Hi everyone! Last week on Thursday we released Waking the Tiger and it has been a huge success breaking our active user records and is our highest rated DLC on steam for HOI thus far! Thanks everyone who has bought and played it and given us feedback, its super appreciated and the team is really happy!

The plan now is to get the 1.5.1 patch out with the most important fixes we have done. That one has been in open beta since Friday (but updated a few times), so thanks those who have braved its waters and helped us with feedback there too. We just updated that one again as well just now. The plan is to check it for any issues and if it's ok we hope it can go live tomorrow After that we will focus on a more long-term patch where we will have time to address balance issues and more risky changes. That one will be 1.5.2 and will get a rolling opt-in open beta you can participate in until it's done (about 3 weeks or so to give you a rough timespan) which will get updated frequently with fixes/balance updates for those who want to help test.

Overall the release has been very stable, but looking at reports and feedback the things we are focusing on are:

• Balance. There are several areas, but air involvement in land combat and general strength of spamming air power is a prio.
• Desynchs in multiplayer. Telemetry data only shows a minor increase of 2% more people desynching, but we are still prioritizing this. 1.5.1 has a few potential fixes but it has proven very hard to nail down the exact reason. If your MP group runs into this feel free to tell us and test on the open beta.
• Focus tree fixes. Germany not going fascist has had some unforeseen effects as well as other inter-country checks. Hopefully most of this have been taken care of in the 1.5.1 beta now.

The changelog so far on 1.5.1 is as follow:

Spoiler

################################################################
######## Patch 1.5.1 "Cornflakes" ########
################################################################

##################################
# AI
##################################
- "Desperate AI" improvements, ai know does not switch escape provinces as long as last one valid and fixed a case where it can try to escape a province that is also desperate
- fixed a case where armor divisions were being allowed in defense fronts

##################################
# UI
##################################
- Fixed positioning of add army portrait btn.
- Fixed Zaibatsus Challenged tooltip issue.
- Fixed balance, tooltips, and events for ideology switching decisions.
- Fixed border clash focus icons lost gfx
- Added infantry tech level 3 3D model. Copies lvl 2 version.
- Fix construction showing more building levels to be repaired than what was constructed.
- fixed naval production gui not updating when you switch equipment
- fixed ui scaling no longer breaking tooltips
- added tooltip that explains increased capacity for garrison orders
- Fixed battle plan tools going behind army list stopping you from training on small screens
- Danzig for Guarantees now mentions getting Poznan as well.
- fix for minimap positioning with UI scaling
- fixed drag and drop not working with ui scale
- Division Designer > Better layout, with instant preview when mouse over the edited battalion.
- Aligned division count on badge in theatre view to match army badge.
- Right click on an army group leader portrait while having unassigned divisions, will assign them to it's sub groups in a smart way.
- Added bunch of generic focus icons.
- Added icons for German CV CAS tech level 3, with a flavour names.
- Fixed icon for generic focus for tank production.
- Added icon for attack switzerland focus.
- Minimap is now working with scaled interface.
- Fixed a missing picture in a stability event.
- Adjusted trade window resource quantity label to be large enough to show more than three digits instead of wrapping.
- Updated leader promotion message to clarify that the decrease in skills will be temporary.

##################################
# Modding
##################################
- Added cancel_trigger to all types of decisions. cancel_trigger will not run remove_effect when true.
- Missions now use cancel_trigger to abort before completion and remove_trigger to remove and run remove effect if the decision stays in the interface.
- Added modifier army_org_regain
- Fixed "random variables" being broken with tooltips
- fixed an issue where mods were loaded in wrong order and couldnt overwrite DLC
- When using the effect add_offsite_building in a wrong way, the error log will warn about it.


