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HOI4 Dev Diary - 1.5.2, Future Roadmap and Ironclad

Hello everyone! Today we release the 1.5.2 Patch but I also want to talk a bit about the future and give you an updated roadmap. Enjoy!

1.5.2-cornflakes---forumthread.png

Cornflakes 1.5.2 Patch
1.5.2 is now out of open beta and should be updating on steam next time you start up. Here is the changelog in all its glory:
################################################################
######## Patch 1.5.2 "Cornflakes" ########
################################################################

##################################
# Feature
##################################
- Now it's possible to view the 3d models in the division designer and in the tech view. Also in the division designer, it's possible to choose a preferred 3d model to be used by that template.
- Free Battleships DLC that never really worked, has been moved into the base game.
- Holding shift now creates army group fronts without creating sub army fronts

##################################
# AI
##################################
- Garrison order improvements
- Fixed AI not using its military factories to their fullest when it is not in need of equipment. Now it will produce stuff as long as it has enough resources
- an AI chinese warlord that is at war with Japan will now be very eager to join the united front.
- Added AI strategies to the Baltics and Finland to make them more eager to join Germany's faction if Germany has chosen "Safeguard the Baltics" and/or "Support the Finns".
- Made german AI focus more on non-civilian construction between 1937-40
- Some improvements for naval leader assignment to reduce reshuffling.


##################################
# UI
##################################
- Listed save games now has proper "hover mouse over" effect
- Fixed army insignia positioning.
- New portrait of Von Lettow-Vorbeck for GER.
- The colored background on army groups along the bottom of the screen now intercept mouse clicks, not letting them click through to the map and select stuff.
- Popup windows for declaration of war, peace, and a few others will now auto-close after timeout when running a hands-off or any other case with human AI turned on.
- Added a confirmation pop up while assigning every unit in army to a different army's front orders
- Added drag & drop to reorder theater groups & pinned regions
- Added drag & drop to reorder armies & army groups
- Soviet scorched earth tactics decision now has a tooltip showing the effect
- moved check for low popular support in PRC tree to a scripted trigger to make bypass tooltips more appealing
- Scorched Earth decisions are now hidden if they would have no effect
- When choosing divisions to use as volunteers, the interface should now keep selection when game is running. Would previously deselect all, as the interface was refreshed.
- Tooltip for creating ocuntry leaders with traits look similar to how traits are displayed in the country view.
- Added timer icon showing that low efficiency can be due to air wings recently arriving in a region.
- Added an explanatory tooltip to Manchukuo seize arms decisions.
- "Field marshal traits now go red if assigned to command an army. Added tooltip that explains it when the trait is hovered.
- Added an advisor tooltip to "The Unthinkable" option.
- Fixed some trait squeezing problems in combat log screen when there are too many traits.
- Added order highlighting when mouse hovers over army shields in theater or plan execute/stop buttons


##################################
# Modding
##################################
- Removed duplicate static_modifiers script. the ones in modifiers folder is what we use now
- transfer_navy and transfer_ship effects can now use scope targets for their target (e.g target = FROM)
- Mods marked as dependencies are now loaded in the correct order
- Added on daily action (use cautiously!)
- Added validation of equipment bonus when ideas are loaded.
- Added cancel_if_not_visible parameter to decisions. Cancels a decision if it's visible trigger is false.
- Generating the exact same type of wargoal against the same country now ignores the effect.
- Enabled equipment bonus validation for modders
- Added define to tweak color of invalid trait "TRAIT_INVALID_FOR_ASSIGNMENT_COLOR".
- Added modifiers static_anti_air_damage_factor and static_anti_air_hit_chance_factor.
- Now it is possible to create your own interfaces with mods. Windows, buttons, textfields, and it's actions can now be scripted.
- Value triggers are now accessible as dynamic variables.


