HoI 4 Dev Diary - Formable Nations and Achievements

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Archangel85

Content Design, HoI4 [Retired]
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Hello, and welcome back to another dev diary! 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.


Formable Nations have already been teased by some ill-advised clicking on stream. We won’t tell you just how you can get the infamous form_hre decision, but rest assured: it is quite a journey. And no, the trigger that was accidentally shown on stream is no longer quite so accurate...


The historical purists can also rest assured that they won’t see the decision pop up if they follow the historical path, and the AI is set to never go down this path.

Capture1.JPG


The goal of the Formable Nations system is to give players a goal to work towards and enhance the sandbox gameplay. The formable nations have proven quite popular in other titles such as EUIV and the economics-simulator-that-shall-not-be-named. The implementation was fairly simple on the mechanics side: if you are one of the countries that can form a nation and control the required territories, you can activate a decision to form that nation. This gives you a cosmetic tag and cores on the relevant territories.

hoi4_3.jpg



We have a few fairly plausible formable nations like the Baltic Federation, Scandinavia, or the United Netherlands, which are pretty easy to do. We also have a number of somewhat less historically accurate formable nations like, say a reborn Roman Empire (which Mussolini may or may not have been aiming for), and finally the really far out ones like the Byzantine Empire.

hoi4_6.jpg



We envision these latter ones to be a late-game thing, after you have already achieved dominance over your region, when you want a little extra flavor for that world conquest. We’ve also attempted to ensure that all world regions have at least some possible formables.

hoi4_5.jpg


Again, the AI is set to never take these decisions in historical mode, and the territory requirements are such that only the more plausible and easy ones would likely ever be taken by the AI.


Currently, you need to control the territory directly, but future iterations might also allow you to form nations diplomatically.


Your reward is a new name and country color and a new flag. We had a lot of fun coming up with alternative history flags for a lot of these countries. For some, there are some additional goodies like custom namelists.

hoi4_131.jpg


(This particular one is also available if you form Austria-Hungary through the Hungarian focus tree)

We’re not going to spoil the full list of countries that you can form - you can find them out yourself in just a few weeks.

And if forming a new nation isn’t enough of a challenge for you, Waking the Tiger also comes with 18 new achievements:

awake_and_angry.jpg

Awake and Angry: Reconquer all of China and Manchuria and force a Japanese surrender.

romance_of_the_three_kingdoms.jpg

Romance of the Three Kingdoms - as China, puppet and then annex Yunnan and Guangxi Clique.

sun_tzu_reborn.jpg

Sun Tzu Reborn: As Any Chinese Nation, have fully upgraded/promoted field marshal to Level 10.

the_people_have_stood_up.jpg

The people have stood up!: With Mao as your leader, win the Chinese Civil War.

made_in_china.jpg

Made in China: As Communist China, have over 100 military factories

tojo_shot_first.jpg

Tojo shot first: As Japan, nuke a core territory of the US before the US develops nuclear weapons.

sunrise_invasion.jpg

Sunrise Invasion: As Japan, conquer Mexico then Europe before 1945.

the_dragon_swallowed_the_sun.jpg

The Dragon Swallowed the Sun: As Manchukuo, break free from Japan and annex your former Overlord without being in a faction.

hail_to_the_qing.jpg

Hail to the Qing: As Manchukuo, restore the Qing dynasty.

the_good_the_bad_and_the_weird.jpg

The good, the bad and the weird: As Manchukuo, have max level infrastructure in every owned state and generate at least 15 units of oil.

battlecry.jpg

Battlecry: As a warlord, conquer all of China and Japan.

panda_monium.jpg

Panda-monium: As a warlord, be at war with all chinese nations simultaneously.

make_a_man_out_of_you.jpg

Make a man out of you - Have at least 1.000.000 manpower queued up for deployment.

my_ships_dont_lie.jpg

My ships don't lie: Form Gran Colombia and have 20 capital ships

i_swear_im_not_a_byzantophile.jpg

I swear I’m not a Byzantophile: As Greece, Form Byzantine Empire.

australia_hungary.jpg

Australia-Hungary: Annex all of Hungary as Australia

our_other_place_in_the_sun.jpg

Our Other Place in the Sun: As Imperial Germany, conquer a Caribbean island.

monarchy_is_back_in_fashion.jpg

Monarchy is back in fashion: As Germany, bring back the Kaiser and ensure that Italy is controlled by Victor Emmanuel by killing Mussolini.


That is all for today. Next week, we will take a closer look at the nuts and bolts of the game and talk a little about what our AI programmer(s) have been doing in these past weeks. On stream, Daniel and Gabriel continue their run of “historical” Germany, so tune in at 16:00 CET at https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive


Rejected Titles:

Providing a sense of Pride and Accomplishment

Stealing Victoria II game mechanics for fun and profit, mostly profit

Dan Lind’s Disney Song Singalong

Google Search History: Byzantium Tank Division Names

We use only the finest memes for our achievements

Proud to announce the Shakira/Sabaton collaboration project
 
He also said, "and the AI is set to never go down this path." So I'm confused lol

The AI won't do the HRE ever. It will not take any in historical mode (this might change later if we find a way to properly detect if a game has gone very ahistorical), but will take them if they have the requirements in ahistorical mode. If AI Greece somehow manages to conquer all of Turkey, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and the necessary parts of Romania by itself, congrats, make a screenshot and post it on reddit for free Karma.
 
Are the foreign/SS divisions going to be covered in the stream or in a future diary?
I am thinking of doing a summary diary of all the stuff + things we havent had tiem to cover before release so probably.

Can austria form austria-hungary now?
yes

More serious not for @podcat: can we have the dimension of the decision icons in order to prepare some gfx in advance?

- the small ones on button are 32x32
- the category one is 52x40
- the flavor pic is 114x101
 
Needs moving capitals on forming new tags, like in EU4.
the story is a bit different here tho. There you are forming it for the first time while in HOI its more like leadership are refering back to the glory days for their nation as a way of strengthening their position (dictators and all that) and for those cases moving your capital doesnt really make sense
 
Well ... that's a little rude. So all players who prefer non-historical have to live with that forced feature and can't disable it? Okay, probably there will be a mod for it sooner or later, but it feels like "eat or die" for me at the moment.

It shouldn't be an impossible option to leave players with a choice if they want that AI nations could do that nation forming thing in non historical matches.

I think people are dramatically overestimating the AI's ability to take the necessary territories. We have literally never seen it happen in our internal hands-off runs. Not once. Pretty much the only way this happens is if you feed the right nations the right territories in a peacedeal, at which point the game is practically over anyway.
 
I don't know if the Nordics would have called their country Kalmar Union if we were united today. I think simply "Scandinavia" or something would be more likely.

They do not. The decisions are named in a flavorful manner. All descriptions point out the fact that these nations are being formed for propaganda purposes, and that for certain regimes the ability to point to a great empire in the past and to claim to be the (spiritual) continuation of that empire may well be of incredible importance for popular support for the government. The Kalmar Union decision is named such to illustrate what the government portrays itself as the continuation of. The names for the actual state are different.

SCA_UNIFIED_neutrality:0 "Kingdom of Scandinavia"
SCA_UNIFIED_fascism:0 "Scandinavian Empire"
SCA_UNIFIED_democratic:0 "Scandinavia"
SCA_UNIFIED_communism:0 "Scandinavian Socialist State"


Anything for a Greater Germanic Reich ?

I can't talk about any examples other than the ones that have already been mentioned (or spoiled; looking at you, Daniel! :< )

Do you get cores on the unified land?

Yes.