Welcome back to another HoD DD, the topic this week is Colonisation. This is something we've changed in many ways in this expansion, it's one of our major focuses.

The first change is that the two techs that used to allow Colonisation, Nationalism & Imperialism and Machine Guns, now no longer directly do so. Instead, the Minimum Life Rating effect which allows you to colonise has been moved to Inventions tied to previous level techs, but with triggers that require someone has researched Nationalism & Imperialism/Machine Guns. The effect of this is that anyone reasonably up to date in techs will receive the Inventions around the same time, preventing one nation from having a monopoly on Colonisation.


...

Hello again, it's time for the 4th Victoria II: Heart of Darkness developer diary. This time I'll be talking about the changes we've made to wars and the military in general. While there's no flashy new battle screen like we revealed for naval battles last week, I think you'll still rather like these changes. So, let's get to them!

First of all, we have Ticking War Score (or TWS) based on certain War Goals (WGs), the idea of which is to make it possible to take land from larger nations without having to launch a total war and occupy 90% of their country. TWS can be caused to Tick in two ways, mostly by holding the land in question, but also by winning the majority of battles when using certain War Goals. WGs which deal with the transfer of land use the former, while the Humiliate and Assert Hegemony Goals Tick on battle score.
...

Welcome back to another Heart of Darkness Developer Diary, today I'm going to talk about the changes we have made to the Naval system. We've made some fairly major changes to this area of the game, hopefully you'll like the sound of them

The first is that you can no longer build Dreadnoughts in any little coastal town, you need to have a certain level of Naval Base to build any given ship, so building up your naval infrastructure is now vital to your ability to field a modern navy. Nor can you simply spam Naval Bases in every coastal province you have, they are limited to one per state (In the event of a split state being reunited, the highest level base will be kept), which serves to limit the number of advanced ships which can be built at one time. Finally, you can no longer build Big Ships in overseas areas, only in the area connected to your capital.

You can see the Naval base mapmode here, green-striped provinces have Naval Bases, shaded by their level. ...

That's right, it's Thursday, so that means a new Dev Diary for Victoria II: Heart of Darkness. Today I'll talk about the Crisis system, and some of the AI improvements.

With the Crisis system we wanted to create a mechanic that would capture something of the way the Great Powers of the Victorian period tried to police the actions of lesser nations and used diplomacy to achieve their goals at each other's expense without simply going to war. At the same time, as nations became more industrialised and powerful throughout the period, the stakes on these manoeuvres gradually increased until, in 1914, Europe was plunged into WWI over what was a relatively small incident between a small state and a fading Empire because of the interlocking system of alliances and guarantees which had evolved from earlier incidents. So how does this work in the game? ...

Hello and welcome to the first developer diary for the latest Victoria II expansion: Heart of Darkness! Today we're going to look at the Newspaper system, which is perhaps one of the most interesting features we're adding in Heart of Darkness.

We have several different newspaper headers for different countries and regions around the world, and the major nations also have some special newspaper names for when they are ruled by one of the extreme ideologies. ...

With the release of Hearts of iron III: Their Finest Hour tomorrow, there's no need to hold back!
So if anyone has any questions regarding the expansion - ask away and I'll answer what I can.
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/...%C2%96-Q-amp-A

Cheers,
David Ballantyne, scripter & game designer at TFH


...

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No! It’s a new dev diary for Hearts of Iron III: Their Finest Hour!
Today I’ll be talking about Lend Lease (the feature so good we posted it on Facebook twice!) and the Strategic warfare screen.

Let’s start with Lend Lease. For those who don’t know, The Lend lease act is the popularly used name for a law the USA passed in 1941 to Lend or Lease war material to nations fighting the Axis powers. Technically, being lent meant the goods should be returned after the war, but as one senator commented, “War material is like chewing gum, you don’t want it back after someone else is done with it”, so it was effectively a gift.
In game terms, this is done by spending some of your Industrial Capacity in the Lend Lease slider, and then you can share it out on a sub-screen between nations who have requested LL aid from you, which grants the target nation bonus IC: ...

DD time again! This one is about Landing craft and invasions, which we have been giving some attention to for Their Finest Hour.

For those of you not familiar with them, landing craft during WWII were basically small, flat-bottomed boats which often had a ramped opening at the front, which could be used to rapidly unload men onto beaches. Large versions, known as “Landing craft, tank” or “LCTs” were able to do the same thing with tanks. Landing craft were vital for the large Allied landings in Africa, Europe, and the Pacific, and shortages of LCTs were one of the major reasons Operation Overlord could not be carried out in 1943.

