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HoI4 Dev Diary - Min jistenna jithenna - Malta focus tree

Hello everyone!

So this is a first for me, my brand own dev diary! Well...in fact, I am in a bit of an odd situation. I fell asleep one day in the office about a year ago and no one came in the next morning. The building was put in lockdown during COVID so I haven’t been able to get out and I cannot contact anyone from the team.

I am running low on cash and the only way I can afford to eat is by having uber eats delivered takeout via drones, so I need you to buy this otherwise I have to resort to hunting spiders in the office.

First of a bit of a backstory since this might come as a surprise for some of you, it sure did for me. At first I thought it was a data anomaly but I have to finally admit...that it's not.

Ever since Malta was introduced as a playable nation in MtG we have seen a steady increase in players who are real hardcore about playing the island state. In fact most of you reading this are, 84% in fact.

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Why are you all so crazy about Malta? I have no idea and I am no data guy but to me this signal is pretty clear and I can no longer ignore it. As such I have decided to completely shift gear from our 5 year plan to a huge Malta focus tree. You heard it right here folks, I am finally delivering what you want and no longer will you be bound by your shackles of torment!

Obviously I cannot detail everything in one single dev diary. I need to hurry up to check out my spider traps for food, but there are some new unique features that are implemented specifically for Malta, so broad strokes will be covered in this diary, with more in depth path walkthroughs next time!

Economy 2.0​

Malta now begins as a proper colony of the UK ingame instead of being annexed by them. While the domestic industry will be limited by physical size the country can establish shipping lanes between other countries which trades sandstone. This was a brilliant invention of mine where I realized that Malta was pretty much completely void of industry and needed something that everyone wanted!

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Everyone? Yup, to make sure Malta gets the proper starting economy every construction and building you make now will require sandstone, which you have a monopoly on. It will therefore be very important to establish close ties with Malta, or your industry will hit a (sand) stone wall.

As more shipping lanes are established and countries buy more of your sandstone you get IC output in return. More sandstone can be mined via events, focuses, decisions and by scuttling your own houses to mine their stone, at the cost of taking a stability hit.

Beware though, if you push your trade routes to everyone at once too fast you risk getting the worst malus of all, tourists. They will arrive in great hordes and block your island, making deploying divisions impossible, and slowly erode all your precious sandstone as they walk around to take in the island’s sights.
tourists.png



With the power of blockchain technology and adaptive AI I have tied the amount of tourists arriving to real world tourism data, so you better get all achievements before summer!

Repeatable focus sets and building vertically​

As you know, Malta has limited land resources and while land reclamation is possible it is quite expensive to do so. Luckily we have the solution - instead of building horizontally we are building vertically!

Malta will be able to build several different levels of its country, like a skyscraper. Every level has a set amount of construction slots allotted to them and the player can construct buildings in these slots using the IC gained from the precious sandstone trade. Every new level also requires more and more sandstone, so the player will need to balance foreign trade and plopping another piece of tower onto the Maltese masterpiece.
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Graphical representation of Malta getting its first layer of new ground

Every level also has a special set of focuses, and I am very proud to let you know that every level up until level 3000 has a unique set of focuses. After that, every level has a randomly generated set of focuses up until int.max (2,147,483,647). If anyone ever reaches that level I know that you are cheating and the game will therefore erase your system32 folder.

As you build more and more levels the lower levels become impossible to bomb by the enemy, as it is protected by the level above it, like a roof.
level123.png


Of course it gradually becomes harder and harder to build vertically, so every new set of focuses completed will take more and more sandstone.
I hope that this will please all of you that like to hunt achievements, eventually you will be able to literally have enough levels to reach the moon! (yes I did the math on how many levels you would need to reach it)

A Corsair state​

Some of you will gain quite a wealth via the sandstone trade. If you reach a certain threshold before the fall of France you will be given the opportunity to straight out buy the French fleet instead of it being sunk and scuttled.

This unlocks the first alt-history branch, as you are now a minor powerhouse and with your newly gained armada you will get the choice to transcend into what every HoI player has ever wanted - a pirate state!

A pirate state is a new type of country in which you will transcend beyond the confinement of merely existing as a country with borders and cities, you are now a ruler of the high seas.

Your fleet now serves as your main hubs of recruiting, building and handling politics. Even if the enemy should capture Malta itself you will not capitulate. Instead your capitulation is tied to the brethren court.

Brethren court_1.png

Your admirals are now part of this brethren court, with each admiral of your navy serving as a military leader. If all ships in their task force get completely destroyed, you lose the game and capitulate. You can no longer change the admirals of your navy, and naval composition is done automatically depending on the whims of the court itself and the traits of the brethren (A brethren with a submarine fanatic trait will only use submarines for example).

Here you can see your specific brethrens traits, how much loyalty they have towards you, how much loot they have and you can even build some industry that travels with your ships. You can also transport divisions in these task forces which act as raiders if they are close to land.

While you can no longer edit your fleets, every year the brethren court meets in a secret location. If one court member fails to attend in time he or she can be ousted by another one of your admirals, which can lead to wide scale mutinies.

Here you can use saved loot to bribe other leaders of your court to reshuffle ships, oust brethrens or create new task forces if need be.

