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HOI4 Dev Diary - 1.6.2 Update

Hiya everyone, I am now back from the San Francisco Game Developer Conference and in the sweet embrace of soulcrushing jetlag! Last week was very fun chatting to other game devs and learning stuff from lectures as well as american food (burgers!). While I was there the team have been continuing work on the 1.6.2 patch. So today will be about status there. Short and sweet, enjoy!

We have been fixing all sorts of stuff, but here are some highlights:
  • Increased research bonuses. We may have low-balled our estimates a bit on the new research impacts, where the idea was that it would be faster overall despite many of the new techs. To accommodate that research companies have been improved along with ministers and the computer techs have also increased buffs to make them more worth it (details in the patchnotes below).
  • Help Soviets mount a better defense. We have identified a few things, like a tendency to keep units back for the japanese front despite their main front not having enough units to man it (which causes all sorts of issues).
  • Get Allies more into the Africa game. Keeping Africa allied is quite difficult, but the AI should now prioritize fighting over it a lot more and Uk should be making smarter early choices for focuses and ministers etc
  • The invasion AI has been improved quite a bit, which left China being crushed by Japan a bit too fast and often so we have tuned down Japans strategy a bit unless facing a player to keep a more historical timeline.
  • airwing names are no longer lost on save load, and many other fixes...
The patchlog since last week looks like this, and should hopefully get into the open beta tonight. We then plan to leave it over weekend for testing with you guys and if all is fine it should be making it to everybody next week.
##################################
# Bugfix
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- AI can now accept a fuel incoming lend lease.
- Fixed taken states not being colored properly during a peace conference
- Fixed some decisions on a revolter country disapearing after loading a save
- Correctly change leader trait icons in army badge when switching between leaders where one has exile leader traits and the other does not.
- fixed naval mission assignment not working correctly with taskforces on repairs
- fixed an issue where countries occupying Manchuria would get reports about finding communist sleeper cells while allied with communist china
- fixed anniversary pack not being loaded
- review fixes
- Fixed newly created ships teleporting to the task force set as their deployment target
- Fixed auto balance task force not working
- Fix fuel lend lease. It was full of minor bugs.
- Selecting a decolonized Asia in the game rules will now also grant independence to Malaya.
- Fixed new Maltese fascist flag not showing up properly.
- fixed two instances in US events giving incorrect amounts of party popularity
- fixed ai sending invalid commands with foreign templates
- Fixed Expose the Belly of the Bear events not being sent out, as well as having incorrect requirement triggers.
- fixed a way to create invalid paradrop orders and fixed a ctd that is caused by that
- Converted Battleship and Converted Cruiser Hulls use now the right 3D model as the best match in the Ship Designer.
- Fixed ships from reserve not reinforcing if the reserve task force has at least one ship repairing
- locked the Silver Legion special template gained during the Fascist US civil war
- fixed some localization issues with dynamic modifiers
- fixed stability & war support values not giving all bonuses in some cases
- fixed some scripted diplomatic action issued that broke actions that requires acceptance
- moved lights of Los Angeles to correct province position
- Abdicating after getting "King's Support Forms" will now correctly remove the beneficial spirit granted by that event.
- fixed a original_tag problem related to reusing of dynamic tags
- Now display correct naval supremacy in naval invasion tooltip.
- fixed a ctd while loading saves
- De Gaulle will no longer be incorrectly removed as Free France's leader.
- Added Halifax to the bypass conditions of Motion of No Confidence.
- Added certain stipulations for Coerce Spain and Coerce Greece focuses.
- Only one Rebuild the Nation decision will now be available if you switch ideology using a civil war.
- Alliance with Germany now requires Germany to be fascist only.
- The number of factories displayed in war overview is now consistent with the number in topbar.
- Fixed an effect that was deleting a division template without deleting all divisions using that template, specifically volunteers and expeditionary forces, leading to potential memory problems and crashes.
- Fixed the game generating a definition.csv file that would override the original in case the later was missing some entries
- Mexico without Man the Guns enabled (and therefore with no ability to nationalize the oil fields) will now have control over its own oil from the start of the game.
- Fixed airwing name not being loaded from save
- Fixed DOD unique motorized icons to correctly shop up in the production tab.
- Fixed reserve fleet getting merged on daily tick if in the same naval base
- Fixed ship name from history file not being taking into account in some circumstances when adding a production line for it
- Highlight now fit the size of dockyard grid.
- Fragmenting Yugoslavia in the game setup rules should no longer result in Yugoslav units permanently being present on the map with no possibility of getting rid of them.
- Selecting Asia Decolonized game rule will now correctly grant independence to the Philippines.

