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Johan

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Hello, we are back with the lucky 13th episode of the Hearts of Iron 3 development diary. Progress has been going strong the last week, and we’re happy with the feature we will be presenting today.

So we are back talking about politics. As mentioned in previous developer diaries, Hearts of Iron 3 is a grand strategy war game. Our main focus through out is on the war. However as some German guy once said, war is a continuation of politics by other means. So although we were never going to lavish a lot of attention on it, we felt that politics should at the very least get a little tender loving care. Our goal was to give the internal politics of a country have a little more depth and try to make it function more dynamically. The biggest restriction we placed upon our changes was that it should feel right for the era.

Before we launch into this let’s recap briefly about party organisation, as seen a previous developer’s dairy. Each party has a value representing its relative organisation value inside the country. This number is listed between 0-100 and the total organisation value inside a country will also be 100. This is a 0 sum game where increases in organisation by one party hit the others. This in turn feeds into a party’s ability to mobilise support for things like elections and, for those more cloak and dagger types, coups.

First off I suppose your are wondering what happens if you end up with someone like the National Socialists as the largest party but your country is a democracy. In this scenario your democracy is living on borrowed time. Sooner or later there will be a fire in the parliament building, a state of emergency and a dictatorship. Now I know what you are thinking, what are the odds? However as with all these things we work on the policy, well it could happen.

Onto the cabinet, as with all the various incarnations of Hearts of Iron, there is a ten-man cabinet where each minister has a different type of effect. However with new toys we have to play with in Hearts of Iron 3 we have overhauled these effects. We personally felt that a lot of minister’s bonuses were independent of your current situation where we feel that the minister choice should reward long-term strategy. So let’s look at some of our new minister effects. Your choice of foreign minister will in the main affect your drift, thus who you pick will have a long term affect on which faction your country moves closest to. Same with your military staff positions they, in general, affect practical decay. So if you have Armoured Spearhead Doctrine Chief of the Army he will get you cheaper tanks and better tank technologies but to get the best out of him you are really going to need to build some tanks.

Next, as you are no doubt aware the trusty sliders have gone, to be replaced by laws. We like laws a lot more, because unlike sliders who have a fixed time limit between changes, with laws we can make the switch context sensitive. So consider the situation where your neighbour has become just a little bit threatening, so you up your draft level to increase the size of your army. Then your neighbour attacks you, in Hearts of Iron 2 you would have to wait until the next slider change, with laws since you are at war you can immediately start to mobilise your country for war. It also adds in the effect that moving towards a greater war orientation is not a simple annual step, but an actual process that takes into account the global situation.


Here’s a screenshot of Nazi Germany in 1936.

alpha_jan21.jpg
 
This sounds brilliant! :D Your ministers are also affected by your own choices ("to get the best out of him you are really going to need to build some tanks")!? Great! The new interface looks great too!

P.S. Loving the fasces for the Nazi party symbol. Will other national socialist parties around the world have this symbol too, or are they specific for a party?
 
Weren't the parties supposed to have nation-specific names?

Also, did the "multiplicity" of the same person get changed? Do Stalin and Hitler still exist as 5 separate people?

What does "liberate country" do?
 
So we'll be keeping ministers, excellent. It looks pretty good, the anti-decay stuf should be interesting. Are minister traits, and number of personalities, moddable?

Also, does Rudolf Hess deserve +10% IC? He always seemed more like an insignificant layman to me. Or is his trait for game balance? Also, shouldn't Hitler also be the HoG, not just the HoS anyway? :p
 
very nice,
What does something practical decay means?

Edit:
So we'll be keeping ministers, excellent. It looks pretty good, the anti-decay stuf should be interesting. Are minister traits, and number of personalities, moddable?

Also, does Rudolf Hess deserve +10% IC? He always seemed more like an insignificant layman to me. Or is his trait for game balance? Also, shouldn't Hitler also be the HoG, not just the HoS anyway? :p
Wasn't it the same way in HOI2?

Edit: Ups decay not delay, anyway still the same question?

Edit: Uh I think I know the answer to my own question, yay, it has something to do with the new research production bonuses
 
Oh, I thought political parties would have their real name. name(alignment)

Of course, changing laws at the last minute will have some effect on dissidents, right?
 
perhaps we are yet to add in the flavour names for political parties?
 
First of all, this new system seems to a lot closer to reality and I wonder if the player has the ability to actually effect the election process through his decisions (similarily to Vicky). In, as you put it Johan, previous incarnations of HoI this side was really badly simulated IMHO and have great hopes for this new system.

I have small question or observation on another matter -- can the player affect the power output of a province through infrastructure buildup? To me it seems really weird that provinces have default energy values and cannot change the power output of a nation by building powerplants (or infrastructure). I mean that natural resourses are one thing, but conversion of power from this natural resource should be another matter. I think that this will increase the value of the game, because you can play smaller nations now too without altering the scenario files.

Power is a crucial aspect of industrial output and I believe that this game would benefit if this power production through infrastructure would be implemented.
 
Just wondering, if you can't replace a HOG in a National Socialist government, is there a historic event for Hess to fly to England? How do you get him out of the way?

Also, sliders made it possible to reform Germany back into something resembling a republic, over many years. Is that an option in HOI3, or is revolution the only way out?

My worry is that with sliders we also lost the ability to fine tune the distinctions between different governments...this way every South American country will end up looking identical.
 
nation unity is something that is adversely affected by losing national territory . Though we don't know its affects we know that Hitler will lessen/negate its loss to a degree, presumably to allow The soviets and allies to take most of Germany before the Germans surrender.

Liberate country seems to me to be a quick way of doing Create puppet ----> Liberate Puppet.
 
I suppose that the laws are these things on the bottom left, right?
Will they appear like events asking you to choose, or you will have a list of laws from which you can pick whenever you decide?
 
Looking really good. Is it possible to change the shading of the alignment markers? Maybe making paternal autocrat and fascist lighter shades, so that we can tell the difference more easily?
 
Wow, looks like a much more intriguing and comprehensive management of politics. About the laws, how are they enacted? I mean what catalysts are there to enact certain laws besides the military ones? If I do not have education laws in the beginning but I want them to increase leadership or something, how do I make that happen?