HOI4 Dev Diary - We're back! (and 1.4.2 patch)

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podcat

Game Director <unannounced>
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Jul 23, 2007
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Hi everyone! The HOI team is now back after recharging batteries on summer vacation (although yet again I failed to go visit the submarine museum in Kiel :().
We decided to start our time off with a little patch (Oak 1.4.2) since there were still a bunch of things we wanted to deal with for which there was no time before summer.

Here is changelog:
Code:
######################################
###########  Hotfix 1.4.2 "Oak" ###########
#####################################

##################################
# AI
##################################
- Added AI strategy to avoid some naval strategic regions
- AI now realises that puppets will also join the war when their overlord does ( fixes situation where China does not put any troops on their border with Japan's puppets )
- AI should now prefer even shorter naval routes when picking what ports to navally transfer between
- Nations with low manpower are now less likely to burn pp on relation boosting as they need it for laws
- AI should be less likely to waste PP on guarantees when low on manpower and at war
- Removed AI weight modifier is_in_faction from JAP axis leaning focus
- Tweaked ai weights for carrier plane research. AI will now always research the most modern carrier version available and not research any carrier planes if they don't have carriers, the US and Japan will also be more eager to research carrier planes and particularly so when at war with each other
- Tweaked AT gun research to take enemy armor values into account (AI will be more willing to research AT upgrades if facing an enemy with high armor divisions)
- AI will no longer research basic heavy tanks if it can already research improved heavy tanks
- AI now clears the trades that are not being fulfilled due to having no access to trade country
- Italy should now be more careful about transports across the Med
- Enemies of UK will now be wary of transporting through the english channel

##################################
# Modding
##################################
- Can now use "relation" as target for pp_spend_priority ai strategy
- Can now use "guarantee" as target for pp_spend_priority ai strategy

##################################
# Database
##################################
- Added flavor names for German named fighter squadrons
- Added namelist for FAA squadrons in the 800-list
- Added a number of shipnames to the German roster (thanks davewolf!)
- Added Night Witches to the Soviet “Women in Aviation” focus
- Added German historic airwing names after player feedback
- New icons for Italian small arms and truck
- New icons for French infantry weapons (prime condition, only dropped once)
- Added a flavor name for a Yugoslavian light cruiser class
- New leader portraits for Yemen, Haiti, Malaysia, Luxembourg, Indonesia/Dutch East Indies, El Salvador, Buthan, Cuba, Panama, Dominican Republic, Netherlands (alternative)
- Commonwealth leaders now fallback on British portraits if TfV is not activated

##################################
# Audio
##################################
- Adjusted volume on some of the airplane sound effects

##################################
# Balance
##################################
- First level Radar now have a much longer range to make initial investment more attractive
- Expanded bypass criteria for puppet Bulgaria focus to allow focus to bypass if Romania holds all of Bulgaria in a war
- Albania should now not fold to Italian pressure if in a faction with Yugoslavia
- Added bypass to anschluss if AUS is a puppet
- Turkey will now only join the Axis through the German focus if they are fascist.
- Anschluss event now takes guarantees into account
- Lowered upgrade bonus to self propelled AA variants air attack from 30% per level to 15%
- Changed Demand Sudetenland focus to fire fallback event if England is a subject
- Changed South Tyrol to be a core of Austria
- Nerfed CZE fascism gain through focus by 50%
- Reduced starting fascism in CZE to 5% (down from 25%)
- Fixed wrong tech bonus in a Romanian focus
- A country that initiates coup on an another country gets a bonus while inviting revolting country to its faction

##################################
# Bugfix
##################################
- Fixed an issue where frontlines could sometimes dissapear
- It is now ok to transfer resources from your territories through subjects at war time
- Fixed issue where declaring war on a puppet could pull the puppet into an existing war on the wrong side of the war
- Subjects are now added to a faction if their master is
- Convoys used for naval transfers are no longer locked in a state of being permanently "in use" when saving/loading while navally transferring
- Fixed issue where merged wars made it impossible to surrender because you were not marked as war leader
- License production description now updates properly
- Fixed bug where division size affected how much attrition they took and how their supply status was affected by being out of supply
- Fixed a bug where volunteers could appear in an impassible area
- Fix for incorrect use of has_government = fascist/communist instead of fascism/communism
- Fixed a horrific bordergore issue in Romanian "Split CZE" focus
- Ensured that split CZE event chain did not result in CZE units sitting around after their country got annexed
- Doing the Indian focus "Battaglione Azad Hindoustan" should now fire the proper event for Italy rather than give them the option to collect money for the RAF
- Cheating on the Austria-Hungary Referendum and going with the annexation should no longer report that Hitler was assassinated. (the proper news event should fire instead)
- France now joins the Czech entente if they decide to support the Czechs and Czechs have their own faction
- Fixed a wrong tag in URG loc string
- Fixed Italy Befriend Bulgaria strategy not requiring Bulgaria to exist
- Reenabled Vichy France cosmetic tag in a cynical move to squeeze out a tiny bit of profit
- Fixed an event firing several times for Romania
- Fixed an issue with continuous naval/air production idea not being localised
- Fixed a situation that could cause an infinite loop of naval transports
- Made game several times less fun ( Fixed an exploit with nukes persisting after loading or starting new game )
- Design companies should no longer be lost when loading and older savegame in a new version (from next patch update on, it wont work with older sadly)

##################################
# Stability
##################################
- Fixed a division by zero CTD in airmissions when aircraft are fighting missiles
- Fixed various rare CTDs

As usual for patches between DLC releases we put them in public beta first. I snuck this one up yesterday and it was updated with some extra fixes today. If you want to test it out in beta you can find out how here. If all looks ok we may update live tomorrow evening (earliest), or on monday.

