Hi and welcome! Today we announced the expansion we have been working on for the last couple of months: Waking the Tiger. The names comes from a quote by Mao: “When waking a tiger, use a long stick”. A major theme in the expansion is Asia, with a special focus on China. We will be presenting focus trees and other content leading up to release, as well as going over other features we haven't shown off yet. But first a word on the expansion pass:
The expansion pass for HOI4 was the first one we’ve done, and we’ve learned many lessons.
For example, we decided to release "Death or Dishonor" as a country pack rather than a full-sized expansion so that we could still release something cool during a period of time when we were busy staffing up and focusing on technical issues. We saw that with the resources we had, at the time, we couldn't release a full-sized expansion at the same time as we were spending time on improving the AI and doing other free updates to the base game, such as the significant revamp of the air combat system.
It turns out that scope changes of this type do not go well with an expansion pass if you look at the value we promised to pass-owners. So, in order to make sure we over-deliver and make everyone happy, we have decided that not only this expansion, but also the next expansion - the one after "Waking the Tiger", which is planned to be similar in scope - will also be included in the pass.
This means that the initially promised two expansions have now actually become four. This also means that we are also no longer selling the pass. So if you picked it up yesterday: jackpot!
More info about this here: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/expansion-pass-faq.975687/
Now back to the regular diary!
China in 1936 was one of the most confusing and interesting countries on the planet. After a revolution in 1911 deposed the last Qing Emperor, the young republic quickly found itself ripped apart by a brutal civil war that would continue, on and off, until 1949. In 1936, the Central Government under Chiang Kai-Shek had established some measure of control over the central regions of China. A number of provincial governors, nominally under the control of Chiang, ran their provinces as essentially separate political entities. The Communists under Mao Zedong had successfully evaded annihilation and created a Base Area in Yan’an.
In 1931, the Japanese military had engineered a false-flag terror attack on a Japanese-owned railroad and used the “Mukden incident” to invade and occupy Manchuria, eventually setting up a puppet government under Puyi. The deposed Qing Emperor, eager to reclaim the throne that was so rudely taken from him, is unlikely to give them too much trouble. The Japanese, of course, have their own designs on China - and they don’t necessarily involve Puyi.
The stage is set for the showdown between 3 large players and 5 smaller ones, with the ultimate prize the title of Ruler of China. Historically, the conflict would lead to a savage war against Japan, causing millions of deaths. The following renewed Chinese Civil War ended up in the disgraceful retreat of Chiang Kai-Shek’s government to Taiwan, with the Communists in control of the mainland. But history need not have followed this path…
Given that the various ideologies are already well-represented in the different players in the Chinese Civil War, we have diverted from our past practice of making alternate ideology paths for every country. It made little sense to us that you would want to turn Nationalist China communist when Communist China is already a thing you can play. This also meant we didn’t have to resolve all the weird edge cases that would spring up from this (the days of Mao vs. Mao battles for control of China are sadly over).
The first new focus tree we want to show you is Nationalist China. It has consistently been one of the most requested nations and is actually one of the most played nations even with the generic focus tree. We originally looked at China as a whole during the early development of DoD, but decided that with the available resources we couldn’t do it justice. Events have proven us right, since the new decision system in particular has been critical in modelling the complex issues in China and turn it into interesting gameplay.
In 1936 Nationalist China is coming out of the brief golden age of the so-called Nanking Decade, in which the Nationalist Government tried hard to industrialize the country and build a modern system of government. Guided by the political theories of Sun Yat-Sen, founder and first president of the Republic, this rested on three pillars, called The Three Principles of the People: Nationalism, Democracy and Welfare (note that the Chinese terms have various meanings and don’t map perfectly on what we understand those words to mean).
In the game, the three principles form the start of three separate branches. The Welfare branch builds a modern welfare state, as it was envisioned by the leading experts of the time. Making the people invested in your leadership by improving their livelihood will increase their willingness to defend it against any aggressor, raising your war support. It comes at a cost, however. The Chinese economy is not yet up to the task of supporting a large welfare state, and so your government will have to make up the deficit by printing money, increasing inflation. Inflation is represented by a national spirit in 5 levels, reducing factory output and the number of civilian factories available for construction. You will have various options to reform your taxation system in the industrial branch, but they might not be popular with everyone.
The Democracy branch concerns itself with reforming the government to a state that truly deserves the name “Republic”. Part of this is the establishment of the 5 branches of government (as opposed to the three the rest of the world has to make do with): Executive, Legislative, Judiciary, Control and Examination. Creating a system of checks and balances will finally allow you to get rid of the “Ineffective Bureaucracy” spirit, which reduces conscription by 35%.