##################################
# Database
##################################
- Updated game credits.
- "Danzig or War" now gives core in Danzig.
- "Reassert Eastern Claims" now gives core on Memel.
- Sun Tzu Reborn achievement is now possible to achieve (requires level 9 Field Marshal).
- Communist Byzantium now has the correct flag.
- "Expand the Imperial Guards"-spawned troops for MAN are no longer locked
- Industrial Land Appropriation no longer repeatable for the same state.
- Fixed date requirements for AI values for Ichi Go and Test the Soviets decisions (AI was not prevented from taking these before certain dates).
- Reworked Anschluss bypass conditions.
- Fixed correct state for "Ostwall" forts.
- Fixed art for Japanese Last Stand command power ability.
- "Support the Anti-Fascist War" and "Guns for the Anti-Fascist War" decisions are now targeted decisions.
- Adjusted Polish and German provinces and states to make historical German WW1 borders possible, as well as adding Oder-Neisse line.
- Adjusted Vojvodina and Serbia states to make Austro-Hungarian borders more historical.
- Renamed "Alsace" to "Alsace-Lorraine", and "Lorraine" to "Franche-Comte"
- Added 1x BB tech bonus to French focus "Capital Ship Focus" to bring it in line with "Carrier Focus".
- ai strategy databases are reloadable now
- enabled Japanese equipment names for Manchukuo
- fixed a few naming issues in German name list
- A nationalist China losing a power struggle will now get a cosmetic tag to distinguish it from new nationalist China. If a warlord who has previously taken over nationalists loses a power struggle, they will lose their cosmetic tag. This should fix the 3 China issue.
- changed flavor name of a Manchukuo rifle after two hour discussion of Manchurian small arms development
- added Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck as a general to Imperial Germany
- Updated 'The People Have Stood Up' achievement to better fit description in steam.
- Updated 'My Ships Don't Lie' achievement to fit description in steam.
- Fixed a duplicate name of a German destroyer
- Fixed a few naming inconsitencies in French Division Namelists and Added new Namelist for late-war French Armored Divisions
- Elsass-Lothringen and victory points now renamed back to their French counterparts of France wins the war and retakes it.
- Several text translations has been added and improved.
- Fixed some inconsistencies in name lists for French-speaking countries.
- Renamed Communist Roman Empire to Communitas Proletariique Romani.
- Removed Zhang Lan as Nationalist Chinese Democratic leader due to previous communist committments (replaced with Weng Wenhao)
- Soviet volunteer group and flying tiger focuses now bypass if someone else has already completed that focus to avoid doubles.


##################################
# Balance
##################################
- Whampoa College National Focus now also adds 1 planning point to existing leaders as well as new ones
- Starting land doctrine techs now have normal tech base costs (so now at 50% of before)
- Slightly rebalanced chance of French intervention resulting from Return of the Kaiser.
- Production bonus can go negative now and slow down your equipment production
- Generals gains less XP as combats drag on (down to 10% in a month)
- Generals gains more XP if they are dealing more damage compared to enemies (up to 4x while you are doing 4x damage compared to enemy)
- added an option to Chinese provocation event that allows Japan to withdraw from the continent
- Winter War peace treaty no longer hands over Petsamo (SOV will have to get that the hard way)
- Neutral ideology is now allowed for puppets.
- Halved the extra wounding chance on the reckless trait
- Cautious trait now reduces chance to get wounded (making it the polar opposite of reckless).
- Changed mobilization impact from positive war support to 30 % (up from 3%)
- japanese ideology advisors are now only locked behind focuses for Waking the Tiger DLC owners
- Reworked the Assertiveness Branch of the Manchukuo Tree:
- added a decision unlocked from taking control of the railroads that gives 4 CIV factories over the course of a year
- removed factories from legislative council, purge general affairs and control the railroads
- purge the general affairs council now removes Kwantung veto
- bolster nationalism now allows recruiting bandits. if bandits are still active in the country, taking these decisions removes the spirit
- added a decision to local arms procurement that adds an idea giving dramatically reduced cost for small arms at the cost of reduced reliability
- removed autonomy gain from Assertiveness focus (made no sense)
- added a decision to five people armies allowing the raising (and disbanding) of Manchu Banners, represented by 5 large infantry divisions
- added a decision to the purge general affairs council allowing player to pay command power to seize Japanese army depots in the case of war, giving increasingly large injections of equipment into stockpile and corresponding attack and defense penalties to Japan for a limited time
- reduced the impact of bolster nationalism spirit
- "Changed Command Power cost for Communist China's Infiltration decisions (-0.01 => -0.2) and the Nationalist/Japanese counter (-0.05 => -0.1).
- Increased command power cost (-0.02 => -0.2) for gaining army support in preparation for a civil war. Old values were not rebalanced properly after major system rework."
- Added surrender limit penalty when at low war support. Scales from 0 to -30%.
- Reduced air superiority stat of strategic bombers.(1 => 0.01)
- Increased heavy fighters air superiority (1 => 1.25), so they are better at something that isn't shooting bombers...
- Lowered impact on speed due to enemy air superiority (-0.5 => -0.3).
- Lowered impact on defense due to enemy air superiority (-0.5 => -0.35).
- Changed cap of "Air support" modifier from CAS assisting land unit in combat from 21% to 35%.
- Division anti air reduces damage to the division caused by close air support attacks, in proportion to the AA's ability to shoot down planes.
- Corrected AA damage reduction tooltip to show numbers in red.
- Reduced factory output penalty from long march spirit for PRC (now -15%/-5%, down from -25%/-10%).
- Changed penalty from Chinese idea Illegal Regime (-0.35 => -0.2)
- Last 3 radar techs now increase aim of static AA guns by 20% each.
- Each intermediary AA tech now adds 8% damage reduction from enemy bombers.
- Each AA equipment unlock now increases static AA damage output by 10%.
- Air bases now take 50% less damage from bombing.
- Reduced negative production modifier for Canada and Australia's version of the great depression (for TfV owners).
- The German War Economy Focus now requires 50% war support.
- MEFO bills base cost reduced by 0.05 PP, added -5% Consumer Goods, and increased build speed bonuses to 25%.
- Rebalanced Nationalist Chinese Focuses: Welfare Focuses now give 10 War Support (up from 5), Democracy Focuses that gave stability or War Support have been increased to give 10 instead of 5, added a military factory each to expanding the Taiyuan and Hanyan Arsenals.
- Balanced temperatures for commando trait to < -15 or > 27.
- Chinese Scorched Earth Tactics and Industrial Evacuation Focuses reduced to 35 days.
- Made MEFO PP cost now be substracted -after- modifiers to PP are applied, resulting in a more logical tooltip, and a net PP increase for the player compared to how it was before.


