical
    Click here to read the latest Dev Diary from Pallidum [quote]Useful links Official Website Hearts of Iron IV Wiki Hearts of Iron IV Development Diary Archive


    [ 2017-09-27 12:36:49 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Paradox Grand Strategy Weekend, up to 75% off!

    Save up to 75% on Grand Strategy titles from Paradox Interactive including Stellaris, Steel Division, Hearts of Iron IV, and more*!

    *Offer ends Monday at 10AM Pacific Time




    [ 2017-09-21 17:10:00 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Stability and War Support

    Let's mix things up by getting rid of the rather limiting currency of National Unity and instead replace it with something we feel will bring a whole lot of interesting possibilties to the game
    Click here to read the latest Dev Diary from podcat [quote]Useful links Official Website Hearts of Iron IV Wiki Hearts of Iron IV Development Diary Archive


    [ 2017-09-20 12:12:25 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Chain of Command

    We are back with more traditional Development Diaries, and here is something that has been requested for a while.
    Read the Latest Development Diary by podcat here [quote]Useful links Official Website Hearts of Iron IV Wiki Hearts of Iron IV Development Diary Archive


    [ 2017-09-13 15:10:36 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Hotfix 1.4.2 "Oak"

    ################################## # AI ################################## - Added AI strategy to avoid some naval strategic regions - AI now realises that puppets will also join the war when their overlord does ( fixes situation where China does not put any troops on their border with Japan's puppets ) - AI should now prefer even shorter naval routes when picking what ports to navally transfer between - Nations with low manpower are now less likely to burn pp on relation boosting as they need it for laws - AI should be less likely to waste PP on guarantees when low on manpower and at war - Removed AI weight modifier is_in_faction from JAP axis leaning focus - Tweaked ai weights for carrier plane research. AI will now always research the most modern carrier version available and not research any carrier planes if they don't have carriers, the US and Japan will also be more eager to research carrier planes and particularly so when at war with each other - Tweaked AT gun research to take enemy armor values into account (AI will be more willing to research AT upgrades if facing an enemy with high armor divisions) - AI will no longer research basic heavy tanks if it can already research improved heavy tanks - AI now clears the trades that are not being fulfilled due to having no access to trade country - Italy should now be more careful about transports across the Med - Enemies of UK will now be wary of transporting through the english channel ################################## # Modding ################################## - Can now use "relation" as target for pp_spend_priority ai strategy - Can now use "guarantee" as target for pp_spend_priority ai strategy ################################## # Database ################################## - Added flavor names for German named fighter squadrons - Added namelist for FAA squadrons in the 800-list - Added a number of shipnames to the German roster (thanks davewolf!) - Added Night Witches to the Soviet “Women in Aviation” focus - Added German historic airwing names after player feedback - New icons for Italian small arms and truck - New icons for French infantry weapons (prime condition, only dropped once) - Added a flavor name for a Yugoslavian light cruiser class - New leader portraits for Yemen, Haiti, Malaysia, Luxembourg, Indonesia/Dutch East Indies, El Salvador, Buthan, Cuba, Panama, Dominican Republic, Netherlands (alternative) - Commonwealth leaders now fallback on British portraits if TfV is not activated ################################## # Audio ################################## - Adjusted volume on some of the airplane sound effects ################################## # Balance ################################## - First level Radar now have a much longer range to make initial investment more attractive - Expanded bypass criteria for puppet Bulgaria focus to allow focus to bypass if Romania holds all of Bulgaria in a war - Albania should now not fold to Italian pressure if in a faction with Yugoslavia - Added bypass to anschluss if AUS is a puppet - Turkey will now only join the Axis through the German focus if they are fascist. - Anschluss event now takes guarantees into account - Lowered upgrade bonus to self propelled AA variants air attack from 30% per level to 15% - Changed Demand Sudetenland focus to fire fallback event if England is a subject - Changed South Tyrol to be a core of Austria - Nerfed CZE fascism gain through focus by 50% - Reduced starting fascism in CZE to 5% (down from 25%) - Fixed wrong tech bonus in a Romanian focus - A country that initiates coup on an another country gets a bonus while inviting revolting country to its faction ################################## # Bugfix ################################## - Fixed an issue where frontlines could sometimes dissapear - It is now ok to transfer resources from your territories through subjects at war time - Fixed issue where declaring war on a puppet could pull the puppet into an existing war on the wrong side of the war - Subjects are now added to a faction if their master is - Convoys used for naval transfers are no longer locked in a state of being permanently "in use" when saving/loading while navally transferring - Fixed issue where merged wars made it impossible to surrender because you were not marked as war leader - License production description now updates properly - Fixed bug where division size affected how much attrition they took and how their supply status was affected by being out of supply - Fixed a bug where volunteers could appear in an impassible area - Fix for incorrect use of has_government = fascist/communist instead of fascism/communism - Fixed a horrific bordergore issue in Romanian "Split CZE" focus - Ensured that split CZE event chain did not result in CZE units sitting around after their country got annexed - Doing the Indian focus "Battaglione Azad Hindoustan" should now fire the proper event for Italy rather than give them the option to collect money for the RAF - Cheating on the Austria-Hungary Referendum and going with the annexation should no longer report that Hitler was assassinated. (the proper news event should fire instead) - France now joins the Czech entente if they decide to support the Czechs and Czechs have their own faction - Fixed a wrong tag in URG loc string - Fixed Italy Befriend Bulgaria strategy not requiring Bulgaria to exist - Reenabled Vichy France cosmetic tag in a cynical move to squeeze out a tiny bit of profit - Fixed an event firing several times for Romania - Fixed an issue with continuous naval/air production idea not being localised - Fixed a situation that could cause an infinite loop of naval transports - Made game several times less fun ( Fixed an exploit with nukes persisting after loading or starting new game ) - Design companies should no longer be lost when loading and older savegame in a new version (from next patch update on, it wont work with older sadly) ################################## # Stability ################################## - Fixed a division by zero CTD in airmissions when aircraft are fighting missiles - Fixed various rare CTDs


    [ 2017-08-16 15:33:47 CET ] [ Original post ]

    HOI4 Oak 1.4.1 Patch is Now Live!


    We are now live with our most recent fixes and improvements to the Oak update! Read here for the full list of changes: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/hoi4-oak-1-4-1-patch-checksum-6e42.1032961/


    [ 2017-06-29 13:51:34 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Paradox Interactive Will ROLL BACK Recent Pricing Changes

    Hi, please see the below thread for a statement from Paradox Interactive's CEO, Fredrik Wester: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/pricing-change-rollback-information-thread-latest-news-here.1031635/


    [ 2017-06-22 20:11:18 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Hearts of Iron: Death or Dishonor is Now Available!


    The time has come! With your nation sandwiched between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany you must make the ultimate choice. Will it be Death, or Dishonor? https://youtu.be/6HMy2eBJa3M

    Features List


    • Four New Focus Trees: Experience the war from the difficult perspectives of Hungary, Romania, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia.
    • Equipment Conversion: Update your arsenal by converting older units -- or make use of captured enemy vehicles and gear.
    • New Music and Art: 3 new thematic musical tracks from composer Andreas Waldetoft, new art content for the four focus nations, and new troop voiceovers.
    • New Diplomatic and Puppet Interactions: License military technology to bring other nations’ weapons to the field or sell your advances to the highest bidder. Fascist countries get new subject levels like Reichskommissariat, with access to licenses, industry and strategic resources. The instated governments are held in an iron grip, making it harder for them to break free.
    Please Note: Hearts of Iron IV: Death or Dishonor is included in the Expansion Pass #1 http://store.steampowered.com/app/584140/Hearts_of_Iron_IV_Death_or_Dishonor/ As with every paid release we also offer a substantial free update! Read more here: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/patch-1-4-oak-live-checksum-9b1f-not-for-problem-reports.1029011/


    [ 2017-06-14 13:31:05 CET ] [ Original post ]

    HOI4 Anniversary Diary (and Free DLC)

    Hi everyone! but wait?! this isn't Wednesday? Indeed its not, its the one year anniversary of the release of HOI4!
    To thank everyone who has been playing the game the last year we figured we wanted to give something out, even though Death or Dishonor is right around the corner. So once the build was done, and the team jumped on prep work for the next thing and 1.4.1, our awesome artist made you guys a bunch more non-historic portraits (fighting the good fight against clone army). As well as more custom division symbols to pick from. We also got a cool surprise when a member of the community contacted us about helping out with Polish troop voice overs (our resident team pole is on parental leave which was our original plan!). They sound super nice and its always cool to have members of community to come buy the office for stuff like this :) On release we also gave out the free DLC "United and Ready" that was focused on Poland to everyone, so we felt this was a fitting followup.

    DLC should automatically show up (might need to restart steam). More info and details on the DLC page here.

    First year in hindsight


    Since we released HOI4 the game has has had 8 patches and 1 DLC. The second DLC (Death or Dishonor) is coming on Wednesday next week together with the 1.4 patch. Some people may have been at PDXCon and seen my presentation, but I figure now might be a good time to to show some of that here too (the presentation also went over future plans, but thats a diary for later). First up playbase growth is really nice, we broke 500k earlier this year and it just keeps going up as you can see:
    Playerbase is cool and all, but the numbers I care about the most is active players actually playing the game and HOI4 has a really solid community there:
    A "normal" game would just have that first spike and then head straight down, but our aim is to keep people playing with patches, dlc releases and mod support and grow amount of active players more and more over time (looking at graph we broke active player record several times since release numbers). Speaking of mod support, mods have been a massive hit for Hearts of Iron IV. 60% of players use some kind of mod (although the most common stuff is things like colored buttons, or extra names for equipment), but what really makes me happy is how popular the big mods are: Millennium Dawn, The Great War, Kaiserreich and Road to '56 are all very popular and have daily playing numbers between 8-20%. Its also really interesting to see what nations people play the most and this is one of the things we use to decide what nations to focus on in the future (the other are how relevant they were for the war and if they have interesting positions/opportunities). Early on Italy was the king for a few days (tutorial nation), and after that Germany has taken over. Here are the current numbers:
    Overall a number that hasn't really changed much is majors vs minors. its gone from about 35% to 39%. We feel pretty comfortable with it there. (the DoD nations are not on the list since it was intended to be part of "Where are we going in the future" of the PDXCon presentation and numbers will change a lot with DLC release. They sit around Turkey level though, except Czechoslovakia obviously ;) ). That is almost it from me today, but I figured I'd show a cool thing:
    Yup, the MXY7 Ohka,rocket powered human-guided anti-shipping kamikaze attack aircraft (phew) now gets custom art and works again with the new air interface (we broke it in 1.2 if I remember correctly so it wouldn't launch). See you tomorrow again for a regular diary. That one is gonna be a bit of a mix (axis subject levels, AI & Balance, UI improvements etc) as we cover all the bits and pieces left before the final diary drops just before release with the full patchlog.


    [ 2017-06-06 16:45:05 CET ] [ Original post ]

    HOI4 Dev Diary - Czechoslovakia and AI Update #2

    Hi everyone, this week we will be looking at the last nation for Death or Dishonor and get an AI update from SteelVolt. Lets dive in!

    Czechoslovakia


    Czechoslovakia is probably the biggest what-if of the pre-war period. What if they had made a stand? What if the Allies had not rolled over and abandoned them? Or perhaps - what if Czechoslovakia had come to an “arrangement” with Hitler? What if they had decided not to rely on a France and Britain that failed to defend the Versailles settlement and decided to form an alliance of their own?
    Of course, standing up to Germany requires you to prepare the ground, and Czechoslovakia is not entirely without its problems. The marriage between the Czechs and the Slovaks is not a very happy one, you share a long border with the Germans and time is short until you have to make a choice to fight or surrender. You will have to make tough choices on what area to focus on first.
    Extensive fortifications in the Sudetenland can slow the enemy down and possibly buy you the time until the western powers come to your rescue, but will take a lot of time to finish. Time you might want to spend on modernizing your army, expanding your air force or building up your industry. Historically, Czechoslovakia punched well above their weight in the arms business, keeping pace with several major powers in the fields of aviation and armored warfare. This is represented in game by the national spirit “Skoda Works”, which gives you a fairly sizable boost to your factory output. Together with the export focus branch, you can potentially keep up with Germany in production of war material for a short while.
    Diplomatically, you have two basic choices: stand up to Germany or bow down. You then have several options on how to do either. If you decide to make a stand, you can put your trust in the west (Spoiler alert: this did not work out historically), or you can create an Entente of your own, with Yugoslavia and Romania. This path will likely take you to conflict with Hungary down the road. Alternatively, you can also decide to side with the world revolution and join the Comintern, but that might not make you very popular with your neighbors. Should you decide that living on your knees is better than dying on your feet, you can try and appease Germany by handing over the Sudetenland right away and becoming a German puppet later. However, with Hitler seemingly hell-bent on humiliating the western powers, the Germans might not even accept such a low-key solution. Finally, you can go fascist and try to meet eye to eye with the Germans, becoming either a full-fledged partner in the Axis or a German Satellite state (what that means exactly will be discussed in a future Dev Diary). Czechoslovakia also comes with voice overs for troops, new 3d models (the Czech have sweet tanks) and leader pictures adding flavor.

    AI Update #2


    Greetings, friends! SteelVolt here again :) They tell me it is time for yet another AI diary. Let me start off by thanking all of you who came to my talk at PDXCon. It was fun to see it be so popular that we could barely fit everyone in the room, and there were great questions, several of which I wish I would have had time to elaborate even more on. At any rate, today I will be talking about the second major AI improvement that has been in the works for 1.4; roles. This is a major addition, plus some smaller changes, to how the template designs for the AI are scripted. I am going to start off by apologizing to the modders: you will need to revisit you old scripts. The good news is that the scripting is now a far more powerful tool for directing the AI in what to build. First of all: the AI no longer tries to make designs based on equipment. This led to some rather horrible wastes of XP, not to mention the template progression often took some rather strange turns. In stead, the target templates are grouped into roles, with the possibility to set individual uppgrade priorities both for roles as well as for templates. The details about how this is done can be seen in the examples in the spoiler further down. What this means is that the progression through types of equipment, for example armor types, can be grouped into a single role (armor). The production/deployment AI is also now scripted to build roles rather than specific equipment. That means that you through script set it up to have X% of the desired force as a specific role. This also means that entire roles can be turned on or off through script. A role can contain any number of target templates, which each have some new tweakable values attached to them, including a factor for production priority. This tweaks a base value calculated on the fitness score of each available template. What all this means is that we have been able to improve the scriptability both of what the AI designs as well as what it builds, and while we have improved all of this for the base game through the script, I suspect modders will be able to spend significantly more time on it than we have had available for this update. The last thing this ties in to is how the AI uses these roles, and for now it is a bit static: the AI will prioritize heavily to put divisions explicitly tagged with the 'garrison' role, into the garrison orders. As a bonus, here is a screen shot showing that, plus two new things that are scriptable through the system; division icon and reinforcement priority.
    The ability to prioritize roles for orders is something I want to make fully scriptable, but we have not had the time to do this properly for the next update. It is certainly something I am looking at for further improvements of the system. How to move old AI template design script to the new way it is scripted (plus all new bells and whistles explained) is on the original post here: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/hoi4-dev-diary-czechoslovakia-and-ai-update-2.1026194/ Of course, all of this comes with a bunch of bugfixes in the template design code. The match score, for example, was still not properly calculated. For this update I actually had the time to sit down and really go through all of that properly. All in all I think and hope that this will give everyone, from modders to casual players alike, a richer experience in HoI4 :) Next week we will be covering lots of bits and pieces, among them the new subject levels for axis nations. Don't forget to tune in for World War Wednesday today at 16:00CEST at https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive as we will be continuing our single player campaign as Yugoslavia! (SteelVolt will also be there to answer AI questions)


    [ 2017-05-31 12:06:33 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Yugoslavia and Air Zones


    Hi everyone and welcome to another dev diary on Death or Dishonor and the 1.4 Oak Update. Today's country highlight is Yugoslavia! When we envisioned Death or Dishonor, we wanted to put the player into a position where they had to make hard choices and decisions that they knew may come back to haunt them. Yugoslavia is in many ways made for that kind of gameplay.
    Historically, Yugoslavia attempted to remain neutral for as long as possible, despite heavy pressure from both the Axis and the Allies to declare for their side. When the government of Prince Paul finally decided to join the axis - attempting as much as they could to stay out of the war even then - the government was swiftly replaced by a coup. This caused Hitler to decide on an invasion, and the country collapsed in less than two weeks - with some areas openly welcoming the invaders as liberators. But we are in this to allow you to change that history.
    The reasons for the collapse are many, from poor military preparations to discontent amongst the various ethnic groups, who believe that Yugoslavia is not so much a union of equals as it is a Greater Serbia with some attached territories. This situation is represented in game by a set of National Spirits, which lower national unity to just 30%, make political appointments and law changes more expensive, reduce factory output and make officer recruitment costly. You have several avenues open to deal with these issues, which may even require you to give up some territory and allow some measure of self-government. Consequently, your decisions in other areas must take this into consideration - why build up territory that will not necessarily remain yours? Time is quite literally of the essence, as both Germany and Britain have a keen interest to see you join their faction, and they will be around from time to time to remind you of that fact. Declaring for one will, of course, get you into conflict with the other, and declaring too early might well see your government rather aggressively changed or the country descend into a civil war. To get to the focuses that allow you to join a faction, you must first solve the pressing issues of the country, which takes precious time. Considering that you will also want to rebuild your military, you will have to make tough choices. Some of the mutually exclusive branches have been deliberately designed to be short - the time saved being the major advantage. With such huge problems to solve, we felt that it made less sense to give Yugoslavia many options to expand - that would require a capable military and a united population, both things the historical Yugoslavia famously lacked. However, you may find that a military solution to some problems might be preferable. Joining the Axis or the Allies will also give you the option to at least claim some reward. Of course, you can also choose to join the world revolution and seclude yourself from the petty struggles of the destruction-bound imperialists. Unfortunately, your closest ally is on the other side of some rather aggressive neighbours, and while you can solve the main issues plaguing the country reasonably quickly, your military still leaves a lot to be desired. With enemies on all sides, you must choose...Death or Dishonor. Of course also some neat portraits for new generals and leaders. Here is a sample:
    And 3d models:
    And of course pretty air and tank trees:

    Updated Strategic Areas In a kebab-fueled frenzy Archangel85 stepped up and started splitting up strategic areas and adjusting them to make sense. The goal was to allow easier coverage, particularly in areas that saw heavy and prolonged fighting historically. A secondary goal was to make areas where naval landing are likely to occur easier to establish air superiority in when using carriers. Here is some highlights:










    Here is a full list of zones changed: Split Northern Scandinavia into three zones (added Northern Norway and Northern Sweden) Baltic islands are now part of the Baltic airzone Adjusted the Balkans air regions to allow a better air war over Transylvania The Ireland air zone now covers the entire island Split northern African airzone in two (added North-West Africa covering roughly the area of the Torch landings) Sahara airzone now covers only the impassable area of Africa Split sub-saharan Africa into several zones (Central, South-East and South-West Africa) Split off Madagascar into its own airzone Made Egyptian zone smaller Split Middle East Airzone by splitting off Arabian Peninsula Added Pakistan air zone Expanded Himalayas Airzone to cover Tibet, connecting parts of the zone Rolled Easternmost Himalayas subzone into Eastern India Added Burma airzone Added Malaya airzone Split off Sumatra airzone from Sunda Islands airzone Split Australian Airzone into 4 (North, East, South and Central Australia) Added Korea airzone All Japanese home islands now actually part of Home Islands zone Created Qinghai airzone (split off from Central Asia zone) Shrunk Urals airzone Added Northern Andes Airzone, shrinking Amazonas air zone Added New England airzone (also covers parts of Eastern Canada) Added Midwest airzone Added Rocky Mountains Airzone We are still looking into how these changes affect balance and might make some more changes in the future (still not completely happy with Iberia and France). Hopefully, this will take care of the worst offenders. Country Air Wing Naming Flavor one small thing we did during the air revamp was to add the ability to name air wings. Originally, the game auto generated a name for each wing. We quickly realized that "1. German Heavy Fighter Wing" does not sound nearly as cool as "Zerstörergeschwader 1". So after a bit of whining from the content designers, Havebeard added the ability to generate nation-specific names from a template. We have already added flavor names for all the majors, the TfV and the DoD countries, plus some more minors (Brazil, Iran, Turkey, Poland, Finland, China, Sweden). Modding info: Names are defined in commonunits ames0_names.txt (or specific country files in that folder). The air wings are classed by equipment archetype. fighter_equipment = { prefix = "" generic = { "Jagdgeschwader" } generic_pattern = AIR_WING_NAME_GER_GENERIC unique = { } } They use a pattern you can specify (with a fallback if you don’t), so for example a carrier wing can use a different naming pattern than a land based one (so you can have 1. Fighter Wing but also VF 1 for the US). In the German case, the number comes last (so it is Jagdgeschwader 1, Jagdgeschwader 2 etc.): AIR_WING_NAME_GER_GENERIC:0 "$NAME$ $NR$" The patterns are currently defined in core.yml, but can of course be in any localisation file in your mod. You can also have multiple generic templates: jet_fighter_equipment = { prefix = "" generic = { "Sonder-Jagdverband" "Jagdverband" "Erprobungskommando" "Lehrgeschwader" } generic_pattern = AIR_WING_NAME_GER_GENERIC unique = { } } Unfortunately, we can not yet specify name patterns for cosmetic tags. Expanding this system to cover land divisions is on the list for A Future DLC (tm). Thats all for today. Next week we will be having an AI update from SteelVolt and go over Czechoslovakia. Don't forget to tune in for World War Wednesday today at 16:00CET at https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive as we will be starting a new campaign playing as Yugoslavia! Read the original post [quote]Useful links Official Website Hearts of Iron IV Wiki Hearts of Iron IV Development Diary Archive


    [ 2017-05-24 11:39:17 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Air Improvements


    Hi everyone, time for this weeks Death or Dishonor and Oak Update dev diary. Today will be all about the improvements to the air warfare coming in the update. Some of you who were at PDXCON this weekend might have had a sneakpeek, but here are the details :) Speaking of PDXCON, I had a lot of fun meeting fans (but yikes my feet after 3 days), and look forward to next years! Issues with the old system When we started looking at the air warfare part of the game we felt that there was two main flaws: Transparency and Control. The system only really showed you information over very long time with graphs so it was very hard to understand what was going on and what you could do to improve things. Control wise it was a lot of work to select, organize and move wings around, not to mention having to open lots of airbase windows everywhere. So what did we do? Check out this screenshot, it shows most stuff we have at once:
    First of all we decided to go with something we knew would work well, making airwings behave more like divisions. They are now on the map and you can move them between bases and assign missions in a similar way to divisions and it’s easy to give orders to many things at once. Secondly we made a new air combat interface that should be a lot more helpful and informative. Keep reading to check out all the details... Air Wing Interface
    The air wing interface has been overhauled. The air base window is now gone. Instead, when clicking on an air base, the air wings will be listed on the left, like army divisions would if you selected ground units. We also added the ability to drag a selection box over several air bases to be able to give orders to all of them at the same time. The list of air wings shows relevant information about the air wing, such as its strength, type and missions it’s currently flying.
    Relocating wings to a new airbase is easily done by just selecting them and right-clicking on a new airbase. We’ve added arrows to show that an air wing is relocating and its progress. Assign Air missions Above the list of air wings is the mission panel. To give an air wing a mission in the new system, click on the missions icons in the panel, and right click on the target air region on the map.
    As before, wings will only fly missions that are suitable to them. This means that it’s possible to select both air superiority and bombing missions with a mix of air wings. The fighter wings will perform air superiority missions and the bomber wings will, unsurprisingly, provide bombing. This change should make it a lot easier to manage orders for several air wings at the same time and reduce the need to micromanage the air units. Another thing you might have spotted in the first screenshot is that we now have special combat icons in air mapmode. These show by base color how it's going (sorry Germany) but also which side is getting air support, so a green plane with a + means they are getting help from the boys in the air.
    Air Combat Window As you may have noticed, selecting air wings does not automatically bring up the air region window. This is because we have changed this window into becoming the new air combat window.
    The new combat window provides information on air combats in the past day, or from the last sortie. The top of the window shows the familiar information from the old air region window, but the bottom shows the new air combat overview. The overview is divided into air superiority missions, where fighters battle against enemy fighters, at the top and in the bottom half we show you bombing missions and intercepts. This information can be filtered by mission type, and toggled between our missions and enemy missions. In the top part you might recognize two new icons. Those are for Air Detection. It's such an important value that we felt it best to move from tooltips and show that instead of radar (which is just one of the factors affecting detection). We’ve been rebalancing a bunch of that stuff too, but don't look too closely on numbers as its in progress. You may also notice that we’ve added some other useful information. A very important stat is the disruption. This refers to air missions that have been forced to divert back to base, for example due to taking damage from intercepting fighters. Radar You might have spotted a little green circle in the first screenie also. We've added more visible radar overlays that you can bring up either through a toggle or by hovering over one
    Oh yeah, for those who want to see all the new on-map air counter icons here you go:
    As is normal in game development you only end up having enough time to do half of the things you planned from the start, so see this as the first step on air improvements as well. More things are sure to follow in the future, but we are pretty happy with this progress :) Next week we’ll be taking a look at Yugoslavia. See you then! //podcat Read the original post [quote]Useful links Official Website Hearts of Iron IV Wiki Hearts of Iron IV Development Diary Archive


    [ 2017-05-17 15:18:45 CET ] [ Original post ]

    HOI4 Dev Diary - Air Improvements

    Hi everyone, time for this weeks Death or Dishonor and Oak Update dev diary. Today will be all about the improvements to the air warfare coming in the update. Some of you who were at PDXCON this weekend might have had a sneakpeek, but here are the details :) Speaking of PDXCON, I had a lot of fun meeting fans (but yikes my feet after 3 days), and look forward to next years!

    Issues with the old system


    When we started looking at the air warfare part of the game we felt that there was two main flaws: Transparency and Control. The system only really showed you information over very long time with graphs so it was very hard to understand what was going on and what you could do to improve things. Control wise it was a lot of work to select, organize and move wings around, not to mention having to open lots of airbase windows everywhere. So what did we do? Check out this screenshot, it shows most stuff we have at once:
    First of all we decided to go with something we knew would work well, making airwings behave more like divisions. They are now on the map and you can move them between bases and assign missions in a similar way to divisions and it’s easy to give orders to many things at once. Secondly we made a new air combat interface that should be a lot more helpful and informative. Keep reading to check out all the details...

    Air Wing Interface



    The air wing interface has been overhauled. The air base window is now gone. Instead, when clicking on an air base, the air wings will be listed on the left, like army divisions would if you selected ground units. We also added the ability to drag a selection box over several air bases to be able to give orders to all of them at the same time. The list of air wings shows relevant information about the air wing, such as its strength, type and missions it’s currently flying.
    Relocating wings to a new airbase is easily done by just selecting them and right-clicking on a new airbase. We’ve added arrows to show that an air wing is relocating and its progress.

    Assign Air missions


    Above the list of air wings is the mission panel. To give an air wing a mission in the new system, click on the missions icons in the panel, and right click on the target air region on the map.
    As before, wings will only fly missions that are suitable to them. This means that it’s possible to select both air superiority and bombing missions with a mix of air wings. The fighter wings will perform air superiority missions and the bomber wings will, unsurprisingly, provide bombing. This change should make it a lot easier to manage orders for several air wings at the same time and reduce the need to micromanage the air units. Another thing you might have spotted in the first screenshot is that we now have special combat icons in air mapmode. These show by base color how it's going (sorry Germany) but also which side is getting air support, so a green plane with a + means they are getting help from the boys in the air.

    Air Combat Window


    As you may have noticed, selecting air wings does not automatically bring up the air region window. This is because we have changed this window into becoming the new air combat window.
    The new combat window provides information on air combats in the past day, or from the last sortie. The top of the window shows the familiar information from the old air region window, but the bottom shows the new air combat overview. The overview is divided into air superiority missions, where fighters battle against enemy fighters, at the top and in the bottom half we show you bombing missions and intercepts. This information can be filtered by mission type, and toggled between our missions and enemy missions. In the top part you might recognize two new icons. Those are for Air Detection. It's such an important value that we felt it best to move from tooltips and show that instead of radar (which is just one of the factors affecting detection). We’ve been rebalancing a bunch of that stuff too, but don't look too closely on numbers as its in progress. You may also notice that we’ve added some other useful information. A very important stat is the disruption. This refers to air missions that have been forced to divert back to base, for example due to taking damage from intercepting fighters.

    Radar


    You might have spotted a little green circle in the first screenie also. We've added more visible radar overlays that you can bring up either through a toggle or by hovering over one
    Oh yeah, for those who want to see all the new on-map air counter icons here you go:
    As as normal in game development you only end up having enough time to do half of the things you planned from the start, so see this as the first step on air improvements as well. More things are sure to follow in the future, but we are pretty happy with this progress :) Next week we’ll be taking a look at Yugoslavia. See you then! Join the discusiion here: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/hoi4-dev-diary-air-improvements.1022579/


    [ 2017-05-17 15:06:33 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Equipment Conversion War Update


    Hi everyone and welcome to today's dev diary. I’m home with a nasty cold, but lets power through and check out some more stuff coming in Death or Dishonor and the Oak update. Today’s main topic is Equipment Conversion, or how to choose the StuG Life. Using older chassis to mount more powerful guns etc was very common in WW2 era Germany, in fact its most produced armored fighting vehicle the StuG III was essentially a PzIII with its turret removed to make room for a more powerful gun. We've always let you build these self-propelled variants in HOI4, but its not been possible to convert existing vehicles before. Now if you get Death or Dishonor it will be! This is a great way of getting rid of older stuff you might not want to deploy and keeping it relevant for longer.
    If you look at the top production line there you can see that the conversion tickbox is enabled, and that the line is using suspiciously little resources and running at high speed. This is what it looks like with the box unticked:
    You can only enable this if you have spare equipment that is possible to convert from sitting around in your stockpile. When converting you pay the difference in resources only rather than the full amount and production speed is much higher.
    Note that it lists in what order and what will be converted (although here all I had for the diary was PzIIIs). So what exactly can you convert?

