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HOI4 Dev Diary - Officer Corps

Greetings all, Arheo here!

For my first HoI dev diary, I’m here to introduce the Officer Corps: a collection of new features that will be included as part of No Step Back and the Barbarossa update.

For quite a while, we’ve wanted to allow for more direct specialization of military branches, as well as tying together various disparate systems such as the high command, generals, military-focused national spirits, and doctrines. To achieve step one of this process, we’re giving the Officer Corps and associated mechanics a unique national interface:
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(WIP, as usual)

Here, the empty advisor portraits at the top of the window are where you can now find your High Command and Military Theorist, and the advisor portraits below this are related to each branch Chief - they have been moved out of the political sub-window accordingly.

As well as UI location, there are further changes coming to all military advisors. Where previously, the theorist was the only advisor type that granted daily experience gain, all high command and branch chief will now generate experience appropriate to the branch they represent.

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The Advisor rank (e.g. Expert) indicates both the magnitude of their modifier bonus, and the daily experience you will receive.

We’re also experimenting with a split political/command power costs to gate the experience ramp-up somewhat, along with some other minor changes to command power.

Behind the scenes, we’ve made a host of changes to the advisor, spirits, and commander systems. Where previously, if we wanted to create a national spirit related to having a certain character in your government, it would be entirely unrelated to having an advisor with the same name, masquerading as the same person - likewise for commanders and advisors masquerading as the same person. This has changed. These are (for the most part) now controlled by ‘characters’. This has pretty sweeping connotations for our internal content designers, as well as modders, but importantly also allows us to bring the following new system to the No Step Back release:

Advisor Promotion

The introduction of a more connected Officer Corps felt like the perfect time to bring more of a connection to the Generals and Field Marshals that oversee your active forces, and the various military offices that advise your government.

In No Step Back, Generals, Admirals or Field Marshals can be assigned an advisory desk duty in addition to their status as a field commander. This will effectively add the character as a new advisor to your roster.

The type of advisor available to you is dependent on the skill level and traits of the commander you’re ‘promoting’ (not everyone likes desk duty ;) ), as you can see in the highly WIP interface below:

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Here, Herr Hell can be converted to an Entrenchment specialist as he possesses the Engineer trait, and has skill level 5. Currently, both Military High Command and branch Chief roles are available.

Experience

Experience generation in general has been weighted and balanced in order to achieve a more gradual switch from peacetime generation (a strong cadre of advisors, and unit training), through to wartime. Experience generation from combat and battles has been reduced fairly significantly to account for this, as well as capped (separately from other sources). Overall, experience generation will be consistently higher than in previous versions - this was done both to mitigate the introduction of the tank designer (and thereby increased costs), and to account for the other new ways in which you are now able to spend experience, which we shall cover below.

The eagle-eyed amongst you noticed in a previous diary that the doctrine branches had been removed from the technology window - they can now be accessed from the officer corps interface, and will function somewhat differently to before. Doctrines will be unlocked directly by spending branch experience, which can still be affected by instanced cost modifiers often found in focus trees and events.

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(There have been no major structural changes to doctrine layouts)

There are, in addition to the above, several new and exciting things that branch experience will be used for in NSB, some of which are handily teased in the first screenshot of this diary. Alas, we will be covering what those are and how they might affect your gameplay in a future DD.

/Arheo
 
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Re: superior firepower, while i understand that having massed artillery may provide benefits for your infantry, shouldn't that require you to actually have artillery in your division? Assuming no changes from superior firepower as it is now, you don't actually need to have artillery to benefit from most of its bonuses.
 
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Nikita1221 said:
It would also mean that no-artillery templates won't get any bonuses. Which they shouldn't.
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ksmiles said:
Re: superior firepower, while i understand that having massed artillery may provide benefits for your infantry, shouldn't that require you to actually have artillery in your division? Assuming no changes from superior firepower as it is now, you don't actually need to have artillery to benefit from most of its bonuses.
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I believe both of you are on to something here. How can the Superior Firepower doctrine give superior firepower bonuses to infantry and other units if the division template does not have artillery units in it to provide the bonus?
 