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# Balance
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- naval mission efficiency will now go even lower if you don't have enough ships/taskforces for the assigned regions
- Nationalist Spain will not lose the "recovering from the Civil War" national spirit in historical focus mode, thus preventing them from joining the war
- Atlantic Fleet Designer now adds 10% HP to Carriers
- Armor upgrade for Carriers now adds 1% HP per level (non-MtG only)
- research companies research bonus 10% to 15%
- doctrine ministers research bonus 7% to 10% and 10% to 15%
- electron mechanical engineering research bonus 2% to 3%
- mechanical computer research bonus 3% to 4%
- computing machine research bonus 3% to 5%
- improved computing machine research bonus 5% to 8%
- advanced computing machine research bonus 5 to 8%
- focus: give refuge to scientist research bonus 3% to 5%

##################################
# UI
##################################
- Fixed Benelux formation news event properly referring to Netherlands' original name, rather than the new Benelux name.
- It is now possible to select a theater as a deployment target which will put the newly created ships in that theater's reserve fleet
- Now showing the task force insignia when selecting a task force as deployment target
- Finnish neutrality party was renamed
- Task forces created through the Move Ships Window now copy the insignia from the original task force
- Fixed timed decision showing 999 instead of a progressbar
- Dive bomber trait in admiral skill tree now correctly identifies bonus as only applying to carrier planes
- Minor loc fix to Dutch Trade Neutrality news event option text.
- Added list of required module slots that are empty to the save button tooltip when designing a ship
- Fixed invalid 'no mission set' warning on a task force with a mission but currently refitting or repairing

##################################
# AI
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- Britain should now care more about Africa as well as other area prio tweaks
- ENG will avoid channel if it is at war with GER
- British AI should now pick ministers better to make use of Stanley Baldwin (a first in British history)
- British AI should no longer take early mobilization if it has better use of the political power
- British AI should no longer waste pp on resource prospecting if it has better things to do
- British AI should no longer offer refuge to German scientist until a certain amount of time has passed
- Italy alternate fascist plan will now result in Italy First, rather than Pact of Steel
- Both sides of the Suez Canal are now considered part of Africa for the purpose of AI calculations (still separate for all other purposes)
- blocked ai from creating naval missions in blocked regions
- naval_avoid_region >= 600 will disable regions for missions as well now. Germany disables the channel if ENG is still a threat
- historical Yugoslavian AI will no longer take Greater Yugoslavia
- added an AI strategy to Hungary to prevent them from joining the axis before it is historical if historical focuses are on
- ai is now less reluctant/random about upgrading its ship designs
- fixed a bug preventing the Soviet AI from researching Fighters II
- the Soviet union will no longer pick the War with Japan focus while fighting with Germany
- ai will care more about home fronts that have actual enemies if surrender process is >0 and less about other non dangerous fronts
- ai won't care about guarantees that are guaranteeing an enemy that has offensive war against us or a war that started long ago
- Improved UK historical focus selection order
- Japan will now avoid too aggressive early invasions

##################################
# Stability & Performance
##################################
- Protected against a buffer overflow.
- Detected and skipped a certain type of invalid mipmap data in dds files.
- Fixed CTD when reordering pinned strategic regions

##################################
# Modding
##################################
- added target_root_trigger trigger for targeted decision. this is checked before checking all targets and if false, will skip that targeted decision completely
- added game variables fuel_k & max_fuel_k
- fixed example of scripted diplo actions & fixed some string problems

##################################
# Database
##################################
- Tweaked Chamberlain resigns event to now require Poland to have fallen, and slightly increased the required surrender progress required for Denmark, Norway, the Low Countries, or France.
- The US now correctly starts with 2 Yorktown Carriers under construction in 1936 (MtG only due to balance concerns)
- Italy now correctly has two Littoria-Class Battleships under construction in 1936 (MtG only)
- changed some starting technologies for Italy
- France now starts with 1 Richelieu Class Battleship under construction in 1936 (Richelieu) and two more under construction in 1939 (Jean Bart and Clemenceau) (MtG only)
- added HMS Aurora to British starting construction (MtG only)
- moved Town Class Light Cruiser template to 1936 start, added 5 ships to British starting construction in 1936
- Added Marines division template to HOL
- Added portrait for Ataturk
- added and tweaked a number of division name lists for various countries
- Commonwealth Ties can now be taken if UK is overlord of Dominion civil war factions, as well (and applies the relationship boost to those countries).
- Adjusted requirement for Imperial Conference to no longer be impossible if UK accepts Destroyers for Bases offer from USA.
- removed the claim Romania gets on Bulgaria from the relevant event
- Reach out to the Ware Group is now available for both democratic and communist governments
- Removed Atatürk as a starting field marshal and instead added a decision to recruit him if Turkey is in a defensive war, also assigned to him his new field marshal portrait
- Added foreign language loc and an on_action trigger for Turkish civil wars.
- Added Admiral Hipper to German starting construction (MtG only)
- Added two Kirov-Class Cruisers to Soviet starting construction (MtG only)
- Added USS Vincennes and USS Wichita to US starting production (MtG only)
- Added two light cruisers to Italian starting construction (MtG only)
- Central Powers will now invite Bulgaria if they exist, are AI, and are non-aligned.
- Adjusted Vojvodina state population, and added cores to it in the Hungarian focus tree.
- Central Powers focus now sends event invites to the various potential nations, giving them a choice rather than automatically adding them to the faction.
For the full 1.6.2 log (its huge), or if you want to help test go check out the 1.6.2 beta page.