    • Any base model (PzIV) or upgraded variant marked obsolete (say PzIV B) to a newer one (PzIV C). This goes for planes too.
    • Any base model or variant (up to one tech level back) to a self propelled. So you can convert a Medium Tank 1 to a Medium Tank Destroyer 1 or Medium Tank Destroyer 2 (the second one would then cost more resources).
    • The above also works for licensed or captured equipment (although you can't convert a captured T-34 to a PzIV C, they need to actually be upgraded versions of the same thing).
    There are also some new techs that help improve conversions to be even more efficient. 2 of them in the machine tools tree and Dispersed Industry also gives a base bump.
    For modders its fairly easy to mess around with this, check out the spoiler for scripting examples: medium_tank_equipment = { is_convertable = yes } medium_tank_artillery_equipment_3 = { can_convert_from = { medium_tank_equipment_2 medium_tank_equipment_3 } } We have also been updating the war overview interface to make it nicer and more informative. its now possible to see total losses, fielded manpower, industry and also to be able to sort by each column.
    Another thing is that we now showcase capitulation a bit clearer (see Free France) and its now also possible to get out of capitulation. Previously this only happened at the end of the war which led to some weird cases where a France who had reclaimed all their territory still wouldn't be able to stop their side from giving up if the other majors had fallen. Now the capitulated state is reset if you reclaim your original capital and get back 90% of their surrender level. This weekend is PdxCon and next Wednesday we will be taking a look at new air stuff! Also do tune in to the World War Wednesday stream at https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive with maybe only Daniel at 16:00CET (unless he manages to snag another sidekick than me). It will be full "hot code!" mode and start a new campaign as Hungary to show off stuff from last week's diary. // podcat Read the original post [quote]Useful links Official Website Hearts of Iron IV Wiki Hearts of Iron IV Development Diary Archive


    [ 2017-05-10 10:36:58 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Hungary


    Welcome to the third dev diary on Death or Dishonor and 1.4 Oak update! I hope you are hungry for more info because today we will be talking about... Hungary (ugh that joke didnt really work now did it?)
    A landlocked Kingdom run by an Admiral, Hungary had without a doubt one of the more unusual political systems of the interwar period. At the end of the Great War, Hungary had broken away from the disintegrating Habsburg Empire, and after a brief period as a communist republic, was occupied by the Entente. Subsequently, the Treaty of Trianon was signed, which reduced Hungary to a rump state. In the Treaty, Hungary lost two thirds of its territory and a third of its population. Harsh restrictions were placed on the Hungarian military. Hungary was banned from having a Navy (a crushing injustice, to be sure) or an air force. The Army was limited to 35,000 troops, what military factories existed were under strict observation. In many ways, it was the Treaty of Versailles of Hungary.
    In game this state is represented by Hungary being a Disarmed Nation, with no available manpower, and a crippling 50% construction speed penalty for military factories. Getting out from under the treaty is your first objective. There are several ways to do this: At the far right of the tree, you have the Bled Agreement, which historically was signed in 1938 and which allows you to rearm freely. But the surrounding nations must approve it. Should they refuse, you can still abolish the treaty through other means. After you have gotten the right to bear arms back, the tree opens up and you can choose how to rebuild your military. On the Army side, you can choose between the infantry heavy Home Defense branch and the offensive-focused Mobile Focus. In the Air Force branch, you can select how to procure new planes - you can develop them yourself or get them through license deals with other countries (the licenses in these focuses are free). Politically, one of the obvious goals is to regain your territory. Fans of intricate event chains will be happy to know that you can gain all of these territories through peaceful annexation - if the other side agrees. The AI will call your bluff if it believes you are weaker than it, and things can quickly spiral out of control (the Demand Transylvania event chain is possibly the most extensive event chain we have ever done in HoI history, with 25 events and 16 different outcomes), which can even bring in other European countries. If you want to take the country down a somewhat less historical path, you can decide to murder Horthy and restore the Hungarian People’s Republic, either to join the Comintern or to make your own faction. On the other end of the political scale, we worked with the idea that Hungary was, in principle, still a monarchy. Two attempts by the deposed Carl IV in the early 1920ies failed to put the Habsburgs back on the throne, with the Hungarian parliament passing a law banning him from ever returning. The rejection broke poor Carl’s heart, and he died soon after (some say it was the pneumonia he contracted while flying to Hungary in an open plane to regain his throne, but we know better). This left his son Otto von Habsburg in charge of the house.
    The monarchist faction in Hungary was split over whether the Habsburgs should be forever banned from the Throne of Hungary, or if it was only Carl who was no longer welcome. In the game, you can side with either faction. You can either offer the crown to a proper Constitutional Monarch and become a democracy, or to a King who has...connections to certain rather radical groups in other countries. Finally, you can invite Otto von Habsburg to take the throne that was once his to inherit. If you do, you have committed to seeing the Habsburgs restored to their old glory. It will be a struggle, as the other powers of Europe will most certainly not tolerate this, and you may well find yourself at war with all three sides main factions. Hungary also comes with lots of new art (2d and 3d)

    Also new generals and leaders, here are a few of them (guess who gets to be a real admiral)
    For next week's diary we will be checking out the new Equipment Conversion feature. Also do tune in to the World War Wednesday stream at https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive with me and Daniel at 16:00CET. We will be going full "hot code!" mode and continue part two of our new Romania campaign. Also, we added Aluminum in Asia (you know who you are ;P) Author: Podcat Read the original post [quote]Useful links Official Website Hearts of Iron IV Wiki Hearts of Iron IV Development Diary Archive


    [ 2017-05-03 13:09:56 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Announcement and AI Update #1


    Time flies and suddenly its Wednesday again, and Wednesday means diary time! As you might have noticed we just announced Death or Dishonor, so that together with the 1.4 update is going to be today's topic! After that you can dive into technical AI details with SteelVolt.

    1.4 "Oak" Update


    As normal the DLC will be accompanied by a free update, this time called 1.4 "Oak". We wanted to make sure to take this time to deal with some big, complicated and difficult things that the community had been asking us for for a long time. First up is improving air gameplay, the other is the AI. After the 1.3 update there were a couple of areas identified where the most important was German AI performance. We started digging into that and there were a couple of hurdles to solve. 1) First of all divisions along front lines were not fighting as effectively as they should which led to a lot of "shuffling" and fronts slowing down massively. That meant that Germany struggled a lot versus soviet union. 2) Axis minors did not manage expeditionary forces very well when it came to helping out Germany. 3) In some cases Africa could end up as a big battleground draining precious axis materiel and weakening them (this one we solved with impassable sahara, check last diary). 4) Unit usage such as garrison and template and production management were far from optimal. SteelVolt will be filling you in on 1-2 of those above today. The rest and further details for Oak will be covered in future diaries.

    Death or Dishonor Country Pack


    While we buckled down on the AI our brave content designers have been working as part of our long term plan to flesh out the world with unique national focus trees and extra immersion. We felt that the kind of expansions we have been doing/planning were of quite different types so we wanted to clarify that. So a bit like how Leviathans was labeled a Story Pack the HOI4 version will be "Country Pack". A country pack then is an expansion that isnt a full $15-20 (DoD is $9.99) and that focuses sharply on a specific set of countries or region. For Death or Dishonor this is Romania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia - Nations swept up in the turmoil of mid-century europe and faced with pressure and threat both from allies, axis and comintern. Nations that could have gone many different directions leading to interesting "What if" scenarios while letting people who want to relive history get behind the wheel of nations like Romania and partake in operation Barbarossa etc. The pack also contains new features like Equipment Conversion (StuG:s!) and equipment licensing, things that we felt was well in line with the theme of these nations. More details here! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCBmzi0ik-A

    AI Update #1 with SteelVolt


    Friends! Here we are again. It has been quiet these past couple of months, but we have been hard at work nonetheless. We were graced with time to catch up with some of the technical debt we had worked up earlier, and getting this time has really been a blessing. Several aspects of the AI has undergone substantial improvement and in a couple of cases major reworking in order to not just improve how they work now, but make it easier to work with for future expansions and improvements. The first major part I want to talk about is what we call the unit controller, or what you may know as the "battle plan AI". Since this is a feature intended to be used by the players as well, it is important that it feels as good as possible. As some of you have noted, there have certainly been room for improvements, the most severe issue seeming to have been its tendency to send units from one end of the front to the other and sometimes at the same time having another unit from the other side coming to meet it and take its old place. This was usually done with strategic redeployment, resulting in them having zero organization upon their arrival. Less than optimal, for sure.
    We gave the task of improving this to one of our coders who was really annoyed with how it worked. While we expected him to have to rewrite the system almost completely, he ended up doing only some rewrites but a ton of touch ups and tweaks. The results is something that at first glance might not look significantly better, but it sure feels better to play with, and upon closer inspection does a better job over all. First of all it is much more reactive. Before, units were sometimes given long move orders along the front, they had to complete the move before getting new instructions (which would sometimes be to move back to where they came from). This was in fact a way to solve the even worse problem of units very often getting stuck being given new move orders every hour to different locations, and not moving anywhere at all as a result. Now, however, we have finally gotten time and resources to work out a proper solution, and units that are moving can be grabbed for new orders as the front situation changes. This means that even while units still sometimes do get longer move orders, though more rarely than before, they almost never finish them, but gets grabbed by something else on the way as the front changes.
    If we look at the screenshots from the old version [Old 1 and 2], both Germany and Soviet are struggling with long reassignments of units that will be unavailable until they have walked the distance. Moving on to screenshots from a more current build [New 1] we can see a bunch of green arrows, but the long ones are not likely to complete before getting grabbed by something closer and the end province manages to get hold of another unit that does not have to walk as far.
    This can be seen in screenshot [New 4] and [New 5], taken just a few hours after one another. While it may seem like this could hurt entrenchment, over all it seems to improve performance by not locking units up in long move orders, meaning that units already standing in good positions are more likely to remain there than before.


    If we look at the German side we can see a great example of another important improvement to the system; units shifting to the side in stead of keeping a unit away from the front for a longer travel [New 2]. This change means that under some circumstances it may look messy, but in reality it is a coordinated move that makes units over all move much shorter distances.
    A seemingly messier example can be seen in [New 3], which ends up resolving the rebalancing faster than before and keeping the units on the front more. This is certainly not the only thing we have worked on. Another noticeable change is that expeditionary forces have been significantly improved. This turned out to be one of Germany's greatest weaknesses; once France had fallen it would send a large force to Italy who would send them to starve in Africa. The AI is now much more sane in these decisions, as well as areas like Africa has been made even less interesting to fight in. Next AI update I will be telling you about a pretty large change for the AI; something we call Roles, and how it helps us get AI division design under control. Now back to podcat! For next week's diary its time to return to look at the new focus trees, and that means its Hungary's turn. Do tune in to the World War Wednesday stream at https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive with me and Daniel at 16:00CET. We will be going full "hot code!" mode and testing out the new Romania. Read the original post [quote]Useful links Official Website Hearts of Iron IV Wiki Hearts of Iron IV Development Diary Archive


    [ 2017-04-26 14:06:56 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Death or Dishonor - New Country Pack Announced!


    New Country Pack for Hearts of Iron IV Expands Gameplay for Countries Trapped in a Tough Spot STOCKHOLM - April 26, 2017 - Armchair generals extraordinaire Paradox Interactive today announced that Hearts of Iron IV players will soon have more difficult decisions to make with the launch of Death or Dishonor, a brand new country pack coming later this year. Death or Dishonor focuses on the countries of Europe caught between the dueling ambitions of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany - faced with total destruction by a much larger force or making uncomfortable alliances, survival will take compromise, guile, and perhaps a teensy bit of luck. Death or Dishonor will be available for $9.99 on Windows, Mac, and Linux PCs -- and will be delivered for free to all Expansion Pass owners. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCBmzi0ik-A Death or Dishonor introduces new National Focus trees for Hungary, Romania, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia, which revolve around navigating the ideological (and physical) land mines of central Europe during World War II. This content furthers Paradox’s goal of capturing the unique wartime experience of every nation involved in World War II, but players will also find new opportunities to change the course of history if they so choose. Death or Dishonor - and the accompanying free 1.4 Oak update - will also include:

    • Revamp of Air Gameplay: Take to the skies with new mechanics and quality of life updates that make it easier to bring your airpower to bear. (Part of the Oak Update - FREE)
    • Equipment Conversion: Update your arsenal by converting older units -- or make use of captured enemy vehicles and gear.
    • New Music and Art: 3 new thematic musical tracks from composer Andreas Waldetoft, new art content for the four focus nations, and new troop voiceovers.
    • New Diplomatic and Puppet Interactions: License military technology to bring other nations’ weapons to the field or sell your advances to the highest bidder. Fascist countries get new subject levels like Reichskommissariat, with access to licenses, industry and strategic resources. The instated governments are held in an iron grip, making it harder for them to break free.
    • Improved Map Design and Display: the world map has been clarified to make it easier to follow the action around the world. New impassable areas create tactical choke-points and more historical gameplay (Part of the Oak Update - FREE)


    [ 2017-04-26 13:02:11 CET ] [ Original post ]

    License production and map changes


    Hi everyone! I hope you had a nice Easter break :) Today we continue showing stuff for the unannounced DLC and the Oak (1.4) update. For those who haven't been following, the main points of the Oak patch is to get some big difficult changes through for the AI, helping us with things that have long been problems, as well as make air warfare a much more pleasurable experience (more info on these in later diaries as they are still in progress right now). The main topics are License Production and changes to the map. Enjoy!

    License Production


    As we mentioned in the previous dev diary, nations will now have a new way of acquiring the equipment they need. If a nation lacks the required technology to produce what they need, they can request a license to produce foreign equipment, such as tanks, airplanes or guns, in local factories. Historically, this happened in various forms, ranging from full local manufacturing to assembly of foreign vehicles with or without adapting the designs to use locally sourced parts. The famous Swedish Bofors 40mm was extensively license produced and the Canadian Grizzly tank was a locally produced variant of the Sherman M4 design. In the game, a nation with good relations with a foreign nation can request a license to produce the foreign equipment. The types equipment a nation is willing to license out is dependent on their relations. Germany, for example, may not be willing to license out their latest tank or fighter designs to other nations, but would be happy to provide Panzer IIs to friendly or neutral nations.
    National Focuses will also be able to provide licenses, or provide bonuses to license production. In the last dev diary, we showed you the Romanian National Focus Tree. Some of these focuses references License Production, including the Acquire Fighters focus, which triggers the Fighter Competition event.
    Producing licensed equipment will not be quite as efficient as producing your own designs, however. A cutting edge licenced production will have a noticeable output penalty, but a design a few years old will be almost as efficient to produce as your own technology. If you aren’t in the same faction as the owner of the design, you will also receive a little bit less technical support and manufacturing assistance.
    Licensing equipment also give you a research bonus if you want to unlock making your own. This feature comes with the yet-to-be-announced DLC.

    Map update


    Different terrains are important, but it was not always as easy to see the difference between them as it could be. For Oak we have updated and changed map textures to make this much clearer. Particularly hills and mountains were in need of this, but forests also got a bump in clarity.




    Impassable areas



    A common problem that seems to pop up no matter how many times we think we have solved it is AI over-committing to Africa. There has been a lot of community feedback on this and we were hesitant to just make a hole in Africa as some mods do, but we still felt something needed to be done so we decided to go with a slightly different approach in Oak and have implemented a new kind of impassable areas. It's fairly realistic that large troop movements can not be done through Sahara in HOI4's time frame, so we have decide to block them off for troops and avoid any case where AI may be tempted to commit more troops there than what makes sense. It seems to help the axis AI out a lot and creates more interesting small-scale fighting for players as well. Right now there is no way to un-impassable these areas, but I feel like its a logical step in the future where people may be playing past the WW2 era to be allowed to do some expensive project and build a highway across.
    We have also set up several borders as impassable to block passage across some areas of the Himalayas and others mountain ranges in that area (Afghanistan now is even tougher to take with more border choke-points like the Khyber Pass). While you can't enter impassable areas controlling surrounding areas will flip impassable states so if you control Africa it will look that way on the map also without say a hole in the middle.

    Also don't forget to tune in at 16:00CET on www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive today where me and Daniel present the final episode of Paradox News Network (only true news!) dev MP with the Millennium Dawn mod. See you next week for more diary goodness where SteelVolt will be talking about AI stuff! Read the original post [quote]Useful links Official Website Hearts of Iron IV Wiki Hearts of Iron IV Development Diary Archive


    [ 2017-04-19 10:13:52 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Reflections and Romania


    Hi everyone! After a few weeks break we are finally back with weekly dev diaries covering the 1.4 “Oak” update and accompanying DLC (you are going to need to wait a bit for the full announcement on that, but hey in paradox tradition we will still be talking about stuff that will appear in it).

    Why have dev diary breaks?


    Many people have asked why we take breaks in dev diaries at all, and there are a few different reasons.
    • People don’t like filler diaries, so if we don't have anything exciting to talk about it just means people not getting to read stuff they want and taking up the team's development time actually making stuff. I prefer not to make them if that is the alternative.
    • Being in a situation where you basically finish coding on the thing you talk about the day before is really stressful and can lead to showing things you have no idea if they work which leads to further issues, so we don't do that anymore. With 1.3.3 we were working into the last minute to add improvements and thus had no real chance to build up a buffer of content to talk about for a diary.
    • Several of the things we are working on are also very large things that take some weeks to complete, and it ties into the above. Two of these things are AI related and one is changes to air system as we said before the break we have been working on larger stuff for the Oak Update. Showing partial bits before all is in place is not very useful or easy for us.
    Hopefully that makes things a little clearer. When we are quiet it's not because we don't love you, it's because we are working extra hard on stuff.

    Lessons Learned


    When we released Together for Victory, the feedback we got for the focus trees was somewhat mixed. On the one hand, a lot of people liked them because of their size and the ability to take a country down entirely new story lines. On the other hand, a lot of people felt that that the new trees wasn't adding much to the way they played. That was somewhat disappointing for us, because we had spent so much time on the hundreds of events and focuses that went into TfV, and we were wondering why exactly that was. We started digging into telemetry data on what countries people actually played after TFV, and things got a lot clearer: About 40% of players play Germany, with other major nations following behind at quite a distance. The expansion gave the commonwealth minors a healthy bump, but still - the only content we really added for 40% of our players only happened extremely rarely in singleplayer games. Only when historical focuses were switched off, and the AI decided to go down the fascist path, did the German player get to see any new content (news events aside). And even then, the content was usually little more than an alliance request. So that was the first big lesson: new content needs to tie back to major countries, particularly Germany. Thankfully, we had already decided that our next DLC should focus more on the Axis, so we wouldn’t have to try too hard to come up with reasons why Germany should be involved. The other issue we noted ourselves was that the Commonwealth nations had very little interaction with each other. They each sat in their own little part of the world, mostly doing their own thing with their AI neighbours. That meant that even if you were playing one of the countries that got a new focus tree, you were surrounded by countries that still used the generic trees. All the interesting developments in your region were caused by you. We wanted to change that as well, and force you to pay attention to the world around you. Which brings us to our first new DLC focus tree:

    The Kingdom of Romania


    Romania is a very curious country in the context of WWII, since they were - technically - on all three sides of the war at some point (and had the war gone on long enough, I have little doubt that they would have somehow ended up in the Chinese United Front). During the interwar years, Romania had made an alliance with Poland, and had historically been closely aligned to France. In the event, the Poles decided not to activate their alliance with Romania, in order to use the neutral state on their borders to ship in Allied troops and supplies. This strategy did not fully work to Poland’s advantage. Afterwards, Romania had to come to terms with German supremacy on the continent. This grew even more pronounced when France, a nation the Romanians had always considered as a model for their own country, fell to the Wehrmacht in just 6 weeks (claims that the French AI was broken have not been confirmed by historians). King Carol II approached the Germans for an alliance, bringing Romania into the Axis - but not after the Soviet Union, Hungary and Bulgaria had forced their territorial demands on Romania. The Romanians supplied a large portion of the Axis’ oil supplies, nominally in return for German aid in modernizing their military. They also participated in the invasion of the Soviet Union, famously failing to hold the flanks of the German 6th Army during the battle of Stalingrad (in their defense, they had told the Germans it was a bad idea). When the war threatened to move onto Romanian soil, the country switched sides again and joined the war on the side of the Soviet Union, expelling the Germans and carrying the war into Hungary. In the game, Romania starts out in a fairly strong position, surrounded on three sides by countries that are either weaker or allied, and with the Soviet Union about to be concerned with itself for a while. However, her Army is fairly outdated, her industry is weak and those surrounding countries all have designs on her territory. Romania’s tree is therefore centered around trying to maintain that territory. Historically, Romania followed a very flexible policy, negotiating with the Germans and the Allies in parallel, trying to get the best deal. This is represented in game by not locking you into an alliance branch too early. As long as you aren’t part of a faction, you can negotiate freely to get new technologies and equipment from the major powers (how you get that equipment will be revealed in the next dev diary). Alternatively, you can be proactive and try to become the strongest power in the Balkans, surrounding yourself with a string of buffer states. That will require you to break with old alliances, but they were never going to help you anyway, right?
    Romania also has several directions for how to develop its army, air force and navy:
    Internally, Romania also had a number of issues, first and foremost King Carol’s attempts at steering the country. A devoted hedonist and a less-than-devoted husband, Carol was a constant source of scandals, while also considering himself the only person fit to run the state. You will have to learn how to handle him, which requires time and resources, both of which are in short supply. On the other hand, Carol has a unique new ability allowing him to recruit ministers at a lower cost. Whether or not you want to keep him around is up to you.
    For people who like big pictures here is a link with the whole focus tree as one.

    Increasing Immersion



    Immersion from playing a nation is not just from events and focus trees, art and sound also play a role to create the right feeling and thus Romania gets new general and leader portraits as well as unique voice overs for Romanian soldiers and 3d models of famous planes and tanks
    See you all next week for another diary! That one will not reveal another country, but showcase some other things.... Read the original post [quote]Useful links Official Website Hearts of Iron IV Wiki Hearts of Iron IV Development Diary Archive


    [ 2017-04-12 11:54:33 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Hearts of Iron IV, 40% Off This Weekend!

    Save 40% on Hearts of Iron IV as part of this week's Weekend Deal*!

    *Offer ends Monday at 10AM Pacific Time


    [ 2017-03-23 18:35:00 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Torch 1.3.3 patch [checksum: 2dd2] - LIVE now

    Hi, 1.3.3 patch is now live and should be downloading on steam as we speak (you might need to restart steam). If you discover any bugs in the patch, please report them in the bug report forum as usual. [quote]You need to have a Paradox account and sync that with your Steam account to gain access tp the bug report forum. You can find information on how to do that here![/quote]

    Patchlog:


    ################################################################ ########### Patch 1.3.3 "Torch" ########### ################################################################ ################################## # AI ################################## - Italy AI should now be better at picking proper units to fight in Ethiopia. - AI is now inclined to ignore non-dangerous fronts while at war. - Battle plan AI should no longer "forget" units assigned to attack order. - Made AI better at dynamically evaluating level of preparation to attack based on expected enemy strength. - AI should no longer be able to give units ridiculously long retreat or move orders while they are in combat. - The AI should now be a lot better at handling a surrounded enemy capital. - AI is less spammy with call to arms and join war requests. - Battle plan AI unit distribution should now be more stable (though even further improvements would be good). - AI will no longer declare wars on countries that control no territory, even if they technically exist in a limbo while their faction have not lost a war. - The AI should now be managing its theaters better. - AI will now start considering buildup of military constructions after a while, even if peaceful and not directly threatened. - Naval AI will now attempt to use strike fleets to aid in coastal land combats if they are not on a mission to aid in a naval combat. - Some minor AI optimizations. - AI occupation policy is now scriptable, though no scripts for this has been added. - Repaired a mistake in AI diplo for offering someone to join their faction. Threat from wrong side was used when looking at acceptance. - Made sure AI considers org when performing naval invasions. - Eat your vegetables before you get dessert: AI will no longer be declaring wars or justifying claims while in a losing war. - The AI can now build any scripted building that is a part of an established building category. - Made sure AI can not send parts of equipment. Half a ship is not particularly useful. - Fixed a serious issue where AI would never counter resistance with area defense orders, completely ignoring conquered territory. - AI is now less nervous about neighbors fighting a common enemy and not losing. - Purged unit_base, as it did nothing apart from making scripting harder. unit_ratio is now the end all an be all of unit production in the scripting, and setting it to anything but a positive value will make the AI NOT build it. - AI will now remove deployment lines for types it has reached its wanted number for. - Improved the code behind AI template design, so the scripting should make more sense now. - Minor tweaks to terrain prio when drawing fallback line which should make the go for mountains more. - Battle plan AI is now capable of finding more complex paths to front position. - Some balancing to construction AI focused on improving military industry production. - Made AI better at calculating supply use when deciding how many divisions it can field. - Made sure AI is not blocked from researching, even if only crap is left. Script can still set AI desire to 0 to block it. - Improved naval AI region evaluation and made it better at reacting more efficiently to changing situations. - AI now considers reinforcement priority for volunteer theater. - Improved deployment AI to manage lines better and improved calculation of desired number of divisions. - Added ai_strategy type 'support' that can be used to manipulate a countries desire to send lend lease to another country. - Added will_lead_to_war_with when Germany demands Sudetenland. Makes AI prepare for a possible war. - Improvements for air AI airwings picking and distribution - Now air AI considers AA while prioritizing strategic bombing and defense operations - AI should no longer be so happy on naval construction over military when it had also alot of civilian industry (hello USA) - AI can now reprioritize production lines in a few cases to deal with resource lack - AI us now makes use of more civilian factories when needed for trade - fixed a case where AI would get sidetracked when designing divisions of specific country type and instead attempt to make generic ones - added "ai_priority" on battalion types that get calculated by template, ai uses these rather than the visual representation to manage its divisions - AI is now able to send old equipment as lend lease not just its newest - AI can now cancel lend leases it can no longer afford or with nations it no longer make sense - made AI more careful with its stockpile and who to lend lease to - improved logic for AI's lend leasing - fixed issue where a big difference in scoring of combat width could make AI refuse to upgrade its divisions - USA should now lend lease soviets when they are in trouble if they have sufficient spare stockpile - "support" ai strategy now lets nations lend lease away some of their stockpile buffer too - fixed a case where AI would fail to deploy its main invasion protect fleet completely if some of the areas were out of range - fixed AI invadability evaluation sometimes failing on naval path checking - fixed a case where AI would try to split off fleets when it was not valid - fixed a case where AI would spam invalid naval moves - added equipment_stockpile ai strategy that lets you affect how much stockpile ai feels it needs - all nations with many divisions will now attempt to accumulate bigger stockpiles for safety - Fixed several cases where overflow of calcualted priorities could make AI do the opposite of what it wanted to do - Now air ai calls recalculation of air priorities on joining a war - fixed an issue where air AI would fail to assign mission if the only acceptable one was interception - fixed a case where Japan would ASK to join germanys wars despite doing badly with china - nations with restrictive modifiers for joining factions (japan) now super careful about accepting calls to arms to majors (soviet) when still at war with major neighbors (china) - ai should now no longer get stuck on super large trades and better fulfill its needs (basically skipped the full-trade logic) - AI now looks for trades in priority order of biggest lack - AI now prefers trade with closer nations if naval transport required - AI now likes trading with nations with neutral foreign policy more as they are stable - lend lease now automatically cancels when war ends for the receiver - AI is now MUCH better at looking at the equipment cost for switching more templates than just one at a time - AI cares about infrastructure way more when placing consctruction - AI should no longer go as happy on naval construction over military (was counting ratio also using civilian so got disproportional large naval part) - AI us now allowed to trade using more civilian factories - Ai should now be much better at going for medium tank divisions. Fixed issues with width being off as well as wrong template being used when evaluatign fitness for changing out lines - rebalanced ai priorities for medium vs light armor so that ai doesnt get stuck thinking its making light when it isnt - fixed a case where AI was looking at the wrong type when deciding about template upgrades and could get stuck on motorized - AI should now show greater interest in researching excavation tech. - Tweaked templates a bit for majors to avoid getting trapped in subpar targets - Allied AI will no longer guarantee Finland if Soviet justifies war on their claims, while Germany is the biggest threat. - fixed an issue where some scripted ai strategies would not work after updates (it was order dependant) - added an AI sanity check to the War with the USSR focus for Germany - Reduced AI research randomness and improved info in AI research log message - Made sure AI considers convoy count and possible delivery route before sending lend lease - AI will now leave potentially hostile nations alone for guarantees until they have generated some actual threat giving you 1-2 smaller wars before you are sucked into the ww2 vortex (makes some minors a lot more playable) - rebalanced ai priorities for medium vs light armor so that ai doesnt get stuck thinking its making light when it isnt - fixed a case where AI was looking at the wrong type when deciding about template upgrades and could get stuck on motorized - Improved AI trade law logic selection - AI now has a can_upgrade_in_field trigger on templates to give it hints on when to stop producing light tanks and switch over to medium for stuff ################################## # UI ################################## - Battleplans are now hidden during the peace conference to not obstruct the view. - Players lagging behind message in multiplayer, is now replaced with an alert (tooltip shows who and how much). - Added alert about having unassigned divisions. - Added loading progress bars. - When selecting a division(s), the list of all divisions automatically scrolls to show it. - It is possible to hide ALL map counters except your units. Hotkey 'M'. - All the message popups that doesn't require the player choice (yes/no/etc), automatically hides after timeout, to not fill the screen with hundreds of windows. Useful when running the "hands-off" observing game. - Building constructions and conversions now can be added at the top of the queue by holding ctrl and click. - Made save game name text field longer. - Added stockpiling amount to production screen. Changed text to icons. - Added tooltip to US "Destroyers for Bases" focus to make it clear who gains certain territories - Fixed a tooltip for the Australian focus "A Deal with Japan" to account for different options of territories transferred - Fixed legibility issues in event news.199 - Fixed a tooltip issue in the SAF focus tree - Added dockyard output modifier icon in the production screen - Fixed wrong division flags in the combat screen - Missiles now count as bombers in the region air screen - Fixed issue when multiple army groups was not shown in the volunteer theater groups - Multiple fixes for trade influence issues with not matching numbers - Tooltip in the research screen does not show ahead of time penalty if player has 100% ahead of time penalty reduction bonus - Minor fix for army group leader tooltip, to match numbers when penalty for too many units applied - Arrows now gets hidden while editing the orders - Now top bar tooltip for factories also shows damaged ones - Missiles are not shown in logistics screen anymore - Fixes for fear trade modifiers being applied in wrong direction - Now clicking on not existing country in the managing occupied areas screen you won't go to diplomacy screen - Fixed the bug when plan evaluation numbers was not matching - Fixed the bug when capital icons were not correctly shown - Fix for the tooltip on return territory - Added clarification on non-progressing training by reason of lacking equipment and manpower - Now Pass button gets disabled in the peace conference if no actions left to take - Combat log screen now will be shown on top of other screens - Now load game button disable at the same time as continue button - Clarified tooltip for opening multiple info windows in the tech and focus tree screens - Political cost now is hidden when the law is taken - Fix for the switch to next autonomy level glow (now it is actually hidden) - Fixed warscore not being calculated properly while war without majors on one side - Now invalid leader picking screens disappear as army group gets deleted - Disabled icons while in deployment mode - Fix for the rules not being updated on savegame load - If national focus not changing tooltip doesn't show weekly change anymore - Fixed factory conversion button flickering while non-paused gameplay - Fixed the bug when techtree was broken after switching country - Added ability to toggle fog of war map effect on/off - Tooltips existing lend leases for equipment now show type as well as national flavor name when these differ - Releasing nations with a lot of states no longer massively overflows popup window - Multiple rows of division types now possible to be shown in army overview - Tweaked gradient borders for strategic areas so there is no weird gap between areas (more visible with mods) - Air wing reinforce limit window now has the +50/+100 buttons jump to closest multiple to avoid clicks for neat sizes, steps are also +5/+10 for carrier parked wings - Can now increase/decrease queued up ship production faster with ctrl/shift click (ctrl=10 at a time, shift=100 at a time) - Indian National Army focus now has correct effect description - Fixed overlap of text in options with certain languages - Changed shortcut for closing a bunch of production items as ctrl+click it’s easy to miss-click with other shift+click nearby - Fixed centering of trade scrollbar - Achievement entry header now highlighted in orange - Achievement window now movable - Resistance tick indicator now doesn’t show VP stuff in states where there can’t be resistance - Clicking rightmost side of savegame edit box no longer deselects editing - Spelling fix of Trotskyist - Added tooltip to icons displaying used combat width in the combat window . - Added tooltip to research button explaining the 30 days grace period. - Added province tooltip if there is an air base or rocket site present. - Added state name when hovering over a naval base. - Renamed "Small arms research time" to "Weapons and Equipment Research Time" - Explained conditional effect of why we fight focus in tooltip - Entrenchment tooltip only shows days left when unit is not fully entrenched. - Fixed rounding issue in resource mapmode - Made separate production tooltip for naval items, reflecting they don't retain efficiency. - Added war requirement to lend lease tooltip. - Armies view: Improved consistency across the different tooltips. Added penalty to the groupview in the bottom of the screen. Moved penalty explanation to delayed. - Added delayed tooltip to production line filter explaining Shift+click mechanic. - Removed "Support" header from division icon tooltip when it has no support. - Changed production line tooltip to no longer lie about total output and resource efficiency to the player. - Maximum amount of slots is always stated. Factor modifiers not shown if slots < 0. Wasteland is now displayed in same way as other categories. - Changed "Trade Bonus" modifier to "Overlord trade cost" and made it a negative modifier. - Added "Stop" button to continuous focus detail screen. - Added bypass button for focus if they have are mutually exclusive with another, automatically locking players in a branch. - Moved the disband button, manpower and equipment numbers around for unit details view - A bunch of tooltips readability improved. Various changes, typo fixed, decimal points changed, etc. - added ability to toggle fog of war on/off - Changed efficiency tooltip growth to show daily values instead of weekly ...and more that couldn't fit here on Steam. Please go here to read full patch log! Enjoy! Note: Players with Windows Vista will probably no longer be able to start the game starting with this update. HOI4 has never supported Vista, but it has somewhat worked before. Now it no longer does so I thought we should give a heads-up on that. [quote]Please post any bug reports in the official bug report forum, thank you![/quote] This is not the complete patch log, please go here to read full patch log!


