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