As corsairs you capture ships instead of destroying them in combat. When you would normally enter a “naval battle” you now enter a “boarding battle” where your crew tries to capture the enemy ships. If you have diver divisions you can also try and capture submarines.

If a crew's loyalty drops below a certain threshold they will rebel and take a part of the fleet away and form their own pirate coven .This uses a very complex algorithm designed by me which follows
no loot -> :( = mutiny

A note from Podcat, Game Director​

So hi everyone, this diary is something that actually alerted us to CraniumMuppet being locked into the office. When we found him he was passed out under a desk where he seemed to have created some kind of weird court with the local wildlife. He seems a bit confused and groggy but should make a full recovery.
office.png

An accurate representation of the office when we found CraniumMuppet

So anyways, look forward to next week when we will start dev diaries for 1.11 Barbarossa and the next unannounced DLC. See you all then!
 
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Barbarossa is a reference to a famous pirate. It makes perfect sense next DLC is all about Malta and other not-so-important nations in that area. :p
 
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Hahaha, absolutely phenomenal. It's the naval (and sandstone, lol) expansion we didn't realise we needed for HoI4 :) I've enjoyed every HoI4 diary I've read but not many have made me cry with laughter - well played @CraniumMuppet and I hope you and your wildlife minions are going well :)

Lots of quality NF names there. My favourite is probably...

View attachment 699754

...but it was hard to pick :)

A pirate state is a new type of country in which you will transcend beyond the confinement of merely existing as a country with borders and cities, you are now a ruler of the high seas.

MtG 2 - Kriegsmarine of the Caribbean starring Johny Depp as Doenitz ;)

So anyways, look forward to next week when we will start dev diaries for 1.11 Barbarossa and the next unannounced DLC. See you all then!
I seriously enjoyed this (pretend) DD enough that this is just the icing on the cake - although after the chuckling settled, it is very exciting to hear there'll be news on Barbarossa and the next DLC coming soon - very exciting :cool: Very much looking forward to seeing what you've all been up to :)

Edit: I'm clearly out of form - here's a naval pic, Valetta harbour (Malta) in WW2 - note how many sandstone levels they got to IRL :)

1617273928805.png
 
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Nice! Finally the "Fourth Crusade" (Fascist Malta) gets itself a tree! I've been waiting for this, next up Panterellia tree :D.
So anyways, look forward to next week when we will start dev diaries for 1.11 Barbarossa and the next unannounced DLC. See you all then!
So now for the serious bit: This(quote) is very exciting news, finally!

I'm a man of speculation so I like to speculate: The second image showed "Sand" as a joke resource, but I think it might mean that we get a new resource, not sand ofc, but coal, wood or maybe even rations? Many mods have coal, wood or even rations as coal powered ships, train and steam locomotives, heated homes and powered factories. I think coal could be a cool resource, and I heard that majors such as Japan and Soviet Union were "deficit" in coal so that would make them needy of others and conquer stuff.
 
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As corsairs you capture ships instead of destroying them in combat. When you would normally enter a “naval battle” you now enter a “boarding battle” where your crew tries to capture the enemy ships. If you have diver divisions you can also try and capture submarines.
I now that you're taking the piss, but capping/boarding in X3: Albion Prelude is a lot of fun...
 
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April Fool's aside: I would actually like to see more British land broken off into colonies/dominions/protectorates whatever you want to call them. Egypt is a big glaring one.

Also Ireland should be a dominion in 1936 as they didn't stop being one until 1937.
 
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Hat designer sounds more plausible than an updated supply system, so let's go with that. Unless @CraniumMuppet can give us any hints?
its customization or the different hats for the tourists
Spend extra IC and put a bucket on their head and they'll loiter less
 
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I was like a madman looking at the pictures looking for leaks, really happy Dev Diaries are coming! Best of luck to you.
But with this Malta DLC will we be able to marry leaders? It should've been in the base game!
 
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This sure was a rollercoaster of emotions, first I was happy and surprised for a DD coming out, then I read the title and was very confused, then I noticed what day it is and had a sensible chuckle, then I remembered the current DD draught and became sad... All in about 10 seconds!
And then I read the end of it and became overjoyed... And then remembered yet again what day it is and became suspicious.

So anyways, look forward to next week when we will start dev diaries for 1.11 Barbarossa and the next unannounced DLC. See you all then!

Nope Dev Diaries will be returning!
I'm gonna need you guys to confirm that again tomorrow. ;)
 
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View attachment 699757
HMMMMMMMMMMmmmmmmm......
Whaaaaaaaat

When I first saw this April fool's joke, I still went over the screenshots, several times to see if there were any changes to the UI.
Apparently I need glassed, 'cause I completely missed this :D. Thank you for pointing it out!
 
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First the hat now this, I’m intrigued. There’s a new space next to train, a space that looks conspicuously the size of another button.
 

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Interestingly it's only present in that one screenshot, in the other one featuring the full UI it's conspicuously absent
PDX have done this before. Before the announcement of La Resistance, they showed in one of the screenshots part of the new interface with espionage. But I'm not sure if this is not just an April Fool's joke. What can you do with hat in this game?