    [ 2017-02-23 12:45:12 CET ] [ Original post ]

    1.3.3 Patch #3


    Patch 1.3.3 The patch has been in open beta a few days now and after a few tweaks seem ready for general consumption! The best way to learn about the most important changes is to read the last 2 dev diaries (or furher back if you are interested in the modding aspects). Path 1.3.3 Diary #1 - Industry, infrastructure and world tension changes and new capitulation loot! Path 1.3.3 Diary #2 - Resources now much more important, optimizations, quality of life and AI improvements Patch 1.3.3 Modding - New modding features and some new events The plan is to have the patch go live tomorrow once we investigate some final hardware compatability things this afternoon. Patch log too long for Steam, go here to read it! 500k sales! We broke half a million sales of Hearts of Iron IV which the team celebrated with cake and working on the 1.3.3 patch :) As game director for HOI this feels really good and shows that WWII sandbox games are something people want and its not really just a small niche! More practically this means for us that HOI will have a long future ahead of updates and expansions because the support is there for sure :) and speaking of.... What now? Once 1.3.3 is out the door we will start work on the 1.4 "Oak" update as well as a DLC, which shall remain mostly secret for now, but without revealing too much will have some axis focus. Our aim is for 1.4 "Oak" to be a bigger than normal patch where we get some time to revamp some systems that have been getting a lot of feedback (Air system will be getting updates for example). A lot of focus will also be put on AI, but we are happy to say that we think it has grown a lot since release. Finally squashing any "frontline dancing" will be top priority there. We have also started working a bit on the side on making the gameplay map clearer and easier to read based on feedback from the community. After Oak in the misty uncertainty future of winter we have our next big game update where we plan to focus on Asia and war-related stuff. Of course subject to change. Next week the team is heading to GDC, and this will be the start of bit of a hiatus in dev diaries. We feel like people prefer big juicy dev diaries so we are going to be back once we have done enough big changes to start talking about them. We plan to be in diary break until April. During that time I'll be sharing progress bits on twitter (which we will also repost here on the forum) and once we return we'll jump back on bigger diaries. Also don't forget to tune in at 16:00CET on www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive today where me and Daniel continue playing Russia in Kaiserreich in World War Wednesday! Read the original post [quote]Useful links Official Website Hearts of Iron IV Wiki Hearts of Iron IV Development Diary Archive


    [ 2017-02-22 14:50:51 CET ] [ Original post ]

    1.3.3 update information #2


    Hi everyone and welcome to the last update on the 1.3.3 patch as we are now getting into final testing of it. This is going to be a big diary with guest writing both from @SteelVolt (AI) and @TomaszKowalczyk (tech lead) as well. Grab a cup of the blackest coffee and enjoy! Industry - resource lack changes To continue last weeks theme on industry we have a final change: currently production lines can get a max penalty of -80% due to lack of resources. That effectively mean that a resource lack can be combated by just having more available factories. We felt this was both unrealistic and was making resources less important than we wanted for big nations. Penalties due to lack of resource are now instead calculated by each missing resource over multiple lines and steadily get higher until they can actually get -100% penalty.
    Quality of life! As normal with patches its not just bug fixes and balance, we've done a bunch of quality of life improvements, what while small do feel big when playing. Lets go:

    • Do you need to start a building construction with top priority? No problem. Now you can CTRL+Click when constructing, so it goes directly to the top of your constructions.
    • Now something that should really be there long ago. When selecting a division, it now scrolls the list of the divisions to show them.
    • Did you have problems to find all your units in a crowdy war? Now there is a button (right bottom side of the screen) with hotkey 'M' that hides ALL counters except your units.
    • Because its sometimes hard to plan ahead over areas where you have little intel we have also added a toggle button to turn off the fog of war effect should you need to to better see terrain etc.
    • We invented a revolutionary new thing which we have decided to call a "loading progress bar"
    • Do you also have that one friend that is always lagging behind in multiplayer? Got annoyed by the "player lagging behind" message popping up in your face? Now it's an alert. The tooltip explains who is lagging behind and how much. Of course it also automatically disappears when that player catch up.
    • To be consistent with air wings, any unassigned divisions now also get an alert. It's super useful, when for example, a friend is sending you expeditionary forces, and you have no idea where the frell they are. Now just click on the alert to toggle through the unassigned divisions!
    AI Update! Several people on the forums have asked for more in-depth details on AI improvements like the ones we did for the Together For Victory release, and you have been heard. Here is an update from @SteelVolt: Greetings everyone! Taking a short break from otherwise working super hard on improving the Hearts of Iron 4 AI (not counting last week when a flu virus knocked me out), I am once again here to bring you some news about what is going on in my field. As last time I did these, I thought I would start out with a story from the trenches. This one happened during the current development cycle. After having done some work in several areas of the AI, we noticed in our hands off runs that Germany was fairly consistently defeating England. Getting past the Royal Navy is no small feat, but we initially thought that a Germany that had beat Soviet (which they had started doing at that time) would have industry enough to counter this with airplanes. Turns out that was a bit optimistic. What was really happening was that the naval AI had an issue that made it extremely difficult for it to change regions for assigned fleets, and England had already sent most of their fleet away. These are the related entries in the changelog:
    • Improved naval AI region evaluation and made it better at reacting more efficiently to changing situations.
    • Naval AI will now attempt to use strike fleets to aid in coastal land combats if they are not on a mission to aid in a naval combat.
    The second one being an improvement to how the AI uses its strike fleet (which is the fleets it used not to guard or hunt, but to destroy the enemies main fleet) :) While the coming patch does not cover all AI improvements in the works, there are several reasons to feel excited about the AI for the next update, and I thought that I would highlight some of the more interesting ones here. First of all there is the infamous unit spam:
    • Made AI better at calculating supply use when deciding how many divisions it can field.
    • Added equipment_stockpile ai strategy that lets you affect how much stockpile ai feels it needs
    • All nations with many divisions will now attempt to accumulate bigger stockpiles for safety
    There were a couple of minor bugs, but also some room for improvements, in the code where the AI estimates how many divisions it thinks it can afford to support. This seems way better now. We also made the AI more careful about its stockpile of equipment as well as making it aim for bigger ones for nations who already had a lot of divisions.
    • Improved deployment AI to manage lines better and improved calculation of desired number of divisions.
    Partially connected to the previous point; the AI was way too eager to put a major number of lines working on units but then under certain circumstances just deleting them and starting over. All of this has been given an overhaul, and the AI now acts more moderately both when planning and when reacting to changes.
    • AI will now remove deployment lines for types it has reached its wanted number for.
    Really what it says. Before, the AI would keep producing the units it had started working on, which was very inflexible for changing situations. Moving on, I am surprised this one was not caught earlier:
    • Fixed a serious issue where AI would never counter resistance with area defense orders, completely ignoring conquered territory.
    While there had been mentions that the AI could probably do better when it came to countering resistance, it really turned out that it never did this at all. This was due to a code mistake in a single if-statement that made the AI exclusively considered OWNED territory, as opposed to CONTROLLED. To weather the tightening up and changes we have done to industry has also meant changes for the AI in those areas:
    • Improved logic for when and whom AI should be lend leasing
    • AI is now able to send old equipment as lend lease not just its newest
    • AI can now cancel lend leases it can no longer afford or with nations that no longer make sense
    • AI should no longer be so happy on naval construction over military when it had also alot of civilian industry
    The first couple are pretty straight forward: you should be seeing more effective lend leasing now. The last one was an issue affecting many nations (but USA most of all) where having a lot of civilian industry made it think it needed much less military industry in favor of naval construction. And lastly, the AI is now a lot better at handling safe fronts. It used to sometimes assign significant numbers of units to fronts that posed no threat. Some of these were to countries fighting a common enemy, even when they were winning against said enemy, and others were just...not a threat in any way. Bottom line: more of the AIs units should be making an actual difference now ;) Lets close with a screenshot that makes me feel pretty happy: Japan not declaring war on the Soviet Union until it has secured the chinese front properly. :)
    Performance and Optimizations This part is for those interested in code details and technical stuff. Just a warning! We figured fans might be interested in more technical details as well as getting some insight in what the job is like for coders. So let us know if this was interesting or made your brains melt! Now I'm gonna hand the word over to our project tech lead @TomaszKowalczyk: Hi everyone, I'm going to be talking about all the optimization work I did for the patch. We are of course planning to improve it further more in the next patches, however in 1.3.3 the overall speed up is about 14-18%. This may look like not too much, however the main focus was to solve performance "spikes". Those moments when the game literally freezes at a certain moments (usually every 24th hour, when the next day begins). At the very late game date, they were even more annoying than ever. Those I've improved a lot. I was comparing a certain very late save-game, with 1.3.2 and 1.3.3. The first daily tick after hit unpause, in 1.3.2 it took about 4 seconds to advance. In 1.3.3 it was less than ~0.4 sec. Usually we don't share the nitty-gritty technical details, but this time I'm going to write what and why was slowing down the game:
    • I reworked a bit of the peace conference code that was computing which country can get what. In a gigantic war, where a major country with lots of territory, have lost, pressing SKIP and SKIP and SKIP all over again, was making the game running slower and slower, until almost freeze. This exists in all peace conferences. Just in small wars, it wasn't that badly noticeable. The problem was in a badly nested code loop. Rewriting them worked like a charm.
    • Every time the player click on a navy, and assign the mission in some region(s), the game is doing a "naval path-find" and sends the fleet to go to the necessary area. There was AI logic that wanted to be sure that their fleets were doing the right missions, and it turns out it was spamming "go there", "go there", "go there", while obviously it was enough to tell once. Any kind of path-finding is a pretty complicated and performance heavy thing, but luckily adding a single line of code to stop that solved the problem with the spam!
    • The improvements to the supply system was what had the biggest impact. One problem was that plenty of game elements are relying on information about "supplies supported" vs "supplies required". Which is, how many units we can fit in the area before we get the penalty. Every piece of the code that was asking the region "what is the supported and required values?", was recomputing those numbers from scratch. It was asking all units in the area, how high is your supply usage, and how much the region supports (another complicated formula). And it was done hundreds of time by various game elements, in the same computing frame. Instead, I made it so it computes that information only once, and store it in "cached memory". All the game elements now fetch the data directly from cache, which costs almost no performance at all. Another problem in the supply systems was the large amount of units. In the very late game, having lots of divisions is a true problem, as it requires lots of computing power. This time it almost killed the supply system. I did plenty of tricks here to improve it. I had to rewrite the way we compute the supplies consumption in each area. Instead of looking at each province and iterating through all the units, asking them "what is your supply consumption value?", I do it from the other side. Every hour, each unit "reports" the supply consumption at it's location, bumping up the overall value in the region. Sounds like same thing, but not really from the technical side. Thanks to that, I could completely remove the super heavy code loop from the supply system. To be honest, that was the nicest optimization ever. How to optimize the function? Remove it :) There was so many improvements in the supply system that it doesn't really make sense to list them all, so instead as a summary I will say, that previously the supply system was taking about 65% of the computing time in the daily "spikes". Now it's under 6%. :)
    • Another big optimization to daily "spikes" involved the part of the AI playing around with the division designer to achieve its desired templates. The fix was quite simple here. I've discovered that whenever we try add/remove/replace the division in any slot, the overall template stats are recomputed. That's heavy. Well, maybe not that much heavy, but they became heavy when all countries in the world try almost all possible combinations, in a single frame pass. Turns out, it was enough to refresh the template stats only once after the AI is done filling all the slots.
    • There was also bunch of optimizations in: AI planning naval invasions, AI code responsible for spreading units along the front, the fleets calculating the bonuses from the radars, convoy routes checking which way to go if the certain channels are blocked, and plenty of other hard to explain improvements.
    • There is one last that is my favorite. In our Clausewitz engine, there was an old code loop that nobody ever dared to touch. It was processing all the user interface elements in a "flat manner" instead of the "tree hierarchy". This means, that the more windows and buttons we add to the game, this loop was heavier and heavier. And the windows didn't even had to be shown for it to slow down the game. We always knew about this infamous spot, however reworking it without breaking all the interfaces was nearly impossible. Until now. I found the way! Previously that code loop had ~120 000 passes in each frame, now it's under 700, processing only the necessary interface elements. By that I mean, when you are looking at the technology trees, we are not processing through the hidden production windows and buttons, etc.
    As I previously said, we are still working on late-game performance. I've spent only 1,5 week on it so far, and we already get quite much of it so you can expect us to keep doing improvements like this in future patches. Don't forget to tune in at 16:00CET on www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive today where me and Daniel will be continuing our campaign in Kaiserreich for World War Wednesday! Read the original post [quote]Useful links Official Website Hearts of Iron IV Wiki Hearts of Iron IV Development Diary Archive


    [ 2017-02-15 13:42:05 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Patch 1.3.3 Update #1


    Hi everyone! Sorry about the late diary as we had to scramble for some alternative content due to originally planned authors being cut off by an enemy encirclement and suffering terrible attrition (a.k.a being sick). That means that instead of talking about optimization and AI we will be focusing on balance stuff we have been working on for the 1.3.3 patch which is nearing completion. Industry - Infrastructure effects Infrastructure will now affect the cost of building factories in a state. At the highest level of infrastructure, the cost for each factory is the same as before, with a few minor cost reductions for readability. In less developed states with lower levels of infrastructure building factories is more costly. The bonus to build in high infrastructure states is shown in the construction map mode.
    The reason for this change is twofold. We wanted to ensure that some states are more valuable than others as they will naturally become centers of industrialization. The other reason is to slow down the growth of industry in the mid to late game, which we felt was too excessive (we have also worked with tech progression here). Finally we felt that the value of infrastructure and infrastructure giving national focuses was too low and this will change this up quite a bit! Industry - Efficiency Changes The first 90 percent of the code accounts for the first 90 percent of the development time. The remaining 10 percent of the code accounts for the other 90 percent of the development time. This is a famous joke in software development that is attributed to Tom Cargill of Bell Labs. There’s a certain truth to this and it applies to more areas than programming. Whenever you start something new, initial progress is usually pretty quick but as as you keep working on it, each incremental improvement becomes harder and harder. In Hearts of Iron IV, production efficiency used to have linear growth. We have changed this so that initial production efficiency growth is relatively fast, but it slows down as the lines become more efficient.
    In this graph you can see the difference between the old and new implementation. The old implementation steadily grows in efficiency until it reaches the cap. With the new system, initial efficiency growth is faster, but it takes much longer to reach maximum. This is affected by technology, meaning that modifiers to efficiency growth speed, cap and base all affect efficiency growth. The main benefit of this change is that high efficiency and efficiency retention has a lot higher value now and you need to think harder whether to change out a production line or not. World Tension - new threat rules Justifying a war used to only account for the cost of the states you selected for the wargoal. This led to a situation where it was too efficient to just claim a single state per war justification in order to keep world tension down. War justifications now accounts for the size of the country you are justifying a war against. This has the effect that justifying a war against a major nation, something that would be seen as a very aggressive move, will therefore result in a larger amount of world tension. Justifying against multiple countries has also become a more costly affair, with political power cost going up per justification and war the country is already involved in. This should help with multiple justifications draining political power from guaranteeing nations and make player think a little before they start drawing up the new proposed borders. When a country is at war the tension limit for them joining a faction is lowered. This allows nations to intervene in early wars through other means than guarantees. Capitulation changes Previously you would only get access to a country’s stockpile of equipment when they surrendered. We felt this was too restrictive and a but unrealistic, so there is now a new mechanic where you get access to a percentage of a nation’s equipment when they capitulate. It also gives you a neat breakdown of the most common equipment and detailed count of the rest
    Next week we will be talking about AI, optimization and other things, so see you then! Don't forget to tune in at 16:00CET on www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive today where me and Daniel will be starting a campaign of Kaiserreich in World War Wednesday! Read the original post [quote]Useful links Official Website Hearts of Iron IV Wiki Hearts of Iron IV Development Diary Archive


    [ 2017-02-08 14:45:00 CET ] [ Original post ]

    1.3.3 Modding Features


    Hi everyone, As mentioned in last weeks diary, I wanted to go a little more into detail with a few of the changes modders can look forward to in 1.3.3. Tech trees A part of HOI4 we've often seen modded are the technology trees, specifically adding trees that are unique to one nation. This has so far been achieved with a clever little trick, where the first technology in a tree only is available to a certain nation. This does achieve the goal, but it also means all trees are visible, even though the player can never research them. In 1.3.3 we've added dynamic technology folders, which hides and locks any technology in the folder that does not meet the trigger. I've taken a book out of my click bait add and prepared a little before and after sample using BICE as an example of how the new mod feature looks.

    Obviously they could chose to remove all the original folders and replace with country unique ones, but that's up to the BICE guys. This does technically work with any trigger, but I recommend primarily using it for tags. Enabling during the game and and keeping it enabled for the rest of the game should not be a problem. Industry One of our focuses for 1.3.3 is to improve industrial balance. We will talk more about that in the future (when its actually done :D) but this has led to some new features modders have requested as well. Its now possible to separate the industrial bonuses between factories and dockyards for example (helpful for balancing concentrated vs dispersed industry also) as well as now being able to control the max number of factories assignable to production lines (some mods like to limit the max for naval construction for example so you produce more in parallel rather than serially) but so far this was only possible by limiting UI for player. Now it can be set separately for military, civilian and naval lines. Change state names

    Changing victory point names
    Of course modders have also wanted to be able to change names of cities, and now you can!
    More is more! These new features will amaze you. I can't believe no 5 [quote] Apologies if some have already been mentioned =) -Added trigger to technology folders. Will hide tab and disable research for techs if trigger is not met. -Split up factory modifier into a new industrial_capacity_dockyard so dockyards get their own progression -Added local_non_core_manpower state modifier -Added effect add_state_modifier -Added an on action for on_annex. Fired from both effect and peaceconference. -Fixed on_civil_war_end having a fixed random seed -Added has_country_leader trigger -The AI is no longer quite as emotionally attached to modded ideas. Will now consider changing non-hardcoded ideas if the ai_will_do value is higher than the existing idea. -Added new ai strategy "template_xp_reserve" that lets you modify how much AI wants to burn or not burn its xp for division design -Added proper error handling when reading scripted ai strategies -Added can_join_factions rule -Added trigger has_tech_bonus. Works with specific technology or category -Added has_resources_amount trigger -Added on_startup to onactions -Added count_triggers ( same as calc_true_if on other projects ) -Added set_state_category -Added set_state_name [/quote] The rest of the team are squashing bugs, working on late game performance and as always improving the AI. Also don't forget to tune in to www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive at 16:00CET today where we will be checking out Millennium Dawn: Modern Day Mod in our series of mod highlights in World War Wednesday! Read the original post [quote]Useful links Official Website Hearts of Iron IV Wiki Hearts of Iron IV Development Diary Archive


    [ 2017-02-01 12:31:13 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Hearts of Iron IV: Sabaton Soundtrack Vol. II RELEASED!


    We're thrilled to bring you our second music pack from Sabaton! This one with 10 new tracks illustrating moments of World War II with passion and power chords! Tracklist:[olist]

  • Ghost Division: Tells the story of the elusive 7th Panzer Division
  • Resist and Bite: Recounts the experiences of a Belgian division facing German invasion
  • Coat of Arms: Deals with the difficult Italian invasion of Greece
  • Uprising: Celebrates the courageous but doomed Warsaw Uprising of 1944
  • Screaming Eagles: A song about 101st Airborne’s battles in Bastogne
  • 40:1: Honors the a small Polish brigade’s stalling defence of Wizna against a much larger Wehrmacht force
  • Panzerkampf: Song about the Battle of Kursk, one of the largest tank battles in history
  • Smoking Snakes: Honors three Brazilian soldiers who refused surrender against overwhelming odds
  • To Hell and Back: A song about Audie Murphy, the most decorated solider in American history, and his struggle with PTSD
  • The Last Battle: Tells of how a motley group of French prisoners, German defectors and American soldiers defended Castle Itter against a SS division [/olist] Get it right here: http://store.steampowered.com/app/584141/


    [ 2017-01-26 17:24:30 CET ] [ Original post ]

  • Getting started with modding


    Hi everyone, As podcat mentioned in last weeks diary he would attempt to trick into writing a little something about modding. It didn’t work, I wanted to do it all along, hah! This week I will talk a bit about how to get into modding and how we work with requests from modders. Next week I will go into some of the new stuff modders can expect in 1.3.3. Getting into modding can seem like a pretty daunting task and we’ve received some questions about how to get started. A good first step is going to the User Mods forum and take a look at the Useful threads/information for modders. and the wiki. The Hearts of Iron Modding Discussion subreddit is another good place to find resources. Ask others in the Modding - Quick Questions thread. It’s a great place to ask specific questions once you’ve gone through some of the tutorials. If no one else can help, I might even show up to answer a few questions. Starting the game with the -debug enabled gives you access to the console, where you can write trigger_docs. This will print a list of possible trigger and effect with some sparse (programmer made) documentation to the game.log. Sometimes you can find things here that have not yet been documented on the wiki. From there, it all depends on what you want to achieve. Another useful launch option is start_tag=GER, which loads up the game as the specified tag, skipping launcher and country selector. Starting in debug mode also enables the glorious error dog, who will show up and bark your mistakes at you, like a mad drill sergeant. The dog is your friend, do as it says and strive to fix all your mistakes before committing your mod to steam. Start from the top and work your way down. Here I’ve done something horribly wrong in the Centre state file, so I CTRL+ALT+Right-Click, open the file and fix my mistake.
    Once you’ve gotten into it a bit you will most likely stumble across issues that cannot be solved with the current script features. This is where I come in… maybe! Go to the wishlist thread see if there is already a request for what you are trying to attempt and if there isn’t, make a post describing what you want to achieve. Most of the things in this thread end up in the document below, aptly named by podcat. We then go over the requests with the tech lead and decide what is possible to do. A lot of the requests we have gotten are for new triggers, basic effects, which is great. Other are basically new features, major core system changes or UI rework on a scale that is not modding, but making a new game.
    A request could be: ‘I need a trigger for army experience’ (I can’t believe we don’t have this.). ‘I want to set state names with an effect’ ‘I want the dynamic script flags EU4 has’ Etc etc. Some will be implemented. Some will be rejected based on technical limitations. Some may even be planned for a future feature, in which case it really is worth waiting for the proper implementation by a team of programmers instead of just me. Some of the recent additions include: -Added console command: set_ruling_party - ideology group has shortcuts d f n c for vanilla HOI groups -Added console command: add_party_popularity - ideology group has shortcuts d f n c for vanilla HOI groups -Added trigger has_full_control_of_state -Added has_army_experience has_air_experience has_navy_experience triggers -Dynamic state, country and global flags effect. set_global_flag = test_flag_@ROOT -Added triggers for date days and value to flags -Added modify_global_flag modify_country_flag modify_state_flag effects. Clearing script flags now removed them completely instead of setting value to zero -Added timed script flags. Exampletime: You want to make a series of events where the German scientists goes celebrating after the fall of France. set_country_flag = { flag = GER_drunk_scientists days = 120 value = 1 } This sets a flag with the value of 1 that disappears after 120 days. You can then use the flag as a trigger for a national focus that gives you something like the Bob Semple, or what else your drunken scientists would come up with. modify_country_flag = { flag = GER_drunk_scientists value = 1 } will change the country flag to 2, which you can then use to trigger something else. You can also see how long a flag has been set for and what date it was last set or modified. You probably want to make you own tooltip though, since flags don’t generate proper tooltips at the moment. Proper tooltips for them might be a future request =) custom_trigger_tooltip = { tooltip = GER_drunk_scientists_tooltip has_country_flag = GER_drunk_scientists } Hope this gives you an idea of how to get started and encourages more people to start modding Hearts of Iron. Next week I will talk in detail about the new modding features that will be available in 1.3.3. podcat : Since people are probably curious about a little update from the rest of the team, we have been working on some optimizations to speed up late game a bit. Also don't forget to tune in at 16:00CET on www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive today where me and Daniel will be checking out the Kaiserreich mod in our series of mod highlights in World War Wednesday! Read the original post [quote]Useful links Official Website Hearts of Iron IV Wiki Hearts of Iron IV Development Diary Archive