##################################
# Bugfix
##################################
- Improved Spanish translations.
- Took map wrap-around line in the Pacific into account when computing a state's center point, correcting East Siberia's center from its previous position in the Norwegian Sea.
- Stopped the Focus.IgnorePrerequisites cheat from being used in an ironman game by first turning it on in a normal game.
- Prevented various exploit methods which could pull divisions out of naval transfer convoy combat by cancelling or changing division orders.
- Fixed incorrect default of convoy efficiency when writing persistent data, which had a small chance of causing out-of-syncs.
- Fixed daily change in party popularity being inaccurate.
- Changing of ruling party to unaligned now cancel all boost party popularity
- Naval combat report will now only appear if any damage has been dealt
- Fixed naval combat report not mentioning some losses when merging with older ones in the same province
- Fixed planes shot by carrier fighters not showing in the strategic air view.
- Fixed port strikes with no participating planes
- Fixed planes shot by carrier fighters not showing in the strategic air view.
- Air permission can no longer be obtained from both side of a war and observe similar restrictions as land volunteer.
- Added nb used convoys and nb free convoys to the checksum for OOS detection
- German historical DLC now properly enabled all picture replacements for events
- Fixed a loading order issue that could mess up some triggers for ideas on starting the game
- Japanese surrender events for MAN/CHI no longer incorrectly mentions transferring Korea to MAN/CHI control.
- Return of the Kaiser event when rescuing him through war now triggers upon control of Holland state; previously triggered from capitulation which could bug out if Holland was not in a faction when it surrendered.
- MEFO bills are no longer removed if Anschluss is rushed before the bills are extended a second time.
- Drastically increased the WT generation required for UK to want to kick Imperial Germany out of its faction when having taken the "Alliance with the Shade" focus. Germany now needs to have created 81% more WT than the faction average, up from 34%.
- "Support Anti-Fascist War" decision for USA now correctly removes off-map factories again after the duration ends.
- Fixed some possible problems with text save games while writing arrays
- Fixed a crash after user directory is cleared using the launcher while there are enabled mods in it
- Fixed research all cheat not working for some of the researches
- Fixed a bunch of typos
- Added localization for 'send attaché' action in diplomacy tab/country list screen
- Fixed UI scale glitches with equipment stockpile line graphs
- added a bypass for Build up manchurian army focus in japanese focus tree
- added a bypass for Communist Chinese focus if low_popular support spirit is not present
- fixed critical spelling error in bombing damage modifier tooltip
- fix for unlocalised bypass requirement in Soviet Advisers focus
- the opinion bonus from Italian befriend Japan focus is now correctly applied to Japan
- integrate the warlord army decision now transfers any generals and only creates leaders if the target has not taken personal leadership focus
- Fixed general selection menu stating that Field Marshal can "command 5 armies" when it should be "24 division".
- Fixed tooltip for how many divisions a corps commander can control showing up when trying to assign a Field Marshal.
- Fixed invalid equipment bonus for PRC_peoples_war, PRC_maoism, CZE_naval_focus and bofors.
- Ichi go spirit targeted modifier now works against all the Chinese nations.
- Added attache relation gfx for diplomacy view
- Command power cost on abilities now displays 2 decimals.
- Fixed tooltip for integrate warlord decisions using a flag with wrong localisation.
- Fixed integrate warlord decisions effect running immediately instead of after 90days.
- Re-added localisation for custom tooltips in Chinese Industry Relocation decisions.
- Removed auto call for faction members when a country is the target of war declaration.
- Navies on convoy escort missions now try to help allies if there are no friendly convoys to help.
- Fixed 'org loss while moving' leader modifier not being applied
- Volunteers sent to a countries which became enemies, will now be sent back home (so your divisions don't fight on both sides of the conflict).
- Fixed yet another grammatical issue in texts about the attaches.
- XP is now awarded in the case of unit being destroyed with nowhere to run and for overruns it is awarded to units both in current and in destination province if enemies.
- Fixed bug where a cavalry 3d models didn't get a proper winter camo
- Fixed volunteers not properly being sent back to their rightful owner.
- Corrected British division namelist to use brackets instead of apostrophes.
- Changed scavenger trait to additive modifier
- Fixed a broken bypass in Japanese Liberate Manchuria focus.
- Changed completion trigger for 'Fuhrer directive 21' mission to include allies controlling the required states.
- Added scripted trigger for a state being controlled by ROOT country or an ally to them.
- Fixed Austria-Hungary being formed multiple times as a result of ""Rekindle Imperial Sentiment"" focus.
- Fixed Austria-Hungary news event referring to ""Austria-Hungary taking the lead"". Now correctly refers to country's old tag.
- Re-Forming Austria_Hungary now flips government to Unaligned and makes Otto von Habsburg country leader.
- Hungary can now choose ""Tade Deal with Germany"" focus with non-Fascist Germany.
- ""Break the Anglo-French Colonial Hegemony"" focus now also correctly gives claims on Palau, Papua, and Samoa.
- ""Reinstate Imperial Possessions"" and ""Reintegrate Luxemburg and Alsace-Lorraine"" focuses are now also available if France is puppeted or if Germany owns Alsace-Lorraine.
- ""Reinstate Imperial Possessions"" and ""Reintegrate Luxemburg and Alsace-Lorraine"" focuses now rename Alsace-Lorraine to Elsass-Lothringen, Strasbourg to Strassburg, and Mulhouse to Mulhausen.