##################################
# Database
##################################
- removed a focus from PRC 1939 start that caused an error
- Fix for two wrong division name lists in the 1939 start
- Event pictures "communists cheer" and "American hunger strike" now have interface entries
- unlocked Chennault as adviser for manchukuo and reduced cost for him
- Reenabled generic tank manufacturer idea for countries without
- Returned Samoa to its (then) rightful owner
- "Forced loans" decision is now repeatable.
- Assertiveness focus now bypasses if manchukuo is already free.
- Communist Japan can now only call for Soviet Volunteers once
- Unaligned Germany's Anti-Comintern Pact no longer invites India and China and other Asian minors that don't border SOV.
- Blow the Suez Canal event now has correct localisation.
- "Object to Attachés" decision is now more limited and its effects now depend on relative strength of nations.
- AST and SAF no longer locked out of Appeasement tree by Germany opposing Hitler.
- Adjusted bypass requirements for "Danzig for Guarantees", "Safeguard the Baltic", and "Support the Finns".
- "Schlieffen Once More" is now available in case of Franco-British Union.
- Added some missing (and fixed some existing) text translations to Russian.
- Political advisors unlocked from PRC/CHI focus trees, are now available to warlords that take over the government.
- Fixed some missing event pictures in Japanese border war.
- Added plenty of missing texts translations in various languages.
- Added bypasses to the "Japanese Non-Aggression Pact" focuses.

##################################
# Balance
##################################
- Germany should no longer lose 50% of its equipment upon starting the Oppose Hitler civil war.
- Communist Chinese focus tree, now get's some infantry equipment production bonuses, for better gameplay balance.


##################################
# Bugfix
##################################
- Prevented exploit of tech swapping military doctrines by starting level 2 tech in the current branch before switching to a different branch.
- Fixed Chinese Industry Relocation decisions to check for control of state.
- Changed remove_trigger to cancel_trigger for Political Struggle decisions to avoid sudden influx of points when someone claimed national leadership
- Reinstate Imperial Possessions no longer removes core for Alsace from France.
- Fixed not creating combats while moving into provinces that has combats that you can't join (where both are enemies)
- Made "Triumph for X" decisions non-repeatable.
- fix for double inflation spirit appearing under certain circumstances
- their cores are no longer lost when you puppet a nation (fixes soups in peace deals when AI cant liberate for example)
- Now guarantees can be mutual (fixes a path in japanese focus tree)
- Fixed frontlines around wastelands sometime disappearing.
- JAP nuke surrender decision now clears global flags
- PRC that takes over through political struggle will not inherit negative spirits from China
- added bypass checks for Confrontation with the warlords focus
- blocked taking national leadership if subject or leader is subject
- Fixed a case which could prevent nations from ever surrendering
- Manchukuo now loses Kwantung Veto when released through the Japanese focus tree.
- Changed local_org_regain to army_org_regain for communist china's spirits
- added bypass checks to Finish the Fight focus for japan
- Fixed planes being engaged in combat in another region than the one they are assigned to
- Added recalculation of support points if a state involved in the struggle changes controller
- Fixed an issue where states would show as being part of the strugle, though they were controlled by an enemy nation.
- Fixed female unit leaders being converted to males on save/reload
- Surprise Attack Plan idea for civil wars is now functional.
- Creating a Manchurian Airforce focus will now bypass if MAN does not exist
- Enabled increase Airlift decision for a China that is in the United Front
- Fate of the Imperial Family no longer requires Manchukuo to exist.
- Decision to escalate to a border conflict is now cancelled if in faction with the target