    [ 2017-01-25 13:03:30 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Squanching them bugs


    Hi everyone, yesterday the 1.3.2 Hotfix went live for Hearts of Iron IV so now its time to talk a bit about what we are up to next. As I hinted at last week we have been listening to the community and decided that we want to put a heavier emphasis on bug fixing and improvements this year for the team. Hearts of Iron IV is a big complex game with a lot of moving parts and we are doing this both for you the gamers and ourselves so that we have a more stable and polished base to build new cool stuff on as well. This is something we started laying the foundations for just before Christmas by making sure we organize all our recorded issues and tasks to make sure we focus on the right stuff and have good progress. For starters we are currently working on 1.3.3 which is going to be things that didnt make it into the 1.3.x hotfixes previously, general improvements across the board with fixes and improvements to balance, AI, bugfixing etc as well as a big chunk of stuff for modders Havebeard has been working on. This means that 1.3.3 will have no major system rewrites or anything like that, but a bunch of nice stuff all over. You can expect this patch to drop in a couple of weeks. After that will be focusing our efforts on the 1.4 Patch weâ


    [ 2017-01-18 12:51:18 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Hotfix Patch 1.3.2 Live Now! [checksum e13a]


    Hi, 1.3.2 hotfix is now live and should be downloading on steam as we speak (you might need to restart steam). If you discover any bugs in the patch, please report them in the bug report forum as usual. Patchlog: - Fixed CTD when double clicking the first factory in a line superduperfast to reset factories - AI now much better at respecting airbase size limits - Improved AI management of air missions - Deployment is now allowed in locations where it supposed to, regardless if your capital state is not owned by you. - Fixed huge slow down and eternal freeze in the peace conference. - Lowered air combat delay so that some areas will still see combat even though caught in extreme time zones. - Crusader Kings 2 achievement now requires correct states - Rebalanced air combat for increased air casualties - Air accidents should no longer happen in peacetime - Added CTD safety for voice over playing in case player has some broken sound drivers - Fixed potential CTD in clearing country resources on civil war starts - Fixed a manpower transfer issue causing units to disappear after peaceful annexation (like the Anchluss) - Fixed issue with Australia demanding New Zealand causing Australia to be kicked out of any faction it is currently in - Fixed two typos in Indian focus tree/ideas - Tech tree now refresh after switching tag (when choosing to play as new puppet) which made some achievements tricky - Transfer ship effect (like in NZL focuses) no longer sometimes transfers wrong ships (or whole fleets :D) - French language translation fixes. - Fix for Crusader Kings 2 achievement. Flags are now set from events granting them immediate freedom. - Added script flags for Crusader Kings 2 achievement if SAF chooses to puppet nations. - Mil to Civ factory conversion now properly removes the military factory. - Japan now creates own faction and adds New Zealand to it for befriend Japan focus. - Changed trigger for Befriend Japan to require same ideology. - Only create wargoal on AST if ideology differs. - Fixed has_goverment trigger doing the opposite of what it was supposed to. - JAP will only create faction if not already in a faction. - AST will join JAP if JAP already leader of faction. AST cannot befriend JAP if JAP is in another faction. - Fixed an issue where in civil wars the dynamic tag side would end up with no manpower in their divisions and get them disbanded Enjoy! If you experience any problems with the game following the patch, please report it through our bug report forum [quote]You need to have a Paradox account and sync that with your Steam account to gain access there. You can find information on how to do that here![/quote]


    [ 2017-01-17 08:51:06 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Back from Christmas


    Hi everyone! The team is now back from holidays, rested and fresh and ready to jump to it. In fact we already have done a couple of things that we will be releasing this week if all goes well. Release of Together for Victory went well and we saw more people than ever play HOI4 during Christmas. It was also really nice to hear that people feel like AI has taken a good step in the right direction with 1.3 Torch and we will continue working with this. So as I said we had time to fix a couple of things during the holidays and after getting back, so here is our changelog for a 1.3.2 hotfix: [QUOTE] - Fixed CTD when double clicking the first factory in a line superduperfast to reset factories - AI now much better at respecting airbase size limits - Improved AI management of air missions - Deployment is now allowed in locations where it supposed to, regardless if your capital state is not owned by you. - Fixed huge slow down and eternal freeze in the peace conference. - Lowered air combat delay so that some areas will still see combat even though caught in extreme time zones. - Crusader Kings 2 achievement now requires correct states - Rebalanced air combat for increased air casualties - Air accidents should no longer happen in peacetime - Added CTD safety for voice over playing in case player has some broken sound drivers - Fixed potential CTD in clearing country resources on civil war starts - Fixed a manpower transfer issue causing units to disappear after peaceful annexation (like the Anchluss) - Fixed issue with Australia demanding New Zealand causing Australia to be kicked out of any faction it is currently in - Fixed two typos in Indian focus tree/ideas - Tech tree now refresh after switching tag (when choosing to play as new puppet) which made some achievements tricky - Transfer ship effect (like in NZL focuses) no longer sometimes transfers wrong ships (or whole fleets :D) - French language translation fixes. [/QUOTE] It will appear today (give it an hour or two) as an opt-in open beta for some community testing before rolling out for real. Hopefully this week if no problems are encountered! Hopefully the above fixes the big issues encountered during Christmas break. More stuff will get done as we now start working on a bit bigger patch. Unfortunately I can’t really give a more detailed roadmap for you today as I had planned, because apparently there is a lot of stuff to do when everyone gets back from holidays planning wise ;) But next week I will know more and can share it with you. For everyone who has requested it though, we will be putting a much heavier emphasis on bug fixing and improvement this year. More details in next diary! Today we don’t have a World War Wednesday stream. That will start up again next week. If you want to sate your HOI4 video craving I’m going to recommend checking out Daniel’s cool 60+ people grand multiplayer campaign he ran during Christmas. I asked him for a summary and he sent me this picture:
    Read the original post [quote]Useful links Official Website Hearts of Iron IV Wiki Hearts of Iron IV Development Diary Archive


    [ 2017-01-11 11:46:33 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Happy Holidays!



    [ 2016-12-23 14:35:33 CET ] [ Original post ]

    XMAS Hotfix out!



    Hi everyone :D Hope everyone has been having a good time playing Together for Victory. This will be the last diary of the year, so lets get to it! We haven't had time to gather much statistics yet about the release, but I'd figure I'd at least dig up the most popular of the commonwealth nations the last few days: 1. India 2. Canada 3. Australia and South Africa (basically same score) 4. New Zealand I actually thought India would end up below Australia, but nope. In longer games (15h+) Canada ends up about same score as India though. Mod support is also record high just before release of TFV at 60%(!!!). By far the highest of any of PDS titles, and we'll be buckling up next year to give even better support to modders as well in light of this. When this diary goes out we have just put the 1.3.1 hotfix live. URL=https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/hoi4-torch-1-3-1-hotfix-patch-checksum-8152-not-for-problem-reports.990217/#post-22232690] Go here for details. We know it doesnt fix everything reported, but rather than wait until after christmas we wanted to make sure the stuff we had out and tested got to reach everyone playing rather than just people who opted into beta. Tomorrow pretty much everyone on the team go off to celebrate christmas. We will be back on 8/1 full of candy and fighting spirit and start working on reported issues for the next hotfix. I'll also give you some roadmap for the future then when it comes to patches. Merry Christmas everyone (although I suspect I'll see you around on the forum durign the holidays also ;)) Read the original post [quote]Useful links Official Website Hearts of Iron IV Wiki Hearts of Iron IV Development Diary Archive


    [ 2016-12-21 13:23:36 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Hotfix Patch 1.3.1 Live Now! [checksum: 8152]


    Hi, 1.3.1 hotfix is now live and should be downloading on steam as we speak (you might need to restart steam). If you discover any bugs in patch 1.3, please report them in the bug report forum as usual.

    Patchlog:


    - Garrison order should now be more stable and not reassign units quite as much on changing priorities - Allied AI now more hesitant to naval invade Germany and italy early on - Fixed some bugs restricting AI from template updates - Improved some target templates for AI - Reduced AI tendency to suicide attack into enemy lines - Fixed a problem in AI where front priorities would sometimes fluctuate wildly leading to a lot of front flip-flopping - AI now considers distance a bit more so wont pull most of its army vs ethiopia back early on - AI for observed country is no longer blocked from diplo responding when using human_ai - Improved AIs ability to prepare against enemies that they only have an ally sharing border with - Spearhead order no longer so concerned about protecting its flanks - When a Spearhed front is split, all units stay on the front that has the spearhed order attached to it - Fixed some event picture issues - Made the focus "Burn the royal portraits" available if South Africa has already broken free - Fixed some setup issues with NZL tech setup in 1939 - added cosmetic tag for Soviet-controlled Finland - changed national focus to Test the USSR for Japan to account for Manchukuo existing - Fixed a CTD in peace conferences - Fixed an issue with map stripe coloring not updating in peace conferences - Fixed some issues with credits - Shortcut for spearhead order is now Shift+X rather than B which was conflicting with strategic redeployment - CTD Fix: Launcher no longer has msaa and anisotropic filtering that could cause crashes. - CTD Fix: if player deleted a mod while launcher was running, and then selected it - CTD Fix: Should no longer crash in GUI if a modder deletes the vanilla window component - CTD Fix: Sometimes when hotjoining using manual server ID - CTD Fix: When using old saves or incompatible mods due to naval base positioning - CTD Fix: Tooltiping lend lease as it finishes could cause crashes - Fixed a crash on load with invalid mods, NOT a complete fix, its something we are looking into more for future update to help players clear their document folder of invalid cache files and corruption. - Launcher - Added a button (and a checkbox in crash report window), that offers to backup and delete all files that can potentially cause the stability problems. - Optimized ai processing of upgrades, should remove much of 1940+ performance spikes - A fix for a trade modifier not applied correctly if not bought the DLC. - Fix for RAJ Famine removal not really needing corruption squashing - Fix for Mexico Civil War inconsistencies - Fix for missing SAF factories from focus - Fix for missing INS convoys causing issues with trade/resource system - Fix for missing event in CAN focus tree - Fix for RAJ being able to pick ideology pushers without picking a path - Fix for South Africa releasing African countries as not communist in the anti-colonialist crusade - Fixed modifier capped 0-1, so you could never lower tension for sending volunteers for a country. - Fixed script that used values outside the intended range - Added port to Lesser Sundra Islands. Of course there are issues reported that are not fixed in this hotfix, but rather than delay it to get those in as well we felt we needed to make sure the things we had was out to people before Christmas. If you are one of the people with startup crashes due to mods this update both solves issues with that and gives everyone a new option to clean up their user folder easily of any old remnants of mods or other random detritus (what was causing many of the issues for people on release). Here is what it looks like (it will also let you do this through the crash report popup after restarting a crashed game):
    Read original post!


    [ 2016-12-21 13:12:06 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Weekend Deal - Hearts of Iron IV, 33% Off

    Save 33% on Hearts of Iron IV as part of this week's Weekend Deal*!

    *Offer ends Monday at 10AM Pacific Time


    [ 2016-12-16 06:57:00 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Hearts of Iron IV - Together For Victory Released!


    Reinforcements Have Arrived, eh? Together for Victory is Here. STOCKHOLM – 15 December 2016 – The time has come for all the subjects of his Majesty to stand shoulder to shoulder against Fascism. Will you answer the call? Together for Victory, the first expansion for Hearts of Iron IV, is now available on major digital retailers. This add-on for Paradox’s grand strategy epic about the tumultuous years leading to and including WWII puts the British Dominions and Commonwealth nations in the spotlight. The major new mechanic is the Autonomy system. Nations still subject to a greater power have a range of actions available to them depending on how subservient they are. A Dominion will have some constraints on its foreign policy, but will be more independent than a puppet regime. Through decisions and actions, these subjects can assert themselves and gain full independence. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1N4g7Irsdyk Together for Victory also includes: New National Focuses: Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and India each receive their own National Focus Trees, bringing their history to life Spearheads: A new order simplifies breakthroughs in land invasions Continuous Focuses: Choose a National Focus to boost your nation’s capabilities over time, prioritizing one aspect of your military machine over another Alternate Histories: Each of the Dominion nations has alternate history branches. Lead South Africa to a Communist revolution that will end segregation but alienate Great Britain. Make Canada a Fascist state warily eyeing the giant to the south. Tech Sharing: Cozy up to an advanced great power and take advantage of their research progress to accelerate your own development. Combat Log: Extensive details on the performance of your divisions in battle are now available for you, Commander. Request Lend Lease: Ask for assistance from across the seas in the form of lend lease, adding new vehicles and equipment to beleaguered armies. New Art: New portraits for new leaders, old leaders have some portraits redone, and new unit designs and event pictures make their debut. Sign up for a new challenge in Hearts of Iron IV: Together for Victory


    [ 2016-12-15 14:01:23 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Patch 1.3 - Torch is live now!


    ################################################################ ############ VERSION 1.3 "Torch" ########### ################################################################ ####################################################### # Together For Victory Expansion ####################################################### - New focus trees, generals, and ministers for Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and India including alternate history paths. - 19 New 3d models for commonwealth infantry, planes and equipment as well as accompanying 2d art - New Autonomy system where a nations autonomy can move between Annexed, Integrated puppet, Puppet, Colony, Dominion or Free with different effects. - Masters can recruit subject forces - Masters can build in subject territory - Continuous National Focuses are new focuses that give running bonuses (basic ones included in patch) - A Land Battle Log giving you history and statistics of combats for a theater (basic history list included in patch) - A new Spearhead batteplan command where units will aggressively take only marked provinces (great for encirclements using BP tool) - Ability to request lend lease from other nations - A technology sharing system where members of the commonwealth or factions can benefit from each others technological advances - You can now release a nation as puppet and decide to continue playing as it - 3 new commonwealth themed music tracks by composer Andreas Waldetoft - Voice over sound for infantry units in: German, French, Italian, British english, American english, Spanish, Russian, Mandarin, Japanese, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian and Swedish languages. ############################### # Free Features & Important ############################### - Theaters now indicate number of attacking and defending combats with color for status - Can now configure garrison order for what to guard. - Can now edit existing lend lease details - Added cosmetic tags for european states that are puppets of Germany - Added cosmetic tags for east-european states that are puppets of the Soviet Union - Added cosmetic tags for a number of British colonies (including a former one) - Added a new type of equipment design company (support units) - Added Manchukuo to the game. May God have mercy on us all (also a bunch of other nations!). - Added achievement viewer - Added a music player - Added outdated equipment alert - Added outdated and new production indicators for production view - Added several new generals - Enable player to call subjects to war even if the player isn't war leader - Buildings can now increase in cost for each level. Forts and naval forts now ramp up in cost the higher the level - Interesting countries screen can show more interesting countries with special national focus trees - Air attack (from AA battalions) now counteract enemy air superiority effects in combat and for movement - Warscore system now uses combats instead of just taking provinces (these give a lot less) to reward nations - Added 12 new achievements ################################## # AI ################################## - Tweaked up base AI research factor for mechanized and lowered top lvl infantry weapons a little - Moved Weserubung focus to be taken earlier in historical ai focuses mode - Prevented ai from researching technologies more than one year ahead of time - AI now takes research bonuses into account for picking techs - Fixed casting errors in AI that could make it assign troups to a non-optimal front, and also cause overflows leading to random madness - AI no longer ONLY saves all its nukes for punishing the enemy taking their own cities - Improved AIs ability to adhere to supply limits. - AI now attempts to recover when units are unable to reach desired front location. - AI now attempts to detect and react to many encirclement opportunities, both against itself and against enemies. Includes evacuating dangerous areas and cutting off bottlenecks. - Tweaked prio for what AI considers "weak enemy" to avoid attracting too many units. - Added contininent prioritization for the AI with high scores to Europe and the Pacific, but low to Africa. - Fixed bug where AI would keep swapping a fighter with land equipment at the top of the list for all eternity - Various fixes and tweaks to AI naval invasions. - AI should now be capable of using rockets. - AI sets up a couple of fleets to be used for special missions. - Tweaked AI research desires. - Tons of AI front balancing work. AI randomly abandoning fronts should no longer happen, among many other things. - Removed block from AI preventing it from adding more support than columns of regiments. - Various bugfixes and improvements to AI template design. - Made AI capable of making % of production LL and should increase their production accordingly - Made AI threat assessment properly include faction members of countries they are about to enter war with - Made sure that AI does not completely block itself when having multiple invasion orders against the same area but being unable to cover the regions for all of them at the same time - Made AI better at supporting naval invasions by focusing on the next one to complete preparation. - Tweaked naval invasion priority to make them more inclined to take islands (particularly with air bases) and home region - AI no longer ends up in strange state where they are assigned to a root order but not a following attack order. - Split up AI garrison order in two: home area and other areas. - AI is no longer using all types of garrison locations - Made AI invasions scriptably more unpredictable. - Made sure that a factor of 0 in tech script blocks research, and that it can not randomly get a negative score when picking tech. - Fixed strange bug in AI order assignment that left units assigned to a group but not an order. - Scary fix makes AI actually consider all target areas of enemy, in stead of one at a time. Should set pacific area ablaze when the time comes, and keep the invasions rolling. - Made sure AI is capable of calling subjects into wars even if they are not in a faction. - Fixed crazy random bug in AI that could randomly reassign units to one front before recovering over the next few days - Tweaked crazy production AI that lead to air fields in very bad places waaaaay too early - Fixed problem that caused garrison order to not garrison forts even when it was selected - Made sure that coastal defense garrison order prioritizes ports over empty coast if not enough units to cover entire coast - Made sure AI no longer ends up switching between mutually exclusive techs even when halfway through. - AI no longer spams trucks like they were some kind of war winning superweapon. - AI countries now will always call subjects who cannot decline into war. - Fixed AI leaving military factories unassigned. - Improved AIs capability of determining if ready for war as well as AIs ability to ask again. - Made AI able to remove regiments in template design under certain circumstances. - Made absolutely sure that the AI uses military factories, even if it does not want to build more air planes. - Rebalanced AI desire to produce infantry equipment. - AI does not trust countries in other factions even if they have a NAP with them. - Unitcontroller does not consider provinces empty when a division is fighting its way out of it. Should reduce front shuffling. - Stabilized AI invasion prio scores. Should result in invasions not swapping units around as much and randomly getting canceled. - Blocked the AI from swapping the last support battalion int template design over and over. - Added AI strategy to tweak desire for modifying templates. - Fixed overflow that cause some countries to not build planes causing USA to end up with 0 strategic bombers. - Made sure released AI countries don't get stuck building nothing. - added a naval base in northern China to try and encourage Japan to engage in China - adjusted ai weights for Germany to allow non-historical Germany to actually decide to go with China instead of Japan - adjusted Soviet historical focus list slightly to account for focus requirements - Germany will no longer try and befriend Japan if Japan is already in faction with them. Germany doesn't l-like Japan or anything! - Garrison orders logic was significantly improved - China no longer accepts puppeting with historical focuses on unless Japan is comically strong. China accepting now also adds World Tension - Added system of scripable ai areas for ai prioritization - Fixed bug in unit controller that would lead to provinces not getting any units. - improved italy's minister picking AI - increased priority on some early industry techs for AI - Fixed a problem with naval invasions getting destroyed upon execution for AI - Fixed an issue with AI's old templates becoming honeypots for updates - Improved German production AI strategy - Marked equipment as correct type for AI to avoid it getingt caught in truck vortex - Tweaked german idea selection for chief of air force - Fixed bug where ai strategy for template upgrades would pick wrong target - Tweaked japan starting strategies for divisions, less trucks for the truck throne - Tweaked japan target infantry template to try and keep their costly madness down - Tweaked chinese tech ai - Tweaked minsiter selection ai for japan - Tweaked minsiter selection ai for germany - Tweaked minsiter selection ai for france - Tweaked trait evaluations for AI - Fixed issue where AI always thought negative modifiers were bad, even when they were good (bad ai! no I mean good ai!) - AI is now blocked from putting CAS on naval bombing missions. Should help GER and JAP - Japan will no longer approach Germany for an alliance if Germany is not leader of a faction - AI should no longer be able to cancel unit movement that is retreating. - Further improvement to unit balancing between fronts - AI should no longer leave civilian factories unassigned ################################## # UI ################################## - Focus trees now remember their position when closed. Resets when looking at other trees - Diplomacy window 'sort by our opinion' now handles reverse sort - Proper highlighting of 'add new command group' button - Fixed overflow on long nation names in trade - Subject view, manage occupation and idea subwindows in politics view are now mutually exclusive and wont stack on top of each other - Added new icon to division modifiers in combat to highlight AA support - Setting up lend lease no longer says convoys are needed always even when they arent - Trade interface no longer incorrectly states that you need convoys when you dont - Amount of convoys indicated in trade interface now takes ones actually already used on route into account when displaying deficiencies - strait mapicons no longer eat dragboxes and zooming - added cool canadian motto to loading tips - Fixed war view so ally does not wrongly show up in both member and uncalled sections. - Now dangerous naval invasion alert disappears correctly when enemy invasion fails - Dangerous naval invasion alert now disappears in max a month after success instead of next hour - Added In the Field and In Training to Manpower tooltip in top-bar. - Changed some equipment names. Fixed a lot of typos. - Added glorious manchuria leader Henry Pu Yi for benefit of all - Map icons don't merge naval and land ones now, yay - Added flags for ANG BOT COG MZB KEN and ZIM - Added mr Orde Wingate, FOR TEH ORDE - Added 4 new indian generic leader portraits - Added 4 new african generic leader portraits - Around 60 new focus icons added - Around 34 new national spirit icons added - Added 108 new report and news event pics - Added training indicator for armies in theater list - Added custom backgrounds and glow to show new and out of date items in production view - Made selected unit and wings sexier and easier to see (thanks Roflbinflood) - 'Received' and 'Given' military access relations are displayed with different icons in diplomacy view - Always pause for peace conferences in mp when a human player is involved - Longer range now supported for "mutually exclusive" national focus indicator - Resources now always shown in peace conferences - Option slider for setting volume of ingame voices - Clarified tooltips for breakthrough for attacks in combat view - Improved tooltip for "dismantle faction" button - Fixed misleading tooltip for naval invasion order - added DEF names for cosmetic tags ("The ") - Fix for missing generic military theorist pictures in country technology view - Fixed localization issue with Jet tactical bombers - Fixed a number of legibility issues with certain events and country names - Fixed soviet motorized equipment being invisible when in production - Fixed an issue where unique motorized icons were not showing in production menu - Fixed a proper endline to collapsing deploy entries - Fixed bug that prevented AI from rebasing its airwings - Fixed a display bug in news.228 event - Added tooltip to show total manpower of selected divisions in division list - Map colors and stripes are now properly refreshed in the building constructions view. - Fix for incorrect party popularity value in 'Stage a coup' dialog ################################## # Modding ################################## - Added num_tech_sharing_groups trigger to count active tech groups for a nation - Focus.AutoComplete now no longer closes focus screen or does a popup - added num_subjects > x trigger - "-hands_off" start flag now set max speed automatically unless another speed is set on command line (enjoy fire and forget go home support) - Changed the modifier send_volunteer_size to add to volunteer cap. - Added send_volunteer_factor to modify current allowed divisions. - Attrition from heat and extreme heat in provinces is now separate and called heat_attrition. - Added new graphical culture commonwealth_2d. - Added if-else trigger. Syntax: if = { limit = {} else = {} } - Added else to if effect. Syntax: if = { limit = {} else = {} } - Made add_building_construction effect able to take some really special ugly input, that makes it easier to place province building. Use at your own peril. - Added modifiers cost of military leaders. military_leader_cost_factor, army_leader_cost_factor and navy_leader_cost_factor. - Added possibility to set unit cap on field marshalls. - Added new way of naming countries. _ideology_ _ideology_subject __subject. Can use OVERLORDNAMEDEF and OVERLORDADJ to insert name/adj of overlord in own name. __ideolog.. etc etc. - Added add_ideas command to console - Added on_release_as_puppet on_release_as_free triggered from the manage occupied territories menu - Added 'set_cosmetic_tag' effect wich allows to dynamically change country's appearance: name, flag, map color, names & portraits pool - Added 'on_subject_annexed', 'on_subject_autonomy_level_change' and 'on_subject_free' onaction events - Added 'add_to_tech_sharing_group', 'remove_from_tech_sharing_group' effects - Fixed CTD for reloadtechnologies command - It's now possible to script a message for the white_peace effect - Fixed bug that made it possible to really break AI production through script - Fixed diplomatic on_action scope set wrong - Added swap_ideas effect that will show the difference between bonuses of the two ideas. Syntax: swap_ideas = { remove_idea = add_idea = } ################################## # Database ################################## - Maintenance Company tech no longer belongs to armor company, which caused AI to waste tech bonus on it - added lvl 1 port to Labrador so that supply works there if canada/UK goes to war - Maracaibo now has correct name - Added Stanley Baldwin (thanks to tom_jones for base artwork!) - fixed bug in Italy National Focus tree (Capital ships focus now actually gives the naval XP it promises) - Japan can no longer create the Indian National Army if Raj is fascist or Japan is not at war with them - Japanese Battleship name "Yamato" no longer used for first battleship Japan builds, reserving it for future battleships (including super- and space-battleships) - Changed names for some political parties to be more accurate - Newsevent for “Eastern Poland to the Soviets” no longer shows two options if Soviet and Germany in same faction (there is a reason it is called “unholy”, guys) - added localisation for mountaineers_tech, cat_trade_interdiction and cat_battlefield_support - All ground forces in the Dutch East Indies are now under control of (colonial puppet) Indonesia. This should reduce the amount of Dutch units in Europe while keeping the balance of forces in the DEI roughly as it was before. - Added Pakistan as a releasable country - Added Angola, Botswana, Congo, Kenya, Mozambique and Zimbabwe/Rhodesia as releasable countries - added several hundred flavor names for equipment to a number of countries - Added British Malaya as a puppet of UK. - Added heat_attrition and heat_attrition_factor modifiers for both country and unit leaders. - Added Belarus as releasable country - One Australian land province is not wrongly marked as coastal anymore - Added Windhoek as VP to South-West Africa state - Added two additional flavor names for Japanese tanks - Restored Port Arthur to its proper historical significance, a decision that was not in any way related to AI performance and any such allegations are lies - Added tech sharing for Tizard mission events (if you have TFV) - USA no longer eligible for generic election events before 1948 - Fixed a number of inconsistencies and errors in the French and German naval OoB for 36 and 39 starts - Fixed an issue where de Gaulle could be replaced as a leader of Free France for no good reason - Added colonial governor as official leader for Malaysia and Indonesia (retire on breaking free) - Added Yemeni merchant marine (5 whole convoys!) - Added a number of cosmetic tags for certain constellations of puppets - Added Italian generals Emilio De Bono, Italo Balbo and Radolfo Graziani. Added French generals Charles Huntzinger, Henri Giraud and Philippe Leclerc (Thanks to Sleight of Hand for this and other things ported from the Vanilla+ mod!) - Added cosmetic flags for German dominated UKR and BLR - British colonies now always use British equipment names and pictures if no unique ones exist ################################## # Balance ################################## - Increasing custom difficulty levels now also lower attrition units takes from that nation - Moved mechanized tech levels down one year, so first is unlockable in 1940 - Increased hardness to 80% for light tanks from 70% - Increased hardness to 50% for light tank variants from 40% - Increased hardness to 90% for medium tanks from 80% - Increased hardness to 65% for medium tank variants from 55% - Increased hardness to 95% for heavy tanks from 90% - Increased hardness to 80% for heavy tank variants from 70% - Increased hardness to 99% for super heavy tanks from 95% - Increased hardness to 90% for super heavy tank variants from 80% - Added +10% hardness to motorized from first level mechanized tech - Bomber and CAS aces now use better bonus modifiers for attacking - CAS attacks now scale properly with active planes rather than whole wing when looking at ace bonuses - Added hard-cap for nations to become majors, 35 factories are needed. (should avoid wars dragging out into whack-a-mole-the-new-major as you blob) - Reduced air superiority boost for offensive formations (doctrine) from 25% to 15% - Reduced air superiority boost for logistical bombing (doctrine) from 25% to 15% - Added air superiority boost for combat unit destruction (doctrine) at 10% - Reduce base free repair from 0.5 IC to 0.3 IC - Reduced agility of Naval bombers to 30-35-40 - Reduced agility of Close Air Support planes to 35-39-44 - Reduced air attack of Close Air Support planes to 6-10-14 - Reduced air attack of Naval bombers to 6-10-14 - Brought carrier plane agility in line with land based versions - Carriers can no longer reinforce with fresh planes while in combat - Added a small amount of threat to more imperialist parts of US foreign policy focus tree branch - Nerfed Raj tech level at start - Reduced chinese civilian start ic by 1 - Nerfed French starting armor equipment in 1936 into the *bleep* ground - Germany no longer allowed to pull Turkey into their faction after they have capitulated. No fun allowed. - Warscore system now uses combats instead of just taking provinces (these give a lot less) to reward nations - Air attack (from AA battalions) now counteract enemy air superiority effects in combat and for movement ################################## # Bugfix ################################## - Fixed issue where some rocket sites would not show up on map - Fixed issue where small damage to aircraft would be ignored - Fixed issue where a command group icon was sometimes not selectable - Fixed issue where CAS ace would actually have a detrimental effect to damage done in land combat - Can no longer use console after resynch in MP - Nukes now impact owners national unity, not controller - Fixed wierd scaling issue with main menu bg - Fixed manpower not being returned from fleets - Fixed the issue when relations could be transferred wrong in civil war - Now lend lease has the highest priority in equipment distribution - Added cap for the factories going negative in multiplayer after very fast clicking - Now units that doesn't have supply path to the capital will count as encircled while disbanding them - Fixed the issue when division view was not showing air attack - Added fallback if ship names were not properly scripted in the database - Fixed the bug when player could call to arms country which was already at war in the war overview - US focus Defense of the Pacific is no longer blocked by Japan having the same ideology as Japan. - Stopped Japanese cloning program (Removed one of the Matsuis ). - Added category tags for some technologies. engineers_tech recon_tech mountaineers_tech military_police_tech hospital_tech logistics_tech signal_company_tech maintenance_company_tech. - Removed highest level artillery high command for most releasable nations. Replaced with lowest. - Fixed civil wars not spawning if revolter only has 1 state. - Winter_attrition now does more than nothing for unit leaders. - Save games now store enabled DLC bitmask which is checked. UI doesn't allow to load save game if some of DLCs are missed. - Map mode is no longer switched for secondary coop player if host player assigns/un-assigns naval mission - Releasable countries list is now correctly refreshed after player releases any country - Countries aren't displayed as if they capitulated twice in world tension log - Fixed issues where exp.forces could stay in wrong countries after a peace conference. - More small air wings is no longer better than less large air wings. - Air Accidents now happens equally fair regardless of how many different air wings you have. - Fixed corrupted theatres and fronts after the peace deal. - Fixed issues in unit naval transportation mechanics causing sometimes a unit to not leave it's port, and AI could not do anything about it. - Minor fixes in the supply systems - There is no longer created an invisible naval route from the capital state to itself. (No player could spot it. We found it while debugging the code). - Battleplans "estimated execution" province stripes are now correct when the source and destination are both 1 province long. - Fixed exploit where a player could avoid loosing most of the equipment in combat by doing save and reload right before the combat was over. - Nukes are doing now the real damage to the units, by reducing the manpower and equipment, not just str/org bars! - Player can no longer trade with factories gained from other trades. Tooltips was saying that, but nothing blocked the interface from doing so. - Fixed some possible gui issue after peace conference - Fixed issue with calculating losses from manpower - Fixed issue where river crossing would not impact breakthrough of attackers - Expeditionary forces now use the manpower pool of their origin country - Fixed an issue with Burma road focus not giving rewards unless Britain actually owned india and parts of China (Britain owning India and parts of China would probably not want to help China anyway) - Fixed bug where some lakes could remain controlled by the enemy, and there was no way to conquer it. - Puppeting either the Soviet Union or Germany voids the MR-Pact - Neville Chamberlain resigning through event no longer forces fascist or communist leaders to resign - Removed exploit where the SOV Great Patriotic war could become permanent ############################### # Stability & Performance ############################### - Fixed potential CTD in num_faction_members trigger - Added some safety agaisnt CTDs when doinh really broken saves with mods - Fixed a savegame reading bug leading to broken saves - Fixed potential CTD in trigger checks for home areas - Fixed rare order-related CTD. - Fixed CTD in automated handling of units in fronts. - Fixed CTD in unit map icon. - Fixed more divs by 0 than you can shake a stick at. - Made exiled units move to the area closest to them in stead of their capital. - Fixed CTD when player eventually clicked on the sea province in the construction mode - Fixed CTD in lend lease view, when player closed the view while having acceptance tooltip - Fixed memory leaks in political and unit stats view - Fixed CTD - AI referring to a deleted front. - Fixed CTD - Extremely rare and difficult to reproduce crash regarding the multithreading. - Fixed CTD - Caused by the division by 0 when a certain naval combat took place. - Fixed CTD - Rare crash when going back to main menu. - Fixed CTD - When trying to access a garbage memory data (regarding the supply naval routes) when loading some savegames. - Fixed CTD - When trying to access some data of deleted unit that was sent as a volunteers. - Optimized by ~70% super heavy performance spike after the peace deals. - Fixed OOS with peace conferences where not all human players were involved - Fix almost guaranteed OOS in mp for AI white peace - Fixed potential OOS on save load and some units were encircled - Fixed OOS due to multithreading issue in air superiority calculations - Very rare CTD fix (framerate dependent), when clicking CONTINUE to load the recent save - Fixed malformed map texture in low-detail gfx settings. Enabled some basic lighting that solves the tiling problem, which improves the look, but makes the shader a tiny bit heavier.