- Greater Hungary can no longer be formed if Austria-Hungary was formed via the ""Rekindle Imperial Sentiment""-spawned decision.
- Fixed panzer_leader trait not gaining xp if a non-armor unit was participating in the combat. Now it gains xp if more than 40% of the army under the leader control's is armored at the time of the combat.
- Reworked the AI's pathfinding algorithms, so it should now take more reasonable routes, when it comes to combinations of land and naval transportations.
- The battle plan window is now hidden in naval and air map mode.
- Fixed drag and drop causing 'new army' portrait to ignore clicks
- Added temporary penalty for assigning airplanes to a new region or receiving reinforcements.
- It's no longer possible to capture naval/air equipment when it gets destroyed in land combat.
- More fixes in the texts translations.
- Fixed a wrong tooltip in Manchukuo Five People Armies focus.
- Fixed two wrong cavalry division names in British name lists.
- "Danzig for Guarantees" now renames Poznan to Posen, if accepted.
- Added bypasses for "Align Hungary" and "Align Romania" focuses, if they are in Germany's faction.
- "Reinstate Imperial Possessions" and "Reintegrate Luxemburg and Alsace-Lorraine" now also transfer Alsace-Lorraine to Germany.
- Nuking now uses the highest VP in the state when calculating war support penalty instead of specific province nuked. Multiplier from infrastructure is now calculated before they are destroyed.
- Drawing defensive orders now takes army groups into account when counting divisions, so it displays the correct number of divisions that will be assigned.
- Fixed tooltip of panzer_leader trait for the xp gain.
- Fixed cancel_trigger for timed decisions not removing, but instead executing remove_effect if the mission was completed.
- Fixed guaranteeing nations not being auto-called into war when neither the guaranteeing country nor the attacking country are in factions.
- Yalta Conference event now should allocate correct states to DDR and Poland.
- MEFO bills now gives a 20% construction speed bonus to military factories, dockyards, forts and coastal forts, air and naval bases, AA buildings, and Radar stations, instead of -20% consumer goods.
- MEFO bills now renew every 180 days instead of every 90 days.
- MEFO bills - Slightly increased the base political power cost and the political power cost ramp-up.
- Unaligned Germany now loses MEFO bills when the German civil war begins (but is not required to pay for them). MEFO bills and mission are now transferred to the Nazi side of the civil war.
- Unaligned/Democratic Germany now gets a temporary "Rebuild the Nation" National Spirit that gives -20% consumer goods bonus for 365 days, when completing the "Rebuild the Nation" national focus.
- "Rebuild the Nation" national focus now takes 70 days to complete, up from 35 days.
- Previous "Rebuild the Nation" national spirit has now been renamed to "National Revitalization".
- Fix issue where scripted events that try to add countries to a civil war were silently doing nothing if world tension is too low. The world tension check should not automatically apply to scripted events; the country should just be directly added to the war, which is now once again the case.
- Fixed nuke events referencing the wrong states/leaders.
- Fixed a spelling error in a tooltip for Attaches.
- Fixed navy leaders not gaining xp.
- Fixed a news event referencing a Hungarian king that didn't necessarily exist.
- Added an appropriate Apostrophe to King's Own Cavalry division.
- Warlords that have inherited the Incompetent Officer national spirit from Nationalist China can now take the decision to get rid of it.
- The Japanese kodoha national focus path will now only invite Japan to the axis once.
- Countries on the winning side of a war but occupied by a different faction can no longer be marked as untouched, allowing them to be annexed or puppeted by the occupiers even if the actual enemies never did any damage to them.
- Unit leaders go into cooldown when you disband the army now.
- Capped minimum supply consumption to 0.05, so it's no longer possible to get it negative and suffer huge penalties.
- Forced countries entering into a dependency relation to cancel any war relation they have between them.
- Fixed the Call Ally diplomatic action to have the recipient join the correct war.
- Clarified Treaty with USSR" requiring "Anti-Soviet Pact" to not have been taken.
- Army group orders now does not mention number of unit information in them.
- Made the call ally tooltip properly indicate when a civil war is not joinable by an ally due to low world tension, just as it already does for the other country if they want to initiate a join war action.
- Call to war and join war actions in the diplomacy screen no longer show every individual war relation in the list of wars, but just the primary one.
- Allowed a country to be invited into peace conferences even if some of their faction allies are at war with the winners of the war, as long as the country being invited is at peace with all the winners and at war with the losers.
- Fixed a bug that caused a navy leaders not gaining experience.
- Fixed killing encircled units not giving intended amount of flat experience gain.
- 3d model viewer > Camera moves a bit towards up when you zoom into the model.
- 3d model viewer > multiple technology views being open at the same time, are no longer showing the same model.
- 3d model viewer > Fixed unit models shown on map, not being updated for allies when you select a custom model
- 3d model viewer > Several other improvements.
- 3d model viewer > Reduced min zoom levels for 3d model viewer.
- 3d model viewer > Non infantry equipments does not use fallback infantry models in tech window anymore.
- Fixed drag and drop for armies in the same army group.
- Fixed bug in a war relations being broken after loading a save.
- Fixed war members calculation that incorrectly excluded friends in a war due to not being in the main faction, which could incorrectly lead to premature capitulations.
- Fixed Dispersed Industry IV translation.