Looking over changelog list you'll notice how we have again added more portraits for free. This is part of our ongoing project to make sure all starting nations have unique portraits and its not that much left now either. I expect us to have accomplished it by 1.5 hopefully! Here are the portraits that were added:
portraits.png


We have also been working at an old and very difficult AI problem. The classic where Italy ships troops to Germany to help out (often from africa) leading to slaughter as they go through the channel. Our solution for 1.4.2 is specifically to deal with issues in the channel and the Mediterranean and works by us highlighting particularly dangerous areas to AI. Whenever AI needs to transport through such an area to reach another front and danger is high enough it will instead use those troops somewhere else. So for example Italy would leave troops in africa and fight on those fronts rather than get them killed moving to more high priority fronts. Long term we want to come up with a dynamic solution for this that doesnt need us pointing our danger to the AI and ways it can adapt its strategies based on this. AI however is always a work in progress for improvements and I think we have made a good step forward for a more competent transportation AI.

For today's World War Wednesday stream we are going to try something different: A massive co-op game where each general in germany is a different player on the dev team and me and Daniel run the government. Its going to get interesting so tune in at 16:00CEST on https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive!

See you next week for another diary!
 
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I was hoping the new DLC would be hinted at or even announced :-/ Running on empty with only DoD and TFV after all this time.

We have worked about one week since we released Death or Dishonor + made 1.4.1 patch for it. And we spent this week making 1.4.2. Its much too early to spill the beans on next DLC already :D We need to at least do some of the features in it.
 
So how do we get to see Colijn's portrait in game? :D

He is the neutral leader for now, consider it future proofing though for a nation in need of some special events

upload_2017-8-16_15-28-45.png

You guys are wierd sometimes....
 
@Cold Evil from the MD4 team has resorted to making a script that repeats the same AI strategy for every country to solve this exact issue and we end up with 1000s of lines of code to solve something that could be solved if we could use dynamic targets for AI strategies like THIS, ROOT, FROM and etc.

For example
<snip>

Do you think this would be possible in the near future?

probably yea, its something we ourselves really want to have
 
Any plans for improving the division designer use by the AI? I'd like them to replace their cav with mechanized eventually, and use less motorized, cav, and infantry, and use more artillery, medium/heavy armor, mountaineers, and mechanized. Or on the other hand, make it easier to mod the Ai that way, with an aim at 40 width or 44 width with a field marshal. Btw, maybe motorized/light tanks/heavy fighters could use a buff?

templates is always goign to be work in progress. The previous patches has focused quite a bit on it. For this one our AI job was spent on some other stuff, but there are sure to be more changes in the future

Cheers for the DD Podcat :D. Am a big fan of the focus for 1.4.2 - from my angle, that was the next-largest AI issue to deal with. Looking forward to seeing how it works out later today. One thought - have you put in anything to stop the Allies shipping troops through the med once it becomes a warzone? Nowhere near as high a priority as the channel (in no small part because Italy often gets their fleet thumped), but when you get a chance to tune up commerce warfare, things like this (or allied convoys through the Bay of Biscay once France has fallen) might be something to think about. A long-term solution that's more dynamic is definitely a worthy goal, but I suspect the ai_strategy will still remain useful in some cases.

The other big place was the straits of Malacca. May well have already been sorted, but if not, some kind of strategy along the lines of "if we don't control Singapore, best not send anything through there" might be good. If it were me, I'd also have one for cutting off trade between Japan and GER/ITA/other European Axis in certain conditions, but those conditions might start to get a tad unwieldy. Just throwing ideas around in case they help, suspect you'll have thought of them all already but figure it can't hurt :).

Yeah, the naval transfer stuff in 1.4.2 is sort of only the first step to fix the places with most problems, we will be working on a more general solution thats more flexible. Performance is also a little heavier than we'd like, so we wanted to keep it limited for now.

Will you fix the AI adding unnessesary Division designs (Infantry Division 2, Infantry Division 3 and so on) where each design just adds 1 more infantry battalion? Its also really unimersive to meet Soviet Divisions with the name "Infanterie Division 6" as example.

AI does that so it has a chance to go back if it needs to scale back, and also its a good way to trace its behaviour for us. The solution I think is not templates but a better naming system in the game with historically named divisions etc to avoid this *hint hint*
 
Not trying to sound "Yeah but you didn't do X" but how come we get all these great new leader portraits while Alf Landon and Earl Browder are still using Mr. Wilson as a placeholder portrait?

https://imgur.com/gallery/gPY9b

Put these on the wishlist. Will be done when we have free art resources (so about half an hour before the heat death of the universe, give or take 30 minutes)
 
I have a question. I understand most of the changes, but why reduce starting CZE fascism to 5% from 25% when historically in the 1935 elections, they had 25% and kept 25% in 1936, so historically why change it? When Czechoslovakia has other problems, which are actually historically false, like Benes being in charge of Czechoslovakia instead of Hodza

Do you have a link for me to back that up? The election data I found online indicates only a tiny amount of support for the National Fascist League.
 
Hm, fair point on the Sudeten German Party. I had somehow ignored it. Will take a second look at it, but the reduction was primarily for balance reasons (it was too easy for CZE to join the Axis).