    [ 2016-12-15 13:50:56 CET ] [ Original post ]

    HOI4 Dev Diary - Achievements Patchlog


    Hello everyone! This will be the last development diary for Together for Victory before release tomorrow. Releasing something you've worked on for a long time and finally having it in the hands of gamers (or whatever the closest digital distribution equivalent is ;) ) is always a mix of excitement and nerves and its going to be really great to see what you think about this first step of updates to Hearts of Iron IV. Anyways, without further ado the topics of today: Achievements and the Torch patchlog!

    Achievements


    To make it easier to keep an overview over achievements and how to complete them we are adding an achievement viewer in the expansion:
    Entries also have tooltips showing details about the requirements to get them. Of course we also have more achievements to complete for you! Braaaaains!
    As Canada, complete the Send in the Zombies focus. District 9
    As South Africa, have 9 civilian factories in Transvaal. Our Words Are Backed With Nuclear Weapons
    As India, develop and deploy a nuke. You must have the Quit India Movement national spirit. Crusader Kings
    As South Africa, finish the A King for our People focus and take Jerusalem. Crusader Kings 2
    As South Africa, finish the Anti-Colonialist Crusade focus, release all European colonies via the focus, and take London. Rule Britannia
    As any British Subject state, conquer all of Britain. Cut The Strings
    Break free from your overlord as a puppet. It's 1812 All Over Again
    As Canada, take and hold Washington D.C. The weapons of the Third Emu War
    As Australia, use a nuclear bomb on core Australian territory. I Am the Tong Master
    As South Africa, break free from the UK and puppet another nation. The Empire Strikes Back
    As Britain, declare war on one of your former subjects. The Puppetmaster
    Have at least 26 subject. Freegypt!
    As Egypt, go from puppet to a free nation using the autonomy system.

    Torch 1.3 Patchlog


    As we always do expansion releases are accompanied by a free patch with bugfixes, improvements and features. The one coming out together with Together for Victory tomorrow is 1.3 which we've named "Torch". Here is the full list preview, click the spoiler to read it: Go to our official forum to read the full 1.3 changelog Due to these changes, 1.3 will not really be savegame compatible with 1.2.1 so we'll make sure there is a saved steam version you can go back to if you want to finish a game you are currently running (as normal it will be named 1.2.1 in beta list). We are also adding a few extra generals to Italy and France who were a bit lacking (as part of free patch). People who follow my twitter might have seen them already, but for everyone else:

    AI Update


    SteelVolt has been writing a series of smaller AI diaries and here is the last one before release: AI Update #4 You can read the previous ones here if you missed them: AI Update #1 (part of last diary) AI Update #2 AI Update #3 Also don't forget today's World War Wednesday stream starting at 16:00CET on www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive. We'll be starting off a multiplayer dev clash multiplayer while me and Daniel answer questions about the dev diary and patch log. The dev clash MP will be concluding in a longer stream on Thursday during release. Expect much blood, sweat, tears and salt. If you are an owner of the Expansion Pass you'll already get it (together with the next 2 expansions). Owning Together for Victory will also grant you new forum avatars and an unique icon! (actually people with just base game will also get a few new ones as of today) [quote]Useful links Official Website Hearts of Iron IV Wiki Hearts of Iron IV Development Diary Archive


    [ 2016-12-14 10:16:59 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Invasion Date Set, Together for Victory Lands December 15


    Invasion Date Set, Together for Victory Lands December 15


    New Video Dev Diary Reveals Changes Ahead STOCKHOLM - December 7th 2016 - The British Dominions and Commonwealth states take centre stage in Together for Victory, the first expansion to Hearts of Iron IV, the hit World War II grand strategy wargame from Paradox Development Studios. And now a date has been set for the brave offspring of the Empire to show off their new uniforms. Together for Victory will be available on December 15, 2016 for $14.99 at major digital retailers, including the Paradox Store. This expansion is not only the first for Hearts of Iron IV, but sets the model for many future add-ons, bringing new detail and gameplay options to nations outside of the great powers. Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and the Raj of India have been given unique National Focus trees, more leaders to choose from, and a selection of industrial corporations to add extra color to your experience. Game Designer Dan Lind has enlisted to present a short video summarizing what you can expect: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__7H765fA7Q Together for Victory also includes:
    • New Autonomy System: Subject states are not merely puppets, but can have a range of action. Dominions, Puppet States, and Colonies can either work their way to total independence.
    • Spearheads: A new order simplifies breakthroughs in land invasions
    • Continuous Focuses: Choose a National Focus to boost your nations capabilities over time, prioritizing one aspect of your military machine over another
    • Alternate Histories: Each of the Dominion nations has alternate history branches. Lead South Africa to a Communist revolution that will end segregation but alienate Great Britain. Make Canada a Fascist state warily eyeing the giant to the south.
    • Tech Sharing: Cozy up to an advanced great power and take advantage of their research progress to accelerate your own development.
    • Combat Log: Extensive details on the performance of your divisions in battle are now available for you, Commander.
    • Request Lend Lease: Ask for assistance from across the seas in the form of lend lease, adding new vehicles and equipment to beleaguered armies.
    • New Art: New portraits for new leaders, old leaders have some portraits redone, and new unit designs and event pictures make their debut.
    Together for Victory is just ten days away! Mobilize your inner army and prepare for an even wider perspective on the world’s darkest hour.


    [ 2016-12-07 14:15:56 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Cosmetic tags, art, gameplay and AI


    Hi everyone! As some people from the fan gathering already know I am happy to announce that Together For Victory will be released on the 15th of December. This means only 2 dev diaries left, and today's will be pretty big so we have time to present everything we have been up to! This diary will also start off a series of smaller mini-diaries about the AI from SteelVolt.

    Cosmetic Tags


    Cosmetic tags are a new tool that we think modders in particular will like. While not being a full-on tag-switching or union-tag mechanic, it can probably be used to achieve most of the effects. In the most basic sense, a cosmetic tag just tells the game to use a different name (and flag!) for a country while certain conditions are met. For example, the new countries of Malaysia and Indonesia start the game as integrated puppets of Britain and the Netherlands. Calling them Malaysia or Indonesia would make little sense historically. So they both get a cosmetic tag that sets their name to “British Malaya” and “Dutch East Indies”, respectively. They also get the historically correct flag (which is, of course, the most important part of this new mechanic!). The cosmetic tag gets dropped when they break free. Cosmetic tags can also define which name pool and portraits a country will use - India will use European names and portraits for its autogenerated generals as long as it has its cosmetic tag. We are planning to extend this to at least include ship names as well, but that will probably not make it into the expansion at launch due to unforeseen issues. Where it gets interesting is with auto-generated cosmetic tags, which allow for a lot of flavor. One type is tied to the new autonomy system, one type is tied to the overlord, and both can be combined. In effect, this means that we can specify what a country that has become a puppet of another country is called at each level of autonomy. For example, if Germany takes Indonesia as a puppet, they will be called “German East Indies” for as long as they remain a puppet (in fact, the way it is scripted means this works for any country - there may even be a Luxembourgian East Indies). Eagle-eyed viewers of the MP stream at the fan gathering may have already seen another instance of this happening. The first use of this new option was fairly obvious.
    The second one was also fairly clear.
    For modders, check out how you can use them here: It should be noted that these generated cosmetic tags require very little scripting - just an entry in the right localization file. But the possibilities are quite extensive. Modders can freely set cosmetic tags with set_cosmetic_tag = and remove them with drop_cosmetic_tag = yes. The autogenerated cosmetic tags are Subject_Overlord_(ideology)_autonomy_level, so for example: BLR_GER_autonomy_dominion:0 "Weißreußen" or ZIM_ENG_autonomy_puppet:0 "British Rhodesia" or LIT_SOV_communism_autonomy_integrated_puppet:0 "Lithuanian SSR" We are hoping to use this feature a lot more in the future to improve immersion and aid in storytelling, and we are certainly looking forward to the crazy cool stuff the community can come up with. We have also decided to bring back Manchukuo. Originally left out to make it easier for the Japanese AI to fight China, we are now happy to report that we have fixed the issues that Manchukuo caused to the Japanese. Manchukuo starts as an integrated puppet of Japan and does not have a unique focus tree just yet.

    Unit Art


    As part of fleshing out the commonwealth nations in the expansion we wanted to add new 3D models and 2D art representation for equipment and vehicles. This is part of our idea to prefer combining focus tree/flavor with relevant art rather than splitting it up as much as possible and probably how future country packs will look too.
    I'll let you guys see if you can identify all the vehicles :) These are also of course represented in the tech trees etc:

    Warscore changes


    As warscore became more important with the new autonomy feature shortcomings in the old system became apparent. Before 1.3 you get warscore only for taking provinces, and it doesn’t really matter how well defended (in fact the best way of playing India to freedom was to ignore Britain’s calls for aid in europe and rampage across the emptyness of Siberia). To solve this warscore is now earned from battles. The importance of the location matter, as does if you are winning or defending. The most beneficial score wise is to be an attacking victor that grabs land, but others are no longer left with nothing. For a combat with multiple nations present the score will be divided by how much of a contribution they have each made.

    Anti-Air Changes



    Support and mainline Anti air battalions have been pretty underused for division designs, so to make those more attractive we have changed the rules a bit. The air attack stat of those battalions now reduce the effect of the enemy air superiority effect, both in combat as well as outside (speed penalty). This means that even if you can’t match the enemy air force you can compensate by outfitting your divisions with anti-air. (before someone asks the AA division in the screenshot has an insane amount of AA to get that high bonus and is pretty awful for anything but shooting down enemy planes, which it does very well).

    AI improvements #1


    The other day I ran a poll on twitter and 630 people voted for us to do special smaller AI diaries, so we will be kicking this off by including the first part by SteelVolt here, but after that he will be posting them separately up until release (next one on friday). Initially he will be going over the patch changelog step by step (the whole log will get revealed the day before release, but I figured I’d point out where the stuff is coming from already :) ), so over to him: Hey everyone! This time around we thought we would tell you about AI fixes and improvements by looking at some points in the changelog and go a bit deeper into what they actually mean. First of all, working on a game like Hearts of Iron is a real adventure. So many interacting systems leads to butterfly effects all over the place, sometimes in unexpected ways. And in no other area is this more clear than AI. Fix one thing, and something else becomes a problem. I will be sharing some stories from the trenches over these diaries, And I thought I would start with one from when we were working on Sunflower. When working with the balance of units in Africa (I think we can all recall those massive wars being fought in the deserts of north Africa). Making the AI a lot less interested in sending units there did indeed make them not put all their troops there. What we saw in our hands off runs the following days was that Germany struggled really bad with taking Europe. A lot more than it had before. It turned out that when the Allies no longer cared about Africa, they would send almost all their forces immediately into France to help them push back Germany. This even included Australia. So in a sense, I am playing a super complex game of whack-a-mole with the code. Anyway, since this is the first of these to focus on the changelog, I thought it would be a good idea to take a look at some of the straight up bugs that has been taken care of. - AI now attempts to recover when units are unable to reach desired front location.
    • It turned out that encircled AI units tended to become overly passive. This was due to them playing it too safe and not being able to find a secure path back to the main front. Expect them to fight back a bit more now.
    - AI no longer ends up in strange state where they are assigned to a root order but not a following attack order.
    • Reassignments could sometimes lead units to get stuck not being assigned to an advancement order. Since they were not flagged as unassigned (they were, after all, assigned to the root order), and given that orders often ends up being split, this was not always evident. This would improve the AI's ability to attack in general.
    - Fixed strange bug in AI order assignment that left units assigned to a group but not an order.
    • The underlying cause is not as related to the previous one as it may seem, and the effects were even more dire. The tricky part here is that due to how the game works internally, some actions must be resolved in a central update loop before others can be done. This means that the AI is forced to set up their stuff in steps, but due to that the last steps changes MAY be outdated, the code to manage all this easily becomes a bit hard to follow. The fixes for this in particular should make the AI behave more reliably in relation to the plans it makes.
    - Made sure AI is capable of calling subjects into wars even if they are not in a faction.
    • Another really basic one. Turns out the AI would not even bother considering calling in countries to wars if they were not in the same faction. There are, however, countries that CAN be called into wars that do not follow this rule: puppets. While most puppets are set up as being part of factions, at least before wars happen, this slipped under the radar for quite a while. The notable exception is Japan and its early war with China.
    That's it for round one, and I have to tell you I am really stoked about getting the update into your hands. If your pet peeve was not covered in this text, just relax and wait for the other ones. The next will be more about bug fixes, and after that I will go into improvements. Next diary (that isnt about AI) will go over achievements, some UI improvements and the full patch log with changes! And don't forget today's World War Wednesday stream starting at 16:00CET on www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive. We'll be showing you Together for Victory features and answer as many questions about the expansion as we can during the stream. Read the original post [quote]Useful links Official Website Hearts of Iron IV Wiki Hearts of Iron IV Development Diary Archive


    [ 2016-12-07 11:13:42 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Together for Audio


    ATTENTION SOLDIERS! For this Dev Diary I’ll talk about something you might not be that used to have in Hearts of Iron franchise: Voice Over! For this expansion I wanted to do something more with the audio and trying out something completely new for our history based games. So I wanted to have your units reply back in their native tongue whenever you select them and giving them order and there should also by different Voice Over lines when you select units during combat, if you now are playing as a country which we support Voice Over for now. Here is a short overview on which languages we have recorded:

    • German
    • French
    • Italian
    • British
    • American
    • Spanish
    • Russian
    • Simplified Chinese
    • Japanese - Bonus -
    • Danish
    • Finnish
    • Norwegian
    • Swedish
    Of course since our office is in Scandinavia we wanted also let some of the our Dev's from the Hearts of Iron 4 team record their own voices for our Nordic languages. I’ll let you guys try to figure out who has provided with voices once you have the expansion. ;) I have attached a small youtube video which will give you a sense on how the German, Russian and Japanese VO sounds and triggers in the game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Dq1hjuGATs There will be 4 different “states” that the Voice Over will be triggered in;
    • “Idle”
    • “Combat”
    • “Combat Winning”
    • “Retreat”
    VO lines tied to the “Idle” state will be triggered when the unit is not engaged in combat, “Combat” VO lines when your units are in combat while the “Combat Winning” will be triggered when your units are winning. “Retreat” is triggered when your units are retreating from combat if they are defeated. I want to talk about another topic and that is mods! With the new Voice Over system and script it is easy to mod your own Voice Over for the current languages and for other countries.. The easiest way to mod in your own audio files is simply just changing the .wav files to your own .wav files with the same name or just change the path in the .asset file. Below I’ll go more in depth in how you can script in your own Voice Over for those who might be interested: Modding: First thing you need to find is which “landcodes” we’re using in the game and you can locate these “landcodes” in this folder: Hearts of Iron IVhistorycountries These landcodes are important if you would like to mod in Voice Over for other countries than those we support at release of the expansion. Then later on you will need to open up the audio asset file which you will find in the dlc folder and it will be called “vo.asset”. After that you will mod the audio script like below: Here is how the German “soundeffect” may look like: soundeffect = { name = "GER_infantry_positive_combat" sounds = { sound = de_Positive_001 } max_audible = 1 max_audible_behaviour = fail volume = 0.45 volume_random_offset = { 0.0 -0.15 } playbackrate_random_offset = { 0.0 -0.15} } But if you replace “GER_” in the “soundeffect” instead to “HOL_” it should look like this: soundeffect = { name = "HOL_infantry_positive_combat" sounds = { sound = de_Positive_001 } max_audible = 1 max_audible_behaviour = fail volume = 0.45 volume_random_offset = { 0.0 -0.15 } playbackrate_random_offset = { 0.0 -0.15} } Now the German Voice Over will be triggered for Holland units when they are in combat instead for German units. You will apply the same method for the other type of Voice Lines which are scripted: _infantry_idle _infantry_neutral_combat _infantry_positive_combat _infantry_retreat Just script in the right landcodes and script in audio assets and I think you will be able to create really cool audio mods. Music: (handing over to Andreas Waldetoft here...) I have already done some British music for vanilla Hearts of Iron 4 score, but I wanted to expand on that and have an even more appropriate mood when playing as commonwealth countries. From fire ridden London, to tanks helping the British to victory in El Alamein. Together for Victory will come with 3 brand new themed tracks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRxK66AzfwQ To make managing and playing your music easier we are also adding a music player as part of the free 1.3 (Torch) patch.
    it lets you play/pause/skip songs and lets you pick of you want to use the regular in-game weighted song picking (certain songs for axis/allies/commintern etc) or plain random. Playlist changes are remembered also in your settings. Next week we will be looking at a bunch of new game stuff as well as taking a look at new art & models! Podcat: Don't miss the World War Wednesday stream today at 16:00CET over at https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive! Me and Daniel will be trying out the Great War mod for the first time :) Read the original post [quote]Useful links Official Website Hearts of Iron IV Wiki Hearts of Iron IV Development Diary Archive


    [ 2016-11-30 11:56:33 CET ] [ Original post ]

    New Zealand Combat Log


    Hi everyone! With the team now back from a few days on Malta (where we learned, among other things, that limestone walls trumps radar for warning about incoming italian bombers), we are back at full steam and have another dev diary for you talking about stuff coming in Together for Victory and the free 1.3 patch. First up is the new focus tree for New Zealand: New Zealand In 1936, the First Labor Government had just taken power in New Zealand, the smallest of the commonwealth dominions. This new government introduced a number of social reforms and created what would become the world's first modern welfare state. In practical terms, this gives you a much needed boost to your available manpower and provides more workforce for your factories, represented by a reduction in consumer goods required.
    Open bigger version With a very small industry, you'll have to work hard to expand your production capabilities. Fortunately, unique resources in the form of natural gas, oil and iron rich sands are available for you to exploit. Several industrial initiatives are also available to you and lucrative technology sharing focuses will give you a valuable advantage if you remain loyal to the commonwealth. If you choose to abandon Great Britain to it's fate however, there are three options for you. You could side with the Japanese as they are your biggest threat, or you could embrace the global revolution and form closer ties with the Soviet Union. The last option available is to establish a true independent New Zealand and take your own path. Perhaps by taking Australia on the way.
    Some of the new leaders & portraits for new zealand When working on the New Zealand tree, we wanted to include some important historical developments. The formation of the Royal New Zealand Navy and Air Force were important for the country's ability to defend itself. To aid you, two light cruisers and a number of aircraft will be transferred to the newly formed services. The Charlton Automatic Rifle, although historically never deployed, was a modification of the Lee Enfield rifles for automatic fire. This was just one of many efforts to make do with what limited resources they had at hand. Another such effort, perhaps not quite as successful, was the development of the Bob Semple "tank". This indigenous armored fighting vehicle was constructed from a tractor chassis, armed with no less than six Bren machine guns and was armored with corrugated metal plating. It was believed to be bulletproof.
    Combat Log You might have spotted changes to the theater interface in earlier screenshots, and now is the time to explain whats up!
    First of all there are two new indicators on the right. These show you how many active defensive and offensive combats are going, and if any of them are having problems. Its a good way of noticing if there are changes to the status of a front at a glance. Next to them is a button that opens up a brand new interface: The combat log.
    This new feature gives you access to history over combats for the selected command groups in the theater. Summarizing losses to combat damage, attrition, any combat modifiers that were present and breakdown on losses to air. The idea is for you to be able to analyze the situation after the combat is over. This part will be available for everyone as part of the free 1.3 "Torch" Patch. For people who get Together For Victory there are also two more tabs available letting you dig into lists of equipment losses for you and enemies and check out performance of division templates involved in the fighting.
    Thats it for today, next week I'll be inviting Jazzhole and Metal King over to talk about awesome new music and sound. Also don't forget to tune in for today’s World War Wednesday Livestream and find out if who of the Allies and Axis will be able to tip the balance in the war in Europe! Watch it live @16:00CET over at https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive! Read the original post [quote]Useful links Official Website Hearts of Iron IV Wiki Hearts of Iron IV Development Diary Archive


    [ 2016-11-23 11:48:50 CET ] [ Original post ]

    India - Struggle for Independence


    Hi everyone, after just getting back from enjoying our weekly Wednesday Indian food at a local place, what better topic to cover than India! India is a colony under British rule, that means that, unlike the dominions we have presented so far, they have more restrictions and limitations placed on them. These are things that you will want to shake off as a player - for example, unless you gain Dominion status you will not fully benefit from technology sharing.
    Enlarge image After Provincial elections are done India is faced with two paths towards freedom (Historically both occurred simultaneously to a degree, but player must decide which one they want to play). On one hand they can continue to cooperate with the British and earn their freedom or status as dominion through service and the autonomy system (see last week’s diary). India at this time is a nation split between the Quit India movement & Gandhi calling for freedom, various Princely states supporting the British as they fear losing their power, and a large Muslim community that can sway to support independence and the creation of Pakistan. If you check the rightmost part of the tree there are also British investors getting fat off of India which may gain you some short term benefits in military and civilian investments, but which will also set back your struggle for independence. On the other side the player can decide to go the non-cooperative path “Swaraj”, or self governing. This in effect puts you in the shoes of Subhas Chandra Bose trying to rally support for Indian independence from other factions. You can both ask Comintern and Axis here for backing. It is also possible to proceed without backing, but it is very difficult. With backing (or not) you can then launch a civil war and fight for your independence and continue to build up your nation free from the clutches of the British imperialists. Note that there is no classic "fascist or communist" path here, the support you get will dictate the direction for your nation. Bose was in my opinion much more interested in practical things and achieving freedom rather than promoting ideology and would have gone with any side that supported him (he asked Soviets first historically, but was told 'no'). It doesn't mean that you can't peacefully go communist etc, but it would be done using regular mechanics. Military wise India is famous for having the largest volunteer army in history at the end of WWII. To model this you are limited to a strict volunteer army until you gain higher autonomy levels. But several focuses give you forces from Gurkhas, Sikhs etc. India gets several choices for making its army more distinctly Indian: setting up local officer training of Indians, mountain artillery and jungle training etc.
    India also starts with the national spirit “risk of famine”. This is a serious internal issue that will be up to the player to solve. Famines have long been issues in the area, but war, corruption and the like will stress things to a breaking point. If you gain enough autonomy to gain control over local government, root out corruption and improve railways and infrastructure, you will be able to prevent the famine entirely, but it will put you into a bit of a race once you get dragged into World War II.
    Subject Forces As I hinted at last week the new autonomy system allows you to recruit forces from your subjects. This is done through the normal training & deployment interface where you can pick one of your subject’s division templates which gets copied over to you and is now marked as a subject template. These templates are a mix of yours and their manpower. For a colony its 30% of masters manpower and 70% of subjects. Actual equipment to arm them is supplied by the master. Other autonomy levels, like puppets, generally have lower requirements. These forces can only deploy in their home nation and must then be transported to other theaters. Using these forces also increases the subject's autonomy in the same way as expeditionary forces will, so its something the master needs to consider.
    We are going on a short company trip to Malta tomorrow, so there might be some delays to posting that day. Just a heads up :) Next week we will be taking a look at New Zealand and some other stuff! Remember to tune in for today’s World War Wednesday Livestream and find out if who of the Allies and Axis will be able to tip the balance in the war in Europe! Watch it live @16:00CET over at https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive! Read the original post [quote]Useful links Official Website Hearts of Iron IV Wiki Hearts of Iron IV Development Diary Archive


    [ 2016-11-16 14:03:31 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Autonomy


    As the swedish weather takes a turn for the worse it's time to huddle up around the tent heater and type up another diary. Today we will be talking about Autonomy which is a new concept replacing the old master-puppet relationship in previous Hearts of Iron games coming in the Together for Victory expansion.
    Instead of either being Free or Puppet nations can now live on a scale with fixed steps. The idea here is that we wanted both to flesh out relations between nation and give new gameplay abilities to gain freedom when playing as a puppet.
    Free

    • Well, nothing much to say here, it's how nations normally are.
    Dominion
    • Master may trade a bit above trade law limits
    • Master gets somewhat cheaper trade
    • Can not declare wars on its own (goes for all subject levels below also)
    • Can not refuse calls to war (goes for all subject levels below, but can be modified by actions in focus trees)
    • Get full technology sharing bonuses
    Colony
    • Master can trade more above law limits and cheaper than for Dominions
    • Colonies get less effect from technology sharing (master gets full bonus from you)
    • Master can recruit subject troops. We will cover details on this in next dev diary.
    Puppet
    • Master can trade more above law limits and cheaper than for Colonies
    • Puppets get less effect from technology sharing (master gets full bonus from you)
    • Subject troops can be recruited like for colonies (see above), but easier.
    Integrated Puppet
    • Master can trade basically for free and without restrictions.
    • Master automatically gain control of deployed forces if player.
    • Subject troops can be recruited like for puppets (see above), but easier.
    • 25% of their civilian industry and 75% of military industry is controlled by master.
    Diplo annexed
    • Country stops existing and is swallowed up by master.