##################################
# Stability & Performance
##################################
- Fixed small memory leak.
- Fixed uninitialized variable in graphical settings, which in theory could cause an undefined game behaviour.
- Fixed CTD when loading a savegames which was related to the air wings.
- Fixed OOS caused by "local resistance" data not being properly cleared.
- Improved initial loading time a bit. The naval distance calculations are much faster, and is done only once (or whenever a game changes has been detected that could affect the naval distance calcluations). At every next game start, the loading process skips the naval distance calculations by just loading the cached data.
- Fixed peace conference behavior and crash in the case that one or more of the winners have been occupied by a different winning faction.
- Fixed SS recruitment crashing the game under very specific circumstances.
- Fixed CTD when asking a lend lease to some AI countries within the first day of the game.
- Puppets surrender with their overlords and any other majors even if they have been in the war for fewer days than normally required to surrender. This fixes a crash elsewhere when transferring the puppet in a peace conference.
- Attempt to gracefully skip over opponents who are no longer at war with each other when cleaning up war relations at the conclusion of a peace conference. This avoids crashes when multiple peace conferences get initiated and completed simultaneously, especially due to scripted white peace events.
- Ensured all buildings in the newly-changed Polish and German states are present in those states, to avoid crashes.
- Fixed CTD on create_unit effect with invalid template name. Now shows an error instead.
- Mod files created through the launcher tool, are now UTF8-BOM to avoid errors when using the file later.
If you want to read more see the last couple of diaries for highlights :)