- Fixed issue where decisions updating decisions to remove could skip an element in the array if one was supposed to be removed
- fixed an issue where Manchuko's Assertiveness branch broke if Japan went with support Kodoha (lost Puyi, lost special autonomy level)
- Forcefully removing support for opposition in a state now properly reduces the gloabl support for the leader of China
- Added bypass trigger to Japanese focus Triparte Pact if either Germany or Italy is not fascist or Japan is at war with either of them
- Secret CIA reference now actually works (maybe. but thats CLASSIFIED)
- Removed max trait limit from unit leaders
- Fix for awake and angry achievement not working
- fixed a US resource decision pointing to the wrong state
- Adjusted Wilhelm II and von Mackensen minimum/average death dates.
- Fixed the never ending "connecting..." message when you fail to connect to a multiplayer session. The max timeout is 30sec, but now it will finally say "Failed to connect".
- Fixed attaches adding ideas twice on save/load.
- Fixed a double-Stalin-bug. If a player right click on a country with a leader, and then on your own country that is missing a leader portrait, it still shows the previous country portrait.
- Battleplans > Fixed bug in defensive orders being auto merged when painting them.
- Fixed a number of issues with Romania in base game without DLCs enabled.
- Fix for wrong event being fired from SAF decision.
- "Fall of Cairo" event now gives correct Italian leader
- Fixed "replace_path" not working for mods downloaded from the workshop.
- Socialism with Chinese Characteristics no longer creates a faction if player is already in one.
- Fixed missing occupying country name in the tooltip.
- Various generals generated from focus trees (or other effects) now has correctly scripted skill levels.
- Overall garrison order improvements.
- Fixed a bug where strikes from demobilization would be impossible to remove by restarting demobilization mission immediately on timeout.
- German focus to "align Hungary or Romania", now bypass if the country does not exist or is already a subject of another country. Effect from focus to integrate them now only gives factories to the country that becomes a puppet of Germany.
- It is now possible to bookmark with Ctrl+(1-9), not only a divisions, but also a selected province or a strategic region.
- Reverted Nazi Germany getting back their old focus tree if they won the German Civil War (because it broke a lot of things).
- South Africa now has referendum decision available if they went "South Africa First".
- "Test the soviets" decision should no longer require split-second timing for it to work.
- Poland now more inclined to ally Germany, and less inclined to ally UK, after giving up Danzig for guarantees.
- The amounts of air wings being sent as volunteers are now updated properly, and should no longer go negative.
- Fixed typo in the tooltip of command power description.
- Fixed some division names in German historical name list.
- Referendum decisions now have proper triggers, and will correctly display after Political Discourse is Opened, or ideology support is above 60%.
- "Test the Soviets" will now only execute a negative effect for Soviet Union if they actually lose.
- Splitted demobilization missions into two separate decisions, to fix an issue with strikes spirit getting stuck.
- Manchukuo "Five People Armies" - spawned divisions are no longer locked.
- Fixed some XP gain problems for unit leaders. Multiple leaders can gain XP from same combats now and XP gain does not depend on number of units in army (it depends only on number of units in combat) which should increase overall XP gain.
- Fixed command_power_gain modifier (which are currently being used in inflitration) behaving unexpectedly and causing too much effect on daily command power gain.
- "Expand Civil Support" and "Expand Military Support" decisions, are now removed when a civil war starts, even if still active.
- JAP, RAJ, SAF, ITA, and SOV revolters will no longer get their 'old' focus tree back if they miraculously win the civil war, because it broke many things.