The Nationalism branch concerns itself with the struggle to unite China under your banner and defend it against foreign aggression. It offers you a fundamental choice: do you focus on uniting the country first, leading to a confrontation with the warlords and the Communists, or do you put your petty squabbles behind you to focus on defending against Japan? Or perhaps, you might want to take the fight to the Japanese directly? After all, nothing unites a people like a common enemy…
Before you do, however, it might be wise to review the state of your army, which is less than impressive. Usually under-equipped, often poorly trained and shoddily led, your army suffers crippling penalties to attack and defence until you have had the chance to reform it. Each step will have to be paid for with Army XP, meaning you will be on the back foot for a while until your army has absorbed the harsh lessons of warfare.
The only upside in your rather bleak position is that you are, after all, the internationally recognized government of China, which offers up a large number of avenues to get outside support: German advisors can help you reorganize your officer corps and assist you in building up your tank force, while approaching the Soviet Union might gain you some desperately needed planes as well as support in developing new tanks.
The French and British will send you supplies directly through the Burma Road and Hanoi, represented by off-map factories helping you produce equipment. They may, however, withdraw the support if they wish. Should Burma be overrun, they will also be unable to help you.
Finally, the US can help you build a navy and will support you in building up a domestic aviation industry. Should you find yourself in the position to approach Japan, they can help you with modernizing your navy, although they won’t help you to the point where you may become a legitimate challenger in their own home waters.
Lastly, once you have built up your forces, it may be time to throw off the shackles the Great Powers have laid on you, and reclaim the position you were meant to have: the undisputed, unchallenged hegemon of the Eastern Hemisphere. Whether you will be a benevolent overlord or institute direct rule from Nanking is up to you.
.jpg "CHI_infantry_artillery_cavalry_04 (1).jpg")
The expansion will come with a bunch of new 3d models for china, more details of this in a later diary.
A sample of the new general pictures for nationalist china
See you all next week with another diary!
PS. The last episode of our beginner-stream with @Da9L and @bus will start at 16:00 today and run for 30 minutes and then I’ll pop in and talk a bit about the expansion. So check out the Paradox twitch today at 16:00 CET: https://go.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive
PSS: This is not the thread to discuss the recent removal of HoI from sale in China. To discuss this issue, please go to the relevant thread: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...-iron-iv-removed-from-steam-in-china.1052971/ . Moderators will remove posts concerning this issue.
PSSS: If you missed the trailer, check it out here:
The expansion pass for HOI4 was the first one we’ve done, and we’ve learned many lessons.
For example, we decided to release "Death or Dishonor" as a country pack rather than a full-sized expansion so that we could still release something cool during a period of time when we were busy staffing up and focusing on technical issues. We saw that with the resources we had, at the time, we couldn't release a full-sized expansion at the same time as we were spending time on improving the AI and doing other free updates to the base game, such as the significant revamp of the air combat system.
It turns out that scope changes of this type do not go well with an expansion pass if you look at the value we promised to pass-owners. So, in order to make sure we over-deliver and make everyone happy, we have decided that not only this expansion, but also the next expansion - the one after "Waking the Tiger", which is planned to be similar in scope - will also be included in the pass.
This means that the initially promised two expansions have now actually become four. This also means that we are also no longer selling the pass. So if you picked it up yesterday: jackpot!
More info about this here: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/expansion-pass-faq.975687/
Now back to the regular diary!
China in 1936 was one of the most confusing and interesting countries on the planet. After a revolution in 1911 deposed the last Qing Emperor, the young republic quickly found itself ripped apart by a brutal civil war that would continue, on and off, until 1949. In 1936, the Central Government under Chiang Kai-Shek had established some measure of control over the central regions of China. A number of provincial governors, nominally under the control of Chiang, ran their provinces as essentially separate political entities. The Communists under Mao Zedong had successfully evaded annihilation and created a Base Area in Yan’an.
In 1931, the Japanese military had engineered a false-flag terror attack on a Japanese-owned railroad and used the “Mukden incident” to invade and occupy Manchuria, eventually setting up a puppet government under Puyi. The deposed Qing Emperor, eager to reclaim the throne that was so rudely taken from him, is unlikely to give them too much trouble. The Japanese, of course, have their own designs on China - and they don’t necessarily involve Puyi.