What are we doing now
We are now beginning work on the next expansion and the next big update 1.6 'Ironclad'. Its too early to share any details or hints what they will be about tho so go mad with speculation based on the name ;)(madagascar focus tree? wut!? o_O... well out patch names seldom tell you much). Below is an update on our long term roadmap though which might give some ideas. or not.

The five year plan

As I said last time we did this, its not actually a five year plan, but I want to share with you some form of roadmap on what to expect in the future as well as follow up what we have been up to. The list below was posted when we started on Waking the Tiger and 1.5, so stuff that is crossed off we now consider handled.

Just to be super clear, this is not any form of exhaustive or final list and unless we have already done it we can't promise anythings. Priorities change etc. The point of this is to give you an idea of things we would like to do. The order of things is also not in any kind of priority order, or order we would do them.

  • Improve flavor and immersion with naming of things in the game. No more Infantry Division Type 1 etc.
  • A Chain of Command system allowing field marshals to command generals
  • Every starting nation has a custom portrait for historical leaders
  • A way for players to take dynamic decisions, quickly. Something that fits between events and national focuses.
  • Changing National Unity to something that matters during most of the game rather than when you are losing only
  • Rework how wars work with respect to merging etc as its a big source of problems
  • Add the ability to clean up your equipment stockpile from old stuff
  • Allow greater access to resources through improving infrastructure
  • More player control over naval warfare and fleet battle behaviour
  • A logistics system with more actual player involvement (now you only care once stuff has gone very badly)
  • Improved naval combat interfaces with good transparency to underlying mechanics (give it the 1.4 air treatment)
  • Improve balance, feedback and mechanics for submarine warfare
  • Long term goals and strategies to guide ai rather than random vs historical focus lists, visible to players
  • Spies and espionage
  • Improving peace conferences
  • Update core national focus trees with alt-history paths and more options (Germany, Italy, USA, United Kingdom, Soviet, France, Japan, Poland)
  • Wunderwaffen projects
  • Properly represent fuel in some way in the game
  • More differences between sub-ideologies and government forms
  • More National Focus trees. (Among most interesting: China, South America, Scandinavia, Spain, Turkey, Iran, Greece)
  • An occupation system that isnt tied only to wars and where core vs non-core isn't so binary for access to things.
  • Make defensive warfare more fun
  • Adding mechanics to limit the size of your standing army, particularly post-war etc
  • Have doctrines more strongly affect division designing to get away from cookie cutter solutions and too ahistorical gamey setups
Also some new ones since last time:
  • More player control over rules. HOI is played in many different ways and say competitive MP and single player rulesets often clash
  • More usage of drag and drop and QoL like this. For example controlling template lists.
  • A more robust and expansive mapmode system. Having a player mapmode in MP would be helpful etc

You'll notice that some of these are small and some of them are huge. I can't really talk too much details about this stuff though. That is stuff we will do once/if it makes it to dev diaries with feature highlights and has been implemented.

We will now start work on the next unannounced expansion and 1.6 'Ironclad' so there will be a longer break in dev diaries. I can promise an update around PdxCon on how things are going :)
 
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Actually wouldn't mind a raid mechanic, to be honest, sort of like the Viking raids in CK2. Instead of capturing provinces you'd gain various "rewards" like intelligence, or a stat bonus to your next naval invasion in that area or something. There could be events that handled the results of the raid and gave you various outcomes with some fluff text.

Whether this is best handled by implementing a full-fledged raid system, or if it's better taken care of by events and decisions, though, I'm less certain about. Raids weren't that common during WWII, to my knowledge, especially not the Dieppe/Operation Archery-scales ones. Correct me if I'm wrong.
 
Actually wouldn't mind a raid mechanic, to be honest, sort of like the Viking raids in CK2. Instead of capturing provinces you'd gain various "rewards" like intelligence, or a stat bonus to your next naval invasion in that area or something.

Whoo-hoo! An opportunity to emulate "Operation Biting" aka the Bruneval Raid would be wonderful! Drop in a brigade of paras or marines, get a research bonus for say, radar or atomic technology!

(I'm saying this from a potential user experience perspective. I know enough about coding, that I know I don't know anything about coding. Or managing game balance, for that matter).
 
Another thing. These sort of little Royal Marine excursions are always interesting, and Operation Fork is one. Sadly, Iceland always joins the axis and their ships go and fight for the Germans. That did not happen in reality. I propose that Iceland only be allowed to join the axis after a week, unless British troops have landed in Reykavik. If the British get there, Iceland joins the allies, but relations with the UK are understandably a little strained. And we get a newspaper article about the complete savage Royal Marine Captain roasting the German ambassador. When he protested and reminded the British that Iceland was a neutral country, he was told "Denmark was also a neutral country".
 
About 450 hours in this game later I would like to see something like the following implemented (regard these as mere sugestions, I'm not sure if they are good solutions to the game at this stage):

Fuel: make it an item produced like any weapon (maybe requiring refineries to be built, or using civilian factories in the same way military ones are used in a production line). Oil ceases to be used in the fabrication of equipment and starts being refined into units of fuel, that then must be supplied to your divisions. Then create consequences for your trucks and tanks being with an empty tank...

Ammo: alocate military factories to build ammo, then supply it. This could affect the ammo requirements for divisions with lots of artillery etc. to work properly.

Land supply lines: a system akin to convoy availability could be created based on truck production. I'm not sure how this would interact with the infrastructure level, which simmulates roads and rail, but a solution could be creating a threshold for the number of divisions certain level of infrastructure could keep supplied. Above that you would need to have enough trucks to to create the supply lines that would compensate the saturation of railroad transport by logistics.