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Harin said:
How can the Superior Firepower doctrine give superior firepower bonuses to infantry and other units if the division template does not have artillery units in it to provide the bonus?
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Because the bonus is not just the artillery units. While Artillery does gain the most; mortars, machine guns, AT, AA, rifles, etc, everyone benefits from ample resupply.

The bigger problem currently is the validity of a 10/0 unit vs a 7/2.

With 30w upcoming, the question should be 15/0 vs 9/3/2/1. Picking the 9/3 should be the better choice, with the Superior Firepower doctrine making them that much better. And the reason why everyone wouldn't just pick Superior Firepower, is that they don't have or can't afford the logistical support.
 
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Jackarim said:
Wouldn't it be much cooler if you could build your own doctrine overtime for the needs to have or the things you will do in the future similar to a skill tree?
Every nation can have its own distinct doctrine that formulates there needs.
Some traits could be made mutually exclusive still and some doctrines could give very good specific buffs but at the same time give you debuffs in other areas.
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From a game play viewpoint this is a good idea. But not how it works in real life. Maybe a compromise where there are the four main doctrines with optional techs available to all four. Maybe some modder will take it upon himself to mod your approach. Sure it would be a big hit for the majority of the player base.
 
KingStevenofEarth said:
And each state can only hold a max of 3 refineries and 3 fuel silos. So yes, I max those out first, and then focus on building my civilian factories up along with enough shipyards to support a decently large navy followed by converting my civilian factories into military factories at the start of '41, unless I've been drawn into the war somehow sooner. When playing as Germany I do the same thing except with a greater focus on military factories from the beginning.
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If you did this against a good player rather than the ai, they would eat you alive, I guarantee it. Over-investing in fuel silos and refineries is a massive pitfall in hoi4. The factories you didn't build because you built silos instead will be the difference maker in multiplayer. Building 3 silos and 3 refineries in every state is a ridiculous waste of CIC, even more so when you build them before even building new civs. Your factory count will be so far behind that you won't stand a chance against a nation that started with half your industry but built civs, let alone a major power on par with you.

There's no use for refineries and silos before you need them, you can focus on building up your industry and then build refineries when you're about to go to war and expect shortages. Silos are nearly always a waste, as long as you can maintain positive fuel income it doesn't matter if your cap is 200k or 2 million.
KingStevenofEarth said:
My point there being that I've sufficiently studied enough warfare to come up with the most effective strategies.
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What I quoted above demonstrates something else, unfortunately. Real life does not always translate into gameplay. Almost every game the optimal choice is to build civilian factories from the start until a year or two before you expect to go to war.

This has been discussed ad nauseum and tested by many, as well as played out in countless mp games. Fuel is decently well balanced as is, the axis will struggle to both fulfill their fuel needs and have enough factories making tanks and planes to win the war in multiplayer.

It doesn't take a Hannibal to beat the AI, unless you're a new player who doesn't know how the game works yet or you're actively trying to lose, it's pretty hard to lose a game in sp no matter what you do.
 
I like this change just based on that it looks like I will no longer have to dedicate a entire research slot to the army doctrine till the end of the game.
 
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Shaka of Carthage said:
Because the bonus is not just the artillery units. While Artillery does gain the most; mortars, machine guns, AT, AA, rifles, etc, everyone benefits from ample resupply.

The bigger problem currently is the validity of a 10/0 unit vs a 7/2.

With 30w upcoming, the question should be 15/0 vs 9/3/2/1. Picking the 9/3 should be the better choice, with the Superior Firepower doctrine making them that much better. And the reason why everyone wouldn't just pick Superior Firepower, is that they don't have or can't afford the logistical support.
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Seems many think that supperior firepower is by far the best doctrine, might be a good idea to reduce/remove the generic soft attack bonus and only keep the artillery bonus so as to at least make SF use artillery.
 