    To move up or down a level master or puppet need to pay Political Power, but that can only be done once you fill the autonomy bar to max for your side. To actually fill it up there are several things you can do depending on which side of the power you are sitting in the tug-of-war relationship:
    • When master is building buildings or infrastructure in a subject nation it reduces their autonomy.
    • When a master recruits or uses troops from a subject it increases their autonomy.
    • Lend lease of equipment affects autonomy (when sending to master you need to send up to date stuff for it to increase your autonomy).
    • A subject can use the Increase Autonomy continuous national focus to slowly gain autonomy.
    • A master can use the Suppress Subjects continuous national focus to suppress its subjects towards lower autonomy.
    • There are also a lot of national focuses in the new focus trees affecting autonomy.
    • Gaining warscore increases autonomy for a subject.
    • Trading resources from a subject increases their autonomy.
    To put things simply, helping subjects lowers their autonomy and taking things, or getting help from subjects increases their autonomy. Being a subject, or having subjects isnt always bad. Technology sharing for Canada & Friends is quite potent, although of course it restricts their diplomatic powers. On the flip side being able to recruit forces, gain industry and manage subjects further down the scale can often be a better choice than annexing outright. Building things in subjects is done as normal through the construction interface, and indicated with a flag:
    As a master its a trade-off, building will lower their autonomy, but long term it likely means that they can field more forces and gain their freedom through fighting and helping out. See you next week when we will be presenting another nation as well as go over how subject troops work. Oh, remember to tune in for today’s World War Wednesday Livestream and find out if the over-stretched axis players will be able to beat back the allies. Watch it live @16:00CET over at https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive! Read the original post [quote]Useful links Official Website Hearts of Iron IV Wiki Hearts of Iron IV Development Diary Archive


    [ 2016-11-09 14:15:46 CET ] [ Original post ]

    South Africa - together for victory?


    Welcome to the 4th dev diary for the Together for Victory expansion currently in the works! South Africa South Africa starts out in a precarious position. You don't have a lot of industry, but your manpower is even worse. The national spirit "History of Segregation" reduces the recruitable population by a crippling 55%. You will be able to remove it through a series of national focuses, but it will make building up for the war a lot harder. Politically, South Africa was by no means a united country during the late 30ies. While it was a British Dominion, the memories of the Boer Wars are still alive, and historically, joining the war was a very narrow thing that cost the prime minister his job - Hertzog had campaigned to keep South Africa out of the war, while his party decided that they would stand with Britain. A strong pro-German opposition even carried out acts of sabotage inside the country. In the event of war, you will have to deal with them.
    Click here for bigger version Of course, if you wish to depart from history, you will have ways to do so. One of our design goals in this expansion was to give more alternatives to playing a country, while also faithfully representing the historical outcomes. Another goal was to open up new areas of the map to warfare, which were fairly untouched in the historical timeline. If you know the location of every swamp province in eastern Europe by heart, perhaps the lands south of the Sahara will provide a new challenge. In the fascist branch, you decide to side with the hardcore anti-British Afrikaner Broederbond and either try to use the opportunity of the war to roll back the loss of Boer colonies or decide to go with Germany (they won't ask for their colony back...for now), which will even allow you to join into a tech sharing arrangement with them. But seizing power will not be easy, and you must time your moves carefully. If you play your hand a little too late or a little too early, you will face the might of the British Empire without friends to help you. Once you are securely in power, however, you may even decide to crown a new King for your country (you may have to make do with a slightly used one for starters). In the communist branch, you will first work to unmake the discrimination against your fellow black workers, before facing a difficult choice - you can decide to join the comintern and become a staunch ally of the Soviet Union in Africa. Soviet Advisers will help you improve your military, while a tech sharing arrangement helps you find the scientifically correct way to achieve victory. The alternative is called the anti-colonialist crusade: Having thrown off the shackles of your colonial masters, it is time to start decolonising the rest of the continent. For this purpose, we have added a number of African countries which you can liberate. Don't worry, you won't have to march into Lisbon to free Angola. If you control the state, you will get the option to free them even if you are still at war with Portugal. But of course, you may instead decide that these young nations need more firm guidance... With South Africa's limited resources, you must make careful choices to navigate the war. Tech sharing can provide you with a powerful boost to your research speed - a boost you will lose the moment you decide to leave the Commonwealth. Britain will also be a source for more advanced military equipment that will not be available when you leave. Like the other commonwealth nations we are fleshing out there are new portraits for leaders and generals too:
    Continuous Focuses With Together for Victory we introduce a new type of national focuses. These can only be taken if you have done at least 10 regular focuses first and rather than taking 70 days and giving you a rewards they instead give you different kinds of bonuses while they are active (this means you can turn them off if you are low on political power or need to do something else). The base system here will be part of the 1.3 Torch patch, while the focuses related to new mechanics in the expansion will only be available to people who get that.

    • Army Training - Speeds up training of divisions
    • Naval Production - Gives a general production boost to producing all kinds of ships
    • Air Production - Gives a general production boost to producing all kinds of aircraft and infrastructure (simulating locals helping out) and also increases the effect of ordered repairs substantially.
    • Resistance Suppression - Helps you suppress resistance in occupied states so you will need to tie up less of your fighting forces
    • Technology Sharing - Lets you gain a technology sharing effect (if you do not already have one) from faction members. Only members who actually use this focus will gain the benefits though.
    • Increase Autonomy - Will help you work towards more autonomy (details next diary!)
    • Suppress Subjects - Will help keep your subjects under control (details next diary!)
    • Construction Engineering - Speeds up construction of all non-industry buildings
    • Construction Repairs - Increases the amount of free repair that gets done to damaged buildings
    Speaking of construction and repairs, we have changed costs of forts so that they now ramp up in cost with higher levels, and made base level cheaper so its now a major investment to try and build something like the maginot line which should make things less exploitable and more strategically interesting. The base free repair effect has also been reduced to make the Construction Repairs focus more interesting. Next week we will be talking about the new Autonomy system hinted at through the so-far revealed focus trees. See you then! In the meantime, check out this trailer to set the mood for our upcoming Commonwealth focused expansion: Together for Victory. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCbK6ZmJ0MM And speaking of the Commonwealth. How will they and their allies handle the warmongering Axis aggression towards Moscow in today’s World War Wednesday Livestream? Watch it live @16:00CET over at https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive! Read the original post [quote]Useful links Official Website Hearts of Iron IV Wiki Hearts of Iron IV Development Diary Archive


    [ 2016-11-02 12:09:25 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Together for Victory Announced


    For King and Country, Paradox announces Together for Victory
    First Expansion for Hearts of Iron IV has Commonwealth Focus STOCKHOLM – 1 November 2016 – When the fires of war erupt and your nation is under siege from the greatest war machine the world has ever seen, it is good to know that you are standing shoulder to shoulder with your brothers and sisters around the world. Together for Victory, the first expansion for Paradox Development Studio’s World War II game Hearts of Iron IV, shines a bright light on the British dominions and colonies that rallied around the flag in England’s darkest hour. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCbK6ZmJ0MM The centerpiece of Together for Victory is a set of new National Focus trees for five subjects of the British crown: Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and the British Raj in India. Make history with appropriate technology or alternate history paths, as well as new portraits, new leaders and new companies for the Dominions. Together for Victory is the first step in a process that Paradox hopes will tell the story of every nation in the great conflict. Together for Victory will also include: New Autonomy system has different levels of dependency and status for subject nations – puppets, Dominions and fully independent states Continuous National Focus ideas will add new bonuses and improvements to your country as you take it through the crucible of war Nations can request a Lend-Lease agreement from their allies and friends if they are in dire need of equipment and vehicles And much more, including updates and changes to the combat system Hearts of Iron IV: Together for Victory is coming soon to major digital retailers, including the Paradox store.


    [ 2016-11-01 14:20:10 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Ally Down Under


    So, last week we announced the name of the expansion we are working on: Together for Victory. A big focus of the expansion is fleshing out the commonwealth nations and first up last week was Canada. Today we will be showing off Australia! Australia Focus Tree Australia ended up with a really big tree actually (although much is mutually exclusive paths where you need to make a choice). We put extra effort into their alt history paths because we figured their location made them well suited for this.
    Australia start with the national spirit Great Depression, which limits their production capacity during the initial years. This is modified through a number of wartime emergency foci that become available as tension rises and war breaks out. On the political side Australia has a few choices. The main choice one is whether to stay with the commonwealth or break free. If Australia decides that it is tired of fighting Britain's war, there are a few option. From here Australia can either focus on protection against the Japanese menace lurking next door, by trying to form an alliance with USA. The fascist path features civil wars and, deceit and a glorious deal with Japan to split to South West Pacific between the two empires. The communist path focuses on helping communist China by sending equipment or volunteers. Once Australia has proven it is willing to make sacrifices for the revolution Soviet will accept them as a member of the Comintern. Like Canada we have also been adding extra leaders with unique portraits (magnificent beards make such a difference for admirals).
    Technology Sharing You might have noticed that the Canada tree presented in the previous diary as well as this one made references to mysterious technology sharing focuses. This is a new feature part of Together for Victory which is set up from focus trees or events. It allows nations to share their technological progress with other members of their sharing group (not necessarily limited to factions etc). The way it works is that the more members of your group have unlocked a certain technology the more bonus you will have to research and catch up. Some like the commonwealth basic one has no limitations on affected technology, but things like the Tizard Mission between UK and USA are limited to electronics, radar etc. You’ll have ways to improve your bonuses from sharing, and some nations will get less out of technology sharing than others, but we’ll get to that when we start showing details about how the new autonomy system works (in a future diary).
    I expect some people here are new to how we work with DLC at paradox, so going to go over it again. Whenever we release an expansion there is also going to be a free patch coming out for players along with it with fixes and changes, and this is no matter if you buy the expansion or not. For Together for Victory this will be 1.3 Torch. I'll be holding off on printing bug fix lists until just before release, but I figured I'd let you know that we have made some good progress on solving the issue with small vs big air wings (and similar issues in naval combat) as well as done some rebalancing there last week. See you again next week where we’ll be talking a look at South Africa :) Read the original post [quote]Useful links Official Website Hearts of Iron IV Wiki Hearts of Iron IV Development Diary Archive


    [ 2016-10-26 11:14:51 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Denmark

    Hello everyone and welcome to another Europa Universalis IV development diary. This time we’ll go into the main flavor of the 1.19 patch, which we call Denmark. Well, why do we call it Denmark? Well.. First of all, we’ve added lots and lots of Dynamic Historical Event to Denmark, bringing them up to par with other european majors. Skåne also starts with the Skånemarket, a large bonus to the fish produced in the province. We have also added a few new provinces in Jylland, while also increasing the development of Denmark as a whole.
    And as you can see here, the Danes get a nice new unit in 1.19 as well..
    Norway also got an improvement, getting their map revised to include a fair amount of new provinces, and a wasteland in the center of the mountain range, to make the country more easily defended against the vile swedes. We also gave them a huge chunk of new Dynamic Historical Events, making playing them a fair bit more interesting.
    We also improved the political mapmode, as so many had requested, so we now show the terrain map where there has been no colonisation yet, so you’ll have some more informative eye-candy while playing
    One other thing to mention today is the fact that we added a fair bit more instructions to the AI for your nation if you crash or are forced to stop playing for a while in a campaign. The following options now exists for your convenience.

    • Ignore Decisions -Yes/No
    • Embrace Institutions - Yes/No
    • Develop Provinces - Yes/No
    • Disband Units - Yes/No
    • Change Fleet Missions - Yes/No
    • Send Missionaries - Yes/No
    • Convert Culture - Yes/No
    • Add/Remove Cultures - Yes/No
    Stay tuned.. Next week we’ll talk more about forts, peace options and tradegoods, amongst other things. Read the original post [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis IV Wiki Europa Universalis IV Development Diary Archive


    [ 2016-10-25 11:06:30 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Oh Canada!


    Welcome to the second diary covering stuff in the upcoming (unannounced) expansion and patch, if you missed the previous check . I do have it on pretty good authority that there is gonna be some enlightenment on that today during the World War Wednesday stream (15:00 CEST) ;), so make sure to tune in then! One of the things we are focusing on in this expansion is to flesh out the commonwealth nations with focus trees, art, flavor and special mechanics. First up is Canada because it was the first of the commonwealth nations to send troops to Britain. Like many commonwealth nations it suffered from the Great Depression and came through the war a modernized, more independent and stronger nation despite the hardships of the war. The Canadian focus tree deals with some major issues of the time. Firstly how to get out of the economic depression and get ready for the war, but also problems with conscription, particularly around french-canadians (a major reason was because existing officers were mostly english speaking). Canada had a fairly small population, but mobilized heavily during the war, both militarily (40% of men in conscriptable ages joined the military and a sizable amount of women too) and industrially (a large part of allied production was thanks to Canada). To model that one of the trade offs you will need to do in the focus tree is one between manpower and fielding a larger army or to fully mobilize your industry. So, without further ado here is the focus tree:
    larger You will notice a few things. First up: it's BIG! Secondly, we have made sure to support all ideologies without restricting internal development and such too much by ideology (you can mobilize industry no matter what etc). This is something we feel strongly for and will keep doing in the future as some of the major trees can be a bit inflexible. It's not readily apparent but there are a couple of new features hidden in choices in this tree as well that we will be talking about in future diaries, but to not give away too much this early: we are expanding on the puppet/subject and master relationships into a new system with levels that can be affected, and there will also be neat new things with technology (I probably said too much already now though.. More in the future!). Each of the nations we add comes with more Generals/Admirals, portraits, custom equipment icons and 3d models where appropriate. We really want to make sure that nations we add feel fleshed out and give you new ways of playing (focus trees are great for this!)

    To make playing the allies cooler we are also adding a new feature with the expansion: Request Lend-Lease. This allows you to make broad stroke requests such as requesting infantry equipment or heavy tanks to your allies, they can then exactly how to fulfill that (or if they can’t at all). Like we usually do we team new features with free stuff in the patch so you can now also modify a receiving lend-lease if you no longer need parts of it (or even the whole thing). This functionality will be for any kind of Lend-lease too so no matter how it's set up you can avoid canceling the whole thing when you just want to change parts.

    Next week we will be covering more new stuff, but until then don't forget to tune in for the expansion announcement and multiplayer stream at 15:00 CEST today. We will be trying a new format with spokespersons for each major faction being able to talk on the stream with headsets so things should be more involved than normal! Read the original post [quote]Useful links Official Website Hearts of Iron IV Wiki Hearts of Iron IV Development Diary Archive


    [ 2016-10-19 11:26:14 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Blitz Command and Garrison Orders


    Hi everyone! Today I will start talking about features coming in the future expansion (still not announced yet, so its name shall remain under fog of war). First up are things related to battle plans and managing unit orders Paid Feature: Blitz Command The Offensive Lines in battle plans are designed to expand as a front expands and you take territory. This works fine if what you want to do is push along a broad front, but not as well when you are trying to have several orders in the same area active at once or doing encirclements or more detailed things. As long as such are a couple of provinces microing some armored divisions to do it is no big hurdle, but for bigger stuff that becomes a lot of work. So, to improve on this we are adding another tool to the battle plan toolbox for you to use: Blitz Command. A blitz command works differently in that when you activate it it remembers the area you tell it to take and will do that without readjusting its width or caring about other things getting in its way. Perfect for drawing pincer movements and encirclements!

    We have also worked on the AI’s ability to identify encirclements and choke points, so even though it's easier to plan an encirclement now actually successfully pulling them off will be more difficult. Free Feature: Configurable Garrison Order The Garrison order has gotten some love and you can now configure what you want it to guard and care about. So if you only care about ports and coastlines you can select only ports and coastlines for the order. It will also help you a bit and count up how many divisions are at least needed so that it can place one on each spot according to your order.
    Thats it for this week but we are doing a Q&A stream today during World War Wednesday at 15:00CEST so tune in if you have questions (about anything really) and I'll do my best to answer :) Read the original post [quote]Useful links Official Website Hearts of Iron IV Wiki Hearts of Iron IV Development Diary Archive


    [ 2016-10-12 10:31:15 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Looking Back


    Hi everyone, today I thought we should do something different and take a look at how some concepts have changed over the Hearts of Iron game series. We'll be looking at supply, upgrades and reinforcement and such first. Hearts of Iron 1 I didn't remember how it was here, and actually had to go buy myself a copy of the game online because I couldn't find any discs :D HOI1 has a pretty simple supply "system", a percentage of your total Industrial Capacity (IC) is diverted to supply production via a slider and goes into your supply stockpile. Units consume supply and if they run out they start losing organization etc. For a unit to be able to draw supply it needs to be able to trace a path to a friendly port or its capital. There was also a combat modifier penalizing you from fighting far away from your capital.
    Reinforcing had to be done manually (although you could do it for whole armies) by clicking on their strength to bring it back up.
    Upgrading divisions was a bit tricky compared to later games. You had to take them off map into the Force Pool, perform the upgrade by partially rebuilding it and then redeploy the unit on the map. These systems gave great control, but forced you to do a ton of micromanagement and keep track of a lot of things at the same time. Hearts of Iron II Supply works a lot like HOI1, but introduces concepts like Supply Efficiency and Transport Capacity (TC). TC is a global value that gets automatically set as 150% of IC (could change by modifiers). Each division adds up to your total need of transport capacity depending on their supply consumption and if you go over it you start getting penalties. What directly effect a division is called Supply Efficiency which is an average of TC, local infrastructure and any bonuses from local HQ. Supply for divisions was now changed to be less micro intensive. You could prioritize armies and also give them special Offensive Supply when in a pinch. Doing so gave these units improved supply efficiency for a month at huge cost, but was good for your elites and critical offensives.

    Upgrading and reinforcement is now also less micro and done by diverting a percentage of your IC to it with a slider. You also had the option of producing attachments (like military police or anti air) to your divisions which could be deployed later. This basic system made for a lot less micro management, while only giving up some control (there is only really 2 prio levels since a division is prioritized or not), managing attachments was some micro, but it was a step in the right direction and gave great control. One of the major downsides of the system was that there was no real way of controlling Transport Capacity, so if you expand into in asia your front in europe will get same penalty when going over a global TC, but as an abstraction it worked pretty well. Hearts of Iron III For HOI3 we wanted to expand on the supply system and make it more realistic. Supply and fuel are transported around the world in a province-by-province (and through naval transports) flow network.
    This system meant that there was a realistic delay built in when stuff changed and bottlenecks appeared and it's probably our most realistic system to date. The downside of this was that it was extremely hard to understand and follow (and also was very very bug prone). A problem a week ago could be causing your current frontline issues and because it was all a flow system with incremental changes being able to interpret how it was going wasn't exactly clear. What actions to poke the network with to improve things also was never really readily apparent for people without a lot of experience. We even added an "arcade mode" supply option that bypassed all the complexities and put it back to HOI1 level basically. Like HOI2 reinforcement and upgrades were now handled by diverting IC and upgrades.
    There is no way of prioritizing different armies or geographical areas, but you can tell units not to receive upgrades or reinforcement and in that way control where stuff is sent. HOI3 also expanded on divisions and basically made everything an attachment. This meant that you could reorganize brigades on the map by shuffling stuff around and do things similar to attachments in HOI2. The downside was that this was very micro intensive when you wanted to reorganize army templates as there was no way of doing it across more than one at a time. Hearts of Iron IV For HOI4 we changed the supply flow system to be instant and based around bottlenecks instead. The goal being that it should be easily apparent what is causing your frontline problems. We also moved to larger areas to get a better manage the complexity for calculations and display to player. When it comes to upgrades and reinforcement we made drastic changes in HOI4. They are now effectively the same things as you produce equipment rather than an abstract supply value to fill your divisions. We also added abilities to prioritize where supply went between theaters for better control, and even flagging division templates as elites, regular or reserves to manage their priority within theaters. Looking at the system I think gameplay went up on all accounts here. I think the system feels more realistic and immersive when looking at how you need to build exact equipment, but with fuel costs calculated into production of equipment rather than when using them (like on ships). There are some suspension of disbelief issues here we want to work on in the future.
    When it comes to managing upgrades of divisions compared to HOI3 we also made a big leap. It's now easy to do incremental changes to lots of divisions at once, either through editing their master division template, or changing a couple of selected divisions at once. Also upgraded equipment now slowly trickle into the divisions, upgrading them bit by bit in the field rather than all at once like in previous games.
    Team wise we are working on the expansion right now and should be able to start doing dev diaries on it soon, but let me know how this one felt, is it interesting to take a trip down memory lane? Read the original post [quote]Useful links Official Website Hearts of Iron IV Wiki Hearts of Iron IV Development Diary Archive


    [ 2016-10-05 13:10:45 CET ] [ Original post ]

    The Team!


    Hello all! KimchiViking here. New Project Lead for HOI4. As podcat mentioned in his Dev Diary last Friday; we're going to do these DD's on Wednesdays from now on. Starting with a presentation of the team, as it is right now. Currently the team is comprised by members from Sweden, Denmark, Russia and Belarus. Which means that if you walk into our section of the Paradox offices, here in Stockholm, you are likely to hear a garbled mix of English, Scandinavian and Russian. And yes, our walls are full of war propaganda posters. People keep toy tanks on their desks. Just how you always imagined it, right? ;) More people are joining us soon. However, without further ado. This is the HOI4 team as it looks right now. In alphabetical order…

    • Your name: Carl
    • Your forum name: SteelVolt
    • How long you've been on the team: Since August 2014
    • Role on the team: AI design/AI programmer
    • A brief explanation on what your role means: Together with the responsible game designer I design how the AI should behave and is the responsible for the technical design for the AI. I am also the primary programmer to implement these designs.
    • Something you want to share with the forumites: One of my favourite HoI4 AI moment was probably a while back in development when nuke missions were basically set up like regular strategic bombing missions. The AI had not yet been made to construct or use nukes. One day another person in the studio came to me and told me the AI had nuked them. After asking a few questions it became clear that the player had built nuclear powerplants in locations which had then been taken over by the AI who was not really aware of the extra...umpf, it was packing in to its strategic bombing runs against the player.
    • Your name: Dan
    • Your forum name: Podcat
    • How long you've been on the team: Since the project started development (so after summer 2013 or so if I recall), but I also worked on HOI3 and its expansions.
    • Role on the team: Game Director
    • Brief explanation on what that role means: I'm in charge of the overall design vision and direction of Hearts of Iron. Designing expansions, writing dev diaries (except today, ha!) and having opinions on everything :)
    • Something you want to share with the forumites: I keep hassling the company to squeeze buying a real tank into the PR budget. Sometimes I even think I've convinced Fredrik :D
    • Your name: Filippa
    • Your forum name: Distantaziq
    • How long you've been on the team: May 2015
    • Role on the team: Embedded QA
    • Brief explanation on what that role means: Assessing risks with changes, assessing the risks of new issues uncovered in the game, testing mechanics to make sure the game functions under certain conditions
    • Something you want to share with the forumites: One of my personal favorite moments - when we got the letter from a fan who suffered from depression and found some relief in playing our PDX games. And also the photoshopped image of Da9l for the Hungary Games. That was hilarious. (https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/world-war-wednesday-today-13th-14-30cest.920353/)
    • Your name: Ilya
    • Your forum name: ARMORIOS
    • How long you've been on the team: More than 1.5 years
    • Role on the team: Gameplay Programmer
    • Brief explanation on what that role means: I do coding of almost everything in the game.
    • Something you want to share with the forumites: I have to share it openly: I love the Hearts of Iron-series! :) It was one of my favourite PDX titles since HOI2 vanilla. It was great honor for me to put my hands on the development of new iteration of this amazing World War II game. Also my Russian background means that everything connected to this historical period is close to my heart. I see it as my duty to deliver the best gameplay experience in this WW2 setting. Salute!
    • Your name: Jakob
    • Your forum name: Havebeard
    • How long you've been on the team: Since May '15
    • Role on the team: Content Designer and Technical Scripter
    • Brief explanation on what that role means: Adding triggers and effects to the scripting language. Research, writing and implementation of focus trees, events and all the other tiny bits and pieces that make up the game.
    • Something you want to share with the forumites: Until fairly late in the beta Jakob was a max skill general with all traits. Unfortunately someone picked up on it when Denmark kept doing better than expected in the test games.
    • Name: Jonas
    • Forum name: Mrop
    • How long you've been on the team: A few months
    • Role on the team: UX designer
    • Brief explanation on what that role means: Hello! I'm the UX Designer for Hearts of Iron 4. This means I decide where to put buttons. More broadly, I decide what buttons should exist, if they should even be buttons, or if we should even have buttons in the first place! I have only been with HoI for a few months, so most of my time has been spent on the first DLC. I also work on Europa Universalis 4, Tiberius, and Caligula.
    • Something you want to share with the forumites: My proudest achievement for HoI so far was when I added a test DLC that replaced Hitler with an anime girl.
    • Name: Mats
    • Forum name: Sideburnout
    • How long you've been on the team: Sep 2013
    • Role on the team: Artist
    • Brief explanation on what that role means: Making 2d art and implementing them into the game, ranging from the tiniest icon to the cover! Also the fonts, I hate fonts.
    • Something you want to share with the forumites: Errordawg is one of my greatest creations so far ;), I think he made it into the game thanks to Darkrenown who was kinda fed up with all our cat aficionados and I couldn’t agree more. Whenever Podcat mentions getting dogs into the game I put everything else aside and abide. We do use errordog and major console dog emojis btw.
    • Your name: Rufus
    • Your forum name: Omghax
    • How long you've been on the team: On and off since february. Permanently since August.
    • Role on the team: QA tester
    • Brief explanation on what that role means: Trying to ensure we ship the best possible product by identifying issues early and ensuring they've been addressed before release. Also bug forum liason.
    • Something you want to share with the forumites: Scientists seem to be attracted to PDX like flies to honey. As I left behind a masters in molecular biology to come work here and our team also includes a nuclear physicist and Physical Geographer. Makes one wonder if we're branching out in unexpected directions.
    • Your name: Sergey
    • Your forum name: quarz
    • How long you've been on the team: Less than a month
    • Role on the team: Programmer
    • A brief explanation on what your role means: Implementation of gameplay features, bug fixes, optimization
    • Your name: Sofia
    • Your forum name: KimchiViking
    • How long you've been on the team: Came aboard after the HOI4-release, in June, this year.
    • Role on the team: Project Lead
    • Brief explanation on what that role means: Out of the mountain of work we have in the backlog; I make sure that the team knows what to work on and by when. So that we can squeeze the most possible value into the game, given the limited time and manpower we have at our disposal.
    • Something you want to share with the forumites: I’m the sort of person who always likes to test the limits of what a game can do. The possibilities in HOI4 boggles the mind! Playing Germany, right now, I envision it as if I'm enabling Rutger Hauer, by creating my own personal version of the movie “Fatherland”.
    • Name: Tomasz
    • Forum name: TomaszKowalczyk :)
    • How long been in the team: Since 2012
    • Role on the team: Senior programmer, Tech lead
    • Brief explanation on what that role means: Coding in new features, according to given fancy design, and bug-fixing of all kinds. Also fixing game-performance and stability issues. Responsible for the overall code quality written by the team.
    • Something you want to share with the forumites: Our team is arming up with Nerf Guns. Should I be worried? o(^_^)o
    So, yeah! This is us. :) It's a small team. (If you compare it to a AAA-title game.) But these people can do great things. I used to watch them from afar. And know that Paradox games only get better with time. Being apart of that process now, is equal parts having a sense of responsibility to carry on that tradition and being chuffed to bits about being in a situation to make things happen. That's it for this DD. Keep calm and carry on developing HOI4!, I like to say. Read the original post [quote]Useful links Official Website Hearts of Iron IV Wiki Hearts of Iron IV Development Diary Archive


    [ 2016-09-28 10:36:18 CET ] [ Original post ]

    "Sunflower" - Patch 1.2 - released!


    Today we released patch 1.2, a.k.a. Sunflower for Hearts of Iron IV. Highlights of this patch: - AI improvements - Custom difficulty settings allow you to adjust the relative power of Germany, France, Italy and the Soviet Union - Improved peace conferences, based on the popular Steam workshop mod by Neutrino. - Hotjoin added for multiplayer games - Resync button added to remedy connection issues without having to re-host multiplayer games - Added new releasable nations ...and much more! Due to Steam's limited space, and the length of the patch notes. Please visit our official forum for a full list of changes. Read full patch notes! [quote]Older save games should be compatible, but as usual we strongly recommend finishing off old ironman saves using 1.1 to avoid unpleasant surprises. To stay on a previous patch level: 1. Right click Hearts of Iron IV in steam 2. Click Properties and go to the tab that says "BETAS" 3. Select the appropriate patch (most likely you want 1.1 - Red Ball Express) in the dropdown list 4. Close the window and let Steam update the game When you want to upgrade to 1.2 you repeat the steps, but select "None" in the dropdown list. If you experience any bugs in 1.2, please post a proper bug report in the bug report forum[/quote]


    [ 2016-09-16 10:56:31 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Development Diary - September 9th 2016


    Hello everyone, this is going to be a very short diary because the team is knee deep with work on the Sunflower patch today. Patch is coming along and bugs have been squashed this week, but there are no major new features to talk about this week. The funniest bug found was probably the one where German AI, presumably due to its strong sense of honor, refused to attack units it massively outnumbered (say 40 divisions of medium tanks vs 2 infantry divisions sitting on Copenhagen). We are also looking at integrating the Enhanced Peace Conference AI mod into the patch, because frankly it works well and its creator is a nice guy who gave us permission :) Oh yeah, also our artist added more neat icons (now 14 in total) for your Armies so it's easier to keep them apart:
    Now for something totally different! As you know our games collect stats and metrics and who doesn't love stats?