Army training: some General skills connected to logistics and organization could be earned through conducting army drills (in game, putting your divisions training). This could be balanced through associating some skills to combat specifically but letting others be earned in peace time through exercises. This could be a contribution to balance the disparity existing between some nations' army leaders.

The deep battle doctrine's step (not recalling the exact name right now) that lowers infantry battalions width is now a bit nonesense. It used to be good in conjuction with the FM skill that increased the max width by 10% (thus enabling 11/22/44 width divisions), but now if one uses this perk trying to optimize infantry divisions within 10/20 width range, you get weird numbers.

The apropriate artwork for Soviet SPG's and Tank hunters would be highly appreciated. Building StuG's etc is very cool and immersive, SU-76M's, ISU's etc is too generic.

Front line and planning: I'd like to create frontlines freely without having to making them relative to another country's borders.

Maybe some terrain features should be impassable except for SF (mountain ranges, marshes etc). Right now you can push through mountains and other types of terrain with tanks and huge blobs of infantry. Not quite realistic/immersive/cool.

Just my €0,02, cheers!
 
Ironclad = Operation Ironclad? (thanks google) The Operation was to take Vichy France controlled Madagascar, which is why they also say "Madagascar focus tree" so my bet is something on Naval Invasion combat and possibly some changes to the region in Africa. Of course, I could be completely wrong but I think my guess is pretty accurate ;P
 
  • More player control over naval warfare and fleet battle behaviour
  • Improved naval combat interfaces with good transparency to underlying mechanics (give it the 1.4 air treatment)
  • Improve balance, feedback and mechanics for submarine warfare

DESPERATELY needed, great, you've made Major improvements on Land and Air so far, but the Naval side of things is definitely the biggest current flaw in this game, making playing as Japan (my HOI3 2nd favourite country to play as) absolutely no challenge at all in HOI4. If you sort this out it will elevate HOI4 above HOI3 for me. This has cheered me up no end.

Good luck sorting this out, can't wait to be scared of Subs again and taking years rather than a couple of weeks to gain Naval superiority in the Pacific.
 
One thing though. Air doctrines should not be mutually exclusive. I can understand land and sea doctrines being exculsive, but many nations had more than one doctrine. Germany had a focus on close air support but also could be said to have done Operational Integrity, with a large fleet of He 111s and Ju 88s. So did the Soviets, with Il-2s and PE-2s. The UK and USA both had large fleets of strategic bombers, but also lots of CAS in the form of the 2nd tactical air force.
 
While I own the game since day one, I've only played it now because I didn't like it too much because I found it too generic (and wasting my time at Stellaris).

Anyway, after playing around 40 hours this week I wanted to say that many of the points of the first post sound very good. However, I have some points which I really don't like about the game and aren't addressed. I will not try to list things, which are on the improvement list, like the subpar naval warfare model... Japan didn't invade the Philippines in a single of my games but Pearl Habor... which was nearly impossible even in 1941 oO

Here we go:

- I find it really strange, that ships and land units have XP while air units don't. I would argure that pilot quality was one of the more important aspects of the war and a major reason for the rise and fall of the German and Japanese airforces
- I really don't like the loss statistics model(s), there are simply too many different systems. Why isn't there a complete report like the theater report which also includes air and naval losses? Right now you have a decent statistic for the theaters but you have to click on the air zones to get the air losses. Don't let me start with the naval one where you basically have all seazones littered with battle results while you have no statistic at all about losses. But hey, you can see what ship sank what- yay
- the peace mechanics are pretty fishy, but in my ahistorical game (Danzig for Slovakia, ITA not in Axis) it really shines. ITA started a war with UK/FRA/US, which wasn't very smart and really got spanked. After I finished off the USSR, I obliterated ROM, HUN, FRA, GRC and took back ITA. Guess what, ITA got back some provinces of Italy. Ok. But after I beat the UK (it had zero! troops defending the island) and surrendered after I took London and some other City, ITA (still surrendered) got the whole northern UK. Nice WTF moment
- while I really like the LeadLease model in the game I really don't like the interface. Maybe there is a shortcut or something but I would really like to have the "once" button max out at the currently available junk
- allowing to place garrision orders in the "resistance" mapview

One more suggestion about the naval model: I would really like to see the Ship details increased because in my opinion the Str/Org model isn't really that useful for naval combat. I would like to see to have the ships some components (engine, firedirctor, weapons), flood damage and fire. Just an idea. Also I really have a hard time to follow whats going on currently when the war gets bigger

One more thing: the naval combat model must check the seazone for the air status. I have my coasts saturated with nav bombers and fighters and the Allies lose countless transports in the North Sea and Baltic without even having a remote chance of a successful invasion there. While I get it is difficult to write a decent AI it should be possible to get the AI to ignore seazones with enemy air superiority and anti naval firepower. SSIs Pac War had that in 1992...
 
