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