HOI4 - Development Diary - September 23rd 2016

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Thanks :) I quoted your post to the team as well. Its really nice to hear positive things because as devs most of our contact will be bug reports or people with problems, so hearing from the guys without problems and just having a good time adds some much needed balance :)
This DD is about long term stuff, so let's talk long term. :rolleyes:
I'm playing Paradox games for 15ish years now. The games PDX creates are by far the best you can find as a fan of complex strategic games.
You offer historical flair, with a brought set of options at hand to create complete different outcomes.

I think the crowd here in the HoI Forums might be the hardcore-hardcore crowd out of all your hardcore-customers. So no matter how much you get punched for bugs, balance issues, game concepts you tried and that don't get much love:

Be sure we love you! Keep creating immersive, deep, complex strategic games for this crowd :)
 
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If it's a Commonwealth-themed expansion then I suspect we might see some new focus trees for Canada, Australia, South Africa and Raj, which would be cool.

Although I have to say that I'm a little surprised you think that with 1.2, the base game is in a good enough place to shift resources into DLC instead of focusing on balancing, quality of life and AI improvements. I thought we'd get at least one more major patch before the DLC tail began extending.

Notice they mentioned the first DLC will be heavier on content than code. This probably means most of the devs will continue to focus on stuff that will go into the free patch, while the art/content team focus on the DLC. Similar to the Stellaris Heinlein patch and the story-focused Leviathan pack.

We'll have to see as they start going into more detail, but it sounds to me they are doing pretty much what you're asking for. Just in a way that keeps the lights on.
 
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I think I'm up over 400 hours, I love the basic premises this game is built on I really do but I also like mods that help to rectify issues I personally see, division spam and impassible terrain really are the biggest for me the rest of the mods are more eye candy. I trust the HOI4 team to do what their beloved fans want with an eye towards the future which I see as bright and exciting!!!!;)
 
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Great game!
Possibly already discussed elsewhere, but I'll take the chance - I really, really, really miss the unit hierarchy from HoI3! Meaning I would like to group my divisions together into corps, possibly including a couple of artillery or other brigades, and maybe even some CAS, and then bunching the corps into armies and the armies into army groups... Having 100+ divisions just flat under one army group just isn't realistic. And I like realistic. Please?
 
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Great game!
Possibly already discussed elsewhere, but I'll take the chance - I really, really, really miss the unit hierarchy from HoI3! Meaning I would like to group my divisions together into corps, possibly including a couple of artillery or other brigades, and maybe even some CAS, and then bunching the corps into armies and the armies into army groups... Having 100+ divisions just flat under one army group just isn't realistic. And I like realistic. Please?
I dont really care that much about what is realistic or not to be honest. At least its not a very good argument for doing something gameplay wise. I do think at least a 1 level heirarchy would add a lot to gameplay as well as realism though. Field marshals sittign at the same level as generals atm feels a bit messy and doesnt really make you care so much about their traits
 
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I think I'm up over 400 hours, I love the basic premises this game is built on I really do but I also like mods that help to rectify issues I personally see, division spam and impassible terrain really are the biggest for me the rest of the mods are more eye candy. I trust the HOI4 team to do what their beloved fans want with an eye towards the future which I see as bright and exciting!!!!;)

I've clocked in 210 hours now and when I tried the vanilla 1.2 beta patch I was disappointed because I was used to August Storm. Fortunately the issues you mentioned are solved by the modding community already (August Storm for instance has both impassable terrain and division spam fix).
 
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I really like the intentions with this game and it is the only game with serious possibilities to be the best strategy game ever. But then you have to fix three basic things that completely ruins the game.

1. If I draw a frontline of two provinces with a offensive line of two provinces then the AI SHOULD NOT(!!!) charge and take nine provinces in width! It should attack on a narrow front and only on with two provinces width. The width of the attacking army HAVE to be limited by how big I draw my offensive line! Why else should there be possiblitties to draw different lengths of offensive lines. If I for example have a frontline of four and a offensive line of two then the AI should gradually narrow the front as it getting closer to the offensive line.