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But Scandinavia will likely be a stand alone so PDS can give Sweden the massive focus tree it deserves. :D

Call that Sturstromming?

K
 
It would be nice, at some stage, to see governments, ministers, staff and so on be revamped to make sense as opposed to the total jumble they are now. Also, how about time-based historical leaders and commanders as opposed to fantasy island ones?

K
 
Am I the only one wondering where the new dev diaries are?

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No dev diaries --> devs extremely busy with something unusual --> Victoria 3 confirmed!
 
No dev diaries --> devs extremely busy with something unusual --> Victoria 3 confirmed!

I thought I saw my breakfast cereal in its milk make a V shape this morning - 100% Vicky III confirmed :D.
 
As much as I love Paradox games (particularly EU4 with which I'm up to 600+ hours) I feel HOI4 is still a good half dozen DLCs away from being a fully developed game.
Many aspects of it are great - the map detail, factories and docks, the hundreds of different painstakingly researched weapons/vehicles/planes/ships you can build, national focus trees, battle plans and fronts, etc. The early game in particular I think works really well.

A few things seriously mar the experience though - small wars work ok but I've noticed the World War itself seems almost impossible to draw to a final conclusion, especially as the Axis.

It seems countries only surrender when their territory is sufficiently occupied and their wider faction only when all countries have surrendered. So you need to invade say, the continental US to win the war. This just doesn't seem accurate. An Axis victory is more likely to look like a partition of Eurasia, with America holding onto the western hemisphere.

In EU4 various factors would lead to peace, including not just occupied territory but 'strength of alliance/army strength/length of war/revolts at home, etc). It should get to the point where if you've beaten the enemy repeatedly and killed enough millions of troops by 1945 or so, one side or the other is willing to sign a peace treaty. The fact that Allies had to literally take Berlin is something of an aberration and should not be seen as the norm. France, Italy and Japan all surrendered before their capitals were taken, as did Germany in 1918.

One element should be the intensity of a blockade/aerial bombardment. Germany attempted to force Britain into surrender this way. It didn't quite work, but that doesn't mean it couldn't have. Indeed, Japan is proof this strategy can work (though with a couple of atomic bombs thrown in). There is already the idea of 'national unity' which is good, but it seems you still need to occupy at least some of a country's territory to force a surrender. It should be possible (albeit difficult) to force that national unity down to zero without any ground invasion if the population is literally starving from blockade (food should totally be a resource), homeless from intense bombing (i.e. most of their factories/infrastructure destroyed) and already mourning half their male relatives (i.e. manpower is down near zero). When it finally hits zero, a people are basically sick of the war and attempt to overthrow the government (this could be represented either by literally forcing peace on that country/player, or just by massive revolts popping up at home, again like Germany in 1918 or Russia in 1917).

Other points - naval combat still needs work (and as said above, a submarine campaign/blockade seems of limited use without affecting national unity). In EU4 naval combat always seemed like an important element of the game (unless you're playing a central Asian horde or something) while also being quite easy to understand. In HOI4 I always found it quite bewildering and of limited use.

Partisans should be represented somehow like rebels in EU4. In some countries (like Russia and Yugoslavia) they grew to armies hundreds of thousands strong. In insufficiently garrisoned countries they should pop up periodically as light infantry-dominated brigades and divisions (i.e. few vehicles, no tanks or aircraft). Maybe give them defensive combat bonuses in mountain/forest terrains and the opposite (offensive combat penalties) in open fields cities to better reflect insurgent warfare. For the most part they are just a hard to eradicate nuisance but if neglected can start to liberate large areas.

City garrisons - EU4 mostly focused around armies but you at least had 'forts' to slow the enemy down if you were busy elsewhere. This idea of static garrisons (and not just building bunkers which can be occupied later) should still have a role, albeit a smaller one in the 20th century. I just find it hard to believe a 2,000-strong brigade can march into the middle of London (a city of 5 million in 1940) and apparently take it in an hour without difficulty. Big cities by the 20th century all have police forces and are bound to have barracks/other military facilities nearby. Not to mention just armed resistance by locals.These may not stand for long against modern armies, but should at least count for something, maybe just capable of slowing down an attacking divisions for a few days until other units can arrive. Even if its not totally realistic, it can compensate for the stupidity of the AI when it often leaves its big cities completely undefended (port cities in particular). Research and national focus options should allow you to upgrade them (again a lot like EU4 forts).

Also, less easy to fix but I've found the AI still needs a lot of work. It often doesn't seem to understand the whole idea of 'fronts' and is pretty easy to outsmart. In particular it does weird things with naval invasions - i.e. sending 3 divisions to reconquer France which then get surrounded and slaughtered on the beach. It'll repeat this like 20 times and I feel like I'm taking candy from the marines...