The easiest difference to notice is that we have added two new units: Landing Craft and Assault Ships. Landing Craft can be thought of as a Transport flotilla with many landing craft attached, while Assault ships represent both LCTs and the larger flat-bottomed transport vessels. ...

Another Thursday, another dev diary! Today I'll be talking about Combined Arms and Leader Traits.

First up: Leader Traits. We've added the ability for leaders to gain traits through combat, and added several new gainable traits based on fighting in various terrain types, which give a speed and combat bonus in that terrain. The new traits are: ...

It’s Thursday again, so that means it’s time for another TFH DD! This week I’ll be talking about two rather neat new features: Combat Tactics and Armour/Piercing.
Let’s look at Tactics first. When a battle starts now, the battle leader on both sides picks a Combat Tactic which gives his side certain bonuses. These are somewhat like the old Battle Events, but they are always active now, and a new Tactic is chosen by both sides every day of the battle. The choice of Tactic is affected by: Leader skill, Skill vs enemy skill, Units present, Techs, Frontage, Reserves, and whether it’s an offensive or defensive battle. Many Tactics also have a Counter-tactic that nullifies them, meaning they grant no bonus. In the example below you can see this has happened to the Soviet Ambush, the German’s have chosen Breakthrough, which counters Ambush and renders it useless. Leaders who out-skill their opponent s are more likely to Counter them. ...

Hello and welcome to the first Dev diary for Their Finest Hour, the latest expansion pack for Hearts of Iron III. Today I'm going to talk about a rather interesting feature we call Custom Game Mode.
Basically, GCM allows you to make changes to your country before you start playing. You can simply tweak a couple of techs if you like, but you can also pretty much start from a blank slate and re-design your country as you choose. Simulation's great and all, but we appreciate that sometimes, you just want to run a war. So we thought we´d help you by speeding up the early years for those gamers who would like to jump straight into the action.We hope that this will be an interesting option both in single and multi player, SP users can experiment with different setups, and MP users will be able to start later scenarios with their own custom setup without having to play through years of peace to build their desired armies. ...

AHD DD14 – Mapmodes

Time for the first (written) and last AHD DD of 2012! This time it's about the new mapmodes ...

It's Friday, and that means it's time for another AHD dev diary! Today's DD is about China. As most of you know, getting China into your Sphere of Influence could be a massive boon to your economy since all those Chinese pops buy your produced goods first. Perhaps not quite a “Win” button, but it was a big advantage.

Our solution to this was to split China into several parts. Some of the parts are still pretty populous and so are still good SoI targets, but they are not quite as huge as the old China was, and of course multiple GPs can now Sphere separate parts.
...

Hello and welcome to the first developer diary for A House Divided, the first expansion for Victoria 2. From the title you're probably thinking two things:
1) So the focus is on the American Civil War?
2) Must everything about the ACW be called A House Divided?

Well the answers to those are “No” and “Yes” respectively.
...

For the Motherland - DD 8 – Modding

Well, it's Wednesday and that means it's time for a dev diary! Today ...

DD 3 – Misc stuff

Hello everybody, welcome to the third FTM DD. We actually planned to give you a video DD this week, but it's taking longer than expected to be wrapped up (even though Podcat did all his own stunts), so instead I've hastily cobbled this together carefully selected a few minor things to show off.
...

Hello everyone, welcome to the first FTM dev diary! Recently we had a poll to decide what should be the fifth and final battle scenario in FTM and the winner was Operation Unthinkable. For those of you not in the know, Operation Unthinkable was the British-American plan to attack the Soviet Union after the surrender of Germany and drive them back to their pre-war borders. The plan was also to re-arm surrendered German troops and use them to spearhead the attack. It was a risky plan, the Red army was at this point well equipped, well trained, and very battle-hardened, but at the same time the USSR was finally running out of manpower and their country had been devastated by the German invasion. While the Allies had much smaller armies in Europe they would enjoy air supremacy and the USA had only just gotten their war economy fully in gear. Of course, no one knows how the war would have panned out, as the operation was never launched, but in FTM you'll have the chance to find out.
...

I've chosen Taira for their centeral location, they border the Emperor and all 3 other Daimyos. Minamoto (blue) is the current Shogun, I'll have to do something about that soon. For now I start by increasing my army size and forming an alliance with Tachibana (green). My initial plan is to build up and hit Fujiwara (purple) as soon as the Shugun's influence falls before 50. I also send an insult to Minamoto, low relations with Daimyos hurt their Influence:

...

Hello and welcome to the 6th and final DD for HoD, today I’m going to tell you about the changes we’ve made to Industry ...