2. The choice of aggressiveness of the offensive should also decide how much the AI deploys as flank protection during the offensive.

3. Fallbackline should be "universal" and NOT connected to specific armies. Other wise strategic elastic defense is impossible to plan and execute properly. An army at a fallbackline should also be able to defend this with different fanatism depending on the aggressivnes set. So that I as highest command can decide if they should fight to the last bullet and launch counteroffensive no matter the cost or should be able to fall back if the line is impossible to hold if I set the aggressivnes at a lower setting.

Please Paradox fix this basic things and the game will be playable and great, especially in MP. I like the idea of non-micro. The game will then be a fight between strategic minds and not click by seconds.

/Jeff
 
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I dont really care that much about what is realistic or not to be honest. At least its not a very good argument for doing something gameplay wise. I do think at least a 1 level heirarchy would add a lot to gameplay as well as realism though. Field marshals sittign at the same level as generals atm feels a bit messy and doesnt really make you care so much about their traits

Amen
 
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Is there any interest in looking again at the core land combat resolution mechanics? I'm thinking particularly ORG scaling, that leads to small divisions being able to take as many hits before retreating as large divisions. For instance, a 1 INF division has the same capacity to take ORG damage as a 9 INF division. Is this intended?
 
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Hi everyone, with the release of Sunflower and a smaller hotfix it's time to start looking at the long game.

Some people here might have gotten Hearts of Iron IV as their first Paradox game, or are new around here, so I best explain what I mean with that. For us the release of a game is just the beginning, and we plan on improving it for as long as people are interested. Crusader Kings II has been out for over 4 years and just had its 11th expansion as an example. Always together with each expansion we also release a bigger patch, usually with a bunch of free features too. There are often smaller patches in between also, but the big stuff happens when we release expansions.

For Hearts of Iron that means the next step is an expansion combined with the next 1.3 patch we've named Torch. The name of the expansion is still secret but the core theme will be around allied cooperation and the commonwealth (but not limited to this). Long term (and honestly at this point it's mostly speculation), I plan the next expansion to focus on the core of the game - the land war, and after that perhaps naval or air focus. Those are just rough themes and not strict limitations and might change of course. The first expansion will be a bit heavier on content and flavor while the second is likely going to be slightly more code heavy. We will be talking details in future diaries, both about fixes, UI improvements and free or paid features.
For the Torch patch the top priority when it comes to AI development will be the island hopping campaign to make playing USA vs Japan more exciting. Expect a future diary on a roadmap for what parts of the game we feel work well, which could do with improvement and roughly in what order we consider priorities for these and ai improvements.
We aim to have expansion and 1.3 out before Christmas if all goes well :)

I hope you are all as excited as me to see where we will be going over the next years of development and growing HOI4 :)

Starting next week we are going to be doing dev diaries on Wednesdays instead. That means Wednesday will be HOI day with both the World War Wednesday stream (and expansion related streams in the future) and dev diary on the same day (Fridays are always hard to get the time to answer questions on so this will work better I think). Next week the topic will be the HOI4 dev team. Since release and patch development we have been reorganizing ourselves and I think it's important to present the team as it looks now.

p.s @Sideburnout apparently had a bunch of requests for a wallpaper for the Sunflower patch, so here goes! Both Debug Dog and Sergeant Console on an afternoon drive in the desert ;)

View attachment 207619

Applause.

One request, please include a fix for the expeditionary manpower issue in 1.3. Losing your own manpower to replenish allied division losses really makes the expeditionary force feature sub-optimal to use.
 
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Way to trigger half of your user base.
aww come on, I was aiming for at least 99% >;-D

Applause.

One request, please include a fix for the expeditionary manpower issue in 1.3. Losing your own manpower to replenish allied division losses really makes the expeditionary force feature sub-optimal to use.

yup
 
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I dont really care that much about what is realistic or not to be honest. At least its not a very good argument for doing something gameplay wise. I do think at least a 1 level heirarchy would add a lot to gameplay as well as realism though. Field marshals sittign at the same level as generals atm feels a bit messy and doesnt really make you care so much about their traits
It's good to hear you say this, as many would of course agree.