##################################
# Stability & Performance
##################################
- fixed an OOS that is caused by triggering same event twice
- added CTD safety checks to deployment destruction to avoid random crashes
- Prevented using the Continue button to load an old save from a previous and incompatible save version.
- Possibly fixed new game launch crash with modded initial state where it tries to instantly peace out countries at war
- Better handling of error messages from the DirectX function calls (so now if something goes wrong with rendering, we see what is it about).
- Fixed CTD when selecting planes on a non-owned carrier after a civil war.
- Fixed CTD related to the new division names system.
- Fixed CTD in our code responsible for parsing (searching) the folders and files.
- Fixed CTD when using event add_ofssite_building when it would put the building level below zero.
- Performance improvement caused by add_relation_modifier (seen especially when played with specific mods that use it a lot).
- Added extra safety checks to prevent potential CTDs when joining to a MP session.
- Filtered out superficial unit and country leader values when calculating checksum, to avoid false positive OOS.
- Fixed possible OOS cause when client and host have different sets of leader portraits or names (DLCs and MODs may cause that each player in the session has different portraits/names).
- Added hotjoin and error code details to telemetry for OOS events, which will help us with tracking OOSes that happens to the players.
- Fixed potential OOS if only some of the players are using mods with unit names (related to the ace generation).

Its always interesting to see what people play and like in the new expansion, so we took a look at some telemetry:

What paths do people pick?
Germany:
Rheinland - 55%
Oppose Hitler - 45%

Japan
The Unthinkable Option - 9.5%
Purge the Kodoha Faction - 65%
Support the Kodoha Faction - 16.8%
Strengthen the Civilian Government - 8.7%

People Republic of China
Marxist Orthodoxy - 9.8%
Agrarian Socialism - 81.5%
Social Democracy - 8.7%

Manchukuo
Assertivness - 89%
Obedience - 11% (I guess you guys arent very obedient ;D)

Nationalist China
They dont really have a top level choice like the others, so no data here.

Its early days so I expect these numbers to look different in a week or so

 

[permanently_afk]

Guys, no reason to argue whose opinion is most valid. We try to listen to everyone and have a decent grip on what the majority wants. As for historical vs ahistorical this is why we have different paths. you dont have to go down the commie japan path if you dont want ti (although I am not sure its all that implausible in the scenario we painted up honestly)

I am sorry, though I get a bit tetchy when someone presumes to speak in my name. I'd been fine if they spoke about "I am asking again for more historical accuracy".

 

[Fulmen]

you can help us solve the issue by grabbing the host savegame, and the person desynching's save game. zipping them up and attaching in the feedback thread to the beta patch so we can compare them, or make a new bug report in bug forum. It might be that the 1.5.1 beta solves your issues too, there were a couple of fringe OOS cases solved so make sure to test that if you and your friends are up for it.

I've hosted several MP games with the beta since the weekend. It definitely seems more stable than 1.5.0, but I don't know if that's just luck.

Yesterday we ran into a repetitive OOS that only got fixed by taking a save, rehosting and making sure everyone restarted their games. The first rehost everyone didn't, and all of those that didn't went OOS. 2nd rehost everyone restarted and the OOS was gone.

Unfortunately I forgot about making an OOS report and deleted the saves already.

I made 3 bug report (making my 4th) but none of my posts got any QA/dev reply, however other bug reports have more replies, do you still check every post?

They generally do read them, even if they don't reply. I've already made 3 bug reports for Waking the Tiger and they fixed at least one of them (control-groups not being assignable to states) in the latest beta update.

 

[Misaka_Complex]

Was the problem of Germany declaring war of everybody/bullrushing through the Maginot improved or is it still ignored? Also was there an improvement to performance issues where the 1943 lag was present in 1936 for some people?

 

[GSP Jr]

Suggestion: can we please get the arrows back in the Production menu? I think for new players it is very un-intuitive that the only way to change the order of things is to click in that specific blank space on the bar, no indication at all that this is how you drag things around. But more importantly, I want to be able to jump new lines to the top immediately, and be able to move low priority thigns to the bottom immediately like I used to. The clicking and dragging system seems like a downgrade to me.

I like both the arrows - for moving 1 or 2 or all, but the drag and drop comes in handy too.
I want both, please.

 

[Fulmen]

Telemetry data only shows a minor increase of 2% more people desynching, but we are still prioritizing this.

Keep in mind there's a lot of people playing in MP mode alone for some reason, or with just one or two friends. In big groups of say, 15-32 players, the chance for OOS skyrockets.

Also, does activating hotjoin in singleplayer make the game show up as multiplayer in your telemetry data?

 

[Kuzma Minin]

Any fix for the soviet union not being able to take land from Poland in a completely historical game?

 

[Angelis]

Since WtT I'm now a proud owner of the game and all its DLC's as well. It seems to be a great game and I have a lot of fun learning how to play.

Would it be possible to get some kind of ingame-information, if e.g. a unit has been completed, or arrived its destination or especially when it is attacked? Maybe it's noobish to ask for that but I find it a bit strange to constantly scan the map to avoid unwanted surprises.

"Das ist unerhört! Der Russe steht 12 Kilometer vom Stadtkern und ich erfahre das so zu sagen auf Nachfrage!"

Anyways thanks for the great game and keep up the good work!

 

[GSP Jr]

Love both the updates and the DLC, too many additions and improvements to pick a favorite.

Now, back to work on 1.5.* and push some code, lol.

 

[stl3l9n]

@podcat
Are MEFO bills still 20% consumer goods?