Znail said:
Seems many think that supperior firepower is by far the best doctrine, might be a good idea to reduce/remove the generic soft attack bonus and only keep the artillery bonus so as to at least make SF use artillery.
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I would rather other doctrines get assorted soft attack bonuses in their core areas rather than nerf SF's. As I mentioned earlier in the thread, the reason it's generally the best doctrine is because it's the only doctrine that gives universally useful stats, and none of the others do. If the other doctrines gave stats worth taking, people would pick them. Even if SF was nerfed into the ground to give only 10% soft attack and defense through the whole tree and no other stats anywhere it would still be better in many situations than other doctrines.
 
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blahmaster6k said:
I would rather other doctrines get assorted soft attack bonuses in their core areas rather than nerf SF's. As I mentioned earlier in the thread, the reason it's generally the best doctrine is because it's the only doctrine that gives universally useful stats, and none of the others do. If the other doctrines gave stats worth taking, people would pick them. Even if SF was nerfed into the ground to give only 10% soft attack and defense through the whole tree and no other stats anywhere it would still be better in many situations than other doctrines.
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I don't see any particular reason to give all doctrines soft attack just to let SF keep it's bonus when it's easier to just remove the bonus from SF.
 
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Znail said:
I don't see any particular reason to give all doctrines soft attack just to let SF keep it's bonus when it's easier to just remove the bonus from SF.
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If you remove the soft attack bonuses from SF then that just makes three doctrines bad instead of two of them, and mobile warfare will be the one picked every game regardless of country. All doctrines need to be good. That's just basic game design. Give players multiple good choices. Right now only two doctrines are good. The problem is not that superior firepower is overpowered, it's that the others are underpowered. There is almost zero reason to take GBP or MA in an average game, making there also be zero reason to take SF won't change that.
 
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Im not sure if this was covered, but would it be a good idea to make recruiting new generals cost command power instead of political power? It makes more sense to emulate that generals would come from your officers, not from spending political power/money. It frees up more PP for smaller nations and gives a logical use for CP.
 
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Shaka of Carthage said:
Because the bonus is not just the artillery units. While Artillery does gain the most; mortars, machine guns, AT, AA, rifles, etc, everyone benefits from ample resupply.

The bigger problem currently is the validity of a 10/0 unit vs a 7/2.

With 30w upcoming, the question should be 15/0 vs 9/3/2/1. Picking the 9/3 should be the better choice, with the Superior Firepower doctrine making them that much better. And the reason why everyone wouldn't just pick Superior Firepower, is that they don't have or can't afford the logistical support.
Click to expand...
superior firepower is basically the industrial power>human resources doctrine. it basically depends on just having more industry put to produce, well.... anything, from ammo to artillery pieces, so that means, that while the "superior firepower" infantry should have more belts of machinegun ammo, there is also more artillery behind them, and this is a sort of package deal, it just doesn t really makes sense any of them in this not to exist..

so superior firepower should be quite useless for someone planning on spamming cheap 10w infantry
 
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freejones912 said:
Im not sure if this was covered, but would it be a good idea to make recruiting new generals cost command power instead of political power? It makes more sense to emulate that generals would come from your officers, not from spending political power/money. It frees up more PP for smaller nations and gives a logical use for CP.
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I definitely agree. Also command power limit should possibly be more than 100 if its gonna bu used elsewhere.
 
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withche.07 said:
I definitely agree. Also command power limit should possibly be more than 100 if its gonna bu used elsewhere.
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One of the devs mentioned they've upped the cap. Lets see if I can find it. Yep.

Arheo said:
There are indeed. The CP cap is now also increased to 200 by default, and the gain is now flat, rather than related to the current maximum.
Click to expand...
 
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