    • 12% of players use Nato counters (this jumped a whole percentage when Black ICE and August Storm mods released)
    • 12% play multiplayer
    • 20% play ironman
    • The most popular major nations are Germany at ~40% of games, Soviet (15%) and USA (12%). France is least popular at 6%.
    • 35% are played as a minor nation
    • Mods are super popular! Around half of daily active games use mods of some kind. We are really excited by this, because we spent a lot of time making sure HOI was easy to mod and easy to get mods for in the workshop.
    Among mods the most popular ones are cosmetic. Here are the top 3:
    • Colored Buttons
    • More Division Icons
    • Flavor Names extended
    When it comes to daily active players I can't quote exact numbers, but compared to other games and how its historically looked the numbers for HOI4 are strong which looks great for the future :) I know everybody was hoping for a patch this week (including us!), but we also want to make sure things are as good as they can be when we release, and especially since we are still dealing with a lot of illness among team members we need to push it a little longer. You will know it when I do when the patch is ready :) See you all next week, in another life where we are all cats (cats playing 1.2 Sunflower) Read the original post [quote]Useful links Official Website Hearts of Iron IV Wiki Hearts of Iron IV Development Diary Archive


    [ 2016-09-09 15:36:26 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Development Diary - September 2nd 2016


    Hi everyone! Friday means its time to give you all a fresh update on Sunflower (1.2 patch) progress! Its starting to come together nicely now, so without further ado, here is what's been happening... GUI improvements Managing a lot of divisions training in parallel can get hard to get an overview of so now it’s possible to compact the entries. As an added help we now color training that is blocked by lack of equipment making it much easier to manage your queue size.
    As a minor improvement to support the work on next section naval battle and port strike reports now give a quick summary over damage to survivors as well so you know how much was done in total and naval invasion alerts are more relevant and accurate. Naval Balance There has been a bunch of reports about the submarine game not working so well, so this week we fixed bugs and tweaked submarines and convoy raiding. The big bug was that raiders would attack empty routes (supply convoy routes to places with enough local supply, so that they weren't used), this meant that they would be attacking non-existent convoys in a bunch of places rather than real ones making it appear as if it was impossible to catch anything there. General detection was also too low and has been tweaked up. The way sunk convoys affected efficiency of transport also had problems and have been tweaked for much stronger impact now. Starving out islands with a lot of defenders work a lot better now and raiding convoys can be pretty potent!
    The AI’s use of fleets and missions have been improved a lot for Sunflower, but it’s still an area that needs more work to be really competitive with players. It’s something we will put effort into in the future. General balance-wise we have been working on stuff to promote mixed fleets better and discourage light cruiser spam and lowering the impact of evasion in combat, meanwhile torpedoes have also gotten stronger. It’s going to need some more tweaking before the patch is out, but naval balance is now already much better! Script update We feel it is a shame that so many of the Soviet loving players chose to avoid the fiery alternate history path that picks Leon Trotsky. It simply has not made sense from a pure gameplay perspective. We’ve added a focus to address the issue that Trotsky is a much weaker choice than Stalin. After winning the civil war, a Soviet player will be able to pick the focus ‘Permanent Revolution’, which unlocks parts of the same tree that ‘The Great Purge’ does.
    Once the focus is completed, Trotsky’s trait will change to ‘Triumphant Revolutionary’. This will remove his Political Power penalty and make it much cheaper to help fuel more righteous worker revolutions across the globe. “The end may justify the means as long as there is something that justifies the end.”- Trotsky
    The focus trees have long been a source of many weird, funny and frustrating bugs. The exiled government of Germany would demand Memel from Lithuania, who would then lie down flat and hand over the territory. Countries would welcome their invaders by building infrastructure and factories in the occupied territories. Diplomatic pressure on Turkey would make them a puppet of the exiled Germany. The USA would view a democratic Germany as still being ‘The Fascist Menace’ and jump at the first chance of war with them. Japan would go for war with the USA, despite being pushed back to the islands by the Chinese. These and many other issues with the National Foci have been addressed in the upcoming patch. I’ll mention a few of the general changes here:

    • As a general rule foci are blocked when a country has capitulated. We’ve added an option in script to unblock it for when the foci still make sense to complete.
    • Adding buildings via focus should now look for control of the state before building.
    • Blocked some of the foci leading to war if the nation has the same ideology.
    At the moment there are some AI issues left to deal with, but if all goes well I hope we can get the Sunflower patch wrapped up during next week, at least as an open beta for public testing. Thanks for being patient! Read the original post [quote]Useful links Official Website Hearts of Iron IV Wiki Hearts of Iron IV Development Diary Archive


    [ 2016-09-05 08:52:34 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Development Diary - 26th Of August 2016


    Hi everyone and welcome to this weeks diary with an update on Sunflower (1.2) patch. This is a great diary because its mostly written by other team members while I grab the credit of posting it! :D First up is Voffvoffhunden with new nations we are adding in. New Nations Have you ever felt that the Soviet Union was a bit of a big, threatening blob, but that there was little you could do about it apart from taking all their territory for yourself? Things are about to get a whole lot more colorful! You can for example enjoy a stay in the breadbasket of Eastern Europe, as the territory of the Ukrainian SSR joins the fray as releasable cores! Get yourself a nice little puppet just a grenade’s throw from Moscow, or release it from the Soviet Union, take control and have your own little reconquest against Poland.

    Of course, one pesky country doesn’t do much for the breakup of the Soviet Union, so let’s all give it up for our favorite Caucasus trio! Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan are releasable, and offer a whole new regional playground. I hear Tbilisi is lovely this time of the century.

    As Poland gets invaded, Georgia might look to set up its own little empire Between the Other Seas, Azerbaijan might want push towards Stalingrad to ensure it controls ALL the Caspian oil, and Armenia, bordered on all sides by larger potential enemies, offers a whole new challenge for those players who like to play small nations and make them big. Now, we hear you, some people prefer hotter climates to former Soviet states, and some players would rather dismantle the Allies than the Comintern. For you there’s always Southeast Asia!

    Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia can now hang out with Siam, offering new and challenging paths to domination in East Asia, or more states to turn into precious communist puppets. We’re not stopping with the French-controlled mainland, however, as both the United Kingdom and the Netherlands can get a sock to the jaw as you force them to release Indonesia and Malaysia!

    The colonial map will never be the same again. Looking to the future, there is a lot more we want to do, to allow enterprising players to redraw the world map through victory, or give themselves new challenges. Even with the new countries released, the Soviet Union is still an enormous block that we will be looking to add even more cores to. There are the Soviet republics of Central Asia, of course, which will be a huge chunk of territory. These will be followed by some more Soviet republics that never became independent, but which a forceful peace treaty might find use for to guarantee global stability/overlordship. There’s also some more work to be done in Asia, such as the division of India, and Papua New Guinea, which Australia currently clamps on to with fists of steel. Then there’s Western North Africa, where the control of France and Spain is a little too secure. That brings us on to the subject of the rest of Africa, which has just an immense number of post-colonial states whose independence is tightly tied to the era. From there, we’ll see where future updates take us! Theoretical states are always interesting, and who knows, I’ve heard a rumor that Texas really wants to secede from the Union... AI Update from SteelVolt This week I started out making sure that the AI is capable of canceling deployment lines when it badly needs the equipment in the field. Following up on that I am currently working on improving the AIs template upgrade and selection capabilities as well as fixing a bug or two in that system that popped up during development. Oh, and there was that funny bug: AI could give away states to countries not at war with the original owner, leading to it being immediately given back...to the original owner! See you all next week! Read the original post [quote]Useful links Official Website Hearts of Iron IV Wiki Hearts of Iron IV Development Diary Archive


    [ 2016-08-26 08:45:36 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Development Diary - 19th Of August 2016


    Hi everyone! It's been a very empty office this week between gamescom and sickness (I'm starting to wonder if the CK2 team is testing their new plague expansion stuff on us!) but we've still managed to get some stuff done on the Sunflower(1.2) patch. Port Strikes As many of you have noted port strikes are very hard to defend against and feel unbalanced. You can now only perform port strikes if enemy air superiority isn't above a certain level (30% is what we are testing atm), basically it means there needs to be no defenders or you need to have air superiority for the mission to perform at all. We are also adding stacking penalty in the same way land combats work, to simulate that there just isn't enough room for 1000 bombers to strike the same small fleet. We have also been looking at some other naval issues, but more about that in the future. AI The main focuses this week for AI has been making sure ai upgrades its templates better and naval missions. The naval mission AI should now use the ships at its disposal much better and prioritize defending invasions. The issues with Ai creating long invasion plans it could not cover and never managing to invade japanese home island shouldn't happen anymore now for example. It also had a tendency to be overly protective of areas with convoy raiding leading to very nonoptimal fleets being organized for hunting. When it comes to division templates SteelVolt managed to squash some bugs related to switching them out and we now have a scriptable progression system for the AI to use. It was for example not able to realise that it could progress its light armor templates to medium armor templates before. I imagine this will be very welcome among modders as well to be able to custom tweak nations. For those who dare to look at code, here is an example: [quote] light_armor_default = { target_width = 19.9 width_weight = 0.1 column_swap_factor = 0.1 stat_weights = { } target_template = { weight = 0.9 support = { engineer = 1 recon = 1 artillery = 1 } regiments = { light_armor = 4 motorized = 5 infantry = 1 } } allowed_types = { } replace_at_match = 0.9 replace_with = medium_armor_default } The important bit here being [COLOR=#ffff00]replace_at_match = 0.9 replace_with = medium_armor_default[/COLOR] This is an example from the light armor template, which will change to the medium armor template once it has a match of 90%. Do note that the "entry point" of a template must follow the naming convention given (for example 'light_armor_default'), but after that it should work with any name at all, meaning those templates would not be picked by AI in any other way than through the scripted progression. [/quote] If you don't spend all day looking at code, the above basically translates into more interesting AI opponents ;) Other AI improvements we have been working on this week is improving its avoidance of small encirclements and making sure it can handle building of nuclear reactors for late game, so beware nukes flying :). Next week for ai we plan to focus on many minor issues to improve AI performance, like making sure it doesn't tie up too much equipment in training when it needs it in the field to help with casualties. The plan for the patch is to be able to release it (as a open beta first) in 2-3 weeks barring any outbreaks of plague. Next Friday we'll have some more updates for you as well as talk about some new additions that will be in the patch:
    Read the original post [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis IV Wiki Europa Universalis IV Development Diary Archive


    [ 2016-08-19 12:14:55 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Development Diary July 1st - Summer!


    Hi everyone! The game has now been out for a bit under a month and we have released the first big patch yesterday. This year has been hard work, but also incredibly fun to finally get to release the game we have worked on for so long be successful. As you probably know us swedes like vacations and it's now time for us to get some rest for a month and return full of energy to work on the game again. This means that you will likely not see as much presence on the forum during this time as you are used to, so I figured I'd give a heads up. After vacation we will be working on 1.2 patch or 1.1.1 if a hotfix is needed. AI and balance will be priority but we also have some nice ideas for increasing difficulty and replayability and such for players who have already mastered the game. More info on that in august. Enjoy your summers and many thanks from the team for supporting us! p.s fun statistics about HOI4: about 30% of games played are using minor nations. This is really great to hear because one of my goals when designing HOI4 was to make minors fun and playable.
    (ARMORIOS playing Germany, although his invasion ended in flames for him it looked neat :) ) Read the original post [quote]Useful links Official Website Hearts of Iron IV Wiki Hearts of Iron IV Development Diary Archive


    [ 2016-07-01 12:50:03 CET ] [ Original post ]

    "Red Ball Express" (1.1 Patch) Released! [checksum: 5d33]


    "Red Ball Express" (1.1 patch) is now ready, check out the patch notes if you want to see details on what has changed. [quote]AI - Tweaked deployment AI to not get crippled when their armies are taking damage. - Air mission AI is better at prioritizing the most important regions in stead of getting stuck in local optima of groups of regions. - Tweaked down AI desire for motorized a bit. - Added scriptable AI strategy to tweak factory assignment to equipment types and SIGNIFICANTLY boosted fighter production. - Tweaked up AI production balance for infantry equipment. - Tweaked guarantee desire to go down the more enemies a country has. Should keep Allies from going guarantee crazy while in wars. - Added a define for min steps for unit controller to strategically redeploy to front location and boosted it from 4 to 8 to reduce lots of small redeployments along fronts. - Made AI capable of determining if a template was created by them or not. Germany should no longer replace their divisions with templates from Austria. - Tweaked area defense and pocket handling AI to be better at handling coastal defense. - Tied countries naval base IC fraction to their naval AI focus, primarily meaning Germany will not be building as many of them, at least initially. - Improved unitcontrollers capability to recognize when units should join as support in a combat (effects both player and AI). - The AI now launches naval invasions against the same enemy area at the same time rather than separately. - Tweaked AI template designing - Having a common enemy will now make AI very accepting to granting and accepting military access as long as both are democracies. - Neutral countries now consider guarantees when deciding on which faction it would rather join. - AI is now properly checking if having common enemy when looking at asking for and granting military access, and is also more eager to do - Soviet and Germany should no longer bail from the Unholy alliance as soon as they can - AI containment score no longer goes massively negative if a major is farther away than germany meaning Allies can guarantee vs soviet aggression if they are worse than Germany - Made non-core states count as half compared to core states when deciding on number of units for area defense. - Added Women in Aviation to historical focus list for soviet - Moved Claims in Baltic up the historical focus list for soviet - Improved AI naval deployment to strategic regions - Tweaked front assignment AI. Should mean AI is better at multi front wars. - Further tweaks to AI front assignment to attempt to reduce bad stuff happening in multi front wars. - Further tweaked the AI front balancing, and made sure France does not completely mess up their Italian front and Germany pushes hard against Poland when war breaks out - AI should now be able to respond to naval invasions with naval bombers - Made sure fascist majors are much more likely to go for war economy - Polish AI will no longer randomly change its ideology by picking ministers - AI should no longer use garrison divisions as infantry. - Changed trigger condition for UK focus Benelux Intervention to require a bit more fascist/communist support, preventing the AI from taking it immediately. - Naval AI will now deploy all its fleets (previously it would generally deploy less than 1/3 of all its ships). AI will now split fleets it cannot find a mission for, allowing it to spread them out better - AI is now able to set naval bombers to try to prevent others from sending reinforcements over water. - Tweaked AI down prio of non war/dangerous fronts. - AI will no longer guarantee against leaders of other naughty factions (like soviet) if there is a much much worse faction around doing bad stuff (Axis) - AI nations will no longer spam you with requests for military access at game start and nations who would rather occupy someone than liberate wont ask for military access - AI can now feed puppets/liberated/change government countries with states in peace conferences giving much saner outcomes - Made sure unitcontroller does not interfere with retreating units. - German 1939 OOB now lists the good armor template last so ai will prefer it - Made sure that template design AI puts a motorized together with armored when making new templates. - Made AI look more at fitness when picking template for designing, upgrading and deployment. - Improved how AI calculates which is a garrison template (making it pick the proper one as infantry.) - ai now avoids putting nations that have very small bottleneck borders as main enemy - ai now prioritize fighters and medium armor more for research - Countries at war are no longer automatically assuming war will happen with non neutral neighbors (the Germany putting everyone against Soviet thing.) - ai no longer retains main enemies who have already gotten wiped out - Germany no longer goes justification crazy on south america - Romania and Yugoslav small armor templates on start no longer deathtraps for AI - AI should no longer ping-pong between trade laws in edge case - US AI now a lot more hesitant to join factions due to threat - fixed add_ai_strategy effect and added strategies where countries are added in faction from event or focus - AI will now prioritize better economic laws a lot more - Fixed typo in polish AI focus UI - Division designer difference indicators now have tooltips showing how much - Added open air base button to the air mission entry - Now shift+click on the category in the production will make visible only that category - Interface tweaks so long texts in other languages does fit in several places - Added buttons for airwing limit to make easier to adjust values in big steps - Now navy commander can now also be assigned while fleet is not in the port - Added tooltip and toggling icon to indicate if current settings let you unlock achievements - You can now merge fleets that are not in the same location, the merging fleet will then travel to its merge target and then merge with it. - Now it is possible to assign airplanes to a mission area before the arrive to the new base - Division template window has now better tooltips for equipment, manpower, training time. - Clarified "no trading while fighting"-tooltip - Added yellow highlight to deployment date for units - Changed string format for convoys in topbar to prevent overflow - Opinion in interface will now also return a value capped between min and max values - removed useless decimals in logistics screen - Logistics screen now show 1 decimal when over 1k - Intel viewing of airplanes don't show fantasy numbers anymore - Now air base icons shown non empty only if there are players air wings Bugfixes - Fixed issue when sometimes frontlines was not updated after occupation. - Now Nation A liberates Nation B if Nation B is friend or giving military access to Nation A, otherwise occupies - Fixing quiting to menu achivement bug - Fixed some focus that couldnt be aborted - Fixed issue where it was impossible to do naval transfers where you have the theatres. Also player couldn't RMB on some naval ports but the systems allowed for the transportation (GUI issue). - Building cosntruction triggers checked for owned state/province. Now checks for controlled instead - Added on_action to the add_to_faction effect which should fix lack of achivements for faction joining - Modified flags for Holland - Fixed so equipment cost list doesn´t cut of 11th entry in div designer - Efficiency retention techs now actually help (no efficiency loss at max all techs now!) - Fixed spelling error in FRA, BRAZ for "Ottowa"-class ship - Intel overview of nation now also lists airplanes in stockpile - The political advisor type "Ideological Crusader", which are supposed to increase same ideology opinion with 20%, now has an effect. - Added custom trigger description depending on type of idea for better tooltips - Border occupation now account situations when you attack trough the country which is from the same war, but not in the same faction, plus border flip afterwards also account for countries from the same war. - The game option "Pause on Notifications" now also pauses NF/research. - Proper data cleanup when kicked, banned, connection lost, server lost. - Fixed glitch in the front sections calculations, causing sometimes the fronts to be split/malformed. - Skybox is no longer visible when you toggle UI off - Changed font on animated map text so it show cryllic and polish characters - Fixed fighter icon for polish dlc - Fixed text on Mod tools button in launcher that didn't fit in Spanish - Kick and ban buttons in mp lobby should now be aligned (important!) - Maldives now looks a tad better, changed the heightmap, made some of the islands smaller and nudged unit positions - Fixed script error in Pearl Harbor Gambit focus - Carrier deck size now matches everywhere. - No longer allowed to declare war on someone you are fighting a war together with. - Convoy count in topbar now can show 5 digits - Fixed Issue where long air region names goes out of dedicated area - Added triggers to block multiple news event options - Fixed issue when take all states action did not changed the price when other country puppet the loser - Drawing offensive orders now takes better choice which def.line to attach the arrow to. - Added ability to disable debug saves and made them turned off as default - Added bypass to Pearl Harbor gambit focus for USA - Fixed malformed frontlines against master/puppet for countries being in faction with the master. - Disabled the system_debug.log when not running with "-debug" launch option. - Fixed pausing of the game on the fullscreen - Patched mysterious issue when airbase was lost and the air wings still remained in void space. Now they are send back to the warehouse. - Fix for flickering airbase icon in the airbase view - Nations who are done in a peace deal will no longer give remaining points to anyone in faction, just people with same ideology - Parts of unit map icons will no longer "trap" the zoom-in with mouse - Fixed artillery starting with 0 defense - Now peaceconference saves will happen only with -debug while start up - Now occupation breakdown updates properly after exiting to main menu - Fixed occupation rules - Fixed a bug where you could avoid civil war by inviting back trotsky - Warscore from bombing is now saved in save game. - Warscore from bombing is now much lower + added monthly falloff. - Fixed issues with country rules not clearing properly and not updating every day - Added special case for showing shortcut icons "," and "." - Changed price calculation for new divisions so now it does not add up cost for group if it is first group - Increased modifier that prevents spain from joining axis early - Fixed bug where a country without the rule of occupying neutral countries could occupy them. - Fixed the bug when airings manpower was not updated - King G now only dies once - Browser now remembers last page - Naval strikes can now also hit navally transfered troops outside combats - Added event that allows merges of 2 communist chinas - Fix for peace conference turns not taking scor einto consideration properly - Fixed bug where it was possible to send a single unit as exp.force twice! - Changed a lot of popus to use the definite article - Fixed a bug that gave USA extra PP for certain NF - Warscore is no longer added from dropped countries in war merging. - Trade routes over land now get correct tooltip on day 1 - Factories from trade now used to fill construction and trade first - Fixed join faction achievement not firing. Fixed scope from add_to_faction effect - Fixed Soviet civil war triggering multiple times. Fixed 2 outcomes of not purging happening at the same time. - Leaving a faction no longer broke the entire supply system until save reload - Fixed issue where merging ships would reduce manpower - Removed EU4 hints folder. - Fixed the bug when Britain couldn't declare war on other democratic countries despite having a wargoal from focus Database & Balance - Changed German democratic party to Zentrum - NF completion for Poland 39 start - Fixed spanish communist crusader using male portrait - Focus Lessons of War and Sov-Ger research agreement now give less armor research - Added AFG leader portrait Zahir Shah, VEN leader portrait Lopez Contreras and 3 new middle eastern generic portraits - Replaced incorrect japanese general - Added Xi'an to PRC - Added straits to denmark to make them more surrendermonkeys [Balance] - Several name corrections in OOB files - Province 3860 is now a part of state 527 instead of 328. (Manchuria/Korea) - Added an event to move PRC capital to Beijing or Nanjing after Chinese Civil War. - Added a requirement of more than 15% world tension to War Economy policy. - Removed Hungarian claims from Northern Transylvania and Vojvodina - Removed generic Tank Designer idea from Canada. - Moved Sao Paulo to be part of the Sao Paulo state. - Found a better Serbian fascist party leader. - Adjustment to Paraguay and Nicaraguan political 36 and 39 starts. - Republican Spain and Nationalist Spain now have the same National Unity - Added more ai_choice triggers for Czechoslovakia's response to German demands. - Added localisation for Libyan adjectives - Changed names for neutral Nicaragua and Paraguay - Fixed Finland starting as democratic in 1939 - Added ENG cores to French cores when Anglo-French Union happens - If the Munich agreement can't happen (depending on various wars for GER or CZE) CZE will now get a different event about ceding the Sudetenland or giving GER a wargoal. - Soviet now gets one armor research bonus and one land doctrine, rather than three armor research. - Fate of Czechoslovakia now correctly adds claims and an annex CB if CZE resists GER. - Fixed text overflow in Balearic Islands headline. - Expanded the final event for RAJ's Azad Hind, and added several removal points for the Azad Hind idea. - Removed eng core from state 687-British Guyana - Added fixedsize to countrystate view state owner and foreign claims - Fixed heightmap error on denmark - Fixed so all building in the maldives are on land again - German march order music now has correct path - State name corrections. - Added names for (unreleased) country tags. - Lowered time for Demand Balearic islands for Italy - Moved capital of Brazil to Rio - Subdue the Warlords now requires that China does not exist or is a puppet of Japan - Johnson Island Garrison renamed to Johnston Island Garrison - Corrected JAP_1939 unit history. - Fixed a bug where an achievement wouldn't fire because of it was using any_country trigger - Soviet foci New Soviet Man and Women in Aviation have switched places - Added general to Ireland - Nerfed skill 5 generals for BRA AST AFG CAN - Changed German Admirals traits for variety - Bumped population of some of the smaller islands - Changed ideology of country leader for DEN FIN FRA NOR SWE - Changed start trade to use factories instead of specific amount of factories for trade - Increased air range on rocket interceptors now that local coverage isnt always 100% - Mass assault doctrine now gets -10% lower requirement on training for deploying divisions - Political parties and leaders for Brazil. From forum. - Great depression now limits faction joining at an extra 20% - Human pause now has a superior priority to the automatic pause - Fixed issue with fleet splitting failing because it forgot to assign base - Now state controller switches properly after capitulation - Added 3 new generic asian stateleader portraits and 2 new generic asian warlord portraits - Added 6 new generic Arabian portraits - Sheng Shicai got a minor facelift - USA now gets a slightly different shade of blue to differentiate them from france - Fixed inconsistent finnish flags - Added additional flags for Jordan - Fixed Israeli leader portraits - Fixed bugs in event for china moving capital - Lowered time for National focus "support nationalist spain" so Italy can complete it before the SCW ends - Typos and political party fixes for Brazil - around maginot line focus now a bit faster - Rebalanced ships so that armor is more important and destroyer spam no longer rules the sea. Ships are also a bit cheaper to produce but require a little more manpower - air battles should now be a lot less bloody and slower paced - Fighters should now have an easier time vs enemy bombers without escorts Stability & Performance - Will no longer overwrite ironman saves if writing of current failed - Optimizations for air interface and mapmode - Parser now handles large tokens without crashing on savegame load - Optimization for releasing countries - Fixed several memory leaks - Fixed CTD for airwing transfer when base in invalid - Fix for potential CTD in splitting navy when you have no home base. - Fixed rare ctd when loading an old savegame from ingame with active naval combats - Fixed several rare CTDs - fixed rare CTD in alert manager - fixed rare CTD in air gui - Improved performance a lot when viewing a lot of unit icons in combat - Fixed a possible CTD on fleet merging - Fixed Extreme slow down because of sea locked fleets trying to get out. - Fixed CTD in history writing when convoys shoot down aircraft and having lost their route User Modding - Added possibility to script in historical aces in name pools - Moved dynamic country tags into a separate file - Manpower in field trigger no longer counts expeditionary forces from other nations - Fixed issues with tooltip for ships in port trigger - Added defines to tweak unit assignment importance for different kinds of orders. - Added possibility to script desired amount of factories to spend on a trade - Fixed crash from default bookmark being later than 1936 - Added add_ai_strategy effect - In debug mode the country flag tooltip will now show AI strategy values - Fixed map icon crash from having more than 128 country capitals in view - Fixed country unit names list being incorrectly initialized during modding leading to CTD Multiplayer - Supplysystem should now update for all players when changing country controller (OOS fix) - Observers no longer get asked for co-op acces as well as main player[/quote] Read original post Known issues: - Using "observer" mode from console in single player will break AI behavior. It should be fine for its intended purpose in multiplayer after having lost still as long as you observe players. Enjoy!


    [ 2016-06-30 19:23:13 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Dev Diary - June 17th - Patch 1.1 "Red Ball Express"


    Hi everyone and hope you are enjoying Hearts of Iron! The team has been busy working on the 1.1 path that we have decided to name "Red Ball Express" (since we thought it was a cool idea from Stellaris team to use names, we will be doing the same for major patches). The idea is to have the patch out before we go on vacation in July, so expect it one of the last days of June with a open beta patch some days before to make sure it goes smoothly. I'll be presenting some of the more important stuff we have done so far, but we have of course also fixed minor bugs, optimization, crashes and the like. Next week will have a diary with the full patch log and I'll talk about the other stuff we have done also. Access to allied territory One of the biggest talked about issue has been the fact that as long as you fight the same enemy you automatically gain military access, even from other factions. This was kind of a bandaid for an old issue, and we never liked it either... so we have been listening and working on a solution. The way things work now is that you will be requiring military access as expected and the game will also alert you if you end up in a position where you are trying to move into occupied area you don't have access to (as this for democracies would liberate those nations you will need to ask for permissions, which ai will give you). We are still testing our solution, so there might be further changes still. Peace conferences We fixed a serious issue where instead of taking turns in a peace deal when there were 2 major contributors it would instead end up so that the 2nd of those gets to push through almost all changes in the peace deal. This could lead to some really weird peace deals. Now you will instead get to take turns (as well as do a little more per turn if you are close in points). Hopefully this should make peaces feel a lot more sane and rewarding. Invasions and Naval bombers When it comes to invasions and ease of reinforcing invasions into Germany we have now made Naval Bombers able to attack troop transports (before only fleets could stop them, which isn't a great option for Germany when facing the royal navy obviously), so you only really want to do invasions with sufficient control over the skies. AI has also been tweaked to prefer several larger invasions at once to pose more of a threat to players and bleed less troops in smaller invasions. I've also been looking at general balance around naval bomber and other air war being a bit too bloody, but I'll give you an update on that next week instead because it's not done. AI When it comes to further AI improvements, I'll hand over the mic to SteelVolt: This path we have taken a look at some things in the AI where relatively small effort would give a rather big payoff. A lot of this focus was around mistakes Germany was making, such as building too many dock yards and thus lagging behind in the production of military factories. Another thing we discovered that Germany did was to start using the Austrian division designs after the Anschluss, due to looking at the latest date edited. Both of these have been taken care of, but we have also looked at how to make them not rush the maginot line without making large changes that could break other cases. Aside from this I have been working on keeping the AI up to date with some rule changes we have made for this patch, such as the "enemy of my enemy access" rule. I am also very happy to be able to introduce a new feature today. When working on how to improve the warfare AI I realized that it would be very beneficial if there could be different modes of plan execution. While something along these lines had already been discussed, the intention was to have it in a later patch as we expected it to take some time. But as the AI needed at least something basic like this I added three modes, and to test them I added some buttons in the order group interface for it. As it turned out, it worked so well that we are making the feature available for players as early as patch 1.1!
    The three modes are as follows: Careful: The units will not attack heavily fortified locations (what counts as heavily fortified is set in defines, so modders can tweak this) and will not attack provinces that has a score below 50 on a scale that goes to 255. This means that if a part of a front has level 6 manned forts, that part will not advance at all unless micromanaged. It also means that they are significantly less likely to push into provinces that would end up very exposed or extending the front line. Balanced: This is the default mode, and it works exactly as it does already in the game. Rush: The units will aggressively advance into provinces that are part of the order. This mode is ideal to quickly crush weaker enemies that would be unable to mount a proper counter attack anyway. I hope you enjoy this new feature. Defines have been added for score limits for the different modes, as well as fort levels for the careful mode. Please note that this only applies to how land battle plans are carried out. Of course, there are also various minor tweaks here and there See you next week everyone when I'll talk about other changes in the patch! Oh, and if you missed the three day war, the multiplayer skirmish featuring Enter Elysium, Quill18, Marbozir and Arumba, then you can check it out here. Read original post [quote]Useful links Official Website Hearts of Iron IV Wiki Development Diary Archives World War Wednesday Stream archive[/quote]


    [ 2016-06-17 12:45:57 CET ] [ Original post ]

    The Very First Patch is LIVE!