See you all next week again!
 
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Podcat, are there any plans to help the Chinese AI resist the Japanese? They don't cover their coastline very well, leaving ports entirely undefended, for example.
 
Could you elaborate a bit on that?

Thanks for the patch.
quickly checking seems to indicate its a bunch of basic battery and armor techs
 
Really happy to see a lot of historical fixes in there! Looking forward to seeing how the Allies do in Africa as well. Italy still has a problem of not committing enough troops before the war starts.
 
Why not just make China garrison ports properly? As player China you just need about 20-30 divisions (even the garbage triple-red chevron divisions) set to garrison ports on coastal provinces and you can repel every Japanese invasion against Japanese AI without even paying attention. The default garrison AI even handles reinforcement.
 
= 600 will disable regions for missions as well now. Germany disables the channel if ENG is still a threat"}">- naval_avoid_region >= 600 will disable regions for missions as well now. Germany disables the channel if ENG is still a threat

I found a bug, the first "=" shall be "-" to be in line with other changes. :p
edit: oh wait....i think something else is wrong too. :p
 
Great!
Could you please have a look at traits XP gain for admirals? Numerous reports by the community that some are almost impossible to get, such as Ironside or the Carrier one.
 
- Nationalist Spain will not lose the "recovering from the Civil War" national spirit in historical focus mode, thus preventing them from joining the war

I hate to be a bother, podcat, but for those of us in my MP group, Spain is kind of a big deal. I'd like some clarification if you don't mind.

Can the national spirit be removed by Ally with Spain like it has in previous versions of the game? Does it remain applied forever if Britain runs Coerce Spain? Or do you just mean that it never expires on its own, but Germany can still remove the Civil War spirit via NF if they go that path?

It might make a huge difference in how we play in MP, since we generally don't allow Germany to invade fascist Spain.
 
I hate to be a bother, podcat, but for those of us in my MP group, Spain is kind of a big deal. I'd like some clarification if you don't mind.

Can the national spirit be removed by Ally with Spain like it has in previous versions of the game? Does it remain applied forever if Britain runs Coerce Spain? Or do you just mean that it never expires on its own, but Germany can still remove the Civil War spirit via NF if they go that path?

It might make a huge difference in how we play in MP, since we generally don't allow Germany to invade fascist Spain.
Why would it never be removable by focus?

I took it to mean that it's just not a timed idea anymore, so it now requires a focus in order to remove.
 
I think Japan is so strong because there is a problem with USA aggressivity in Pacific. When I check USA and Japan fleets in late war in 1.6.1, there are ussualy both on full size. I think both nations focuses on convoy escort and don't fight each other.
 
These two are huge! Hopefully we see improvements in these areas. :D Thanks for all your hard work, MTG is great if we can just iron out some of these balance issues.

  • Help Soviets mount a better defense. We have identified a few things, like a tendency to keep units back for the japanese front despite their main front not having enough units to man it (which causes all sorts of issues).

  • The invasion AI has been improved quite a bit, which left China being crushed by Japan a bit too fast and often so we have tuned down Japans strategy a bit unless facing a player to keep a more historical timeline.
 
Why would it never be removable by focus?

I took it to mean that it's just not a timed idea anymore, so it now requires a focus in order to remove.
yeah its just the timer thats the difference
 
Any chance the German and Italian scientists could go from +3% research speed to +5%? Currently I see many players skipping them, calculating them as not worth it, since it's a total of 200 PP and -10% stability for just +6% research speed. Another perhaps even preferable option could be halving the PP cost, for instance.

Also, consider buffing the malus to ahead of time research. It's still possible to get techs almost 4 years ahead of time, e.g. 1944 FTRs some time in 1940. This is still way too ahead of time IMO.

EDIT: Missed the line about scientists already being changed to +5% research speed. :)
 
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They don’t have burgers in Sweden?