If the second expansion is focused on land war then hopefully this includes some OOB changes; nothing major, but tying generals to armies and field marshals to army groups/theatres would be fantastic. I think that's really all people want, that extra rung in the ladder. That's obviously not the same as a full HoI3-style OOB with everything tied to HQs, etc.

Looking forward to it. :)
 
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It is rather amusing to read some of the stories about how the allies deceived the Germans, and the painstaking lengths they went through, to do so.
My personal favorite is the escape kits they smuggled to prisoners hidden in Monopoly boards.

I dont necessarily disagree with that :)
How would aircraft carriers work in that situation, though? (On a related note, do longer ranged carrier aircraft boost the ability of the fleet to find enemy ships? And does higher level RADAR? I'd love a good reason to research the higher levels of RADAR, but like the non-land doctrine trees, it almost always loses out to other techs, as the opportunity cost is too high.)



1. If I draw a frontline of two provinces with a offensive line of two provinces then the AI SHOULD NOT(!!!) charge and take nine provinces in width! It should attack on a narrow front and only on with two provinces width. The width of the attacking army HAVE to be limited by how big I draw my offensive line! Why else should there be possiblitties to draw different lengths of offensive lines. If I for example have a frontline of four and a offensive line of two then the AI should gradually narrow the front as it getting closer to the offensive line.
I've been requesting something along those lines for a while now. (See sig.)
 
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Can you tell us if you plan on adding more constraints to the NF system for the AI. Pretty much every game I play is in some way ruined because the AI took a war dec NF and used it despite being in no position to win that war.
 
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The name of the expansion is still secret but the core theme will be around allied cooperation and the commonwealth (but not limited to this).
I've been holding off on buying the game so far, but if this turns into some supreme allied command, you will have all of my love forever.

Lack of coordination between allies was seriously the most frustrating part of HoI3.
 
The solution for the clunky air system would be very simple: Scratch air bases and only assign a desired target number of planes per type to a region. The a.i. assistant could handle the rest. Why would the player care which air base a plane is based on? The player builds airport capacity per region and the rest is abstracted. No need for actual bases on the map and micro-ing wings and base-attachment.

While that might make sense for the smaller areas in Europe, it would be problematic for the huge areas in the pacific. The emphasis there should be on grabbing islands so you can build airbases. If planes were just assign to an area, then individual islands would be relatively meaningless.
 
I'm very excited to hear that we're now getting into the new features phase. I like HOI4, but it honestly needs a lot of work. In general I think some things have been too simplified and too abstracted and they really need to be sorted out and expanded upon. One very serious problem I think the game has is the almost total lack of feedback from battles and the war overall.
 
I dont really care that much about what is realistic or not to be honest. At least its not a very good argument for doing something gameplay wise.
Nooooo.....
Yes I agree that some level of abstraction is needed for gameplay, but why not include some things for immersion and for those who prefer realism? And it would be just easier to control armies when they have their own hierarchy (maybe without generals and without actual HQ's on the map).

PS Any information with regards to research system? Right now it feels just totally unrealistic and there are no interest there (for me), we don't have any infrastructure for research, or any other dependencies. Hoi3 system had at least leadership points and theoretical and practical experience. And hoi4 have nothing right there, some Rumunia can have same amount of research slots as Germany. And I really don't understand why didn't you used your naval building system in research system. Introduce research buildings in game and when you want to research technology assign maximum 15 research facilities to this project.
Really want to see more interesting research system and want to see that it would depend on some infrastructure or resources, not on national focuses where we can get free stuff for nothing.

PS PS and would be great if we had some areas where it is impossible to pass, especially in Africa or Asia, for more natural and interesting war in those regions. Now Axis just spam africa with divisions and they are attacking across sahara like it is easy thing to do. I would want to see real war for north Africa like it was in hoi3 for example.
 
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