    We have had a beta patch out over the weekend. A big THANK YOU to everyone who helped us test it out. We have fixed a lot of stuff you found, and those things will be in the next patch, which we are aiming to have out in beta next week, and live shortly after. As for now, the patch is almost the same as the beta patch. A crash fix or two might have slipped in. Full patch notes for patch 1.0.1 (Hotfix) as follows: Stability & Performance

    • Fixed several rare CTDs.
    • Late-game performance optimizations.
    • Large peace conference resolutions are now faster and also properly indicate that they are active to non-participants.
    • Added GUI scaling option for people with very small or very high resolution displays (experimental).
    • Added a max framerate limiting system (defaults to 75 fps) to help people with the combination of bad cooling, great graphics cards and very high screen refresh. If you are one of these with heat issues I would love to hear if this solved it (changing max_fram_rate in settings can let you remove its effect by making it higher, or go lower if you still have issues)
    Gameplay
    • Fixed an issue with deploying troops during Spanish civil war when continuing save games.
    • Can now zoom in and out using PgUp and PgDown buttons on keyboard.
    • Stopped an exploit where player could redirect a naval transfer into an invasion without preparation.
    • Fixed a case where fleets who found themselves outside base range would be instantly deleted.
    • Fixed some highlighting issues in tutorial.
    Content
    • Added 9 new unique nation leader portraits.
    • Improved some VP/state names in China.
    • Improved a lot of alternate ideology nation names and party/leader names.
    • France can now send volunteers to Spain if they choose the Support Nationalists focus.
    • Fixed many localization issues, both in English and other languages.


    [ 2016-06-13 19:37:57 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Release and future patches + Beta Hotfix patch 1.0.1


    Hi everyone and welcome to the 60th dev diary (wow). This week we released Hearts of Iron IV! Initial reception seems to be great. Good reviews and a lot of players playing the game! The team is really pleased with what we have accomplished! Some fun statistics for first week: Top nations played: Germany - 35% Italy - 13% Soviet - 10% USA - 10% United Kingdom - 4% France - 3.5% The most played minors seems to be China, Poland and Turkey. Hotfix 1.0.1 We have been working on a hotfix patch for solving some performance issues and crashes that have popped up. It is still an optional beta patch, and I expect we will make it available for all on monday. If you have issues listed below and want to try it out go here to check things out early: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/hoi4-1-0-1-hotfix-beta-patch.945139/ Changelog for that is: Stability & Performance

    • Fixed several rare CTDs.
    • Late-game performance optimizations.
    • Large peace conference resolutions are now faster and also properly indicate that they are active to non-participants.
    • Added GUI scaling option for people with very small or very high resolution displays (experimental).
    • Added a max framerate limiting system (defaults to 75 fps) to help people with the combination of bad cooling, great graphics cards and very high screen refresh. If you are one of these with heat issues I would love to hear if this solved it (changing max_fram_rate in settings can let you remove its effect by making it higher, or go lower if you still have issues)
    Gameplay
    • Fixed an issue with deploying troops during spanish civil war when continuing savegames.
    • Can now zoom in and out using PgUp and PgDown buttons on keyboard.
    • Stopped an exploit where player could redirect a naval transfer into an invasion without preparation.
    • Fixed a case where fleets who found themselves outside base range would be instantly deleted.
    • Fixed some highlighting issues in tutorial.
    Content
    • Added 9 new unique nation leader portraits.
    • Improved some VP/state names in China.
    • Improved a lot of alternate ideology nation names and party/leader names.
    • France can now send volunteers to Spain if they choose the Support Nationalists focus.
    • Fixed many localization issues, both in english and other languages.
    Here are some cool portraits [USER=635267]@Sideburnout[/USER] has been adding to the patch to flesh out minors:
    Right now we are working on the first proper patch that we plan to release just before vacation in july. You will get more detailed info in coming weeks but the main focus will be: - AI - Air warfare balancing - Making sure invasions are harder to pull off, easier to defend against and more cleverly done by AI - Improving peace conference scoring - Quality of life interface improvements - Bug fixing Enjoy the game and we'll try to keep up with the amazing activity here on the forum! Read original post [quote]Useful links Official Website Hearts of Iron IV Wiki Development Diary Archives World War Wednesday Stream archive[/quote]


    [ 2016-06-10 13:55:14 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Now Available on Steam - Hearts of Iron IV

    Hearts of Iron IV is Now Available on Steam!

    Victory is at your fingertips! Your ability to lead your nation is your supreme weapon, the strategy game Hearts of Iron IV lets you take command of any nation in World War II; the most engaging conflict in world history.

    From the heart of the battlefield to the command center, you will guide your nation to glory and wage war, negotiate or invade. You hold the power to tip the very balance of WWII. It is time to show your ability as the greatest military leader in the world. Will you relive or change history? Will you change the fate of the world by achieving victory at all costs?


    [ 2016-06-06 18:08:00 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Hearts of Iron IV Available NOW!


    Hearts of Iron IV Storms the Beaches Paradox's Grand Strategy War Game Now Available STOCKHOLM - June 6- Paradox Development Studio returns to one of its most popular game series with the release of Hearts of Iron IV. This giant war game gives you control of any nation in the world during the chaotic years in and around World War II. Vast armies are yours to command, industrial infrastructures are yours to build and the far reaches of science are yours to research. The Hearts of Iron series has always been one of the deepest and most sophisticated games about humanity’s greatest conflict. Hearts of Iron IV brings greater attention to the big picture of battleplans and sweeping troop movements, with a heavier emphasis on accessibility without losing the depth that fans have long admired. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9BiUtINy4w As the world tension grows, you will be tested as a president, a commander and an industrial titan.

    • Command the Great Powers: The seven strongest nations in the world come with exclusive National Focus trees to guide you through your new history
    • Battleplan System: Set plans in advance for your armies and watch them execute their missions with the click of a button
    • Two Historical Scenarios: Start the game with the explosion of war in 1939, or begin in 1936 to build up for the coming conflict
    • Eleven Research Trees: Upgrade your weapons and vehicles, learn new military doctrines and unlock the mysteries of the atom and computing
    • Change History: Can you bring the mighty Soviet Union to its knees? Get to Berlin by 1942? Build an alternate American empire in South America
    Hearts of Iron IV is being released alongside the first minor power National Focus DLC, Poland: United and Ready which is available to all customers for free! And we are also joined by our fellow Swedes, the heavy metal band Sabaton, who have licensed a number of their World War II themed songs for a special Hearts of Ironmusic pack. Take up arms in defense of your country, or sign up to impose your ideology on a hostile world. Hearts of Iron IV is here. [quote] Useful links Release information and FAQ Hearts of Iron IV wiki Beginner Tutorial Videos [/quote]


    [ 2016-06-06 16:10:19 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Development Diary + Beginner tutorial


    Hi everyone, todays diary was a bit late because we are all busy with the release, but here we go: Its a wierd feeling to finally be able to release a game we have poured so much heart, hard work and sweat into over the last few years. A mix of pride in the team and the game and butterflies in your stomach as the assault ships close in on the beaches of Normandie. The weather finally seems to hold up and we expect to make landing on the evening of June 6th after long preparations. You can join us in the Higgins boats for the last stretch up the beach as we will be streaming the game 15:00-19:00 CEST and have most of the team come by to answer questions and hang out. To best prepare to meet the German pillboxes and other obstacles we recommend checking out these briefings from Jake: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRkkqv6B7I8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7qu2UcSIkM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWu1p46PyIY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuMbmL0jSQY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3hit9HSNNE There are also some After Action Reports from some of our betas to read here: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?forums/hearts-of-iron-4-after-action-reports-aar.947/ And finally, lots of streams out there now so make sure to check those out! See you in streams and next friday when I expect we will be talking about how the release went! Sideburnout sorted out an extra wallpaper as well, enjoy:

    Read original post [quote]Useful links Official Website Hearts of Iron IV Wiki Development Diary Archives World War Wednesday Stream archive[/quote]


    [ 2016-06-03 15:09:01 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Beginner Tutorial - Division Designer


    The tutorial week continues! Today's episode is about the Division Designer. The purpose of these videos is to make short and easy to find guides on specific topics. Once the game is released we expect a ton of user made let's plays and tutorials. Since these tend to be quite long, and it might be hard to find the specific thing you have questions about, We made these. I like to call them wiki articles in video format. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuMbmL0jSQY [quote] Want to learn more? The Hearts of Iron IV wiki [/quote]


    [ 2016-06-02 15:13:02 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Video Developer Diary + Beginner Tutorial + Streams!


    Today we have a double, if not a triple or quadruple treat for you! First we have a brand new video Developer Diary! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SMwEjVzzBY Then the tutorial week continues! Today's episode is about ???. The purpose of these videos is to make short and easy to find guides on specific topics. Once the game is released we expect a ton of user made let's plays and tutorials. Since these tend to be quite long, and it might be hard to find the specific thing you have questions about, We made these. I like to call them wiki articles in video format. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWu1p46PyIY And if that wasn't enough for you. There is also the World War Wednesday Stream today (it already started though, but you can watch the VOD), as well as the modding stream that begins at 16:00CEST at https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive Vod's are available on twitch.tv after the stream ends, and it will be uplodaded to Youtube as soon as possible. You can find our channel here! [quote] Want to learn more? The Hearts of Iron IV wiki [/quote]


    [ 2016-06-01 15:00:00 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Beginner Tutorial - Construction


    The tutorial week continues! Today's episode is about Construction. The purpose of these videos is to make short and easy to find guides on specific topics. Once the game is released we expect a ton of user made let's plays and tutorials. Since these tend to be quite long, and it might be hard to find the specific thing you have questions about, We made these. I like to call them wiki articles in video format. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7qu2UcSIkM [quote] Want to learn more? The Hearts of Iron IV wiki [/quote]


    [ 2016-05-31 14:10:12 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Beginner Tutorial - Battle Plans


    Hello! During this week we'll be releasing one tutorial video a day where glorious DDRJake explains some basic concepts of the game in an easy to understand manner. The purpose of these videos is to make short and easy to find guides on specific topics. Once the game is released we expect a ton of user made let's plays and tutorials. Since these tend to be quite long, and it might be hard to find the specific thing you have questions about, We made these. I like to call them wiki articles in video format. We start off with video #1 - Battle Plans! Enjoy! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRkkqv6B7I8 [quote] Want to learn more? The Hearts of Iron IV wiki [/quote]


    [ 2016-05-30 15:27:39 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Development Diary 58 - Tutorial, Wiki Browser


    Hi everyone! Today we will be talking about something pretty important: How to learn how to play Hearts of Iron IV! To help with this we have two important tools: Tutorial & Game Wiki. Tutorial Hearts of Iron IV is very much the easiest HOI to get into, but it is still a complex hardcore game, and as such we want people to get the best and smoothest start possible on the way to mastering it.
    HOI4 features a somewhat nonlinear tutorial where you will be starting off as Italy and learning about different aspects of the game. Each step will generally also contain links to in-depth info on the Wiki (more about that soon). Italy is a good country to learn with because it puts you in a pretty easy war with ethiopia right away and it's pretty much up to you when and how you get involved with WW2. The tutorial is also not something that ends, so you can keep playing on as Italy with the same savegame if you so chose (recommended for first playthrough).
    Wiki In my opinion a complete and up to date wiki is an important part of playing and learning to master a Paradox grand strategy title so we wanted to make sure there was a wiki available from launch and also that it was integrated in the game. Thats right, we now have an ingame browser so reading info won't take you out of the game experience and its possible to open links directly from the game in it. The browser can be set up to use your regular external one if you like also, which is pretty nice if you have multiple screens. For people on trains or otherwise disconnected from the internet - the game ships with an offline version of the wiki as well you can decide to use instead.
    You can go check out the wiki already here. We will also be releasing a series of beginner tutorial videos starting next week for people who prefer to learn by observing :) See you guys next friday when we'll do the last diary before release! Read original post [quote]Useful links Official Website Hearts of Iron IV Wiki Development Diary Archives World War Wednesday Stream archive[/quote]


    [ 2016-05-27 09:39:51 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Hearts of Iron IV - Development Diary 57 - Poland: United and Ready


    Hello everyone! We are getting close to release now with preorder started a few days ago. When we posponed HOI4 release it was mostly a question of getting more time for programmers to fix bugs, which left our scripters and artists a little underused. We figured we would put this to use on adding more flavor and fun for some minor. We have a lot of polish players, so focusing on Poland seemed to be a good idea. We werent sure if we would get this complete on time, and since we wanted to see if this kind of content packs would be well received we figured the best idea was to make it a separate DLC from the base game. Things worked out and it got ready on time, so we decided we should just release it to everyone for free (this isn't just for preorder, you will get it whenever you buy HOI4, forever). If this is popular we hope this is the first of a series of packs we'll make as DLC in the future. So, what does it contain?

    • Focus tree.
    • 2D art for tanks & planes, complete with flavor names.
    • 2D art for ministers, generals and country leaders.
    • 3D art for infantry and some more well known tanks and planes
    • Some achievements & events.
    Polish Focuses We had two rules when we designed these, first that the Polish focus tree could not be worse than the neutral one and secondly we felt it could not depend on other people's focus trees. We made sure that all the benefits you get from neutral tree are still there, but made sure that they carried a lot more Polish flavour. In the end we were able to do some really cool things with Poland. The industrialization efforts of Poland are mainly based a short term national investment called the Four Year Plan. Parts of this plan included heavy investment in infrastructure, activation of the Old Polish Industrial Region and developing the Central Industrial Region. We have taken inspiration from the plan and implemented its different parts as branches of the Polish focus tree. We also focused on the fact that Poland was way ahead of other countries when it came to the decryption of the German Enigma machine. To reflect this, Poland gets special focuses that give them them bonuses in computing and decryption. When it came to diplomacy we wanted to add additional options for a Polish player who is surrounded by threats. Although we cannot stop Germany and the USSR from trying to carve up Poland (those focuses are elsewhere), we did feel we could have Poland seek accommodation with either power. If you play your cards right this could also lead to an alliance with them (which blocks the “carve up” focuses for that side). That isn't the most interesting path, however, as digging around in history we stumbled across a rather ambitious Polish plan, called the Between the Seas Concept. This was a proposed alliance of countries between the Baltic, the Black Sea and the Mediterranean (one suggestion including Italy, no less). The idea ultimately failed due to a whole number of reasons which are too many to mention. Still, it’s an intriguing idea, and one we felt we could something really cool with. If Poland chooses to go for the Between the Seas Concept they can set up an entire faction of their own. Although the Balkans are rocky ground for Poland, the Baltic States was an option. Especially if Poland could make up with Lithuania after the rather unfortunate disagreement over the status of Wilno (or Vilnius, depending on which side you were on). So Poland has the option to carve out its own little mini-faction in the center of Europe. From there it is up to a skillful Polish player to grow their alliance and stand strong against both East and West.

    Equipment and names For the Polish DLC we wanted Poland to feel like a fully fleshed out country. This included the names of equipment, which is a challenge for a country that wasn't too active in the research department after 1939. We therefore had to resolve to our least favorite tool when it comes to historical research: making things up. If we look at ships, the Polish Navy during World War II was just a few destroyers and submarines. However, it gave us something to work with, and so for the names of more advanced classes we tried to followed the same naming convention as the ones we did have information for. That leaves only a slightly small gap, namely every other ship class. Time to get creative! For light cruisers we went for Polish cities. As an added bonuses the naming order is by population size in the 1930s, a fun little detail for Polish fans. When it came to Heavy Cruisers we chose rivers in Poland, those mighty arteries binding the country together. The first class is named after the Polish Victory against the USSR in 1920 at the Battle of the Niemen (or course Poland would want to name a ship class after that). The follow up classes then get names after other rivers in Poland. That's it for the easy ones, it’s time to dig a little deeper. We needed two names for Battlecruisers, and ultimately settled on territories that Poland felt were rightfully hers. For the mighty Battleships we went big and named them after Polish Royal dynasties. We saved the biggest man of Polish interwar politics for the biggest ship, the first Polish Super Heavy Battleship Class is the Pilsudski class. We needed two, though, so we also went for another famous Polish Marshall, Poniatowski (the man I am sure unbiased Polish historians agree would have won the Battle of Borodino, if only Napoleon would have released the Imperial Guard to support his flank attack). This left just the carriers and for ´those we went for Polish Kings, starting with the savior of Vienna, Jan Sobieski.


    Next week we will be talking about tutorials, wiki and stuff like that. On wednesday we got another episode of World War Wednesday where Daniel & SteelVolt take the helm of communist France, and also more modding stream so make sure to tune in! Also, remember to preorder so I can beg Fredrik for a real office T-34! Read original post [quote]Useful links Official Website Hearts of Iron IV Wiki Development Diary Archives World War Wednesday Stream archive[/quote]


    [ 2016-05-20 14:09:48 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Hearts of Iron IV - Pre-order available now!


    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEN5SEb5ASA You can find the Information and FAQ thread here! http://store.steampowered.com/app/394360


    [ 2016-05-17 15:53:09 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Development Diary 56 - Bits Pieces


    Hi everyone! At this point we have covered almost all big features of Hearts of Iron IV, so today I thought I would highlight some of the smaller changes we have done and give a little update on where we are in the project. Right now our Release Candidate has been approved which means that no matter what we have something of good quality to release, and the release date 6th of June is safely locked in! At the moment we are working on further balancing and bug fixing for a release day patch. Straits and Canals The straits system in HOI4 is our most flexible and moddable yet. Each strait can have different rules to better match historical rules rather than trying to fit it all under a general blanket. Each strait has a list of provinces that needs to be controlled to decide the rules and they can have 4 states in relation to you: Friendly - you and allies control all provinces. Contested - Control of provinces is mixed between you and someone you are at war with generally blocking you both. Enemy - Controlled by enemy, generally blocking you completely although some may let submarines through. Neutral - You are neither friend or foe. Usually means you can go through unless it's something like the Panama Canal, or the Turkish Straits where only trade is allowed. For each of these a strait can specify what happens with military transports, fleets, trade and submarines.
    Manpower, Anti Air and Naval battles To better be able to model historical use of manpower and for balance reasons Fleets and Air wings now require quite a bit of manpower tied up in shore/ground crews. This means we can get a much more interesting tradeoff for nations like USA and Britain. If you run out of manpower now you won't be able to form air wings or deploy ships. We have also done changes to how static anti-air works. It now gives a clear damage reduction to bombing in its state and will also shoot down bombers so it's a much more worthwhile investment. In fact if you combine lots of anti air and the Dispersed Industry track in industry research you can remove the majority of bombing damage letting you fight outnumbered in the air easier. Oh we also added extra details you can toggle on for naval battle reports if you want to dig into all the details of a combat, looks like this:
    Graphics Settings In an attempt to help out people with less endowed computers we have added a ton of settings to graphics where you can lower texture resolutions and turn off visual features. You can for example turn off all 3D models leaving you with just counters.
    Airplanes and art Japanese and US carrier planes now have awesome unique art where they differed from base model. We also fixed a few odd choices. For example the He 111 no longer has to fill the shoes of strategic bomber for Germany and gets moved to tactical instead. In its early game place we now instead have the Dornier Do 19.
    We will now be entering the home stretch push for HOI4 before release, so expect more videos and streams in the coming weeks. In fact we have a special longer World War Wednesday Tuesday planned next week at 17:00 CEST. If you aren't completely busy purging evil xeno fungi across the galaxy in Stellaris you can help as well: Pull your friends away from whatever they are doing and tell them about WW2 and HOI4! At this point our aim is, to quote Churchill: Victory at all costs! Read original post [quote]Useful links Official Website Hearts of Iron IV Wiki Development Diary Archives World War Wednesday Stream archive[/quote]


    [ 2016-05-13 12:13:29 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Hearts of Iron IV - Development Diary 55 - HoI4 QA


    Good morning! This weeks topic is brought to you by the embedded Quality Assurance on Hearts of Iron IV, and how we work. My name is Distantaziq and I'm one of the two embedded QA on HoI4. My partner is currently in flux, but at time of writing and until HoI4 is released it is Da9L who holds the position, or maybe you know him more prominently as the person who put the ”Y” in ”Yermany”. Quality assuring a game is much like quality assuring any other piece of software, except in an arguably more creative setting. If you’re thinking of getting into the business “to get to play games the entire day” you’re more or less signing up for “a fun safari trip” while you’re really enlisting to the corps. The Quality Assurance department in Paradox Development Studios is divided in two parts; Embedded Testers, that are a part of the project's development team, and Central QA that are more fluid as they jump between the titles. Central QA are more generalists, and jack-of-all-trades. While the embedded testers are the first to test out all the new features, balance changes etc, the testers in the central group are able to support the embedded testers by providing with more long term gameplay testing, and a “fresh” perspective on things and catch anything that might have slipped through. The Embedded QA are the true experts in their respective projects. As was mentioned above, we are the first ones to test out any new changes in the game, in order to see any possible problems with the changes, if they are entertaining or not, and provide this feedback to the projects producer/project lead. We also have the opportunity to specialize in various areas. If we take Da9L as an example, he is the resident expert on AI, which means that a of the project leads can request him for a certain amount of time to have a sweep of the AI, or maybe see how the AI handles the new DLC features that was just implemented. As two QA who are solely on HoI4 we are a part of the development team and our three main purposes are to assess the risks of the project, monitor the activity/numbers on our bug tracking service JIRA (and subsequently regress the issues) and give continuous feedback on the project, if something works better/worse and why/if it needs to be changed. The risk assessment is where we analyze the project’s status that week, and pin down specific issues that we think (for instance) are destabilizing the build, or are crippling the AI/other essential features. We also take the time frame into aspect, if we have enough time to assure the quality of implemented changes before deadlines, and/or if a so-called “feature creep” is attempted. If everything is working smoothly we don't really have anything to report that week, but there are usually crashes or other issues that are worth taking note of for the project leaders and managers. Regression as such involves reading resolved JIRA issues and getting into the problem at hand and checking if the issue still exists in our latest version (which is why it’s so important when you report bugs to note what version you encountered the issue in). If the issue is fixed, we close the issue and help it pass on to the other side. Every week we schedule multiplayer with the rest of the HoI4 team to make sure all multiplayer features are up to par (so far pretty good!), and in a perfect world we also get some scenario testing done, to uncover issues we might not have noticed otherwise. (Since one of the most dangerous things about being quality assurance is getting comfortable and losing your edge by following the same motions when you enter the game.) As you can imagine, working on such a vast game as HoI4, our days are a blur of keeping track of bugs and trying to make sure none of the more severe bugs slip through the cracks. Like that one time when Soviet had a coup trigger on them that turned into a civil war, and both sides ended up nuking each other to bits (needless to say, the AI received a lot of restrictions on their nuclear usage after that). We’re therefore really grateful to the betas who provide observations and help testing the game to make sure it’s providing entertainment for as many players as possible. :) Enclosing some tidbits of weird things that we've seen throughout the development process:
    In for a wild ride...
    Border updates took a break.
    Who needs ships anyway!
    Denied tech.
    Sticky player map mode names. Myes.
    (Pink IS programmer art.) Until next time! Read original post [quote]Useful links Official Website Hearts of Iron IV Wiki Development Diary Archives World War Wednesday Stream archive[/quote]


    [ 2016-05-07 07:50:22 CET ] [ Original post ]

    The Clausewitz Maya Exporter!


    Hi guys! You can now download the Clausewitz Maya Exporter, which will allow you to create your own 3D models to use in your mods for Hearts of Iron IV, Stellaris, Europa Universalis IV or Crusader Kings II (the two latter titles are not fully supported due to an older version of Clausewitz). The Exporter is free for anyone with a Paradox Account. We plan to release our .mesh formats to enable our community to make a similar exporter to use with other software like Blender as well. We are really looking forwards to seeing what you, the community, can make with this tool. [quote] Links Download the Clausewitz Maya Exporter for free (requires a Paradox Account) Guide on the Clausewitz Maya Exporer - this is Stellaris specific at the moment. But hopefully you can figure it out. We'll release Hearts of Iron IV instructions later. The official Clausewitz Maya Exporter forum [/quote]


    [ 2016-05-02 15:11:06 CET ] [ Original post ]

    Hearts of Iron IV
    Paradox Development Studios Developer
    Paradox Interactive Publisher
    2016-06-06 Release
    GameBillet: 33.97 €
    Game News Posts: 472
    🎹🖱️Keyboard + Mouse
    Very Positive (220284 reviews)
    The Game includes VR Support
    Public Linux Depots:
    • Hearts of Iron IV Linux [135.44 M]
    Available DLCs:
    • Hearts of Iron IV: Sabaton Soundtrack
    • Hearts of Iron IV: Together for Victory
    • Hearts of Iron IV: Death or Dishonor
    • Hearts of Iron IV: Sabaton Soundtrack Vol. 2
    • Hearts of Iron IV: Waking the Tiger
    • Hearts of Iron IV: Man the Guns
    • Unit Pack - Hearts of Iron IV: Axis Armor
    • Music - Hearts of Iron IV: Radio Pack
    • Hearts of Iron IV: La Résistance
    • Unit Pack - Hearts of Iron IV: Allied Armor
    • Music - Hearts of Iron IV: Allied Speeches Pack
    • Country Pack - Hearts of Iron IV: Battle for the Bosporus
    • Unit Pack - Hearts of Iron IV: Eastern Front Planes
    • Music - Hearts of Iron IV: Songs of the Eastern Front
    • Hearts of Iron IV: No Step Back
    • Hearts of Iron IV - DLC Subscription
    • Hearts of Iron IV: By Blood Alone
    • Hearts of Iron IV: Arms Against Tyranny
    • Country Pack - Hearts of Iron IV: Trial of Allegiance
    • Hearts of Iron IV: Content Creator Pack - Soviet Union 2D
    • Expansion - Hearts of Iron IV: Götterdämmerung
    • Hearts of Iron IV: Expansion Pass 1
    • Expansion pass 1 Bonus - Hearts of Iron IV: Supporter Pack
    • Expansion Pass 1 Bonus - Hearts of Iron IV: Ride of the Valkyries Music
    Victory is at your fingertips! Your ability to lead your nation is your supreme weapon, the strategy game Hearts of Iron IV lets you take command of any nation in World War II; the most engaging conflict in world history.

    From the heart of the battlefield to the command center, you will guide your nation to glory and wage war, negotiate or invade. You hold the power to tip the very balance of WWII.

    It is time to show your ability as the greatest military leader in the world. Will you relive or change history? Will you change the fate of the world by achieving victory at all costs?

    Main Features:
    • Total strategic war: War is not only won on land, sea and in the air. It’s also achieved in the hearts and minds of men and women.
    • Authentic real-time war simulation: Let the greatest commanders of WW2 fight your war with the tools of the time; tanks, planes, ships, guns and newly discovered weapons of mass destruction.
    • Assume control of any nation: Choose from the greatest powers striving for victory, or the small nations trying to weather the storm.
    • Turn the world into your battlefield: Experience the full WWII timespan in a topographical map complete with seasons, weather and terrain. Snow, mud, storms can be both your strong ally and a ruthless enemy.
    • Negotiate or force your will: Experience the advanced politics and diplomacy systems, form factions, engage in trade for resources and appoint ministers to your party.
    • Intense Online Combat: Battle in both competitive and cooperative multiplayer for up to 32 players. Featuring cross-platform multiplayer.
    • Give your nation a unique edge: Experience the flexible technology system, where all major powers get their own unique identity. Develop detailed historic tanks and planes through research and army experience.

    Everyone will receive:
    • Poland: United and Ready:
      A Free DLC adds a unique focus tree for Poland, new 3d models for tanks and planes, 2d assets, and extra leader portraits for the ultimate in historical accuracy.
    • Forum Avatar
    • Wallpaper

    MINIMAL SETUP
    • OS: OS: Ubuntu 20.04
    • Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad Q9400 @ 2.66 GHz / AMD Athlon II X4 650 @ 3.20 GHzMemory: 4 GB RAM
    • Memory: 4 GB RAM
    • Graphics: ATI Radeon HD 5850 or NVIDIA GeForce GTX470 with 1GB VRAM / Latest available proprietary drivers from both manufacturers
    • Storage: 2 GB available spaceAdditional Notes: Controller support: 3-button mouse. keyboard. and speakers are required. / Internet Connection or LAN for multiplayer. Up to 32 other players in multiplayer mode.
    RECOMMENDED SETUP
    • OS: OS: Ubuntu 20.04
    • Processor: Intel Core i5 750 @ 2.66 GHz / AMD Phenom II X4 955 @ 3.20 GHzMemory: 4 GB RAM
    • Memory: 4 GB RAM
    • Graphics: ATI Radeon HD 6950 or NVIDIA GeForce GTX570 with 2GB VRAM / Latest available proprietary drivers from both manufacturers
    • Storage: 2 GB available spaceAdditional Notes: Controller support: 3-button mouse. keyboard. and speakers are required. / Internet Connection or LAN for multiplayer. Up to 32 other players in multiplayer mode.
    GAMEBILLET

    [ 6089 ]

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