The stage is set for the showdown between 3 large players and 5 smaller ones, with the ultimate prize the title of Ruler of China. Historically, the conflict would lead to a savage war against Japan, causing millions of deaths. The following renewed Chinese Civil War ended up in the disgraceful retreat of Chiang Kai-Shek’s government to Taiwan, with the Communists in control of the mainland. But history need not have followed this path…
Given that the various ideologies are already well-represented in the different players in the Chinese Civil War, we have diverted from our past practice of making alternate ideology paths for every country. It made little sense to us that you would want to turn Nationalist China communist when Communist China is already a thing you can play. This also meant we didn’t have to resolve all the weird edge cases that would spring up from this (the days of Mao vs. Mao battles for control of China are sadly over).
The first new focus tree we want to show you is Nationalist China. It has consistently been one of the most requested nations and is actually one of the most played nations even with the generic focus tree. We originally looked at China as a whole during the early development of DoD, but decided that with the available resources we couldn’t do it justice. Events have proven us right, since the new decision system in particular has been critical in modelling the complex issues in China and turn it into interesting gameplay.
In 1936 Nationalist China is coming out of the brief golden age of the so-called Nanking Decade, in which the Nationalist Government tried hard to industrialize the country and build a modern system of government. Guided by the political theories of Sun Yat-Sen, founder and first president of the Republic, this rested on three pillars, called The Three Principles of the People: Nationalism, Democracy and Welfare (note that the Chinese terms have various meanings and don’t map perfectly on what we understand those words to mean).
In the game, the three principles form the start of three separate branches. The Welfare branch builds a modern welfare state, as it was envisioned by the leading experts of the time. Making the people invested in your leadership by improving their livelihood will increase their willingness to defend it against any aggressor, raising your war support. It comes at a cost, however. The Chinese economy is not yet up to the task of supporting a large welfare state, and so your government will have to make up the deficit by printing money, increasing inflation. Inflation is represented by a national spirit in 5 levels, reducing factory output and the number of civilian factories available for construction. You will have various options to reform your taxation system in the industrial branch, but they might not be popular with everyone.
The Democracy branch concerns itself with reforming the government to a state that truly deserves the name “Republic”. Part of this is the establishment of the 5 branches of government (as opposed to the three the rest of the world has to make do with): Executive, Legislative, Judiciary, Control and Examination. Creating a system of checks and balances will finally allow you to get rid of the “Ineffective Bureaucracy” spirit, which reduces conscription by 35%.
The Nationalism branch concerns itself with the struggle to unite China under your banner and defend it against foreign aggression. It offers you a fundamental choice: do you focus on uniting the country first, leading to a confrontation with the warlords and the Communists, or do you put your petty squabbles behind you to focus on defending against Japan? Or perhaps, you might want to take the fight to the Japanese directly? After all, nothing unites a people like a common enemy…
Before you do, however, it might be wise to review the state of your army, which is less than impressive. Usually under-equipped, often poorly trained and shoddily led, your army suffers crippling penalties to attack and defence until you have had the chance to reform it. Each step will have to be paid for with Army XP, meaning you will be on the back foot for a while until your army has absorbed the harsh lessons of warfare.
The only upside in your rather bleak position is that you are, after all, the internationally recognized government of China, which offers up a large number of avenues to get outside support: German advisors can help you reorganize your officer corps and assist you in building up your tank force, while approaching the Soviet Union might gain you some desperately needed planes as well as support in developing new tanks.
The French and British will send you supplies directly through the Burma Road and Hanoi, represented by off-map factories helping you produce equipment. They may, however, withdraw the support if they wish. Should Burma be overrun, they will also be unable to help you.
Finally, the US can help you build a navy and will support you in building up a domestic aviation industry. Should you find yourself in the position to approach Japan, they can help you with modernizing your navy, although they won’t help you to the point where you may become a legitimate challenger in their own home waters.
Lastly, once you have built up your forces, it may be time to throw off the shackles the Great Powers have laid on you, and reclaim the position you were meant to have: the undisputed, unchallenged hegemon of the Eastern Hemisphere. Whether you will be a benevolent overlord or institute direct rule from Nanking is up to you.
The expansion will come with a bunch of new 3d models for china, more details of this in a later diary.
A sample of the new general pictures for nationalist china
See you all next week with another diary!
PS. The last episode of our beginner-stream with @Da9L and @bus will start at 16:00 today and run for 30 minutes and then I’ll pop in and talk a bit about the expansion. So check out the Paradox twitch today at 16:00 CET: https://go.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive
PSS: This is not the thread to discuss the recent removal of HoI from sale in China. To discuss this issue, please go to the relevant thread: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...-iron-iv-removed-from-steam-in-china.1052971/ . Moderators will remove posts concerning this issue.
PSSS: If you missed the trailer, check it out here:
We'll be adding some more screenshots over time, but I felt we needed to tease a bit at least..
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