 

[kettyo]

Do we now get a notification in case a resource is overimported? I miss this a lot in 1.4.2.

Also what would be super-awesome if there would be three historicity levels with a new semi-ahistorical one where major ideological and political transformations (which are more fantasy than plausible) are disallowed but otherwise there is freedom.

 

[CommissarWallace]

- Prevented exploit of tech swapping military doctrines by starting level 2 tech in the current branch before switching to a different branch.


this is the only change i do not like it already takes to long to get doctrines in game so removing the ability to change from bad one for your country to a good one is not a good move i really dislike this "fix"

This is definitely a statement I agree with - having to waste the better part of a year re-researching a base doctrine because your country starts with something you don't want is pretty abysmal. I'd recommend having everyone start with no doctrine picked, and maybe a research bonus towards the 'historical' path.

 

[thinking_waffle]

So if 1.5.1 is focusing on a major bugs and balances, should I expect the resolution of the conflict between some advisors and their alter-ego generals fighting for another faction in 1.5.2? This problem concerns mainly Zhu De for communist and nationalist China and Li Zongren for the Guanxi Clique and Nationalist China. In any case I would just like to have advisor lists that are coherent with your stance that China is already in a civil war.

On a totally different subject, I still wonder why something such as the ace portraits disable the ironman mode, i really thought that it would work like idea icons or music mods. The change is only cosmetic.


In any case, good luck.

 

[him_15]

Great effort from the team, much appreciated! Really looking forward to HOI's future as well!

 

[krogoth21]

Yeah good suggestion. I personally have also thought about being able to mark stuff as deprecated liek with equipment to hide from the list, but not need deleting

First, thanks for the really good work.

Second, while you're thinking about quality of life improvements, could you please bring back the fact that the planes list when creating an airwing remembers its last position ? It is really annoying to have to scroll through the list to find where you were for each airwing. It is very frequent that I create more than 3 wings of the same plane type in a row.

 

[fabius]

Drag drop would also be useful
1. Move generals around on the bottom of the screen.
2. Move army icons in the Theatre box
Both of those would help quickly picking the Army I want and keeping an order.

3. Drag drop divisions in the army list. To help keep order and quickly glance to see how many tank, motorised, mountain ect divisions are in that army.

edited: if air is getting looked at- I'd just suggest that it's much weaker until 44, when air-ground co-ordination really kicked in.
This could be tied to making doctrine ahead of time MUCH more expensive as racing land can doctrines also unbalance.

And a small request- Strat Bomber ping pong. Can we have a delay to how quick strats can change zones. After all, bombing runs took some planning, recon, even espionage etc.

 

[scroggin]

I were just thinking Im going to miss the developement diaries every week, then Podcat comes to the rescue with this

 

[baasfaalhaas]

@podcat ey, if i go over general limit so lets say 30 out of 24 divisions i dont get xp at all, while before you'd still get xp (general lvl xp). Is this intended?

 

[Memoryofthelost]

Quick question will the Chinese warlords get access to all the nationalist chinia's focus advisers now or are they still missing?

 

[scroggin]

For the of us who dont use the battle planner could the logistic wizard trait be moved from behind the organiser trait. According to the tooltips you can only gain the organiser trait from experience using battleplans, thats fine for the traits that reduce planning speed but why for log wiz?

 

[adil3tr]

All this shows is that people like ahistorical Germany and Manchukuo, but historical Communist China and Japan. And I tend to agree. I enjoyed the Kaiserreich path for Germany, but found communist Japan a bit too implausible.

I thought it was an exciting idea, but felt that the execution lacked a sense of purpose. For example, the communist tree could have focused on freeing colonies like the democratic one and the South African communist tree, or could have revolved around Japan being a research and technocracy focused and boosted communism. It just felt in the DLC like your nation was crippled, had no navy, and had no story besides helping Mao if your civil war didn’t take three years to end and he isn’t dead. I hope maybe in the future the communist branch can be updated to be more imaginative and have a central aim like the other branches (take the pacific, attack Russia and fight on land, form the PTO)